Heroquest : End-of-cycle

Hey, it's time for back to school! Not the funniest moment of the year but at least it can be associated by my gaming group to a glorious Heroquest moment.... Nothing else than an end-up of the 9 missions campaign.  

Everything started with an genders balance in the group. Indeed I provided to my wife a female avatar for the sorcerer. This model is a fan made and can be find on ebay, thank to Dante who kindly sent me this beauty. Colors scheme is totaly inspired by the HQ version.

The last mission is splited in 2 maps  representing a wide tunnels network infested by Green Skins. Quite standard mission exept that each one ended by a special encounter/room. Indeed, the first mission finish by the encounter with the Slayer Thorik in the middle of a fight with a Manticore (Khazad-Dûm echo!).

The second  mission ended in the treasure room and the encounter with Balaur, the Blue Dragon (Smaug/Erebor echo!). After an Epic fight well managed by adventurers group,  Balaur perished by an arrow fired by the Elf. Thorik couldn't resit to behead the monster and it's  very good reason to paint my Citadel DS9 Dragon Slayer vignette, as reminder of this fantastic campaign. I admit the blood fx on the axe is a bit overkill :) 

Anyhow cheers for the adventurers!

In game picture

Friday evening adventure!

Encounter with Thorik

Encounter with Balaur

Balaur's death

Heroquest ! Treasures room

Hello gents! The Sundayquest cycle come to an end  and to celebrate this event I prepared a treasures room worthy of its name for the final adventure (2 scenarios). 

The background is about an old Dwarf realm fallen into the hands of the green skins. The king's familly owner of the realm live in the shame since this tragedy. Only the familly son survived and become a slayer, seeking a glorious death in the tunnels of his old realm. 

The heroes will come across this fella at the end of the first scenario during a fight vs Manticore. After the struggle (we suppose they'll win), the slayer will join the group for the second an last scenario. The goal is to wandering and finish by the treasures room... Defended by... a Blue Dragon! Epic story :)

The room : I mainly used carboard to build the structure of the room,  ground come from Dungeon floor plan box and walls are printed on paper sheets and come from a sample found on the web. For the treasure piles, I used this youtube tutorial (Link). Regarding the glitters, to avoid a flat coat of gold coins, I'm looking on the web to find a shop which providing several tones of gold (Link). Last advise for gemstones, I chased on ebay this item, several sizes and tones (Link)

The treasure keeper : I had an old crush for this piece from Ral Partha / Citadel catalog (DG3). I met this model for the first time in the Herault Citadel French Magazine, picture from magazine reader. Thank you Jérôme Arquille :) It's not the taller Dragon from the Citadelle Range but I have an indescriptable attraction to this model. Could be the posture, it seems on top of the treasure pile.

Heroquest !

Hello! Today a long post to share my last hobby/gaming moments which are revolve around the famous Dungeon crawler, Heroquest. Hasbro reedition is fairly good and I was charmed by the plastic furnitures. So, coupled with my fantasy miniatures collection, I saw an easy way to introduce my kids to miniatures games with a bit of retro fantasy role playing game. 

Kids and wife have a very low fantasy rpg/wargame culture and my main objective is to present them a dungeon crawler with an easy board game rules system and a touch of rpg create o good ambiance . Heroquest is a very good tool to achived this task. 

Role playing Game : The point is to let my gaming group discovered the way to play a cooperative game and introduce a new concept : the Game Master. Meaning, the guy hidden by a screen who represent the game/background/rules/map/monsters/etc...  I take the time to give background for evey mission, I also give description of rooms and key actions. To stimulate the rpg description skills of the adventurers, I reward them with bonus die when they provide a good description of death blow, jump over trap, etc... But the rpg style stop here, players haven't the opportunity to refuse a mission or kill a npc, it's a quite linear story.

Necromencer Bastillon

The board Game : Here, I would like to introduce another new concept to my gaming group : The fog of war. In the same way of the old Dungeons floor plans. To do it, I covered the board game with black pieces of card board. Pieces are maintained in place by Black balsa borders than I sticked on the board. I progressively remove the black pieces function of the adventurer progress. I machined the bottom of the doors with a dremel thus I can stack them on top of the balza borders.

Balsa borders

Machining with dremel

HQ board fully covered

Plastic furnitures : The range of furnitures developped by Hasbro is probably the key factor of my compulsive buying. I completed with a mix of ebay Item and things from my own collection to obtain a full set of material for dungeon crawling.

DM material

Foam from Feldherr range

DM set up

The DM screen : The one supplied in the original box never really inspired me. A rpg screen must provide to the adventurers a good supportfor their imagination, when the GM describe a situation. I took 8 pieces of fantasy art from the early period of J. Blanche. Those had a huge influences on my imagination in the 80's and I hope they will also work on my gaming group. 

The screen have a technical interest as well regarding the capacity to give precious information to the GM during the game but for HQ this aspect is very low. I used four horizontal A4 sheets.

In game pictures : We  play HQ games on sunday afternoon at bi monthly frequency and since the summer period we started to run some games on friday evening. I prepare a final scenario for the end of August in order to prepare the worst moment of the year for kids... The return to school!

Classic sunday afternoon

Chaos Citadel

In game picture

Dream up!

Orcs lair

In game picture

Rpg moment!

LED candles