In my last post, I went over the three core tenants of a Dungeon Crawl Board Game. I did this by examining one of, if not, the first Dungeon Crawl Board Games, Dungeon!. I also explained how Dungeon! was seriously flawed but, had room for innovation. In this post, I'm going to talk about one of the biggest and best Dungeon Crawler of all time, and how it revolutionized the genre, while examining it through the core tenants. So get ready, as it's time to talk about Stephen Baker's classic Heroquest.

Released in 1989, Heroquest popularized the genre. In the process Heroquest introduced a ton of people to the Dungeon Crawl genre and the tabletop gaming industry. Made with simplicity in mind, Heroquest has stood the test of time, and many do consider a PERFECT game. Now I wouldn't go that far. Yet, the sheer adoration of its fans is admirable, and has spawned many expansions, spin offs, and a remake! Heroquest is a classic, and this is only reflected through the tenant system.

Crawling is magical. The game achieves this through the plentiful use of miniatures. This game has miniatures of monsters, heroes, and even furniture. The miniatures are also easily paintable, adding a new way to interact with the game. But, the miniatures do have one crucial flaw, practicality. Building, carrying, and painting all of these miniatures is hard work, work that some may be unwilling to do. Yet if you are able to put in the effort, it will add a magic to crawling that few games have captured since.

But, what about combat. Well, I wouldn't call it magical, but it gets the job done. At its core combat is moving your minis around the board and rolling dice. However, your class, equipment, and spell, add depth and replayability. Your class affects your rolls, equipment, and spells. Your equipment effect's your certain roles, and your spells can do damage, give you buffs, and much more. When playing as a wizard, or elf, you have access to all three of these. If your a barbarian or dwarf, you don't have access to spells. The dwarf makes up for this by its ability to find traps, adding to the crawling side of the game. The barbarian doesn't have any of this, instead he's the strongest. This makes him ideal for beginners, but he gets old after a couple games.

However, combat isn't the only thing that adds depth and replayability. Treasure, also adds this, yet it also adds depth to a part of the game I haven't mentioned yet, the campaign. This campaign is played in missions, each mission having a different layout. Each mission also has a story attached, along with rewards in the form of treasure. This treasure is definitely on the rare side, and is rewarded by the game with good timing. Overall the treasure is solid and certainly spices up play. Though I in my opinion, there just isn't enough of it to make the campaign mission entertaining on a long time. This could have been avoided if the treasure was more unique, changing gameplay drastically. Instead, most treasure is things that make you stronger, which gets old fast.

So if we put Heroquest through the system, it gets a good score. Yet, like in Dungeon! the treasure and combat is where it falls behind. It's a huge improvement, light years ahead of Dungeon!, but by modern standards the combat gets repetitive without spells, and the treasure gets boring once you dive into the campaign mode. Don't get me wrong, Heroquest is great, and is certainly a classic but it isn't perfect. Heroquest also paved the way, inspiring dungeon crawlers to this day! It's combat being a clear example of this. Anyway, that's some of my thoughts on heroquest. Stay tuned for part 3, where we look at Warhammer Quest.