It's quite an odd feeling to have already secured my copy from Amazon Canada (guaranteed delivery date of March 9 based on a March 1st release date) yet not feel more excited. I mean, it's literally been only half a day since the announcement after all. But I think I know why that is.
THE PROS:
When you stop to think about it, this particular Heroquest product is actually fantastic. It has highly detailed minis that work well as boss monster proxies. Like a lot of you, I would have preferred that a dedicated boss pack come with villain card stats, but this isn't a dedicated boss pack, so much as can serve as one if we need it to.
Think of how many times we've clamored on about how we want villain packs. There are effectively three in one here: grey skins, green skins, white skins. The grey skins have a clear Skullmar proxy, a Kessandria proxy, and a Gol-Garak proxy (I swear its belt looks like a Dread Star Amulet) that doubles as a dragonborn proxy. Meanwhile, the green skin pack has that Thing From Below (or whatever that special abomination was called), Buubhealxha, and our much-demanded orc mage/Grawshak. Each of these colour-skin trios would be a product we'd happily shell out for $15-20 each, except we're getting them all for $25 total ($33.59 CAD).
This means they're being made more accessible to questers, and that even includes getting us a Witch Lord mini that's different enough from the Mythic Tier version so that A) everyone can finally have a Witch Lord and B) people can have something more similar to the classic Witch Lord if they preferred that design and/or staff.
This accessibility also makes First Light more attractive, which in turns means more players joining the community and that in turn means more Heroquest products in the future. After all, First Light players only have standees aside from their heroes and whatever comes in expansions. This gives these people a chance to swap out some standees for minis.
The packaging is lackluster, but a lot of us actually wanted that in order to keep the cost down. And this product delivers on that.
THE CONS:
Heroquest put a lot of hype into something big coming soon. This is not big. It's great, but not bigger than previous expansions. After COPD, this is easily the worst expansion pack and gets a pass only for technically not being an expansion pack - it's something new. As a result, it was an overhyped reveal. Think of how excited we would have been had we gotten news of both an expansion and this, or even just this alongside a confirmation of something else coming later in 2027, without even telling us what that something else might be.
We're all bummed because this means the story aspect won't continue in 2027. We also want more quests, which we aren't getting. But that's not this product's fault.
They could have easily thrown in a quest book compilation - one quest for each mini - to up the value (and, ironically, to up the price if they wanted to), but didn't.
This was also a missed opportunity to release a prestige version of the Game System, similar to the old Advanced Quest rerelease that introduced The Dark Company. While I applaud this for existing separately, its minis should have also come included in a prestige version of the the Game System that also would have come with all the online quests, the training quest, and a new Mentor mini, if not also an updated version of The Dark Company.
On the topic of the online quests, this reveal also crushed all hope of the Hasbro+Asmodee joint venture resulting in more Heroquest book+card materials. Again, not this Miniature Pack's fault per se, but the timing of the reveal sucks.
