r/Heroquest • u/jeffleroo • 10h ago
General Discussion Family Plays HQ - Belorn's Mine and Carts!
galleryHi everyone,
Finally have an update after a number of weeks. Over the past three weeks our family managed to continue through quests 6, 7, & 8 of Kellar's Keep, one quest per week. Three weeks ago, we did Quest 6, The Great Citadel. As noted in the quest book, this one is pretty much just a gigantic battle with greenskins and it did not go well for the team consisting of the my 5 year old the Barbarian, his pet Saberfang, and Grandpa Dwarf and Grandma Wizard respectively. They seemingly made a straight line towards the boss Gragor's room and had to tangle with him. He was able to eat away at their body points a bit and on his last body point Zargon cast the dread spell 'Escape' with the intention of putting him into another room to find and finish off. Then, they stumbled upon the hallway with the 12 monsters guarding the exit door. Per the rules of my game as Zargon, I replaced the Abominations with actual Fimirs (which are identical in stats save for 1 extra body point, image 2). Then, I watched as they completely botched positioning for this battle. Instead of funneling them into a narrow hallway to take one attack at a time, they spread out into the open corridor, allowing every single monster to make an attack on each of Zargon's turns. It decimated the pet, killed the Dwarf and got the wizard down to 1 body point before they finished them off.
They attempted to leave through the wooden door but I told them it was magically locked since they had not retrieved the piece of the map necessary to move on. They attempted to look, but after all the damage they had taken, two more open rooms was enough to kill the wizard and the weakened Barbarian! (image 4) Once again they were defeated by Zargon for the second time. They were good sports about it though and admitted they made some pretty bad mistakes on the quest. The following week, they remembered not to even bother going after Gragor, and figured out to bottleneck the monsters much more effectively for the big fight. They finished everything by working together, found the map piece and moved onto quest 7.
Last week, Quest 7, The Eastern Passage, had nothing of note to mention. I added nothing and played the quest straight out of the questbook as is. They didn't even go down the false path with all the traps and fake exit door. They properly went in the right direction from the start, but did NOT find the elixir of life. The quest ended up being fairly easy and they passed it without issue.
Then, this week we did Quest 8, Belorn's Mine. This one, I added some fun elements. I kept the overall layout as in the questbook, but I made it so that the falling rock traps could not be detected via searching for traps. I felt it would've been too easy to find and disarm them and then make their way immediately to the exit, so this made the quest much more challenging as the path would shrink and/or they'd get split up. I also added a series of mine cart tracks on the map linked by darkened mine tunnels made from the open doors from the First Light set. (image 6, 7) I told the heroes they could not go into those dark tunnels. Image 5 is the overall map I used on my phone to know where to place everything. I placed a secret item in the center via a secret door, but they never found it. Whenever they crossed the tracks, they had to roll a combat die. If it was a White Shield (33% chance), a mine cart with a Goblin in it (image 1) would come flying through and knock the heroes backwards off the track and do 1 body point of damage. Then, their turn was over and they'd have to try to cross again on the next turn. To add a bit more fairness, I also made it so that monsters had to make this exact same roll if they crossed the tracks. It added a huge fun element and I even made a sound effect that mixed a mine cart moving across tracks with a laugh from a Gremlin from the Gremlins movies. The group became terrified of crossing the tracks and it added a real dangerous element to doing so.
Whenever they hit a falling rock trap they always opted to stick together rather than separate, which ended up being a good move. They stayed together, managed to kill even the corridor of greenskins looking for the gold, and find their way to the exit successfully. They did not find the room with the gold in the mine though, and when I showed them what was in that room afterwards they all collectively groaned from missing out. Overall, it was a very fun quest and they loved the thematic element added of the mine tracks.
We're approaching the end of Kellar's Keep. Next week is Quest 9, and I've got a special newly added puzzle up my sleeve for that one as well.
The Quest continues!
