Trial by...

... Heroquest!

This afternoon I sat down and played Heroquest. First time in years I think.

What is more I did so, having been inspired by Mr Rab's post over on the LAF (more here), with my son. I had been saving Heroquest, with the idea of sprucing my old set up and painting all the miniatures, for when he was older,  but I thought what the heck - let's see how he gets on.

Both my kids (4 year old son and 2 year old daughter) have expressed interest before in Daddy's monsters, often eager to see what new creatures are lurking in the parcels that pop through our letterbox with some regularity.

I'd asked him earlier in the day whether he'd be interested in playing and I took the fact that he jumped up and ran to the door, shouting "Can we play the game?" when I came back from walking the dogs  to be a good thing. As you can see K, his sister was quite keen too!

So I got my Quest book out and prepared everything to play the first mission - The Trial. Both of the kids were excited to find the treasure and get the evil Gargoyle, Verag.

Movement proved to be a good opportunity for some adding practice, totaling the score from 2D6, although it took a little while before H understood he couldn't just teleport to any room he wanted to - not sure he got the idea that doors and monsters and the like only appeared when his character could see them. Next time I may set out all the doors and blocked passages first to help him visualise where he can go.

And so the intrepid hero set off with his Dwarf and Wizard (the Elf unfortunately had snapped off his base many years ago, as had the barbarian's sword) in search of gold and derring do. H soon got the idea of the simple combat system Heroquest has, although not necessarily the survivability of his characters! Soon we were down a Dwarf at the hands of an enraged Fimir and the Wizard was down to his last body point with a Chaos Warrior on his tail!

The success of the quest was balanced on a knife edge, one bad dice roll away from disaster... so I brought the swordless Barbarian on as reinforcements! With some timely use of Fire of Wrath and Ball of Flame the wizard saw off his pursuers and the Barbarian caught up to add his muscle to the expedition.

Having looted all the treasure chests he could find, H turned his attention to locating Verag and slaying the foul beast - a task he approached with some relish! Unfortunately the Wizard had fallen in a rather uneven combat with a Mummy so the Barbarian went it alone...

After a bit of a tussle with Verag's Fimir and Chaos Warrior bodyguards (K got stuck in with the die on their behalf!), H the Barbarian stood before his mighty foe, broadsword at the ready... and killed him in one combat round - rolling 3 skulls!

So how did the little tyke enjoy his first foray into dungeoneering?

Well his favourite bit was killing the Gargoyle and finding the treasure, although he wished he could have done more magic before the Wizard met his untimely end.

Oh and he wanted to know when we could play again - Result!

While I'm on a Heroquest vibe here's a great new series of videos that tickled me, featured on the marvellous Ye Olde Inn's Community Blog on Heroquest, which I've been lurking on for a while.

Right - off to finish basing some Warmaster skeletons...