Family Plays HeroQuest Part 9 - Quest for the Spirit Blade
Today, our family came together again to complete the second last quest of the game system, Quest for the Spirit Blade. Once again, it was my son the Barbarian, and his grandparents as the Dwarf and Wizard respectively. We're approaching the end, and I have an epic finale planned and ready to go.
For this one, I mostly kept to the layout of the quest book, but I added one major element: water rooms. In a previous quest, I conceived of a maze for the heroes that would fill more and more with water each turn. I had the heroes start in the middle room as normal, but each of the four doors had a book case next to it. When all four heroes left the room, the book cases moved and blocked off all four doors, so there was no retreating (and also so that the water wouldn't spill into the center room, but they didn't know that yet).
This time the water was back, but I wanted it to be much more dangerous than before. So many doors on the layout were ready to unleash a torrent of water that was inside the rooms and would expand six tiles on each of Zargon's turns, and if the heroes ended a turn in the water they'd take a body point of damage, and it took two squares of movement to move through a single square of water.
Here's where the famous HeroQuest random luck came in though... In the very first center room where they started, my son searched for treasure and drew a custom card I had printed of the "Helpful Mouse". All credit to Banjo and his many custom cards. I liked this card, and a number of others, so I actually had it printed and put into the treasure deck as a random card they can draw. For those who don't know, this card allows a hero to populate a room without opening the door and alerting the monsters inside. So, I didn't plan for this, but the Barbarian used it on the very first door in the center corridor and revealed that the room was completely full of water (bottom right corner of image 2). I had planned for them to open this door and start the water hazard event, but they knew what was on the other side and now knew NOT to open the door! Little did they know, though, that two of the rooms on the quest were filled with water, and there were multiple doors that triggered it, so I knew a flood was coming eventually but luck was on their side at first.
Eventually, in the bottom portion of the map they did trigger the water door and the flood began. The water spilled into the corridor but would drain by either going into the waterway, or into the grate tile I placed in the middle. They knew to run for it away from the water, and sure enough they picked the correct direction to go and found the elevated stone bridges over top the water rooms immediately. This Quest actually ended up being one of the shortest we've ever done, as the group essentially went straight down the correct path to the final room. I had multiple rooms and decoy directions they could've chosen, but they somehow picked the exact path to the exit. You'll notice in image 1 that there are plenty of closed doors still on the board as they never went in those rooms.
On the bridge, they encountered a Water Elemental who jumped up from the water below to battle them (image 3). I made it fairly strong, but now that we approach the end of the Game System, the Wizard was finally starting to think like a true magic user. She used a fire spell on it, and I said that the elemental was vulnerable to fire magic and took triple damage from it. That finished it off, and the heroes had a direct path to the final encounter (image 5). In the final room, I gave the Spirit Blade to a 'Spectral Warrior' and treated it as ethereal (image 6). The heroes had to roll black shields to hit him. I should note that he did have his accompanying minions as per the quest notes, but they killed them easily enough before I took the attached photos. It took a bit of work, but they were eventually able to overcome the boss and the Barbarian collected the Spirit Blade. He was excited as he knows what that means and what's coming.
Next week, we've already planned the big finale. My son begged his mother, the Elf, to accompany them in this final Quest and she has agreed. For the very first time since their very first game of HeroQuest over three months ago, the four heroes will be reunited and face the final challenge together. Other than that first Quest, it's always been either my son and his grandparents or him and his mother, never all of them together. The Barbarian has the Spirit Blade, and the Witch Lord awaits...
