Come join me as I unbox Altar Quest and explore its contents.
A Rude Awakening
FedEx woke me up bright and early today. This was a surprise to me. The last time I checked the tracking (just before bed), it said the same thing that it had the last million times I checked: “Shipment information has been sent to FedEx”.
At 8:00am, the doorbell rang, and the entire house was awake. So much for sleeping in on my Saturday! Oh well, I can’t stay mad at them for long, they did just deliver Altar Quest. This looks like a great day to unbox Altar Quest.
I think I need a bigger desk!
Into the house, and down to the dungeon. I’m glad my wife didn’t take it into the house. This box is huge! It almost doesn’t fit on my makeshift work bench, the largest clutter free, horizontal surface in my house besides the floor (and who am I kidding, the floor’s not that clutter free with three kids running around).
I must admit, they did an amazing job cramming all of this into one box. If I was in charge of this, the box would have been much bigger! It’s well packed, and well protected, this is much appreciated.
With everything out of the shipping box, I get a glimpse of how truly small my desk really is.
Altar Quest, the Base Game
Upon opening the box, you see rules and some sheets of chipboard tokens. The printing quality is impressive, and the tokens are pretty easy to pop out. Some of them almost fell out when I picked up the sheet to move it. This is reassuring, I’ve had some games where the tokens are so hard to get out you almost rip them up trying.
I’m getting some powerful emotions of nostalgia right now. This stair case almost looks identical to HeroQuest.
The board is pretty large. The material feels a little thin, but I think it’s pretty well made. I’ll follow-up later on the quality after I play it a few times. I like that the board is six-fold, I really hope this is how Hasbro makes the new HeroQuest board. It makes storage convenient.
There was a lot of thought put into packing the box. Everything has a place, there’s a tray for the cards, with a little spot for the dice. The minis are neatly packed into molded trays. Once I punch out the tokens, there should be enough room to store them on top of the board. Worst case scenario, I’ll need to put them under the trays.
The miniatures are really nice. The plastic is hard, it only flexes in thinner parts like the weapons. I’m really impressed with the level of detail. My favourite thing about the minis: no assembly required.
Overall, the quality is pretty good, there are however, a few imperfections. This is expected in manufacturing. If they’re outputting thousands of units, there’s bound to be an imperfection once in a while. I noticed some warping in base of the mushroom patch:
A Look at the Stretch Goals
The stretch goals box is bigger than the base game!
I didn’t realize the massive amount of extra stuff we were getting.
The stretch goals come with a second board, you have the option to use in place of the original. I’ll be honest, I think I like the alternate board more. The original board has a lot of colours, the alternate looks more grim and dark.
The stretch goals come with a massive amount of miniatures, three trays worth. One of those trays fit the full dimensions of the bottom of the box. There’s also another card tray to hold the decks for the various extra heros and enemies.
The minis are the same quality as those in the base game. I especially like the additional tokens that are cast in plastic, it’s a really nice extra touch.
A couple things to mention: it looks like they ran out of room for all the extra minis, there are two that were just put in a plastic bag and placed in the tray with the dice. It would have been nice to have a safe place to store these, but I guess that wasn’t possible.
Side Quest: The First Four Hero Pack
We’ll take a quick detour and visit The First Four heroes before we continue on to the grand finale.
There’s not a lot going on with The First Four. First off, the box, not as nice quality material as the others. I’d say it’s pretty similar to cereal box material. It’s also pretty difficult to open without damaging the box flaps, just something to keep in mind if you haven’t opened yours yet.
Once you carefully remove the contents, you’ve got a tray with miniatures, your hero decks, and some tokens.
The Ruins of Arkenspire
Finally, we’ll look at the Ruins of Arkenspire.
This box is smaller than the others, but still the same quality. Inside, the first thing you see is a story guide and additional rules.
Ruins of Arkenspire doesn’t have a traditional board, instead there are two smaller boards that are each double sided.
It uses each of these in smaller encounter style missions. This is actually where I got the inspiration for my work in progress: HeroQuest Mini Encounters. If you’re interested in this project, or many others like it, check out the HeroQuest community at Ye Olde Inn.
There is only one tray, half devoted to mini’s and the rest for cards, dividers, and two mysterious boxes labeled “Box 1″ and ” Box 2″ with special instructions not to open until instructed.
Again, the minis are great, though there are far fewer in this expansion set. There’s one mini that even looks like we could use him as The Witch Lord in HeroQuest.
There didn’t appear to be as much thought put into packing this box. There are card dividers provided, but I can’t seem to get them to fit in the space allotted for the cards. I don’t understand why dividers are provided if we can’t use them in the box!?
Final Thoughts
Overall, Altar Quest looks great. It’s well made and looks like it will provide not only dozens of hours, but maybe even hundreds of hours of adventure. If you’ve never heard of Altar Quest, I would encourage you to check out the publisher, Blacklist Games. You can also check out my post comparing Altar Quest to HeroQuest for more information about the game.
I’m going to look through the rules and play through a couple of games soon. Then I’ll give my thoughts on the rules and mechanics.
For now, I’ve got a dilemma. Where do I put this tower of awesomeness until I can get around to playing it?
Check out more Altar Quest content.
Thanks for visiting, hope to see you again soon.
