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Innocence Lost
We found out about a new HeroQuest Quest Pack, and it all started with a seemingly innocent message from an Avalon Hill Employee on their Discord Server:
A trip down memory lane, remembering the Frozen Horror reveal during the previous years Hasbro PulseCon livestream. Looking a little closer, that’s not the Frozen Horror! This is a screenshot of the previous PulseCon, but it’s been tampered with.
Some speculation occurred as to whether or not this was a real image or a hoax. When shared on Reddit, some users accused the poster of trying to trick them. We know better though, Avalon Hill wouldn’t trick us like this, it must be real, so further investigation happened.
Get your copy of The Frozen Horror.
Digging Deeper
Thanks to the efforts of a very dedicated fan on the HeroQuestFans Discord server, Eudoxio, they were able to get us a closer look at this image by running it through some up-scaling software to extrapolate some of the blurred out features.
From this we can see a bit more detail. We see the four classic heroes, and what appears to be, possibly a new hero!
Who could this new hero be? The speculation has begun. The consensus that I think most have agreed on so far, is that this is an alternate version of the Guardian Knight that was previously released in limited quantity.
I think that is a very good guess, it should hopefully appease the fans who unfortunately missed out on the Guardian Knight. One question I have about this new figure, will it be a male hero or female? I think neither! In order to save from creating two versions of the hero in one expansion, I think this MASKED hero could be used as either. I think they likely won’t have any defining traits, so you could use it as either.
Now that we’ve agreed that this will likely be a Knight Quest Pack, what will the theme be? Looking at the adversaries, we appear to have some mixed race enemies. Some could be Elves, judging by the pointed ears, others could be human, or humanoid. This could be some kind of organized group, like cultists of some sort. In the background we see some ghostly figures.
What do I think? I think we’re looking at some kind of cult, possibly some sort of vampires, definitely some ghosts or spirits. I’m hoping this means that we’ll be getting a spookier, horror themed quest pack.
We have seen translucent plastic in the past, with the icy blue dice in The Frozen Horror Quest Pack. This would be a great opportunity to give us some translucent minis to play with.
Some speculated that this new Quest Pack will be a remake of one of the previously published EU expansions. A good theory was The Dark Company. It was confirmed, however, that this will be something completely original, and not The Dark Company!
At this time, we don’t have any idea when this Quest Pack will release. Our best guess is sometime in late 2023, after Mage of the Mirror releases in February.
HeroQuest: The Mage of the Mirror is now available to Pre-Order. Expected shipping is February 2023!
What’s in a Name
Another mystery, the new HeroQuest expansion’s name. It was conveniently cut off so we can’t see what it’s called.
Reddit user u/allnamesaretaken211 found another version of the image: https://www.reddit.com/r/Heroquest/comments/xvpxml/a_new_adventure_for_2023/
Doing a bit of digging, I managed to determine the origin of the image. It popped up briefly during the Hasbro Investor Day 2022 Virtual Event which was livestreamed.
This image is a screenshot directly from the recording of the livestream. If you would like to checkout the recording for yourself, it can be found here: https://investorday2022.hasbro.com/.
In order to view the recording, you’ll need to register. To save you some time, watching the whole thing, the part we are talking about is around the 0:44:00 mark.
Looking a bit closer to the images, we can determine a little bit of the title:
We can definitely make out “Rise of the Dread”, unfortunately the rest is obscured. The full title can be seen on the side of the box, but it is too small to make out.
From here, a lot happened. There were frantic attempts to guess the title all over Reddit, and Discord. Mocking our futile attempts, a challenge was issued by the same Avalon Hill Employee who shared a seemingly innocent post.
And finally, after many attempts, the name of the new Quest Pack was revealed!
HeroQuest: Rise of the Dread Moon
Parting Words
The whole time I was writing this, I couldn’t get this song out of my head, enjoy:
Let me know what your thoughts are on this new Quest Pack. I’m hoping for a horror themed quest with a new Knight sent from an order of vampire hunters.
The Rogue Heir of Elethorn is currently shipping in some areas!
Thanks for stopping by, hope to see you again soon!
[…] Thanks to this post from Avalon Hill earlier today, we have some more details for the upcoming HeroQuest expansion Rise of the Dread Moon. […]
[…] case you haven’t heard of Rise of the Dread Moon, it’s an all new HeroQuest Quest Pack that should come sometime this year. This new Quest […]
[…] interesting case will be the upcoming release, Rise of the Dread Moon. The icons for this brand new quest pack will need to be converted to match the two classic styles […]
One thing is for certain. The ranks of the Dread Minions will rapidly be expanding. Which can lead to other speculations, will they be transparent, grey, or since they appear to be some undead white? Sticking with the color faction content, then some deadly subbing could be in the near future.
In the meantime, I’ll be looking forward to adding the elvish influence in the near future for my gaming.
Thank you for the great work Elvyler, and keeping us up to date.
There’s a dread moon on the rise.
or a bathroom on the right. lol.
Glad it got pieced together. Maybe we can get a translucent dread host. maybe vampires and werewolves hopefully in time for Halloween next year. great job keep reporting on the awesomeness that is HeroQuest.