Against the Ogre Horde – The Next HeroQuest Expansion Announced!

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The train has left the Speculation Station! After months of pondering what the next HeroQuest Quest Pack would be, our hopes and prayers are confirmed! Against the Ogre Horde, here we come!

So far there is no pre-order available for Against the Ogre Horde, the release date is tentatively set for March 2024!

As of this writing, the HeroQuest Game System is on sale at Amazon, get yours today!

A “BIG challenge” Awaits in Against the Ogre Horde

Now that we know what is coming, it’s time to figure out what we’ll be getting! Which means we are back to Speculation Station again!

A good place to start might be with the original Ogre Horde expansion, which to be honest, I’m not that familiar with. I suspect that a lot of North American readers may not be very familiar with this expansion either; it was only released in Europe. So, let’s look at it together. Here’s a link to the original expansion in Ye Olde Inn’s archives.

Here we can see that we have a shorter quest book with only 7 quests. Also included are 4 new types of ogre monsters:

• Ogre Warrior [Move: 6 | Attack: 5 | Defend: 5 | BP: V | MP: 1]
• Ogre Champion [Move: 6 | Attack: 5 | Defend: 5 | BP: V | MP: 1]
• Ogre Chieftain [Move: 4 | Attack: 6 | Defend: 5 | BP: V | MP: 2]
• Ogre Lord [Move: 4 | Attack: 6 | Defend: 6 | BP: V | MP: 5]

As you can see from the stats listed above, these ogres are not like the one we’ve seen in Mage of the Mirror, they all have “Variable” Body Points. We can notice that the Ogre Warrior and Champion are pretty much identical, and that none of these Ogre types are anywhere near what we saw in Mage of the Mirror.

What is all this business about “variable” Body Points!? According to the quest book, the Ogres don’t have a set number of Body Points, instead they make use of a “Body Point Tracker”. This was a track on each quest that contains a series of blank squares and skull squares. Every time a hero damages an Ogre, it could be any Ogre, Zargon, or in this case Morcar, marks off an X on the tracker. If the X is over a skull, the Ogre is killed and no more damage is marked on the tracker:

This is a really interesting mechanic, and I wouldn’t mind seeing it come back in the remake version. It brings a unique flavour to the Ogres that we haven’t seen yet in the remake game.

Next up we have the Ogre Miniatures themselves. Originally there were 7 miniatures included, 4 Ogre Warriors and 1 of each the Ogre Champion, Ogre Chieftain, and Ogre Lord. We can kind of see these different Ogres represented in the new box art, here are my thoughts on what we are looking at:

I’m thinking that we’ll see the same number of miniatures, 4 of them will be the same as the Ogres from Mage of the Mirror, then we’ll have new sculpts for the Champion, Chieftain, and Lord, if they are still called those names in the remake. At this point, we’ve had a different surprise in each new Quest Pack, so I doubt 7 miniatures will be all we get. There could be dice, or new furniture. A new giant plastic Ogre Throne would be a perfect addition, but even then, it would still be light on the plastic compared with all the other quest packs. There has to be something else, we just don’t know what that is yet.

It’s also been mentioned that some of those Ogres look a lot like Orcs. This is entirely possible. There may be an explaination for this in the text of the original quest pack. It’s mentioned in the classic quest pack that “…other Ogre clans and Orc tribes came to swell the ranks of this new army.”. So Orcs are now actively working with the Ogres in this quest pack, it would make sense for them to be represented in the artwork.

Here’s what we know for sure:

• There will be ogres!
  • It’s in the name, there have to be Ogres!
• There will be 3 brand new quests!
  • I’m trusting you guys on Discord about this one! I can’t confirm it, because I don’t understand Italian. Several people have reported on Discord that there will be 3 brand new, never before seen quests added!
• There will be a new way to play called the Arena!
  • More on this below

Enter the Arena

The Arena!? What’s this? We don’t know, but maybe we can gain some insight from the First Edition European version of the Game System. Thanks to Seekhashem on Discord for pointing this out to the community!

In this edition of the Game System Rule Book, there are two sections, one called The Arena, and another called Return to the Arena, see them below:

These Arena sessions, are meant to be a type of tutorial so that players can learn how to use their chosen character. There has to be more to it than that though. I’m thinking that we’ll see this greatly expanded, and there are a couple of things that point to this.

1. In all the official posts we’ve seen so far, the Arena is mentioned as a “new way to play”. Technically, if this is a “new way to play” they wouldn’t reuse a mechanic from the first edition of the game. This should be something NEW.
2. The Arena was somewhat hinted at in the new Hero Collection pack Path of the Wandering Monk, which is something I haven’t talked about yet. This hint comes in the form of the World’s End Tournament, mentioned on a scroll included with the new hero, as well as the scene of an arena included with the Hero pack.

These points are merely guesses, but I think they are pretty plausible. I’m hoping that we’ll see some new, large tiles to go along with this Arena theme. I think some mention of the World’s End Tournament will be included as part of the new game mode in Against the Ogre Horde.

Pre-order Path of the Wandering Monk on Amazon or Hasbro Pulse!

Let me know what your thoughts are on this newly teased expansion!

Thanks for stopping by, hope to see you again soon!