Complete your “Proprietary” HeroQuest Mythic Collection – The Crypt of Perpetual Darkness!

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Yeah! I know, I missed writing about a whole expansion! It’s been busy over here, I have barely even had a chance to read through First Light yet. Anyways, it’s my blog, I can do what I want, and I feel like talking about The Crypt of Perpetual Darkness! It’s finally here! The day all non-mythic backers have been hoping for, and many mythic backers have been dreading!

Pre-orders, Get your Pre-orders, Read all About it!

Pre-orders are now available for HeroQuest Joe Manganiello’s The Crypt of Perpetual Darkness! Man, that’s a mouthful! Surprised they didn’t stick “Proprietary” into the title as well. I feel like if you’re going to make the title that long, you might as well go all the way, eh? Us super-fans, we lovingly have been referring to this one as CoPD, not to be confused with the disease, though, the dragon Venim does look a bit on the unhealthy side.

Pre-order today at: Amazon US | Hasbro Pulse

So far I’ve got reports coming in of pre-orders being available at Amazon US, and Hasbro Pulse (US, Europe). As the days go on, these will likely expand to additional retailers. Usually us Canadians rely on either Amazon CA or GameStop for Avalon Hill products, so far there’s been no word from them about the expansion. I can confirm that both Amazon US and Hasbro Pulse US do ship to Canada, but, keep in mind that yo may incur additional shipping charges and duties. Not to mention, Canada Post has been having a lot of union issues lately…. but anyways, don’t want to get too political here!

What do we get in the Box….

…Well, not much apparently.

Here are some pictures of the contents from Hasbro Pulse:

This all comes in at a whopping $34.99 USD. Now, you could maybe blame this markup on the recent tariff situation brought onto the gaming industry, but I think that it comes down to the form factor. This pricing is very similar to the other “small” box expansions we’ve seen in the past. Perhaps Hasbro has a certain benchmark of pricing based on the size of games to maintain consistency.

Let’s Have a Look at This New Content

So yeah, the pricing is less than ideal for HeroQuest Joe Manganiello’s The Crypt of Perpetual Darkness … oh man, I don’t think I can keep saying that … but at least the expansion is now going to be widely available to the general public. It looks like they’ve tried to sweeten the deal with some more “Premium” features, but is it enough to make it worth it? I’ll let you be the judge of that for yourself, but here are my feelings about the content:

Quest book featuring 10 quests

I think it’s safe to say that the quest book might have some changes. Just from looking at the picture provided of Quest 1, there’s some new artwork. Here’s a comparison to the 2021 Mythic version:

Could there be other changes? Maybe, perhaps some errata to update errors that were possibly present in the original. At the very least, I think we can expect some additional artwork strewn through the quests.

1 metallic black dragon miniature

AHHHHH, that’s twice now I’ve tried to type “metallic” only to have accidentally written METALLICA instead!

What does this mean!? Is the dragon pre painted using metallic paints? Is the dragon metal, therefore being metallic? Does the plastic have metal flakes in it, making it metallicaAAHHH plastic!? This we don’t know yet. We’ll have to wait and see, but the way the light kind of glints off the texture on the base here, I’m almost inclined to think this might be a metal mini. That could just be wishful thinking though:

8 black dice – 1 pad of character sheets – 2 cardboard tile sheets

Yeah, ok. It’s getting late, I’m getting lazy, I mean tired. I’m putting these three together.

Dice, so this expansion is going to make the rulebook really confusing for some people. “‘Heroes use their 2 “Red” Movement Dice, wait, they’re black, umm, are they for something else!? ‘” No, they’re still movement dice, just like we got “Blue” Movement Dice with Frozen Horror. Though oddly enough, we didn’t get gummy bear movement dice in Spirit Queen’s Torment and Prophecy of Telor!? I want more gummy bear dice!

I almost think that HeroQuest fans are maybe starting to get diced out. We have a lot of new official dice set colours, do we need more? Some might say “you can never have too many dice”, I disagree. I think we need to start having dice with different meaning. Maybe Power Dice… an idea for Wizards of Morcar maybe?

Another pad of character sheets? We have the standard ones, we have the blue Frozen Horror ones, we have the purplish ones from First Light, now black comic book styled ones. No! I didn’t forget to talk about the art direction, I’ll get there!

2 tile sheets, these are pretty standard. Mythic CoPD came with tiles for some new traps and a double sided Ye Olde Inn/Dragon Lair tile.

20 foil-embellished cards

Yeah, now I’m going to complain about the art style! Well, not really complain. I actually really love the new card/character pad art, I think it looks awesome! My only critique is that, in my personal opinion, it doesn’t feel like HeroQuest to me. I would have hoped for some more traditional HeroQuest style art. This art looks like it would be more suited to a superhero/comic book type of board game.

Ok, so we’re getting 20 foil cards, that’s great. From the look of these cards, I almost think the foil is reversed. The foil is on the back, not the front.

That might be ok for some things like Artifacts or Equipment, though even then, I would prefer not to have them foiled on the back. This expansion is including additions to the Alchemy deck. That’s great, I love the new Alchemy dec…wait a minute! If the backs are foil, how are you going to use them with the previous Alchemy cards!? That’s not a true random dataset if you can determine that what is up next will be 1 of X number of options.

I see why they went with foil. It’s got that premium look and feel, and maybe Avalon Hill thinks this will help to justify the cost, but I would have preferred to not have it.

So… Is it Worth it?

In my opinion, not really. In your opinion, that’s up to you. Am I still going to get it? Yeah! I think it’s cool, and I always like expanding my HeroQuest collection, but do I need it? No, I could live with out it if I really had to.

This Dreaded Day for Mythic Backers!?

Come on guys! It’s not that big of a deal! So the rest of the world now gets access to this special little quest that only you had for the past 4 years, GREAT! As a mythic backer myself, I think that’s great! The more HeroQuest we get out into the world, the better the world will be! You still have your EXCLUSIVE mini’s – Alt-Gender Heroes, Mentor Wizard, Witch Lord, and Prisoner Sire Ragnar – but to be honest, I’d love for the rest of the world to get these too! Now go back to the top and read the rest!

Before you leave, why not stop by Elvyler’s Game Studio on your way out to see if there anything that might interest you!

Let me know in the comments if you have any questions, concerns, or just feel like saying hi!

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