Frozen Horror Heroquest Review

With this generation of HeroQuest, the folks at Avalon Hill are working on releasing the original expansions and adding brand-new content, much to the welcome of fans, old and new. Frozen Horror is the third expansion and contains an entire ten-quest campaign with new monsters, hazards, traps, rooms and rules to add more challenges and provide greater rewards.

This is the first of several campaign expansions that provide the history and depth for individual heroes, providing environments, monsters and a story. This expansion offers depth and a compelling story for the Barbarian.

You will need the HeroQuest Games System base game to play this expansion.

The Build-Up

This campaign takes place in the frozen north, the realm of the mighty Barbarians. It tells the tale of a great evil stirring that requires only the strongest and bravest of the Barbarians to prove themselves before gathering their party to save the kingdom. The campaign structure differs from the previous campaigns, where the first three quests are played only with the Barbarian. This change allows new characters who want to try the Barbarian to quickly level a new character with gear and gold, ready for the later quests with the rest of the party. For the pre-existing Barbarian player, the opportunity to obtain equipment and artefacts to aid in the rest of the campaign is vital.

This expansion adds a lot of new content to keep quests interesting and the party engaged. Of course, for the Dungeon masters, this also adds new tools when creating quests. There are plenty of new monsters with interesting rules that will quickly strike fear into heroes that open a door and find the fearsome Polar Warbear with its unique attack mechanics to make two attacks per turn or instead carry out a single massive attack against a single hero. Or maybe they find a Yeti, which can gradually crush the life out of a hero. New Dread spells allow sorcerers to use the power of the cold and ice to their advantage, so there is plenty for heroes and Dungeon Masters to keep things interesting.

For the heroes, there are new inventory items to spend your hard-earned gold and new quest items to earn; just be sure to fully explore each dungeon to find those secret rooms. One common issue experienced by many parties playing through the various campaigns is that it is possible to get to a point where you've obtained all of the good items from the inventory shop, and you end up with mountains of gold you can't use. The Frozen Horror helps answer this by introducing Mercenaries (hired help) available for a single quest. These can take the form of the Scout, Swordsman, Archer or Halberdier, each with their strengths and weaknesses. Each are fully represented by miniatures and are controlled by the player who hired them. There are also multiple copies of each mercenary to allow players to hire several of each type if desired.

This campaign is fully represented in the app, allowing it to replace the Dungeon Master role, which is welcome if everyone wants to play as the heroes or your gaming group only plays cooperative games.

Unboxing

Considering the number of miniatures you get, it is a very compact box. It complements the base game nicely, making all monsters and companions easily accessible. In Hero Quest fashion, all items fit into plastic moulded compartments. It stops everything moving around in transit, but some miniatures can feel too snug and offer a small challenge to get out.

The Rulebook

The rulebook/campaign book comes in an A5 booklet and follows the same formats as the previous one: new rules and information in the front and quests in the back.

The rules are straightforward to get up to speed on, but given the small book, don't expect too much room for pictures to break up the walls of text. Expect to spend a good few minutes reading through all of the additions and new aspects before you play.

Game Setup

Setting up the game will be very familiar for HeroQuest gamers. Get the base game ready and have the Frozen Horror game nearby to grab tiles or miniatures when needed. The Dungeon Master, or a nominated player if using the app, will set up the board according to the quest book and when new items need to be placed as rooms are discovered.

There is a change to the start of each mission where each hero must decide if they want to hire mercenaries, pick the type and number, get the appropriate mercenary card and miniatures and deduct the gold from their stash.

First Play Through

On a first playthrough, this expansion comes out swinging, making good use of new room tiles to help set the scene. New monsters are present early, almost like they are on parade to get the Barbarian character (the only hero that can play the first three quests) a taste of the types of monsters to come.

As the Barbarian can't rely on Healing spell support from the Wizard or Elf, you end up playing much more cautiously, with each decision feeling more nerve-racking and impactful. Having just cleared a room but taken some damage, do you risk searching for treasure in hopes of finding a healing potion or triggering a trap or a brutal wandering monster and risk taking more damage? Sadly, in our case, we tried to approach the dungeon the same way as others, but without spell support, we ended up retreating or risk falling to the new Frozen monsters. Trying again, this time being much more cautious, allowed us to complete the quest, but being completionists, we didn't feel we could fully explore the dungeon.

The Good

• Introducing mercenaries to provide players with badly needed support for this campaign and a way to spend their gold
• New monsters to keep players engaged and make it feel like you are in a different area from the previous campaigns
• New treasure, inventory and artefact cards for all players, including items tailored for the Barbarian (he or she is the focus in this campaign, after all)
• An alternate miniature of the Barbarian. Allowing players the option to now play as male or female (or why not a party with two Barbarians?)
• Quality-of-life additions, such as new combat and movement dice (blue because it's cold!) and a pad of more detailed character sheets, weren't essential but do enhance the experience.

The Bad

• The first three quests can only be played by the Barbarian. If you are used to playing as a party, this can immediately be a turn-off, as everyone else watches instead of participating. As the Barbarian has to rely on healing potions that you can STILL only find via treasure cards, some bad dice rolls can badly impact the ability to progress or complete the solo quest.
• This campaign feels like the designers set the difficulty to hard mode. The new monsters are fantastic but can be very powerful, especially if encountered in large numbers or in corridors, and you can't get all of your characters engaged. Encountering a Yeti in a corridor can mean death for a hero. The wandering monsters feel especially brutal in this campaign.
• Some of the hazards encountered in the quests are thematic but very damaging to heroes with little recourse. One hazard and a dice roll can stand between being okay or falling to your death, regardless of health or equipment.
• Game-breaking bugs in the app if using it as the Dungeon Master. Enemies with ranged weapons can fire through other characters, enemies occupying the same space as heroes or escaping monsters, causing the game to become unresponsive. Note, while this review is not on the app, this is provided for information. It is possible any issues could be corrected as the app is often updated. Just something to keep in mind at the time of writing of this review
• The final quest breaks the mould that Hero Quest forged by spanning two maps, allowing players to traverse back and forth as needed. For some, it will feel epic. For others, it will feel like it drags on with the potential for running back and forth trying to find the right area.

Final Verdict

My party loves HeroQuest and was really looking forward to playing the Frozen Horror after devouring the base game and the previous two expansions. The setting was thematic, and the new monsters added never-before-seen variety to the game. It did feel like the game had been bumped up to the hardest difficulty in every way; rooms didn't always give you the option to search for treasure, wandering monsters can be extra brutal, and some of the new room and corridor hazards can make for some quite frustrating experiences. Because of how brutal the game felt (having undetectable traps or unavoidable wandering monster trigger points), we reduced the number of traps or wandering monsters that could be pulled from the treasure deck to try and offset the difficulty. It helped.

The new monsters are fantastic additions to the game, and for Dungeon Masters who like to create their own quests, they are great. In the campaign, it did feel that these new monsters (some are very powerful and can take a beating) are overused. The 'that monster can do what!?' quickly dissolves into 'oh no, them again!'.

The introduction of mercenaries is excellent and gives the heroes (finally) a way to use their hoards of accumulated gold. Each player will quickly find their ideal mercenary as each one you hire has a unique skill.

Having the first three quests a solo experience only resulted in an 'oh, so we can't all play?' moment as the rest of the party had to watch one player go through the dungeon on their own.

We have since completed this campaign, but it didn't have the same fun and sense of adventure and accomplishment that the base campaign, Kellars Keep or Return of the Witch Lord had. If you have played through the previous campaigns and are looking for more in this fantasy setting, there is good content here. Just be prepared that it is a different type of experience than the previous campaigns with a different difficulty curve.