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Hi —


I am currently developing two board games based off of the Heroquest rule set.

One based in Warhammer Fantasy and the other based in W40k universe, with some own elements I’ve added in.

It’s for my personal use, as I’ve been building with my boys who are young.


I am nearly finished with the rules for “Battle Maze” (set in Warhammer Fantasy) and the other “Space Maze” (my sons named it!). I say nearly finished — but as I am constantly having new ideas and wanting to add stuff it’s difficult to ever get these rules locked down!!!


So I am currently trying to come up with a rule about the impact of getting weapons thrown at you or fired at you. This rule could have application across both games.

It started with me thinking about Throwing Knives. They use only 1 combat dice and are fairly useless, but what if they, regardless of whether the attack is successful, could impact a characters movement? Then they could potentially be more useful?
For example, whilst attacking an enemy in front of your character, another enemy could potentially be positioned to come up behind you and attack from behind. I have a rule that attacks from behind enable + 1 combat dice! Therefore, you could throw the Throwing Knife at them and stifle their movement potentially stopping them from moving into melee range of your character on their next Turn…?


It then got me thinking of the wider applications. What about Bow and arrows, firearms. IF shot at with anything, would characters receive a movement penalty? What about Space Maze? Could a rule like this add depth to the combat there too? Maybe penalties could stack if more than one character were shooting at the same character, would movement penalties stack? Be more effective?
Maybe the character being shorter might receive further penalties, for example -1 to their defence dice, or -1 to their attacking dice.??


Perhaps if one character on an enemy, that enemy sees a 50% penalty to their movement. Then thinking about stacking, if another character fires on that same enemy, they see a further movement penalty, and a penalty of -1 dice to both defence and attack dice? Such a rule, might allow for then flanking manoeuvres.

But I’m just thinking of W40k — I’m thinking of the scenario where space marine is looking down a corridor with a gene stealer bearing down upon him. I’m just wondering whether such a rule would unbalance things? Be overpowered. Could make Melee only characters in the W40k setting board game be too weak???


OR Would a rule like this totally stifle combat? And how would it work???


Any feedback or thoughts would be appreciated!

I feel this rule could have potential, to add a tactical layer to combat. But it also could be a hindrance??


Not sure…

Lamoi wrote:
It started with me thinking about Throwing Knives. They use only 1 combat dice and are fairly useless, but what if they, regardless of whether the attack is successful, could impact a characters movement? Then they could potentially be more useful?
For example, whilst attacking an enemy in front of your character, another enemy could potentially be positioned to come up behind you and attack from behind. I have a rule that attacks from behind enable + 1 combat dice!

There is the rogue character from hero-quest, which is the dagger specialist.

They can move through monster squares, gain +1 combat dice when attacking a monster that is next to another hero, have a toolkit and unlimited daggers, and when making an attack with a shortsword or dagger (including throwing a dagger) they can make one additional attack with another dagger (i.e. throwing a pair of 2 dice daggers into the back of a monster fighting their ally).

I have seen that !


Yes, I did note and consider it..


But then in exploring how it could be expanded upon, I then decided on developing the above…


To try and have a wider general rule to govern ranged attacks …..


This is what I have so far.

IMPACT OF RANGED FIRE/

If a ranged weapon is used, whether thrown weapons, bow or rifle, it potentially can negatively impact the targets movement. Further penalties to their defence and attack dice will also incur IF more than 1 character is shooting at the same target/character.

It will be as follows:

1) A character is attacked by a ranged weapon – IF any skull is rolled for the attack, the attack is considered on target, regardless of whether the attack is successful, the character will receive a 50% reduction to their movement on their next turn.

2) IF another character carries out a ranged attack on the same character, following the same rule above, the character will incur a further penalty to their movement -2 spaces, and also incur -1 to both their attack and defence dice.

# IF no skull is rolled, but only shields for the attack, the attack is considered a complete MISS.

Ultimately it depends on your goal.

Heroquest is already easy to run away in and straightforward to fight monsters in but one character usually has to hold the bottleneck.

I would imagine this would add a lot of rounds of backing up and rolling smaller numbers of dice while the monsters can't fight back but it does depend on the setting.
Best to play test and see what works.


In terms of 40k heroquest there was space crusade which had no form of anti-movement, and space hulk with overwatch (automatic but inaccurate shooting until you either killed anything incoming or jammed your gun).