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I’m new to the hobby.


And have been designing my own board game (for personal use) as I find a lot of wargaming/skirmish games and other board games to have rule sets that are quite intimidating.


However, I recently got a print shop to print out a PDF of the entire advanced request rules.

The reason being, as it seems to me that advanced hero quest carries with it a rule set that pretty much carries over into all Warhammer type games.

Therefore, being interested in advanced hero quest as a game to borrow many elements from, and also to try and learn it rule set.

I’ve been met with some confusion about certain gameplay mechanics.

Which I would like to ask questions about.


1) The SURPRISE ROLL gameplay mechanic.

Can’t seem to find anywhere in the rules where it really expand on this gameplay mechanic. You went to a room and as far as I can discern you then to find out whether your hero surprises the monsters, and gains an advantage to some degree, or you lose the role and the GM, and gained some advantage.


However, what doesn’t seem to be clear and I haven’t found yet in the rules, is exactly how this mechanic plays out.??

2) SKAVEN ASSASSIN — also, can anybody help me with the special rules set for? he seems to suggest that you can add a +2 to their surprise role. Again I’m not entirely sure how the surprise role mechanic works. And then this assassin can be placed anywhere of the already explored dungeon within line of sight.
I don’t really understand the advantage of this? Is it just that you can potentially place the right assassin behind the heroes, I guess creating a flanking concern?

Okay, so it's been a long time since I played AHQ and my memory is terrible, but I'll give it a try

The surprise roll mechanic is related to who gets to act first in combat, monsters or heroes. IIRC it also affects monster placement.

During the exploration phase the heroes may open a door to a room, if this room contains monsters then the combat phase begins, starting with the surprise roll. There are various modifiers to the roll, including the bonus that the skaven assassin has.

One the advantages of the assassin's placement rule is that he can attack the heroes from the corridor, meaning that it can avoid the potential bottleneck of the doorway where all of the other Skaven will be attempting to get to the heroes.

Advanced Heroquest & terror in the dark expansion

played both for hours as a teen