Level Up - Comparing Hero Progression in Advanced Heroquest vs Shadows of Brimstone | Which Is Best?

Always Board Never Boring looks at character progression and campaign play in Advanced Heroquest (which is very simple) and Shadows of Brimstone (which is much more elaborate). He loves both systems, despite the different degrees of complexity. Which game has your favourite system for "leveling up" your heroes?
#advancedheroquest #shadowsofbrimstone #dungeoncrawler
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[@HivisoftheScale]

I love how the spell "Flight!" comes with it's own exclamation mark. Like "Flaming Hand of Destruction" is okay and all... but FLIGHT!!

[@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring]

Ha. That spell is flight as in "run away" so maybe the wizard just shouts "FLIGHT!" as loud as possible to spook someone.

[@HivisoftheScale]

@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring Yup, I remember clearly -- Just as Gandalf the Grey began to slip off the edge he yelled out "FLIGHT!! you fools..." Then, with the spell cast, he went down there to kick a Balrog's butt!

[@nickgraney2119]

Played our first Shadows of Brimstone adventure tonight when Finn came home from school. 'This is the best game we have dad, i love it. Can we do another adventure?'. No Finn, its 9pm..... Love it ❤

[@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring]

Nice. Which core set have you got?

[@nickgraney2119]

@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring Finn is getting Gates of Valhalla for Christmas, I also managed to snag a copy of the first edition City Of Ancients for £30 (box lid was badly ripped, but contents brand new and on spru/card stock unpunched). Its a great game which has so many of the good things from WHQ95 from what I can tell so far 😀

[@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring]

Valhalla looks like a cool set. I believe it uses the same Other World as City of the Ancients too, so that's handy. One of my concerns with Shadows of Brimstone was that ii uses Quest 95 as a launching pad, and while I love Quest and will always have a special place in my heart for it, I don't really enjoy it anymore. Fortunately, I feel that Shadows of Brimstone does enough new things to lift it above whatever foundation Quest provided.

[@Geerdie]

Thanks for this aspect of these games, i am making my own HQ homebrew game and i am currently looking in way off leveling up and gaining xp. So this was right up my alley. Loving the video's and everything you do.

[@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring]

Thanks so much. Good luck with the homebrewing.

[@crazyvolucris]

Love to see that you found your way to Shadows of Brimstone… i fell 2020 in this Rabbit Hole and got lost totally. One on my most loved games… well maybe in competition with Dungeon Universalis🤣 but they are so different that both got a place in my heart… right now i tip my toe in AHQ and WQ… well let’s see how it goes. So thank you for this nice vid. Best Chris

[@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring]

Shadows of Brimstone has been on my list since it first came out, but I was always put off by the general "messiness" of it. When the revised editions came out I decided I would get around to trying it, but other games I wanted more always kept pushing it down the list. This year I decided enough was enough and it was time to get into it.

[@crazyvolucris]

I also followed it a very long time and was not really into the cowboy theme… but the Feidal Japan Style got me… ending up owning nearly everything right now 🤣 love it to death with all the Event cards and narrative going on while playing. So happy to see some more content on your channel 🤩

[@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring]

I love Wild West stuff, so I'm happy with that theme, but are there any issues with mixing heroes from different settings? I have a group that love viking stuff, and the conquistadors look really interesting to me too.

[@HivisoftheScale]

Sounds like Shadows of Brimstone is all about the experience..! Wakka wakka!😂

[@zombiedad]

Have you ever written any games ABNB?

[@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring]

I ghost-wrote some choose your own adventure books many years ago, I have worked with several designers editing rules and playtesting, and like a lot of people in the hobby I have tinkered with writing my own games in my spare time, but that's as far as it goes.

[@jeremycarnes1656]

Wow! What is that incredible board you're using at 1:25? I love it!

[@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring]

It's one of the "beautiful dungeon mats" I reviewed on the channel a while back when they were on Kickstarter. You buy the art from DriveThruRPG and get any company you like to transfer it to neoprene.

[@dustinbainbridge1872]

I love me some Advanced HQ, but Shadows of Brimstone is top notch for me. The narrative that emerges as you play really is the fun part for me. I've been collecting it for years as my main "lifestyle game" and I still feel like there is so much stuff I haven't seen because the game has so much potential built into it, especially as you expand your collection of it.

[@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring]

It's pretty wild how much stuff they have made for it. I can see myself expanding it a little. It's still too early for me to tell if I'm going to get completely engrossed in it, though. It's certainly possible.

[@georgeadsett-knutsen829]

Oh you will, you will… This has become my regular group’s favourite dungeon crawl. It is also nice to be able to run a game and be part of the posse, and not be playing against other players. SoB and HQ are very different (I have still yet to play AHQ and I love them both. I feel more affinity with my SoB character and enjoy the character development. I really like how you said the AHQ mechanic works. I really must get a game in… Great vid. Many thanks. 🤠

[@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring]

@@georgeadsett-knutsen829 Advanced Heroquest is a masterpiece in keeping thing streamlined while still giving you enough campaign and character development to fully invest in that world.

[@1000jjwalker]

very cool

[@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring]

Thanks for watching.

[@phildevey6302]

One thing I do in Shadows of Brimstone when levelling up is to roll 3D6 for the Upgrade Bonus (instead of of 2D6), and choose any combination of two dice for the result. This gives you a little bit of control on the bonus you are getting, without letting you just choose anything from the table. Just my own house rule that I read about somewhere, and liked the idea of. I must say I was a bit surprised when you said you a few videos ago that you had bought a core set of Shadows of Brimstone, because it is so heavily based on Warhammer Quest 1995, and I thought you had said previously that you didn't like Warhammer Quest 1995 very much. There is a lot of bookkeeping in Shadows of Brimstone, and so many things to keep track of, but it is great to see your characters grow and progress, acquire mutations, get rid of them, the overall storyline is really good. There are so many expansions available for Shadows it can be quite confusing at first. The one normally recommended is Frontier Town, which adds quite a bit to the town stays in between adventures. After that there are many ways to go, including more worlds, more enemies, supplement packs, and loads of other things.

[@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring]

As I mentioned in another comment here, the fact Shadows drew inspiration from Quest 95 (a game I love but don't really have any desire to play again because that love is rooted in a place and time that isn't here and now) is one of the reasons it took me so long to try it. Other reasons where the general "messiness" of the game, the potential sprawl, the Kickstarters, miniatures that weren't really doing it for me, the fact it is supposed to be a long-form campaign game which makes it harder to get to the table, and just the fact there are so many games I want to play and you can't play them all. However, I personally believe Shadows is quite far removed from Quest 95. You can see the influence, but as far as I'm concerned it doesn't feel like playing Quest 95, so that hasn't been a barrier to my enjoyment of the system.

[@phildevey6302]

Fair enough. I must have got it wrong about Quest 95, as I really thought you didn't like it. It is my favourite game of all time, so naturally I also like one which is heavily based on it, and I enjoy both of them a lot. Another small thing I do with Shadows is that I don't allow characters to level up during a mission. It doesn't seem right to me that half way through an adventure they suddenly get better, so I only allow it during town stays. The idea is that during a town stay they rest and recuperate, do some training, get better equipment, and level up, which seems more natural, well to me at least.

[@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring]

To be clear, when I went back to Quest 95 as an adult, I didn't enjoy playing it any more. So much so, I gave away my copy, and I have said numerous times that even if I still had a copy it wouldn't have made it into my top 50 games list, because I just don't want to play it (this is probably what you remember me saying). However, it was an incredibly important game for me growing up, so it will always be special to me. I feel that Brimstone has taken the core of Quest 95 but FFP have done so much with it I don't feel like I am revisiting Quest. If it did feel exactly the same, then I am sure Shadows wouldn't have gone down well at all with me. I'm okay with levelling up on a quest. It can feel a bit intrusive, but at the same time it could represent some sudden inspiration or revelation, so I'm okay letting it slide. I see where you are coming from though.

[@johnmiddleton4291]

I still think the most in depth experience and level system in a boardgame is the old FFG World of Warcraft boardgame. Between the base game and the Shadows expansion, it replicates almost all of the the three skill tree paths and abilities for all of the original WoW character classes from 1-60 vanilla. Add to that the huge number of items, many specific to classes, and it is the mmo characters on a board. The Burning Crusade expands it all up to level 70 and adds the abilities, items, and race/class combos from that first mmo expac. It's really pretty insane. Hundreds and hundreds of cards with character sheets to slot everything into.

[@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring]

I always thought the WoW game sounded pretty good (and long!), but I've never had a chance to play it. I only ever owned the WoW Adventure game, which as you know was a very different sort of game.

[@SouthernWolf]

Shadows of Brimstone is a pretty great game, but you're right it gets to be a bit overwhelming after leveling up 4 characters a few times. You should also try Chronicles of Drunagor if you can find it, it's a super fun dungeon crawler with 3D dungeon layouts.

[@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring]

I remember looking at Chronicles of Drunagor when it was coming out, but haven't really followed it since. I may be wrong, but don't believe it's that easy to get in the UK, unfortunately.

[@NikoTeaJay]

Consider the Allies expansion if you end up expanding it. It gives some pretty expandable henchmen and some not quite as expendable specialists as allies. Adds a lot to the emergent story of the game. Lots of drama. And you get to roll on the henchman gruesome fate chart. Fun comparison between two games.

[@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring]

Thanks for the suggestion. I feel like getting Swamps of Death makes sense for another world, four more heroes and loads more monster variety. After that I thought I might look at expansions that flesh out those worlds to make them as interesting as possible. Assuming the game stands the test of time, of course.

[@NikoTeaJay]

@@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring it's a game you could easily sink a 1000 pounds into. Lots of cool expansions. Second core set is good value. Though worth considering is the fact that core set enemies are on the simple side. I'm not convinced the enemy variety gets boosted that much, aside from visual variety. But extra heroes, another Other World and just more cards into your mine decks is good. I got the Fortress core set and once I deemed it good enough to expand, I got rather trigger happy with all major Fortress themed expansions. At least it's less than an all-in Wild West😄 I figure I'll add some more enemy packs before I'm set with Brimstone. Definitely not a game for completionists.

[@robertlykins728]

Then don’t play Warhammer quest because your hero’s will just die on their first quest! Most likely before they even reach a room! That will generate an event card!

[@AlwaysBoardNeverBoring]

Ha. I've played hundreds of games of Warhammer Quest 95. I have had more than my fair share of first room cave-ins or minotaur attacks, but I did start playing more from the roleplaying book controlling the dungeon for my friends and that evened out a lot of that nonsense.