Impressions of Heroes of Might & Magic III: The Board Game

 I played 2 test games (dueling in the Monk's Retreat scenario and 3-player co-op in the Unholy Quest scenario) and decided to share my impressions.

BOX

 There are many components here. I would even say too much. Lots of cards, tokens, fields... a lot of fiddling. Yes, black cubes turned out to be too much for us and we played without them, it is good to remember which locations I have already visited on a small map.

 The layout in the first batch took us about an hour - and this despite the fact that the owner of the game has already laid out most of the components by category. The game itself lasted about two hours. Some components look frozen (for example, the Income tablet), although as far as I understand, they have a different appearance in the final version.

RULES

 What I dislike most is the rule book. In my opinion, it needs to be revised a lot.

Example 1:

 In points 9-11 of the layout, you must lay out the stats, spells, and skill cards "on the deck of cards to the left of your hero's card." However, it does not specify that one deck should come out, and not 3 different ones. Worst of all, the exploded view of the game on page 7 shows them separately. So when point 12 told me to "shuffle the deck of cards to the left of your hero card", I didn't know which one to shuffle. In the first game, we made a mistake and did not mix our hero's specialization into the Might and Magic deck. We later noticed the bug, but less experienced boarders will have a harder time.

Example 2:

 When we were looking for battle rules, like any sane person, we looked at the battle rules section of the rule book. Page 33: "Unit Actions in Battle":

 "When a player activates a card from one of their units in battle, they can do one of the following actions when activating the unit:

 Movement - ...

 Attack - ...

 Retaliatory attack - ..."

 However, counterattacking is not an action. This is a reaction that is not performed during the player's turn, but after an enemy unit attacks.

 But we were more confused that the "attack" section only describes when you can attack the enemy. And how to actually carry out the attack? It's on page 27 under "Units" in the example. Admittedly, the attack is very simple and intuitive, but the rulebook shouldn't rely on players to intuitively understand everything.

Example 3:

 Neither the "Recruitment Action" section, nor the "Recruitment Cost" section clearly states how many units can be recruited with one action. One? How many as you like, if there are enough funds? it should be based on that.

 In order to build advanced creature houses, you must build low-level creature dwellings. This is not indicated on the houses themselves, nor in the "Construction" section, but in the "Recruitment cost" section.

Example 4:

 On token cards, the ankh symbol (artifact symbol) means "draw an artifact card." And in the rulebook, the same symbol means "A hero visiting a location with an artifact symbol draws 2 cards from the artifact deck, chooses one, puts it in his hand, and puts the second card face up in the discard pile." So which option is correct? And what to do if the location has 2 artifact symbols? Pull 2, drop one and repeat? Or draw 4 and drop 2? Or just pull 2?

 Some locations have 1 treasure chest symbol, some "2 chest symbols -> 1". What to do in this case? We assumed that 1 chest symbol = roll 1 die, and "2 -> 1" = roll 2 dice, pick 1.

 However, enough problems with the rules. Let's go to the gameplay.

RESEARCH OF THE LOCATION

 The map is made quite conveniently. Everything would be clear at first glance, if it were not for the problems with the interpretation of rules and symbols mentioned above. Some buildings seem redundant. Yes, the observatory allows you to open a new tile, but you can do the same thing by simply moving and not spending an action west to the location of the observatory. Stables can be considered an empty tile, since their only purpose is to give you 1 movement: as much as you spend to get there. The maps look pretty small, you're playing with a small amount of tiles, so I almost never had to choose where to go next.

 I think the game lacks more large-scale scenarios with a large number of tiles. Perhaps the "All for one" mode is better in this regard, but it is designed for three.

BATTLES

 On easy difficulty, fights with neutrals are practically pointless. Even on hard difficulty, we usually beat neutrals without losing. Tier 1-3 armies are especially neutral since they are only a few units. In the second game, on the second turn, my level 1.5 hero defeated the level 4 neutrals on normal difficulty, spending only 1 movement point to continue the battle, and damaging only one of his units (the number changed from "crowded" to "a few").

 There can be a decent amount of downtime in 3 player battles. You can fight 2-3 neutrals in one turn (especially if you have logistics or artifacts/tiles that give extra movement). Most are easily won, but battles still take time. I believe that with experience the battles will become much shorter.

 Battles between heroes are rare; basically you beat neutrals controlled by another player. After all, defeating the enemy hero will practically take him out of the game: in late you will have an income of about 20-30 gold per turn (10-15 from the start, 5-10 from the mines, 5 from the town hall), which is only enough for " few" units of low-medium level. In addition, if you lose, you have to pay the winner with gold, so he can hire an even bigger army.

CITY BUILDING

 In my opinion, this aspect of the game is done so-so. Creature dwellings, town hall, mage guild and citadel are practically the same for all factions. You only have 1 unique building (in my opinion, add-on factions have 2), and the effects of some unique buildings are boring or of little use.

 The Town Hall costs 10 gold and 4 stones and generates 5 gold per turn, so it will only take 3 turns to pay for itself, and substantial income will start in 4 turns. Scenarios last 7-11 turns (Unholy Quest on Impossible difficulty lasts a maximum of 14 turns). There's nothing to buy a town hall, it's smarter to just hire units.

 And in half of the scenarios, you already have 3 buildings at the start. I built only one building in both parties and saw no point in building more.

DECK BUILDING

 The most interesting aspect of the game in my opinion, but also flawless. Getting rid of unnecessary cards in your deck isn't easy - it usually involves morale - so it's often best to just not draw new cards. The fewer parameter cards, the bigger the hero, because the deck becomes thinner. Spell cards are hit or miss: they can be useless, they can be really powerful. This is especially true of high-level spells like chain lightning, blast, and respawn. Similarly with skills: attack, sorcery and intelligence are probably the strongest, while artillery, eagle eye and first aid are useless. I think it is logical, because in the PC game they were trash too, but that's bad design.

 Artifacts are, as it should be, really strong. It is wise to build a deck mostly from artifacts.

BALANCE

 The game looks generally balanced right now, but after only a few games it's hard to judge the balance. The only difference between factions in heroes and units, because buildings are almost identical, and skills, spells and artifacts are completely random.

 Jeddite from "Mysterious Sorcerer" makes the mage guild both useless and harmful, because your deck is likely to be littered with weak spells (Jeddite can pick 1 out of 5 spells for free, and with a mage guild you have to pay more with less random control). Minotaurs are too strong for their price. Fat, fast, deal a lot of damage and most importantly bring a bunch of cards.

CONCLUSIONS

 I got a fan from Heroes, but the game as it stands is really underdeveloped. It faithfully transfers the mechanics and spirit of the computer game to the table, but in my opinion, it would be better to deviate from the original source, throwing out some elements of the computer game and adding more original ones. In its current form, I can recommend the game only to those who adore both boards and "Heroes". If you haven't played board games, then the rulebook can be a very serious obstacle (although once you get to know the rules, the gameplay is quite simple and understandable), and if you are not a fan of "Heroes", there is much better.