Heroes of Might and Magic: The Board Game, part 1

 

This rather large box actually arrived over 7 months ago...

It contains the spoils ("rewards") from the HOMM3 Kickstarter I supported back in November 2022.

Those of you who don't like unboxing posts can stop reading now. :-) This box has the core game components.

The whole series of Heroes of Might and Magic computer games, but especially HOMM3, are easily my favorite computer games of all times. If you like turn based strategy games with great replayability and a lot of strategy, and have never played this gem, download it from Gog.com ASAP - it's less than $10, and regularly goes on sale for half that. 

More booklets from the core game; "missions" are scenarios, and there are quite a few of them of several different kinds. .

"Grand Hex" tiles gradually create the world to explore and fight over, starting from the unknown. 

The various types of background terrain have effects on movement, depending upon the player's faction. 

L:eft to right, plains, swamp, and grasslands terrain. 

Some of the many heroes available to paly, each having different special traits and abilities. 

All of these characters will be familiar to players of the computer game. 

The simple version of the Battle board, used for resolving combat between Heroes and their accompanying armies, and other players or the local monsters. 

Each faction has a different town type, and raises different types of creatures; with time and development, more and better creatures become available... for a cost, of course!

Town boards for the Castle, Crypt, and Dungeon factions. 

Cubes for tracking the leveling up of heroes, dice for resource generation and combat, and so on. 

Creature cards; the color of the star indicates the relative strength of that type of creature. 

There are LOTS of different creatures, almost all with at least one unique feature. 

Weakest to strongest... bronze class, then silver, then gold, up to azure (very tough!). 

If a player's Town is attacked, there may be defensive structures to help the defender's forces. 

Such as the Arrow tower. 

Astrologer cards can produce special effects each week (7 player turns). 

Hero ability cards; the game uses deck building techniques. 

Some ability and Spell cards. 

Action cards

Special ability cards for heroes; the more they level up, the more special abilities they acquire, and/or the more powerful their existing abilities become. 

Some of the many artifacts/ magic items, most of which will again be very familiar to players of the computer game. 

Hero special ability cards

Spell cards

Creature cards; these list the stats for each creature type. 

Hero figures Blue is for Castle (Knight/Cleric faction).

Purple is for the Dungeon faction (Warlocks and Ovberlords)

Black is for the Crypt faction (Necromancers and Death Knights)

More cool miniatures for each of the faction towns (the other 4 are for towns we haven't covered yet), the wide variety of neutral creatures...

and some upgraded markers for various game elements. 

Of course I went for the cool minis!  :-)

Faction creatures, level 1 (weakest) to 7 (strongest):

Castle (blue) - Peasants, Archers, Griffons, Swordsmen, Monks, Cavaliers, and Angels

Dungeon (purple) - Troglodytes, Harpies, Evil Eyes, Medusas, Minotaurs, Manticores, and (red/black) Dragons

Crypt (black) - Skeletons, Zombies, Wights, Liches, Vampires, Dark Knights, and Bone Dragons

Fortunately, my older daughter, who loves games (unlike my wife and younger daughter, who do not), is eager to play it with me, and I'm hooking my grandsons on the HOMM computer games...

There will be a second post covering the additional factions in that big box at the top of this post!