Friday evening, convex monitor, mug of hot tea, comfortable stool. So you start your computer, wait a painfully long time for the operating system to load. And now you click on the icon with the image of a knight’s shield. Then you make your way through the familiar game menu, select a faction, hero, bonuses, generate a large map… And now it’s Monday morning and it’s time for you to go to school. This happened? Yes, some still do, needless to say.
Heroes of our time
To be honest, I wasn’t a fan of turn-based strategy games back then. I loved Morrowind, Diablo 2 and Hitman: Codename 47 more. Somehow I passed by that magical world that gave dozens of sleepless nights to my classmates and their fathers. Grown men loved to play Heroes, yes. Because grown men are grown boys. And they hacked away day and night, hired archangels, archdemons, built strategies. What can I say, the third heroes are still popular, they are loved and played on top PC builds! They create mega-cards based on Game of Thrones and The Lord of the Rings. The third heroes settled in the hearts deeply and for a long time.
I got acquainted with the series thanks to the fifth part of Heroes of Might and Magic. All this thanks to the St. Petersburg development team from Nival. In my opinion, it was a cool game that transferred everyone’s favorite mechanics into a modern shell. But! But this is just my opinion, which may not coincide with others. Otherwise they’ll swoop in now, cover you with all the waste products and happily rush off to other places. No, that’s not what I’m here for.
I just want to tell you about what I recently learned. About the fact that soon you will be able to turn off the heroes on your PC and go play them at the table. Yes, I’m talking about a board game based on Third Heroes!
Tabletop characters are like computer characters, only on the table
Of course, it is very difficult to say whether this statement is true. But in 2021, a board game based on Heroes of Might&Magic III was announced . But not the HD edition, but the one that is in the hearts of thousands of players. And therefore, we can soon check for ourselves whether the headline statement is true or not.
There is little information, it is all in English. Therefore, I will try to tell you about it that I managed to dig up in the open spaces.
Polish developers from Archon Studio were chosen https://nogamstop-casinos.co.uk/review/golden-pharaoh-casino/ to adapt the cult game to the tabletop. The company, judging by their portfolio, specializes in turn-based games that make liberal use of detailed miniatures. Miniatures are good, it means you can still paint them. The company’s portfolio includes an unreleased board game based on Wolfenstein, a tactical role-playing duel Masters of the Universe and terrains for various role-playing games.
In the blog, the development teams themselves were surprised when they had the honor of adapting the cult game to desktop platforms:
“In Poland this game was one of the most iconic games we played. Basically, every child in the late 90s played Heroes games, and we are incredibly happy to turn our childhood love into a board game with miniatures,” says Yaroslav Evertovsky, CEO of Archon Studio.
“Working on this license is like being a teenager again, but this time we are the authors, and many fans from all over the world look to us with high expectations in terms of quality,” continues Yaroslav.
From the development team blog
Archon Studio plans to launch a Kickstarter campaign in November 2022, which means that very soon you can sacrifice your wallets and hope for the speedy release of at least a basic game. And if you are a fan of additional goodies, then you can donate a little more and get additional cities to your base.
What about the filling??
Players can expect cards of heroes, monsters, effects, and improvements. And also miniatures. On the game’s website, hero boards, a battle board, multi-faceted terrain tiles, and simplified resource boards were spotted (yes, the resources were cut, just like in the latest “Heroes”).
Apparently, players can expect a complex board game for many hours of play. There are a few nuggets of information to be gleaned from the developer diaries. Thus, Jakub Olezhik reports that exploration of the world will take place through the opening of hexagonal tiles, on which there will be seven locations. Each tile will have different events: a battle with neutrals, a search for the Grail, collecting resources, and so on.
Of course there will be decks of cards. There will be characteristics of heroes, artifacts, warriors. This means that players will have to build their deck. And this, in turn, means that there will be some randomness. This is not always a bad thing, it helps to diversify the gameplay when replaying the game. And in board games this is an important aspect.
What about the heroes and their armies??
They are also present, where would we be without them?. It’s clear that when adapting a project to a table, you have to simplify or invent some mechanics. Same with armies. Now the player will be able to take control of an army, which will contain five units out of seven available. Thus, the player will need to choose the appropriate troops for his strategy. Warriors will be divided into “grades”: Gold, Silver and Bronze. Strong, ordinary and weak, respectively. On the battlefield, a unit’s move will be determined by its initiative, which is indicated on the fighter’s card. There will also be types of warriors – air and ground, melee and ranged fighters.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any information about the characters themselves. Only fleeting mentions that the game will include heroes such as Katerina Ironfist and the necromancer Sandro. I hope they will tell more about the characters in the future.
Conclusion
That’s all I could find on the subject. The blogs also talked about the economy of the game, but in my opinion this is unnecessary within the framework of this opus. If there are people on the site who are also interested in the world of board games and follow the project, then you can report my omissions in the comments. And I, in turn, have already registered on Kickstarter, started saving money and coming up with an excuse for my wife on the topic “why did I again have some kind of incomprehensible board game that is so similar to Dota”. Yes, these are the comparisons.
Let’s hope that the game will turn out to be really good and interesting, that it will not get stuck within the framework of one fundraising campaign and will be a success among players around the world. I really want to believe in this, because perhaps it will someday be published in Russia in Russian, with an eye on pirated translations of HoMM III.
Thank you for your attention, I will be glad if this news brings joy to someone.