Against the Ogre Horde

What This Pack Is

Against the Ogre Horde is an Avalon Hill quest pack for the 2021 HeroQuest Game System (you need the core box to play it). It came out in 2024 and contains a quest book of 10 quests, 28 miniatures, 29 cards and a sheet of cardboard tiles. It brings a new hero, the Druid (two figures, one male and one female), a family of ogre monsters led by the Ogre Lord, and ranged versions of goblins, orcs and skeletons.

The campaign has two halves. Quests 1 to 3 take place in the World's End Tournament, an arena where the heroes fight teams of monsters under special rules. Quests 4 to 10 are a classic dungeon crawl into the fortress of the Dirgrusht ogres, whose lord Zargon is trying to corrupt. The quest book asks you to play the quests in order, but it also says groups who want "the original quest experience" may skip the tournament and start at Quest 4.

What's in the Box

• The Druid hero, with two sculpts.
• Ogres: Ogre Warriors, Ogre Champions, Ogre Commanders and the Ogre Lord.
• A Wolf, the Druid's animal ally.
• Archers: goblin archers, orc archers and skeleton archers.
• Furniture and doors: a throne, a double door and stone doorways.
• Cardboard tiles for new traps, supply crates, the World's End Tournament hall and trophy tiles.
• A quest book with the 10 quests, the new rules and a blank map for designing your own quests.

The Druid and Animal Allies

The Druid's own abilities are printed on its hero card; the Druid page covers how to play the hero. What the quest book explains is the general rule for animal allies, which the Druid's wolf uses (and which later packs reuse):

• An animal ally can join a hero at no cost, but only when there are fewer than four hero players. Recruit it before the quest begins.
• A hero controls one animal ally at a time. The ally takes its turn straight after its hero's turn.
• The ally can move, attack and defend. It can't search, cast, drink potions, open doors or carry equipment, treasure or artifacts unless an item says it is meant for animals.
• A hero can use an action to give one of their potions to an adjacent ally, as long as neither of them is next to a monster.
• If the ally's hero dies, the ally keeps going under that player's control until all the heroes are defeated.

The "fewer than four hero players" limit matters: in a full five-player game (four heroes and Zargon) no one brings an animal ally. With two or three heroes, an ally is a free extra body on the board, which is a real help against ogres.

Meet the Ogres

The quest book prints this monster chart for the four ogres. These are the pack's own numbers.

Big monsters reach further

The pack adds a rule for large monsters: a monster that takes up two squares can attack any creature on the 10 squares around it, diagonals included. Standing "beside the corner" of a two-square figure does not keep you safe the way it does with ordinary monsters, which can't attack diagonally.

What an ogre hit looks like

These are exact odds for one attack against a hero who rolls the usual 2 Defend dice (a hero blocks on a white shield, 1 face in 3):

A Wizard with 4 Body Points who stands next to an Ogre Warrior has a 9.7% chance of dying to a single attack, and a 54.5% chance of being dead after two. Keep the Wizard out of reach.

Going the other way, an ogre blocks on black shields (1 face in 6), but it rolls a lot of them. The Barbarian's 3 Attack dice against an Ogre Warrior's 4 Defend dice cause at least 1 Body Point of damage 62.9% of the time and 0.98 on average, so it takes the Barbarian about five or six attacks on average to bring down a 5-Body Ogre Warrior alone. Ogres are a whole-party problem. Gang up on one at a time, and use spells that don't need a combat roll.

New Rules in the Fortress Quests

Ranged monsters

Whenever Zargon places a skeleton, orc or goblin, he may use the ranged version instead. A ranged monster rolls its normal Attack dice against any target it can see that is not adjacent, but only 1 Attack die against an adjacent target. The answer to archers is to close the distance: an archer in your face is barely a threat.

Mind Points and shock

This pack makes Mind Points matter. Track Mind damage on the bottom row of the character sheet. A creature at 0 Mind Points is in shock: it rolls only 1 red movement die, 1 Attack die and 2 Defend dice, and armor, weapons and artifacts don't add dice. Restoring any Mind Points ends the shock. Spells that target Mind (such as Sleep) have no effect on monsters with no Mind Points, such as skeletons.

Dread spells that attack the mind

The pack's Dread Sorcerers cast one spell per turn and, if they cast, may still move but may not make a weapon attack. Killing the caster ends any spell it has active.

• Mind Lock freezes a hero for one turn per skull the sorcerer scores. A frozen hero rolls 1 Defend die and can't move or act, and can try to break free each turn by rolling three or more skulls on combat dice equal to their Mind Points.
• Dominate lets Zargon take one full turn as the hero (including attacking other heroes) if the sorcerer rolls at least two skulls.
• Mind Burst is a contest: both sides roll combat dice equal to their Mind Points, and whoever rolls more skulls deals the difference as Mind damage to the other. It can backfire on the caster.

Exact odds for one Mind Burst. "Hero hurt" means the sorcerer rolled more skulls; "caster hurt" means the hero did.

The Barbarian, with only 2 Mind Points, is one bad Mind Burst from shock. Against Festral he loses 3 Mind Points on an average cast, which is more than he has. Send the high-Mind heroes at the sorcerers and keep the Barbarian on the ogres.

New dungeon features

• Stone doorways are slabs that have to be shoved aside. A hero rolls their base Attack dice and needs two skulls; once open, a stone doorway stays open. With 3 dice (the Barbarian) that is a 50% chance per try; with 2 dice (Dwarf or Elf) it is 25%. The Wizard rolls 1 Attack die, so the book notes the Wizard can't open one at all.
• Swinging blade traps trigger when a hero steps on the marked square, and the blade hits every hero on the squares marked with blade symbols for 2 Attack dice (heroes defend normally). The Dwarf disarms a found blade trap automatically; anyone else with a tool kit rolls one combat die and succeeds on any shield (50%), but a skull springs it.
• Pits of darkness work like pit traps but can't be disarmed, only jumped. A hero who falls takes damage by armor: 1 Body Point with no armor or non-metal armor, 2 with metal armor, 3 in plate.
• Supply crates are gifts smuggled into the fortress. The first hero to search for treasure in that room finds 4 Potions of Healing (each restores one red die of Body Points).

Moving when the coast is clear

Unthreatened movement: when no monsters are active on the board, heroes may skip the movement roll and count each red die as a 4. Two dice become 8 squares, which beats the 2d6 average of 7.

Ogre mercenaries

Between quests, one ogre mercenary (a sparring partner of the tournament champion) is available to hire for the gold cost on its card. It moves and acts on a chosen hero's turn and can move, open doors, attack and defend, but can't carry items. Keeping it for the next quest costs half its price; if it is defeated, rehiring it costs the full price again.

The World's End Tournament

Quests 1 to 3 are arena battles. The heroes and their allies form the Challenger team; Zargon's monsters are the Defender team.

• Alternating activations. Each round, the Defenders go first: Zargon activates one monster and takes its whole turn. Then the Challengers activate one hero, and so on, back and forth. Each figure is activated once per round (mark it with an activation token). When one side runs out, the other side activates its remaining figures one after another.
• When every figure on both sides has gone, the round ends and a new round starts, Defenders first again. The battle ends when one team is defeated.
• Trophy tiles lie face down on the arena floor. End your turn on one to take it into your team's shared pool. Tiles add 2 squares of movement, add a skull or shield to a roll, heal, or let you strike back when hit (a riposte).
• Death in the tournament: a hero who dies is out for the rest of that quest, and their items stay on the square where they fell for others to pick up.

Tournament treasure

A hero who searches for treasure next to a treasure chest in the arena rolls two red dice, then removes the chest:

That is a 15-in-36 (41.7%) chance of getting hurt. Open arena chests with a healthy hero, not one who is down to 1 or 2 Body Points. Bone weapons work like the armory weapon of the same name but have no gold value and can't be sold.

Arena battles outside the campaign

The tournament also works as a stand-alone skirmish. Each hero has a power of 1 plus the Attack dice of their strongest attack; add the heroes together for the Challenger team's power. Zargon then builds a Defender team from the book's World's End Team Roster whose total power is no higher than that. There is also a monster-versus-monster variant where two players draft equal-power teams.

The Ten Quests

Titles and goals as the quest book gives them, without Zargon's secrets.

Many of the fortress quests set their own goals ("hold this room for one hero's full turn", "throw the ring into the pit") and their own exits, so heroes don't always leave by the spiral stairway. Read the parchment text carefully; it tells you what counts as finishing.

Try It at the Table

1. Play an arena match tonight. Set up the tournament hall, total your heroes' power as described above, and have Zargon build a Defender team of equal or lower power. It is usually shorter than a dungeon quest and teaches the alternating-activation rhythm.
2. Pick a Mind Burst target. Before Quest 6, decide which hero will go after Dread Sorcerers. Look at the Mind Burst table above: the Wizard is the only base hero who is more likely to hurt the caster than be hurt.
3. Focus fire. When two ogres come through a door, have every hero attack the same one. Two wounded ogres hit exactly as hard as two healthy ones.
4. Plan for the stone doorways. If your Barbarian is down, a stone doorway may take the Dwarf or Elf several turns to open (25% a try). Don't leave the strongest hero on the wrong side of one.

Where Next

• Against the Ogre Horde: Lore: the story of the Dirgrusht ogres, Gruzbella and Ekur.
• The Druid: how to play this pack's hero.
• Jungles of Delthrak: the next quest pack, which reuses the animal ally rules.
• Dice Roller: check other matchups for yourself.