Jungles of Delthrak

What This Pack Is

Jungles of Delthrak 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. The quest book holds 16 quests, and the box adds 29 miniatures, 36 cards and 39 double-sided cardboard pieces.

Three things set it apart from earlier packs:

• Two new heroes, the Berserker (a human) and the Explorer (a dwarf), each with a male and a female figure.
• Branching paths. The quests are not always played in order. At several points the heroes choose where to go next, and the campaign ends in one of three different finales.
• Jungle monsters with keywords such as Venomous and Spawn, plus terrain that slows movement, traps made of vines, and webbed cocoons.

The setting is the jungle of Delthrak, the ancestral home of the dwarves who fled Kellar's Keep. Zargon's minions have stolen a dwarven relic, and a glowing Dread blight is spreading through the jungle. The Jungles of Delthrak: Lore page tells the story in full.

What's in the Box

• Heroes: two Berserker and two Explorer figures.
• Animal allies: a Raptor ally and a Saberfang ally.
• Monsters: Blightcrawlers, Blightweavers, a Giant Ape, Raptors, a Serpent, Skullblights, a Goblin Warlock, goblin archers and a skeleton archer.
• Furniture: basins (used as a pool of water, or with the crystal or fire piece on top), a crystal cluster, a bonfire, statues and an Alchemist's Shop.
• Cardboard: hindering terrain, cocoons, grasping-vine traps, venom tokens, Spawnling tiles and stranger tiles.

The New Heroes

Either new hero can replace one of the four core heroes. The only restriction is that a party should not contain two copies of the same hero. Each hero's abilities are printed on its hero card; the Berserker and Explorer pages cover how to play them. The pack's Potion of Elder Wisdom refers to recovering "any 1 hero spell or skill", so expect once-per-quest skills that work much like spells.

Animal allies

The pack uses the animal ally rules first printed in Against the Ogre Horde: an ally joins for free when there are fewer than four hero players, a hero controls only one, and it acts right after its hero. It can move, attack and defend, but can't open doors, use potions or carry items, and a hero can spend an action to give it a potion when both are clear of monsters.

The Fangwarden Armlet artifact calls a Raptor ally once per quest. If that Raptor is defeated the armlet goes dormant, and it only recovers after the hero completes two quests without it. The box also includes a Saberfang ally figure; how it joins the party is explained on its card.

Choose Your Path

After some quests, the story offers the heroes a choice, and the quest book sends them to a different page depending on what they pick. A single run through the campaign plays 9 or 10 of the 16 quests, so the pack can be replayed with different results.

• After Quest 1 the heroes either go back to a dwarven outpost to gear up (the book suggests this for new heroes) or press straight on into the blight.
• After Quest 5 they either help Tharn, a dwarven scout, search an old dwarven vault, or help a small plant creature whose home is in danger. Only the second route unlocks Path C at the end.
• Quest 10 offers two or three possible endings, each a pair of quests.

Choose Your Difficulty

The pack offers three ways to handle a hero reaching 0 Body Points:

In Heroic and Story mode, a spellcaster who drops to 0 can immediately cast an available healing spell on themselves, even if they have already used their action that turn.

Jungle Terrain, Traps and Furniture

• Hindering terrain (sand, web and jungle tiles) costs 2 squares of movement per square, for heroes and monsters alike.
• Grasping vine traps. When a search finds one, Zargon just points at the square instead of placing a tile. A hero who steps on it rolls one combat die: either shield dodges (a 50% chance), but a skull costs 1 Body Point and holds the hero in place, ending the turn. The hero, or an adjacent hero, spends an action to cut the vines.
• Cocoons block movement and line of sight. A hero next to one can spend an action to destroy it; some hide treasure, some hide nasty surprises.
• Pool of water. A hero searching for treasure in an area with a pool may restore 1 lost Body Point instead of drawing a treasure card.
• Crystal cluster. A monster casting Channel Dread next to it adds 1 to the roll. It blocks line of sight and can be attacked: 6 Body Points, no defense.
• Bonfire. Anyone moving through it rolls one combat die and takes 1 Body Point on a skull (50%). You can't end a move on it.
• Statues block line of sight. Strangers are characters the heroes meet; those without stats flee if attacked.

Monsters of the Jungle

The quest book's monster chart:

What the keywords do

Venomous

A hero damaged by a Venomous creature is paralyzed: they can't move but can still take actions. They roll one red die at once and shake it off on a 5 or 6 (a 1-in-3 chance); otherwise they take a venom token and the paralysis lasts until the end of their next turn. A Potion of Serpent's Blood (50 gold) cures it.

Spawn

At the end of each hero's turn, every active monster with Spawn either creates a new Spawnling next to itself or moves all its Spawnlings. A Spawnling that reaches a hero goes onto that hero's card, and at the end of each of the hero's turns it deals 1 Body Point per Spawnling tile, with no defense roll.

Agile

Moves through hindering terrain, furniture and heroes as if they weren't there. You can't body-block an Agile monster.

Clever Tactician

May move both before and after its action, and rolls 1 extra Attack die against a hero who is adjacent or diagonal to another monster.

Entangling Roots

A hero who steps next to this monster stops moving at once (walls and closed doors block the effect).

Ranged

Full Attack dice against a visible target that isn't adjacent, but only 1 die against an adjacent one. Close in on archers.

Skullblights can also be destroyed with Holy Water, and spells that target Mind Points (such as Sleep) can't be cast on monsters with 0 Mind, including Spawnlings and Skullblights.

Why Raptors hunt in packs

Exact odds for one attack against a hero with 2 Defend dice:

The extra die adds almost half a Body Point per attack on average. A hero who stands where only one monster can reach them takes that bonus away.

Other Rules in the Pack

• Unthreatened movement: with no monsters active, heroes may count each red movement die as a 4 instead of rolling.
• Item exchange: heroes can hand a potion, weapon, artifact or other item to an adjacent hero if neither is next to a monster, and can trade freely between quests.
• Large monsters that fill two squares can attack, and use abilities like Spawn on, any of the 10 squares around them.
• Dread spells: each monster may cast each spell it knows once per quest, even if another monster already cast it. Some monsters can cast certain spells "at will".
• Extra treasure cards from the pack are shuffled into the core treasure deck.
• Multi-phase enemies switch to a new stat line when their Body Points run out, rather than dying, and healing never sends them back to an earlier phase.
• Optional order of play: heroes may choose the order they take their turns each round. Zargon still goes after all the heroes.

The Alchemist's Shop

Try It at the Table

1. Stock up on Serpent's Blood. At 50 gold it is the cheapest item in the shop, and a paralyzed hero next to a Serpent is in real trouble. Each roll to shake off venom succeeds only 1 time in 3.
2. Kill the spawner first. Spawnlings keep coming as long as their parent is active. Each Spawnling has 1 Body Point and no defense dice, but the Serpent or Blightcrawler behind them is the real problem.
3. Count terrain squares before you move. A 2d6 roll of 7 only carries a hero three squares through jungle tiles, with one square to spare.
4. Pick the difficulty as a group. If your table hates losing a hero, Story mode keeps everyone in the campaign without changing how monsters fight.
5. Decide before Quest 10. Talk about which ending you are aiming for and buy healing potions while you still can.

Where Next

• Jungles of Delthrak: Lore: the story of the Emberwrought Diadem and the Dread blight.
• The Berserker and The Explorer: this pack's heroes.
• Playing Zargon: running a quest pack for your group.