HeroQuest - Kellar's Keep - First Play!

21st September 2023

It's a Thursday night and we're in Aldershot for some gaming fun.

HeroQuest - Kellar's Keep was the first expansion released for the original HeroQuest game back in the 1990's.
When HeroQuest was re-issued a few years ago - so was Kellar's Keep.

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Kellar's Keep is an expansion pack (The first expansion I believe) for the HeroQuest game and as such, it more or less uses identical rules as HeroQuest, which I've already blogged about here.

Everything I wrote there also applies here to Kellar's Keep. I'll not repeat that, instead I'll just talk about what's new or different

What's new?
The campaign
Most significantly, the Kellar's Keep expansions adds a new 10-part campaign that builds upon the original HeroQuest and is meant as a follow up to the 14 part campaign presented there.
Theoretically, players can carry over their characters from the original to Kellar's Keep. However, the rules state no items, weapons or potions, etc, are kept.
This means that players are essentially starting fresh with what amounts are new characters which I felt was a little frustrating but also completely understandable from a game balancing perspective.
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​Components
Kellar's Keep also adds a number of extra miniatures to represent new (or more) monsters as well as some extra tiles for situations players will encounter.
​Also added are some cards for potions and like which players may purchase between adventures.
Finally and very importantly, a pair of doors are also added to the game which changes one aspect of it quite a lot.

What's changed?
The 2 new doors represent the entrance into and exit out of a map.
Instead of having the stairwell tile on the map. Players now enter the map through a door on the outside edge of the map and must find the exit door.
Players can now only exit a map via the exit door, they cannot retreat back through the entrance. Once players are in, they're in!
This can make the game a lot trickier, whereas before players could beat a hasty retreat if things turned bad for anything reason, now they're in it for the long haul regardless. This greatly increases the chances of a party wipe - which is bad!

The other notable change is in difficulty; it definitely feels ramped up in Kellar's Keep.
No doubt the designers took on board comments that adventures in the original were too easy!
Players will find Kellar's Keep more challenging and will have more to think about.

These are the significant changes that come to mind

Overall
There's not much to write here: If you're expecting something different from the original HeroQuest or revolutionary, you won't find it in Kellar's Keep.
If you enjoyed the original campaign however, then it's very likely you'll also enjoy this campaign. This is very much a case of 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it!'