Might & Magic Heroes: The Board Game has a lot of Magic, no Might…
…and the Magic was poor.
In Might & Magic Heroes: The Board Game, each player becomes a leader of one of four different factions hoping to conquer and govern the realms of Ashan.
I haven’t played the computer game of Might & Magic Heroes but I don’t think it matters too much here.
The goal is to get 14 points by exploring. Exploring is almost purely based on combat. Each location on the board is ‘Guarded’ by something nasty and to take over that area you need to kill it.
Factions
Each player has a faction that has a different look and feel. I was White which seems like they’re ‘Good’ with Crossbowmen, Griffins and Angels etc Each Faction comes with 3 Heroes to pick, again, each very different.
Sadly the Hero I picked just didn’t have the Might which is important at the beginning of the game.
Actions
You start with 3 Action cards which are ‘Move or Gather’, Move or Recruit’ and ‘Move or Build’. (You can get a 4th which is ‘Gather or Build’ and you should try and get this as early as possible.)
If you build, you pay resources and build a building. You can also upgrade your Citadel with this action. This gives you access to more advanced units and buildings.
If you Gather, you collect resources based on which territories you own plus any extra from buildings you have built.
If you recruit you can pay gold to recruit units for your Heroes that are in your Citadel. You can eventually get the ability to buy those 2 Heroes you didn’t pick at the beginning of the game.
The other things you can do is move, which leads to combat.
You move around the board controlling places that give you resources and points. Like I said each is guarded by a big bad and if you move onto one or onto an area they are looking after, you fight.
Combat
Combat is great. You take the Monster, your Hero and the units in their group and place them on a board in Initiative order, like this…
Then, in order, they attack. In this example, the Yellow bad guy goes first. The token represents 6 enemies and you roll 1D8 up to a maximum of 5 per token in the group. They need to score under their combat value to hit, in this case, 1’s hit.
For each damage dealt to the monster, you give them a damage token which reduces the number of dice they roll later.
For each 1 damage you take, you can downgrade a unit from Elite to Regular, or kill off a Unit.
If a Unit is Elite you get the option of rolling a six-sided dice that can let you re-roll misses, resurrect units and make a double hit. There is also a misfortune option on that dice that forces you to re-roll all hits.
After killing the monster you flip it over and it tells you what you get as a reward.
I do love this combat system, it works really well… kind of…
Turn Length
At the start of the game, you have one Hero. One move, one combat, turn over. Later on, you can see my layout when I have all 3 Heroes. 3 Moves, 3 Combats and all that is just one action of a turn. It takes FOREVER. It’s especially annoying when you know you’re going to Gather, Gather, Build, Recruit and your entire 4 actions take less time that one Combat for one action for one player turn.
Also, constantly getting the combat board, picking up the Monster, Picking up the Hero from the board placing the token on the board to remember when your Hero was, picking up your units and putting them on the battle board, making sure the initiative order is correct and then rolling for combat takes a long time and grinds a bit after a few times.
Might & Magic Heroes Summary
All in all, it’s a good game with some great ideas. I love the Combat system… I love the building and upgrading stuff. The game works very well. It’s just that clunky-ness and downtime.
Jesta ThaRogue