Advanced Heroquest Reborn - A New Miniatures Project

I ended my recent post on the new Age of Sigmar release by reflecting on the Games Workshop's decision to end the past 30 or so years of lore by destroying the Old World in which Warhammer was set and replacing it with a brand new world.

"The new world concept will need time to grow on me, it is of course instantly lacking the rich history that the previously established world accumulated over many years, but I suppose if I don't like it then I know I can carry on playing the older games as their rules are readily available. I can even mix and match older and newer figures and lore as I see fit. And that's it, at the end of the day a hobby like this will always be what you want to make of it." 

The last line got me thinking about how I can make the hobby what I want it to be. I have a certain nostalgic fondness for the older era models and lore. This of course is tied in with when I started collecting miniatures. I started with Heroquest before moving onto Advanced Heroquest, Warhammer 4th Edition and then Warhammer Quest along with the accompanying fiction of the era like the Konrad trilogy (by David Ferring) and Beasts in Velvet (by Jack Yeovil / Kim Newman). This shaped a clearly defined world in my mind which has stuck with me ever since, even though later releases perhaps watered that world down somewhat (before finally destroying it).

Gone but not forgotten - Source : Advanced Heroquest (1989)

Despite my liking of the older era lore I have mixed feeling about the older miniatures. Many purists will say you can only play these older games with old models, partly what I suspect is the driving force behind the somewhat overpriced "LOOK VINTAGE OOP CITADEL MINIATURES" sales that fill eBay week after week. Now while I do also have a fondness of some of the older models, some are, lets face it, not so great. And if I'm honest, I do think some of the newer models, yes including plastics, are an improvement on the older ones.

So with all that in mind I thought, why not use old and new models, to recreate something from the time of a rich and vibrant world, the Old World meets new. For me Heroquest was my first thought, but as I still own a complete copy I thought I'd move on to the next stage and recreate Advanced Heroquest (which I sadly no longer own and won't unless I part with the best part of £100).

So what is Advanced Heroquest Reborn? It's going to be my re-imagining of a classic game using modern models (although the odd classic will probably sneak in somewhere).

I want it to stay as true to the source as possible and looking through the rulebook there is a wealth of background images to draw on. My first thought, after reading the rulebook for the first time in a long time, was that it has a certain rawness and brutality about it which was lost in favour of a more polished world later on. This is something that really stands out today and something which makes it more appealing to me as an adult.

The "old" Old World in all it's savage glory - Source : Advanced Heroquest (1989)

Some of you may remember a post I wrote a long time ago where I contemplated building character models from the Warhammer 40K world. That never took off because first of all because I always felt more connected to the Warhammer world rather than the 40K world, and second, because I just didn't have the knowledge of the 40K range or enough spare parts to start with compared to Warhammer. So, as projects go, it's still somewhat ambitious for me but I do feel better prepared and more connected to the subject matter this time round.

Advanced Heroquest contained 36 figures, 20 of which were Skaven and me and Skaven have never got on due to my inability to paint them so that in itself will be a bit of challenge. It's also why I'm going to start my next Advanced Heroquest Reborn post by looking at the heroes.