Heroes of Terrinoth review

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Heroes of Terrinoth is a co-operative fantasy quest card game from Fantasy Flight Games and designed by Brady and Adam Sadler, who created the co-operative Warhammer Quest: The Adventure Card Game that Fantasy Flight released in 2015 and then took off sale in 2017 when its licensing deal for Warhammer came to an end.

Yep: this is Warhammer Quest with all traces of Warhammer scrubbed off it.

How different is it? The action has been relocated from the Old World to Terrinoth, a fantasy setting so bland that its most remarkable feature is how utterly unremarkable it is. Art and text have been changed, characters, monsters and quests are different, but the card design and graphic elements remain the same. In Warhammer Quest the player leader token is a torch; in Heroes of Terrinoth it’s a torch with fewer spikes on it. You want the game in a nutshell, that’s it.

The gameplay is almost entirely unchanged, and that’s a good thing. One to four adventurers (biffy, spelly, healy and stealthy) set out on one of eight pre-programmed quests, working their way through a stacked deck of encounter cards via a number of locations. 

Heroes choose from four possible moves on their turn, but once it’s used each move card is tapped and can’t be used again until reset. This is what gives the game most of its tactics, and turns it into an almost puzzly resource-management challenge. 

It’s clever and fun, but it never feels like a dungeon-bash or an adventure quest. Where the atmosphere of Warhammer pervaded Warhammer Quest, Terrinoth’s second-hand fantasy tropes aren’t enough to give Heroes of Terrinoth any flavour beyond cardboard. It’s back and it’s still fun – but it’s simply not the game it was.

JAMES WALLIS

PLAY IT? – PROBABLY

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Designer: Brady Sadler, Adam Sadler

Artist: Sebastián Koziner

Time: 45-60 minutes

Players: 1-4

Age: 14+

Price: £37

This review originally appeared in the January 2019 issue of Tabletop Gaming. Pick up the latest issue of the UK's fastest-growing gaming magazine in print or digital here or subscribe to make sure you never miss another issue..

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