Hero Quest

Hero Quest consists of 12 games.

Games 1–11 are individual Quests fought by each player's army against the forces of Chaos. Game 12 is the Final Battle, in which the surviving forces of all participating players unite against Chaos.

Players may use any Warhammer Fantasy army permitted by the group, with the following exceptions: Warriors of Chaos may not be selected as a player's campaign army, and Daemons of Chaos may not be selected as a player's campaign army. These armies form the principal enemies of the campaign.

At the beginning of the campaign, roll off to determine who controls Chaos during the first Quest. Players then alternate control of the Chaos forces.

The player controlling Chaos is not considered to be using their campaign army. Casualties, victories, magic items and other events affecting the Chaos army have no effect upon that player's own campaign force. This means that the Campaign requires 18 or 19 games per player as they alternate who plays Chaos and the final battle.

Every player begins Game 1 with an army of no more than 500 points. Army allowances increase automatically as the campaign progresses. Winning or losing a Quest does not alter the size of a player's army.

The listed value is the maximum size of a player's army for that Quest.

|Game|Army Size|
|   1|      500|
|   2|      750|
|   3|    1,000|
|   4|    1,250|
|   5|    1,500|
|   6|    1,750|
|   7|    2,000|
|   8|    2,250|
|   9|    2,500|
|  10|    2,750|
|  11|    3,000|
|  12|  Special|

Normal army-composition rules apply except where specifically modified by these campaign rules.

A Hero Quest army is a persistent army. Players do not write an entirely new army list before every Quest. Instead, the army they begin with gradually grows throughout the campaign. Once a unit has joined the army, it remains part of that army until it is destroyed.

Growing the Army -- whenever the army allowance increases, the additional points may be used to: recruit new units; increase the size of existing units; purchase command models; purchase equipment or other available upgrades; recruit additional characters; purchase mounts; improve the equipment carried by the Hero; or purchase any other option normally available to the army.

Existing units may be improved as the campaign progresses. However, models and units may not normally be removed simply to recover their points.

Example: a player recruits a unit of 20 Black Orcs during Game 3. Before later Quests, the player might increase the regiment to 25, then 30, then 40 Black Orcs. They might add a Musician, Standard Bearer, Boss or an eligible magic standard. They may not voluntarily reduce the regiment from 40 models back to 20 merely to spend those points elsewhere. The decisions made while building the army therefore remain relevant throughout the campaign.

After each Quest, determine which units survived. A unit survives if the number of models remaining at the end of the battle is at least equal to the normal minimum size of that unit. A surviving unit remains part of the player's army for the next Quest. Before the next Quest, surviving units recover their casualties and return to the strength at which they began the previous battle.

Example: a unit of 50 Black Orcs has a minimum unit size of 10. If 10 or more Black Orcs remain at the end of the battle, the regiment has survived. Before the next Quest it returns to 50 models and must remain part of the army. If only 9 remain, the regiment has been destroyed.

A unit reduced below its normal minimum unit size by the end of a Quest is destroyed for campaign purposes. Remove it from the player's standing army. Its points are no longer committed and may be spent freely when preparing for the next Quest. The player may purchase the same regiment again, but is under no obligation to do so.

A destroyed unit therefore represents not merely battlefield casualties, but a regiment that has ceased to exist as an effective fighting formation.

Single models, including Monsters, War Machines and Characters, are destroyed if they have been removed as casualties or have otherwise failed to survive the battle.

Every campaign army is led by one special character known as its Hero. The Hero is selected when the campaign begins and remains the same character throughout all ten games, although they may “upgrade” to a Lord if starting as a Hero.

The Hero may initially be selected from either the army's Lord or Hero choices. Named and Special Characters may not be selected as the Hero.

As the army grows, so does the amount that may be invested in the Hero. All equipment, mounts, magic items and other upgrades purchased for the Hero count toward this limit.

Some Heroes are simply too powerful to take to the field during the early stages of the campaign. If a player's intended Hero cannot be legally fielded because their minimum points cost exceeds the allowance available at the beginning of the campaign, the player may nominate another character to act as the Hero's Representative. The intended Hero must be declared before the first Quest begins.

Once the intended Hero can legally be included in the army, the player may replace their Representative with the intended Hero. This may only occur once during the campaign, and from that point onward the intended Hero becomes the player's Hero for all purposes.

The Representative and intended Hero should have an appropriate thematic connection. For example, a Slann Mage-Priest might initially direct the campaign through a Skink Priest acting as his emissary. Once the army is sufficiently large for the Slann to personally take the field, the Skink Priest may be replaced by the Slann. A Saurus Oldblood could not become a Slann Mage-Priest simply because the player wishes to change their Hero.

When the Hero is Revealed, construct the new character normally using the current army allowance. Equipment, magic items, mounts and other options belonging to the Representative are not transferred to the revealed Hero. The Representative is removed from the standing army without penalty. The player may subsequently recruit that character normally if desired.

The Hero Revealed rule exists to allow an otherwise unaffordable intended Hero to participate in the campaign. It may not be used simply to replace an existing Hero with a more desirable character later in the campaign.

The Hero is not bound by the normal restrictions governing the number or total points value of magic items carried by a character. The Hero must still pay the normal points cost of every item and upgrade.

The Hero may: carry more than one Magic Weapon (max of 1 Melee, 1 Ranged); carry more than one piece of Magic Armour (max of 1 Worn, 1 Shield, still bound by the limitations of what non-magical gear the character can buy, so most Wizards will have neither); carry only 1 Talisman; carry only 1 Enchanted Item; carry only 1 Arcane Item, if otherwise eligible to use Arcane Items; exceed the character's normal magic-item points allowance; upgrade their mount to a mount with a higher point cost; and trade magic items to other characters in their own army, allowing them to pick up new items within a category.

The Hero may be upgraded to the army's Battle Standard Bearer for +25 points, even if the Hero is a Lord choice, would not normally be eligible to become the Battle Standard Bearer, or is also the army's General. The Hero may therefore simultaneously be the army's General and Battle Standard Bearer.

The normal rules for the Battle Standard apply unless specifically modified by Hero Quest.

The Hero is never permanently removed from the campaign. If slain, destroyed, dragged into the Realm of Chaos, turned to stone, swallowed by a Giant, blasted into another dimension or otherwise removed during a battle, the Hero returns before the next Quest. The battlefield consequences of being slain still apply normally to the Quest in which it occurs.

This protection applies only to the campaign's Hero. Other characters are subject to the normal survival rules.