Heroes of Might and Magic III: The Board Game – Of Managers and Designers

Archon Studio’s latest Kickstarter update for their upcoming Heroes of Might and Magic III board game serves as a progress report and lets us know that the game’s core rules have been finalized and are currently being translated. We’re also told that the developers are planning on putting together a “map editor” of sorts to help us create our own scenarios for the game, as well as a set of official rules for those interested in engaging in some competitive play.

Beyond that, we learn that the Pledge Manager should be going live soon and are presented with some recent mechanical changes. Have a look:

Howdy!

Our progress has been steady throughout this past month. We have some important topics to cover in this update, so let’s jump right in!

Pledge Manager

We’ve gotten a lot of questions about the Pledge Manager and we can confirm that it’ll launch April! We’ve yet to announce a specific time and date, but you’ll definitely be able to access it sometime this month. Expect to see some optional non-gameplay add-ons that weren’t revealed during the campaign!

General Progress

In general, we’ve actually already finished the core game in its entirety! All that’s left is the expansions and the translations, which is a huge milestone we’re happy to announce.

As the final rules have already been finished, they’ve been sent off for translation! After the rulebook translations have been finished, we’ll move onto the components and from there, the game will be just about ready!

Scenario Design

You’ve had access to the mission book for a couple of weeks now, and we’re hoping that some of the scenarios inspired you to create some of your own; there’s a lot of rules you can play around with!

This was only briefly mentioned before, but we are planning on official support for custom scenarios and house rules. We’ll be releasing a “map editor” of sorts, which will generally outline how to create and balance a new scenario. You’ll be able to freely share your scenarios with other people, or through our Discord server where I’m sure that you’ll find plenty of people more than happy to try your scenario!

You’ll be able to view the tournament book through our website under the downloads section. For those that haven’t looked through the Mission Book just yet, you can also view it in the same place as the tournament book.

New Stuff

One thing that’s been on our minds is that we want balanced scenarios that allow for competitive play in tournaments that’ll be hosted by your local shop. This is what drove us to develop the tournament book! This is also where you’ll find information on how to create your own scenarios, as mentioned in the above section but there are also new options to modify your deck. We’re also planning on a more extensive campaign, so you can look forward to that!

Existing Changes

As with anything, things change over time. Here are some of our most recent changes to existing mechanics!

• Adjusted the difficulty of the Rampart and Fortress campaign after extensive testing.
• Changed the way morale works according to the feedback received during playtests.
• Rebalanced some units to better fit the general balance of the rest of the game.
• Increased the amount of Keywords you’ll find on cards to make them more understandable.
• Rewritten some Artifact abilities to better differentiate between them.
• Changed the trading post to allow players to sell cards.

And many, many more!

All in all, the feedback we received was very positive during the most recent round of playtests. We really can’t wait to get the game to you, I sure hope that you guys are just as excited as we are!

That’s all for today, if you have any remaining questions then please feel free to reach out to us via contact [at] archon-studio.com, tune into our fortnightly livestream, join our Discord, make a forum post on our BGG page, or just write in the comments and we’ll do our best to answer as many questions as we can!

See you later, Heroes!

– Szymon Ewertowski & Jakub S. Olekszyk