Once upon a time, HeroQuest was the board game equivalent of a gateway drug, only instead of leading to meth it would lead you into the slightly less financially crippling life of a Warhammer player. Or maybe it would get you into Dungeons & Dragons. Either way, you'd end up a nerd with a collection of little guys you will definitely finish painting one of these days.
Unlike that original board game, Avalon Hill's boutique revival of HeroQuest isn't for an audience of kids who might grow up to be roleplayers. It's for the adults those kids already grew up to be. A deluxe nostalgia box full of lushly detailed plastic orcs and goblins and dungeon furniture—which turned out to be easier to paint than I expected—it's an expensive proposition aimed at middle-aged folks like me who played HeroQuest in the 1990s and still have fond memories of saying "I use my broadsword!" and "Fire of wrath!"
