A Lesson in Card Size

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In this post I want to talk about something that many of us already know but others really miss.
There are three different sizes and layouts for the HeroQuest cards (but we could say five or even six exist...).
I am comfortable to refer to them as UK 1989, US 1989 and AH 2021 (or simply the NEW version).
Let's see them in detail...

The first version is the 1989 edition and is also the smallest one, released in UK first and later in the rest of Europe. Australian and Japanese editions of the game also features this layout. It's the smallest version of the three and measures mm 54x80 approssimatively. This version features a frame on both sides, white on the rear and brown (but sometimes almost black) around the text description on the front side, shaped as a parchment. Card artworks were made by the great Gary Chalk.

NOTE: 1991 quest pack Against the Ogre Horde was featuring 4 monster cards on the rear of the questbook. I guess they were not intended to be cut as the size used was slightly smaller than the standard cards. We can count hem as a variant of the European layout, different in size and for the monster icons (with white circles instead of black) and the moonster images were squared instead of being rectangular.

The second version, US 1989, was used when the game was released in North America and Canada (1989-1992). The same layout was used for the Brazilian release. For some reason the size was increased to mm 56x89 approssimatively. Almost the same in width but way taller. It is possible they needed more space for the text as the US cards are sometimes adding extra description.
They figured the same artworks of the UK version but they were redrawn, with slightly changes to colors and details. I don't know who did the new artworks for the US cards. The feeling is like they painted over the original ones. The slightly curved titled banner from the UK edition was replaced with a straight one and a different font was also used.
NOTE: US version of Kellar's Keep and Return of the Witch Lord were each featuring ten mini artifact cards on the rear of their questbook. These cards were intended to be cut and added to the game. Althought the style was the same used in the Game System they were drastically resized to fit into the page and their size is mm 43x65 approssimatively (yes, that's a another US layout of the cards!).
Fun fact, the fonts were changed again with the release of the Barbarian and Elf Quest Packs (The Frozen Horror and Mage of the Mirror) in 1992 although they are looking very similar to the fonts used for Game System cards (yes, that's even another layout!!).

The third layout (the new one), is used for the release of the Hasbro/Avalon Hill remake of HeroQuest in 2021.
It is not related to any country in particular as it is currently used by worldwide releases.
They changed all the graphics, fonts, artworks and even some of the titles although they recover the text from the US 1989 version. This layout is using an even bigger card size, measuring mm 63x89 approssimatively. So, same lenght of the US cards but larger.
The artworks are digitally made and they stepped back using frames again on both sides of the cards as it was in the old UK edition.
Different artists have been hired to draw the new cards, causing a bit of inhomogeneity in the style of the artworks (some of them look cartoon while others look way more realistic).

Let's see below a comparison of the front side of the three layouts. 

Curious: Fire of Frath in the original UK edition had a very cool feature: it could seek and strike an enemy anywhere on the board. This special characteristic is missing in its later releases but if you look at the new version of this card, you may notice the image is representing a fireball turning around a coulumn to strike a skeleton that was hidden behind. Is ithis a coincidence? I guess no. My guseeing is since they reimplemented many cards from the UK edition that were missing in the US editio, (Holy Water and Bracersfor example) they draw the artworks by taking inspiration from a deck of UK cards but later they just copied the text from the US version as it was.