Hellboy: The Board Game – New Minions!

This week we’re running a series of blogs detailing what’s coming up in the new Hellboy: The Board Game Kickstarter. Just in case you’ve been under a rock for the past few weeks, this new Kickstarter is going to fund new cases, new Agents, new minions and new bosses! All of these can be combined with the existing game to create your own new adventures.

We’ve worked with James and Sophie at Needy Cat Games once again on these new elements and this time they enlisted the assistance of Hellboy: The Board Game Super Agent, Edwin Moriarty. Over the next few days, Edwin will be delving into the new expansions to explain what makes them so exciting! He's already covered End of Days and Pandemonium and today he's talking Hell on Earth.

So, spoiler alert, but things don't really go great in the Mignolaverse for, well, almost anyone. The BPRD eventually finds itself in the middle of a full-blown apocalypse, with monsters roaming the streets and people desperately surviving against the odds. There are some great iconic enemies in this hell on earth, and my favourite to write by far was the cricket.

Crickets are nightmarish creatures, basically a ravenous fanged maw on top of long stringy tentacle legs. They skitter around at a hell of a speed and they don't tend to appear alone. Where there's one cricket, there's a dozen more. Worse, when they nest, you'll find them in their thousands. I wanted this to be how they felt to face on the board too, so I created a simple rule to make sure things escalate: whenever you place a cricket you roll a dice and there's a chance you'll place another one alongside it.

When minions appear in clusters in rooms, this can have a chilling effect, revealing sudden swarms of these vicious creatures. Though they're not much of a threat alone, they're rarely alone. The case file that comes in this expansion really plays on this, as agents will have to discover cricket nests and deal with the horrible consequences of disturbing them. If you really want to turn the difficulty dial up, why not put crickets in as a minion and then use the horde rules from Darkness Calls? Maybe with a Hammerhead from the Pandemonium expansion in the slot to be called up if all the crickets are in play. That's a surefire way to ruin your day.

As the apocalypse rolls on, mutants are spotted roaming the landscape. These were once people, but have been twisted by the power of the Ogdru Hem. Alone or in small groups, they're no threat, but they feed on the power of creatures nearby that share their lineage. That means that every Ogdru Hem or frog monster also in play increases the mutants' melee attacks, turning them from trivial threats to terrifying foes. If there's one piece of advice I can give you facing off against the enemies in this expansion, it's don't get outnumbered.

But let's be real, you probably won't have a choice.

You'll find these and other minions in the Hell on Earth expansion, along with a case file to show off their endless nightmarish swarms.

HELLBOY: THE BOARD GAME RETURNS TO KICKSTARTER SOON! MAKE SURE YOU SIGN UP TO THE KICKSTARTER PAGE HERE TO BE NOTIFIED WHEN WE GO LIVE.