 Oh, I'm going first, I know. Hello, I'm James. I'm Sophie, and we're from Needy Cat Games. And today we're here at the Mantic Games HQ to have a look at The Wild Hunt, which is a new expansion for Hellboy, the board game. It's quite exciting, isn't it? I'm so excited. There has to be a proviso here. We haven't actually seen this since we wrote it quite a while ago, so. This is going to be an adventure. Yeah, this is quite exciting. This was the last expansion we worked on for Hellboy. I think it's the one we're happiest with. Oh, yeah, I'm so proud of this. I'm really excited to see what it is. Sophie did most of the work on this one. So for those who don't know, we designed the game as Needy Cat Games. I did kind of the most basic core fundamental engine of the game and some development things, the engine. And then Sophie did a load of work on case files, expansions, pumping out content. And yeah, this was the last one. So this is the one that we're kind of happiest with because it feels like it was the one that was most developed. It had the most interesting ideas, and it pushes the system in weird ways. Well, and I think as well, by this point, we've written so many case files that we've got really well practiced at it. So this has been built upon all of the experience of creating everything else that was in the game. So yeah, I think you're right. It's the most refined. At least that's how we feel about it. I mean, we'll have to say. There's nothing refined about giant punching things. But you know. So a couple of fun facts about the Wild Hunt expansion. This is the first expansion which has come out, which is based off the work of an artist other than Mike Minyola, because we had the Hellboy the Board game, Darkness Calls, and the BPRD archives, which were all in the big Kickstarter box. They were all based off the first few like Minyola comics. This one's a little bit later where Duncan Fregredo came in and did some things. So what's quite interesting is the miniatures look a little bit different because they're based in a different style, and that's really cool. This is, as I've said already, this is an expansion that can click onto either the retail or Kickstarter version of the game. We'll get into that in a little bit more detail. Should we stop talking and open the box up? Go on, it's your baby. Oh, I'm so excited. So as you'd probably come into expect it, if you've got anything from Hellboy so far, I'm going to put this here and just obscure this. You'll actually notice this is the same dimensions as the side of the Hellboy retail box. So it'll sit on your shelving. Nice and happily. Bit of Kallax. That's the most important thing. It's Kallax-friendly. But yeah, as you come to expect, what we've got is a tray of lovely minis. Oh, I can't wait. Get them out. Let's see what's in there. Oh, cool, look how deep that is. These are big. It needs to be deep, because what we've got in there. So we've got a few miniatures. We've got Elegos, who's one of the Dukes of Hell. He's a big, scary monster. Now, he in the game, as I recall, is almost unkillable. You have to kind of... You have to destroy a magic ring. Yeah, I think it's like you have to roll a BPRDI while you're attacking him to take his ring out and then his resilience drops way down and you can actually hurt him. So he's really fun. And we've got... A couple of Giants. Giants, and they're massive. What's interesting is, whenever you look at things like Giants and that in a game like the Miniatures game, you have to scale them down a little bit, because if they were the size they were in the comics, you wouldn't get anything else in the box, yeah. But I think what's great is they really stand out as big models, you know? I mean, they're the same kind of scaling down that the tentacles of Sadhu Hem had in that core game. They're big enough that they look really impressive. We actually got some painted versions of these as well. Do you want to grab out the painted Giants and Elegos? There's the painted one. I believe, once again, by Angel Heraldes, who's name I've probably horribly mispronounced there. But yeah, how cool are these? I mean, this is just adorable. I love it. Adorable isn't the word I use, but he's amazing. I just think there's so much movement in the Miniatures. I think that's the thing that I think the sculpting has really reflected in the entirety of the Hellboy board game, Miniatures range, which is that there's just so much movement in them. The reaction pack, cinematic, comic-y, you know? Yeah, exactly. And I think you can see that even more as we move. Shall I? I don't want to take these away, but we'll put those over there as they're out the way. And I do maintain that if he was real and that big, he would be adorable. I'd want a little pet one. You'd have a little pet one. So we've got the Wild Hunt. It's interesting because the Wild Hunt comic is, it's kind of a story in two parts, isn't it? So what we've kind of done here is we've attempted to kind of get a bit of everything. So you've got Elagos, who comes from kind of one part of the story. And then you've got the Wild Hunt stuff itself. So you've got the Wild Huntsman, the Giants, and we'll come to the rest in a minute, which is the other part of the story. And the game, the expansion really covers. Yeah, it really transcends those things. There's, you know, and that was a really fun challenge from a design perspective, from finding reasons for them all to be together. So we, I think we came up with some really interesting mechanics in terms of that, in terms of like how the Wild Huntsman interact with you as the player. Because some of the case files sort of turn on his head a bit, make it a bit more unpredictable. They're not completely... They're not always evil, they're mostly evil, but they're not 100% evil all the time. Morality aside, yeah, sometimes they'll stab you, sometimes they'll stab the other guys. Sometimes, in certain things. It's quite interesting, and that was quite an interesting thing of like how to do that mechanically. So that was quite fun. We'll run up the painted Wild Huntsman as well. This one's beautiful, and I think really embodies the feeling of the Wild Huntsman. Again, so much movement to them. Yeah, I mean, there's just so much detail as well. Like you don't actually realise until you see the painted one, how much detail is in the miniature. Like they've got really beautiful like facial features and there's like details all over their body. It's really impressive. I mean, we've said it before, in the Hellboy unboxing videos, these are PVC miniatures that they kind of push what you can do with PVC, they're really, really cool. I love them. And of course, you can't not bring out Hellboy. This is my favourite, look at this. So this is Enraged Hellboy, which is another Hellboy. Now, if you've got the Kickstarter version of Hellboy, this will be your third Hellboy, because you have Horne Hellboy as well. Oh, and you've got the... Oh, Pancake's Hellboy. Pancake's Hellboy, and you've got Father Christmas Hellboy. So Christmas Hellboy was, yeah, he was a limited edition. Limited edition. So this could potentially be your fourth, fifth Hellboy? What I really like, this is what, something you did with the rules here, is all the different Hellboys have kind of the same core basic rules with a couple of tweaks. So this one is, he's a lot angrier. Shall we try and find his card? When we get to it. So yeah, we'll do that. But basically, it means if you were feeling mad, you could theoretically have a game with four Hellboys. I mean, hey, who's to say it can't happen? I think there is one rule card in the Kickstarter version which says you shouldn't do that, but we're not gonna come around your house and stop you. No, exactly. If you're gonna do that, I might recommend if you've got the Kickstarter edition mixing in the hardcore deck, because I think you might... Yeah, there's gonna be a lot of punching involved. I think you might completely destroy anything you come up against. But how cool is he? I mean, you look at the size of the blade, it just looks awesome. And that is straight out of the comics. There's a particular panel, which that completely represents. Oh, that's brilliant. And the painted one is just so nice as well, so... So that's a whole load of minis there. We've got some more minis in here before we get to them. Ooh, we've got here, we've got here. Now, this is a sample, so I think you won't have a little bit of masking tape on your version. But we've got new rules, because we had some new rules in terms of how outdoor tiles works. Yeah, because a lot of this is actually set outdoors, which is a whole new thing. Normally, so far, you've been exploring old castles or manors or shacks or whatever else. Now it is, there are rules for being outdoors. Yeah, and what we try to do as well is that, rather than give you a huge chunk of rules, most of which you won't need for most case files, is that if you choose to use these, like if you decide to get, if you've not yet bought the BPRD archives, which will be released next year, separately to go with the retail edition, or if you've got the Kickstarter version with the BPRD archives, you can start mixing in the tiles if you want to. So what we've tried to do is put them on rules cards, so you only grab the card that's relevant to the thing you're using. It's a nice quick reference, yeah. Yeah, rather than it being like a big stack of stuff that you have to get. So this is actually quite a dense expansion from a rules point of view. There's a lot of stuff in here. So you've got rules for outdoor see, outdoor room tiles. You've got, I think, new scenery pieces. Cool new scenery pieces, yeah. So the scenery pieces, you've got different things, like there's a rock slide, which behaves differently. There's some cool new scenery pieces for like armor, like armor, there's suits of armor standing on plenty of things. Yeah, you'll see all this when we get to it in a bit. So there's lots of cool new extra bits. Then you've got a lot of new deck of doom cards. Deck of doom cards, which are looking amazing. You've got some which are specific to the case files in here. Some which are mixed into your existing deck of dooms, though, so you can go back and add these cards in, go play for your original case files and you'll have some new things happening. We've also got some more boss behavior cards. No, those are unexpected threat cards. Oh no, unexpected threat cards, sorry. Those are for the BPRD archives. Well, they're not. They're actually, they're a thing. So in the BPRD archives case file constructor, which again, if you've got the retail edition, that's coming, don't worry. There are rules for adding these into your deck of doom and they're basically things which bring out the big bosses and big monsters and things in cool ways. But in here, one of the new rules cards actually tells you how to use them, so you can use this card away. Ah, brilliant, yeah. So you can mix those in. If you want a bit more of a challenge, I haven't actually looked through this at all since we first wrote it. So yes, those unexpected threats can actually just be mixed in into your deck of doom to increase the chances of meeting cool new bosses. So if you're using some, like if you're using one of the case files that requires one of the, like Elegos, but you want to also have a risk of a giant turning up, you can mix it in with your deck of doom. Oh, and there's your enemy cards. Enemy cards for different things, yep. So those look lovely. And then there's the boss behavior cards. There we go. Right at the end there. So yeah, there's some pretty cool bosses. So that's the big cards. We've got some little cards as well. We've got some new encounters. And again, these are the same as the deck of doom in that you've got some which you are using certain case files and some which are shuffled into your regular deck. We've got a couple of new requisition cards. So there's new things you can pick up before a case. There's something really interesting about the requisition cards actually is that in this game, I introduced the concept called legendary items because in the wild hunt, there are so many like epic things that they pick up like there's Elegos's ring and there's the raven, the crown. Excalibur, there's the raven crown. There's all sorts of things that are like, these are like unique items that are a really big deal. And you don't get that in any of the other stories as much anyway. But in the wild hunt, a really distinctive part of the story was that there's all these like legendary items. So that's actually like a whole new sort of aspect to the requisition cards. So you can select them, but they're quite expensive but there are ways of picking them up throughout the game. Yeah, they're cost four, which is not a thing we've had before. No. So like you say, certain, like the case files specifically do have things where legendary items do come out. There's an opportunity where you could literally get Excalibur from a stone, which I think is just an amazing idea. So even if I do say so myself, but. You've got a few things like you've got one of Hellboy's starting cards there which is the giant blade. He never downgrades dice, having additional enemies in these areas. So you can just wade into huge swathes of enemies and dice them up, which is, I mean, look at him. Of course he's gonna do that. Also, we should probably talk about Alice. We've got Alice Monahan, who is your backup agent. Yes, Alice, Alice, Alice. Oh, she's in the next layer. But yeah, she's just a really handy information gathering backup agent. So she'll help you get your information gathering, your information gathered track up, which is really handy if you're playing with like a punchy, like Hellboy heavy team. It was really interesting actually, Alice, because in the comics, Alice is very much, she's a very big central character, but she's very much a supporting character for Hellboy. And we agonized for ages over whether to make her an agent or whether to make her a backup agent. And the reason why we decided to make her a backup agent is because we wanted to stay true to the spirit of the comics. It would have felt weird her running around with a sub machine. Yeah, she wouldn't have just. Yeah, exactly. That wasn't her character. Her character is not, you know, hitting things with a stick or a really big stick. But she is very much like, she is in the world hunt, she is like the emotional support of Hellboy. She's basically like the embodiment of his human side. So it felt really weird to try and make her like a combat based character. We sort of gave it a go. And then we were just like, this doesn't feel like the Alice that we know from the comics. What's really nice though is it means that, you know, she is a really sweet, and she's actually, she's one of the ways you can get the legendary items. Yes. There's a chance she can, when she's doing remote support, she can turn back up with an awesome legendary item. Shall we look at what else is in here? Oh yeah, let's go, that's how I'll move this out of the way. We'll sit here and ramble about the game for days if we don't. So we've got another tray of things here with a load of imps who are the little guys running around with spears and swords and spears we gave her. One's got a sword and one's got a spear, but there's multiples of each. So there's Alice and there's the imps. And then here are the painted versions, which are incredible. They are just amazing. And again, Alice is so detailed. It's incredible what they've managed to do with that. Case file cards. For a start, this is an interesting one. The case files are now coming in Ziploc bags, which is really cool. I like that a lot. Yep. And what we've got is we've got four packs here. The first three, we've got three new case files, which I think it's a short, medium, and long. So you've got a nice variety. It's only the second short one. I think there's only one short one in the retail box. So if you like playing short games at Hellboy, you've done the, I can't remember what it's called, it's Frog Hunt or something. It's Hunting Party. Hunting Party. Yeah, no, it's not Hunting Party, is it? It's gonna bug me now. So we'll come back to you in a minute. There's the very first case file we recommend you try out. And yeah, now there's another one you can use if you wanna do a short case file. But there's three of those. And then what you've got as well is, again, if you've got the Kickstarter edition, this is all the stuff to add into your case file constructor from the BPRD archives. If you haven't got the Kickstarter version, don't worry. Tuck these away, keep in the box, hold on to them, and whenever it happens next year, and that comes out. You can just mix them into what you've already got when you buy your BPRD archives. So that'll be a really nice bonus for you before you've even played anything. So we're nearly through here. Let's see what else we've got. We've got a few little bits and pieces. Hellboy's rules card. Smooth. Yeah, smooth. So Hellboy's agent board, again, he's very much the same as Hellboy from the board game with a couple of differences. He loses his taunt ability, and instead here, he has a thing where basically, instead of, he's seen it all before rule, where you can get a little bonus on investigation checks, he has the hard to ignore rule, which is whenever he makes a fight check that makes at least four damage, he just bumps to the front of the cue. So rather than having to spend action cubes to taunt, you just do it for free. And then he has go on, tell us about your favorite rule. I just love this. So it's literally called, ah, I hope I pronounced that correctly. I think that's about, yeah. If people aren't saying it like that when they play the game, they're doing something wrong. It's taken directly from the comics. There's literally an amazing series of panels where he's just yelling, ah, the whole time, while wielding this sword, because he's so angry. And I was just like, well, I can't not have that. And I wrote it in to the rules, being that long. And I was like, I wonder if they're gonna cut it down and they didn't, so I'm so happy about that. And this is, move up to two areas, and each enemy you evade suffers two damage. So you're basically like running through people. You still suffer one damage, but then make a fight action at the end. So you can just basically run through a load of enemies, hurt them all as you're going, and then attack at the end. It does take all three of your cubes, but I think it's absolutely worth it. It's the kind of thing where, as well, because you've got your, the big blade, which makes you good at hitting big crowd enemies. It means Enraged Hellboy is like the ultimate crowd control character. He can either run and pull any enemies with him than hit them, or he can use this one and just hit them on the way through and then get to whatever it is that he wants to get to. Absolutely. So yeah, so we've got that. We've also got finally, some hard tokens. This is the bit I'm looking at. I know this is really sad, but I'm really excited about the card bits, and they're like my favorite bits. What have a look, what you got? So what we did, I don't know, if you're familiar with the comics, great. If not, you should read them. But we had a really big challenge deciding what settings to put into the World Hunt, because we had a choice of two settings, and there's so many cool set pieces in the World Hunt. It's very hard to pick which bits to do. So we ended up on like this weird kind of fairy otherworld sort of setting where they walk through. This is kind of mystical Avalon England sort of, you know that. But they sort of stumble into it, and you're never quite sure if it's just a misty bit of the moors or whether it's actually like a fairy world. But so this is what all of this is based on. So there's this sort of weird green otherworldly kind of environment. There's some of the new scenery pieces we talked about. And as you can see, there's quite different ways of using the tiles, which is quite exciting. And then on the other side, it's just loads and loads of fire. Which I just- Lots of fire. I just love it. I just love it. There's just so much fire. One of the case fires is set around, again, there's a siege in the World Hunt comic where Hellboy and Alice end up interrupting a siege on a castle, and it's surrounded by a lake of fire. So we just did fire. There is a way of getting through it because we've obviously got all the tiles that we can reuse from the corset. So the whole point is that you can make really nice big maps that are surrounded by fire, and the fire has certain effects in the game, and you can go into the fire if you want to. Mainly, Elegos tries to punt you into it, which is really good fun. Yeah, he's constantly trying, he literally aims to hit you into the fire at all times. So you're constantly trying to get away from the edges, which is a really fun kind of way of using the map tiles in a different way, which was really interesting that we've tried to, on every single expansion, we tried to make it so that the map tiles and the actual maps that you create feel very different, so it's not just the same dungeon over and over again. The last thing that's worth mentioning is the little poison tokens here. The imps can chuck poison spears at you and poison you and hurt you in different ways. Because I mean, they're only little, but you wanted to give them something that would make them quite dangerous. Of course, that plays into the comics as well. Absolutely. We don't want to, no spoilers here. But you should read the comics. Yeah. So yeah, that's pretty much everything in the box, isn't it? Yeah, although just one last thing, there are loads of imps. I don't know if you fully sort of saw, but there are four of each of the small imps. So they might be small, but you can get overwhelmed by lots of them, which is quite a big risk. So there's like big things and tiny things in this expansion, which has been quite fun as well. So yeah, that is the Wild Hunt expansion that we held with the board game. Just loads of stuff to jump into. Let me say three new case files to play through, but also so much that you'll be able to remix with the case file constructor if you've got it already or if you get your hands on it later. Give it a look if, I don't know, why not tell us your favorite bit in the comments below? I can do that. I can do calls to action. It's a thing. Yay! And that's it. We're going to go away now and maybe we'll unbox some other things another time.