2195: Quest Complete

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We played through the whole Warhammer Quest: The Adventure Card Game campaign today with the full complement of four players, and despite failing the first four quests, we were ultimately victorious, saving our local town-in-peril from a full-on orc invasion.

It’s an interesting game. The first four quests felt very difficult indeed, with our party quickly getting overwhelmed before we were able to complete our objective. On one occasion we got frustratingly close to victory — like, one extra action would have let us win, probably — while on others it very quickly became apparent that we weren’t going to make it out of this particular dungeon in one piece.

What’s interesting is that if you know this is going to happen, you’re not necessarily resigned to playing out the last few turns of your inevitable bloody demises; instead, you can do what you can to minimise the damage you’ll suffer in the subsequent quest. Each quest has both “reward” and “penalty” affects according to whether you succeeded or failed, you see, and these range from adding a “Nemesis” monster into the monster deck for the subsequent quest (a penalty, obviously) to adding one of the four “Legendary Fortune” cards into the Gear deck, allowing the lucky drawer to take and equip one of their three Legendary items.

Where the interesting stuff comes is once a couple of these rewards or penalties have resolved themselves. Since we failed the first few quests, the Nemesis from the previous mission would end up in the next quest’s monster deck, in addition to any Nemeses the quest threw at us. This was obviously a bad position to be in, but there’s a ray of hope for a party in this situation: if you kill a Nemesis added to the monster deck in this way, they are perma-killed and won’t come back again. As such, when it became clear that we weren’t going to successfully complete a quest, we’d simply turn our attention to the Nemeses who were harassing us and take them down so we wouldn’t have to deal with them again in the campaign, and this ultimately worked out pretty well. Facing three or four extra Nemeses in the final quest rather than the one we did successfully deal with would have made a big difference to the eventual outcome of the campaign.

At the moment, we’re not quite sure whether our failures in the first quests were due to our own incompetence (largely due to lack of knowledge of the game) or due to bad luck — or a combination of both. I suspect a bit of both, though it’s not at all unusual for a cooperative game such as this to be tuned to a very high level of difficulty to encourage replayability. I’d be interested to try the campaign again and see if we perform any better — or if the few random, non-fixed elements and dice rolls we had to deal with throughout really were the deciding factor in our success or failure.

Interestingly, Warhammer Quest: The Adventure Card Game also comes with a non-campaign “Delve” quest that is much longer than an individual campaign quest, and provides a condensed form of the campaign’s progression automatically at set intervals through your progress. It sounds like this will be a stiff challenge as well as significantly more randomised than the campaign quests, so it will be fun to give that a go sometime.

All in all, it seems like a great game, and I’d be happy to play it again sometime. A day well-spent, I feel!

2179: Warhammer Quest: The Adventure Card Game Blind Tutorial Playthrough

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Longtime readers will know that I’m a fan of Games Workshop’s wonderful but out-of-print dungeon crawler games, including Hero Quest, Advanced Heroquest and Warhammer Quest. Unfortunately, these don’t hit the table nearly as often as I’d like, since they’re quite time-consuming to play and fiddly to set up due to their sheer number of components and pen-and-paper RPG-style necessity to prepare adventures beforehand.

I was, as you might expect, quite excited to hear that Fantasy Flight Games, who have been leveraging a whole bunch of Games Workshop properties recently, had released an official card game adaptation of Warhammer Quest which promised to play in 30-60 minutes, and which many claimed offered a fun dungeon-crawling experience without the need for festooning your table in thousands of miniatures and cardboard tiles.

The game is extremely well-regarded on legendary boardgaming community site Boardgamegeek, so I was keen to give it a go. One of the most common complaints, however, was that neither the Learn to Play manual nor the Rules Reference guide were particularly well laid out, meaning it took a little while to get your head around how to actually play. This is nothing unusual for Fantasy Flight Games, however, who, although they produce absolutely beautiful components and cards, aren’t particularly well-regarded when it comes to writing instruction manuals. (Hey. If anyone from FFG is reading, I am very much available for freelance manual and tutorial writing. Please get in touch.)

With that in mind, I decided to try the game’s tutorial scenario and record my experiences for the benefit of anyone else considering this game. So let’s jump right in.

This is all the stuff you get in the box. Two rulebooks — a “learn to play” guide and a reference manual — plus a selection of quest sheets, a deck of large cards, a deck of small cards, six dice and a selection of tokens. Numbered tokens are double-sided so can be used to denote a value of either 1 or 3.

Let’s get set up! I’ll be trying out the Tutorial solo. The Tutorial isn’t a full quest, rather just an opportunity to try out all the main mechanics before jumping in to a full session. I’m going into this pretty much blind, so I may get things wrong along the way. As such, do not take this post as a definitive How to Play guide for now!

First thing to do is pick two heroes to play. There must be at least two heroes in the party, even if you’re playing solo. There are variations on each hero card according to how many party members you have. Generally speaking, the fewer party members you have, the more life each individual character has. If playing with two heroes, each hero gets two turns. If playing with three heroes, one hero per round gets an extra turn.

I’m going to go with the Ironbreaker dwarf and the Bright Wizard for this playthrough, because a tank/wizard combo sounds sensible, and also they’re the two characters I’ve played most in Warhammer End Times: Vermintide on PC.

Each hero starts with four basic action cards that allow them to Attack, Aid, Explore or Rest. During a Campaign or Delve quest, these can be upgraded to Advanced versions later. Here are the Bright Wizard’s basic actions:

And here are the Ironbreaker’s:

The Bright Wizard begins the Tutorial engaged in combat with a Night Goblin Archer, while the Ironbreaker has been set upon by a Rat Swarm. There are also two face-down enemies in the middle of the table, considered to be “in the shadows” for now.

The Tutorial also specifies that we’ll be exploring the Throng of Webs location for now, so this card goes in the middle of the table along with the shuffled Dungeon deck.

We’re now ready to start. We begin with the Hero Activation phase, during which each hero activates in turn, beginning with the current Party Leader, and performs an action. The relevant card is exhausted once it is used, unless it has a Prepare symbol in the corner, in which case all action cards can be readied for the next round.

The Bright Wizard is first to play. Let’s play her in an appropriately hot-tempered manner by immediately flinging a fireball at that pesky Night Goblin Archer in front of her.

Fireball is the Bright Wizard’s Attack action, and it allows her two white dice with which to attempt to deal damage. It’s also a ranged attack, so she can fling fireballs at enemies in the shadows or engaged with other heroes and even target more than one enemy in exchange for taking a point of damage, but for now let’s concentrate on the immediate threat.

The Bright Wizard gets two white dice for her attack, and rolls against one black die because she’s engaged with one enemy. She rolls two success symbols (the crossed axes) plus a defence shield, while the goblin rolls an attack for one point of damage. Since the Bright Wizard rolled a shield, she successfully defends against this damage, and since the goblin only has two hit points in the first place, she defeats it with an appropriately explosive flourish.

Now it’s the Ironbreaker’s turn. He, too, is going to attack. His attack allows him to engage up to two enemies. He’s already engaged with one, but he’s feeling cocky, so he also chooses to engage one of the enemies in the shadows. This flips the card face-up and places it in his engagement area in front of him.

It’s a second Rat Swarm. They don’t do much damage, but they do have 3HP each so it’s unlikely either of them are going down this turn. Regardless, the intrepid Ironbreaker pushes on, rolling two white dice against two black dice.

He rolls one point of damage, which he applies to the enemy of his choice, and successfully defends against one incoming point of damage thanks to the two shields he rolled.

Now it’s the Bright Wizard’s turn again. Since her Fireball is exhausted, she can’t use it again against the enemies engaged with the Ironbreaker or the one remaining in the shadows. She instead takes the opportunity to explore the location by rolling one white die against no black dice, since there are no enemies engaged with her right now.

She rolls a success, which puts the party 1/7 of the way to completing this location. She finds some Cool Waters, which allows her to recover 2HP or ready an action, but since she has taken no damage and her Explore action allows her to ready all her actions anyway, it’s not much use right now. Since she’s flush with life right now, she then chooses to take two points of damage to claim two success tokens and put them in her play area. These can be used next turn for two automatic successes on the Explore action if she uses it.

That’s the end of the Bright Wizard’s actions this round.

The Ironbreaker, meanwhile, is still engaged with the two Rat Swarms. He chooses to use his Stubborn Resolve ability to exhaust one enemy in front of him and automatically defend against up to two points of damage. He then gets to rest, which allows him to recover HP by rolling white dice against black dice, but since he hasn’t taken any damage and there’s no way for the single remaining readied Rat Swarm to do enough damage to get through that monstrous 2 defence, there’s no need to roll any dice.

That’s the end of all the Hero turns this round, which brings us to the enemies.

The Bright Wizard is first to activate an enemy. Since she is not engaged with any enemies right now, she must activate one of the enemies in the shadows, and since there is only one face-down enemy left in the shadows, she flips it face-up to reveal a Giant Wolf.

The Giant Wolf then resolves its three actions in turn. First is Lacerate, which causes whoever it is engaged with to be afflicted with the Bleeding status. Since it is not yet engaged with anyone, however, it does nothing.

Next, its Prey ability causes it to engage the Hero with the most HP, which is the Ironbreaker. It moves into his engagement area. Since the Ironbreaker is now engaged with the maximum three enemies, any additional engagements will simply cause him to take automatic damage, but since there are no other enemies on the table right now, that probably won’t be an issue.

Finally, the Giant Wolf’s Inflict ability deals two damage to the Ironbreaker. This can’t be defended against. The Giant Wolf is then exhausted.

That leaves just the injured Rat Swarm for the Ironbreaker to activate. First it would Advance to engage the Hero activating it if it was in the shadows, but since it’s already engaged with the Ironbreaker, nothing happens. It then deals another point of damage to the Ironbreaker.

At the end of the enemy phase, the Bright Wizard is on 20/22HP, while the Ironbreaker is on 23/26HP. Of the enemies, one of the Rat Swarms and the Giant Wolf are on 3/3HP, while the other Rat Swarm is on 2/3HP. All the enemies are now re-readied for the next round.

Before the round ends, the location’s effects are resolved. In this case, the party leader (currently the Bright Wizard) must exhaust one of her four actions, though it can’t be her Explore action, which has the Prepare icon on it — if this was exhausted, she would eventually be completely unable to act! She instead chooses to exhaust her Rest action Smouldering Wrath, since she’s fairly hale and hearty right now.

Now the round ends, and the party leader token passes to the Ironbreaker.

The Ironbreaker is in a slightly sticky situation, since he’s engaged with three enemies and two of his actions are exhausted. He chooses to offer his Aid to the Bright Wizard, since he has the HP to spare right now. He throws up a Shield Wall, rolling one white die against three black dice.

He rolls two successes, which the Bright Wizard chooses to “bank” on her Fireball action. He also rolls two attacks, causing him to take three points of damage — two from the Giant Wolf and one from one of the Rat Swarms, since higher attack value enemies are always prioritised in situations where not all enemies are attacking. He’s now down to 20/26HP, but those two banked successes for the Bright Wizard will be useful.

Shield Wall also allows the Ironbreaker to re-ready all his actions, so he does so.

The Bright Wizard is up. She chooses to cast Fireball and engage the uninjured Rat Swarm, pulling it off the Ironbreaker. She then voluntarily takes a point of damage to target a second enemy. She then rolls two white dice against one black die.

She rolls one success and two defence, the latter of which allows her to shrug off the Rat Swarm’s counterattack of a single point of damage. With the two banked successes from the Ironbreaker’s Aid action, she has a total of three successes to assign between up to two enemies as she pleases, and since her Fireball is ranged she doesn’t even have to attack the enemy she’s engaged with. She chooses to assign all three points of damage to the Giant Wolf in front of the Ironbreaker, killing it instantly and levelling the playing field somewhat.

Next it’s the Ironbreaker’s turn again. Since he readied all his actions last turn, he is free to use his Attack skill Inexorable Advance. Since this allows him to engage two enemies, he pulls the Rat Swarm back off the Bright Wizard with a mind to cleaving both remaining enemies with a lucky roll. He rolls two white dice against two black dice.

He rolls a normal success, a critical success and an attack. The critical success counts as a normal success but also allows an additional roll of that white die.

Impressively, he rolls another critical success, which means another reroll. That’s a total of three successes so far.

His final roll is a shield, allowing him to shrug off the single point of incoming damage. He assigns two of the successes to the injured Rat Swarm, killing it, while the remainder goes on the last enemy. This round is now over for the Ironbreaker.

That leaves one action for the Bright Wizard. She chooses to use her Burning Sight ability to explore, using her two banked success tokens from the previous turn — these must be declared and used before rolling dice — and rolling a critical success.

She then rolls another two successes, bringing her to a total of five, including the banked tokens she used. This brings the overall progress on the location to 6/7. She then draws a Dungeon card.

The Shrine she discovers gives her the option of exhausting an action to recover 1HP and claim a success token. Since the Explore action allows her to re-ready all her actions anyway, there’s no reason for her not to do this. She heals 1HP, exhausts her Aid ability Fan the Flames and banks a success token on it.

The Bright Wizard cannot finish the exploration this turn by burning HP, but she can bank one token for next turn. She takes the 1HP damage she just healed and claims a success token. She then re-readies all her actions, and that’s the end of the Hero phase.

The only remaining enemy on the table is engaged with the Ironbreaker, who takes one point of damage.

The location effect then causes the party leader (currently the Ironbreaker) to exhaust one action dealing with sticky webbing. He chooses to exhaust his Explore action. Leadership of the party then passes to the Bright Wizard for what will probably be the final round.

To clear the Tutorial, the party must fully explore the Throng of Webs location (which requires just one more Explore success to do so) and defeat all the enemies. With that in mind, the Bright Wizard uses her first action to Aid the Ironbreaker for two dice plus the success token she banked earlier.

She rolls a success and a critical success…

…followed by a defence, which isn’t much good right now, but three success tokens is still plenty. In fact, you can only bank up to two success tokens per card, so the Ironbreaker banks two on his Inexorable Advance card and a third on his Shield Wall card. He also readies his Into the Dark action to explore if necessary, since the Bright Wizard’s Aid action allows him to ready one action.

The Ironbreaker uses Inexorable Advance and rolls two defence, which is more than enough to shrug off the incoming damage from the Rat Swarm. He uses his two banked success tokens from the Bright Wizard’s Aid to defeat the Rat Swarm without the need for rolling further successes. Now the area is clear of enemies, which just leaves the exploration.

The Bright Wizard has a banked success token, so rolling the die is just a formality at this point, but she rolls a critical success anyway. That brings the location to 7/7 progress, completing it and clearing the Tutorial. Full quests would require the exploration of other locations and perhaps the completion of other objectives, but for now… victory!

1228: Dungeon Delving

Way back before I started doing this daily blogging shenanigans — yes, there was a time when I was an erratic blogger, just like normal people on the Internet — you may recall that I once gave a harrowing account of the adventures of Count Kurt von Hellstrom and his merry band of warriors, otherwise known as the characters my friends and I rolled to play a campaign of Games Workshop’s tabletop roguelike Warhammer Quest. On the off-chance you haven’t been reading this blog since December 2009, here’s a link for your delectation.

I greatly enjoyed my experiences with Warhammer Quest, though it hasn’t hit the gaming table for a good few years now, which is a shame. It takes quite a long time to set up, you see, and the heavily-random nature of the game’s encounters wasn’t altogether to the taste of a couple of our group; our more recently-acquired Descent: Journeys in the Dark 2nd Edition is scratching the dungeon-crawling itch a bit better for the group as a whole. Despite this, I still consider myself highly privileged to own a copy of this much sought-after collector’s item, and one that is in pretty good (certainly playable) condition, too.

As such, it will probably not surprise you to hear that when Rodeo Games, developer of the excellent Hunters series of XCOM-style turn-based strategy games for iOS devices, was working on a digital adaptation of Games Workshop’s classic, I sat up and paid attention. Hunters and its sequel already played more than a little bit like Games Workshop’s Space Marine-based board games such as Space Hulk and Space Crusade, so I was confident that they were a good team to take on the challenge of porting Warhammer Quest to the small screen.

And you know what? They’ve done a great job. The iOS version of Warhammer Quest, which hit the iOS App Store around midnight last night, is a fantastic adaptation of the board game and its various foibles, tweaked just enough to feel like an original video game rather than a straight-up port of the board game’s mechanics.

The iOS version of Warhammer Quest features a substantial single-player campaign in which the player’s party of heroes moves between various towns in the Warhammer Old World, and takes on quests, as all good heroes should do. Most quests are introduced by some well-written text that gives a good feel of context to the dungeon crawling, and these are supported by various encounters in the dungeons themselves.

The actual dungeon-crawling gameplay is very similar to how the board game works. Characters have a particular move allowance for each turn, and a certain number of ranged and melee attacks available, assuming they have the appropriate weapons equipped to perform these. The wizard character may cast spells on his turn as well as moving and attacking, and all characters may also use items or certain other special abilities as well as moving and attacking.

Fans of the board game will recognise certain specific quirks of the tabletop version — for example, rather than having a set pool of magic to cast spells at will, the wizard character is dependent on the randomly-determined Winds of Magic that change each turn and provide the power required to cast spells. Likewise, the satisfying “Deathblow” rule is in effect, which means any time a character defeats an enemy in a single mighty blow, they can automatically attack any other adjacent enemies and sometimes clear out a room rather quickly.

A few changes have been made, however. The level-up system, which was simply based on the amount of gold acquired in the board game version, takes the form of a more traditional experience point-based system in the iOS version. This works just fine, and a helpful breakdown of who killed what (or healed whom) at the end of a quest helps you easily figure out which of your characters is pulling their weight and which ones need to step up to the plate a bit more readily in the next adventure.

There’s a couple of frustrating bugs present in the current version, which mars the experience a little — firstly, occasionally the game will get “stuck” while resolving an encounter upon entering a new room tile and require a restart to proceed. (Thankfully, the game autosaves regularly, so you’ll be back before the move you made that froze the game.) Secondly, the game’s “hardcore” mode, in which characters can die permanently, doesn’t appear to work correctly at present — I lost a character in an early quest, completed the rest of it and was very surprised to discover them waiting for me back in town when I returned.

The game also falls into the trap of offering obnoxious “Get more Gold” in-app purchases for players too lazy to earn their way to higher-tier equipment. Not only does the ability to purchase in-game currency remove all need to manage your finances carefully — an important part of the game if you’re playing it properly — but it also raises questions over how well-balanced the in-game economy actually is. Is the rate of gold acquisition in the game deliberately slow in order to push players in the direction of the in-app purchases? It’s hard to say at this early stage, but it’s something that will be on the mind of some players.

The game also includes a selection of day-1 DLC — three new characters and a bolt-on series of quests. Normally, I object thunderously to day-1 DLC but when the game itself is just £2.99 it’s hard to get too mad, particularly when each package adds a significant amount of cool stuff to the game and is still pretty cheap even if you buy all of them.

Despite these issues, the iOS version of Warhammer Quest is well worth your time if you’re a dungeon-crawling fan. An update should hopefully fix the bugs described above, and with any luck Rodeo will continue to support the game with new content over time. As it stands, they claim there’s 25-30 hours of single-player content in the game already, which should keep you busy for a while.

Download it here.

#oneaday Day 897: Dungeon Crawling

I’m a big fan of board games, as regular readers will know. And I have fairly diverse tastes, too — I like everything from Eurogames such as Catan to theme-heavy Ameritrash like Last Night on Earth. Exactly what I want to play at any given moment is largely determined by my mood at the time, but I can pretty much always muster up enthusiasm to play a dungeon-crawling game.

I own several dungeon crawlers, but I’m planning on picking up the very interesting-looking Descent: Journeys in the Dark Second Edition when it releases, as it sounds like just the sort of game I want to play. It also sounds like it’s been improved significantly over the original edition, which could take up to 4 or 5 hours to complete a single quest. The new version reportedly keeps play sessions down to much more manageable lengths while incorporating a solid “campaign” system for character advancement and a branching narrative. I’m looking forward to it a lot.

As for the ones I already own, each of them have their pros and cons, and I like them all.

Starting at one end of the spectrum we have Games Workshop’s Dungeonquest, which saw a rerelease by Fantasy Flight Games recently. Dungeonquest is gloriously random and is best left on the shelf if you like to plan out what you’re doing well in advance, because progression is determined largely by the luck of the draw. Consequently, it is a very difficult game to “succeed” in — even the instruction manual helpfully informs you that players have approximately a 34% chance of survival in any given playthrough.

In Dungeonquest, players take it in turns to draw dungeon tiles from a pool in order to build the dungeon as they go. If it’s a corridor, they get to move again. If it’s a room, things happen, determined largely by drawing cards and making skill checks. If it’s a special room, super-special things (usually bad for the player) happen. Many of these things end in instant death for the player, meaning games can be over relatively quickly if you’re unlucky.

The aim of Dungeonquest is to make it to the middle of the board to raid the slumbering dragon’s massive treasure pile, then make it out again before the sun rises — the time limit in question being represented by an ever-advancing “track” at the side of the board. If players don’t get out before sunrise, they die. If they run out of health, they die. If the fall down a bottomless pit, they die. Hilarity (and, usually, frustration) ensues. It’s not a great game, but it is an entertaining one.

Moving up somewhat is MB and Games Workshop’s Hero Quest. This was my introduction to fantasy role-playing when I was a kid, and it still holds a very fond place in my heart to date. It’s an adversarial game where a team of up to four “hero” characters of varying classes take on the forces of darkness, controlled by a single “evil wizard” player. The evil wizard has a book of preset quests with which to challenge the heroes, and following these through in sequence provides a rather loose narrative. The game was later expanded with a number of additional packs that broadened the scope somewhat with new monsters, traps and additional rules to make things more interesting.

Hero Quest is good because it bridges the gap between traditional “family-friendly” board game conventions and the more abstract, strategic nature of role-playing games. It’s accessible enough for pretty much anyone to understand, has high-quality components and a wide variety of things to do — plus is very expandable and customizable.

Advanced Heroquest not only changed the “correct” way to punctuate the phrase “Hero Quest”/”Heroquest” but also revamped the game completely to be significantly closer to a Dungeons & Dragons-style role-playing game. It also incorporated rules for limitless replayability including random dungeon generation, character advancement and a heavy emphasis on customization. While the original Hero Quest released an expansion allowing players to create their own adventures, Advanced Heroquest practically demanded that the Games Master (or “GM” — effectively the “evil wizard” player by another name) come up with some of their own creative, fresh ideas. And it was up to the GM in question how far they wanted to take it — Advanced Heroquest’s rules catered for simple story-free “hack and slash” dungeons as much as elaborate, story-driven scenarios featuring light role-playing. The game even came with full rules for solo play, which was a godsend for me when I was a kid, as short on nearby friends as I was.

Then came Warhammer Quest. This is pretty hard to find now, which explains why I paid nearly £100 for a copy on eBay. Warhammer Quest takes the formula of Advanced Heroquest and shoots off in a different direction rather than necessarily making it more complex. Warhammer Quest has a lot more in the way of random elements, but also features a lot more rules to prevent the game from running away from the players. Where Advanced Heroquest often had dungeons that spiralled off into myriad dead ends, Warhammer Quest’s dungeon generation rules ensure that players move quickly from encounter to encounter on a much more linear path, giving the game a much faster pace. That’s not to say that either approach is “better” as such — Advanced Heroquest had the thrill of exploring the unknown, while Warhammer Quest always had something interesting through the next door — but it marked a significant difference between the two.

Warhammer Quest contains a fairly heavy degree of luck. If you were playing a campaign, after completing a dungeon you then had to roll repeatedly on a table to determine the events that happened during the journey back to town. These frequently got rather ridiculous, as demonstrated abundantly through the adventures of Kurt von Hellstrom and his friends.

Warhammer Quest has one cool thing over its two predecessors, however — it can be played without a GM/evil wizard. The base rules for the game include an artificial intelligence system for the monsters that determine how they move and attack, allowing all the players at the game table to cooperate and take on the dungeons together rather than one being forced to constantly be “the bad guy.” Rules were there to allow the game to be played with a GM, too, but for those craving a purely cooperative experience, Warhammer Quest was a great one.

I don’t get to play these games nearly as often as I’d like to. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to get Descent out regularly once I get my hands on a copy — and I’m also pretty curious about the Dungeons & Dragons boardgames, too. Full reports on each and any of those I get the chance to play will, naturally, follow.

#oneaday, Day 341: The Five Best and Worst Holiday Board Games to Teach Your Family

As the Coca-Cola advert says, holidays are comin’. (To go off on the earliest tangent I’ve ever gone off on, the word “Coca-Cola” is seemingly indecipherable to Americans when pronounced with a British accent, as I discovered at the cinema the other night.) In fact, holidays are pretty much here, what with it being Christmas Eve and all. Actually, by the time you UK types read this, it is Christmas Day. Happy holidayweenukkahmas. Fuck it. Happy Christmas.

Anyway. You may be currently locked in a house with the rest of your family, in which case it will at some point become necessary to devise some form of entertainment in order to prevent you all from killing each other. It is probably a little late to recommend things to go out and buy right now, but you’ll know for next time. In the spirit of List Season, which always seems to coincide with holiday season, here are the five best and worst board games to break out during a lull in the conversation and/or turkey consumption. Well, maybe not the “best” and “worst”. But five good ones and five less appropriate (though still good) ones, in the order that I thought of them.

The Best

Ticket to Ride

Ticket to Ride is a relatively simple game. The basic goal is to collect sets of coloured cards in order to claim train routes on a board representing America, Europe, Scandinavia or one of the many other variants out there. Bonus points can be attained for claiming the longest continuous unbroken route as well as completing specific “point-to-point” routes between two cities across the board via any line. It all seems very simple until near the end of the game, when a lot of blocking each other’s routes comes into play. It’s simple enough for kids as young as 7 to understand and enjoy, yet there’s enough strategic play in there for the adults to appreciate, too.

Carcassonne

Carcassonne is a game about laying tiles on the table to build up a map of a geographical region featuring cities, roads and fields. Points are scored by claiming these regions with little wooden people commonly referred to as “meeples”. It’s another simple game that is expandable with about a bajillion optional expansion packs. There’s only one rule—the “farmers” rule—that is a little difficult to explain to everyone. The rest is very simple. There’s also a great iPhone and iPad version for those lucky enough to have Apple products under their tree, and there’s a similarly great version on Xbox LIVE Arcade, too.

Settlers of Catan

Catan is a game about building and trading. There is lots of interaction between players as you attempt to collect combinations of resources for building roads, settlements and cities. There’s also an element of luck thanks to a roll of two dice determining which resources are “produced” each turn, though the luck factor never overwhelms the strategy element. Catan is perhaps a bit complex for young kids, but is a lot of fun for older kids and adults. It’s also expandable with several additional packs, though not quite as many as Carcassonne.

Robo Rally

Robo Rally tasks players with racing through a series of checkpoints using their robots. Robots can be programmed using “instruction cards”, which allow the ‘bot to do things like turn 90 degrees left or right, move forward a certain number of spaces and a few other things. Each turn, players can give 5 instructions to their ‘bots from a pool of cards in their hand. It becomes a game about planning where you’ll end up and making the best of the options available to you. It’s simple to play, with lots of different variations and tracks included in the box.

Space Alert

Space Alert is a thoroughly silly game where you start by listening to a CD filled with sci-fi alerts telling you where threats are appearing around your spacecraft. Using hands of “order cards” (a bit like Robo Rally‘s instruction cards) players plan in advance how they’re going to take care of all the threats and keep the ship running smoothly. The twist is the amount of time they have to plan all this is determined by the length of the track on the CD. If they dawdle too much, jobs won’t get done, normally with disastrous consequences. Said potentially disastrous consequences are revealed after the CD has finished, when the orders laid down are revealed and resolved on a turn-by-turn basis. It’s genuinely horrifying to see a well-laid plan screwed up and resolve itself in turn-by-turn slow motion, but it’s hilarious.

The Worst

Arkham Horror

Arkham Horror is a brilliant co-operative game set slap bang in the middle of HP Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. However, its shortest variant takes three hours to play, with more difficult opponents taking four or five hours to take down and usually ending with the players’ defeat. It also has a bajillion rules to learn, which are easy enough to remember once you’ve played a game or two, but nightmarish to explain to newbies. Save this one for gaming nights with plenty of time to spare.

Power Grid

Power Grid is an in-depth simulation of competing electric corporations attempting to supply power to cities in either Germany or America. It has a few elements in common with Ticket to Ride but also has an in-depth simulation of supply and demand in its resource market, as well as a requirement to be good at both maths and forward planning. It’s quite heavy going for newbies and is rather depressing for people who don’t do well with numbers.

Monopoly

When was the last time you finished a game of Monopoly? Exactly. The simple reason for this is that people always forget two things: firstly, that the “you can take all the tax money if you land on Free Parking” rule is complete bollocks and was never in the game in the first place, and secondly, if you don’t buy a property when you land on it, it’s supposed to be auctioned off. Following these rules (which no-one ever remembers to) makes games a lot quicker. Alternatively, you could download the Board Game Remix Kit and make Monopoly worth playing again.

Warhammer Quest

Warhammer Quest is awesome, but has a big-ass rulebook, hundreds of bits of cardboard, cards, counters, miniatures and all manner of other things to deal with. While it makes an awesome Christmas present, it’s best saved for a night you can devote to it with a group interested in taking part in a full campaign.

Agricola

Agricola is a great game (that is a lot more interesting than its concept—”a game about 13th century German agriculture”—sounds) but takes approximately a thousand years to set up thanks to its hundreds of little wooden bits, thousands of cards and board that comes in far too many pieces for its own good. I also hate it because I never win and that means it’s bullshit.

So there you go. All of the above are worth spending some Christmas money on. Not all are worth trying to explain to your grandma, unless she has a particular interest in trying to take down Cthulhu.

#oneaday, Day 294: Filthy Rogue

The roguelike genre is one I only discovered relatively recently. In fact, I was a relative latecomer to the whole RPG genre, only getting to grips with it for the first time with Final Fantasy VII. As such, for a good few years, I felt that RPGs were all about strong stories, interesting (and sometimes clichéd) characters, a buildup to an epic final conflict and some of the best music you’ll ever hear.

As such, when I played an RPG that wasn’t so strong on the story and focused more on loot-whoring or level-grinding, I found myself losing interest quickly. It was long after its release that I finally beat Diablo II and, to this date, I’ve never beaten it on anything other than the normal difficulty level.

That changed when I came across Angband, though. Angband looks like the sort of game you used to play on Teletext. Sure, there are graphical tilesets you can customise it with. But at its heart, it’s a text-based game with about a bajillion keyboard commands.

But you know what? The kind of emergent narrative that came out of several intense Angband sessions rivalled any pre-scripted tales that Squeenix have ever come out with. Largely because it was so unpredictable, and that any screw-ups were inevitably your fault for failing to prepare adequately, rather than the fault of the game mechanics itself.

Take the time my oil lamp ran out on the fifth level of the dungeon. This meant, in gameplay terms, that I couldn’t “see” new passageways ahead of me—namely, they weren’t revealed on the map—unless I banged into a wall, which then helpfully revealed said wall on the map for me. My first reaction in this instant was, of course, to panic. Death in Angband doesn’t mean restoring a saved game. Oh no. Death in Angband means your save game getting deleted and you having to start all over again. This adds an enormous amount of pressure on you, the player, to get it right. And it also makes you kick yourself when you realise that you didn’t bring enough oil to fuel your lamp.

So off I went, slowly “feeling” my way along the walls of the corridors in an attempt to find the stairs up… for five floors. This sounds like an impossible task. But after a fairly lengthy period of methodical, careful searching (and a few terrifying combats in the pitch darkness) I finally managed to emerge victorious to town level, stock up on oil and provisions and jump back into the dungeon with renewed fervour.

Of course, I promptly got twatted by an Ogre, making all that work utterly meaningless. But it didn’t matter—it was a fun experience unlike anything I’d experienced in a game before. And I’ve struggled to repeat it with any game since then.

Not through lack of trying, though. There are some great roguelikes out there, many of which are a lot more accessible than Angband. I have three favourites I’d like to share with you right now, one of which is, of all things, a board game. The other two are iPhone games.

Sword of Fargoal is actually a remake of an old Commodore 64-era title which didn’t look like the picture above. No, it looked like this:

The best thing about Sword of Fargoal is its simplicity coupled with a surprising amount of hidden depth. While Angband is rather intimidating to get started with, with pretty much every key on the keyboard (shifted and non-shifted) mapped to something, Fargoal simply requires that you get to grips with moving and using a context-sensitive button in the top-right corner. And keeping an eye on the text display at the top of the screen for hints and cues, too. Combat is a case of running into an enemy—the player and monster will then take turns bashing each other until one or the other falls over or one runs away. Gold is collected to sacrifice at altars throughout the dungeon for experience point bonuses. And the rest is left to the player to discover. The more you play, the more you start to notice little graphical details and cues tipping you off to the location of traps or treasure.

And it’s challenging, too. There are 15 levels to explore, all of which are sprawling monstrosities with several areas. And when you make it to the bottom to recover the titular blade, you then have to escape again. I haven’t even made it to the bottom yet. It’s a lengthy, challenging quest. And despite the fact that death is permanent, it’s addictive and easy to return to.

Then we have 100 Rogues, which takes a slightly different approach to that of Sword of Fargoal. While Fargoal‘s quest is lengthy, 100 Rogues can potentially be beaten in one sitting. Key word here being “potentially”. 100 Rogues is particularly brutal, fond of surrounding the player and battering them to a pulp. Fortunately, the player also has a Diablo-style skill tree at their disposal, including a number of attacks that can beat back several enemies at the same time.

It’s very difficult, though, and the descriptions of the game on the App Store don’t even try and hide the fact that you will die. A lot. In fact, there’s even a Game Center Achievement for having sent the titular 100 rogues to their eventual demise.

I only picked this up recently, but it’s immensely appealing due to its 16-bit graphics and soundtrack. It looks and plays like a Genesis/Mega Drive game, in a good way. It’s a bit buggy in places but the author appears to be committed to regular updates.

Finally, one of my favourite roguelikes of all time is Warhammer Quest, a game that involves you having people you actually don’t mind being in the same room with. Featuring all the genre staples—a randomly generated dungeon, permadeath, brutal difficulty, vast amounts of phat lewt—it’s very much the board game equivalent of Rogue et al. Even better, everyone gets to join in on the fun—there’s no need for a Game Master player (unless you really want to use one) as the rules cater fully for monster “behaviour”.

Couple that with the game’s immense customisability (it’s a word) thanks to its use of Games Workshop Citadel Miniatures line of figures and you have a game with limitless potential. And hundreds—hundreds—of tiny pieces of card and plastic.

So there you go. A whistlestop tour of the roguelike genre. And I didn’t even mention Moria or NetHack once.

#oneaday, Day 73: Strategic Mind

I’m shit at strategy games. I mean really shit. That doesn’t stop me playing and enjoying them, but I am just awful at them. I think it’s an inability to think ahead or do those mind-fucking mental calculations required to predict what situation you’ll be in ten turns down the road. If I start getting into thinking about that, I end up suffering from analysis paralysis and have to lie down for a little while afterwards.

This is frustrating when playing board games which you know are supposed to be really good, like Agricola and Power Grid. But I find myself consistently losing at them. Agricola is more of a problem than Power Grid, which I can normally do respectably in.

It could well be difficulty in prioritising things. In Agricola I’m never sure what action is the best thing to take, and seeing my regular opponents playing I’m always pretty sure that they are doing some sort of black magic to convince me I’ve had the same number of turns as them but in fact knocking me out for three rounds, getting into an extremely advantageous position and then waking me up as if nothing had happened. Of course, I know that’s actually not happening, that it’s just a case of me making poor choices. But it’s immensely frustrating, and prevents me from enjoying the game as much as I should – because, I hasten to add, it’s a great game.

Now games like Warhammer Quest and Arkham Horror? Fine. I work well as part of a team, so co-op games are good for me. Even Catan is fine, as the semi-randomised nature of the game means that I’m not totally reliant on my non-existent strategic brain. Ticket to Ride, too, is great. But as soon as the game comes down to nothing but my own skill and chance is kept to a minimum? I suck. Hard.

Perhaps I should find a way to practice strategic thinking. Does anyone have any suggestions?

The Adventures of Count Kurt von Hellstrom and Company, Part The First

[Note of explanation: I recently acquired a copy of Games Workshop’s classic dungeon-crawler Warhammer Quest, which is notoriously brutal on its players – though not quite so much as their earlier title Dungeonquest. What follows is a report of our first adventure together as a party – myself as the Elf, my friend Sam as the Dwarf, my friend Tom as the Wizard and my friend Tim as the Imperial Noble.]

“You must defeat the demon in the temple before it escapes and wreaks havoc across the land!”

The situation sounded serious. Count Kurt von Hellstrom stroked his beard absently, looking at the writ which had been pushed into his hand some hours earlier. He was expecting some companions to join him, but wasn’t sure what to expect. This was, after all, the first time he’d been out adventuring properly. It was time to see if those years of rapier training and pistol-shooting were good for anything.

An Elf was the first to arrive, hooded and mysterious.

“Hello,” said the Elf bluntly. “You’re Kurt?”

“I am, my good Sir!” said the Count with a flourish. “Count Kurt von Hellstrom, at your service!”

“Good,” said the Elf, then looked around him without another word.

There was an awkward silence. The people of Marienburg went about their business as usual, and here, in this alley behind the Beer and Boar Tavern, the two strangers eyed each other up.

“Might I know your name, my good sir?” asked Kurt finally, twiddling his beard around his fingertip.

“I’d… really rather not,” said the elf.

“Now come, come, sir,” said Kurt with a wry smile. “One should never be embarrassed about one’s heritage.” He flashed a sparkling medallion around his neck. “This has been in my family for generations. It gives me strength.”

The elf sighed and dropped his hood. Beneath it was a mane of long, blond hair.

“All right,” he said. “But if you laugh, I promise I’ll run you through.”

I’d like to see you try, thought Kurt, his hand instinctively moving to his rapier and the muscles in his legs tensing, but then he realised this was probably what passed for elven humour.

“I’ll be careful,” he said with a grin. “Now come on man, spit it out!”

“Tinkleblossom,” the elf replied, grimacing. “Tinkleblossom Feypants.”

There was another awkward silence. This time, the elf was the one to break it.

“I know, right?” he said. “You can just call me ‘elf’ if it’s easier for you to deal with.”

“No, no,” said Kurt. “Tinkleblossom is just fine.”

Tinkleblossom muttered something under his breath and raised his hood again – a clear signal that this conversation was, for now, over.

At that point, there was a raucous shout from around the corner and the sound of clattering metal.

“Ach!” cried a gruff voice. “Ye’d think ye’d never seen a chap who wanted tae defend his family honour before! Well sod ye, buddy!”

Tinkleblossom and Kurt both peered around the corner curiously, only to see a short, stout figure staggering up the alleyway towards them.

“Ach. Just on time. Ye’d be th’ adventurin’ types, aye?”

“Yes,” said Kurt. “I am Kurt von Hellstrom. This is… an elf. Who might you be?”

“Jizzmatron Drizzlecock at yer service, laddie.” He belched thunderously, then hiccuped, sneezed and wiped the snot which had escaped from his nose on the back of his hand. It was lost somewhere in his beard. Kurt grimaced. Tinkleblossom just shrugged and made a noise that sounded distinctly like “Meh.”

“Well, pleased to meet you,” said Kurt, regaining his composure quickly. “I believe we’re expecting one more.”

A booming voice echoed around the alleyway and smoke appeared as if from nowhere.

“That would be me!” thundered the voice, though there was apparently no-one else in the alley save the strange, wispy smoke. Suddenly, in a flash of light, another figure appeared and the smoke was gone.

“I’m Marlon,” said a somewhat less thunderous voice which came from an old-looking man with a lengthy white beard. “Scholar of magic. I believe you were looking for someone with my talents.”

“Aye,” said Kurt, smiling. “That I was. Now that we’re all here, I believe you should all take a look at this.” He brandished the writ.

“Ach,” grunted Jizzmatron. “Readin’s fer sissies. Just give us th’ short version, laddie.”

“Oh,” said Kurt, then shrugged. “All right then. Demon. Sealed in dragon statue. Deep in a dungeon. Protective magics weakening. Destroy it or die.”

“Aye! Now that sounds like some fun!” cried Jizzmatron.

Tinkleblossom glowered at the writ for a moment before handing it back to Kurt.

“We should get moving,” Kurt said. “It’s quite a trek.”

Four weeks passed as the adventurers picked their way to the abandoned Dwarven temple. It was an uneventful journey – led there by a local who knew the land well, the journey passed without incident. It was when the party descended the steps into the darkness that things began to get a little less straightforward.

“This is as far as I go. Oh, and you’ll need these,” said their guide, tossing a bundle of four dully-glowing swords to the floor. “They should make short shrift of that demon. Apparently. I don’t know. Good luck.”

The guide tossed his torch onto the cold flagstones at the bottom of the stairs and left the bewildered-looking party to their fate.

“So, err,” began Jizzmatron. “What now?”

“We explore, of course!” cried Kurt. “Riches await!” He pulled out a lantern from his pack and lit it.

“You’ve got the light,” said Tinkleblossom. “That means you get to go up front.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way!” said Kurt, spinning around to face the corridor into the blackness with an overdramatic flourish. He was about to step forward, when Marlon spoke up.

“Wait,” he said. “I feel the winds of magic. I should draw upon their power in case we need some… firepower.”

Marlon closed his eyes and grimaced. Jizzmatron stifled a snigger and whispered “He looks like ‘e’s shittin’ ‘imself!” to Tinkleblossom. The elf ignored him.

As suddenly as he had closed them, Marlon opened his eyes again and looked at Kurt. He looked a little concerned.

“Um,” he said. “I have a bad feeling.”

“What do you mean, a bad fe-”

At that moment, a stone block started sliding across the archway at the bottom of the stairs. Tinkleblossom and Kurt both lunged for it to try and brace it with something, but it was too late. Now they were trapped.

“Oh well,” said Kurt, unconcerned. “I’m sure there’ll be another way out.”

“Ye don’t know Dwarven construction, clearly, lad,” muttered Jizzmatron, but it was true – there wasn’t much option for the adventurers but to go onward.

“Let’s investigate this room a little,” said Kurt, holding up the lantern. “It’s… oh my.”

As the adventurers’ eyes slowly became accustomed to the gloom, they saw by the dim light of the lantern that the walls of this first chamber were lined with chests, suits of armour and piles of gems.

“We’ve hit gold!” yelled Jizzmatron. “Treasure!”

“Be careful,” said Tinkleblossom quietly. “It could be a-”

Sure enough, it was. Just as the dwarf was about to reach for the nearest pile of gold, there was a scuttling sound and suddenly a huge number of giant spiders dropped from the ceiling. The adventurers gave a shout as one, but they were too late to react and were soon engulfed in sticky webbing. Tinkleblossom, Marlon and Kurt managed to break free but Jizzmatron remained stuck. The others drew their swords and made short work of the spiders just as the dwarf managed to extricate himself from the sticky threads that bound him.

“Ach,” he spat. “Ye could have saved me one.”

“I’m sure there’ll be more,” muttered Tinkleblossom, wiping spider ichor from his blade and replacing it in his scabbard. “For now, we should search this room and see if there is anything useful.”

Ten minutes later, the adventurers stood up, covered with dust and a few last sticky bits of webbing.

“This ain’t no soddin’ treasure!” bellowed Jizzmatron. “It’s all fake!”

“What did you expect?” said Kurt. “Would you store your riches just inside the entrance?”

“Well, lad, ye coulda said somethin’ sooner if ye thought that!”

Kurt twiddled his beard a moment, then looked at the dwarf with a smile.

“Well,” he said, “There might have been something!”

Tinkleblossom sighed.

“Let’s move on,” said Kurt, brushing himself off and gesturing to the archway which was now visible.

The adventurers made their way onward into the darkness, slowly and carefully. Just as they were about to step through the archway, though, there was a gibbering sound and some knee-high green things skittered out of the inky blackness.

“Snotlings!” yelled Tinkleblossom, drawing his sword again. “This should be easy.”

Sure enough, the adventurers made short work of the greenskins thanks to some fancy swordplay from Kurt and some lightning magic from Marlon.

“Now,” said Marlon, “May we please move on?”

The adventurers stepped forward. Beyond the archway, the corridor they were in continued into darkness.

“What’s that sound?” asked Kurt, holding up the lantern. “Uhoh.”

There were tiny holes lining the walls of the corridor, and a soft swishing sound was slowly getting louder, until sand started seeping out and over the floor. It kept coming until it covered the floor. The section of corridor was completely covered with undulating sand. Jizzmatron slipped over and landed flat on his face just as a low gurgle announced the arrival of more guards – this time, orcs. The battle was made much more difficult by the undulating, shifting sands of the floor, with Jizzmatron and Tinkleblossom spending much of the fight face-down on the floor cursing and, on one occasion, at the bottom of a spike-filled pit which had managed to conceal itself beneath the sands.

The orcs were soon joined by some goblin spearmen – practically as soon as the first wave was dispatched, Marlon gave another “Uhoh” and the creatures leapt out from whatever shadows they were hiding in. Eventually, the party picked their way carefully away from the shifting sands, with Tinkleblossom dragging himself along the floor to get the last few feet, the number of times he had fallen over not doing wonders for his temper.

The corridor continued further and curved around to the left. With a roar, yet another band of orcs burst out of the shadows and attacked the party, this time accompanied by a small group of archers. One of them knocked Kurt to the floor, causing the rest of the party some concern, but Kurt managed to knock back a swig of a strange blue potion he’d found on the body of one of the goblins before he passed out. He immediately started to feel better – even more so once Marlon muttered an incantation and a strange green light enveloped him, knitting his wounds together and rejuvenating him.

“Aha!” cried Kurt. “A second wind! Take this!”

Kurt leapt to his feet, jumped back, drew his dueling pistol and fired a shot at a nearby orc, hitting it square between the eyes. Spurred on by the rejuvenation of their companion, the others made short work of the remaining greenskins and looked around the room.

“Do ye smell something?” asked Jizzmatron. “And it ain’t me farts. Not this time.”

“Mm,” said Tinkleblossom. “Sulphur. Certainly smells like them.”

“Was that a joke from ye, elf? Ah didnae expect that outta you.”

“I’m full of surprises,” muttered the elf. “This way.”

Tinkleblossom led the party through another archway where the corridor split in half.

“Which way?” said Kurt. Jizzmatron sniffed the air, and pointed to the left branch of the passageway.

Sure enough, the corridor opened out into a huge chamber filled with a dull red light that was coming from a huge crack in the floor. At the far end of the chamber was an enormous statue of a dragon. It wasn’t moving, but it almost seemed to be watching the warriors as they peered into the room.

Then, there was a roar, and a wall burst open. A huge brown shape charged into the room accompanied by a horde of greenskins.

“Minotaur!” yelled Jizzmatron. “Get back!”

The party steeled itself for what was likely to be a tough battle. Jizzmatron flung himself into the fray with aplomb, taking down orc after orc with his great axe. Tinkleblossom stood back and fired arrows into the fray accurately and carefully, eventually felling the minotaur with a lucky shot between the eyes. Marlon muttered incantations and lightning flashed through the air, striking orcs down left, right and centre.

Eventually, the bodies piled up and the warriors were victorious. But there was one thing left to do – and it was on the other side of a rickety-looking rope bridge.

Jizzmatron bravely volunteered to go first and stepped carefully onto the bridge. It wobbled under the weight of him and his equipment, but it held firm and he made it across, only to be face-to-face with the dragon statue. He drew the faintly-glowing sword that the guide had left the party with at the entrance of the dungeon and squared up to the statue.

“Make that hit count!” cried Kurt. “People are depending on-”

Jizzmatron didn’t need telling twice. He swung the sword in a wide arc at the statue’s head. The sword shattered, but not before the blade had struck true. There was a loud rumble and the whole room shook, but then the statue broke into pieces. Flames blew across the room, lighting a tapestry on fire and allowing the heroes an escape route. They ran through the dark tunnels as the rumbling grew louder and louder and escaped just as the “back entrance” to the dungeon collapsed behind them.

But now where were they? The landscape was unfamiliar. Kurt pulled out a pocket compass and pointed.

“That way,” he said. “If my calculations are correct, that way should get us back to civilisation.”

“Ach, let’s hope they are,” said Jizzmatron.

A week later, the adventurers were lost. Eventually, they came to a small village that wasn’t on their map and stopped for the night, deciding to continue on their way in the morning.

It wasn’t an easy journey. Marlon got struck by lightning on top of a mountain, meaning he spent the remainder of the journey naked, which certainly got him some funny looks from passing travellers. Tinkleblossom got swept off a cliff by a tornado and broke both his legs, but survived. Jizzmatron broke his ankle. And they got lost not once, but twice more.

Eventually, they made it back to a populous-looking town, with a wandering minstrel that they’d picked up along the way in tow. The guards were unimpressed with the minstrel’s performance at the gates, but they allowed the ragtag band of adventurers in to the town. Before they sorted out accommodations, they decided to fix the various problems that they had encountered on the journey, fixing Tinkleblossom’s broken legs, Jizzmatron’s broken ankle and Marlon’s singed robes. This ate into a considerable portion of the profits from their adventure, but by the time all was as it should be, the adventurers realised that they had enough to pay for some training.

Marlon, Jizzmatron and Kurt locked themselves away in the training camp for a week while Tinkleblossom went into the wilderness to be amongst nature for a while. Not one of them could possibly imagine where their adventures would take them next…

[So there you have it. A lengthy description of our first game of Warhammer Quest. All of the above events were randomly generated – as if that wasn’t already obvious! But the real strength of the game is that it keeps up its “theme” and “feeling” throughout. Two of the three people I was playing with aren’t big roleplayers, but the disaster-after-disaster thing that went on in the dungeon and on the subsequent journey home made it feel like the whole expedition had a real “story”, however nonsensical.]