Warhammer Quest: Shadows Over Hammerhal - Session One - The Catacombs!

After FINALLY finishing up the last of the miniatures for Warhammer Quest: Shadows Over Hammerhal, a few weeks back, we finally got our campaign started Tuesday evening!!

(You can see ALL of the miniatures I have painted for Warhammer Quest here: Age of Sigmar - Warhammer Quest Miniatures)

I invited John, the manager of the local Warhammer Store and his partner Maygan to join Amanda and Finnegan as players and I would take on the role of Game Master. 

Shadows over hammerhal is unique in the Age of Sigmar era of Warhammer Quest games as it is the only one requiring a Game Master!? All the rest have somewhat random board generation, but the "dungeons" in Shadows over Hammerhal are all fixed with rooms being placed out as Heroes move to doorways an open them. Each room has a little description, list of hostiles in the room and special rules (traps, etc) and what can be found if successfully searched.

The first thing we did was pick out some characters to play! 

Finnegan played Golnir Coalbeard, the Cogsmith

John played Arvios Sunhelm, Lord-Castellant of the Perspicarium - the Hammers of Sigmar Stormkeep in Hammerhal

Maygan played Alnaryn - Aelven Loremaster

Amanda played Vizrin Kyre - Black Ark Fleetmaster

I had offered up the heroes from the Silver Tower as well... but in the end everyone selected the Heroes from Shadows Over Hammerhal. 

The adventure begins with the Heroes entering the catacombs beneath Cinderfall - a poorer district of Hammerhal Aqsha. There is a long short story at the beginning of the Guidebook that follows the investigations of Coalbeard and Sunhelm, looking into possible sabotage of a bellows-tower that had collapsed in the region. In the process of following up leads they ran into Alnaryn who was looking into similar things and later Vizrin Kyre, who, at one point, was a suspect in the investigations. It turned out it was one of his traitorous lieutenants that had stolen some alchemical ingredients from the Guild of Thaumaturgists and had planned on selling it to some unseemly cultists. They followed treacherous lieutenant and some of his cronies to their meet-up with the cultists in a room below some abandoned, run-down houses in Cinderfall. Violence ensued. Afterwards a secret passage was discovered leading down to the catacombs...

I didn't end up taking a LOT of pictures, largely because I was very focused on remembering rules and keeping the game moving along.... 

To start with the group encountered a cross-intersection of passages. As a search indicated the route to their left was the most often used, everyone headed that way and entering that room encountered a sentry that they quickly dispatched. 

Searching that room they heard noises in the room beyond. 

Not able to get past all the others and open the next door, Coalbeard decided to just check the room to their right - and found MORE Guards!? 

Coalbead blasted TWO of them with his guns before any of them can act, the remaining two moved swiftly to attack! 

Leaving Coalbeard to sort out the guards he'd encountered Kyre opened the door to discover it was a barracks of some sort!!!

Things looked a little dire at first, but they backed up into the room and let the Kairic Acolytes charged in througt the bottleneck of the doorway... after taking out a few of those, the Lord Castellant, Arvios Sunhelm, waded into the midst of them... This may not have been the BEST move, as, on the next Hostiles Activation they ALL attacked him!! 

Luckily the Lord Castellant IS pretty tank-y and took all those hits and only three of the wounds got through his armour... which... isn't great... But he succeeded in doing his special lantern action - blasting them all with the blinding light of Azyr - and stunned every last one of them! This gave Sunhelm a chance to recover and the others to charge in and start chopping down the vile cultists - without too much worry of them fighting back. 

A second turn he was successful in blasting them with the Light of Azyr and stunning all hostiles in the room! The other three finished them off! 

Then the group kind of got pretty split up - trying to explore the level quickly - luckily there were NO AMBUSHES!! 

A few traps were sprung, a few gold coins were gathered up and two staircases were found - one behind a secret door... 

At that point we had to call it for the evening... rather than returning to Cinderfall just yet (as no one was severely injured and requiring serious medical attention) they decided that next session they would press on down the stairs behind the secret door. 

The Renown Tracker! Each player tracks Renown, which is awarded for taking out hostiles or doing a special action listed on their character card. Amanda/Vizrin Kyre gains bonus renown if they deal 5 damage in one turn - which they did at least once - killing a few of the acolytes gaining at total of 5. Finnegan/Golnir Coalbeard got bonus renown for killing three enemy with shooting actions in one round... I'm not sure if he did that... but he did kill off a few of the Acolytes and was leading with six renown at the end of the session. John/Arvios Sunhelm scored bonus renown for stunning at least three hostiles with the special lamp action - which he did twice - and taking out a few Acolytes as well brought him to four renown. Maygan/Alnaryn's special action is a little trickier... she had to take out one hostile with her sword and one with the magic blast she can do... but the ranged attack can't be done while adjacent to an enemy, so she'd have to spend at least one action attacking with each attack and at least one action moving...? (unless she STARTED in melee, finished off an enemy with the sword THEN spent the next few actions blasting Hostiles with the magic...?) 

Fun was had. Enemies of the realm were smited....? smitten....? That doesn't seem right...? SMOTE!?  I don't know. Gold collected... 

Warhammer Quest: Shadows Over Hammerhal has some SERIOUS Old Skewl D&D Dungeon crawl circa 1983 vibes... Which... isn't bad!? 

Looking forward to playing again next week (and hopefully all summer long!). 

At some point I'm going to have to mix the last of the Silver Tower Hostiles into the painting mix, so they're done by the time we work our way through the passages below Cinderfall... 

(and then work on the rest of the Cursed City hostiles so we can play that later in the fall or winter!!!) 

So excited about this!!!