Warhammer Quest: Cursed City - The Night Wars Begin!

Despite still not having Radukar the Beast finished... or the Fell Bats... we went ahead and started Warhammer Quest: Cursed City - Night Wars this week! 

The campaign involves destabilizing and destroying the power base of three Vampire Lords that took over when Radukar the Wolf was defeated! And then once they have been defeated in turn, there is a final battle...? So... maybe 13 games? Assuming they are all victories... the maximum number of games would be 19... There are 13 games that need to be played to win the campaign - three destablizing missions for each vampire, followed by a Decapitation Journey... and after all three Decapitation Journeys have been successful... you play one Final Battle... If you fail seven battles the campaign is over and you lose... so... if you played all the battles, but had a lot of failures along the way... (like six of them) The nineteenth game would decide all success or failure would determine the entire fate of the campaign!? 

I imagine we'll get 13-16 games out of it, assuming a few go badly... 

The group decided to go after Lady Annika the Thirsting Blade first and played through a Purge Journey... Each of the Vampire Lords have a different type of mission to play and Lady Annika's are Purge Journeys. So after this, we'll play at least two more Purge Journeys... then a Decapitation Journey... then move on to hunt down one of the other Vampire Lords... 

Though each of the Vampire Lords get more powerful as eash of their rivals are taken out and they take over some of their territories and taking in their surviving minions!? 

Anyway... The Journey... 

This journey took place in the Corpsefall Passages.

Amanda, as always, was playing Qulathis the Exile and Glaurio ven Alten III. Finnegan had oridinally planned on taking Brutogg Corpse-Eater and Octren Glimscry... but when they decided on Lady Annika as their Quarry and found out her special ability was MORE VAMPIRES (instead of discarding vampire encounter cards, they are shuffled back into the deck), Finngan decided the old feller needed some rest and instead brought along Dagnai Holdenstock - Vampire Hunter! 

In Purge Journeys all the passages are closed and need to be opened with a 4+ action and hostiles and mysterious object tokens are all hidden and randomly placed as Lurk tokens, which are not revealed and activated until someone opens the door and has line of sight to the token... 

The objective of a Purge Journey is to destroy ten hostile groups and then make it to the extraction zone. 

The city was plunged into permanent night when the three vampire lords took over, so ALL of the hostile groups are on their Empowered side, making them all faster and more deadly! 

Qulathis was the first to leave the landing zone. Opened a few doors. Found a Mysterious Object. 

Brutogg was next and bullied past her to find some Ulfenwatch in an open square. 

Dagnai strolled out and investigated the Mysterious Object and found himself some Realmstone! 

Ulfenwatch dealt with, Qulathis pressed on... 

Dagnai looting the mysterous objects. 

Glaurio was the one to open this door... 

and found MORE Ulfenwatch!? 

Brutogg shoved his way into the middle of them and just started destroying them... 

and then some zombies showed up. 

Brutogg turned to start dealing with zombies while Glaurio finished off the last of the Ulfenwatch! 

MORE Zombies arrive! 

Dagnai fought his way past the zombies into the next chamber where he found another Mysterious Object! 

Qulathis and Glaurio dashed past and encountered some Vyrkos Blood-Born! 

Glaurio engaged them blasting the first one with his pistols.

Brutogg joined in beating another one down. 

Then Dagnai found himself surrounded by zombies again!? 

...and chopped them all to bits with his axe!? Then he looted the mysterious object... 

... and joined the other fighting the vampires! 

Glaurio stepped in to finish off the last one!

and then a Vargskyr showed up... 

and then Lady Annika herself showed up... 

Glaruio and Dagnai dealt the Vargskyr some grievous damage... 

Then Glaurio took off to get to the Extraction Point as it looked like it was getting time to vamoose! 

Qulathis ran by and finished off the Vargskyr! 

The Qulathis and Dagnai laid in wait to ambush Lady Annika! As she strode through the door Qualthis shot her and Dagnai gave her a good chop with his axe!

and then corpse rats flooded the room!? 

Dagnai stuck to the plan and finished off Lady Annika! 

Then he almost single-handedly cleared out all the rats... 

AND THEN he looted the last Mysterious Object, using his harpoon gun to yeet it right out of the room full of bats! 

Now, at this point Dagnai was inspired and, as such, gets to draw TWO Discovery cards when looting a Mysterious Object - which is handy as it allows you to avoid Traps or Crisis... usually... and sometime a treasure AND a realmstone card are drawn (which is what happened in this case) and Finnegan usually chooses the realmstone by default... because a lot of the items are... not that great... but I suggested he actually read what the card said this time around - it was a new one from the nightwars set and a character uses it on their turn and instantly becomes INSPIRED! Which is AMAZING!! Not needed for this journey, this late in the game... but on a future Journey - especially for Qulathis who really, REALLY struggles to inspire! She is so weak before inspriting, it's often difficult to finish off enough things to gain any inspiration points... and her special bonus activity to gain bonus inspriation points is so difficult to pull off... I'm not sure she's EVER done it... in THIRTY GAMES!? 

Just as they were getting ready to head into the Extraction Zone - Glaurio and Brutogg were ambushed by more Vyrkos Blood-Born! Glaurio was wounded once more! 

He killed the Vampire, however, and staggered back into the Extraction Zone! 

Everyone else made it in there just as some Kosargi Night Guard came lumbering through the building after them! 

Whew! 

Nice first outing in the Night Wars... 

Wasn't exactly a cake walk... there was a lot of tension and a general feeling that things could go sideways at any moment. It starts off kind of slow and easy - as hostile groups don't activate until they are discovered... but once discovered, as each hostile group is destroyed, a reinforcement group immediately arrives. So once all four have been revealed... you are fighting four hostile groups!! 

Lady Annika seems like she has the potential to be super deadly... it just worked out that Dagnai was in the right place at the right time and got in his hits before she landed a blow... She has some funny rules though... when she actually causes damage with the thirsting blade... if she has zero or one Blood Token, she gains a Blood Token and deals an extra damage and also heals 1-2 wounds... Once she HAS two blood tokens, however, she is very full of blood and suddenly moves slower (like HALVED from 6  to 3!) had worse dice for attacks and deals less damage... Once you hit her and deal damage... blood goes spraying all over and she loses a blood token and because deadly again... It seems kind of... goofy...? 

There are also some new enhancements that can be purchased... which seem crazy good... but are also crazy expensive (14 realmstone!?) There is no way that much could be gained in a single Journey... but there are a few ways extra realmstone can be gained now. One is visiting certain businesses in Haven - an area of the city that has freed itself of the undead and is a small, growing enclave of good and order... and also you can now trade in previous enhancements and gain half what you paid for them in realmstone... something to work towards! 

After this Journey all went to the which is described as Haven's premier tavern, boasting two intact and relatively clean rooms and the ability to produce food that isn't just boiled rat on a skewer... There you can have drinks on the house, being a hero and all.. each that visits rolls a d12, on a 3+ they start the next journey with one inspiration point. on a 1 they start the next journey with one damage!? 

Everyone gained an inspiration point to start the next journey... except Brutogg who rolled a two and got nothing... (at least he didn't start with a hang-over... not that being injured matters too much for Brutogg as he heals SO QUICKLY!!) 

I liked the system where I removed the tokens as people were taken down... but in this one the rules are very specific about how it's done. You have a token down to show who you are hunting, once the victory track gets to three (or six, or nine) you do the Decapitation Journey and when that's successful, you put up the token to show they're defeated and put down a different Hunting token to show who you are going after next. There are a few mechanics based on the number of tokens on the boards and, yeah, I could just reverse it and say the number of tokens that are no longer on the board... but I decided to just go with the rules as written for this campaign... 

Next week we will start playing on Tuesdays, as the role-playing game is now, theoretically happening on every third Sunday (maybe...) and Amanda has a singing lesson on Wednesdays and doesn't get home until 7:30... and then needs to eat, so we were starting rather late... and then ending rather late!!