Over the Holidaze, last year, just after Xmas, Amanda, Finnegan and I got together with a couple of gaming friends I haven't played with in ages to try out Warhammer Quest: Darkwater!
I had tried to get as much stuff as I could painted - at least all the stuff I knew I'd need for Act I... Shaman Foulhoof was a MUST as he is the focus of all the Boss Battles at the end of Act I. Ideally I would have liked to have gotten all the Mire Kelpies and Pox Wretches and Pestigors finished up as they are the most common of foes in all the Act I encounter cards. As the day approached it was clear I was NOT going to get them all done, so I gave up on trying to get the Pox Wretches done.. by about 2am the morning of, it became clear I was not getting the Pestigors done either... and I gave up and went to sleep.
The entire campaign is played in three Acts. Acts I, II, and III are played through in order. For each Act you build an Act Deck. Normally when putting together an act deck you shuffle ALL the Encounter and Event and Respite cards together and deal out 14 cards and set those on top of one of the three boss battle cards you've selected at random.
As I didn't have most of the miniatures needed for about half the Encounters, and I really wanted to try and play through an Act in the afternoon. I decided to make a shorter Act deck - of only ten cards (instead of fourteen). I only included encounters that included Mire Kelpies, and I only shuffled in about half of the events and one or two respites, and then dealt out the ten cards.
When you play through an Act Deck, you draw two cards, read the description side, pick one to play or resolve, and discard the other. So you really only play or resolve seven of the fourteen cards (or five of the ten, in our case.
On the appointed day, Neil and Beau cane over. I already had the game set up all we needed to do was pick characters and start flipping cards!
Beau decided to play Drolf Ironhead
Neil played Inara Sion
Amanda wanted to play Bren Tylis
and that left Edmark Valoran for Finnegan
I kind of played the Game Master - running all the hostiles and keeping the game moving along.
The first two cards drawn wereThe Hungry Swamp and Rooting Through Filth. They decided to do Rooting Through Filth. This involved running to a number of locations marked with a counter spending an action to flip them over to see if a Key was hidden at that location and then getting it to the grate location before the time ran out (FOUR TURNS!)... it seemed simple enough.
BUT the key was apparently SO HEAVY, that is drastically reduced the models speed... but, for some reason, you could THROW it (up to FIVE HEXES!?)!?
Initial set-up with all the Heroes in the middle. Six location tokens to be searched and six Mire Kelpies to fight off (which auto spawn almost immediately after they are destroyed!?)
The mire Kelpies didn't seem too dangerous, they were easy enough to despatch... just kind of... in the way...
After a two turns of not finding the key, we suddenly realized this might be a LOT harder than we originally assumed as the key STILL needed to be found... and then somehow gotten back to the grate before the end of the fourth round.
Bren Tylis found it in the Third Round...
The rest of the round was setting things up and getting people in position for some game of crazy sportsball of some sort. Bren threw it to Inara... but missed, but that wasn't a problem because it scattered into an adjacent hex where she could move to and still throw it on to Drolf...
Who, on the very last activation, was able to pass it to Edmark, winning the encounter!!
As none were vulnerable, they drew six reward cards and each player got to pick one... I don't think anyone was injured, but if they were the D3 healing sorted them all out.
New cards drawn were A Brief Respite and Breaching the Abbey... No one was wounded, so they didn't really NEED a Respite, but figured it was better than an encounter where they could get injured... so did that... and they did get a free reward card...
The next two cards were Cleanse the Spawn Pit or Gates of Azyr... They did come her to play miniature games, so decided to go with Cleanse the Spawn pit...
In this one, three nests had be be destroyed (by standing on the hex containing the token and doing the one energy Destroy Next ability) AND a hero had to be standing in a particular hex at the end of five rounds... There were also a pair of treasure tokens that could be looted!
Edmark scored some loot - while all the others were off destroying nests! When gathering loot from a token, you did the loot action and removed the token and then drew a card, but then kept if face down and didn't get to find out what it was until the end of the game... Which kind of reminded me of Frostgrave... in that you pick up loot, carry it around and at the end of the game roll to see what it is!?
Nests were destroyed, loot was looted, person was standing in the correct hex at the end of the game. another Victory! Yay!
If you fail... four reward cards have to be collectively discarded between the four characters, then you heal a bit, then you PLAY THE SAME SCENARIO AGAIN!? If you don't have cards to discard, the campaign is over and YOU LOSE!! Which seems rather harsh... an early loss - before even having an opportunity to gather any reward cards - could mean just having to start over right away!?
The next two cards were BOTH encounters; Cursed Loot and Demolish the Rot-Shrines. They went with Cursed Loot! in this one four cards are drawn. One is designated as CURSED. They are shuffled and dealt out face down and then each player gets to decide if they want to keep the card. If anyone keeps the card and it turns out to be the Cursed card, they gain the DOOMED status card!! Someone did end up with it... Drilf, I think...? (it wasn't all THAT scary... at the end of each battle round a twist token is placed on the card, if at the end of an encounter there gets to be 7 or more twist tokens, inflict d6 damage.. if it makes the character vulnerable, the card is removed. Otherwise they keep it and the tokens... considering you do get to heal some between each encounter...? I don't know.. maybe in a longer campaign it could be worse..
AGAIN we drew two Events (who MADE this deck!? Moron...) I think they went with trapped treasures and may have gained another treasure...? I did not keep track of these things or take notes...
Finally we got to the bottom of the Deck and found the Boss card... I think you're supposed to shuffle them and pick a random one...? I picked this one because I had the models painted... sort of...
The main hostiles were Shaman Foulhoof and the three Blight Templars... There were supposed to be a bunch of Pestigors on the board as well... but they kind of just acted as tokens, so I put out Plaguebearers instead...
The Blight Templars are NASTY!!! Very, VERY tough and hard to take down... but also hit SO HARD!!
The scenario required some creative placement of Inara's waterspout - which was VERY handy!
Edmark was the only one that could really hope to deal much damage to them... and take hits from them...
Amanda had some one-use special attack that gave her a BUNCH of extra dice and she grabbed a handful of MY slaanesh dice and rolled them! This was two regular hits and three crits, dealing eight damage... reduced by two because Blight Templars are TOUGH... but I think it still killed one outright!
In the end they beat down two of the Blight Templars and slew Shaman Foulhoof before the time was up!
Huzzah!
The game was pretty fun. It's almost a totally different game than Cursed City. We will definitely NOT be playing ONE campaign for an entire year. An entire campaign can be played in a weekend, for sure... I imagine I'll play through the campaign a few times!
Once all the miniatures are done and I can just shuffle ALL the Act cards together, there will hopefully be MORE tabletop action - and a bit more variety in the scenarios! I had tried to keep the ratio of events to encounters the same in the pile of cards I shuffled to create the deck, but random being random...
The downside is there isn't really the same sort of player progression. The reward cards are sometimes one-use treasures, other times they are (semi-)permanent items, and other times they are a new ability... but you can only ever have a maximum of four Reward Cards... so... not going to gain a LOT of new abilities or permanent items.
Also, playing Cursed City as long as we have, the characters have developed personalities and players have kind of gotten quite attached to them. When characters were lost, it was quite devastating - not just to the party for having lost the particular powers that character brought to the group (oh how Cleona has been missed - especially during the Night Wars campaign!!), but just as a personality that was fun and interesting. I'm not sure anyone's going to play any character long enough with Darkwater to get all that attached (not that you can even LOSE anyone in Darkwater! If you run out of Health, characters are just "vulnerable" and limited in the actions and abilities they can use...)
I also don't LOVE the map book. I would 100% prefer the hard room tiles used in ALL THE OTHER EDITIONS! The book seems rather flimsy and won't stand up to extended use... The fact that campaigns take so much less time to play through, we'll hopefully get through a few before it completely falls apart...
Despite all that, I am looking forward to being done Cursed City and trying this out for real...
I do hope GW supports and adds to this... although, maybe not just in the way they did with the recent White Dwarf - they include four new character cards you can use to play with an alternative party of deranged Ghouls... Each character is based on an existing model in the Flesh-Eater courts line. Which is kind of a neat idea, until you look up those models on the Warhammer website:
- Abhorrant Cardinal - $53.00CAD
- Abhorrant Gorewarden - $57.00CAD
- Marrowscroll Herald - $50.00CAD
- Royal Decapitator - $50.00CAD
$210CAD total if you want to run that adventuring party... Yikes...
Yes, I know, you could go looking for alternative models. I've seen a few people suggesting that some of the Warhammer Underworlds warband models work well (which I do have!)... And anyone that plays Flesh-Eater Courts probably has MOST of those miniatures... but still... Seemed a bit much.
Why have they not published stats for, say, The Saviours of Cinderfall (like they did for Cursed City!) or Characters from the Cities of Sigmar Freeguild Command Corps (like they did for Cursed City!) or SOMETHING that was under $100...? Seriously, if it had been something that was less than $100, I probably would have run out and bought the magazine AND the box of whatever was needed... There is... well... I'll never say NEVER... but it is EXTREMELY unlikely I'm going to drop $210 to pick up an alternative adventuring group!!
I hope they'll drop some rules for an Army Of One like they did for Grombrindal or Gotrek Gurnisson...
I wondered if they might, at some point, include fold-out map sheets for new scenarios in White Dwarf magazines. They often include posters that are the same size of bigger than the maps used in Warhammer Quest: Darkwater!
We DO have one more game of Cursed City to wrap it up. In the meantime, I'd best finish up those Pox Wretches and Pestigors!! There are a couple of heroes and hostile characters as well... but they aren't needed until Act II or III... so they're not as much of a priority! (Although, given how quickly the first Act can be played through, they probably SHOULD be a bit of a priority!!)
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