I have enjoyed building, painting and playing campaigns in all three modern Warhammer Quest games, and decided to undertake a general comparison of the games. These games all feature an action dice slot mechanic where you use rolled dice to obtain actions for your round. It is also worth beginning with the advantage that the original two fantasy sets have a huge amount of compatibility, being able to transfer heroes and enemies between the two campaigns to add variety. Some of the mechanics and dice then changed for Blackstone Fortress and Cursed City.
Theme Setting
Lets face it, the theme alone may well determine which of these games is your favourite. Silver Tower is set within a tzeentch tower rather than a dark dungeon, with bold colourful tiles which often have some unique hero interactions built into them. Hammerhal is much more a traditional underground dungeon, a dark and grim theme, you will predominantly encounter khorne and nurgle chaos creatures. Blackstone Fortress finds you on a space station with docked ships and a futuristic style and Cursed City is all about the undead and vampires. Ultimately for my taste the characters and theme of Cursed City wins out, but Silver Tower was close.
Artwork & Books
Silver Tower is has a relatively short rulebook and a separate quest guide from which you read passages as the story unfolds. The lay out of both tower books can occasionally seem a little muddled, but adventure tile cards will reveal which passages to read as you progress. Hammerhal has a main rulebook that is much thicker with loads of background storyline, plus a nice painting guide and was vastly superior to Silver Tower, with rules better organised, and each campaign dungeon set out neatly in the adventure book for a gamesmaster to use. Blackstone Fortress split it’s books up into background, rules, combat and campaign, and are nicely presented but remembering which book you need can become a pain. Cursed City has two books, a rulebook and a quest book, and features my favoured cover artwork. Shadows over Hammerhal edges this with its larger Cinderfall city book with varied districts opening up a more expansive world, with the progressive storyline of Blackstone Fortress over many expansions making it the best longer term.
The Miniatures
Balancing off against the production artwork and background books are the high quality plastic miniatures. Silver Tower offers 6 excellent hero models and a host of varied enemies including grotlings, acolytes, tzangors, skaven deathrunners and the amazing ogroid beast. Hammerhal has a much leaner selection of 4 heroes and a gryph hound, with enemies comprising khorne bloodreavers, acolytes and the putrid blightkings, but overall it just cannot compete with what Silver Tower offers, being too humanoid focused, although the acolytes in this game are improved miniatures on the Silver Tower ones. The good news is that models can be used and interchanged between the two games. Blackstone Fortress comes with 8 heroes and a variety of enemy groups including guardsmen, chaos enemies, mechanical drones and ur-ghul creatures and is a good one box package but does lack a unique creature (added with the Ambull expansion). Finally Cursed City has 8 heroes and a great range of enemy models which have personalities. Overall i give this to Cursed City but it was close run by Silver Tower.
Tiles, Cards & Components
Tiles are very individual to each game and all are pretty good for theme and style. Silver Tower are bright and colourful with interactive items located on the tiles, while Hammerhal is darker and more dungeon like in appearance with chaos symbols, skulls and fiery locations, and were notably a thinner quality. Blackstone Fortress is metallic spaceship related with hex based spaces, and generally dark rooms are interspersed with neat lighting effects. Cursed City mixed up flagstone courtyards with castle inside rooms. In terms of other components, Silver Tower provided sets of different coloured action dice for players to use and identify with, something that Hammerhal and Blackstone left out to their detriment, but Blackstone and Cursed City counter with different dice types for combat strength which enhances the play variation, and has additional card decks for encounters and discoveries, and Blackstone had seal-able baggies for saving games. Despite Silver Tower having the most interesting tiles, overall Blackstone Fortress goes that little bit further as a whole package.
Gameplay, Campaign & Rules
All these games use the same dice slot allocation mechanic for actions, feature extra destiny dice and renown and are built with the same core gameplay feel. However, there are some key differences which may split opinions. Silver Tower, Blackstone Fortress and Cursed City run a fully co-operative approach, with cards and dice generating the adventure, and enemies using artificial intelligence, while Hammerhal offers up a gamesmaster experience, controlling the enemies, revealing hidden secrets, and providing or embellishing the general storyline. Silver Tower is unique in that each adventure can be scaled for different hero numbers, while all the other games expect four heroes to participate each game. In campaign terms, Hammerhal has a city to visit between adventures, experiencing encounters, adding to the overall theme, and Blackstone has a space station with docked ships. Hammerhal features a long pre-written multi level dungeon campaign which is well designed but has limited replay value, while Silver Tower and Blackstone Fortress randomise room order and encounters to vary repeated adventures. Cursed City has pre laid out maps, but offers three different types of quest and then more interesting boss level scenarios. Each new game released has i feel slightly improved the rule set, Hammerhal benefited with the removal of respite, and added an ability for players to search rooms for hidden items, and Blackstone and Cursed City has a better turn order mechanic, plus much better combat dice and are better designs. Monster AI is handled by simple table rolling that works better in the fantasy games as Blackstone requires individual rolling and table examination for every model, which can become tiresome. Cursed City is a winner for it’s varied approach to missions, but Blackstone Fortress with Ambull expansion storyline in White Dwarf or the annual is a significant high point. Silver Tower scenarios offer a little more randomness and feels better for engaging one off mini adventures.
Expansions
Expansion content is often key to the enjoyment of games like this. White Dwarf magazine made a way to join up the Silver Tower with Hammerhal editions which was a nice touch, and Silver Tower and Hammerhal added card packs so you can expand heroes and monsters yourself. However sadly new campaign storylines and dungeons were never added, and Hammerhal in particular needed new content to keep it fresh. Blackstone Fortress received a lot more design support, the addition of the Dreaded Ambull monster hunt was excellent, plus they expanded into small box enemies such as traitor guard leaders and a nurgle enemy box, and then two larger box expansions with new campaign material. The life of Cursed City was cut short and the planned content was never properly added, but it did get some content eventually where you had to purchase the models separately. Ultimately Blackstone Fortress has much more official content, should you wish to pay for it, and an emerging storyline which far exceeds what came with the other releases.
Conclusion
All these games are great to own, being relatively simple designs to learn and play, capturing a dungeon feel with a story and light campaign, albeit not as strategically deep as some other crawlers, they are quick to teach and great fun. They are also some of the most enjoyable modelling game sets around, providing a great hobby experience. Personally i feel Silver Tower and Cursed City are the best value core sets overall for the hobby experience, however Blackstone Fortress is the most expandable. Hammerhal is a weaker link but does offer a different controlled dungeon master approach. Gameplay is similar enough not to be a significant factor but the Blackstone and Cursed City do have better combat dice, and Silver Tower shines as it is largely self contained, has storyline events, and is scale-able to player numbers. Personally i like the fantasy theme and combination of Silver Tower & Cursed City but theme really is a key choice.
With Cursed City now a completed product line we wait to see if the quest series is continued in the future, and it would be a surprise if there was not a return to this series.