Games Workshop released a new board game version of Warhammer Quest in May 2016, many years after the original 1995 Quest game became an expensive collectors item. This was very exciting news as the brand name carries great weight and expectation. This game was set in the Age of Sigmar world, a future version of the old fantasy world, and sees six heroes in the core box entering the Silver Tower to find lost peices of an artifact to defeat the chaos tainted Tzeentch.
The gameplay has seen a number of changes over the original version, but it does remain a relatively simple affair to play with some nice choices. Your hero player card has four dice spots that you roll and fill each round, and then use these to activate certain actions, lower numbers rolled can be used to move, explore, heal and use a basic fight skill, while higher rolls are needed for special weapons or abilities. There is also a pool of destiny dice you roll at the start of each turn, and any player can tap into but these as they are shared across your party, so you need to use them co-operatively and wisely. The tower itself will be explored using exploration cards, pretty similar to the original game, but there is new book of encounters that will be read out during your adventure to provide an engaging storyline. Monster abilities are printed in the rulebook, and here it would have been much better to have individual cards laid out for easier reference. The tower tiles are bright, colourful and look unique compared to other dungeon crawl games, and this helps establish the new setting, but traditionalists may prefer the older mirky fantasy dungeon style. One of the welcome features is that there is still some semi randomness to the room order, while each mission will contain specific locations to engage with. The game is also totally co-operative, and also scales for the number of heroes, which is a major new development, enabling play with fewer than four heroes.
The Warhammer Quest line is a modelling product, and there are 51 miniatures included in what is an exceptionally good core box set. If you do not like building and painting, then this is probably not the best game for you, asl eaving them at grey plastic really misses out on the visual treat. I treat modelling as part of an overall game experience and product value as i enjoy completing the set, and with perseverance it will eventually make one of the best ones to own.
Overall this dungeon crawl game looks bright and shiny, with its own character theme, and it is certainly not a re-print of the old game, but feels like a proper new edition. It remains relatively quick to play with easy to learn rules, and has a new and distinct dice allocation mechanic. It does lose out a little for having little real character levelling, and no outside settlement events between quests to undertake, as your missions are all self contained in the tower itself. Overall i am really impressed with the re-invention of the game, it is a wonderful product which welcomed me back into the Games Workshop world of gaming, and here is my painted set > Silver Tower
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Expansions
Whilst Games Workshop seemed to quickly move onto their next core game, Shadows over Hammerhal, there were some expansion additions you could make to your game which largely focused on heroes (my additions highlighted green = own, blue = part owned, red = not purchased) :
Battlemage
A promo additional character card for a battlemage given as a pre-order bonus from Games Workshop webstore, and a useful addition to your core box set party.
White Dwarf Magazine
Two special edition White Dwarf magazines were fully dedicated to Silver Tower and included background articles and painting guides plus rules to add the Lord of Plagues. These are quite collectable if you enjoy adding theme to your core box.
Hero Cards
A pack of 44 large sized hero cards, allowing the use of a range of new heroes within the Silver Tower which may lean you towards buying new miniatures to add to your game. It was arguably the single most important game addition for this set, given how much it enabled you to change and create your party.
Mighty Heroes
A box containing four additional hero champion models that found themselves subject to the Gaunt Summoner’s ever-shifting domain – Tzeentch Sorcerer Lord , Khorne Bloodbound Slaughterpriest , Stormcast Eternals Knight-Venator , Fyreslayers Auric Runemaster. However, I found it quite hard to consider incorporating chaos miniatures as hero types myself, and did not purchase it.
Arcane Heroes
Another box containing five new hero characters with an emphasis on wielding arcane powers – Chaos Sorcerer Lord , Skink Starpriest , Dark Elf Sorceress , Skaven Grey Seer , Stormcast Knight Heraldor. Again the cross over from chaos into heroes was very evident.