@yayKM and I played our first proper game of Warhammer Quest tonight! The miniatures were 95% painted (the heroes just need some finishing touches on their bases, and the "mysterious objects" weren't finished yet because I only started them this afternoon), and it looked great.
It was going to be just a "Get used to the rules" sort of game, but we played through a whole game and figured we might as well make it the first real game and we'll continue with the storyline next game. Unfortunately we didn't roll too well on the end-of-game event table and our heroes are all going to be starting the next game with one wound counter already because they were hurt fighting off the undead that were trying to overwhelm the airship that is our mobile base of operations.
We played our second game of Warhammer Quest this afternoon! Another success, though it was looking a bit dicey at one point. The journey type we were playing was a "Hunt" where you need to kill ten hostile champions before you can finish it, but very thematically the zombies have no champion-type miniature in their groups so they just serve to slow you down. Play of the game went to my dwarf who single-handedly decimated a horde of hostiles (you'll have to excuse the lack of fully-painted miniatures because I ran out of the painted ones and had to resort to the half-painted ones I'd been working on earlier in the day).
Once you achieve the completion condition for whatever journey type you're playing, you need to retreat to the extraction point and once your heroes are all there, THAT is when the game ends. Today we had a classic movie feel because one of the last hostiles to spawn was one of the really nasty boss types, we ended up being able to avoid fighting him but it was a rush to the extraction point before he caught up with us!
We had @wobin over today for a game of Warhammer Quest and it was excellent fun!
@yayKM and I had previously planned to do a Deliverance journey type for our next game since if you're successful it reduces the fear level of the populace of Ulfenkarn (if it hits 10, you lose, and we were currently at 7), but we hadn't actually done that other journey type before and for introducing @wobin to the game we figured it'd be easier just to do a Hunt since that was what we'd played all the previous games so far and were familiar with it.
All the characters levelled up which means they get some additional traits, but it also means the hostiles we face next game are more numerous too!
Our Warhammer Quest adventures continued tonight, and HOO BOY was this one rough, mostly due to having an absolute SHOCKER on the dice rolling!
We played a "Deliverance" journey type, the story is that there's an evil all-consuming spell, the Suffocating Gravetide, wandering the streets that you need to outrun, and you need to warn the citizens of Ulfenkarn as you go so they can get inside and stay safe. The token that represents the Gravetide moves along one board section at a time and you need to stay in front of it or else you take two damage, and the board section that it was previously is destroyed along with any hostiles. The board itself isn't laid out ahead of time unlike the other journeys, instead you build it as you go by pulling from a deck and putting the appropriate tile down that's shown on the card along with any hostiles. There's a "Nightfall" token that moves along a track, and if you've taken enough turns and it gets to the end, all of the enemies are empowered and are significantly nastier (it represents night falling and all the undead becoming more powerful). We got fucked on that twice by rolling on the event table at the end of the turn and ending up on the "Move the Nightfall token one further space" and ended up having to fight the empowered hostiles much earlier than we otherwise should have, and we also had two "You don't get any Destiny dice at the start of next turn" results too (the Destiny dice are a pool of extra dice that the heroes can use in addition to their normal activation dice).
The "Warn the citizens" bit is an action that requires an activation dice result of 6 so if you've rolled really poorly you might not be able to do it that turn, and to be successful in the mission requires eight warnings. Ordinarily this wouldn't have been too bad, but as I mentioned before we had just dreadful rolls for like everything. As an example, @yayKM rolled five dice that would require a roll of 3+ to be successful attacks, and only succeeded on one of them. There were also multiple really bad rolls on defence AND attempting to heal wounds, to the point that we weren't entirely sure we were going to succeed in the mission without everyone being taken out of action.
As it was, we made it by the skin of our teeth, of @yayKM's two heroes one had taken three grievous wounds (out of a maximum of four before you're out of action) and the other had two, and one of my heroes also had two grievous wound counters as well. We had a final fight where we needed to get past a group of hostiles, and JUST BARELY made it by having @yayKM's extremely witchhunter manage to just limp into the final board section and trigger the last warning we needed to end the game. And just as a final "Fuck you", the roll on the very final event table at the end was dreadful too and all the heroes had to discard their treasure cards.
We had @wobin over for Warhammer Quest and a barbecue today!
The Warhammer Quest journey type was "Scavenge" so we could get some gear and currency to level up, it was a similar kind of deal to the others where the map is pre-made, but oh my god I don't think I've EVER seen as poor rolling as @wobin had today. At one point he spent all four of his activation dice making attacks without hitting a single thing, and that was rolling the equivalent of a 3+. 😫 I think he made one single attack successfully, and ended up getting wailed upon by a Kosargi Night Guard which mean he had three grevious wound counters and so had to rely on one activation dice and whatever spare Destiny dice we had left. In the previous game we'd upgraded his character with a piece of equipment that let him attempt to recover wounds on a 4+ instead of a 5+, and literally every single role he made for this he failed. We had @yayKM roll two of them, and she made one success and failed the other.
Thankfully, nobody ended up dying and we did actually get a good stash of stuff and have some good upgrades for the next game, but oh man.
We had another visit from @wobin today for more Warhammer Quest!
We're at the point where we need to fight the first big bad before we can level up to Level 2, and it's a two-part quest. The first, which is what we did today, was similar to our previous one where the map is built as you go and you have to stay ahead of the Suffocating Gravetide, and it represents fighting your way towards the big bad's lair. We did that quite handily this time, and player of the match definitely goes to my dwarf Dagnai Holdenstock who is an absolute close combat BEAST when he inspires. I don't think he missed a single attack roll once he inspired.
We didn't have time to do the second half, so we packed everything away and will do it when @wobin is back from his trip to Japan. It's a "Hunt" journey type, but the map is fixed and so are the specific hostiles you encounter as well. Very keen to see how this goes, especially because your characters keep all of their current statuses when you start the second part (so two of our four champions are inspired, and the other two are only one point away from it).
We continued our Warhammer Quest campaign today with @wobin by defeating the mighty Vargskyr!
It was a very interesting variation on the standard journeys: instead of the hostiles we faced being randomly selected from the encounter deck, we started out with all six corpse rats and all six dire bats, divided into two groups, plus the Vargskyr itself. The Vargskyr didn't start on the battlefield and they represented it striking stealthily from the shadows by making its activation involve rolling the D12 and whichever of the lychgates (the red door things on the edges of the tiles) was on the die, the hero closest to that would just straight up take a damage, no saving throw or anything. To actually get it to come out in order to damage it, you had to get to the "mysterious objects", which are the skeletons and the columns with the raven on top, at which point it'd pop out and absolutely wallop the hero that activated it, then vanish as soon as any damage was done to it, and you'd have to get to the next mysterious object, and so on.
It started out looking VERY rough, almost everyone was at half health quite quickly, but thankfully we were able to rally and once we got through the initial hostiles that started on the battlefield we had some very lucky rolling where the hostiles _didn't_ respawn when it was their turn to activate. After that it was a case of getting enough damage onto the Vargskyr which we were able to do (and once all the mysterious objects were gone it'd remain on the battlefield so we could really wail on it).
So now we're all at Level 2, so there'll be more hostiles to face, and the Vargskyr will actually potentially come back as one of the hostiles drawn from the encounter deck when we play our next regular game! 😬
A full two months after the last game (oops), we had @wobin over for another Warhammer Quest game! We did another Deliverance journey, where you need to stay ahead of the Suffocating Gravetide curse and warn the citizens of its approach, and we absolutely smashed it despite the Vargskyr making an appearance. We found from the last one of these we did that as long as you can get sufficiently ahead at the beginning it's not too much trouble to keep clear of the Gravetide, it's when you get stuck fighting hostiles and can't make any forward progress that you really end up in trouble.
To be fair, @yayKM's character was VERY heavily wounded in that fight, but thankfully I had a very convenient healing potion equipment I was able to give her and she rolled very well and was able to recover all the wounds she'd lost. We did a lot better this game, everyone ended up inspired, and my dwarf Dagnai singlehandedly faced down an entire room of zombies and skeletons and took most of them out, barely taking a scratch in return!
The next game is going to be a rough start though, I rolled EXTREMELY poorly on the event table at the end of the game, and THE big bad, Radukar the Wolf, is going to make an appearance at the beginning of next game despite him ordinarily not showing up until we're Level 3 (we're Level 2 right now). 😬
Another Warhammer Quest journey with @wobin today, and oh my GOD was it a shocker. 😫
We played a Scavenge journey where you go around searching for loot and fighting off hostiles, but Radukar the Wolf (the MAIN big bad of the whole game) made his first appearance, my character Cleona was so badly wounded she ended up out of action (thankfully she didn't end up dying), everyone was constantly failing attacks they should have easily made, and we rolled so poorly on the end of turn event table that we ended up at the "Nightfall" point (where all the monsters are much more powerful) FOUR turns earlier than we should have otherwise. 😬
It was an absolute rollercoaster, even outside of Cleona being taken out of action everyone else had multiple times where they'd taken so much damage they were only two short of being taken completely out of action, only to claw their way back and then get wounded all over again, then right at the end it was a mad scramble to get everyone to the exit point. As is frequently the case, hero of the match went to my dwarf Dagnai Holdenstock who was able to be inspired early and just slaughtered his way through everything. He got an upgrade in the post-game phase where damage from his weapons can't be ignored, which is going to be REALLY good because there are three or four types of hostiles that have some sort of "Roll the D12 and on a (certain number) or higher, damage is reduced by X amount" and it bit us so many times.
We had @wobin over again for a continuation of our Warhammer Quest adventures, and it went a lot better than last time. This game was a "Decapitation" journey where we're off to kill one of the big bads, it's split into two stages where the first one involves fighting through to find their lair, and the second is actually killing the boss itself. We did just the first stage tonight, and ended up getting almost everyone inspired within the first two turns, which meant we were steamrollering through the hostiles for a while, though our momentum ended up grinding to a halt when @yayKM's warrior was extremely badly wounded taking on a room full of skeletons and had to hang back until we could heal her up. Next time it's going to be taking out Watch Captain Halgrim, the skeleton warrior boss, and nothing except his skeletal Ulfenwatch minions.
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