Warhammer Quest

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Warhammer Quest
Warhammer Quest cover.webp
Manufacturers Games Workshop
Designers Andy Jones
IllustratorsGeoff Taylor, Richard Wright, Dave Gallagher, John Blanche, Wayne England & Mark Gibbons
PublishersGames Workshop
Years active1995–1998
Players1–6
Playing time2–3 Hours

Warhammer Quest is a fantasy dungeon, role-playing adventure board game released by Games Workshop in 1995 as the successor to HeroQuest and Advanced HeroQuest , set in its fictional Warhammer Fantasy world. The game focuses upon a group of warriors who join to earn their fame and fortune in the darkest depths of the Old World.

Contents

Games Workshop stopped producing Warhammer Quest in 1998.

Game

Mainly written by Andy Jones, Warhammer Quest utilizes a set of simple game mechanics to simulate the Warriors' actions as they explore and fight through the dungeons of the Old World. The game puts a strong emphasis on co-operative and thoughtful play by the players in order to survive against the myriad monsters they inevitably face.

Primarily designed for four players, the original game continues the tradition of HeroQuest by supplying a Barbarian, Wizard, Dwarf, and Elf as its main Warriors.

The game components are [1]

Treasure

The game focuses on the acquisition of vast amounts of treasure, which is divided into two types:

Treasure can be sold for gold, which can then be used to pay for training and advancement, as well as buying items essential to survival: healing, a weapon, extra armour, or magical talismans that evoke special abilities.

Monsters

All of the hostile creatures encountered by Warrior parties are known under the collective name of "Monsters". Almost all Warhammer creatures of the time were included in the Bestiary section of the Roleplay Book. Monsters are broadly divided into the following species:

Lizardmen are the only major race not to feature in the game. They were later released as an additional supplement in the Warhammer Quest magazine "Deathblow".

The challenge of encounters is related to the current Dungeon level and the strength of the party. At lower levels, a small group of Orcs will provide a reasonable challenge; at higher levels, tougher opponents such as Ogres and Dragons are encountered.

Warhammer Quest Roleplaying

The game was released with a Roleplay Book, which enables players to expand their games by introducing tabletop roleplaying game mechanics. When used, the Roleplay Book offers the players the chance to travel between Settlements, train to the next level, visit numerous shops and traders, as well as visit Special Locations. The Wizard, Elf, and Dwarf have a Special Location that was exclusive to each of them and, if their luck was good and if they had enough gold, they could buy specialty items to help them in their adventures.

Additionally, the Roleplay Book introduces the element of Psychology, which includes new rules for Fear, Terror, Hatred, Breaking (fleeing), and being Prone. There are also rules and descriptions for using two new Characteristics: Luck and Willpower.

The Roleplay Book also contains a bestiary of Monsters that the warriors might encounter. The Roleplay Book also offers a Hazards Table (for use when traveling to a village, town or city), a Settlement Events Table (for use when spending time in a settlement), extra Treasure and Objective Room Treasure tables as well as ‘Battle-level Monster Tables’ for use as the Warriors' careers progress.

The last section of the Roleplay Book contains guidelines for writing adventures and Warrior development. It also contains an entire pre-written campaign for the Gamemaster and the Warriors to play as well as introducing the first expansion Warrior of Warhammer Quest: the Dwarf Trollslayer.

Warrior progression

Every Warrior can be progressed up to 10 stages or ‘Battle Levels’. In many role-playing games, character advance by accumulating experience points. In Warhammer Quest a Warrior accumulates gold to advance battle-levels and can also use the gold to buy items. Every monster encountered and killed is worth a certain amount of Gold. In addition, the Warrior can sell any treasure at the end of the adventure. The leader carrying the lantern (typically the Barbarian) decides which warrior gained an item of treasure.

Expansions

A number of expansions were released for Warhammer Quest. These included two new adventure packs, several Warrior packs as well as additional Treasure Card packs and a set of blank Monster Cards & Event cards, where players could record their own monsters from the Warhammer world that were not written within the Roleplay book or else not produced as an official card by Games Workshop.

Adventure packs

There were two adventure packs released for the game. Lair of the Orc Lord contained six new adventures against Greenskins (Orcs & Goblins) while Catacombs of Terror featured six new adventures that pitted the Warriors against the evils of the Undead. Both expansions contained new, pewter models to represent their enemies as well as new Board tiles and cards.

Warrior packs

Games Workshop released packs for nine additional Warriors, all of which had some background within the Warhammer world. The packs consisted of a Warrior model, rulebook and a set of card tokens detailing the warrior's original statistics & equipment. The rulebooks offered a piece of background as to the warrior-type & a set of rules to use the warrior including details about any new special locations they might visit, skills or equipment they could obtain as well as details about their Battle Level progression. The Warrior Packs released were as follows:

Magazines

White Dwarf

To accompany Warhammer Quest Games Workshop produced a number of articles in their White Dwarf magazine that added additional elements to the game play such as extra rooms, adventures & other articles. They were as follows:

Citadel Journal

To accompany Warhammer Quest Games Workshop produced a number of articles in their Citadel Journal magazine that added new semi-official adventures and scenarios, alternatives rules, and warriors. Some articles were written by the usual contributors of Warhammer Quest while others were fan-submitted material. They were as follows:

Deathblow Magazine

Deathblow was a dedicated Warhammer Quest journal released by Games Workshop to accompany the game in a similar vein to its Citadel Journal and Fanatic Magazine. Deathblow consisted of only three issues. Deathblow included articles by contributors outside of Games Workshop's employ and featured articles from White Dwarf, the Citadel Journal and contained new adventures and a selection of other Warhammer Quest related paraphernalia.

Deathblow introduced eight new Warriors: The Halfling Thief, Kislev Shaman, an Assassin, an Ogre, Druid of Albion, Dwarf Brewmaster, Salty Seadog & Lord of Aenarion.

Deathblow was named after Warhammer Quest’s ‘Death-Blow’ mechanic where if a warrior killed a monster in one single strike he could then carry that attack through to an adjacent monster.

Deathblow #1

Deathblow #2

Deathblow #3

Warhammer Quest contributors

Warhammer Quest and its expansions/articles were authored, illustrated or produced in whole, or in part, by the following:

Andy Jones, Geoff Taylor, Richard Wright, Dave Gallagher, John Blanche, Wayne England, Mark Gibbons, Bryan Ansell, Gavin Thorpe, Ian Pickstock, Mark Hawkins, Dean Bass, Steve Anastasoff, Tuomas Pirinen, Mark Hawkins and more.

Sequels

Eighteen years after the game ceased production, Games Workshop released Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower (2016), Warhammer Quest: Shadows Over Hammerhal (2017), Warhammer Quest: Blackstone Fortress (2018), and Warhammer Quest: Cursed City (2021). [2] [3] [4] [5] These games follow the original in overall design as dungeon crawling board games, but with substantially different rulesets. Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower, Warhammer Quest: Shadows Over Hammerhal, and Warhammer Quest: Cursed City are set in Games Workshops new fantasy setting, Warhammer Age of Sigmar . While Warhammer Quest: Blackstone Fortress is set in Games Workshops sci-fi universe Warhammer 40,000 .

Adaptations

Video games

On 20 August 2012 GW announced Warhammer Quest for iOS devices. [6] The development company is Rodeo Games. [7] It was released on 30 May 2013. It received positive reviews from critics. [8]

It was later ported to PC, Mac and Linux by Twistplay and was released by Chilled Mouse on Steam on 7 January 2015, [9] Android on 25 June 2015, [10] and later to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

Warhammer Quest 2: The End Times by Perchang was released on 20 October 2017 for iOS [11] and for Android on 11 April 2018. [12] It received average reviews from critics. [13]

Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower was released for Android and iOS on September 3, 2020, based on the 2016 sequel of the board game. [14]

Card game

A card game adaptation, Warhammer Quest: The Adventure Card Game, was released in 2015. [15] It got a positive review from Robert Florence of Rock Paper Shotgun: "Is this game a reasonable substitute for the full-flavour Warhammer Quest? Absolutely not. That old game is something very, very special. But this is an impressive attempt to pull some of that game's magic into a smaller box and support it with modern game mechanics. I was really surprised by how right it all felt." [16]

Reception

In the January 1996 edition of Dragon (Issue 225), Rick Swan liked the high quality of the game components, and the "easy-on-the-brain explanations" of the rules. But Swan objected to actual object of the game, which he summed up as "a string of random events, most of them combat encounters, with an occasional death trap thrown in to break the monotony." Swan also noted the game's complete lack of realism, but said, "Warhammer Quest doesn’t pretend to be realistic, and therefore doesn’t deserve to be criticized for its lack of logic. That’s like criticizing a candy bar for its lack of vitamins." Swan concluded by giving the game an average rating of 4 out of 6, and only recommended the game as a means of training up new role-players: "Warhammer Quest does a admirable job of incorporating role-playing fundamentals, and thus serves as a painless introduction to RPGs. And when Quest-ers get the hang of hit points and attribute scores, that’s where you step in with Call of Cthulhu or the AD&D game." [1]

Reviews

See also

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References

  1. 1 2 Swan, Rick (January 1996). "Roleplaying Reviews". Dragon (225). TSR, Inc.: 89–90.
  2. ↑ "Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower".
  3. ↑ "Warhammer Quest: Shadows over Hammerhal".
  4. ↑ "Warhammer Quest: Blackstone Fortress".
  5. ↑ "Warhammer Quest: Cursed City".
  6. ↑ From Dan Harden at 10:08 BST. "White Dwarf Daily". Games Workshop. Retrieved 10 October 2013.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  7. ↑ "Home". Rodeogames.co.uk. Retrieved 10 October 2013.
  8. ↑ "Warhammer Quest for iPhone/iPad Reviews". Metacritic . Fandom . Retrieved 28 February 2023.
  9. ↑ "Warhammer Quest on Steam". steampowered.com. Retrieved 30 October 2015.
  10. ↑ "Chilled Mouse brings their new Warhammer game from Steam over to Android called Warhammer Quest". Droid Gamers. 25 June 2015. Retrieved 31 December 2015.
  11. ↑ "Review: Warhammer Quest 2: The End Times | Pocket Tactics". Archived from the original on 3 November 2017.
  12. ↑ "Get ready to loot some orc corpses in Warhammer Quest 2 for Android". 30 March 2018.
  13. ↑ "Warhammer Quest 2: The End Times for iPhone/iPad Reviews". Metacritic . Fandom . Retrieved 28 February 2023.
  14. ↑ Bald, Cameron (3 September 2020). "Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower launches for iOS and Android as a free-to-play strategy RPG". Pocket Gamer . Steel Media. Retrieved 15 March 2023.
  15. ↑ "Warhammer Quest: The Adventure Card Game". Fantasy Flight Games . Asmodee. 31 July 2015. Retrieved 15 March 2023.
  16. ↑ Florence, Robert (5 January 2016). "Cardboard Children - Warhammer Quest - The Adventure Card Game". Rock Paper Shotgun . Gamer Network . Retrieved 15 March 2023.
  17. ↑ "Warhammer Quest | Article | RPGGeek".
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