I don't know, man. I've had sessions where I've wanted to flip the fucking table. You roll 2 or 3 CP a few turns in a row, and meanwhile the other guy just drew a missile launcher. Oh, yup, he's setting it up in the window. There goes the west face of my block. Good thing all I've got all these mob counters on the board. It'll only be 10 years before they get over there to stop him. Well, I rolled 4, might as well do nothing else and draw a counter. Oh good! City Def! Next turn, I'll try to get them to the pedway. I'll have to go through this open square... Oh, attacked by a gang, huh? Fucking special. Oh yeah, of course they fucking died. Oh look! I rolled 3 CP A-FUCKING-GAIN!!! Well, I didn't want to do this, but I guess I'm going to have to use the Kleggs. Oh, no, nevermind. I should have known you had a Kleggs Go Home.

Whee!!! What fun this is!

It's not a matter of "not getting the best" draws and rolls. I'm talking about when you're struggling with your shitty draws and rolls to get something you need immediately to fight the other guy with, and when you finally get it, he plays a card that takes it out of the game just like that. Boom. You're fucked. Nothing you can do about it, nothing you could have done about it.

Fair enough. Yeah, I can see a game of Block Mania by itself playing out like that.

I guess I haven't experienced it because I've only ever played it with Mega Mania (3-4 player), so seldom does one player focus all of their arsenal on another individual. That and early on we always house-ruled 6+d6 command points instead of 2d6.

Jeff White wrote:


I disagree. Sure they were entry points to a huge system, but you could also play endless games with only the box' contents, even playing a 2-player league/campaign or whatever of most of those games with the 2 included factions.

The only game where levelling wasn't really feasible without investing more was WHQ, but then again, the game came with 36 "scenarios" plus a game-mastered one where you didn't need anything more than what was in the box and a pencil and eraser.

Columbob wrote:


Yes, you could play lots of games, but you couldn't take full advantage of the rules in any of those games with only what was included in the box. Did you have goblins or trolls on your ork roster? How about going to a full 16 man squad? Can't be done with the base blood bowl box alone.

The same is true for the other games as well. No Hired Swords for Mordheim, no juves, or heavies with the necromunda box set, etc. And this doesn't even include the terrain you need to really play the games.

No matter how you slice it, GW sold you a game with a complete set of rules, but not all of the pieces to play with all the rules. I've always though that 'boardgames' where self contained. Sure expansions may come along, but I expect to be able to play with all of the rules in a base game with what's in the box.

But if those rules and pictures of additional minis were never included in the base game in the first place, you wouldn't even be looking for them. So the promise of expansion makes you yearn for something more. Other than that, the starting teams were still pretty customisable with different weapon builds, the BB teams each had about 4 different types of players. Don't tell me that, because you could expand it with the entire Citadel menagerie, Warhammer Quest had fewer different monsters to fight than Descent (which is widely considered self-contained), because that's just not true.

But yeah, the way the games are presented though, you wanted more. But that's the GW marketing strategy, selling you a "hobby" rather than a simple game.

Here's all I should have to say about Warhammer Quest: The last time I played, we picked this scenario where we have to go into the dungeon, get some artifact or some such, and exit through the door we came in. Have to exit through that door. Turn 1, we walk through the first corridor and then draw an event card (or roll on a chart? I don't remember which). Cave in. That corridor is now impassable for the rest of the game. Not even 2 turns in, we haven't done a_ny_thing, and we lose.

Classic GW right there. Let's put some ridiculously hard-hitting random thing in there and not spend the 30 seconds it takes to realize what a bad idea it is, and how easily it could torpedo the entire game. WQ is full of shit like that. Poke your head into a new room... AMBUSHED BY 20 SKAVEN! You're completely surrounded, so don't bother trying anything like running away, or getting to a safer spot. You can't move for the next half hour, so just keep rollin' them bones until you find out whether or not you live through it. You probably won't. It might help if you keep telling yourself this is fun.

Oh, and who's genius idea was the rule that only the guy with the torch gets to reveal a new board section? It's not like the Barbarian doesn't already get to do the lion's share of the killing as it is, which is all there is to the game anyway, let's marginalize all the weaker characters even more.

These are just transparently, I'd even say objectively boneheaded design choices. I've never seen any game this side of Candy Land that goes so far out of its way to keep you from making any sort of consequential decision yourself.

This is why I've been arguing with the people treating Dungeonquest as if it's some kind of holy grail that FFG somehow violated. A lot of GW productions in the late 80s and early 90s were completely luck-based AND included dice. DQ and many others like it are fundamentally bad designs if you want to have a consistently enjoyable experience. The reason that people like me play it is because the one high out of 5 plays is memorable (and the other 4 are still somewhat amusing for the grisly manner of one's demise.) Talisman and Fury of Dracula pretty much stand alone in terms of the non-Warhammer/40K setting as solid games and I think FFG made decent improvements to both.

As for the 40K-based games, I have all three (Doom of the Eldar, Battle for Armageddon, Horus Heresy) and each has their charm and strategic depth. If you can avoid killing the Emperor in the first turn, I think HH is almost there with BfA. Doom requires some real luck on the part of the Eldar player (thematically appropriate, if you know the story.) I may be the only person that actually liked FFG's redesign of HH, but the original is still a solid game (again, barring the first turn mishap) and probably still cheaper, at this point.

i agree. What makes GW dungeon quest so good is that it is suicide quest.

They are sort of like Nethack, for those with good knowledge of PC games. You know going in that the game is going to bend you over and hump you. But this means when it doesn't the victory is that much sweeter, and when it does, as Jackwraith has said, it's sort of funny. They aren't smart games and don't live up to modern standards, but some times screw modern standards i want something that is refreshingly oddball with stupid rules.

Blood Bowl is my favorite GW game and is totally playable out of the box. Surprising amount of tactics. Yes it shines as a league game, but is still fun as a one-off. Typically you can field teams just using your old D&D minis or minis from other games. My Tailsman halfling (3rd ed) plays for my fling team.

I am also a fan of Necromunda. My roomate at the time and I pooled our money and bought a copy when it first came out set it up and played it that night, then played it again and again. The leveling up is such a hook. Ended up playing until we had to go stock shelves at Target at 4 AM. That was a long 8 hours, but when we got home... yep we played some more. Ahh to be young again.

I love Necromunda. I'm pretty fond of almost all of GW's Specialist Games (Necromunda, Mordheim, Battlefleet Gothic, Epic Armageddon, Blood Bowl.) The only one I've never played is Warmaster. A friend and I used to play Necro regularly. We had a couple of the terrain sets, so we always had the right setting. We each had a normal gang (Delacque, Cawdor) and an unusual gang (Spyrers, Skavvies) and played lengthy campaigns with both.

He and another friend of ours once got into a three-game campaign of 40K, Epic, and BFG. Space Marines/Imperials vs. Tau vs. Orks. I have both SM and IG fleets/armies for BFG and Epic, so I could fill the story in wherever one Imperial force was more appropriate than the other. It was a blast: 3 totally different play styles in three different games. I barely play any GW games, anymore, which is really a shame considering my ridiculous collection (which I should probably sell, one of these days...)