Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower

Ravenloft (40$) Ashardalon (40$) Drizzt (40$) Temple of Elemental Evil (40$). $160, 160 or so miniatures. 4 full box games worth of content.

OR

$150 for one game, with one game's worth of stuff, and the gameplay is very similar (and I'll even grant that this is a bit better)

NO DEAL.

I wish we still did thrashdomes.

Warhammer Quest doesn't give you a single D20 to resolve everything. It wins.

It's 20 d6 instead.

SuperflyTNT wrote: $150 for one game, with one game's worth of stuff, and the gameplay is very similar (and I'll even grant that this is a bit better)
NO DEAL.

Technically there are enough models (and dice) in Silver Tower to play AoS Skirmishes. It probably provides enough miniatures to build a Tzeentch starter army.
Still, D&DAS's gameplay seems very similar and is certainly a better deal if that is all you're looking for. And it doesn't require any assembly.

SuperflyTNT wrote: Ravenloft (40$) Ashardalon (40$) Drizzt (40$) Temple of Elemental Evil (40$). $160, 160 or so miniatures. 4 full box games worth of content.

OR

$150 for one game, with one game's worth of stuff, and the gameplay is very similar (and I'll even grant that this is a bit better)

NO DEAL.

I haven't logged much time on F:AT recently, but it was worth logging in just to thumb this post.

Things that I know:

I purchased Space Hulk 3rd edition for $100 and regretted it. It's good fun, but there are tons of other two-player games that I'd rather play instead - and all those games have less set-up and are easier to store. Correction: There are tons of other two-player games in the $20 to $40 range that I'd rather play instead.

I purchased Ogre (designer edition) for $100 and regretted it. I always wanted to own/play Ogre as a kid, but all it's doing now is increasing the sag in my shelves. It undoubtedly will get played before my death, though. Once, maybe twice.

Owning a high-priced game *might* be worth it if I only owned 10-15 games, because they might see regular play. But I own far more than that, so these gold-plated roadsters will never see the pavement more than a few times. Are they good enough that they should? That's not clear to me.

Of course, I do hope that Silver Tower is good/shiny enough so that at least one person I know buys a copy. That way, I'll get to play 2-3 times without spending $150. Given that I was never going to play more than 2-3 times anyway, that's perfect.

P.S. It was neat to play someone else's copy of TIME stories. Glad I didn't buy it myself...

P.P.S. I did purchase Risk and Pandemic Legacy, and those absolutely were worth the money - disposability or not.

I was invited to play this twice today.

Some thoughts hopefully not already covered.

#1 Its not worth $150, at least by direct comparison to competitors titles.
I am used to GW's premium pricing structure. Iif you are a budget gamer, look elsewhere. You will definitely get more bang for your buck with other titles. There is a caveat for this though I'll remark on later.

#2 Its hands down better than DDAS. From pretty much every angle other than cost and assembly. Here's why:
Its not just a simple case of choices in who you kill. You have a bit of resource management to consider before you run pell memo into the fray. And as you become wounded the choices and your ability become more difficult. Brilliant stuff, just like claustrophobia, but even more succinct. Choices matter and they feel like they matter.
Its not a race like DDAS. DDAS feels like a gauntlet. You're options are to be either fucked, or fucked harder.
There are actual thematic elements to WQ that even my GF's 7 year old son understood, where as when he played Ashardalon with me, he was constantly asking why such and such a thing was occuring. The theme shines through and is somehow more intuitive than D&D if that's possible.
Not only that, but there are points in the game that have interesting adventure resolution. I don't want to spoil anything, but there are bits that are very interesting about the adventures that make me think back to my days playing D&D and how we as a group had to thwart our rather clever DM. How is it that a warhammer game does D&D better than D&D? Maybe we should blame D&D 4th ed. Or just lackluster boardgame design. Or both.

I don't miss going to town, buying crap, and then seeing if I have to sit out next adventure or even die due to some random baloney that happens outside of the dungeon. Many people are crying for this element to be brought back to WQ, but I say good riddance. It was just more stuff that made a game unfun when all you wanted to do was run your sword though a face of a hapless minotaur on your way to robbing an innocent liches tomb.

I bought my copies of ravenloft and ashardalon for $30 ea. second hand (half off rmsrp). Even if I could buy the other 2 ddas games for the same price, id still buy warhammerquest silent tower over them. To me, quantity does not overshadow quality. They're just a lot of cool components that sit in a box waiting for me to somehow make a better game out of it.
When people illustrate how each copy costs x and you get all this for that much, all I see is "This turd costs $40, and look how full your bag of shit can be if you do this multiple times!"

Sometimes, if you're looking for something specific, you gotta pay the price. Even if that price is obviously ridiculous.
That said, I'm not feeling the premium price here. Even at $100 I feel its too expensive.
The mini quality is there, the game quality is there too as is the amount of fun the kids, my friends and I had making me think that pulling the trigger wouldn't be a bad choice unlike the ddas games. I can't justify it though, not even with that rationale. Its priced too far away from reasonable.

Oh, for the days of milton bradley and mass market shops....

Edit:
I also learned that each character will cost you a buck each for the rules in the app. Not horrible, but I don't think you can see the character rules before you buy.
The cost of immediate expansion for this game is also quite high. You can buy the other four monsters in the rules not included for $70. ($40 for herald of tzeentch on burning chariot, $30 for flamers of tzeentch) and the other 4 (or five if you get the empire wizard card) characters will set you back at least another $100 due to tzeentch sorcer lord being no longer available (dafuq), and because the dwarf comes in a pricey kit.

superflycircus.com/2011/01/castle-ravenl...-hunt-for-the-fiend/

ColorCrayons - if I could trouble you to do an experiment, since you own Ravenloft and Ashardalon....try the above, and then let us know how it stacks up? Or even just read the above and see how it stacks up, if you're not inclined to play DDAS.

I think the problem with DDAS (as well as the brilliance) is that those games are sandboxes for DM's to do with as they wish, sort of in keeping with the history of D&D. The "stock" story is lackluster, to be sure. But there's so many "modules" that people have made... boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/59113/item/1414152#item1414152
... that it's been made a far better game. Try that with GW, and they'll burn you at the cross.

hotseatgames wrote: Warhammer Quest doesn't give you a single D20 to resolve everything. It wins.

Columbob wrote: It's 20 d6 instead.

You guys just won the internet.

SuperflyTNT wrote: superflycircus.com/2011/01/castle-ravenl...-hunt-for-the-fiend/

ColorCrayons - if I could trouble you to do an experiment, since you own Ravenloft and Ashardalon....try the above, and then let us know how it stacks up? Or even just read the above and see how it stacks up, if you're not inclined to play DDAS.

I think the problem with DDAS (as well as the brilliance) is that those games are sandboxes for DM's to do with as they wish, sort of in keeping with the history of D&D. The "stock" story is lackluster, to be sure. But there's so many "modules" that people have made... boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/59113/item/1414152#item1414152
... that it's been made a far better game. Try that with GW, and they'll burn you at the cross.

I have no problem buying components to make a better game. I was an avid consumer of gw for two decades afterall. And the wargames sucked.

But I do have a problem being given a product that is said to be complete as a playable game, and finding out that it doesnt hit the reasonqble expectation of how D&D has portrayed itself the entirety of my life, and then try to have to fix it myself or wait for others to do that. This is an inexcusable and fundamental flaw. I did go through the effort to try many fan mds and have looked over your link back. I find the stock system that the mods grow from to be the antithesis of my expectations of a dungeon crawl.
Granted, its my own expectations that have colored my enjoyment of what DDAS offers, but even taking the game for what it is and not what I expect it to be, its just a poorly made euro with a great theme slapped on top that I find to not be satisfactorily realized or utilized.

I've spent a lot of time retheming Doom to use most of the components found in the ddas games with a lot of good results. But only with the player character being a warrior mage type of class. Its basically diablo the boardgame now. I love rethemeing games and doing this sort of work. But I just find anything using the system in the box to be trying to gold plate a turd. Very pretty and admirable gold plating. But that plating doesnt conceal the stench of the turd beneath.

Paying $150 for a full-on epic fantasy masterpiece is one thing. But I think Silver Tower is a 60-minute game?

For me personally, if I'm looking for a 60-90 minute fantasy bash to play once per month, almost anything will do. It just needs die-rolling, killing, mockery, and laughter. And for bonus points: awkward and earnest flavor text.

Lots of games fall into this category:

Descent 2nd edition
Dungeonquest
the D&D games (the full Temple campaign was awesome with my kids, by the way)
Dungeon!
Warhammer Quest: Adventure Card Game (almost too thinky and difficult for 'fun', but still good)
Claustrophobia (2-player only)

These games are nearly interchangeable for me, since in all cases the bang for the buck (and time spent) is quite high. Brutish, silly, and short, and that's great. Not sure why I would buy a $150 version of the same thing. I'm so easy that I'll take almost anything.

At the moment, 'best in class' in the Run, Roll & Rampage genre is Space Cadets: Away Missions. And that's only $70. I seriously doubt that Silver Tower is more fun than Away Missions, but that could just be my lifelong cynicism and skepticism talking.

I just found this:



Retails for $55. This is about half of what these models cost individually. Maybe more depending on where you sit. The knight venator character alone costs nearly as much as this entire kit.

At least this, while still pricey, is a huge bonus to buying the extra characters. It will include the character cards as well.

Day 1 Expansions piss me off more than anything

On a positive note, the one thing that I really like about Silver Tower is that the enemy AI is unpredictable. If I'm reading the game bits & boards correctly, a 1d6 determines enemy actions (e.g., 1= attack closest hero, 2-3 = gang up on weakest hero, etc.).

What hurts the many-versus-one games (Doom, Descent, Imperial Assault, etc.) is that the DM-controlled monsters all attack perfectly - best possible positioning, attack and retreat around corners, etc. This tends to result in a pro-DM bias. I love the idea that monsters can behave differently from turn to turn.

This same issue hurts the pure coops with scripted AIs, such as the D&D games and Space Cadets. It becomes too easy for the heroes to work the system, at times.

So yeah, cool mechanic.

In all the discussions of dungeon crawlers why doesn't anybody ever bring up dungeon saga? Did that get poo pooed around here and I missed it?