Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower

If Warhammer Quest has priced itself out of your collection, you might already own a good replacement. For those of you that have Descent 2.0 collecting dust on your shelves you should really check out that Road to Legend app that FFG just put out. It essentially takes the PoD CO-OP expansions and turns them into a full fledged way to play the game. I've played a couple of games with it so far, but my impressions are largely favorable. The app does quite a bit of cool things. First it tracks all your campaign stuff so you don't need to write anything down which is awesome. Next, like wkover mentions about Enemy AI, the app will randomly give enemies different boosts and commands each round. So you're never quite sure if a cave spider is going to disease you, or attack and dart back into the shadows. It makes gaming the system much more difficult.

FFG has also implemented the switch of turn order that was introduced in Imperial Assault. In Descent 2.0 it would be that all heroes would activate and then all the monsters would act. Now it switches back and forth. Hero 1 will have a turn and then Monster group 1 will go. It goes back and forth like this until everyone has activated. Then a new round begins and the Heroes once again start with their actions. I like this so much better and was really happy to see it show up in Descent.

The app is far from perfect, but it is a HUGE step in the right direction for Descent. Most of my issues are minor interface issues and not with how the game plays. The game actually feels like a honest to god dungeon-crawl now. You move from room to room, not knowing what you will find. There are treasures to unearth, hidden dangers, and the app even does random DM/Overlord stuff if you linger around without advancing. It's very slick, easy to use and fixes many of my issues with Descent 2.0. I'm very eager to see where they take this thing.

Egg Shen wrote: If Warhammer Quest has priced itself out of your collection, you might already own a good replacement. For those of you that have Descent 2.0 collecting dust on your shelves you should really check out that Road to Legend app that FFG just put out. ... It's very slick, easy to use and fixes many of my issues with Descent 2.0. I'm very eager to see where they take this thing.

One early report that is bothering me is that the "free campaign" comes only with 1 small quest and 2 even smaller encounters. That's all fine by me, but it seems that the maps aren't randomized at all. That seems a good waste of computing power. I hope the first one we pay for will have randomization or Nerekhall style plot-twists.

Squigherder wrote: 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?

I never knew it existed.
www.manticgames.com/mantic-shop/dungeon-...ings-quest.html#tab3

Video How To Play is pretty slick.

@EggShen: that app sounds bad ass

I still don't know about this app business. If I need _any_ computing power to run any part of a game, one of two things are happening:

1) Box that game up and play something that doesn't require me to also be diddling with a phone.
2) Box that game up and just play a video game, giving everything over to the machine.

Hey, maybe it's my loss...but I think I'll be fine...

Dungeon Saga is basically Jake (dreadball, lost patrol, deadzone) Thorton's take on HQ/AHQ. I gave it a serious look, but was already deep into DB. One big upside is that expanding it with KoW minis will be considerably cheaper than expanding WHQ with AoS. I'd love to give it a try sometime.

Edit: now that I think about it titling silver tower as 'warhammer quest' is super lame and only done for marketing. There is no more warhammer. The title no longer makes sense. Maybe this should be: "Age of Sigmar Adventures - The Silver Tower" or something...

Sevej wrote:

Egg Shen wrote: If Warhammer Quest has priced itself out of your collection, you might already own a good replacement. For those of you that have Descent 2.0 collecting dust on your shelves you should really check out that Road to Legend app that FFG just put out. ... It's very slick, easy to use and fixes many of my issues with Descent 2.0. I'm very eager to see where they take this thing.

One early report that is bothering me is that the "free campaign" comes only with 1 small quest and 2 even smaller encounters. That's all fine by me, but it seems that the maps aren't randomized at all. That seems a good waste of computing power. I hope the first one we pay for will have randomization or Nerekhall style plot-twists.

For some people this might be a negative, but I look at it as a positive. It allows the development team to craft focused scenarios and not have to factor in random tile placement. Plus, I like that once you start a dungeon the app tells you to grab tiles 24, 8, 10, 14, and 29. You can put the rest in the box and have everything you need on the table.

Enough games do the randomized dungeon thing, and I think it's very smart of FFG to not follow suite. There is some randomization in each dungeon though. Basically the app has access to "Open Monster Groups" at certain points in the dungeon. Based on what expansions you own it will draw randomly from acceptable monsters to spawn. Also, the dungeon perils and other events seem to be random as well. So while the level itself won't change, you can get a different experience based on the heroes you select and what the app throws at you. That's more than enough for me.

@ Jeff White - I think the app makes complete sense for this game. I have a couple of the print on demand co-op expansions and it would be too costly for FFG to implement them into the game. Essentially it would have required them to either make a huge Stand-Alone sized expansion, or a 3.0 version of the game. With the app, they are able to basically just write scenarios/campaigns and let people use the stuff they've already purchased.

I understand the apprehension, but you're still doing 95% of the work on the table. The app is only spitting out a scenario, doing some minor DM stuff, and keeping track of your character's upgrades, items, gold etc... Basically it takes the tedious stuff away and let's you focus on combat and exploring the dungeon. I call that a win.


I hope FFG doesn't get too carried away with the campaigns. I've heard the next one will be 8 quests with additional side quests. I'd be fine with little 4-6 bite sized campaigns. They don't all have to be big and take forever to finish. Honestly, if there was a 4 quest mini-campaign I could finish in one setting with some friends, I'd drop $5 on it. That way we could just plan to play it during one long Saturday session. I don't have people willing to invest a few months on a Descent campaign.

I don't need a total random dungeon. Maybe change the order of the rooms or something. A totally random stuff is easily done with a deck of cards. But regulated randomness, with pre-designated keypoints/crescendos... that would keep things fresh while keeping the scenario design tight, and that's where the app could be really useful. They did something similar with XCOM. In the past we have to arrange cards in different piles, then stack them on top another. A little programming could do wonder.

Egg, thanks for not throwing out an aggro response to my negative take on the app. Sounds like it works and if you guys are having fun with it, carry on. Sorry to be an internet jerk on the issue. Cheers!

I've got the app, just haven't had a chance to try it yet. Too busy looking at my pile of Deadzone.

It's just too bad that the app doesn't factor in the Conversion Kit. Otherwise it's the logical evolution of the coop PoD scenarios. I'll be trying it pretty soon.

The free mini-campaign (1 demo/intro, 2 side quests and one final): I wonder if those 2 side quests are part of the 8 included with the base set. They've made a specific side quest for each of the expansions (not the hero-monsters collections), that's pretty cool. The intro quest is pretty generous giving 3 xp to each hero as well.

The thing that kills me is that I really don't like 1vA games at all, since I invariably am the 1; so as awesome as this app sounds, I won't do a 1vA game.

Or does the app do away with the Overlord?

The app basically replaces the overlord. I don't know how it handles the monster actions and whether it requires tracking the heroes' movement, wounds, etc. in the app.

SuperflyTNT wrote: The thing that kills me is that I really don't like 1vA games at all, since I invariably am the 1; so as awesome as this app sounds, I won't do a 1vA game.

Or does the app do away with the Overlord?

The app changes the game from 1vA to a straight co-op.

When you play, the game instructs you what tile to put what monsters on. It doesn't keep track of where they are or anything. When it's the monsters turn to activate the app will give you instructions on how the group will react...think AI card from Ravenloft. Except how they act might differ from turn to turn. When you kill a group of monsters you simply click on the monster group and tell the app it's been defeated. Like I said, the app is really just doing very minimal stuff. Everything important is still happening on the table.

I ditched 2nd edition a couple of years ago, but I'd like to pick it up again (due to Road to Legend). What expansion do you recommend I pick up with the core game (for monster/hero variety)?

I'd like to see this app in action myself...but I looked at Descent 2nd edition, saw a billion expansions, and backed out slowly.

Hope they do something like this for Imperial Assault, I'd be all over that.

Frohike wrote: I ditched 2nd edition a couple of years ago, but I'd like to pick it up again (due to Road to Legend). What expansion do you recommend I pick up with the core game (for monster/hero variety)?

I never actually purchased any expansions for Descent 2.0 because I was pretty sure it was going into the trade pile. The only reason I held onto it was due to discovering the Co-Op print on demand expansions. I tried them and liked them well enough to keep the game. Then when I saw no further support I figured FFG ditched the idea. Finally they announced this app and I figured it was my last chance to truly see if I was going to keep the game or not. So far it's looking good.

The problem with expanding the game now is that both big and small box expansions come with a bunch of useless overlord stuff. So I'm thinking those hero and monster figure expansions might be the best way to go. However, the actually boxed expansions contain the addition hero classes which are key to adding more variety. So I'm thinking I might pick up one Hero & Monster collection and one small box expansion. That will give you about 5-6 new heroes, 4-5 new enemies, and two new hero classes. That's just my take on where to go from here. Sevej or someone else might have a better idea.

Also, for those curious about the app...just download it on your smartphone. It's free. Set up a campaign and play through the tutorial quest. The tutorial will walk you through how the app functions and give you a pretty good idea of whether or not you think it's worth it.