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The Perfect Campaign
The one that came closest for me was Descent 1: Road to Legend.
The main reason my group liked it more was that each mission had a sense of purpose:
Instead of going from one "story" mission to the other, heroes and overlord each had one or several goals they were trying to achieve, and missions/encounters were the way they got this done (ok, most missions were just: raid the dungeon to get stronger but there was always decisions to be made about how to stop the Overlord lieutenants from razing a settlement, whether it was worth spending time to go to a specific trainer, and so on...).
These "strategic" decisions gave much more context to the game that any written fluff could ever do.
When you compare that to Imperial Assault: The heroes don't even know why they are chaining missions. They don't have any goal except reach the finale.
The "only" problem with Descent RTL was that its game system was too fiddly, with an insane amount of bookkeeping and setup./teardown time (we used to leave the board in place and not touch it until next session), and we ended up with 30 pages of rule tweaks to rebalance the campaign, and avoid having one side keep steamrolling the other after a few quests.
I think it worked because it didn't try to be a railroaded RPG, but instead, had some very light elements of an X-COM game.
That is the same reason Blood Bowl works well IMO, especially when playing in a championship format:
Each game is a part of an overarching contest that is clear from the beginning to the end.
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Colorcrayons wrote: I've been seeing some good reviews about the newest war hammer quest iteration. Maybe that might strike a chord with you, Egg Shen?
You talking about the Silver Tower or the new one that they just released? I haven't really looked into the new one, but is it that much different than the Silver Tower? I figured it was just more of the same with a new setting/skin.
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- san il defanso
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Egg Shen wrote:
Colorcrayons wrote: I've been seeing some good reviews about the newest war hammer quest iteration. Maybe that might strike a chord with you, Egg Shen?
You talking about the Silver Tower or the new one that they just released? I haven't really looked into the new one, but is it that much different than the Silver Tower? I figured it was just more of the same with a new setting/skin.
I think it's actually more like the 1 vs. many format. One of the players serves as a GM of sorts. That makes me feel a little better about not being able to afford it right now.
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san il defanso wrote:
Egg Shen wrote:
Colorcrayons wrote: I've been seeing some good reviews about the newest war hammer quest iteration. Maybe that might strike a chord with you, Egg Shen?
You talking about the Silver Tower or the new one that they just released? I haven't really looked into the new one, but is it that much different than the Silver Tower? I figured it was just more of the same with a new setting/skin.
I think it's actually more like the 1 vs. many format. One of the players serves as a GM of sorts. That makes me feel a little better about not being able to afford it right now.
Yeah, it's much more like Heroquest in fact. You've got one enormous multi level pre-set dungeon with set features like secret doors and traps and events that kick off other than just combat
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- Colorcrayons
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Anyways, even those who are ghey for co-op are admitting it is pretty good. But there are times where you have to be more of a ref as a gm than a no punch pulling opponent., due to how some expanded exotic monsters aren't quite balanced in that regard.
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I wrote up a short review on it at Geek & Sundry: geekandsundry.com/warhammer-quest-return...dows-over-hammerhal/
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I am currently working on a campaign-based game and this article has become my guiding star.
And everyone's comments on it are great too!
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I have already played 7 out of 8 of the adventures a while back with some friends, but we stuck with the same characters for most of the adventure. From that prior experience, I know that the game is usually a little too easy, but occasionally and surprisingly can get very tough. I also know that the familiars can be annoying, but less so if I restrain the impulse to grab loot early and often. One of them is more likely to show up when there are heroes with multiple skills, so that should be less common if I keep switching up teams. The familiars are an amusing novelty at first, but eventually just become a hassle at the worst times.
I started with the default first quest, the one using the wagon wheel icon on a white background. My starting party was the Excelsior Warpriest and his Glyph Hound (one of the six starting characters from the game), a dwarven Battlesmith, a Knight-Azyros, and an Orruk Warchanter. To ramp up the difficulty, I resolved to discard as dead any characters that become grievously wounded.
The Warpriest is a fighting healer with an area spell that is hard to deploy but nearly always hits. His Glyph Hound is sometimes helpful and sometimes gets in the way. The Battlesmith is an okay fighter, except that he has a special attack that lets him attack every adjacent foe. The Knight-Azyros is one of the golden-armored followers of Sigmar. He's a tough scout who can do the same area spell as the warpriest, only with less chance of hitting with it. My favorite was the Orruk (orc) Warchanter, who is like a cross between a fighter and taiko drummer. His drumming attack hits easily, and can potentially trigger a chain of follow-up attacks for a maximum of four damage total.
The map tiles are gorgeous, and my wooden tokens don't quite do justice to them. But I don't have the time or talent to paint miniatures well, so I bought a stripped copy of Silver Tower, which means everything but the minis. I scanned the profile pictures of each character and monster and cropped them to fit my wooden nickels, affixing the printed art with craft glue.
The first five rooms go smoothly, even too easy. Like two rounds of combat at most, plus one physical challenge that was a tricky dice-stacking thing. Then my full team hit the big battle in the room with the searing beams. Two encounter rolls on Table B had me facing 4 Blue Horrors, 4 Khairic Acolytes, and the option to use an exotic enemy. Drawing upon the adversaries expansion cards, I come up with the Lord of Plagues, who comes with a Blightlord sidekick who is also no joke.
It's a rough fight. A Pink Horror randomly showed up, then a Skaven Deathrunner. The Pink Horror manages to slay my Gryph Hound with a fiery blast. The Warpriest fell to a lethal slash from the Lord of Plagues, who regenerates every turn. The Knight read a scroll and turned four enemies into stone statues. Before I could finish off the Lord of Plagues, he manages to summon three more Blightlords to replace the one I killed. Near the end, my Warchanter finally got into a good position to rotate one of the searing beams, enabling him to kill or seriously wound the Lord of Plagues, all 3 Blightlords, and a couple of Blue Horrors.
Then the Gaunt Summoner arrived. We nearly killed him on the first round, but then he teleported a short distance, leaving two Pink Horrors behind for us to fight. We finished the Gaunt Summoner, but then the Ogroid Thaumaturge randomly showed up, and soon killed the Battlesmith. Combat continues, and finally, finally the knight and the orruk stand alone, surrounded by corpses and statues. That final room took up about 2/3 of the playing time, and left me slightly burned out today, having faced the equivalent of 3 final bosses in one fight. But I am looking forward to playing more Silver Tower soon.
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