Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I feel like the modern quest games have been good or better generally.

Silver Tower has a 7.4/10 rating on BGG, while Shadows over Hammerhal and Blackstone Fortress both have a 7.7/10 rating and even cursed city has a 7.2/10.

Some of the BSF expansions are over 8/10.

So I think they've all been considered a bit better than mediocre

Rolling dice for movement in a boardgame in TYOL 2025 is an incredibly interesting choice. Will have to see the full mechanic.

Necronmaniac05 wrote:
I feel like the modern quest games have been good or better generally.

Silver Tower has a 7.4/10 rating on BGG, while Shadows over Hammerhal and Blackstone Fortress both have a 7.7/10 rating and even cursed city has a 7.2/10.

It depends on what people actually rate, even when just like with video games, books or movies, 6-7 means "mediocre" nowadays.

For example a lot of ratings with comments for Cursed City follow this pattern:


In general, cool theme and components, boring, obsolete gameplay solutions from an era long past, basically Monopoly in the age of Brass or Food Chain Magnate.

HidaO-Win wrote:
Rolling dice for movement in a boardgame in TYOL 2025 is an incredibly interesting choice. Will have to see the full mechanic.

Something like 5 +D3 (+D3 if they run) could be interesting.

In that solo/co-op space I wonder how much backseat driving you can mitigate by not having it exactly certain where you'll end up each time - you'll kind of know, but a lucky roll on a turn or two might mean that suddenly you could take a gamble and push to claim something (a chokepoint, a treasure, have that space to vault an obstacle etc) a turn before you definitely could, but you don't know what your character (or something else's) is really capable of until their turn.

Kind of predictable, but not known.

That is kind of funny, anytime I'm looking up a game on BGG and see it's an 8 or better I'm like, "Oh this game is actually good." Yeah 7 is middling, if you have reason to like that kind of game and the theme you will probably like it, but if not it's likely nothing special. Even a game like Cursed City has really nice components and is a fully acceptable skirmish game, it's just a horribly boring game to play more than a half dozen times and has no meaningful campaign elements in a game where that's the point of the game.

SnotlingPimpWagon wrote:
Were any new era warhammer boardgames any good?
Should I actually expect my purchase being more than just about minis?
I heard a few ringing endorsements about Betrayal at Calth, and I love Space hulk from 200x
But don’t remember anything but “it’s ok” about any other games, like silver tower or the next one they did (the one with nurgle I think)
Oh, and heard good things about about the Khorne arena fighting one, but it’s not really comparable

Deathwatch: Overkill was actually good.
Assassinorum: Execution Force was brilliant except for the fact there was exactly one mission and no real variation, so you don't want to play it often.
WQ Silver Tower was a bit better than the average dungeon crawler. Blackstone Fortress and Cursed City are very mediocre though.
Never actually played Speed Freeks, or the knight or flyer ones, just bought them for the model discount.
It seems like the peak of board-game rules writing at GW was around a decade ago, and it's been downhill since then. Wouldn't hold much hope for anything released now.

RANDOM MOVEMENT!!!!

Johanxp wrote:
RANDOM MOVEMENT!!!!

Yeah, it's like GW just realizing they can't design like others do so they instead lean into it, knowing people buy their games for the models anyway Next step - advertise "retro game design" as nostalgia-bait ;D

Johanxp wrote:
RANDOM MOVEMENT!!!!

The best thing about Warhammer Quest: Darkwater...

https://www.warhammer-community.com/en-gb/articles/h2qdou5l/an-adventurers-guide-to-warhammer-quest-darkwater-the-basic-rules/

Biggest mechanical preview yet. Definitely a departure from Blackstone Fortress/Cursed City. Almost like they saw Gloomhaven et al using cards and decided to use cards without fully getting the stuff Gloomhaven achieves with its gameplay. Even with the safety nets the move roll will drive people nuts, will have to see what the encounter design is like.

Maybe it's my MtG brain talking, but putting the resources gained in front of the cost to obtain them seems... off.

You also can't use a card that's been expended, but then we're told you can expend a Move card to gain energy and then use the expended Move card anyway?

It doesn't really sound that user-friendly to me. Feels like convoluted-arsed change for the sake of it. Thinking I might explore the fan-updates to Advanced Hero Quest or something instead...

Feels like "Underworlds-Quest" this time around. For the time being I'm keeping an open mind.

Crispy78 wrote:
It doesn't really sound that user-friendly to me. Feels like convoluted-arsed change for the sake of it.

That basically sums up GW edition/game rule changes

You're not wrong!

Hmmmm... this rules preview concerns me. >.< Far too many steps taken from previous iteration (which worked worked well, imho) in one swoop. If they going to develop anything, it should have been a 'duel' system, an expansion of the breaking away from combat penalty, which is very much in line with the scale and nature of particlar heroes (also in my opinion).

I do wonder if Underworlds is doing *so well* in terms of sales that GW are looking to build on that - or if (Occams Razor) they have cut the Other Games team so much that they have only the developers from that brand to hand and that bringing the two lines together is their goal... which would be such a same (from an individual for whom the original WQ was their gateway into the hobby, fewll away for many a year, but was brought back by Silver Tower, before the next iteration of Necromunda hit)

It doesn't sound too bad to me. You need some complications beyond move, roll to hit, roll to defend or the user gets bored. This doesn't sound too complicated once one wraps their ahead around the idea that it's "declare action, spend card to gain resource, perform action," and not "spend card to gain resource, declare action costing that resource, perform action." And they're trying something a little innovative with the enemy AI dice.

Roll to move isn't inherently good or bad, a sign of bad game design or good game design, it can work in some contexts and be a pointless drag in others. In this case it at least thematically makes sense, you're moving across the rough terrain of this swampland and Nurgle infected abbey. It may work in terms of improving gameplay as you're working your way across pretty small hex maps, so not being able to exactly plan out how you'll checkmate Festus McBoillord in exactly four moves, and instead have to roll with the punches and let random wackiness ensue could be a good thing.

I'd perhaps have opted for variable move dice based on initial hex started from (were I in charde of rules, it would likely be first hex passed through instead as determiner of move value, with the scenic boundaries tht could have been an easy incorportation - but I'll admit that might be an overcomplication) through - some being d3, d4, or d6 - to allow variance but some anticipatory degree of scaling to allow for tactical decision.

SamusDrake wrote:
Feels like "Underworlds-Quest" this time around. For the time being I'm keeping an open mind.

Tell me you haven’t played Underworlds without saying you haven’t played it.

There is absolutely nothing in the rules they described in today’s article that draws on Underworlds.. not movement (beyond hex boards, which Blackstone shares), not combat, not vulnerable status, not activation, not a damn thing!

Had GW had leaned into Underworlds, then we’d actually have a damn fine game system upon which to base a Quest game.

 Clockpunk wrote:
I do wonder if Underworlds is doing *so well* in terms of sales that GW are looking to build on that …

To repeat the above, there is nothing here that is built upon Underworlds.

Bah, the dice for actions also being wounds taken was the best part of the previous system.

callidusx3 wrote:

SamusDrake wrote:
Feels like "Underworlds-Quest" this time around. For the time being I'm keeping an open mind.

Tell me you haven’t played Underworlds without saying you haven’t played it.

There is absolutely nothing in the rules they described in today’s article that draws on Underworlds.. not movement (beyond hex boards, which Blackstone shares), not combat, not vulnerable status, not activation, not a damn thing!

Had GW had leaned into Underworlds, then we’d actually have a damn fine game system upon which to base a Quest game.

 Clockpunk wrote:
I do wonder if Underworlds is doing *so well* in terms of sales that GW are looking to build on that …

To repeat the above, there is nothing here that is built upon Underworlds.

Its not the hard-wired mechanics of Underworlds, which is a valid point you make, but it honestly feels like the same minds that made Underworlds were given the task of overhauling the system for this Quest game.

For example, we no longer have tiles to make up the maps but underworld-style retangular layouts. We even have the half-used hexes around the edge of each Darkwater map, which wasn't in Blackstone Fortress. That alone doesn't suggest that Dark Water will play like Underworlds, but the feeling of Underworlds is there.

Where has the dice pools and action dice gone? Hmmm...we now have symbol dice that fell out of an Underworlds box, but they're used to decide the hostiles behaviour. Not the same function, because the symbol dice in Underworlds are for determining combat. But the symbols have the same feel as those used in Underworlds.

We no longer spend actions but roll for them, and it now involves ability and equipment cards. So to make an action we have to score and consider which card to play at the right time.

The character cards have a health track on the side, which I think is nice, but it seems to be only a health track instead of a wound reducing the activation pool in previous Quest games. This feels like a neat solution to the wound tokens of Underworlds which pile up on the card.


For clarity, I have Blackstone Fortress and Direchasm.

I like the AI dice

With this kind of design what, if any character advancement do you think it will have?

There doesn't look like a lot of design space to put advancement in.

It actually reminds me of hero quest, with a little more complication in the action cards component. Your advancement there was basically just equipment upgrades.

I appreciate the enemy behaviour dice system. But the card action system, the random movement and the simplified combat system is not for me. I return painting my WHQ 1995 Bretonnian knight :-)

callidusx3 wrote:

 Clockpunk wrote:
I do wonder if Underworlds is doing *so well* in terms of sales that GW are looking to build on that …

To repeat the above, there is nothing here that is built upon Underworlds.

You say to someone who has bought every set since the original Shadespire box? Get back under your bridge. If you cannot see the likenesses in play... well, that's your (weirdly wilful for some reason. Have you even played either game system, I do wonder given your response even) blindness.

Which part is like Underworlds tho?

The Underworlds part.

Uhhh, one game is played on a hexmap and the other game is also played on a hexmap... whadda I gotta do, draw you a freakin' diagram!!!

There are some visual similarities between the character cards and the three stats, and there's symbol dice, I can see how someone could instinctively feel like they were similar. Especially if they haven't played a lot of other GW games so that the SUPER common elements shared by most GW games aren't immediately apparent to them as such.

Of course this game is actually clearly like Battletech, and it's about time GW has had grounds to sue Catalyst back to the stone age for preemptively stealing their game design!

Isn't the combat system extremely simplified? It's fast for sure but seems quite boring too.