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[quote=Zenithfleet 806116 11402293 null]Me and a mate have been playing a fair bit of the original 1995 Warhammer Quest lately. I feel the need to jot down some of the ludicrous misadventures we've had down the dungeon. Most of which involve the hilariously unfair deaths of all concerned. It's got to the point that the Red Queen AI from the first Resident Evil movie is regularly quoted, hence the title of this thread. No photos of games in progress I'm afraid (my set is unpainted anyway)--just hastily sketched word pictures for your febrile imaginations to do something with. The photos I do use here belong to other people and are just to break up the text a bit. [img]http://www.coolminiornot.com/pics/pics16/img565f40efa34c4.jpg[/img] (Repeat, this is not my paintjob! From CoolMiniOrNot.) Now the thing about Warhammer Quest, the thing that makes it so beloved, isn't that it's co-op. Neither is it the random dungeon generation. It's certainly not the rather repetitive combat or the relative lack of genuine exploration (at least in the basic game). No, it that it's unfair. Infamously, absurdly unfair. This isn't the kind of game where you stroll through a carefully finessed scenario designed to make you feel excitingly endangered without suffering any real losses. Oh no. We're not in theme park territory here. This game means business. This game looks at your heroic party of four foolhardy randos--generally a Barbarian, Elf, Dwarf and Wizard unless you own the expansion character packs--and says: "Oh, you thought walking into a pitch-black underground maze full of monsters was a good career move? We'll see about that." No hero has yet survived two quests in a row. Ever. And to my recollection we've only ever completed one quest objective--the one where you have to get your stolen memories back. Occasionally we've escaped a botched dungeon and made it to the nearest village, but they never have anything worth buying and we never have much gold anyway. There was that one time a Dwarf got his clothes burned off by a random lightning strike and then the local shops had no clothes in stock, so he had to venture into the next dungeon clad in nothing but his beard--making him weaker than a starting Dwarf ... I should also mention that our WHQ setup includes the following, painstakingly gleaned over about a decade of scrounging: - The base game - Both official expansions (Lair of the Orc Lord and Catacombs of Terror) - The extra rooms and cards from White Dwarf - The Skaven mini-expansion from White Dwarf - Treasure packs 1 and 3 (albeit missing a few cards) - Custom cards that put many of the Battle-level 1 Monsters from the Roleplay book into the basic game, plus many of the Roleplaying events - The Dark Secrets cards from White Dwarf (which we only use on occasion) Generally we just chuck the whole lot into the mix as a great big randomised soup, and see what comes out. Usually what comes out is horrible yet highly entertaining death. For instance, we might randomly meet Skabnoze the Orc Shaman from the expansion while on a generic adventure to find the Fighting Pit objective room. However, we don't include the big bosses (Gorgut, the Dread King, etc.) unless our objective room calls for it. The fact that we have a few Roleplay monsters and events in there probably increases the difficulty a bit, but we haven't actually seen too many of those come out on the cards. We use the Settlements and travelling stuff from the Roleplay book, and have visited a few ghastly Monty-Pythonesque villages in our time as a result, but we haven't yet used the Fear rules (our Warriors have it tough enough already). But enough of this--on with the suicidal misadventuring. I won't recount all of our games here, just the ones that stick in my memory. Spoiler tags are purely to keep the size of this post down. If they're annoying, let me know and I'll edit them out. ------------------------------------------------------ [b]Skaven gonna Skaven [/b] This was one of our first games, which unfortunately we didn't have time to finish. I include it because it provided an early, memorable example of how the randomness of WHQ can throw up great little stories. [spoiler] At the time we were only using the base game plus a few custom cards--we didn't have the two expansions yet. It was the bog-standard adventure recommended as a good first play. We had to find the Fighting Pit and rescue the people imprisoned there from the Skaven. Naturally, the random card draws didn't turn up a single Skaven enemy for the entire game. Orcs? Yep. Goblins? Definitely. Spiders? Heaps. Rodents of unusual size? You betcha. Minotaurs? You don't see one for ages and then three come along at once. But not a single intelligent man-sized Rattus P Rattus in sight. Unthematic, you say? On the contrary! It made perfect sense. What self-respecting Skaven would risk his own cowardly hide to kill these intruders when he could send someone else to do his dirty work? We decided that they were spying on us through holes in the walls. At one point we passed through a room and found a magical shield. Hmm. How conveniently conspicuous. In the next room, the roof suddenly fell in. We hastily backtracked to avoid being buried alive. As we re-entered the room where we'd found the shield, no fewer than three massive Minotaurs jumped us from the shadows. A dastardly trap! Typical Skaven sneakiness! But with the help of that magical shield and some lucky rolls, the Dwarf managed to survive an absolute pummelling that would otherwise have left him quickly dead, and we were able to take down all three bull-blokes. It all made sense now. Clearly some scheming Skaven underling had left that shield there for us in order to embarrass his boss when the heroes survived his trap. Sadly we had to stop and pack up before we reached the objective room. Given what happened to the next few parties, these guys got off lightly ... [/spoiler] [b]We Don't Go to Karak Azgal - Part 1[/b] A fresh batch of heroes were tasked with sealing the 'hell's gate' portal that had opened deep in an abandoned Dwarf city to busily spew out monsters of all kinds from the Dark Lands. So in we went. [spoiler] Our priority was to keep the Wizard alive until we reached the final room, because he was the only one who could perform the abracadabra to complete the quest. We fought some Orcs in the first room. Nothing spesh. The Barbarian got hold of a 'Talon of Death' treasure, which as far as I'm concerned is [b]the[/b] Warhammer Quest treasure (it's shown in the rulebook as an example of a Treasure card, y'see). This funky little number is worth 500 G, and once per adventure it can can zap all monsters adjacent to the user. Remember this. It will be important later. There will be a test. A little further on, a portcullis slammed down behind us and a half-dozen zombies sprang up to ambush us. (This was a custom card of mine because I only had 6 Zombie models instead of the 9 needed for the standard encounter on the Monster table.) Presumably they were former victims of the Orcs. We took 'em out and continued on. So far, so good. The Dwarf got some useful Undead-killing ointment to smear on his axe, which came in handy later on. One or two challenging but defeatable rooms later (including some tough-as-nails Black Orcs), and much further down a series of corridors (including a collapsed passage where we had to walk in single file), we came to a corner. Now if you're unfamiliar with classic WHQ, I need to explain a few things. Under normal circumstances, events (such as enemy ambushes, or cave-ins and traps) only happen when you enter a room for the first time. Corridors are generally empty and involve nothing more exciting than a couple of turns of "move models, stop, nothing happens, move models, stop, put next piece of dungeon on table, fiddle with the chunky plastic doorway that has slightly shrunk due to age and doesn't quite fit onto the cardboard anymore, nothing happens, move models ..." However, even in the emptiest of empty hallways, you can't ever quite relax. Tension and anxiety hangs over the party at all times. Why? The dreaded Power Phase. At the start of every turn, the Wizard rolls a D6 to see how strong the winds of magic are that turn. The number on the die shows how much magical power he'll have for his spells that turn. But if the die turns up a 1 :one: , then not only is the Wizard caught short with virtually no magic ... but an unexpected event occurs. Maybe monsters. Maybe a trap. Who knows. And this can happen anywhere. Including a room you've already been through and cleared. Or a boring old corridor. It can also happen while you're still in the middle of a fight with the monsters that showed up last time you rolled a 1. And some events tell you to draw another event after resolving the first event. See how this can snowball? So we reach the corner, feeling that we're pretty close to the Hell's Gate portal based on the few dungeon cards left in the deck. Nothing of note usually happens in a corner--it's just a corridor that goes round a bend. But of course the Wizard rolls a 1 in the Power Phase. And who should show up but a Goblin Shaman, with a bunch of his gobbo mates. He promptly starts blasting us with spells. Who does he randomly target? The Wizard, of course. The guy we're supposed to be keeping safe because without him we can't complete the quest. So there we are, trapped in the cramped corner passageway. Surrounded by Goblins with spears. Peppered by Gobbo arrows. Continually zapped by Gobbo magic. Challenging, we think, but we've got this. The Elf gets into a position where he can use his bow and starts shooting at the Shaman while the rest of the team fends off the stabby spears. At this point WHQ decides to teach us a lesson in hubris. In the middle of the fight another unexpected event occurs. And then another. And another. First more gobbos turn up and surround us. Meanwhile the Shaman smacks aside the Elf's arrows with contemptuous ease and continues to blast away at the Wizard, forcing the Elf to heal him with his one-use potion. Then the Dwarf stubs his toe on a clump of yellow fungus in the corner, spraying spores into the air and causing everyone to choke. (Except the Barbarian, who takes a deep breath and declares himself inveegorated.) [i]Then[/i] it turns out that the thing under the clump of yellow fungus that the Dwarf stubbed his toe on was a mighty Undead Tomb Guardian. A creature of impressive stats and even more impressive hat. A creature sufficiently annoyed by this disturbance to his eternal dreams of deceased ladies that he clambers to his feet and lays into us with his axe. Who does he randomly target? The Wizard, of course. The Barbarian zaps the Tomb Guardian with his Talon of Death, but the dead bloke is unimpressed. (Tomb Guardians have a nasty ability to regain lost wounds at the end of the turn, and they have a lot of wounds to begin with, so if you can't knock them out quickly you can end up in a stalemate.) The Dwarf anoints his axe and wallops the spooky scary skeleton, to no avail. But wait, there's more! Half a dozen Skaven scurry in from the unexplored darkness of the next doorway and pile into us. Yet these were but a foretaste of horrors to come--for in the next turn a huge Rat Ogre charges bellowing into the room and goes straight for the Wizard. Of course. Thanks, White Dwarf freebie card. The Dwarf dies to a Gobbo arrow in the eye. The Elf dies to a Skaven blade in the waystones. The Wizard is thoroughly squashed by the Rat Ogre. Quest failed! The Barbarian decides to take his chances with the dreaded Escape table in the back of the Adventure book. He rolls to see if he can at least get out of this deathtrap with his life and his hard-won Talon treasure card. He ends up fighting his way through hordes of Orcs and Gobbos and is knocked all the way down to a single Wound, but he survives to reach daylight. On the way to the nearest village, alone and near death, he stumbles onto a caravan of his kinfolk. Or rather the charred remnants of said caravan. Everyone he knew was slaughtered by Beastmen while he was down the dungeon. He falls to his knees and lets out an operatic "NOOOOO!" But he befriends a small dog in the next village, so that's nice. In the alehouse, he toys moodily with the Talon of Death that he salvaged from the disastrous expedition and decides to try again. (We randomly roll up exactly the same Quest as before.) He gathers three fresh heroes to join him and heads back into Hell's Gate. Which leads to ... [img]https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ec68QEn2ITE/hq720.jpg?sqp=-oaymwEhCK4FEIIDSFryq4qpAxMIARUAAAAAGAElAADIQj0AgKJD&rs=AOn4CLDWxox5TE2JBmKQcGjuW_aFI3W7Fw[/img] (Not my photo! Just included for flavour.) [/spoiler] [b]We Don't Go to Karak Azgal - Part 2[/b] The Barbarian saunters in for his second attempt at this quest, accompanied by three newbies. This time he'll have his revenge. Right? [spoiler] In the first room we meet a Snotling with a rusty key. He will give us the key for 500 gold. At this point WHQ decides to point and laugh at everyone who claims the game has 'no meaningful decisions'. The Barbarian's Talon of Death is worth precisely 500 gold. But will the Barbarian (played by me) surrender the precious item after everything he went through to get it? Of course not. He clutches it to his manly chest and swears that no stupid little green thing will ever touch it. Or touch the Talon. And the only other choice on the event card is to attack the little snot. So we do. He drops the key and screams for help. A boulder falls out of the ceiling and smacks the Barbarian on the head. Being a Barbarian, this does not overly bother him. But it does shove him into the corner of the room. Which quickly becomes a problem when half a dozen Skaven crawl out of the hole in the ceiling and down the walls like it's the freaking Mines of Moria and start stabbing us. Now a mere six Skaven should not, under normal circumstances, be more than a mild speed bump. But of course WHQ has other ideas. Everyone promptly forgets how to hit anything (except the Skaven, who know very well how to hit particular things, namely our nether regions). The Barbarian can't seem to land a hit on the lone ratman blocking his way out of the corner to help the others. We have never seen so many 1s rolled by heroes and 6s rolled by monsters. In the middle of this supposedly straightfoward fight that is rapidly turning deadly due to absurd dice rolls, we roll another 1 in the Power Phase. A mob of Orcs turn up to find out what the commotion is. Guess what happens. Once the Elf and Wizard are dead, the Dwarf and Barbarian try to wade their way back across the room to reach the entry door and escape. The key word here is 'try'. A mere three squares of movement might as well have been a mile. The Barbarian even uses up his once-per-quest Talon of Death zap to liquefy the lone Skaven who just won't get out of his way. It doesn't help. Yep, we all die in the first room. And it could all have been avoided if the Barbarian had just paid the damn Snotling. :facepalm: :D [img]https://www.taleofpainters.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/100_0367.jpg[/img] (Not my paintjob--far too good for that!) [Edited because I misremembered fighting Dark Elves--actually they were Black Orcs.] [/spoiler] [b]Da Brolly Korporashun[/b] By this point we were a bit sick of the standard Elf, who is a solid character in theory but in practice has an astonishing ability to a) suck and b) die. Also, the plastic mini for him is my least favourite of the four official WHQ heroes. Instead we brought along the Elf Ranger, an expansion character. (We used the metal Mordheim Aenur figure for him.) [spoiler] The random quest started [i]in media res[/i], revealing that we'd already been on an adventure only to be captured by Goblins and chucked in Gobbo jail. They had then decided to let us out for entertainment--but without our weapons or armour. The prospect of exploring a WHQ dungeon armed only with bare fists and underwear felt awfully Ghouls 'n' Ghosts to us, but what choice did we have? The rules of the quest stated that the first enemies we fought would be carrying our weapons, which we'd get back once we defeated them. The next set of enemies would be carrying our armour. We just had to hope that we'd run into something weak, like bats ... Yeah. As if. Several dungeon tiles of cautious exploration failed to turn up a single monster of any kind. Ahead lay a T-junction (presumably with a big helpful sign saying "DIS WAY TO DA EXIT!!!") We turned left and crept down a collapsed passage that ended in, well, a dead end. The Dead End from the White Dwarf bonus rooms, to be precise. This has special rules: you can dig through it if you take the time, but unexpected events are more likely to occur there. Just as we were debating whether to dig or turn back, though, the game solved our dilemma for us by springing an Ogre on us. Of course--this must be its lair. Just where the Gobbos had wanted us to go. [i]"Yooz all gonna die down 'ere!" [/i] - da boss of da Brolly Korp, probably Now an Ogre isn't quite as tough as a Minotaur, but it's not exactly the kind of thing you want to meet without a sharp bit of metal handy. When it hits, it hits [i]hard[/i]. We also made a mistake here by misreading the Wizard's fire spell and thinking we couldn't blast the Ogre without catching the warriors adjacent to it. We realised afterward that the spell only affects Monsters, not Warriors. Oops. Long story short, the Barbarian ended up as squishy paste against the wall before we managed to finally punch, kick and noogy the Ogre into oblivion. At least we had our swords back. We retraced our steps and tried the right junction instead ... and ran straight into a wall of Dark Elves. Oh joy. Total party kill, yet again. The irony of course was that no matter whether we'd turned left or right to begin with, the top event card would always have been that Ogre. Of [i]course [/i]it would be the first enemy we ran into in a quest where we were unusually weak until we'd beaten our first enemy. Typical WHQ. Can you hear it smirking? I can hear it smirking. At this point we reorganised the Event cards a little so that some of the tougher monsters were quarantined in a separate deck that would only be encountered if we went down the spiral stairs (another White Dwarf special room). [/spoiler] [b]Mini-boss Meetup[/b] This was quite frankly one of the weirdest random dungeons we've seen so far. [spoiler] As mentioned, we don't include the big bosses from the expansions in the regular randomised deck. We only put them in if we know we're playing a game themed around that boss. That's because each boss dwells in a particular location. For instance, the Dread King lives (unlives?) in the Land of the Dead, and isn't likely to turn up on his dread kingly throne in some random room under a hill in Middenheim. But we do include the mini-bosses. That's because, fluffwise, each expansion has a mini-boss character who travels all over the land and could reasonably be encountered anywhere, while pursuing some nefarious scheme or other. Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time ... Our goal in this adventure was to find a mystical fountain and take samples of the water for some wizard's new waterslide, or something. I forget. Anyway, it quickly stopped mattering once we found out what was *really* going on down this particular dungeon. For this game we put the regular Elf back in, and tried out the Chaos Warrior. Or 'Mr C. Warrior' as he carefully styled himself. He replaced the Barbarian for the game. One of the funniest conceits of WHQ is that the Chaos Warrior character is incognito. He keeps his armour and helmet on so that the other heroes won't realise his true allegiance. Naturally the miniature fits the fluff perfectly and does not have any prominent giveaway symbols on it anywhere, like, oh, I don't know, horns or eight-pointed stars. [img]https://tinyurl.com/yckrh89k[/img] (Not my paintjob!) Really cool mini, though. He just screams mid-90s Chaos. The Chaos Warrior is a bit complicated and random (surprise surprise). This particular one turned out to have a special blade that could parry enemy attacks, along with a poisonous bite. How exactly he made use of said poisonous bite attack without the other heroes twigging to his true nature was a matter of some debate at our table. Nonetheless we imagined it functioning rather like the mouth-inside-a-mouth of a xenomorph from the Alien movies. At least at first. We assumed that he had a hinged jaw on his helmet to allow this snapping mouth to snap out. For this game we also each had a Dark Secret card from White Dwarf. In the Chaos Warrior's case, he was secretly being pursued by monsters because he'd nicked something valuable from them a while back. The monsters would turn up during the game if the Power Phase roll was the same number twice in a row. Remember this. It will be important later. There will be a test. The very first room of the dungeon turned out to be the Shaman's Den, a new room from the Orc expansion. And the event card for the room--drawn totally at random--was none other than Skabnoze the Orc Shaman from the same expansion. I tell you, sometimes this game acts like it's haunted. [img]https://garrapitopinturil.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/img_20160910_194551.jpg?w=724&h=543[/img] (Believe it or not, this is ... not my paintjob!) Anyway, we managed to dispatch Skabnoze in fairly short order. Or rather he slipped on his ring of invisibility and originality and vanished, possibly to return later in the dungeon. We then promptly rolled a 1 in the Power Phase and, drawing another event card totally at random, discovered a series of footprints in the dust leading to a secret door. While we were contemplating this further evidence for WHQ's sentience, yet another event triggered and a pinata in the ceiling burst to rain Snotlings with clubs. Six of them surrounded the Wizard and completely failed to hit him. The Elf was so busy laughing at this farce that a lone Snot was able to clamber up behind him, bop him on the head and leave a nasty bump. Still, we cleared out the Snots pretty quickly too. The Chaos Warrior was proving to be a powerhouse so far. Searching the den after dispatching the Snotlings, we each found a Talisman that would help us get through the valley of fi... I mean deflect one attack per adventure. Score! We decided to ignore the secret door (it led to a silly place) and instead proceeded to the next room. This proved to be a large one with four doors (a custom plaza I was trying out). The event card for this room was ... Skreek Deathstrike, the Skaven Assassin mini-boss from the White Dwarf expansion! How curious. [img]http://www.coolminiornot.com/pics/pics7/img41a888c2de2c9.jpg[/img] (Skreek has no official model, so I used this guy for him. Not my paintjob, of course!) Unfortunately his stats proved quite weak and we lopped off his head in no time. (Think we'll give him an extra ability for next time.) Picking one of the doors at random, we entered the third room--no corridors at all so far--and things went south fast. That old standby the 'Spore Fungus' card knocked the Wizard out cold for three turns. The perfect time for three Minotaurs to turn up? Don't mind if they do! By the end of that very long battle, the Dwarf was dead and the survivors weren't in the best of shape. We had also made far too many jokes about the Chaos Warrior's bite attack hitting enemies below the belt, which had led us to revise our opinion of his mutation and decide that he had a hinged codpiece instead. Yes, we are adults. But before we could leave the room, some kind of invisibility spell must have worn off ... because standing there watching and stroking his goatee and muttering "Curses!" was none other than Gunther Larenschald, the Necromancer mini-boss from Catacombs of Terror. [img]https://www.picclickimg.com/d/l400/pict/184886410917_/Undead-Necromancer-Gunther-Laranscheld-Warhammer-Quest-Tomb-Kings.jpg[/img] (NOT MY PAINTJO ... wait never mind) What was this, some kind of mini-boss convention of evil? What dire plot had we unwittingly stumbled into on our way to the fountain? Clearly something of vital importance to the safety of the Empire was going down here! The Minotaurs had obviously been his private security force. Gunther was accompanied by his trusty book on a stand (a metal miniature that just screams "we ran out of ideas for another character to include in this expansion") and several of his girlfriends, or at least their animated skeletal remains ("what a lovely bone structure you have, my dear ...") Fortunately he himself didn't take long to deal with. He didn't even get to fire off a spell before we clobbered him. His bony bonny lasses, on the other hand, were annoyingly persistent thanks to their regenerative ability. At this juncture WHQ decided we were doing far too well and needed taking down a peg. Yep, the Power Phase roll came up with the same number twice. The vengeful pursuit had caught up with the Chaos Warrior at last. They turned out to be a *fourth* Minotaur and a mob of Orcs, bursting into the room baying for Mr C Warrior's blood. We then drew a Treasure card to find out what exactly he'd stolen from them. It was unlikely to be helpful, since Mr CW can't use a lot of the stuff he finds, but you never know. It might just save the day. It turned out to be ... ... wait for it ... ... three gold pieces. WHQ likes its little jokes. Naturally we all perished utterly in the ensuing melee. Much dark alluding to cursed Pirates of the Caribbean gold was done. Much crunching of bones and sucking of marrow was enjoyed by the Minotaur. The moral of the story is: don't trust mysterious armoured men with large and suspicously hinged codpieces. To add insult to injury, the next quest made it clear that Gunther had survived like the Saturday morning cartoon villain he is. Tune in next time ... etc. [/spoiler] If anyone is insufficiently bored by these stories about the onion on my belt, I might add a few more in future as they happen. Watch this space. Or, um, don't. (Also, is it just me or is Dakka's image-linking facility totally hopeless? I spent about an hour trying to find images on the web that would actually show up in this post ...) [/quote]
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