Well I hope nobody stayed tuned, because it's been nearly two years ...
We never did finish the necromancer quest. We somehow contrived to lose or delete the photos showing the layout of the board, so we were unable to set it up again and continue from where we left off. Clearly the necromancer perpetrated some foul Saturday morning cartoon magic upon us in order to unlive for another day. We had him, I tell you.
We had him!
The quests thereafter followed the established pattern of quick and horrible death by suspiciously sentient cardboard and dice.
But today ... today was an epic tale worthy of remembrance! At least, remembrance in a quiet corner of a subforum where this topic is still on the front page after two years of neglect. Here we go ...
The party: a bog-standard reckless novice team of Barbarian, Elf, Dwarf and Wizard.
The quest: to get rid of some Orcs who had been bothering a village and, if possible, retrieve their precious golden statue. (Quest 3 in the Lair of the Orc Lord expansion, to be precise.)
After so many failures to complete or survive a single quest, we had come to the following conclusions:
a) Adding in the extra monsters from the Level 1 monster table is probably pushing the difficulty a bit too high for first-time heroes (they're more like Level Zero).
b) The Escape table at the back of the Adventure book is an important thing of importance and should not be forgotten. When the going gets tough, the tough get the hell out of dodge. Actually completing a quest objective is secondary to getting as far as you dare into the suicide zone, sorry, I mean dungeon, and then legging it with the gold and magical items you've managed to loot up to that point in the hope that it will better prepare you for the
next suicide zone.
However, we weren't willing to give up on all the added monster variety and restrict ourselves to the limited selection in the basic game. Instead we decided to rebalance things a little.
To this end we tried out a houserule we called "beginner's luck". Each hero started their very first quest with a single Luck token. This let them reroll one die affecting them during the adventure. (As characters advance in level, they can gain Luck points that renew each adventure, but this bonus starting Luck could only be used once per hero.) As well as evening the odds, it should give us a little more in the way of decision-making. Deciding when to use your one-use items or push your luck is a big part of
WHQ strategy--without it the game can become a robotic exercise in rolling dice and dying helplessly.
We also decided that when ... er ... if we completed the quest, we wouldn't have to roll for travel events on the way back home, because we could assume that the heroes were taking an entry-level job only a few days' travel from the village. And because by then it was time to pack up.
Finally, in order to theme the quest a little, we built our Event deck half from Orcy-themed monsters and half from random others.
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Our heroic endeavours opened with the brave party of four idiots, I mean adventurers, sneaking into the Orcs' lair through a collapsed passage in single file. Almost immediately they encountered a mysterious hooded figure sneaking
out of the dungeon. He gave them a curt nod, warned them to be on their guard (thanks Sir Obvious) and departed for parts unknown. "What a weirdo," we muttered. Little did we know that we may well have owed our lives to his unsung feats of monster-slaying ...
The first proper room we entered was a dingy cell with a skeleton in the corner. We should have paid attention to that skeleton. Our attention, however, was entirely taken up by the large rock that fell out of the ceiling and completely failed to flatten the Elf. Never spring a trap requiring an Initiative roll on an Elf. Especially one represented by the much niftier Advanced Heroquest plastic mini instead of the slightly silly "power of Greyskull" Warhammer Quest one.
Nonchalantly brushing a speck of dust off his cloak, he was just about to essay an eloquent and droll one-liner about the boulder that had missed him by a whole millimetre when the bones in the corner stood up and brandished a spear. Two more skeletons clicked out of the shadows. Undead? In an Orc's lobby?
The fight didn't take long--the Elf in particular managed to hit a skellie so hard with an arrow that its head must have come clean off--and we found a +1 Strength sword in the miscellaneous junk at the back of the room. Naturally the Elf purloined it. Unfortunately, the noise attracted the notice of several Goblin archers and a single spearman. The Wizard found enough power to unleash a fireball on three Gobbos, but despite having just two wounds each they all survived slightly singed (and the one undercoated white was clearly wearing asbestos as he wasn't bothered at all).
At some point in all this confusion (I forget when exactly), we were also set upon by ... six Skaven. Must have taken a wrong turn on the way to Albequerque. Wait, did I already use that joke? Miracle of miracles, the Barbarian went berserk almost instantly (he rolled a six in the first round of combat) and took off the heads of several Skaven with a single blow.
Everyone took a few wounds before we finally got rid of the motley crew, but we finished the fight in fine form. The paltry numbers of enemies so far suggested that the mysterious stranger we had met at the entrance had already taken a toll on the foe.
In the next room a sudden gust of wind blew out the lantern and we had to spend several nervous turns in the pitch darkness trying to relight it. The Barbarian asked if anyone had invented matches yet. The Wizard asked if he could just use his fireball to relight the damn thing. The Elf made a cutting remark about the usefulness of a melted lantern. The Dwarf thought loud and unprintable thoughts.
Just as we got the light lit again and prepared to move on, somebody kicked a clump of fungus. Half the room filled with toxic spores while the other half filled with healing ones. As everyone stumbled around either choking or frolicking with invisible butterflies, a distant whumwhumwhumWHUM sound was the Barbarian's only warning before a frothing Gobbo on the end of a spinning ball and chain windmilled into the room and smacked him upside the head. The dent in his skull took him to half Wounds in one blow. Meanwhile the Fanatic's mates gathered in the room behind us and started peppering us with arrers. (Arrers are like arrows, only they either do no damage at all or flukily kill people. Our dice are unanimous on this point.)
The Dwarf charged headlong back into the dingy cell to clobber the archers and somehow managed not to trip over his own beard. The enraged Barbarian again hit the berserk button (unsurprising really) and chopped the head off the looney with the ball and chain who had defaced his face. By now we had picked up a fair assortment of gold and special items, including two firebombs for the Wizard and a couple of one-use-only amulets. And nobody had died yet. Inconceivable! But the Wizard had to heal the Barbarian's head back to normal shape (by Barbarian standards), and himself partake of the Elf's generously proffered one-use healing potion after being arrowed down to a single remaining wound.
It was in Room 3 that things got hairy. And by hairy I mean scaly, followed by bony and grisly.
It was a custom room I've mentioned before, the Old Plaza. It has 5 x 5 squares instead of the usual 4 x 4, and three other exits rather than the usual one. What awaited us in this unsettlingly spacious chamber was Indiana Jones's favourite thing. They fell from the ceiling in a hissing and coiling mass and sent the Wizard into screaming convulsions under a pile of danger noodles for three whole turns. The rain of snakes also bestirred an axe-wielding Tomb Guardian, a super-skellie from the Catacombs of Terror expansion with the most Warhammer helmet that has ever existed. Then a pair of Ghouls climbed out of the garderobe to join him. More Undead, here, in an Orc lair? Had the warboss taken over an old tomb or something? Okay, okay, Ghouls aren't technically undead, but you know what I mean.
Sad to say, with the Wizard temporarily down for the count while he tried to extricate all the snakes from inside his robes and thus unable to offer any healing magic, the Elf copped a rusty axe in the neck and died with poignant dignity, or as dignified as you can get with a rusty axe in the neck. He did use his Luck counter but it didn't do him any good. Opinions differed on whether his final gesture--pointing dramatically to the Wizard writhing on the floor--was intended to mean "help him" or "that beardy bastard drank all my potion".
The sight of his cruel fate so incensed the Barbarian that he went berserk
again. I've never seen a Barbarian who goes from zero to biting his own shield so reliably. By the time the Wizard recovered enough to gasp something about his lethal one-use Finger of Death scroll, the crazed Norseman and the Dwarf had already scattered the Tomb Guardian's calcium components across the floor. One Ghoul was stabbed until it stopped moving. The other scurried off at warp speed. (Unlike most
WHQ enemies, Ghouls have morale and may flee when they take casualties.) Among the remains we found a Bane Scroll of the Undead. Clearly we weren't the first to try our luck against the room's guardian. How does the game
know this stuff?
Just as we were catching our breath and wondering what kind of prayers we were supposed to say over the Elf, a Goblin voice from deeper in the dungeon cackled "BOUNCE, MY PRETTY!" and a pair of teeth on legs bounded out of a doorway and leapt straight at the Wizard.
With a scream best described as "AAAAAAAAAAA" he hurled both of his firebombs at the incoming Cave Squig. It ate both fizzling bombs in a single gulp, paused, looked puzzled, and exploded. A gleaming gem flew across the room. The Barbarian caught it absently, then winced and sucked his singed fingers. It turned out to be a one-use healing spell amulet that the Squig had been unable to digest. The Wizard was left blinking at the edge of a soot-stained circle and smelling of roasted mushrooms.
From the dark depths of the doorway came a deep sigh and a muttered comment: "Continue da research."
So far we had seen several Gobbos, but not a single Orc. Their reliance on underhanded tricks and traps were starting to make us suspect that the local villagers had been exaggerating the threat.
Faced with three possible routes to the objective room, we decided to explore the doorway straight ahead first. Our suspicions that the greenskins had taken over an old barrow or catacomb complex were quickly confirmed. What lay beyond was none other than the HALL OF DEATH. (Dun dun dun, etc.) This room is from the Catacombs of Terror expansion and is basically made of skulls. It has three exits of its own, and each time you try to leave by one of those doorways, an event happens in the Hall.
However, by now the remaining dungeon cards had been divided among so many exits that only one room or corridor lay beyond each route in the HALL OF DEATH. The chances of the objective room being one of them were slim. Accordingly we backed off for the time being and tried the right-hand door from the Old Plaza instead. In this direction, we found an empty corridor, a right turn, and a spiral staircase leading down into the dark. Across the stairway was only a dead-end hallway. The objective room might well lie downstairs, but in that case we would have to crack out the Level 2 monster event cards. We were in no mood to run into Chaos Warriors or a Daemonette in our first quest with these heroes, so we carefully retraced our steps to the Old Plaza and tried the last unexplored doorway. (These moments of quiet where nothing happens can be among the most tense in
WHQ, because you can only move a few squares each turn, and at the start of every turn you roll to see if an unexpected event occurs.)
In the third direction we had to cross a highly dangerous (because high) bridge. You do not want to fight on that bridge. It is a bad bridge. On the other side lay a guard room with a secret door into a second objective room (a rather pretty fountain we decided to stay the heck away from). Then ... success! The Orc Lord's lair lay beyond. All we had to do was clear the room of monsters and then bring home the golden statue. Piece of cake.
Of course, before we could actually enter the throne room, the Wizard rolled the inevitable 1 in the Power Phase and a bunch of Goblin sentries pounced on us. Guess it really was a guard room.
At first mostly archers turned up, assembling on the far end of the very bad bridge we had just crossed. The Dwarf did another one of his famous charges, bellowing a warcry with his axe raised high ... and promptly rolled a 1 to hit. That sent him careening over the edge of the bridge into the abyss. Or it would have if his trusty rope hadn't stopped his fall. Unfortunately the rope snapped in the process and couldn't be used again, much to the Gobbos' delight. Meanwhile, back in the guard room, six more Goblins turned up--this time with spears. What was it with all these Gobbos? Where were all the alleged Orcs?
Some Barbarian berserkering, at least one fireball and an absolute shellacking dealt out by the Dwarf later (he hit one Gobbo with such force it essentially evaporated), we had cleared the pesky grots out and were finally ready to proceed into the lair. The Barbarian had picked up a Quake Scroll, which lets the user set off a weaponised cave-in. This would prove handy in the battle to come.
The objective room itself (Gorgut's Lair) is fairly complicated: it has three levels of floor connected by stairs, and a gaping pit at the entrance that heroes who flub their 'to hit' rolls can accidentally fall into. Once we were inside, we somehow managed to roll a 6 and get the easiest possible combination of denizens: the Orc Warboss Gorgut, six spear Gobbos and six archer Gobbos on the top platform. Of course, the overconfident Wizard went on to roll a 1 in the Power Phase and eight giant spiders abseiled down from the ceiling to join in the fun. Seemed legit for a Goblin-infested lair.
The Warboss launched himself off the platform and dive-bombed the Barbarian and Wizard with a predictably imposing "WAAAGH!"
In response the Wizard and Barbarian both whipped out their scrolls. Gorgut's brow furrowed at this untimely display of literacy. The Wizard tapped him on the nose and declared, "Finger on nose means death!" Gorgut aged decades in seconds like that bit in
The Last Crusade, stripping him of half his wounds. As the now withered and greenish-grey Orc stood blinking and swaying in confusion, the Barbarian read out his own Quake Scroll (or rather the Wizard read it for him and whispered the words in his ear so he could repeat them at the top of his voice). The ceiling collapsed and flattened Gorgut, two Gobbos and a possibly innocent spider under a very large 2 x 2 square of cardboard. I mean rock.
Well, that was a letdown. As it were.
But the remaining Gobbos and their pet spiders (or possibly spiders and their pet Gobbos) weren't about to give up. A spider climbed up the Dwarf's beard and gave him a double spinneret dressing down, pinning him to the wall with web. The Barbarian went berzerk
yet again--I don't think he'd had a single combat where he hadn't gone instantly frothing--but he missed his swing and nearly fell into the entrance pit, only saving himself at the last second by grabbing the painfully pointy spikes on the wall. After a long hard fight, involving much expending of Luck tokens and slogging back and forth around the three levels of the room to bump off all the archers up top, only one lone spearman remained to dispatch. Naturally the Wizard chose that moment to roll another Unexpected Event and cause six more Goblin archers to show up.
Le sigh.
Fortunately the cave-in blocked part of the objective room from view. Unfortunately this caused the Goblins to concentrate their arrowing on the Wizard until he finally succumbed.
When all the monsters finally lay dead, only the Barbarian and Dwarf were still alive. But we had done it! A whole objective room cleared of monsters for the very first time in our personal
WHQ history!
The treasures we found were a little dubious, including a potion that might or might not be lethal poison (clearly stolen from the boardgame Dungeonquest) and the innocuously named Axe of Blood, which I'm sure will definitely not cause the Barbarian to go even more bonkers at a moment's notice in future. A hasty rummage in the chest at the back of the lair revealed the golden statue we had been sent to find. But wait! What's this? A tiny hyperactive Snotling who zooms into the room, snatches the statue and runs off with it? Oh Mork ...
After some worried consulting of the rules, we concluded that it would be impossible to actually catch the little scoundrel with only two heroes. It would be like trying to win a chess game when you only have a king and a knight. After a few halfhearted attempts, the Dwarf and Barbarian exchanged glances and turned their backs on the lair. The statue was only worth a paltry 100 gold anyway. The little speed dial was welcome to it. The Dwarf had over 500G already thanks to the tendency of
WHQ enemies to explode in pinatas of money when killed, while the Barbarian's flattening of the Fanatic and Warboss had left him with over 1000G. They trudged all the way back to the entrance, clinging to their last few Wounds, ready to roll on the infamous Escape table should the dungeon pull any last-minute stunts.
Nothing happened.
We made it out.
And there was much rejoicing. Grateful villagers showered us in coin. Well, sprinkled us, at least. (We decided that since we cleared out the objective room, we should get the standard reward, but not the bonus because we didn't return the statue.)
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All in all, it almost felt ... balanced.
After only trying the 'beginners' luck' rule once, it's too early to say whether it's overpowered. The Barbarian did save himself from dying in the objective room pit at one point, and the Wizard was able to prevent a single Unexpected Event. Without the re-rolls we
might still have made it. Or at least the Dwarf might have. Probably more important was our miraculous tendency to roll very small numbers of enemies when they appeared, and the almost complete lack of creatures more powerful than Goblins and Skaven (contrasting with our usual ability to spring three Minotaurs on ourselves). That mystery man we met at the start must have done a fair bit of pruning. The Barbarian's stunning ability to roll sixes and go berzerk at the drop of a bat was also decisive, since it gave him two Attacks each turn in almost every round of every combat. We have quarantined those dice so the luck doesn't get rolled out of them before the next
WHQ game. Apparently the mere presence of Luck counters on our character cards convinced the rest of the game that we were lucky and should be treated accordingly.
It was a great little epic of a
WHQ game, though. As usual, the randomised events somehow cohered into a setting and story. Here we had a supposed Orc lair that was actually just a bunch of Gobbos squirrelled away at the back of some undead-haunted catacombs, preferring cowardly traps and tricks until their lair was directly threatened, at which time they mobbed us en masse. And their 'Warboss' was probably just some ordinary Orc who wanted to feel important by bossing the runts around. Not a single other Orc to be found anywhere in the place. Just the sort of grandiose-but-actually-petty job for hire that novice heroes might expect. But who
was that hooded man?
, then not only is the Wizard caught short with virtually no magic ... but an unexpected event occurs. Maybe monsters. Maybe a trap. Who knows.
