Fantasy Smackdown 2007 Part II

So a few weeks back I introduced you to a fantasy board game I like to play called Warhammer Quest. It fulfills the geeky little kid side of my brain that calls out to me, screaming for attention, like a spoiled little brat kicking and crying on the ground demanding a piece of candy. So I thought I would follow up that post with the conclusion of the adventure. A couple weeks ago John, Mike and I got back together to try and finish up the adventure.

Mike decided to add some paint to Thorgrim and created a new model to represent Garin the Bold (and the married).

The party was tasked with the quest to return an ancient dwarven crown…

"Between the Dwarf hold of Karak Izor and the Dwarf Sea Fortress of Barak Varr lies a small realm, a border principality known as Heldegrad. Normally allied to the cause of the Dwarfs, the rulers of this small state have been thrown into turmoil by the discovery of the ancient and long-lost tomb of their ancestor-Kings, renowned to contain the true crown of the realm. This labyrinthine burial ground lies near Karak Izor, and the king demands that the crown of his forefathers is returned to him by the Dwarfs or he will shut down all the trade routes from Barak Varr to Karak Izor. Not wishing to plunge the longstanding allies into bloodshed, and acknowledging the king’s right to the ancient crown, the Dwarf Lord of Karak Izor has allowed the your party to descend into the long forgotten tunnels in search of the ancient relic… "

Upon entering the dwarven tomb the party soon discovers a heavily bound chest that was locked and secured to the floor by massive iron chains. With raised eyebrows, the party concludes that likely their booty lies within. But without a way to open it, they venture deeper into the dark, dank tomb in hopes of discovering a key to its intricate lock.

The party finally makes it to the Tomb Chamber (Objective Room).

After dispatching seemingly endless hordes of undead and legions foes tainted and possessed by chaos, the stalwart party finally makes it to the tomb chamber of the ancient dwarven king.

Putting shoulder to door, Sigurd breaks the seal to the long forgotten tomb, as a rush of bitter cold air rushes past. Pushing the heavy iron bound door aside, the party cautiously steps into the ancient chamber, only to beset upon by a host of undead guardians.

Finally, with the undead put to rest, the party retrieves an old iron key from around the inhabitants neck (along with some sweet, sweet loot), and fights its way back to the chest they found early on in their campaign.

Using the key they found in the Tomb Chamber, the party unlocks the heavy chest, and much to their relief, find the ancient dwarven crown they had be in search for. Adding it to their already bountiful booty horde, they hastily exit the tomb and begin their journey back to the dwarven town of Karak Izor.

I forgot to take an overview picture of the dungeon, so I layed out the areas the party explored here.

Upon reaching Karak Izor, the heroes of the realm are welcomed back with much fanfare, returning the crown to its rightful owner. With a hearty handshake, the dwarven king thanks them and throws a huge banquette in their honor.

The End

More pictures here.

~Michael

Fantasy Smackdown 2007

Warhammer Quest… oh how I love thee. Let me count the ways…

I have mentioned a time or two that my local gaming group (3 counts as a group right?), Mike Churchill, John Beaty and I, have recently started playing Warhammer Quest. In fact we will be getting together tomorrow night to finish up an adventure we started last week, so I thought this would a good time to introduce the world of WQ to those of you who haven’t yet experienced this fine game.

I first got introduced to WQ back when I lived in Austin, roughly 8 years ago. My friend Luiz Gaipo invited me to play in a game he was running for Taj, Bill Ard and his wife. I knew nothing about the game, but I’m always up for trying new games, especially in the fantasy realm.

I played an Ogre, Bill played a Troll Slayer (dwarf), Angela played a Pitfighter, and Taj played the Wizard. We only got to play a few game sessions, but it was a ton of fun, and every since then I had been eager to play again.

Sadly, the game is out-of-print, but you can still find copies of it on E-bay if you don’t mind shelling out a lot of clams. I recently picked up a copy, with all the expansions, for $230. Ouch!

The game is a mixture of role-playing and board game. How much of a mixture is purely up to the players/GM, the rules are very flexible. In the purest form, it’s a board game with aspects of role-playing. The game supports solo play up to 4 players (can have more, but 4 is ideal). In fact, you don’t even need a GM.

How the game works, each player first chooses a character, or in this case Warrior, to play. There are a dozen or so “official” Warrior archetypes to choose from. Then you randomly select an Adventure from a list of 30 pre-generated adventures. Once that is out of the way, you randomly select 12 dungeon tile cards and add in the Adventure Objective Room card that was previously chosen. These cards represent the dungeon you must enter and explore to complete the adventure.

Sigurd Jarlsson the King’s Champion (Barbarian), Tanthalas (Elf) both played by John B., and Thorgrim Brokenshield (Dwarf), Garin the Bold (Wizard) both played by Mike C.

At the start of the game, the players place their Warriors on the first tile of the dungeon. Only tiles that they have explored are revealed. The rest are kept secret until such time. Each time the Warriors discover a Room tile a random encounter is generated. Once the bad guys have been dispatched, a random Treasure Card is generated as loot. The players can then decide who gets it, or they can alternate. The loot can be anything from gold, armor, weapons or magical items.

As the Warriors explore the dungeon they collect these treasures to help them complete the adventure. In addition, each time they slay a beast they get experience points in the form of gold. At the end of the adventure, they can exchange their gold for advancement their character a level, purchase better armor, weapons, horses, or a vast number of other things.

The game advances in phases and turns. Each turn is broken down into 4 phases.

* Power Phase
* Warrior Phase
* Monster Phase
* Exploration Phase

During the Power Phase the Wizard of the party rolls a D6. The amount rolled is how many spell points he has available to spend that turn (not counting Reserve Spell points). Any unused points are wasted. If the Wizard happens to roll a 1 in the Power Phase, this also triggers an event, which could be anything from a deadly trap, a discovery of a new room, or another encounter with more bad guys.

Their first encounter, the party faces off against a horde of undead guarding a heavily bound chest.

Once the encounters are dealt with, and assuming the players are still alive, they can continue exploring. The goal here is to find the Objective Room so you can complete the Adventure.

An overview of the map so far. The Heroes managed to clear the room, but we ran out of time to finish the rest of the adventure.

If the Warriors are successful in completing their Objective, they can choose to go travel back to town (which can possibly generate more encounters and events) or start the next adventure.

There’s a lot more to the game than what I’ve outlined here, but this gives you a basic overview of how the game works. If anyone has any specific questions, feel free to ask.

The beauty of WQ is you can make it as random or planned as you want. The game I’m running for John and Mike is a mixture of both. I created the dungeon, the Room encounters, the Objective Room encounters and then let the dice randomly selected everything else.

As Mike, John and even Bill will attest to, it’s a very addictive game, and one that I highly recommend to those of you who enjoy these types of games. You can see the rest of the photos here. I'll post the rest of them next week once we complete the game.

Until next time…

~Michael

Hank Cowdog's Modular Terrain

So one of my many hobbies is playing Warhammer 40,000, or as us "vets" simply call it, 40k.

Anyway... my friend Trey recently posted on his blog about a gaming table he was building to play table top games on, and we were discussing different terrain ideas, and I had mentioned an idea I had about premade modular terrain pieces that could be swapped out, rotated, and manipulated to create various terrain scenarios. Not an original idea I admit, but one that I was contemplating building back when I lived in Austin.

I also mentioned that a friend of mine, known in the terrain building circles as Hank Cowdog, was in the process of building some city scape modualar terrain and that I would take some photos of them to share the next time I was over at his place.

Well as it turns out Mike C. (Hank), John B. and I met up last Friday night at Mikes's house to play a little Warhammer Quest, so it was the perfect opportunity to take some photos of his masterful work, albeit, a work in progress.

You can see here an overview of the 5 peices he is working on.

Mike is working on 5 peices right now, but I only took photos of 4, as the 5th was still in its infancy stage.Each section is 9"x18", with a 3" border around the edges, making each piece a total of 12"x24". These "borders" will evetually be transformed into city streets, complete with textured pavement and paint. Perhaps even pot holes to make them even more realistic.

Notice the blown out door on the top floor.

The pictures really don't do thse fine pieces justice, but if you want to see the rest of the photo's you can go here to see them.

~Michael