I’ve been
having the family over for Christmas and therefor haven’t had much time to
myself, which again means that I don’t have any news on the Oldhammer front. I
did, however, find time to sit down with my brothers and play through the campaign
of Fantasy Flight Games’ (FFG) new card game, Warhammer Quest – The Adventure
Card Game.
The hunt
for the ultimate “dungeon crawler” is sort of an obsession for many
board-gamers. I believe the general consensus is that there’s no such thing – each
game has some kind of imperfection that keeps it from greatness, whether it’s
unclear rules, too-simple gameplay or simply being overly fiddly. My personal opinion
is that Advanced Heroquest is the dungeon crawler that’s come closest,
but many would probably name Warhammer Quest as their all-time favorite. That’s
why, when FFG announced they were doing a card-game version of it, many were cautiously
excited. It’s not really what they were hoping for, but FFG does maker very good games and a
card-game version of an old favorite is better than nothing. So, when my brother
brought it over for Christmas we immediately decided that we had to finish the
included campaign before the end of the holidays.
Well, we
did finish the campaign, so I thought I’d write a bit about my impressions.
I won’t
waste time describing the rules. They can be found on FFG’s site
it you are interested. The game itself is relatively simple anyway – most of
the intricacy comes from the interaction between different cards.
FFG has
done a very good job of differentiating the characters and enemies. The various kinds of enemy feel very thematically appropriate; goblins are weak,
but dangerous in numbers, Skaven are unpredictably dangerous (especially
jezzail and warlocks) and orks are tough and scary. You will fear the nastier
kinds of critter and you might actually come to loathe a certain cunning old ork (which is nicely out of character
for “Newhammer”) who just won’t stay still when you try to wack him over the head.
The heroes
also feel pleasantly unique. My only gripe is that there’s only four of them available
in the base game so you’ll quickly run out of new combinations – especially if
you play with more than two people at a time. I’m particularly impressed by the
feel of progression you get from the game. At the end of the campaign we were accomplishing feats
we couldn’t even dream of in the beginning – all with very little
rules-overhead, which is especially remarkable. You just add an effect here,
switch a card there and boom! Suddenly you’re a bad-ass.
 |
| How you'll feel at the end of the campaign. I love this picture by the way - Its by this guy |
Art-wise
the game uses a lot of FFG’s stock Warhammer art, which aligns closely with the
later editions of Warhammer. That means everything is as over-designed as you’d
expect. See this big ork:
Actually,
the art is undeniably gorgeous (and, thankfully, there isn’t a “sigmarine” in
sight), so I find myself willing to suspend disbelief for a while. I don’t know
– maybe it’s just because it’s drawings and not miniatures, but the
cartoonisism (not a real word, I know) doesn’t bother me as much. Besides, FFG does know when to dial it back, as
exemplified by the wonderfully moody location cards.
All in all,
it’s a very, very good game. Each quest takes, at most, an hour to play through
(including set-up), which is nice and fast, but when you combine them into a campaign, it still feels appropriately epic.
It’s not
the “perfect” dungeon crawler and I suspect that, as a card game, it won’t ever
be, but it does scratch the same
itch, and at a low price, with easy rules and a low play-time it definitely has
a place in my collection – as will any expansions that may be released in the
future (you hear me FFG? Bring out the expansions!).
Merry Christmas
Croaker
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