Warhammer Quest: The Silver Tower

If you're a regular reader of this blog you'll know by now that I'm especially fond of Games Workshop's older dungeon crawl games, namely Advanced Heroquest (which I'm attempting to recreate) and Warhammer Quest.

Both of these games have been out of print for many years as the Games Workshop focused on it's core games, Warhammer 40K and Fantasy Battle. Fantasy battle of course underwent a controversial re-boot, which hasn't won everyone over, me included and became Warhammer Age of Sigmar.

In recent weeks there has been various leaks on the internet regarding a re-boot of Warhammer Quest within the Age of Sigmar universe, the game is called Warhammer Quest: The Silver Tower. This seems to in-line with the current policy of putting back games into the Games Workshop, which has up until now seen a number of Warhammer 40K games released. This is the first fantasy setting game in the growing range and in fact it's the first fantasy game since the original Warhammer Quest.

Today I visited my local store and got to see a copy of the game. Here are my thoughts.

Warhammer Quest: The Silver Tower - Source: Games Workshop (2016)

I really don't like the setting of Age of Sigmar and I suspect Games Workshop are aware that they still have to win many people over in this regard. The setting of this game seems to be intended to appeal to both older gamers like myself and the newer fans of Age of Sigmar.

If I recall the Warhammer Old World lore correctly the Silver Towers were magical realms of the sorcerers of Tzeentch, one of four powers of Chaos, that in this case have survived into the new universe. This in my opinion is very clever move; along with retaining the Warhammer Quest name. There's enough of a nod to the old, highly regarded, games that preceded it, while at the same time moving onto the new.

The villains have a decidedly Old World feel about them, but Tzeentch is the changer of ways after all and so that fits well. This means fans of both the old and new game worlds will have some familiarity with them. I got to see the actual figures today and I especially liked the new cultist figures and really hope they get a release into the Age of Sigmar world proper, if they do I'll be buying into Tzeentch at some point in the future. The main Tzeentch character is a delightfully insane old-school demon wizard called the Gaunt Summoner, again a nod to days gone by and one the painters amongst us will surely want to get their hands on.

As for heroes they are very much from the Age of Sigmar. I'm a bit sceptical about the Stormcast Eternal as a hero, but apart from that you get new updated versions of the dungeon crawl barbarian, dwarf, elf (in this case an assassin) and spell-caster along with a warrior priest (and his pet Gryph Hound). Having more than the standard four character to choose from is, again, another nice touch which ensures there should be something to appeal to everyone.

The Heroes - Source: Games Workshop (2016)

So overall I think this looks like being a fantastic move for the Games Workshop and one I really hope pays off. If it does there are rumours that more expansions will follow. Rules also appear to be following the initial release which will allow more heroes, and possibly villains, from within the existing Age of Sigmar miniature range. With all that in mind the future's certainly looking bright for this one. Well done Games Workshop!

Personally it's been such a long time since I've been excited by the prospect of a new release. This one however has a good blend of old and new and ticks a lot of boxes as far as I'm concerned. So much so, that this afternoon, I went and pre-ordered a copy which should hopefully be with me in a week and a half. I can't wait!

Buried Treasure?

A while ago my father asked me to take some of the huge collection of old miniatures that'd I'd left behind when I left home, almost 20 years ago. Of course in recent years I'd built up a sizeable collection of my own which was filling my own home but I took a few figures that I'd found buried deep in a box and promptly forgot about them.

When I started painting metal figure were by far the best option, plastics were far behind the models you see today. But as time progressed they caught up and I found myself painting them and my vast collection of lead and white metal figures were discarded into boxes to gather dust. I remember at one point I'd do anything to avoid painting metals, so old and out of date was how I viewed them.

Back to the present and I wanted to try a new way of stripping paint and so I decided these old figures would be good for a test. The paint stripping was a success (and will feature in a future blog post). After reading an excellent blog, Realm of Chaos 80s, I began to to look at the figures and see them in a new light.

Sure some of them were certainly worth something on eBay, I'd seen some of the figures selling for between £5 to £50! But really I have no desire to sell them, I feel inspired to give some of them a chance to be repainted rather than cashing them in for a short term gain.

So what did I find?

Here's some of the highlights:

First up a set of figures from the 90's game Warhammer Quest. The Pit Fighter and Chaos Warrior were playable characters, the rest were NPCs from the Lair of the Orc Warlord expansion pack (left to right Gubbinz the Jester, Bogoff the Snotling and Growler the Squighound).

Next up was part of large group of undead, I seem to remember writing a lot of undead scenarios for Warhammer Quest. If my memory serves me well these are all 1990's Wraiths, with the exception of the figure at the bottom left. This one is a 1980's Wight, made from lead.

Finally we have a collection of hero figures that I used over several years. The Golden Wizard and the Dwarf Pirate were more recent figures. The 2 Dwarfs were part of a larger group I had when I played advanced Heroquest in the late 80s / early 90s (before playing Warhammer Quest).





So is nostalgia going to be all it seems? I certainly have happy memories of the times when I played games with these very figures and maybe I was wrong to write off these figures all those years ago. Will they paint up well second time round or have me rushing back to painting newer plastic and resin figures? Well keep reading and I'm sure future posts will hold the answers.