Old Game Workshop games, which ones to check out?

Here's all I should have to say about Warhammer Quest: The last time I played, we picked this scenario where we have to go into the dungeon, get some artifact or some such, and exit through the door we came in. Have to exit through that door. Turn 1, we walk through the first corridor and then draw an event card (or roll on a chart? I don't remember which). Cave in. That corridor is now impassable for the rest of the game. Not even 2 turns in, we haven't done a_ny_thing, and we lose.

Classic GW right there. Let's put some ridiculously hard-hitting random thing in there and not spend the 30 seconds it takes to realize what a bad idea it is, and how easily it could torpedo the entire game. WQ is full of shit like that. Poke your head into a new room... AMBUSHED BY 20 SKAVEN! You're completely surrounded, so don't bother trying anything like running away, or getting to a safer spot. You can't move for the next half hour, so just keep rollin' them bones until you find out whether or not you live through it. You probably won't. It might help if you keep telling yourself this is fun.

Oh, and who's genius idea was the rule that only the guy with the torch gets to reveal a new board section? It's not like the Barbarian doesn't already get to do the lion's share of the killing as it is, which is all there is to the game anyway, let's marginalize all the weaker characters even more.

These are just transparently, I'd even say objectively boneheaded design choices. I've never seen any game this side of Candy Land that goes so far out of its way to keep you from making any sort of consequential decision yourself.

This is why I've been arguing with the people treating Dungeonquest as if it's some kind of holy grail that FFG somehow violated. A lot of GW productions in the late 80s and early 90s were completely luck-based AND included dice. DQ and many others like it are fundamentally bad designs if you want to have a consistently enjoyable experience. The reason that people like me play it is because the one high out of 5 plays is memorable (and the other 4 are still somewhat amusing for the grisly manner of one's demise.) Talisman and Fury of Dracula pretty much stand alone in terms of the non-Warhammer/40K setting as solid games and I think FFG made decent improvements to both.

As for the 40K-based games, I have all three (Doom of the Eldar, Battle for Armageddon, Horus Heresy) and each has their charm and strategic depth. If you can avoid killing the Emperor in the first turn, I think HH is almost there with BfA. Doom requires some real luck on the part of the Eldar player (thematically appropriate, if you know the story.) I may be the only person that actually liked FFG's redesign of HH, but the original is still a solid game (again, barring the first turn mishap) and probably still cheaper, at this point.

i agree. What makes GW dungeon quest so good is that it is suicide quest.

They are sort of like Nethack, for those with good knowledge of PC games. You know going in that the game is going to bend you over and hump you. But this means when it doesn't the victory is that much sweeter, and when it does, as Jackwraith has said, it's sort of funny. They aren't smart games and don't live up to modern standards, but some times screw modern standards i want something that is refreshingly oddball with stupid rules.

Blood Bowl is my favorite GW game and is totally playable out of the box. Surprising amount of tactics. Yes it shines as a league game, but is still fun as a one-off. Typically you can field teams just using your old D&D minis or minis from other games. My Tailsman halfling (3rd ed) plays for my fling team.

I am also a fan of Necromunda. My roomate at the time and I pooled our money and bought a copy when it first came out set it up and played it that night, then played it again and again. The leveling up is such a hook. Ended up playing until we had to go stock shelves at Target at 4 AM. That was a long 8 hours, but when we got home... yep we played some more. Ahh to be young again.

I love Necromunda. I'm pretty fond of almost all of GW's Specialist Games (Necromunda, Mordheim, Battlefleet Gothic, Epic Armageddon, Blood Bowl.) The only one I've never played is Warmaster. A friend and I used to play Necro regularly. We had a couple of the terrain sets, so we always had the right setting. We each had a normal gang (Delacque, Cawdor) and an unusual gang (Spyrers, Skavvies) and played lengthy campaigns with both.

He and another friend of ours once got into a three-game campaign of 40K, Epic, and BFG. Space Marines/Imperials vs. Tau vs. Orks. I have both SM and IG fleets/armies for BFG and Epic, so I could fill the story in wherever one Imperial force was more appropriate than the other. It was a blast: 3 totally different play styles in three different games. I barely play any GW games, anymore, which is really a shame considering my ridiculous collection (which I should probably sell, one of these days...)

I only came into this hobby in the past five years, and my conservative Christian upbringing meant that GW would probably not have been in our house, assuming it had even been on my radar. So my experience with GW games has entirely been through FFG, with the exception of Space Hulk.

Here's the ones I know:
- Space Hulk: This is a pretty badass game, if you ask me. It plays quick, is very clean, and remains one of the most Ameritrash games ever. Really good if you can find it.

- DungeonQuest: I've only played the FFG version, but I really love it. My only real complaint is that I find the graphical style to be a little too serious. It's pretty dumb overall, but it's over in a hurry and is actually pretty fun to watch if you fall down the bottomless pit on your first turn.

- Fury of Dracula: Along with Battlestar Galactica and Merchants & Marauders, I think that Fury of Dracula is one of the best Ameritrash games ever. It combines some really amazing narrative with great strategy and tactics to make one of the best experiences available today. How different is it from the original? Don't know, never played the original. But man, this game is terrific.

Also, if you like the settings from GW but aren't as concerned about the games themselves, FFG has actually done some amazing work with the license. They arguably have a better grasp on how to design in Warhammer and 40K than GW themselves. Death Angel, Blood Bowl: Team Manager, and Chaos in the Old World are all very good, very thematic games. And I am told that Warhammer: Invasion is also great. So there's another option.

I'm currently in a Mordheim campaign thats just starting. We've done two turns but i haven't picked up a battle yet. My beastmen must be patient apparently. I've played a bit of necromunda but none of the other specialist games. Both are good games, but you've got to have some love for building terrain and painting models etc. Also for the amount of physical investment they aren't the most strat

DukeofChutney wrote: i agree. What makes GW dungeon quest so good is that it is suicide quest.

They are sort of like Nethack, for those with good knowledge of PC games. You know going in that the game is going to bend you over and hump you. But this means when it doesn't the victory is that much sweeter, and when it does, as Jackwraith has said, it's sort of funny. They aren't smart games and don't live up to modern standards, but some times screw modern standards i want something that is refreshingly oddball with stupid rules.

Or Talengard... Don't forget that PC game with the drunken/aspberger's CPU playing as DM.

I have always liked Blood Royale -- the entire "bloodlines" and inter-marriages of kingdoms make it awesome.

mjl1783 wrote: Don't let the reputation fool you; a lot of the old GW stuff is not that good, and the ones that are good are all pretty deeply flawed. Also, just about everything worth playing from them has been reprinted by now.

Oh, that's probably true, I just find it intriguing when games from twenty years ago are still being played, it indicates they did something well and that there's a good chance there's a great game down there. And I'm all for good games. Well, no, I am not, at the end of the day, if a game can't be totally awesome, chances are I really won't get it.

So I'm thorn on Block Mania, since

So as far as the concensous goes, I will probably find few stuff I really like there, specially since I never play games with only two players and the coop experience is already taped in my group and it doesn't seem Fury of Dracula is that awesome from what I read. Dunno, I'm a demanding fellow.

I almost got into Necromunda and Battlefleet Gothic but at the end of the day, those are 2P games and my friends would rather play WH40K for better or worse. BFG miniatures are also expensive as fuck!

I'm surprised to hear you guys not liking Warhammer Quest, I thought it was an amazing dungeoncrawler with lots of depth! Amazing how these things can go =P

mjl1783 wrote: Advanced Space Crusade... don't even bother with Space Hulk if you can get that one for $100. It's so much better.

It is? Do tell me about it! I see old copies of those old GW games being moved around and while I don't think I will play two player games soon, it's always important to have this information in mind, specially if I can get someone from a club to play it with me one day or two.

I also wonder. Would it be a good idea to get an older version of Space Hulk? What are the differences between the editions, feel-wise? I hear people clamoring for older rules but there are so many blind fanboys out there you never know!


Have to say, you guys really know your stuff, this topic is golden, thanks!

Space Ghost wrote: I have always liked Blood Royale -- the entire "bloodlines" and inter-marriages of kingdoms make it awesome.

Laws, yes, how could I forget Blood Royale? Well, possibly because although it was and is utterly unique it was also a mechanical mess that took all day to play and eventually petered out in an intractable morass of complex marriage contracts and dynastic calculations. But there is an awful lot of wonderful game in it to salvage if someone took the time and effort. As I observed in the past, for all the effort FFG pot into revamping the GW games, it's Blood Royale that would have benefitted the most. But sadly, they haven't bothered yet.

It is? Do tell me about it!

It uses a few similar mechanics to Space Hulk, but it's much more of a comprehensive tactical system.

In SH, the marines are boarding these derelict craft that have been taken over by the Genestelers. You see the entire map from the outset, and know right where you're going. In ASC, the marines are boarding these living Tyranid ships, so they only see the parts of the map where there's a battle.

The marines get split into three squads, and each one gets an exploration deck to represent them groping their way around the ship. They turn a card over each game round, and it's either a random event, an ambush, or one of the scenario objectives. The latter two will trigger a battle, and that's when you actually get the boards out and play with the minis. However, the Tyranid player has a zoomed-out map of the ship that he moves his aliens around on with these blips in secret, so only he knows where the marines actually are on the ship, and what kind of aliens are aboard and where.

The battles work kinda' sorta' like SH, except that in that game, the marines can move, shoot, and go on overwatch, the Genestealers can move and attack hand-to-hand, and that's about it. ASC lets you choose between aimed fire or snap fire, you can dive prone to avoid grenades, there's cover you can use, reactions to enemy actions, things like that. SH is a little simpler and faster playing in this respect, and it has a few mechanics that vaguely approximate some of those things, but ASC's tactical rules are just more standardized and fleshed out.

The game is a little anemic out of the box, since you only get a few squads of scouts and a handful of Tyranids even though there are rules for using all kinds of other 40k stuff. I've never played it with just the basic stuff it comes with, but I'm told it's actually a much tighter game that way. So, you know, make of that what you will.

Also, it's been years since I played it, so that description might not be totally accurate.

I also wonder. Would it be a good idea to get an older version of Space Hulk? What are the differences between the editions, feel-wise? I hear people clamoring for older rules but there are so many blind fanboys out there you never know!

That all depends.

For starters, the changes between the first two versions were mostly trivial. The biggest thing they changed with the 2nd edition were the flamer rules, which work just fine as long as you're playing scenarios that were designed for those rules. The new version made some drastic changes that swung the balance way too far in the marines' favor. If you're new to the game, this might not be that big a deal to you, and I did win the one game I played as the Genestealers (which puts me around 10-0 I think). I just had to completely forget everything prior experience with the game, and logic itself, ever taught me about playing the aliens.

But at any rate, you can play any of those editions with any version of the rules you like. The 3rd edition has more content than the other two, and the components are obnoxiously badass, so that's your best bet.

On the other hand, the 1st edition had the Genestealer expansion and the campaign book. This added rules for psychic combat, and Genestealer-human hybrids that could shoot back at the marines, so you got standardized rules for incorporating a lot of other 40k weaponry and units if you wanted to, plus the new board tiles and components it took to make it all work. A lot of people think all of that over-complicated the game, made it too chaotic, and generally made a mess of a perfectly asymmetrical system. If I had my way, I'd never play without it. The game just doesn't stay interesting without all of that variety.

Plus, if you did have the whole shebang for the original SH, you'd have most of what you need to use the full ASC ruleset.

Blood Royale looks like such an awesome game. I love the idea of binding negotiation and negotiation having huge gameplay effects down the line, it just reeks of evil plans and machiavellian machinations. How long is it? I don't trust BGG for this stuff anymore.

Besides the lenght and the bookeping, what's bad about it? It sounds very cool, cool enough to be listed in my "cool garbage" list.

@mjl1783

Interesting, thanks!

I played Warhammer Quest for the first time last weekend, and it was meh. It really suffers from Alpha Dog syndrome, as the players can't split up so you all have to move together and stay in the same room (because you have to be near the player with the torch), and events happen to the group rather than individually so there is only one obvious response, so one person can completely dominate.

I was just handed dice occasionally to roll and chose to hit goblin to the left or right of me.

Erik Twice wrote: How long is it? I don't trust BGG for this stuff anymore.

Memory is shaky - it's been years since I played - but I'd guess 4-6 hours.

Erik Twice wrote: Besides the lenght and the bookeping, what's bad about it? It sounds very cool, cool enough to be listed in my "cool garbage" list.!

The problem I had with it (aside from the admin overhead which you mentioned) is that the details marriage contracts come to dominate the game. Players make peace, ally, form complex, binding deals with one another which eventually ban a lot of aggression and leave tiny armies fighting over the tiny areas of the board that haven't been covered by a detail somewhere. When it gets to this point, it becomes difficult for any one player to win and we used to often abandon the game.