Chaplin, based on the interviews I’m reading, Rodeo took this opportunity to bring some of the lore in line with what is current for the Warhammer Fantasy world. When WHQ was published, they had not finalized some race and class names for WHFB and/or they have simply changed over time. Functionally, the classes should be the same as we remember them, just with updated names.
I don’t know if Games Workshop encouraged this behavior, or if they just decided to change it on their own.
It has been a few years so my memory is rusty. The original game was more or less a cooperative rogue-like with dungeons built at random and encounters generated one room at a time via cards as the party progressed. In the video there are just snotlings and goblin wizards, both of which are chumps (wizard spells depending). In the base game I think there were spiders, orcs, the tougher armored Black Orcs, and the dreaded Minotaur. The rooms were small (some were just hallways) and each one was an encounter chance. There was no real leveling up that I recall and all tactical choice came from loot or a character (class) special traits. The meat of the strategy and tactical choices were from trying to find the quest tile without everyone dying. Think Doom the Boardgame or Descent without an overlord, much more streamlined, built at random a piece at a time during play, and long before those games existed.
Oh the stress and excitement as the roll for new monster spawns when we were already hip deep in baddies and folks were near death. If I recall it was a roll of a 1 on a traditional 6 sided die that determined if another encounter was drawn. I remember the room we played in and the guys I played it with along with the outcry of “@&$@!#%” when a 1 was rolled , a follow up of slamming hands or thumping heads on tables when a Minotaur was drawn, furthermore followed by death, and finally quickly followed by setting up a new game. Good. Times. It was a tough game, but fun and one we played again and again. It wasn’t about leveling up; it was about not dying.
That said there were a million expansion packs. They were mostly character packs, but one was an RPG rules set that added a campaign structure, shops, more encounter options, custom encounter rules, and a whole lot of other stuff. Quest being what it was though, good luck getting far enough to experience much of that.
Having played a little bit if Hunters 2, I can envision a digital hybrid and it could be mighty tasty. In fact I worry 20 or 30 hours will seem too short. I am really hoping there is a sort of one mission/ start from scratch mode that has the length and difficulty of a traditional WH Quest run that will randomize quests objectives and encounters based on all the DLC I own so that I can still have that rogue-like experience. I would pay top freaking dollar for that, but don’t tell Rodeo.
Me too. I am now giddy as a school girl and dreaming of playing WHQ again in about 36 hours. Writting up that last post has brought back a flood of very fond memories. The copy I played most on was that of a gamer friend back in the day as copies even in the late 90’s were damn hard to find. I ended up finally paying a fortune to EBay around '99 or '00 to get a copy and drove across the state on a college trek home scooping up any expansions I could track down. God knows what my collection is worth now (not that I would ever sell it). Even today with a lot of the games clearly spawned in its image, nothing has really replicated WHQ’s experience.
In fact, with this flood of nostalgia, I am strongly tempted to reacquaint myself with the rules and dig out my copy for a little family game night with Kiddo tonight.
I think maybe I should ask a few people who aren’t overcome with nostalgia for game nights gone by with their friends! It just seems a little lightweight. I’m trying to be picky since it’s such a big time investment.
You’re actually right, Tim. The game itself, the mechanics, are pretty simple and repetitive. The game is not very good- there, I said it. What’s good is the experience. All the crazy stuff that can happen, both during the missions and between them at the settlements. The variety of monsters- the RPG supplement that chaplain was talking about was actually included in the box, and it had rules for every single Wharhammer Fantasy Battle miniature. You could get the minis or use proxies (like I did). It was (the first?) fully co-op random dungeoncrawl boardgame, packed with all the lore and style of the WFB universe. There still isn’t anything in boardgame land that has surpassed it in a lot of ways.
All that said, I have no idea how faithful a conversion this is. Some people have implied it is pretty spot-on, some have said it is essentially Hunters with a WQ skin. Time will tell.
And to add on to that. There are a few board games coming out later this year that are aiming in a lot of ways to pick up the, err, lantern that was dropped by WQ twenty years ago. The recent Kickstarters for both Kingdom Death: Monster and Myth are looking to do a lot of what WQ did back in the day. Fully co-op dungeoncrawls with piles of amazing miniatures.
KD:M has said explicitly that they took a lot of inspiration from the old WQ, though it looks less like killing hordes of monsters in a dungeon than Monster Hunter: The Boardgame. Myth seems to have more of the random story/dungeon exploration, monster swarms, loot/leveling, but with it’s own unique (and more modern than the dated, simplistic WQ) system.
Ok thanks. Maybe I will hold off for now. Agricola is coming out soon anyway, and I can only do one iOS game at a time.
I’d still like to play a dungeon crawl or tactical RPG like this. I’d prefer a boardgame conversion. So maybe I’ll end up back here eventually.
I haven’t played the boardgame, but this showed up in the PocketGamer UK interview, and I suspect it’s referring to the RPG supplement you’re talking about.
Question: One intriguing addition to the universe was the Roleplay Book, which allowed players to live out the lives of their characters when they weren’t raiding dungeons. Has this been incorporated into the iOS version?
Answer: Absolutely. That was one of the most compelling elements of the game for us. Back when we were researching the game we wanted to do next, we played weekly Warhammer Quest dungeons. Of course, the payoff for surviving a dungeon was going to a settlement afterwards and gearing up… or, more often, getting drunk in the tavern.
In our version of the game, players can traverse an area of the Empire, visiting towns to sell their hard-earned loot, buying supplies, drinking, brewing potions, and more.
We’ve also incorporated the “events” system from the original game into our version. Tramping round the Warhammer world is a really dangerous undertaking.
Travel time is measured in weeks. Every week the party is travelling, an event will happen to them. We have literally hundreds of these events in the game, ranging from encountering a convoy of prisoners (the player can attempt a high-risk rescue attempt, or leave them to their fate), to finding an enchanted pool which can tell the heroes their futures.
Sorry.
WHQ is/was rather simple. You didn’t have a lot of option of skills or abilities and your character really didn’t change much during a game. Basically you compared strength vs toughness over and over with a die roll to see if you and your teammates could kill off the monsters in a room while drinking beer and eating pretzels. Then go to the next room and repeat. The most basic of dungeon crawls. Very lightweight.
What stood out, as Don Quixote indicates, was the random elements. A dungeon generated on the fly without a DM using cards and tiles that was filled with just about any creature imaginable from a long built upon library of Warhammer Fantasy products. It was a cooperative board game that played like what we currently call a “rogue-like”.
How the iOS app will play out and what strategic meat it will offer I don’t know. Unfortunately all the information available is pretty much in this thread. I am guessing they are taking the RPG rules and running with them in a game not too far from Hunters 2 (there are plenty of reviews and videos on that game though). This would mean a fairly meaty (certainly for iOS standards) game played over time with skill trees, loot, and crafting that is not even close to what the original analogue experience once was.
WHQ iOS is probably a game not meant to be played in 5 minutes or an hour much like a xcom or turn based diablo wouldn’t be. It’s probably not designed to be a time waster/ airport app for a phone, but more along the digital board game revolution lines and meant to be savored on an iPad on a couch. That said, I am hoping for a traditional/ rogue-like mode more akin to the one run randomness of original and less in common with a Hunters type campaign. If so, this could also be played more as a time waster type experience as you would either win in 30 minutes or die in 5.
I hope that comes off as more fair.
I never played the board game, but I’m pretty pissed you don’t have the option to see your die rolls. A large part of the fun of these board game conversions for me is the transparency of the mechanics and seeing your die rolls.
Yeah, I saw that, and it really is awesome that that stuff is being included, but I (and chaplain) were talking more about the actual mechanics. Personally I wouldn’t be too sad to see the mechanics given an overhaul, but I’m probably in the minority there- like we said, the mechanics are actually pretty simple and uninteresteing. I have no problem with boardgames with simple-yet-deep mechanics, but WQ is not one of them.
One thing I hope they do change (or tone down a LOT) with regards to the random events, is the insta-death stuff. There were times you’d roll a die- even in a Settlement between games- and your character would just die. Permanent negatives, etc. I have no problem with- it’s a harsh world. Insta-death is no fun.
Is a “Maurader” the new lore version of the Barbarian? My GW is rusty, but I thought a Maurader was a warrior taken over by Chaos and the Chaos Warrior was a whole other (and totally cool) character class in WHQ that had random mutations. Does this mean the base game of WHQ iOS has a mutating warrior? Or am I behind the times on the names and the Chaos guy is named something else now and a Maurader is just a Barbarian renamed?
Been wondering about that myself. There are definitely Norse Warriors who worship Chaos (from my reading of the Legend of Sigmar Trilogy), as to whether all Norse Marauders are evil, that I don’t know.
My current plan is to pickup the Warrior Priest of Sigmar, particularly if he’s in the $2 range, and use him to replace the Marauder.
I found what may be the first review. Unfortunately it’s in Danish. They do seem to have liked it quite a bit (Score is 9). And you can more or less work out the cost of the DLC [Edit] The US Pricing is much cheaper than the Danish pricing! US Pricing is $2.99 per new Character and $4.99 for the Skaven Expansion.
I still expect I’ll probably get the Warrior Priest of Sigmar, but I’m going to have to play through enough to make sure I really like the game before grabbing him. So I guess I’ll have to put up with a Chaos Warrior on the team at least for a while. I hear the game’s pretty hard though, and team wipes are not that uncommon. So there may be a very “natural” point to swap out the Chaos Marauder.
Aye, they really like it. They say that a lot of the game already has stuff from the boardgame expansions in it. There are 7 major cities, but at the start you only have access to the one, and its surrounding dungeons.
Thanks Razgon! I knew someone Danish was up and reading the board :-)
hehe, feel free to ask about anything from the article, but the google translate works pretty well these days :-)
You’re right, Google translate actually worked pretty well! The language was rather stilted in a few places, but it was generally quite easy to follow along :-)
FWIW it looks like Agricola has slipped at least a week.
Wait. Whoa. What?!? Did I do the math right, is WHQ $28.24 for everything available on day one? Ouch, that is a lot more than I expected.
Still, while I won’t cough up $20 for Battle Academy, Battle of the Bulge, or a Cave Shmup, I will pay $30 for a well done digital WHQ. Although, don’t think for a minute I am not going to start a witch hunt looking for the responsible Qt3er; one of you must have squealed to Rodeo about my “top freaking dollar” comment. Sigh, I guess it is time to realize that just because it is on an iPad instead of any other platform doesn’t mean it is by definition a hollow 99 cent title. That said, I will want some feedback before I move past the $4.99 buy in. So I guess it’s time to try to juggle copy/ paste and goggle translate on an iPad.