Monday Skirmish - Warhammer Quest AND Super Dungeon Explore

This week was rather eventful in terms of gaming, as I didn't really expect to get anything done in that regard, and it kinda borked up my plans to get my Elf Ranger Mage mini painted and posted.

I actually got in three games of Warhammer Quest and a game of Super Dungeon Explore. It was rather amazing fun. We even actually survived more dungeons of WHQ then we lost, which is amazing in and of itself for level 1 heroes.

The first couple games of WHQ that was played was my wife, her niece, and myself. We had a party made up of the Barbarian and Wizard (controlled by my wife), the Elven Ranger Mage (being controlled by yours truly), and the Dwarf (by the wife since we figured the Dwarf was a good straight forward character for a newbie).

The first dungeon we had to do was in the Fighting Pit, in which the warriors were tasked with killing the two prized minotaurs that were in the objective room at the end of the dungeon. the threat of having the objective room worth of monster spawn on us at any moment was also hanging over us the entire way. Something amazing happened though, they dungeon went stupidly smooth. We didn't get any unexpected events the entire path down, and we mauled each monster event that got in our way. It felt rather odd to have a dungeon go so well for us. Even the fight against the minotaurs was rather easy since we had the Elven Ranger's War Crown and the Wizards Fingers of Death scroll to use, which made quick work of the two minotaurs easily within the two turns we were allowed. My Elven Ranger's Sword of Aenarion spell was amazing that dungeon and I really felt he earned his keep, but of course the Dwarf always seemed to come in and strike the killing blow and take the credit (and the gold) for the kill. Smelly under handed Dwarves, what do you expect, am I right?

The second dungeon was more or less what we normally run into. I remember the Fire Chasm objective room being drawn, but for the life of me can't recall what our mission was going into things. The dungeon was made up of four dungeon rooms in a row (mind you, this was right after we just played a game, so the deck was well shuffled by this point), and the power die procced an unexpected event at least once in every room. It took us a long time to slaughter our way into the forth room before we had a cave-in event collapse the roof on us and end our ability to go forward anymore. Although we didn't die, we simply could not go forward any further in time before the cave-in would take effect so had to call it at that point.

The third game took place the next day with a friend of ours. The make up was the same, with our friend taking control of the Barbarian. We got the Idol Chamber mission to retrieve the sword of the elector counts. The dungeon again went pretty strange for us. First the power die never rolled terribly for us for most of the dungeon, it wasn't until we were in the objective room fighting that all the dice just refused to cooperate. The second thing that was rather weird was the fact we somehow only got hallways, and when it came to t-junctions the barbarian somehow kept us on the right track (which meant of course all the dungeon rooms were on the other route). In the end the Elven Range Mage managed to take the sword without the guardian coming to life and hitting one of us like a mack truck. Afterward an unexpected event occurred which of course made the Ranger trigger a pit trap and almost die. We recovered from that thanks to the Dwarf rope, only for the Cave-In event to follow up, which meant the warriors ran out of the Objective room. Apparently holding the sword of the elector counts is to accept a curse onto oneself.

We decided not to worry about doing any campaign stuff since this was most likely last time we'd be able to play a game with her anytime in the foreseeable future and got out Super Dungeon Explore for a romp. Because we haven't played in a while, it took us a while for me as consul and for everyone else as players, to get back into the swing of things. I picked the lava board thinking I would hinder the players a ton, and all it did was slow down my own mobs since the players never even got into that board. Our friend picked up the barbarian girl (don't recall the name) to keep the theme going, my wife picked the Ember Mage, and her niece picked the Holy Paladin. The first spawn point went down really fast, I wasn't at all expecting that and started to think I may well lose some thing fierce, but it came down to the same old thing that let me win. I simply choked the pathway between the first board and the second with spawns until Rex and eventually Starfire could join in. I will say that the Kobold mage's buffs are freaking insane and a huge part of why I was able to pull out such a long entrenchment in that corridor. At that point it was just a matter of time. It certainly didn't help that the Ember Mage was rendered almost useless on the boss fight as soon as Starfire spawned because of his immunity to fire.

In the end, it was a fun few games. I am finding that my WHQ boards are starting to warp, bend, and twist due to age and use, so I need to start looking into something to do as a replacement. problem with that is the coop factor that WHQ has that I have yet to find in another game. SDE, Descent:JItD, and other dungeon hacks I have come across so far all require some type of GM figure to play the bad guys. Unfortunately my kids don't like that type of playstyle, so that means we don't get to play those games as frequently as I would like.