Reevaluating Silver Tower Painting Effort
OK, so I may have underestimated the painting difficulty of the Silver Tower minis. Long story short: Having fun, but taking longer than expected. Rigor Ranking explained The number of miniatures tells you something, but not the whole story. So I went through and graded the miniatures based on the perceived rigor necessary to paint. Here’s my grading scheme: The updated table below shows Silver Tower jumping from a weighted average of 2.0 to 2.5. Quite a leap. Right up there with Blackstone Fortress. Here’s the updated details: Description Quantity Original Rigor Adjusted Rigor Chaos Familiar 8 1 2 Grot Scuttling 8 1 3 Kairic Acolyte 8 3 3 Tzaangor 6 3 3 Blue Horror 4 2 2 Brimstone Horror 4 1 1 Pink Horror 2 2 3 Skaven Deathrunner 2 2 3 Darkoath Chieftain 1 3 3 Excelsior Warpriest 1 3 3 Fyreslayer Doomseeker 1 3 3 Gaunt Summoner…
Qulathis’s Oaken Arrows
For being integral starting equipment for a major character, little information is provided about Qulathis’s oaken arrows. These three little tokens are powerful totems. So what are these arrows? Why does Qulathis have them? And why are they special? It’s easy to miss the only mention of them in the rulebook. At the very bottom corner of page 16, in Step 3 of Getting Ready to Play: “If a player picks Qulathis the Exile, that player also takes the three oaken arrow counters.” There are only a couple other mentions of them in the books. The first is on Quest Book page 16. The Quest Book shares some juicy info about how Qulathis stole “an arm-thick splinter of the Oak of Ages Past… and split it into magical arrows”, thus becoming Qulathis the Exile. Then, on page 27; how to keep track of them in a Decapitation Journey: Not pictured…
Cursed city terrain
As a follow up to my Blackstone Fortress terrain post, I’m sharing the atmospheric terrain that I sometimes use in Cursed City. Unlike Blackstone Fortress, Cursed City doesn’t use terrain within the game. I’m fine with that, the boards look great. Also, what kind of ranged attack would rats, bats, and zombies have? Cursed City is a sword-forward game. I’ve seen some people completely wall-in their boards. For some reason that doesn’t appeal to me. I have other fully walled games, but I like the unclutteredness of the CC board. So I use a few printed files scattered around just for fun. Mainly tombstones. https://www.myminifactory.com/object/3d-print-halloween-diorama-pumpkin-head-and-more-for-28-mm-32-mm-miniatures-192316 (crypt-flat.stl) https://www.myminifactory.com/object/3d-print-modular-cemetery-set-214060 https://www.myminifactory.com/object/3d-print-gothic-ruin-185114 https://cults3d.com/en/3d-model/game/cursed-city-style-pillar https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3706098 https://cults3d.com/en/3d-model/architecture/headstones-for-tabletop-gaming Honorable Mention Halloween base: https://www.myminifactory.com/object/3d-print-halloween-base-188781
Warhammer Quest at 30
It’s finally happened. 2025 is the 30th anniversary of the original Warhammer Quest. WHQ ’95 has had a pretty remarkable run. Other games from that era are still going strong as well. Necromunda and Mordheim come to mind. WHQ had a gangbuster year in 1995, but that was it. Two big box expansions, nine boxed hero expansions, three treasure card packs, roughly forty White Dwarf and Citadel Journal articles, and three Deathblow magazines (that largely reprised White Dwarf and Citadel Journal articles). But that was it. 1996 saw no additional content and game support burned out. All-in-all, pretty well supported, but ending all too soon. Talk about coming in with a bang! And also ending with that same exact bang. As I’ve said before, I wish I bought a copy back then. But I was exiting the hobby and it was substantially more expensive than any of its already pricey…
Da Red Gobbo
Not only did I print the cards for A Most Un-Silent Night, we got it on the table! Right at the end of the holiday season! There may have been some rule bending (breaking) to get us across the silly finish line. Not much paint on these minis, but we got a game in. I even whipped up some Gnawty Snufflers to have in the game. Pretty fun and even a bit stressful! Those reinforcements keep pouring in. Relentless! Here was my first look at it, last year: https://cutandassemble.com/a-most-un-silent-night
Radukar!
We did it! We beat Radukar! It took us years, but we did it! Spoiler alert below… Spoiler alert!! Don’t read unless you’ve completed the core game. There was definitely a difficulty curve to the game. The middle was where it was the hardest. We breezed through the Ven Alten triplets, and Radukar didn’t put up too much of a fight either. The final three vampires charged us on turn 1, and we chopped them all down. Second and third turns we got into positions, there were no reinforcements. Fourth turn we start shattering philactries. Radukar is now on the board. We smash 3 philactries, and attack Radukar, he’s down to one wound remaining. Radukar activates and attacks two heroes, stunning them. Jelsen is last. He rushes into the Nightguard room, smashes the philactry, runs out, shoots at Radukar and misses… With the final destiny die, he takes carefully aim…
Gorechosen Schemes
I’ve been on a bit of a Gorechosen/Combat Arena kick lately, and just started painting the models. Here are some great paint schemes. I need to pick a basing scheme too. I don’t plan to go all-out like some of these painters, they’ve outdone themselves! The Khorne models are a bit “samey”, but these painters have done a great job of differentiating the minis. I especially like the blue Skulltaker by Next Level Painting. It’s a little funny that even some of the newest things in my collection are a bit old now.
Painting Silver Tower
I just finished nine models for Gorechosen and I’m already looking at the next project. Next up is painting the minis for Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower and I wanted to estimate how tough it’ll be. The number of miniatures tells you something, but not the whole story. So I went through and graded the miniatures based on the perceived rigor necessary to paint. Here’s my grading scheme: I’ve already painted Blackstone Fortress and Cursed City, and I agree with my method. Cursed City minis were somewhat more demanding than the Blackstone models. Shadows Over Hammerhal doesn’t have as many figures, but they’re all either quite detailed or are heroes. I like painting, but I also like having models painted, so I’m heartened that Silver Tower doesn’t look as arduous (fun, but arduous) as some of the other sets. Everything is primed and ready go, about half have a base color…
Cursed City – Carried Items
Recently I completed the core Cursed City game. My group never made use of the Carried Item slot on the character card. It was a mystery the whole time. Spoilers below! After finishing the game, I read every Crisis in the Quest Book. Read no further if you wish to avoid crisis spoilers. We wondered what we were missing. Turns out, not too much in terms of game effect. I wish there were more of these/or that the odds were better of hitting them. It’s a fun and mysterious gimmick that we would have enjoyed. The odds of hitting the first part of these little side quests aren’t super great. We never hit one. Then, you’d have to have a hero carrying the item on the board, which isn’t guaranteed, there are eight heroes in the box + all the expansion characters now. THEN you have to get a lucky…
Finally finished: Aekold Helbrass
Big thanks to biggeek at cmon for an inspirational scheme. I honestly had a hard time “reading” this mini. There’s so much going on that the 14 year old me left it behind and moved on. Really happy with how this one turned out.