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 predecessors. Add on the cost of the expansions and (whistle noise), that’s a lot of money back in 1995. I did pick up the Imperial Noble back then, but only because the Trollslayer wasn’t available.
Despite a boom (then bust) of support, and a high price tag, the game has aged EXTREMELY well. Sure, sure, it’s not a “modern” game. But you know what, not everything has to be modern. I’m not positive I’d enjoy a deck-building game as much as a miniatures-on-the-board-character-sheet-in-hand game. That’s totally a real hyphenated word. It’s German.
The remaining sets still floating out there in the world are hard to come by, expensive, and very desirable. I got into 3D printing to avoid the expense of acquiring an original set.
So! What does the future hold for Warhammer Quest?
As far as Games Workshop? Who knows. They run a tight ship. We won’t know until they announce something.
If I were running things? I would have spent the last two years developing a proper spiritual successor to WHQ95. It’d be set in the Old World (now that it’s back). It’d have a similarly massive Roleplay Book. But “modernized” in a way that is still palatable to the descerning WHQ coneseur.
And now for a list of changes I’d make to WHQ25
- Improved travel tables
- Perhaps a web or app based character sheet
- A variable activation system
- Rules/boards for a wider-open board system. The game can sometimes feel like walking down one very long hallway. The claustrophobic nature is great, but it would be cool to open it up a bit sometimes.
- Introduce more named baddies
- Allow heroes to move through friendly character’s spaces to reduce multi-turn bottlenecks.
- Add more value to store-bought items. We rarely buy anything in town. This might require toning down some of the treasure…
- Tone down, or create a treasure-level system. Littlemonk has a very good house rule for that if you use his Ultimate Treasure compendium.
- Don’t skimp on the minis! Also, keep them chonky!
- Have a narrative campaign. All the adventures in the box and expansions are linked one-offs. They don’t build on each other. The games with a GM may build on prior adventures, but we don’t play with a GM so I haven’t spoiled those quests by reading ahead.
Now yes, much of these can be accomplished by house rules. But, the marketing has worked all too well on my brain. I want Rules-As-Written improvements to my favorite game. Ohh, is it my favorite game? Maybe. Probably. Though I played Cursed City more in 2024. Blackstone Fortress too. Heroquest is up there. But WHQ is something special.
Warhammer Quest 1995 is a magical game that people still seek out. It’s a game people want, and other games want to be.
My fingers are crossed that we’ll see a reimagined version this year.
