A few interesting things about Darkwater in these early, early days.
Descriptive text from GW
We’ve really only see the cover art and a couple blurbs. A couple blurbs you say? Indeed. There are two pages up with (minimal) info about WHQ:DW.
The most widely circulated link is the Warhammer Community post: https://www.warhammer-community.com/en-gb/articles/b7qzhmxz/announcing-warhammer-quest-darkwater/
Evil lurks in the dark, there’s something in the water, and the whole of Ghyran is under threat.
It’s probably time to gather together a band of heroes, renegades, and misfits, and go on a Quest…
That’s right! An all-new Warhammer Quest game, set in the Mortal Realms of Warhammer Age of Sigmar.
What perils await our group of intrepid adventurers within the ruins of the Jade Abbey?
However, there is also a Start Warhammer page up: https://start-warhammer.com/darkwater
Warhammer Quest: Darkwater is a thrilling cooperative dungeon-crawling board game set in the world of Warhammer Age of Sigmar. You and up to three companions will lead a band of adventurers into the Jade Abbey’s hallowed halls. Along the way you’ll find treasure and equipment to help you on your quest, and root out the corruption that threatens the heart of this sacred place.
Tell me more about this Jade Abbey. I’m intrigued. Is the Jade Abbey a ruin in the Mortal Realms that we explore, or are the Mortal Realms in ruins? It’s ambiguous. Still intrigued.
Potential Tie-Ins
- The latest Gotrek novel Verminslayer was set in Ghyran. Greywater Fastness to be more specific.
- Where does Verminslayer rank on my favorite Gotrek books? Sadly, quite low. The ending picks up, but I had to compel myself to finish the book. Not my favorite.
- Contemporary White Dwarf magazines have been running a five part serial called The Trials of Albarak. I don’t remember if Albarak’s realm is mentioned, or how long ago it was. This may be just an unrelated fun dwarven tale, but Albarak is a ranger-type dwarf, I imagine similar to the one on the cover. Could be nothing.
Branding
There’s a branding change. I like the cover overall, though it is a bit formulaic/derivative of prior WHQs. The text design is quite vanilla compared to previous iterations. It’s not quite to the level of a Cracker Barrel rebrand, but it’s definitely tamer, neater. It’s interesting that there’s a little skull logo on the lower-lefthand corner. Do we have our own little WHQ insignia now?
Gameplay
Hopefully this is compatible with Cursed City, since Cursed City isn’t directly compatible with its predecessors.
The permutations of grind weren’t that fun. We played a handful of the adventures and skipped right to the meat.
I hope there are more than just four heroes in the box. Give us a generous game please!
Speaking of generous. Please give us more character, flavor, and between quest activities. That stuff is fun too. Cursed City had next to none.
The Art
Take a look at the art from those two pages. I think the greener image is the final copy that will grace the boxes. The lower, clearer image appears to be preproduction. There are a number of changes, arm poses, fighter’s pauldron & lantern placement, the knight’s ribbon becomes a twin-tailed ribbon to match the axe. There are also lots of other, even smaller details that change between the two illustrations. I’m not going to posit that AI was used, because all of this can be explained with filters, layers and all the magic of digital illustration.
Like the internet has said, it’s very classic fantasy, with Cities of Sigmar details thrown in. Also, who are those poxwalker looking troll guys in the back? So I’m seeing five types of hostiles here, plus…
I think the biggest thing that I haven’t seen anyone mention is the TENTICALS!!!! There’s F’ING TENTICALS IN THE WATER!!! SHUTDOWN ALL THE GARBAGE SMASHERS ON THE JADE ABBEY LEVEL! This may be a “Gravetide” type mechanic. Though I kind of hope not, I didn’t love that aspect of Cursed City, but we’ll see.
Don’t forget the stuff happening at the bottom of the page! What is this craziness!!!
All-in-all, I’m excited. I’m glad to see a new WHQ. My favorite game series (don’t tell Heroquest) is back and I’m happy about it.
Less dungeon delving time and more interesting in-between quest events is important to me.
It’s what I noticed from Cursed City, a lot of players think the game feels too long and grind-ey. The lack of civilisation interaction (your typical village, town, city, etc) was also mentioned.
That’d be great. That’s one of the fun things about ’95 is its more roleplay-y aspects. It’s easier to feel a connection to your character when there’s more to the game than just combat.