"Catch you at a bad time... comrade?" - Blade We're vampire hunting in the Mortal Realms. How awesome is that? The very concept within Age of Sigmar has the echoes of the World that Was, but with that Age of Sigmar style. It's gothic, dark and grim, but epic.
What's going on here then? Warhammer Quest: Cursed City, is the latest in the Warhammer Quest line of miniatures board games. If you are an old dog like me you might have played the epic and sprawling original, where you delved into dungeons slaying Skaven and Orcs while looking for treasure. More recently, Warhammer Quest returned as games for the Mortal Realms, with Silver Tower and Shadows Over Hammershal, and then followed by the first Warhammer Quest game set in the 41st millennium, Blackstone Fortress.
Cursed City is a refinement of the latter versions, and clearly, an evolution of Blackstone Fortress, as we have similar dice, initiative tracking and game structure.
The premise is simple. You play, co-operatively with 1-4 players, a band of heroes from the city of Ulfenkarn, formerly Mournhold, as you strike out to retake the city from the voracious vampires of the court of Radukar the Wolf. many ages ago the city stood alone against the invasion of the Chaos hordes, before falling to a demon prince. Salvation came in the form of Radukar and his fleet. He was a vampire ogor (blimey!), and they defeated the forces of Chaos, and set up shop in Mournhold (a city of Sigmar in the realm of Shyish). Then more recently things when bad, as the Nagash (that bastard) inverted the very death energy of the realms, and created the Shyish Nadir, drawing in the underworlds that make up the realm of Death, and in turn, empowered those touched by death - including vampires. Radukar turned on the people of Mournhold, and so began a drawn-out predation on the city and the people of it. And so our band of adventurers and vampire hunters come to the rescue.
Cursed City revolves around the players taking a band of 4 adventurers - consisting of warriors, mystics and assassins - into the streets of Ulfenkarn to either hunt down the Undead, loot the city for resources in their quest, rescue people and escape the Suffocating Gravetide, or track and kill the court of Radukar. Gameplay is divided into Journeys. These are a refinement of the Explorations in Blackstone Fortress, but less drawn out, making it much easier to pause between Journeys (in Blackstone Fortress an Exploration was more like a series of the Journeys in Cursed City). Likewise line of sight and wounding is simplified. Overall, if you have played Blackstone Fortress then this game is going to be easy to get started in, while if you are new to games like this, the complexity is not that high (if you are happy with board games like Scythe for instance then this is much easier).
The game, being a Games Workshop game, comes with excellent monopose, snap-fit models, which have plenty of variation. You get 8 heroes, a legion of Undead warriors, and a bunch of characters such as Radukar himself. The game also has a bunch of tokens to punch out, and tiles that represent the city buildings and streets. Which should be awesome for games of Age of Sigmar: Soulbound. As an introduction to Age of Sigmar, and Games Workshop, for £125 pounds it could sound a bit expensive. And there are cheaper ways in such as the newer intro games for Warhammer Underworlds or tipping your toe in with the Mortal Realms magazine series. But this is also a self-contained game. You don't have to expand beyond what is in the box. And the theme of a gothic city with vampires is perhaps more relatable to fans of fantasy than say the epic high dark fantasy of the previous two Warhammer Quest games set in Age of Sigmar. The game structure is also such that there is a lot of replay value, as it will take a good 30-40+ hours to play through the entire campaign, with different tactics to explore with each of the heroes. And if you don't like painting models, then they snap together and come in two colours of plastic, making heroes and bad guys identifiable. I am sure in a few weeks time you will see on this blog images of my own models painted for this game and a further review once I have got some hours of gameplay under my belt. - Chris