The Chaotic History of Warhammer Quest | Part 2: Silver Tower & Shadows Over Hammerhal
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- Опубліковано 4 сер 2024
- #warhammer #boardgames #gamesworkshop
In this video I explore the deeply ruinous development history of Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower and Warhammer Quest: Shadows Over Hammerhal, the chaos steeped reboots of the 1995 dungeon crawling classic from Games Workshop. Is one of these games the greatest GW boxed game ever made? Sure, maybe!
Check out part one for the secret history of the original Warhammer Quest and some of the earliest spin-offs!
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Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
03:13 Silver Tower Design
07:20 Heroes & Villains
11:04 The Art & Fiction of the Tower
12:54 Silver Tower Expansions & Apps
15:11 Shadows Over Hammerhal
17:32 GMs, RPGs, and the WFRP Hammerhistory
18:49 Hammerhal Expansions & Extra Content
20:15 Conclusions
Correction: A quick note to clarify an error I made in the career timeline for Silver Tower designer James Hewitt - he worked at Mantic Games on Dreadball and other titles before joining GW and developing Silver Tower not after as I said in the video. After leaving GW he led development on the Hellboy game as a consultant from his new company Needy Cat Games.
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This was a really interesting watch. Thank you!
My pleasure, truly. Pretty sure I should be thanking you not the other way around - thank you for such a wonderful game (and for the lovely comment!)
@@jordansorcery I meant it! Very well researched.
Slop is based on artwork from Mordheim. I'm surprised Mr Webb didn't recognise this - we were in the same gaming group when he was a teenager and we played the hell out of Mordheim.
He did indeed call out the connection, it was just an oversight on my part!
Silver Tower sounds really freaking fun!!! Wish they were still making it ;_;
I absolutely loved playing through Silver Tower, it’s wickedly good fun!
I think God Specific beastmen were a thing in WFB 6th as well as the 3rd RoC.
Pestigors and Khorngors got their own models.
But Tzangors and Slanngors had to wait for AoS as you point out.
You’re quite right, I totally blanked on them for some reason!
It’d be fun for the to revisit the original when The Old World gets released.
I’ve got Blackstone Fortress & all the expansions. I enjoyed the setting & the minis.
That’s a great point, I’d love to see an Old World WHQ revival! And even just replacing some of the minis with updates could be great fun!
Hopefully part 3 will give you a few new bits of interesting BSF history too!
I hope that The Old World game is so successful that GW dives fully back into the old world with all kinds of specialist games. I’d even be happy if they used the modern WHQ (Silver Tower and SoH) rules with a new old world setting WHQ game. Bring on the WHQ revival!
Now that would be something!
Love this series. As someone who came late to WHQ, its neat to see the journey the franchise has taken.
Thank you so much, I’m glad you’re enjoying them! I’ve discovered so much I didn’t know before whilst making them, it’s been a lot of fun!
Yes yes yes. Love this Warhammer quest content 💪
Fantastic, I’m glad you’re enjoying it!
The “Fish” familiar is from the side art in the Mordheim rulebook
Oh fantastic find! Makes sense that it would more directly reference something given the others are so clearly inspired by GW history.
Loving your content and learning lots. I missed out on WHQ as a kid, but had both HeroQuest and Space Crusade (and have both original games again as a 40 something year old - plus the HeroQuest reprint). Space Hulk and WHQ are on my wishlist - fingers crossed I can pick up copies of these both one day. They are hard to find and expensive here in New Zealand.
Thanks! They can get very pricey in the UK and I’m guessing it’s even more costly to get them to NZ. Your list is, for me, some of the best board games ever made, well worth a game if you can get them!
@@jordansorcery I scored a copy of Silver Tower in NZ today. Opened but unplayed and still on the sprues. I kinda blamed your video when I told my wife I brought it :D on a positive note - I got it for an amazing price. Thanks heaps for reinvigorating my interest in this game.
Silver Tower was my first GW Board Game. Love it.
Great choice for a first GW game!
re: expansions, I believe the Chaos Adversaries card pack was designed for Silver Tower, not Shadows Over Hammeral. It significantly increased the variety of foes the heroes can face in the Tower. I suppose I could have the timing off, but I'm pretty sure it was for Silver Tower. Also: the fiction included in the Hammerhal box is pretty great.
The back of the adversaries pack lists both ST and SoH so I think I came out post Hammerhal, but you’re totally right that it is clearly designed for ST as well. I like it as a quick fix for enemy variety, but I’d have loved something more substantial to expand the Tower too. And completely agree on the Hammerhal fiction and books - they did a brilliant job with those!
Thank you for this video. I am coming late to Silver Tower. After this I will have to buy.
Thank you for watching! Silver Tower has given me so many hours of fun, hope it does the same for you!
God specific beast English were in 7th Ed WFB too, Khornagors and Pestigors even had minis
Right they were, can’t believe I forgot about them!
Subscribed :) I'd love to watch a series on the history through the editions of all the different factions in fantasy/aos, if that's something that would ever tempt you :)
Thanks! Now that is not a bad idea at all…
I always loved Tzeentch and I didn’t know about Silver Tower. The asymmetrical tiles and story sounds awesome !
It really is a terrific dungeon crawler - the Tzeentchian theming is perfectly done in my opinion
These are some fantastic videos..
Thank you!
Great series. Quick shout out for James Hewitt's other great gift in Boxed game form: Blitz Bowl! Just picked up Lost Relics ... glad to see that 'modern' WHQ is still alive and well.
Thank you! I’ve never played Blitz Bowl, but I’ve heard such good things. Hewitt just put out hit after hit in his time at GW!
I regret not buying Shadows over Hammerhal. I loved that it required a DM, which is always my role, but as a Slaanesh enthusiast I was extremely pissed off at the lacking of Slaaneshi minis both in the game and the extra adversary cards. Sometimes later a friend of mine brought it and we played together with a few other friends, and it was the most fun with a boardgame I think I ever had, and discovered that the plot twist at the end was about Slaanesh. By the time, it was too late to buy it.
It’s a good game that definitely gets overlooked (even by me), but it’s in the company of some true greats so it’s hard to measure up! Great that you got to play it through in the end at least!
love your videos and depth of the whq content
I’m glad, thanks for watching!
That was fast!, thanks for the vid.
Am still wondering why GW keeps releasing such awesome games and k illi ng them almost inmediately, its just pure madness, BUT now I understand why these games are so expensive on secondary market.
Greetings from México.
Thanks for watching! Yeah, it’s a real shame that they’ve supported them for longer - so much potential left unexplored!
@@jordansorcery and with the second miniatures-less expantion Cursed City would have a life time of 2 to 3 years.....I dont know how to feel about it.
@@LaBibliotecaEterna I'm glad to see some more content for it, and it being miniature-less isn't too bad in my opinion as I can proxy, etc. I'm most disappointed that there's been no extra stuff like White Dwarf support as that's where a lot of really fun ideas for the other games have come from!
As someone who played both of these games all the way through, including all the expansions and extra quests released for Hammerhal in White Dwarf, don't think you've missed out on some masterpiece. These games were half-baked at best. Silver Tower had really unique concepts and mechanics, but was ultimately very light on content. Hammerhal had a stronger core, but still too little content, even when I combined the reward decks of both games into one. The game master element in Hammerhal was a complete afterthought, and running games as one was incredibly boring. The balance in both games was a total joke, and characters leveled up so fast that I'd often end up rotating through the entire rewards deck in a single quest. Though there was definitely an attempt for deeper exploration and choices, the mechanics were simply too shallow to allow for anything beyond the depth of a smash'n'loot style game.
So there is no way of playing hammerhal solo? 😢
Again like your first one i really like the series. Never played silver tower, still stuck on the WHQ 95 ;) Looking forward to your next one :)
Can’t blame you for sticking with such a classic! I’d really recommend giving Silver Tower a go if you ever get a chance - it’s definitely an evolution to a different game, but the quest DNA shines through!
It’s wild to learn about the pedigree of the Hellboy game sitting on my shelf
I’ve been surprised in my research at just how interconnected so many great games are by the developers behind them - I guess it makes sense that the best talent kept producing the best games!
Really interesting watch. I still think 95 was best Warhammer Quest and a full remake should be on cards now with old world coming bk. Nothing compares to it, RP elements, different locations, etc
Thanks, I’m glad it was interesting! I’d love a full remake of classic Quest set back in the Old World, fingers crossed the new game builds demand for it again!
Thank you, great sequel
Thanks!
Waiting excitedly for part 3!!
Not too long to wait now!
@@jordansorcery I keep checking everyday!
Part 3 is a little longer than expected, but is on track for release on Tuesday!
@@jordansorcery praise Sigmar!
Great video -- keep it up!
Thank you! I’m working on it!
Great video, I really love silver tower. Looking forward to BSF
Thank you, I’m glad you enjoyed the video! I love it too!
There's something about this game specially the art I purchased silver Tower and Blackstone Fortress and that opened the floodgates this was expensive and hard to get but I did grab it at the beginning of the pandemic with some of that crazy stimulus money I bought the set complete and a very good shape for $400 and mind you before that I was trying to piece the set together so I had some odds and ends like all of the books some cards few things here and there tiles but that was beginning to become a headache so I just bought the box and then I bought the two expansions complete minus the two boxes that they came in whatever I'll do they're hard to get ungrateful I have the three card packs minus one card then I got my hands on all of the extra characters minus the troll Slayer I picked up the trolls player from Talisman 3rd Edition because it was only 20 bucks I love this game I also started collecting Miniatures from the era basically the ones that had cards for the orc Lord and catacombs of Terror they came with extra cards but not the Miniatures so I bought all of them Miniatures the hardest ones to get where the skeletons LOL I love this game I'm not trying to flex I really wish everybody could get this game it's something they should just reprint I just don't understand why they don't do it
It’s such a great game to collect, so many great expansions and opportunities to try slightly different things with a tonne of character!
I have a complete WHQ collection- the best is still the original. None of the newer ones have improved the experience offered in the original. I particularly miss travelling, visiting cities and having so many options for enemies. The combat is better in the newer ones though. I don't like the requirement for a GM either.
WHQ95 had so many sprawling options, it was such a wonderful game to spend entire weekends with! The tighter, lighter builds for the more recent games definitely make them easier for me to get to the table, but I know exactly what you mean about missing some fun aspects of the original - I love them still though!
And I am totally on the same page about SoH needing a GM being a real shame!
I have these two but haven't played yet.... :d
There is some confusion with your timeline regarding James Hewitt.James Hewitt worked for Mantic Games from 2011 to 2014, before moving to GW specialist games. He was a regular on the Old Beasts of War channel showcasing Mantic's Dreadball and Deadzone esp 1st Ed - until he moved to GW.
You are totally right, that's my mistake! He worked at Mantic before GW on Dreadball as you say, and then again after GW as a consultant from Needy Cat leading design on Hellboy - I've conflated the timeline in error, will add an edit in the description to clarify! Thanks for pointing it out
@@jordansorcery I only know this as it was through Hewitt who got me into Mantic Games on the old Beasts of War channel - his passion and enthusiasm sold me and the games were really good and had something that was lacking in GW games. Loved Silver Tower and even SOH, but felt it missed out on the RPG element or at least a Book 🤣🤣🤣. I did roll my eyes when WHQ went 40k as I predicted GW would promote it with loads of expansions over Fantasy equivalent - yep I was right and not being a 40K fan this alienated a few. I know 40K is their most popular IP but I often wonder how great WHQ would of been if the Fantasy side got that same attention - you could of gone down exploring the realms of the Chaos God's/Followers you have the Silver Tower, you could of had a Khorne, Nurgle and Slaanesh type adventures - and of course Skaven lol.
While I prefer the original WQ, the new one has some good elements. Specifically, the fact that they sold a full pack of character card with a with dozens of new characters. I like having the option of playing one of dozens of characters (compared to the paltry ~15 of the original if you purchased everything). Sure, the pack of characters did not come with the minis but to me that is a tremendous bonus. I don't WANT to use the GW minis because they cost WAY too much. I'll use my own mini, or a card board stand-in, or a chess piece, or a penny or whatever I want. I don't need the minis.
That’s an interesting point I hadn’t thought about! WHQ95 has innumerable options for enemies because it’s encounter tables covered the whole citadel range, but it had a smaller pool of heroes. As opposed to Silver Tower that had a huge hero pool, but nowhere near as many enemies!
Loving this. I've been with WHQ since getting it for Christmas back in '96 or so. Have pretty much all of it. Curious whether you'll hit on Lost Relics in the third part of your series!
Thank you, glad you're enjoying it! Man, opening a present and getting that '95 Quest box - what a Christmas that must have been! You're quite right, I will touch on Lost Relics in part 3!
I'd spent so many hours staring at it in the Argos catalogue... my excitement was immeasurable. Poor old HeroQuest was left in the dust x-)
I like your cardigans
Thank you
I once emailed Grant Hewitt saying how Blitz Bowl inspired me as a games creator and how he had used many ideas I had thought of for a quicker version of Blood Bowl and I shared with him some of my reasoning as to why I developed my version … I never got a reply. 🤷🏻♂️
Guess it’s true what they say, never meet or email your heroes. 😂
I have both of these games but played neither yet, would you recommend playing silver tower with shadows rules straight off the bat or play in order?
That's a good question with no right answer! But for my money, play Silver Tower first and then Shadows - there are rules tweaks from SoH, but they aren't that significant and the addition of the GM was probably the biggest thing; but in my opinion ST is so much fun with the Adventure Book that I don't feel it would actually benefit from a GM as suggested by the Return to Hammerhal WD article. Plus, like with movie franchises, I always like to go in release order because even if a follow-up is actually a prequel it can't help but be informed by the earlier release, so you get to see how things evolve over time.
Which is your personal favourite Quest game though?
Such a tough question, and usually influenced by which one I’ve played most recently. WHQ95 holds a special place in my heart as the original and in many ways most fun, but Silver Tower was such a wonderful campaign experience and theme that built a nostalgia of its own on top of the old feelings!
And yet, BSF is so well supported, tells a great campaign story, and is one of the richest RPGesque experiences available in the 40k universe. So in many ways a 3 way tie, but if I could only have one it’d probably be the infinitely replayable original! What about you?
ello! What issue of WD has the Silver Tower & Hammerhal goodies? Thanks for the share!!
I kind of wish I liked SIlvertower more than I do. The new mechanisms and setting (Age of Sigmar) I do not mind, they are very innovative but the look... I hate the look, everything is too bright. The tiles break the game for me, I know we are speaking about a chaotic magic setting but OMG everything is too "edgy", "bright" and "spikey" to my taste. It makes "reading" the table really hard for me. That said, this video really makes me appreciate the effort and the amount of nods to the original classic. I wish someday we will get something with a 30 mission adventure book like we deserve 😅
I was in two minds about the design early on, but came to love the ‘cosmic chaos’ of it in time. And the gameplay definitely played a part in that for me!
Betrayal at calth…and the subsequent legion box of wolves I bought with it for 40k…was a great game.
Lol also love dreadball 😂 legit if into bloodbowl check it out, diff but like basketball equivalent to its American football…if play basketball prob get that, if not meh
Brilliant stuff again! Bad Gags are the life blood of a video. also Silver tower had no cats in it. 1/10 Literally Unplayable.
Thank you! Couldn’t agree more about bad gags or the pawcity of cats in WHQ!
I skipped shadows over hammerhall by accident. I'm now glad I did. The whole point of WQ is that a DM is not required. If I want a DM, I'll play AD&D.
There’s some great stuff in Hammerhal tbf, but I know what you mean, it was a real disappointment that you needed a DM. Especially as it’s still very railroady overall.
My suspicion is that it was simply quicker/easier to write it that way than the complex work that went into the Silver Tower adventure book, but I have no evidence to back that up at all!
In this festive moment, my heart aches at the memory of what a wonderful time it was for Warhammer from 2015 to 2019 - so many prospects shone, so many new paths without the shackles of the past. But no, GW, as usual, turned out to be rotten and ruined everything with cheap fan service. Forgetting that it is impossible to please everyone. Especially impossible to please the haters.
So let Games Workshop reap what they sowed in the new year.
«HAPPY NEW YEAR!»
I think some of the specialist games are still an absolute whale of a time, Necromunda in particular is really fun stuff! In terms of box games though I do share your feelings, it’s a shame we’ve not seen the kind of excellent one off games that came out during that era
I never like the age of sigmar change they did, scraping the old world for me is a big mistake. When i heard they would do a new Warhammer quest, i was happy, but not convinced it would be good. when i saw Silver tower, it was just a 20% of the old warhammer quest was, i did not like the setting, i did not buy it.
Silver Tower and Shadows Over Hammerhal sadly never had a chance with me while they were being sold, as the sting of GW blowing up the richly storied Known World for an (aside from these two games) completely amorphous setting (and a wargame with horrid "rules" that barely even deserved to be called such in its first edition) was far too fresh and with no soothing in sight yet.
They should have just re-released WHQ 95. Everything else has been 👎
Oh for sure, I would be first in line for a ‘95 reprint, it’s such a great game. I’m glad I was able to find some real fun in the reboots though, particularly Silver Tower. It really spoke to me for some reason - I guess I’m just a little bit tzeentchian myself!
@@jordansorcery I’ve played HeroQuest pretty consistently throughout the decades but that was it. I bought AHQ off of eBay around 2007 but never got into it. Then the HeroQuest revival in 2021 kicked my dungeon crawling into high gear. I wanted more. I bought Silver Tower in January 2022 and not long after purchased Shadows over Hammerhal, WHQ Adventure Card Game, Gorechosen, Chaos in the Old World, Lost Relics and WHQ (1995). My partner and I have been playing 95 nonstop since August. I still have a group that gets together twice a month to play HeroQuest (we are 35+ quests in), but I’m going to introduce them to WHQ: SoH (leading into ST with the White Dwarf side quests) beginning in January. I love the entire WHQ franchise (1995 is probably my favorite) but am especially thankful for Silver Tower bringing me into the WHQ world.
Amazing, I’d love to get any quest game to the table that often! I’ve got a soft spot for ST too, I think because it really got me through the transition from the old world to the age of Sigmar. Plus it really highlighted how fun Tzeentch can be, and got me started with a new army!
@@jordansorcery we have a very similar experience with ST then. I’m in the process of collecting all of the exotic adversaries for ST/SoH as well; without these two games I would have have zero interest in AoS.
I was so excited for this untill ir was AoS. Lost all interest instantly.
Same no interest what so ever with Age of crapness.
I was very skeptical of AOS myself, but ST was one of the things that helped turn me around on it. The Silver Tower could have existed somewhere in the Old World for sure, but it felt to me like the intention did AOS was to give everywhere this feeling of wild and dangerous magic. Definitely a different taste, and I still adore the old Warhammer world, but I have come to enjoy Sigmar a lot too
@@jordansorcery I just discovered your site this evening at work. Security guards have alot of time between patrols to check out youtube ha ha. I subscribed. I learnt alot. I reckon the computer game of Keep up the good work mate 👍
@@jordansorcery i think my main problem is the miniatures. They are a bit to over fantastical for me. I liked the more grounded ones from fantasy.
Plus the AoS setting seems a bit boring to me. From what I have read so far.
More power to you if you like it though. But i will opt out. It just makes me happy i have a friend who owns the original set.
Anyway amazing channel
@@jordansorcery I reckon they should of basically of ported the Warhammer Quest game onto Steam. The Warhammer Quest game on steam I played to death but the game stopped at level 7 and they only have a few of the monsters or races. If they ported the gsme fully I would be playing it right now with my brothers.
AoS ewww
Nah, not the same. I won´t touch any AoS garbage with a grot prodder..