Warhammer Mission Blackwater Board Game Review

For gamers of a certain age, Warhammer Quest is a name that comes to mind. The original 1995 version was the premiere Dungeon Explorer At the time, it was a rare cooperative game in the era of head-to-head conflict games. Once out of print it became and remains highly collectible. But in 2016, publisher Games Workshop revived the brand with the critically acclaimed Silver Tower. Darkwater is the latest version, with some new tweaks and a host of new toys to try and maintain its considerable legacy.

what's in the box

Warhammer Mission: Blackwater

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Games Workshop is known as the premier producer of plastic miniatures, and the range of figures included in this set is a bit special even by its own lofty standards. Six of them are heroes, the rest are their enemies, servants of Nurgle, the poisonous, sullen plague god in the Warhammer universe. The Nurgle series has always been a horrific beauty, full of unpleasant details of wounds and drooling stomachs, and there's plenty of that on display here. But what makes these stand out is a sense of character, something often missing from modern dynamic characters.

These heroes jump off your desktop with an air of personality, especially those that blend old-school adventurers with GW's current sensibilities Age of Sigmar environment. Their facial expressions and gestures seem to tell you something about each of them, from the sullen scowl of mercenary Bren Tellis to the triumphant grin of central villain Gergus Pust. For the less experienced modeller, it's worth noting that the box's claim for a push-fit design is essentially correct. Most figures are fairly easy to assemble, although a few will benefit from a drop of polystyrene cement. Painting them, however, is another story as the level of detail can be a bit daunting for newbies.

With the exception of the miniatures, GW boxed games typically omit the rest of the components. That's not the case here: this is a luxurious production on every level, and you can see where the considerable asking price is going. Once you remove the character molds from the box, the cards and punch tokens come in their own carefully packaged sub-boxes, and cards for each campaign event in the game come in their own sealed envelopes. Although these cards could use more and more varied artwork, they are sturdy, shiny, and easy to read.

“This is a luxurious production on every level.”

The most surprising thing is the atlas used in the skirmish scenes that make up most of the game. While this isn't a new idea, most examples are clunky and spiral. The book is hard bound, but it still lays flat and is an absolute joy to use. The maps included are filled with the kind of detailed art we're supposed to see on the cards, effectively evoking the plague-ravaged environment of the game's setting, Jade Monastery. More details about the setting and narrative are provided in the game's rulebook, providing a wonderful preview of the adventure to come.

Rules and gameplay

Warhammer Mission: Blackwater is a Cooperative board gamebut you'll be playing with four heroes in each match, so it's best to have two or four players: solo is possible, but you'll end up juggling a lot as the campaign progresses. It has two game modes, a one-off skirmish or a longer battle mode campaign game. The focus is definitely on the latter mode, as the single-player battles can be uneven depending on which scenario you end up playing, and you don't get the pleasure of slowly building up your character and uncovering the story of your own attempt to free the Emerald Monastery from the decay of Nurgle.

A campaign consists of three acts, each of which gives you 14 randomly dealt encounter cards from that act's deck, with a Boss card underneath. You then get to choose two possible encounter cards for each adventure, which is an important decision. Many encounters are not skirmishes but small narrative segments or mini-games. Most of these are designed to increase your luck or vary risk vs. reward, but there are also some more imaginative designs that make the Silver Tower scene so interesting.

When it comes to combat scenarios, it's important to read the cards carefully and consider how the combat might play out. They offer a variety of maps, combat enemies, side missions, victory conditions, and special rules. These cause them to vary greatly in difficulty, with some being nearly impossible if you don't find certain rewards for your party. This is a big deal because failure is costly: you lose some rewards and try again, and a second failure ends the event.

The duels on the map are based on a set of rules from another game in the series, Warhammer Quest: The Adventure Card Game (see it on amazon). Each hero has three action cards: Move, Attack, and Aid. Using a card requires you to expend energy, which is usually gained by draining one of the cards, whether it's for the action you're taking or another card. Essentially, this boils down to the hero taking three actions per turn, which can be any combination of available options, although some of the bonuses you can earn later in the campaign complicate things a bit.

Combat requires you to roll dice, almost always a pair, hoping to hit a target number based on what you're fighting. Many enemies have defense values ​​that negate the same number of hits, meaning you have to hit both dice at the same time to damage them. Between the probabilities involved and the flexibility of the action system, this provides a satisfying balance between decision-making and randomness. It's not a deep game by any means, but you'll often be at a loss as to how best to allocate your actions, and the turn limit for completing each battle can make for some exciting, high-stakes games toward the end.

Between each hero's turn, monsters are activated. How they behave depends on dice rolls, with most enemies switching between calming black dice and more threatening red dice each round of combat. Mostly, they move towards their target at varying speeds and attempt to attack, although all monsters also have special effects: the fearsome little Poxworm spawns new companions, while the tough Demonic Canker attacks all heroes near the explosion with an area of ​​effect. This roll can have a significant impact on the difficulty of the scenario, as the monster sometimes does nothing and sometimes unleashes horrific attacks, a quirk the rules attribute to its chaotic nature.

One flaw with the system and map design is that most boards have one or more choke points caused by impassable hexes, and most scenarios require the player to get somewhere and do something in order to win. As a result, both players and monsters get stuck, and the scene can get bogged down in repetitive scrolling until you clear the enemies or time runs out. Some character abilities and items can get around this – the dwarf ranger Drolf Ironhead can pass through strange impassable hexagons – but this gives some scenes a space puzzle feel, but in other scenes giving one or two characters access to shortcuts doesn't make much of a difference in achieving your goals. Although the set design is quite diverse, this problem also creates a sense of repetition.

Victory and completion of side mission objectives result in reward cards being distributed to adventurers. Like the scenarios themselves, these items vary in power, with better items becoming available later in the campaign, but the more impressive items are usually one-time use, while more minor power-ups can be reused. They both add more tactical options to combat, which is definitely a good thing. Weighing up whether to add your one-off magical widget to the mix in an attempt to salvage a scene that's going south is always a tricky decision and adds an extra frisson to the dice rolls it usually results in.

Even the battle scenes on the ship only last about 30 minutes, so when you mix in shorter mini-game encounters, it doesn't take that long to get through an action. It's a bit cumbersome to “save” game state between sessions, but it's entirely possible. All adventure cards have their own text prologue to set the scene, and as you progress through the campaign there are secrets to uncover and new playable characters to unlock. The unfolding narrative isn't going to win any literary awards, but it can effectively provide your game with a solid storybook backbone. Nurgle is a particularly interesting antagonist, with his servants alternately loving and filthy, so freeing the once pristine Emerald Monastery from their clutches feels like a worthy goal.

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