SHADOWS OVER HAMMERHAL - THE JOURNEY - PART 5

So tonight we had a little bit of a mix up. In part 4 we introduced some of the new rules found in the past couple of months worth of White Dwarf. introducing the cards and the new locations

from the heroes previous venture into the dungeon it was time for something different.
we had picked up a bounty RAZE THE TEMPLE OF SLAUGHTER and we decided we would utilise this as a way to swap out who played the GM. My eldest daughter has a flair for literature and felt she wanted to have a go at 'driving' a dungeon.

i asked her to take a look through the fold out for the quest and tell me what other models i might need...turns out it would of cost me around £100 to flesh this out with pure Khornites. however the good thing with these bounties is that it gives the option to use the models from the base set..so you can mix and match them a bit. regardless I had an order on for new paints and dropped in another £18 for Skullgrinder, who just happens to be the boss baddie for this bounty.

additionally to this i wanted to get the Bloodreavers painted up. and wanted to utilise a painting process ive been trying out as of late whereby washing the model first with nuln oil would help pick out the details and settle in the recesses. then washing over the model with the various colours would..in theory allow me to paint up unit much quicker...8 hours worth of work and i had them painted up to what i feel is a decent enough standard for any table.

these guys were also featured as stand in for the khorn models i didnt have.

well this quest was a fun one indeed. as it was something a little different, swapping the GM around. With my wife slotting into controlling the Cogsmith and Fleetmaster.
she did pretty well too. kept things fluid and told the tale well as we fought our way through the dungeon. The wife however. not so well being her first outing as a hero..required a lot of hand holding. but then thats all part of the experience right?

it's a pretty decent sized quest too. The one thing to note. that my Castellant seems to of really stepped up a gear. my dice rolling seems to of taken a turn for the good. but its the skills i have combined in with him (i wont give them away as i want you all to discover this for yourselves)
But he is literally smashing his way through everything at the moment.
a few rookie mistakes from the young GM cost her giving us any real challenge. there is a very clear tactic within this quest which could of made it much more challenging if a more experienced GM had of seized the opportunity to pop a door open!
we simply kept everyone behind the battering ram of a Castellant.
even upon reaching this guy.

we swept him aside in a swathe of halberd and grudge raking.
he stayed on the board for a whole turn! yup skullgrinder was dust in the blink of an eye!
taking us about 3 hours or so. It's a multi layered singular dungeon with plenty going on.

again to state here. having the option to switch out the models for options provided in the main box set really is something i would of wished to of seen in other games of old. this isnt 100% driven on hard selling all of those extra models. they are nice to have, but not a neccesity!

so quest creators take note!
that the recent adversary cards released all have very clear indictation that for every adversary set there is a relevant adversary set avaialable. in this case the wrathmonger are to khorne what the blight kings are to nurgle. and so on. so this is a very healthy way forwards i feel..that wont burn too much of a hole in my pocket.

anyways we cleared up the dungeon. due to the multi level nature we had missed part of it. so we decided to go and explore further even after taking out skullgrinder. we cleared the whole dungeon. with the castellant leading the way.

we left the dungeon and headed upto the city to collect our bounty, but alas a huge carnival was taking place and we had no way of getting across town. so we headed on into the next mission.

not much to report on this one other than we found it pretty easy at this point.
we had our first meeting with Lord Redomir (who is due a paint job)
we finally met up with the Gryphound.
we progressed another level allowing us 3 skill cards now.
since i seem to of found the magic number with the castellant and his skills it is starting to feel a little bit too easy. adding the gryphound into the mix as well gives another attacking option along with the extra skill for each of the heroes made this entire quest a little bit of a let down. it was simply too easy!
it seems the balance with the castellant that struggled so much very early in the quest as swung the pendulum the opposite way. and he seems to be taking out an easy 60% of the kills

the other characters plod on. the loremaster has a set of skills all garnered around protection. he can shrug off blows at will.

the cog smith can even break away much easier now due to his skills, allowing him a very easy ride for keeping out of the way and firing shots off from his guns.

and the fleetmaster..is kinda boring..he is...it kind of just feels now that he is just coming along to hide behind everyone and then jump out at the last minute to kick a dying bloodreaver in the head and shout "yeh come and have a go now bitch!" :)

but that aside we wrapped up another mission. with all of our playing time clocking in at around 18 hours or so with another 3 quests to go. and still 2 more bounties to take hold of i can see us coming in at around 30 hours total play to wrap everything up.
the game is starting to feel a little too easy now. so in the interest of keeping things challenging. we will most likely move the difficulty level up to see how it goes.

and this last dungeon unveiled a surprising twist to the story..not going ot give it away...but not all of the quests are in a dungeon.


i think i may well wrap up my journeys in the next post. not really able to give away too much for fear of spoiling the plot. i have had to take a different angle on how i discuss the game. i feel ive given plenty regarding the heroes. and how they progress. a good insight to the city phase. and a good idea of how the game at least plays through.

so part 6 will be the last of the journeys where i will give my final synopsis :)

peace all