Warhammer Quest: Cursed City is a labour of love for hobbyists and a love letter to those old enough to remember the original Warhammer Quest. I hope it's a good game, but it really doesn't matter.

 One of the things I've paid a lot of attention to during my absence from the hobby is the re-introduction of Warhammer Quest.  

Delicious components

I have very fond but hazy childhood memories of playing the original 1995 Warhammer Quest with my friends Dave, John and Tim.  Dave had acquired the set during a period where we were all collecting Warhammer Fantasy (R.I.P.) models and doing our best to play games when we were too young to stay focused on collecting and painting armies and didn't really have the money to do so.  Warhammer Quest was a dream come true with everything you needed right in the box, and I spent some allowance money on the Wood Elf hero to give another option.  Back then, they released small boxes with a new hero for WHQ with their in-game card you needed to play them, and at the time Wood Elves were very much my jam.  I hadn't yet learned that bugs are gross and I can get all the exposure to nature that I need from golf.

But really, my journey began before that with HeroQuest.

We had a family friend who owned a cottage in the Muskokas, and my father was a general contractor and carpenter.  It was mutually advantageous that we would go up for a period each summer and my dad would do some work or repairs, my brother and I would mow the grass or paint a deck chair, and we would get to use this absolutely amazing property for a week or so each year.  

This cottage was a full blown house in lake country.  Rare for the time, it had all the appliances you'd expect, running water and all that.  Because the owner and his family spent so much time there, there was a variety of VHS tapes, outdoor fun equipment like ATVs, and a selection of board games.

Among the board games was something that completely blew my mind called HeroQuest.  If you don't know what I'm talking about, give that a quick Google.  I suspect that the same son of our family friend responsible for the stack of 1960s-1980s comic books was also responsible for HeroQuest being there, but all I can say for certain is that the box art alone sent absolute fireworks through the mind of a young boy who had been consumed by old AD&D PC games like Pool of Radiance.  

I will never find the words to express the frustration I felt when I couldn't get my family to play the game with me for more than an hour -- I couldn't understand why anyone would want to do anything else.  Screw the lake.

Fast forward a few years, after I'd managed to finagle my own copy of HeroQuest, when my newfound interest in Warhammer ran face first into my delight for HeroQuest and RPGs in general.  It took me a long time to learn that Games Workshop was responsible for HeroQuest as well.  

Stepping away from the days of yore, when I learned that the modern Warhammer Quest games were designed to be playable solo, I broke into a sweat.  I wouldn't have to convince anyone to play with me.

But I didn't buy Silver Tower.  I didn't buy the next one.  I didn't buy Blackstone Fortress, despite being intrigued by the fact that it was WH40k. 

Then Cursed City got a reprint right as I was getting back into this hobby, and I found out that it had all the secret sauce I remembered from before.  Wide variety of heroes?  One's even a wood elf?  Character progression over the course of a campaign?  Random table of bad shit that can happen to you between missions for no reason?  Sign me up.  

So I bought it.  Then immediately decided that I wouldn't play it until I had assembled and painted every model.  I wanted to savour the anticipation and have something beautiful.  I've started, and I'm making progress.  I'm not bothering to count while I'm typing, but I'm 5/8 heroes painted and I'd guess around 20 of the bad guys.  There's  60 miniatures in total.  It's a lot of work.

Just the enemies.

I don't know if the game is good, but there are lots of places you can look up reviews.  I'm guessing I'll enjoy it regardless.  But I wanted to use this space to document some of my trials and tribulations while getting the set ready for prime time, and maybe I can inspire someone to finish their set or help someone learn from my mistakes.  

So with that in mind, I'll be posting about the painting and some thoughts about the models and some limited lore.  I'll also give my thoughts about the box itself, but here's my initial take:

For the money it costs, there is nothing that is going to give you the variety of incredibly high quality sculpts to paint.  It's also a hugely satisfying building experience, although it's moderately challenging so I'd say make sure you have the right tools and patience for the job.  The quality of the materials inside, the models, the presentation is so far beyond my expectations that it really is the best example I can present for the new Games Workshop theme:  High cost, unbelievable quality, slick presentaion.

It's going to take forever to paint, it took a while to assemble, and it will take some time to beat the campaign.  But god almighty, I am going to enjoy opening that envelope.  

Start of a long journey

I'm painting again. I don't know where it goes from here.

 It's been a while!

About 6 weeks ago, I felt like painting again.  It's been about 10 years at this point since I stopped, but I've taken longer breaks than that before.

I wanted to wait before posting anything both because I'm a lot older, out of practice and I honestly wasn't sure if I'd pick up a brush and not be able to paint.  As documented previously, my eyesight and fine motor skills were never great to begin with, and I am absolutely racing towards the grave at this point.

It's hard to say what exactly gave me the itch again -- I've casually kept up with WH40k over the last decade, and my Google news feed occasionally features articles from the ever-delightful Bell of Lost Souls (as an aside, it's been incredible to watch the progress of that site over the years).  I think I just ticked over from seeing some beautiful models to realizing that I could go pick up something -- maybe just get some fresh paints and a couple of models and dip my toe in.  You know.

Within a couple of weeks, I had the 40k starter set, some extra Necrons, the Age of Sigmar Dominion box, and Cursed City.  As well as the big paint set from Army Painter, and a growing collection of Citadel contrast paints.  I guess the toe dip went a little sideways.

As an aside, I'm amused that this post of mine from December 2010  has become an entirely valid alternate way to paint models that we now call 'Contrast Method' or 'Speed Painting'.  We'll come back to that.

I'm now about a month and half into collecting, assembling and painting.  I'm really enjoying myself.  

The reason I'm posting tonight is that I wanted a place to put up some pictures of what I'm working on, and document for myself some of the progress I'm making.  Also it's a place to share photos where I'm not spamming my friends and family, who I'm sure are already tired of the daily random photos of weird little models that they don't really understand.

I can also see by the dashboard that somehow people still end up directed towards this site every once in a while.  I hope that these poor lost travelers can find something that inspires or helps them in their pursuit of the hobby, or at least reassures them that someone, somewhere, is also still trying to figure out how to paint after decades of doing it.  

I have a lot of thoughts about the hobby, Warhammers both 40k and AoS, and the enormous evolution of available tools to produce beautiful models and the huge increase in both cost and quality of Games Workshop miniatures.  

Right now I'm working on finishing the Cursed City miniatures before I actually play a game of it.  I'm about 17/60 minatures done, and I'm mostly pleased with how they've turned out.

I will be posting here occasionally with some updates and backlog photos of the stuff that I've been working on.  Forgive me in advance, the photos I've been taking are in no way staged for photography, just rough workdesk photos like the header above.  But in the meanwhile I thought I'd share the first model I painted after a 10+ year absence vs a model I painted a few days ago and the evolution over that 6 week period as I started to remember what was forgotten.  Both are WH40k Orks from the (5th edition?) starter set, Assault on Black Reach.

March 27th: 

How do paints work again?

May 1st:

I'll try to put up something new every few days or when the thoughts feel like going down in text.  In the meanwhile, I'll also try to find a better set up for taking pictures of miniatures, but bear with me for a while on that :)