Book of Battle Mats: Alternatives to the Original Game Board

[Stig]

I wonder if these battle mats would work well with AHQ: When going through a door, instead of rolling a dice to determine room/passage, it's just displayed on the battle mat. All you would need to do is determine what's in the room using the random generator: either rolling the dice as per rulebook or drawing cards as per some homebrews.

They ought to from the explanation of AHQ's rules that was given to me. I've got my AHQ set now and could look them up, but what was explained to me was a slightly modified rule set that capped out how long a corridor could ultimately be to make the dungeon sprawl a little less and fit on more reasonably sized tables.

AHQ is also played with dungeons whose layouts are known beforehand

Only the last part of a quest is known, the parts before are randomly generated. I’m suggesting scrapping the whole generation system and using the battle mat! Just determining room type, contents, and passage features is all that would be necessary, much less rolling! This would lose the unique nature of quest objectives such as the shattered amulet, but new ones could easily be written for unique pages.

[iKarith]

It's easy enough to write quests ala standard HQ for them. I sort of get the impression that most people playing AHQ have made significant changes to the game to suit their play style and players.

Someone commented that GW at the time didn't really do much in terms of balance or even replayability so much. It sounded cool, so they put it in the game. I don't know if GW sort of figured players would fix it if it needed fixing after release, but they have done.

Actually, I've seen three different reviews of Cursed City and based on those, it seems they're still putting stuff in the game if it sounds good without taking balance into consideration. Two reviews noted that not all of the heroes are A-list material. One person had four heroes in one campaign and decided to have a second with the others. The second group had a much harder time doing the same things. If the game gets more longevity (or perhaps because it was so short-lived?) we'll likely see people who love the game try their hands at balancing it a little better.


It seems like GW figured players will figure out which heroes work better than others and may homebrew the deficiencies out of the game. Actually, it kinda seems like that's also how they do things today if I believe a couple of reviews of Cursed City I saw. Two different reviews noted that it has enough heroes you can pick two completely different teams, but that they're not all A-list hero material. Choose one set and you can breeze through a lot of stuff. Choose the other and it's going to be a challenge, at the very least. If the game gets any longevity (or perhaps particularly because it hasn't had any), people will try their hands at rebalancing things.

[Davane]

Yeah, AHQ is really meant to be played with HQ from what I can tell, so that's fine. And I have to make custom cheatsheets anyway as I need to be able to read them.

On the contrary, AHQ is a complete game in it's own right, and the supplemental information for using HQ components with AHQ takes up 3 pages of the 62 page rulebook. It's just that a lot of fans have both AHQ and HQ, and as such, they favour combining the two to the point at which they seem like both are always being played together. If anything, the AHQ rules were designed to supercede the HQ rules, to the point that it includes rules for playing the HQ Game System Quest Book using the AHQ rules, and the four Heroes from HQ presented as AHQ Heroes.

Yeah, so they tell me. But you have encounters against a whole bunch of things that aren't in the box (but are in the HQ box) and a bunch of optional rules to use the HQ furniture and other stuff, rules for bringing characters and things from HQ to AHQ … For being its own thing, it's kinda pretty significantly actually but not technically dependent upon having access to a Game System box full of stuff.

Of course you could just make an absolutely large sum investment in Citadel minis instead of buying HQ. I mean, GW would've loved if you did. But I really do think they assumed you'd have a Game System to pull from, and sure enough, I don't know any AHQ owners who don't also have HQ.

Not really. AHQ has monster information for a lot of different types of Skaven, not all of which come in AHQ, but are in the Quest. It also has information for a lot of monsters that are not in either the HQ or AHQ boxes, but were part of the citadel miniatures range. There is a wandering monster matrix for the HQ monsters, but it is listed in the HQ section - the rest of the time, monster matrices are defined by the Quest. Terror in the Dark included generic monster matrices for various types of themed monster dungeons: Skaven, Undead, Orc, Chaos, Beastman, and Mixed dungeons.

Basically put, whilst AHQ worked better with HQ, you weren't missing a lot without access to it, and AHQ was more than playable in it's own right. In fact, you'd find yourself not even noticing the HQ stuff, since it's basically details on how to randomly generate a maze-like level using the HQ board, rules for furniture, which just puts maybe an extra feature in rooms, and rules for the HQ heroes and playing the HQ quests using AHQ rules.

As a note, I actually got AHQ BEFORE I got HQ. AHQ was pretty much the first game I ever got, and it was a gift. Unfortunately, it was at the end of it's print run, TitD was already out of print, and it was when WD 145 was release (my first WD had the last HQ quest in it!)...

[iKarith]

They did conveniently include the three colors of bases, so you could use that for the skaven at least until you spent hundreds of dollars buying the proper figures…

Good ol' GW.

[banu123]

See the attached example I created using the Loke Battle Mats for Quest 8 in the main questline for HQ.

Wow fantastic. Possible to port over other official quests?