Warhammer Quest: Darkwater Review

Hey everybody, welcome to Drive-Through Review 823. Today we're going to take a

Review 823. Today we're going to take a look at Warhammer Quest Dark Water. This

is a recent release from Games Workshop.

I'm recording this in the new year in 2026. This came out a little bit before

2026. This came out a little bit before Christmas last year in 2025. And I've

had time to paint it all up uh get it played. I played through a full campaign

played. I played through a full campaign and then a couple of like oneshot scenarios uh to kind of get familiar with some of that part. Uh so what the game is uh it's got the name Warhammer

Quest, although it is probably the most different uh from the other Warhammer Quests. are usually like traditionally

Quests. are usually like traditionally like a dungeon crawl, although some of the modern ones do kind of riff on that.

This is not a dungeon crawl. There kind

of feels like it sometimes. And this has a giant book, which I'll show you instead of, you know, tiles that you explore and that kind of thing. And it

has kind of an interesting way of going through different scenarios and how it kind of unravels the campaign and all that kind of stuff. Um, and let's just go down to the table and then I will

give you kind of my sort of final thoughts on it and we'll see how it plays and all that and then I'll come back. So, here I've got the table kind

back. So, here I've got the table kind of set up as it might look like when you are soloing this game [laughter] cuz that's what I've been doing with this game. So, here you've got the book

this game. So, here you've got the book and I think the camera is not really showing you the size of the book. It's

actually quite substantial. But then

down here, I've got character cards, action cards, equipment, and all that kind of stuff all along the board here.

And then some models off to the side and things like that. And you can see there that it takes up a fair bit of room. And

mostly because you've got to want to have some cards spled out uh cuz that's kind of like one of the main mechanisms of the game is getting the reward cards, using spending those wisely over the

course of the whole campaign. And really

when you use those rewards is really kind of a key part of the game. your

actual play space here with the models is always going to be that same size.

And I will put up some pictures and stuff of my painted models uh beyond what you're seeing here. But you can see kind of the detail on one of the maps here. And there's 19 different maps, 19

here. And there's 19 different maps, 19 pages. You can see this one is what,

pages. You can see this one is what, number 11. You can see the number in the

number 11. You can see the number in the corner. Every map will lay flat. And it

corner. Every map will lay flat. And it

looks good. I mean, you can see the artwork on the map and the designs.

There will be little tiles and things sometimes that you will add onto the map and the sort of mission or scenario that you play here will be driven by a deck of cards. So here's an example of the

of cards. So here's an example of the mission that was on here. So there will be multiple missions that play on the same map, but they will be totally different. New rules, new tokens, new

different. New rules, new tokens, new enemies. You can see some of the

enemies. You can see some of the different icons and stuff like that.

like for example there on that particular space that may mean different things. You know maybe you deploy heroes

things. You know maybe you deploy heroes there that time or maybe you deploy uh the the baddies and all that kind of stuff or maybe there's a special thing to interact with like some kind of switch that you've got to flip or

something. At the top of the map here

something. At the top of the map here you can see we've got these initiative tokens with these different symbols and that's going to vary based on which heroes you're using. And then you're always going to have those red symbols

in between. In this case, there's

in between. In this case, there's numbers on those which are actually meaningless to the scenario that I was just playing. Uh, but other scenarios

just playing. Uh, but other scenarios will make use of that. So, there'll be some kind of derived mechanic from that.

And then over on this side, you have a round track there. And that'll be different lengths depending on the map or sometimes the scenario will change up how that actually works. Usually, when

that round tracker gets to that red space, as soon as it hits it immediately, the game will be over and the players will lose unless they've achieved whatever the mission goal set out, but not always. Sometimes it will

reset back to the beginning or it will have some other condition or some event that happens out on the field here uh that players will have to deal with.

Now, other than the main map of the board, you've got sort of two other main pieces and of course the models. But

first thing you've got here are different character cards like so. And

you can see a couple of things. You've

got the hit point tracker there. You got

their move value, their defense value, and then their hit points, which is what that is. And then your attack. Everybody

that is. And then your attack. Everybody

has the exact same attack, I think, except for the range, but it's always usually two dice and three to hit. Uh

some people have more or less range and then a special ability. And for some of the heroes, there are two of each for the heroes. And then there's some

the heroes. And then there's some there's only one version of them. They

always have the same equipment. You

always have one equipment which can get upgraded over the course of the game.

And then you will have a deck, multiple decks of these reward cards. So you can see I've got some from different acts.

So you can see here's an act two uh reward card. Act one and act three. The

reward card. Act one and act three. The

game is played over three acts. So

you'll have up to four cards that you can have in front of your character over the course of the game. And then you also have here these are kind of their main action cards. So every character has the exact same cards. And the way

that the characters work is you will tap this and then it will generate an action point. So if I tap this, I can generate

point. So if I tap this, I can generate an action point. Now, I could either tap it, generate the point, and do the card itself. So, I could tap this move to

itself. So, I could tap this move to spend and do a move. Or I could tap another card. Let's say I don't there's

another card. Let's say I don't there's nobody to aid. I tap that, then I can do a move. Then I can tap the move again

a move. Then I can tap the move again and do a second move. Or move has a special thing where if you tap them both, you always move six. Cuz

typically, unlike this version of D here, who only moves three, typically the movement is a rolling move. It's a

d6. But you can always spend two action points. You can see it says here to do a

points. You can see it says here to do a sprint and just guarantee a six, which sometimes you'll want to do. And then,

but if you've tapped it, so on the first action of my turn, I tap the move to move. This is now tapped. I can no

move. This is now tapped. I can no longer move. So once you tap that, it's

longer move. So once you tap that, it's moved. Um, so that's why the eight is

moved. Um, so that's why the eight is kind of like a nice extra action point that floats around to maybe do two attacks or two moves or spend with a

move to do a sprint and so on. So that's

kind of the main part. You'll have other actions here. Maybe this these will be

actions here. Maybe this these will be action point driven like this symbol here means you discard it so it's out of the game permanently. You'll have some like your equipments for example that you'll tap. They'll untap at the end of

you'll tap. They'll untap at the end of the round just like your action cards.

You may have some that will flip like this one. If you got this arrow, you'll

this one. If you got this arrow, you'll flip it and then that is done for the rest of the scenario for the rest of the encounter, but it will flip back up for

your next one. Whereas a discard is gone for good. And so also the encounters

for good. And so also the encounters themselves, which is a nice segue, will have little action point things that you can do specific to them. Now, the game has two modes. Let's just pick it back

up here. you have sort of a skirmish

up here. you have sort of a skirmish mode and then a campaign mode. A

skirmish mode is you will basically randomly draw an encounter card. So, see

this is an encounter for act three. And

so, they go up in difficulty. Like I

said, there's three acts, one, two, and three. If you do an act one, it'll be a

three. If you do an act one, it'll be a little bit easier. And act three will be kind of like hard mode, so to speak. And

then based on that, you will draw up a certain number of reward cards based on if you chose act one, two, or three. And

then you play through it. And there's a way to actually score points, uh, which is kind of interesting, but you can sort of gauge how well you did on that particular, uh, skirmish thing. And

then, you know, you can just play a one-off pretty easily if you want to do that. Now, kind of the main way to play

that. Now, kind of the main way to play the game, and this comes in to play when we look at these boxes. So, the game comes with these tuck boxes. You just

have to build, you know, just fold and build. So, you can see I've got scenario

build. So, you can see I've got scenario cards here for act one, two, and three.

I've got these decks here and these are where the rewards cards come in for act one, two, and three. Now, each of these has a divider because as you go through it, let's say we're going through act

one here, and you maybe get and lose and spend cards, you never will, this deck will never reshuffle. I don't know that you would ever actually get through the deck. But if you're going to pack it

deck. But if you're going to pack it away to save, you've got a deck list here. You could then say, "Okay, these

here. You could then say, "Okay, these are the ones we've discarded so far. I'm

going to split that deck list in between. So when we go to play tomorrow

between. So when we go to play tomorrow or next week, we can pull this out. We

know we don't look at these because we've already looked at them. And then

we can keep playing from here. And it

works that way for the scenario cards and the encounter cards and all that stuff here. Same kind of way.

stuff here. Same kind of way.

There's a divider card that, you know, helps you keep track of where you're at.

And then there's also four kind of generic boxes for the heroes. So you can put in their rewards cards and their equipment. actually keep track of where

equipment. actually keep track of where they are on terms of the hit points. So

if you, you know, end of the day and D has six hit points, he starts with six hit points. You don't reset back to 10

hit points. You don't reset back to 10 every scenario. So you have boxes here

every scenario. So you have boxes here for the different characters. And

there's some extra like bonus boxes. So

these end up just being where you kind of generically keep cards like you put the boss cards and the NPC cards for their special abilities in there. And

then also another little box here um for some elite rewards which I'll talk about uh in a minute. And the game also comes with a whole bunch of tokens and stuff.

And one thing I like about I just wanted to point out it comes with a lot of generic tokens that you can just kind of use for whatever whether it's marking stuff on the game board on your character and so on. And that's kind of

a nice thing instead of worrying about fussing about making different tokens for whatever. It doesn't really matter

for whatever. It doesn't really matter because you're just tracking a certain thing for a little while. You're gonna

finish this scenario and move on. You

then the token can mean something entirely different than the next one.

Now, the way that you go through the campaign is, like I said, you play through the three acts. So, let's take the act one cards out. So, we'll take these out of here. Now, you can see

here, [clears throat] this has a few types of cards in it. What you're going to do is you're going to take here's the list of cards actually, and this is used as a divider. So, you're going to take

the three boss cards. Each act has three boss cards. Shuffle these up. Put one at

boss cards. Shuffle these up. Put one at the bottom of your deck. So you start there. Okay. Then you're going to take

there. Okay. Then you're going to take all the rest of these and you take about half. You take 14 of these cards. So

half. You take 14 of these cards. So

there's 14 of these. Even in your first play through, you're not even going to see. You're not going to look at. Then

see. You're not going to look at. Then

you take the rest of these, shuffle these up, put them on top of the boss card, and then every sort of turn around through the campaign, you're going to draw the top two. You're going to look

and read kind of the flavor text on the front. And you're going to choose. And

front. And you're going to choose. And

you've got different types of cards. You

got three types of cards you can have here. We can see we have two encounters.

here. We can see we have two encounters.

Let's say we chose this one. We'll flip

it over. It'll tell us which page to turn to on the big book out here. And

then, you know, give us the rules for that scenario. Now, the other two types

that scenario. Now, the other two types of cards, let's see if we got any are here we go, is an event. So, you maybe have choice between an event and something else. And so, you just do what

something else. And so, you just do what it says, which will maybe just be a little brief narrative type of thing.

Maybe it affects the next encounter that you're going to do, maybe positively or negatively. Or you can have a rest bit.

negatively. Or you can have a rest bit.

And there's three of these in each deck.

So you could go through a whole act not seeing any rest bits. You could see all three as a possibility. These as they um sound are all the same. You will heal

each hero three except for the leader.

the leader can then pick to heal three or they can draw extra reward and then players have the opportunity to swap rewards at that point because you cannot

trade rewards at all unless you're in this point which I'll talk about in the review. So, you're going to go through

review. So, you're going to go through all of that and then you're going to get to the end and then let's say that's the boss card. Flip this over. This will

boss card. Flip this over. This will

give you another thing to do and this will be the boss fight. And then after each encounter, including a boss encounter, you're going to heal your each of your characters D3 wounds. So

even if you're down to like three wounds at the end of a encounter or boss fight and you roll poorly, you maybe just heal one wound. So that's that's kind of

one wound. So that's that's kind of where the difficulty in the game may lie. We'll talk about that more in the

lie. We'll talk about that more in the review. And then after an encounter or a

review. And then after an encounter or a boss encounter, you'll pull cards out of the deck appropriately to that act. And

then of course when you move into act two and three the rewards will get better and then you play all the way through the campaign. You'll fight the big bad at the end and then you'll kind

of like unlock the full game. So

I'm not going to spoil it right here in the walkthrough. It's not really a

the walkthrough. It's not really a spoiler, but I will sort of preface it going into the beginning of my review just to kind of talk because just how the game works. I'm not going to talk

about anything sort of narratively or anything like that. I'm not going to spoil that cuz there is some really kind of funny and cool stuff that happens that way. But that's basically what you

that way. But that's basically what you do. You play through either a campaign

do. You play through either a campaign game which could take you I wasn't keeping a stopwatch. I played through one full campaign. I think the box is like 10 to 15 hours something like that.

And I could see that because depending on how many encounters you go through in a deck cuz an encounter probably takes I don't know half hour or so. They're not

too long. uh you know, but if you went through like three of them, I mean, that's an hour and a half right there.

So maybe that's all the time people have. But again, the boxes make it easy

have. But again, the boxes make it easy to save things off and come back to it another day. Uh but it doesn't take too

another day. Uh but it doesn't take too long and and you can kind of steer it as you get the choices off the deck. Um

there may be a tendency to say, "Oh, let's avoid the encounters," which I'll just say right now, you shouldn't necessarily do. Uh we'll talk about that

necessarily do. Uh we'll talk about that in the review, but that's generally how the game kind of works itself out. Okay,

so that was a brief overview of Warhammer Quest uh Dark Water. I'll go

into my three pillars. Uh first thing I'll talk about is player count. Uh I've

only soloed it like I mentioned in the walkthrough. Uh I do have a group where

walkthrough. Uh I do have a group where we play lots of different campaign games and things like that. They're very

interested to try it. Um and I think on surface I think it'll work well. One of

the reasons I showed you kind of my table layout uh to start the uh the walkthrough part of it is that it is overwhelming at first. to solo it because you've got the four characters,

four different abilities, four different equipment, and then you start adding all of the cards and all those abilities trying to keep in your head what's going on because the game is very puzzly. So,

you do want to use equipment at the right time. Don't just waste it, you

right time. Don't just waste it, you know, that kind of thing. So, it's a little overwhelming solo, but after a while, like I said, I played through a whole campaign. You do kind of, at least

whole campaign. You do kind of, at least I was able to, you know, digest everything and kind of get used to it and take my time. I mean, I'm not rushing myself to play it. So, uh, I

played the campaign probably over the course of about a week, give or take.

And, uh, yeah, though, it's soloable for sure, but I am looking forward to playing it with others. And we'll talk about that why in in a minute. And the

play time, like I said during the walkthrough, it says like 10 to 15 hours for a campaign. I think that's right.

Like I said, I was sort of stretching it out over a week. You know, I did say during the um uh walkthrough about each sort of encounter where you're on the map, that's about a half an hour or so,

maybe 45 minutes. They're not very long.

Um I never had one go over an hour, that's for sure. And then, you know, the other cards are just like, you know, read it, do what it says. It takes like a minute, you know. Uh so it's it's pretty snappy and it's pretty light in

that way. Now, let's get to the the meat

that way. Now, let's get to the the meat of it. You know, the third pillar of

of it. You know, the third pillar of review. Like what is this game like?

review. Like what is this game like?

Well, I'm just going to compare it to other Warhammer Quests cuz they put the name on it and I can see why they did that. And I'm not upset. [laughter]

upset. [laughter] I'll be honest with you. When I first saw it and then I first saw the pictures of the book and stuff, I was like, "This is not a Warhammer Quest game. There's

no dungeon explore." Yep. Yep. Yep. But

I started to see um Ash Barker Gorilla Miniatures cover it and I was like, "Okay, this looks pretty good." and or it looks like it could be good at least.

And you know, nothing particularly from what he was saying about it because I was watching kind of his early impressions, but just he did some let's plays and I was like, "Oh, I kind of think I see what they're going for." And

I think Ash even mentioned this uh in passing as well. And I heard another reviewer say something kind of similar.

So I was like, "Okay, I got to check this out."

this out." So, what this to me is is a kind of like Games Workshop addressing Kickstarter in a way. Not necessarily that's not like

a way. Not necessarily that's not like the end- all beall of the game. I

actually think it's a little bit more to it than that because what it is, it's it's a lot of different boss encounters, boss fights, you know, puzzly sort of

situations, that kind of stuff. And if

you think of the price, which is about 200, you can in the US here, we can get it for like 220 online. It's about 250 260 I think retail. Um, so it's around

Kickstarter ballpark for like an, you know, a bee a big beefy miniature Kickstarter like Oatssworn. And I will probably compare this to Osworn more than I should, but it's very Oswornesque

where you have narrative stuff happening.

Sorry for this. uh narrative stuff happening and then you have like a a you know skirmish encounter map thing and you have a little setup stuff there and

all that stuff's going on. So

that sort of give and take that yin and yang balance between like little narrative storytelling back and forth to an encounter that's very Oswornesque.

Now, Osorn's a little bit more stark where it's like an hour plus narrative, lots of puzzles and choices to an hour, hour and a half, you know, skirmish encounter

very starkly, but this is a lot of back and forth cuz you're going through that deck of cards, very brief narrative things that happen very quickly within a minute or two. And then once you go through one of those or a couple of

those, then you're back to the map. And

it's a very quick thing, like a half hour, 45 minutes. But it it has that sort of feel to it. So, it feels to me, not that they set out purposefully or consciously to do this, maybe they did

to say, "Let's do a Warhammer Quest version of Osworn." And by the way, Osworn is a very old Warhammer old world vibe to it as well. So, that's why I'm also comparing it to Osworn. So, that's

what's going on here. And I think what's really neat about this is how this works out is instead of doing a dungeon crawl, instead of doing, you know, what they've kind of done in

the past with the whole dice activation system in Silver Tower and Blackstone Fortress and all that stuff, they they set out to do something a little bit different. They took a risk. And so far,

different. They took a risk. And so far, as Warhammer Quest has gone along, I've enjoyed all of them except for Curse City. And then that Lost Relics was like

City. And then that Lost Relics was like okay, you know, it was kind of a Barnes & Noble [snorts] introductory game that maybe you could play uh you know with kids or something,

but it wasn't like a terribly made game.

Curse City I didn't like at all. Um but

this but they kind of took a risk with Curse City and frankly they kind of took a risk with Silver Tower, Hammer Hall and Blackstone Fortress and I really thought they knocked it out of the park especially with Black Blackstone Fortress. this. I think they took

Fortress. this. I think they took another risk and I also think they knocked it out of the park. Not to say it's a perfect game, but that's what I kind of like what they're doing here

because the interesting part about this is that deck of act cards when you are presented with that. It's it's a really cool

with that. It's it's a really cool simple but a cool thing. It's like you have two narrative choices. And I found myself when I was playing through the campaign migrating from somebody that was like,

"Oh, this is an encounter or an event."

Counter event. So, make your decision there cuz it's like, "Oh, characters have low hit points or you know this and that or maybe the event sounds like it might be good, but that could be a trick." But then I started, you know, I

trick." But then I started, you know, I was thinking of it mechanically and like how how am I going to succeed based on my choice. As I went through, and it wasn't very long. I was still in

act one where I got to this point. I was

starting to string together a narrative in my head based on all the things that had happened previously and I said, "Okay, what would happen here?" You

know, oh, we were in here in the swamp and we fought these things. Okay, so now we've stumbled into this layer or something or somebody's actually been chasing us this whole time. And it was kind of one of those like procedurally

gener generated um solo role playing kind of activities that you can do. You

know, a lot of people that do the soul role playing, they get a book and then they have like a bunch of things and they roll in a chart or whatever and they go, "Oh, okay. So, this happens now." And they have like a couple of

now." And they have like a couple of choices and they do what kind of narratively makes sense. So, I was kind of doing that here going like, "Am I going to go left or I'm going to go right?" And it worked out really well.

right?" And it worked out really well.

It was a lot of fun. And to me, that is like the main number one selling point of the game is, in my opinion, being able to go back through that campaign

because you also have you're only using half the deck of cards. So you you take half the decks, half the cards in the act and then you're looking at every other one because you're looking at two

and choosing one and discarding one. So

you would have read it, but I've already forgotten all the ones I didn't actually do. So, I'm only looking at a quarter of

do. So, I'm only looking at a quarter of the cards for each act in the game. And

so, I can see myself next time playing through and be like, "Okay, I already did that one, so I'm just going to do this one just because." But I also might just choose one I already did because it fits narratively. And that whole

fits narratively. And that whole process, which is a very small, it takes up a small portion of your playing time, just that quick choice, but it's really huge. It's really a big part of the

huge. It's really a big part of the game. And I think it's just an awesome

game. And I think it's just an awesome thing that they did. Okay, so that's out of the way. So, here's where kind of the spoilerish thing starts. And I will

timestamp this and time stamp it to the end. I'm not going to spoil any

end. I'm not going to spoil any narrative stuff, but it's kind of how the campaign works after you finish the first campaign cuz it it has like unlockables. So, anyway, skip to the

unlockables. So, anyway, skip to the head if you don't want to know this, but you're going to know it opening the box in my opinion. Okay? You're going to know it putting together the models and be like, "Oh, well, there's another

hero." You know what I It's like in the

hero." You know what I It's like in the instructions. So, here we go. So,

instructions. So, here we go. So,

you start with four characters and then you play through the campaign and over the course you will unlock three more characters which you can then play on your next campaign. The rules as stated,

you don't play them in this campaign.

So, it's not like you unlock them and start using them. It's kind of like you meet them along the way or whatever.

They're also here trying to fight Nurgle and away you go. Now, the reason for that is you also unlock three new or four new versions or one new version of the other four. So, you've got those new versions. So, now you can choose one of

versions. So, now you can choose one of those and then by the end you realize, oh, we didn't actually beat the guy. It

tells us now we've unlocked the campaign to go beat him again. So this says, "Okay, go back and replay the campaign."

And then after you finish the campaign again, then you get to play this final fight, which is like a really tough version of him, which is cool because that's kind of what happens in like a comic book story or a narrative. It's

like you beat the bad guy and he's like, "Oh, I'm going to, you know, he escapes and you get to fight him again." And

there's enough variety in the act cards when you go play through it again, it's like, "Oh, we'll be fighting him in in a different area." And so then you

different area." And so then you basically play through it again, but now you've unlocked all the versions of the characters, all the new characters, and you have a deck of reward cards, which

are act reward cards. So you get your normal reward reward cards, but then it says in the rules when you unlock the rewards for the act, those will go in the next time you play the campaign. And

you don't put all of them in. You only

shuffle in four randomly out of the act one, four out of the act two, and out of the act three. Those will go in each deck. the second or third or whatever

deck. the second or third or whatever time you play it in the future. And

those are like really powerful, but there's only four in the deck, so you maybe don't even see them or maybe only see one or two of them when you play through it again. And there's like some set collection stuff that you can do,

but it'd be very hard. You'd have to almost, you know, artificially configure it so that you got them. But there's

possibles to get like little combos and stuff, uh, you know, that items that work together, like a set collection.

Like you think of World of Warcraft where you get like your whole suit and it all combos together and you're just kicking ass. So that's you play through

kicking ass. So that's you play through the second time with maybe a sprinkle of those reward cards which help with the difficulty and then you've got some new characters and stuff to play through and that's it. So you just basically play

that's it. So you just basically play the game twice and then you've played the full game. So I've only effectively played the game halfway through even though but I've done nothing's really changed. I just don't have those extra

changed. I just don't have those extra reward cards and I never fought the final final guy. I haven't done that yet. So, maybe I'll do that with my

yet. So, maybe I'll do that with my group. We'll just play through. I was

group. We'll just play through. I was

like, "Hey, hey guys, I unlocked everything. Let's just play a campaign

everything. Let's just play a campaign with everything unlocked." But I think that's cool. It's kind of like you're on

that's cool. It's kind of like you're on training wheels a little bit in that first playthrough of the campaign. You

kind of get a feel for how things work and all that stuff. So, the other part of it is um so that's all the campaign stuff. The spoiler ends now, but the

stuff. The spoiler ends now, but the other part of it is is the puzzliness of the scenarios. And there's two parts to

the scenarios. And there's two parts to this. One is it's really cool. Like I

this. One is it's really cool. Like I

don't know most of all of them the puzzles and the the objectives of the encounter were awesome.

They were so cool. Whether that not they were easy or difficult and that kind of thing like narratively thematically they were really cool. I've really liked it.

It was just clever little things throughout the the whole game was really fun. So that is such a cool departure

fun. So that is such a cool departure from some of the original Warhammer quests. Silver Tower kind of gets into

quests. Silver Tower kind of gets into that a little bit where it has this weird stuff that you do and that's that's what I love. I really like Silver Tower for some of this really wacky funky off-the-wall things. This has some

of that. So, you've got that and then

of that. So, you've got that and then you also talking about now the difficulty of it. that's going to vary greatly because the one thing which I

will levy as a a criticism or just a a note of warning I guess is a game is a little bit easy and it has a kind of a similar problem to Blackstone Fortress where like once you get a lot of

upgrades and stuff cuz Blackstone Fortress is very upgraded driven with all the different cards and stuff then things get easy. So once you have all the upgrades uh you can still roll poorly and lose. Um, but if you've

rolled decently and you're smart about how you use your upgrades, things should be relatively straightforward. Now,

until you get those upgrades, it might be a little bit more difficult. But

also, what's going to happen, and this is a thing that I think I may look at down the road, is now that I've kind of gotten the idea of how the puzzles kind of work and sort of the timing, the

pacing, that kind of stuff. So, I've got a little bit of a mastery of the game.

The difficulties also comes into play when you are stretching it over the course of multiple scenarios because like I talked about in the walkthrough, you don't just heal back to full at the

end of every encounter. You heal D3, which could be one, which big whoop, or three hit points, which maybe also big whoop. The other thing is if you lose an

whoop. The other thing is if you lose an encounter, you have to discard uh reward cards four between all heroes.

So you just spread it out, discard to four. But if you ever lose an encounter

four. But if you ever lose an encounter and you don't have four cards to discard, then you've lost the whole campaign. You have to start over.

campaign. You have to start over.

So the thing about that is is some of the reward cards are just really good.

They're very useful. Some are more situational, still pretty useful, but there are some situations I found where I was like, "Oh man, if I did not have this one reward card, I would 100% lose

this scenario." And that's I was like,

this scenario." And that's I was like, "That's probably okay. Maybe there's

another way that I wasn't seeing to to beat the scenario because I had this reward card. Maybe there's another

reward card. Maybe there's another avenue I didn't take. But your sort of experience, I think, is going to be driven by the rewards that you're given at the end of encounters and things like that. Because there are certain rewards

that. Because there are certain rewards that, and I'll just say it here, um that decrease the defense of the monsters because they automatically block like

whatever amount of hits. So if they have two defense and you roll two hits, well, they're blocked. [laughter]

they're blocked. [laughter] And most heroes roll two dice. So unless

you get bonuses that will let you roll more dice or lower the defense of the monsters, which are huge. Um, and so if you do that at the right time, then you can definitely circumvent some of the

obstacles in your way. So if you don't have those rewards, it's going to be more or less difficult. So it's going to vary there. But once you kind of

vary there. But once you kind of understand that and what to kind of go for, then um the it it's going to be interesting. So

the point I'm trying to get to here is the respit cards because if you could play the game I think you could you could try this if you wanted to make it more difficult is you could say we are

going to make sure we have no respit and maybe we do a rest bit at the beginning of each act. So you just in act one there's no respits you put you put a

rest bit in the top two let's say of act two and three. So you can take that and do that and then you've got to make it all the way through. That's when things get interesting. And I found that

get interesting. And I found that naturally through gameplay without doing that that that is really kind of the long arc the long hall of the game is

like okay if I use this now that is not necessarily a good idea cuz I could do it cuz like it'd be fun to do but do I really need to do it now? And

once that sort of clicked in, then I was kind of off and rolling where I was like, I need to wait till that encounter towards the back half of the act or even the boss fight where I do use this. Um,

and so that's kind of the interesting part of that. You got to make things last over a certain amount of time. And

the other thing I wanted to comment on here, and I'll kind of leave it with this is at first when I was playing it, the reward cards, not being able to like immediately trade those, I was like, "Oh, this is kind of dumb, you know, cuz

how come how come there's no trading?

This is stupid." That's that's one of my pet peeves about dungeon crawls is like how come we can't just trade like why are there no rules for trading you know what I mean or that kind of thing so basic stuff but there is it's always on the respit card and it's going to seem

very simple but to me this is where it all kind of comes full circle because if you think of the time box the time scope of what's going on here it's not like the other Warhammer quest the other

Warhammer quest is you go out well Silver tower a little bit but you go out you do your little venture you come back to town you go out you do adventure, you come back to town or you come back to home base, so to speak. This is not like

that. There ain't no home base in Dark

that. There ain't no home base in Dark Water. This is a hectic two-day

Water. This is a hectic two-day experience in the time frame of the characters that are taking place there.

So, it's like you're moving from event to event to event to event to event to encounter to encounter to encounter to encounter breathlessly. You know,

encounter breathlessly. You know, there's like nothing, you know, they're chasing us. We're in this huge jungle,

chasing us. We're in this huge jungle, this forest that's at trying, it's alive. It's all pestilent and diseased

alive. It's all pestilent and diseased and it's all trying to kill us. So the

pacing of the theme of what's going on is very hectic. So you don't have time to sit there and swap resources and say here take this you know whatever. So

that's when those respits come into play and you can say like oh you got to have this one cuz you're going to see some of these character abilities. It's like oh that guy's that's the guy we send into combat or this is the one we hold back and this is the one we we try to sneak

through the enemy lines. You you'll get that. I'm not going to spoil that here.

that. I'm not going to spoil that here.

[snorts] man, you're like, you really need this, you know, rope or you need this special staff or whatever. And

those respits are those opportunities to do that. So, again, taking those out is

do that. So, again, taking those out is going to it's going to be interesting.

So, I think I think people will come in and they will play through the first campaign, maybe two campaigns, and be settled with it, but then by the end of that, they're going to be like, it's a little easy, but then I think it's very easy to tweak the easiness and add to

the puzzliness. Like I said, either just

the puzzliness. Like I said, either just removing rest bits or pulling it so there's only one possibly in the deck.

You know, just always take two out before you shuffle or something or add one at the beginning of the act, however you want to do it. Since it's all card driven, it's very sort of plugandplay

that way. Um, and yeah, so the

that way. Um, and yeah, so the difficulty there is going to come into if you can't trade your reward items, you like you got to make use of it. You

got to figure out the puzzle of how to make that item useful for for this character or that character. And that's

really neat. And that's such a cool thing. And sort of looping back to my

thing. And sort of looping back to my initial sort of conceit, which is like, hey, this is a Kickstarter game from Games Workshop.

I think they really did a cool thing with this with a kind of it's a new way of doing the narrative stuff. The new

way of kind of doing a campaign. It's

got some light unlocking stuff kind of, you know, little bit of training wheels.

Not really, that's that's not the right word, but it's just like a little beginner campaign. And you sort of

beginner campaign. And you sort of unlock the game. You can play through it again. You probably won't see anything

again. You probably won't see anything that you played through the first time.

And away you go. And so it should be easy to add new stuff. Like you don't even need a new book because there's 19 maps. You could just have a little deck

maps. You could just have a little deck of cards and make that an expansion and you know maybe his games workshops [laughter] can be like go buy these three boxes of enemies and then you know

this pack of cards and you're like oh that's 150 bucks and uh so anyway but you know it it would be easy to expand and and do that and I think it's just really a lot of

fun. other other than it's like a little

fun. other other than it's like a little bit easy, you know, once you get the hang it's like it's kind of easy, but that's an easy fix. It's not even a fix.

It's just like it's an easy sort of tweak modularity modularitywise.

Um, you know, I can talk about combat and stuff and how the enemies activate.

That's the other thing. It's all kind of a here or there. I like how the action taps, all of that. All that stuff works.

The one thing I do like with the enemy activation is they have this red and black dice and then like a special ability and like it they cycle through those the way that works. So enemies are always kind of like rushing or moving in

one round and the next round they're kind of doing their big attacks or their special abilities. Like it just works

special abilities. Like it just works itself out naturally the way that works.

I didn't even talk about that. So that's

such a mechanical thing. But to me, I really wanted to sell the point of how the narrative, you know, rolls out, how it's strung along, and how, you know, the reward cards and that whole sort of

resource management over the course of like, you know, seven, eight games per act. Um,

act. Um, is it interesting, you know, it's cool.

I never really seen anything quite like that. So, uh, again, for the price of

that. So, uh, again, for the price of it, you look at it like a Kickstarter game because it's like there's 49 great minis in here. And so I think part of that is like these are all like I don't

know nine times out of 10 better than the miniatures you're going to get in a Kickstarter and you [snorts] know and it's going to be fun to paint. So it's

kind of the Kickstarter for the painter.

You know what I mean? Cuz a lot of I don't know I this is all probably BS you know but a lot of people that get Kickstarters don't really paint them.

You know what I mean? And uh I mean I don't really paint Kickstarters that I get and I haven't painted in a long time and I was like, "Oh, these also look really awesome to paint, so I painted them." Um anyway, a lot of people don't

them." Um anyway, a lot of people don't care about that. I do. I It's fun. These

are great models to paint. But

gameplay-wise, all that stuff I talked about, I recommend it. So, enough

yapping. Thanks,

[music] feel. [music]

feel. [music] [music] [music]