Warhammer Quest: Darkwater review - "If you want to play Warhammer without needing to buy armies, scenery, and extra models, this board game is for you"

Warhammer Quest has been around for a while now – 31 years, in fact. It's arguably become one of Games Workshop's most beloved titles, with a fiercely devoted player base and a place amongst the best board games. Despite that, Games Workshop itself has never seemed able to quite settle on a consistent format. Darkwater is the sixth title in the series and the fourth entirely new take on the game.

The most recent editions, Blackstone Fortress and the appropriately-named (given its many behind-the-scenes troubles) Cursed City, seemed to have perfected a more modern take on the dungeon crawler format, but took an age to set up and pack away. For the latest edition, Darkwater – which is once again set in the realms of Age of Sigmar – it's clear that speed and convenience are the order of the day. This feels like it's taken the core elements of the last two editions and pared everything back into a more compact and streamlined game.

Warhammer Quest: Darkwater features & design

• Take on Chaos in a ruined chapel
• Fight through a hardback map book of missions
• 49 miniatures, including seven heroes

First impressions are important, and Darkwater makes a good one. The old school artwork is printed on a sturdy box that will survive plenty of wear and tear. Unlike some of Games Workshop's big boxes, this one feels built to last and the envelope system used to store your cards during a campaign is simple and efficient.

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Inside the box you get 49 miniatures. They break down as seven heroes and four enemy bosses, plus the rank and file monsters. The heroes are:

• Edmark Valoran, The Manticore Knight
• Bren Tylis, The Renegade Saint
• Drolf Ironhead, The Grizzled Explorer
• Inara Sion, The Cleansing Blade
• Drasher Vorn, The Rampaging Beast
• Kelthannor, The Forest Prince
• Jacobus Vyne, The Jade Wizard (plus an accompanying forest spirit named Wisper)

Of those, Edmark, Bren, Drolf, and Inara are playable right out of the box, while the remaining three are "unlocked" as you play through more of the game, much like Gloomhaven. They're all really great models, with my personal favorites being Jacobus Vyne (gotta love a nature wizard), Edmark, and Bren.

The monsters are one of the areas where Darkwater really excels. Where the previous Quest game went fully goth with its town full of vampires and zombies, this one concentrates on the servants of Papa Nurgle. The Jade Abbey is a flooded temple, so there's a manky, dingey theme to most of the enemies here. In the box you get five different types of enemy:

• Mire Kelpies: Annoying little beasts that vomit toxins on your heroes
• Pox-Wretches: Basic shambling 'ham baddies
• Pestigors: Plague-themed Beastmen – some really nice models
• Blight Templars: Bloated and rotting champions of Nurgle
• Cankerborn: Two hulking and suitably nightmarish daemons

There are also four bosses: Shaman Foulhoof (a Pestigor who I can't not call Falconhoof); Mulgoth the Cleaver (boss of the Blight Templars); Belga the Cystwitch (half witch, half worm and the best model in the box); and the big bad, Gelgus Pust, who is prone to showing up in early games and laughing at your heroes.

The game itself also looks quite different to previous editions of Warhammer Quest. While the early games all used cardboard tiles as their play surface, Darkwater's biggest innovation is the use of a large book that opens up to reveal 19 different playable maps. The concept is not new – it's already been used by games like Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion – but the Darkwater book is fully hardback and works exceptionally well. It feels high quality and, crucially, lies perfectly flat.

Gameplay

• Play one-off Encounters or a three act campaign
• Campaigns are made up of shuffled Encounter and Event cards
• 19 maps and lots of variety

A Darkwater campaign is split into three acts, with each involving opening new decks of cards. Each session consists of drawing a deck of 15 cards, which are split into Encounter and Event cards, plus one randomly selected boss card.

Encounters are your skirmishes and missions where you turn to a new map and lay out the miniatures. Events are brief things that happen during the campaign – for example you encounter a strange character lurking in the Jade Abbey.

You draw two cards from the deck and choose which one you want to play, discarding the other. So, for every act in the campaign, you play seven Encounters/Events and then take on a boss. When those are done you've completed the act and move on to the next one. Because you'll have discarded half of the cards, however, you'll have to work through the game multiple times if you want to see everything. The large number of treasure cards to be found also means that completists will need to put in the time to get their hands on everything.

You draw two cards from the deck and choose which one you want to play, discarding the other. So, for every act in the campaign, you play seven Encounters/Events and then take on a boss. When those are done you've completed the act and move on to the next one. Because you'll have discarded half of the cards, however, you'll have to work through the game multiple times if you want to see everything. The large number of treasure cards to be found also means that completists will need to put in the time to get their hands on everything.

An event takes place on one of the 19 maps. In the Hero Phase you position your miniatures in the starting hexes and then use a three card Core Ability system for each character. The abilities are Move, Attack, and Aid. Move and Attack correspond to stats on your character cards. To use these you must expend "energy" by turning one of your Ability cards horizontally. The jist here is that while you have the Move, Attack, and Aid cards, they are basically interchangeable.

For example, I might want Drolf to move twice, then attack. To do so I would first use the energy of the rarely-used Aid card to move. I would then expend the actual Move card to move again. I would then use the final card, Attack, to take a shot at one of my foes. These cards are all recharged at the end of the Hero Phase.

In the Enemy Turns you follow the instructions on each enemy card and roll for each relevant model. These actions tend to be fairly self explanatory: Advance and Reposition are movement actions, Onslaught, Quick Attack, and Grievous Blow are different ways that they lash out at the heroes. It's pretty straightforward and works well enough as a system, though it can sometimes feel like a repetitive slog rolling through hordes of enemy models.

All Encounters take place on a timer – you have four Battle Rounds to complete the Encounter and reap the rewards. If you fail and lose the encounter, that will have its own impact on your ongoing campaign.

And that's kind of it. For the most part, this system works well. There's a good deal of variety across the Encounter cards, while the different character and treasure cards add their own twists to the rules. Some cards do feel significantly tougher than others, though. The Act 1 card Deep Trouble has already become infamous for its cryptic wording that renders the Encounter almost impossible unless you have movement-boosting treasure. Thankfully Games Workshop has since amended the wording in an errata. Still, if you lose an Encounter each character must discard four reward cards. If they can't do that, then the campaign is immediately over. That's pretty stark!

Should you buy Warhammer Quest: Darkwater?

Warhammer Quest remains Games Workshop's truest game-in-a-box experience. You really do just buy this one set with no need for any additional armies or warbands. It's super-easy to get to grips with and neatly solves the problem of how long the previous editions took to set up before you could start playing.

It's also pretty good value – as these things go, anyway – especially if you can pick it up at an independent game store and take advantage of the price discounts. You get loads of miniatures which are all to Games Workshop's usual high standards, and the boardbook feels really good quality. I've been playing the game for months and there's a lot of variety in here to keep you busy.

It's not my favourite version of the game. That's still Blackstone Fortress which, for all its fiddliness, felt like a characterful game with a lot of depth. I will also always have a big soft spot for the 1995 first edition, and – as I wrote here – I really wish Games Workshop would make my nostalgic dreams come true and do a made-to-order reprint of that.

Still, this is Warhammer Quest through and through, just in a slightly more streamlined form. It's a huge amount of fun and ideal for those nights where you've got some mates round and fancy adventuring into a peril-filled dungeon over a couple of beers. Just make sure you keep the drinks well away from the map!

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How we tested Warhammer Quest: Darkwater

Our reviewer was able to spend many weeks testing Warhammer Quest: Darkwater, allowing them to get a full sense of how well it plays alongside the game's longevity. They started the process by familiarizing themselves with the game's rules before playing it multiple times, all with different player counts to see how the experience differed.

For a more thorough understanding of our process, don't miss how we test board games or the GamesRadar+ reviews policy.

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