As I suspected, as we get closer to the end of the Quest for the Hidden Vaults, momentum is building, and Amanda wants to get it DONE! I expect we’ll be taking a crack at the Hidden Vaults later this week….

The fourth and final Stronghold: The DEATHMAZE!

Exploration Round One: Challenge

Amanda picked the Ratlings to do this one…

First roll…

I did re-roll the one, for giggles, and got a two – not that it mattered – the initial roll was more than 16 and included a 2 and a 4… so… Ratlings picked up two Archaeotech cards!

Although, looking at the card again… I actually rolled HIGHER than they have results for on the card… probably should have just said 16+. Otherwise, what happens when you roll MORE than that!?

 Exploration Round Two: Another Challenge

 

Ratlings found a thing. Locarno was wounded, but recovered in the recovery step.

 Exploration Round Two: Again With The Challenge

I think this would only be a thing if you were playing with multiple people that were actually, y’know,  really role-playing the „allies of convenience“ and looking out for themselves first… also, if something really cool came out like the Emperyan Chronometer or any of the special artifacts that are the Secret Agendas for many characters… As Amanda and I are WAAAAAAAAAAY more co-operative than the original fluff suggests these characters would be, this was just a gimme.

  Exploration Round Four: Finally, A Combat…

And and AMBUSH at that! With, like, ALL of the Traitor Guard!? (feeling a little grateful I haven’t gotten to painting the extras…

Everyone rushed the explorers… except for the one group of Traitor Guard that could see them – they just took (largely ineffective) pot-shots.

And then our explorers hit back… Hard. Dorg caved one of their heads in… Pious Vorne started bringing the light of the Emperor to the foul traitorous creatures that they are.

then more of them… This group all died in one Cleansing Flame action…

Which meant Vorne was now INSPIRED!

Unlike all the others in the group, Vorne’s Secret Agenda requires Doing a Thing – which is great early in the campaign – as she can actually become Inspired pretty early in the game, early in the campaign… but at this point, everyone who has a Special Agenda that requires a card, they now have them and START every game inspired.

All of the Hostiles were wiped out and all the discovery locations searched and everyone was heading to the escape chamber and just waiting for Dorg to catch up… when ALL THE REINFORCEMENTS arrived!? Seriously… Amanda just couldn’t stop rolling 1s on the d20 Blackstone Die used to determine if Reinforcements arrived!?  Luckily there was a bit of a bottleneck… that has a bend in it… that was precisely 4 hexes away from the escape chamber (Dorg’s max move) and Dorg was plugging said bottleneck… So they all took a run at Dorg… and he took a couple wounds… but he’s a HARD guy to take down, and after they’d done their thing, Dorg just retreated into the Maglev chamber and everyone was off to their final destination…

And Finally: The Deathmaze Stronghold! 

I played this with Keira last month. Her harlequin danced through here in, like, a single turn… (

Harlequin Solitaire in the Blackstone Fortress – check it out, it was EPIC!

but… I have a feeling this lot was going to have a bit tougher go of it…

As it happened, when I dealt out the initiative cards, ALL the hostiles went first! But that actually worked out really well… They pretty much all charged, but they weren’t close enough to actually make an attack at the end of that charge… I really just gathered them all nice and close…

End of Turn One… Beastmen and Nega-Volt Cultists dealt with…

Next turn… Vorne burned up one of the Traitor Guard detachments. Well… almost all of them.

The Ratlings went into to finish the survivors off.

Vorne arrived on, leading the assault, and burning more traitors…

BUUUUURRRRRNNNNN!!!

On Surviving Traitor Guard tries to flee.

Vorne chases down the fleeing Traitor Guard and then burns a Chaos Space Marine to death.

This triggers the activation of Obsidius Mallex and his Chaos Space Marines. Mallex and the Chaos Space Marine pursue the fleeing Vorne – the Chaos Space Marine burns in the flames she leaves in her wake.

And then the Eldar goes and ONE SHOTS Obsidius Mallex!?

BOOM!

Okay, she had some help from a handy little orb that she picked up from the Kravv’cha’to, back when they were hanging with Dahyak Grekh, the Kroot Tracker.

Then everyone just had to get to the escape chamber…

Vorne burned a Rogue Psyker….

And then another…

And then left some flame waiting for any reinforcements that might come through the portal…

There was some waiting for Dorg and the Ratlings to catch up!

During which some Traitor Guard showed up… so those flames burned Chaos Space Marines… but the Traitor Guard were undaunted…?

Nega-Volt Cultist reinforcements also made an appearance… but that was it. Everyone made it out alive!

Woo!

Precipice

Back at Precipice we drew a new Destiny card… yikes…

There were a few things purchased… but not much. Everyone is pretty much all tooled up and carrying the maximum number of resource cards. Ready to hit the Hidden Vaults!

I HAD thought our next game might be ultimate conclusion to the Quest for the Hidden Vaults – but, rereading the rules, we DO need four more clues to get to the Hidden Vaults… for some reason I thought I’d read that once the Strongholds were cleared, you just go to the Hidden Vaults… but re-reading it, I noted that it is played „just like a stronghold“ and the very first thing you do to attack a stronghold is discard 4 clue cards! Unfortuatnely we don’t HAVE four clue cards… I thin we may have even discarded a few, because everyone is already carrying MAX resource cards (all equipment!). Actually, I think the rAtlings still have two clues stowed away in their packs somewhere (I’m pretty sure Rien had one in his mini-refrigerator, tucked in behind a dubious looking jar of „sauerkraut“…

So instead it might be a regular exploration to use up a couple resources and acquire a few more clues!

THEN we’ll be on to the Hidden Vaults…

But what to do after that!?

As some of the possibilities require painting miniature, I thought I’d best start giving it some though…

As I said, we have at least two games left in the Quest for the Hidden Vaults, but what to do after that.

The Dreaded Ambull, I suppose. I think it was the first expansion released – and I have all the minis from it painted! It has at least one adventure and adds new Discovery (shinies) and Encounter (AMBULLS!) and Exploration (Combat and Challenge) cards. There is also a short campaign involving the Ambull in the Annual.

In the annual there are a couple one-off adventures to acquire new Retinue characters – the Pennitent – which I have a miniature for now and a Flash Git (if I could track a single one down…). There is also another Campaign involving the Ambull and a campaign involving a Master of Possession and Greater Possessed.

Who’s should keep us busy for some time. After that, however, I’ll need to get new things painted!

Traitor Command was, I think, the next release and has, like The Dreaded Ambul new cards and map bits and a single adventure/exploration (or short campaign?). Shouldn’t be too hard to get things ready for this, as there were only two miniatures in the expansion – a Traitor Commissar and a Chaos Ogryn!

Escalation was the next release and has a much longer campaign – more like the Quest for the Hidden Vaults! It has a BUNCH more minis to be painted – including four new Explorerss, a Retinue Character and a BUNCH of Cultists (I actually bought a bonus Cultists of the Abyss box – so I have TWICE the Cultists to get painted!).

After that there is No Respite – introducing some Death Guard and Pox Walkers…

There are two more expansions after that before this arc of the the Warhammer (40K) Quest comes to an end. I’m pretty sure we’re totally going to pick them up when they are released.

I’m feeling fairly confident that this won’t be the end of Warhammer (40K) Quest – I’d guess they’ll have a new started box out by Xmas… Anyone care to guess what it’ll be about? My money is on something to do with the Inquisition (or maybe that’s just me being hopeful!)

I actually cleared (most) of the other distractions off the Workbench this afternoon and left only Blackstone Fortress stuff.

the extra Traitor Guard and other elements from the bonus Servants of the Abyss box made their way to the front.

I also assembled the models from Traitor Command and No Respite. It will be a while until I get to playing those… but since I’m actually excited about this at the moment, I figured I’d ride that wave and see if I can’t get that done.

In other news, it seems they’ve announced a new edition of Warhammer 40000. I have to admit, I’m pretty „meh“ about that… It promises to „revolutionize“ the system… but… I feel like the APOCALYPSE rules revolutionized the system. Anything short of that sort of system, I feel, is actually going to be a step BACKWARDS!? To be honest, I have Kill Team, which is okay, better than regular 40K…. Anything that can’t be handled by Kill Team, I’d rather play out with Apocalypse!?

On the plus side, all the existing codices will work with the new edition – so, to start off, all I’d need is to pick up the new core rulebook… so I may do that. But with the new release, they will start redoing Codexes and we’ll for sure see the same old „codex creep“.

Coming Soon to Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

 Another expedition to the Blackstone Fortress in search of the final clues that will lead our intrepid group of adventurers to the Hidden Vaults!?

Maybe some more newly painted Blackstone Fortress minis…?

Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog