Let me preface this by saying a few things. First of all, I love WHQ:ACG, as does my gaming group. This and elder sign are our go to co-op games now, with WHQ edging out Elder Sign a little. We love getting the feel of a dungeon crawler without all the setup and take down time of a game like descent or imperial assault, and since my core group is 4 people, WHQ is perfect. That being said, you can only play through the included quests so many times before they start getting a little stale. The random locations and such help keep it fresh, and the delve quest helps out as well, but I'm worried about the time approaching where it can't continue to keep the attention of our entire group. My concern is that if there are no expansions, where do we go from here? We have some time (heck, we haven't even cracked open Omens of Ice yet because we've been playing WHQ so much), but if there are no expansions announced in the next couple of months I'm worried that one of my favorite new games of the last few years will be relegated to the shelf. If that happens, what game should we move to? I've been eyeing the LOTR LCG, and I know that out of the box it only plays 1-2, my concerns are how easily can it be upgraded to play 4, and just how much time does deck construction add (I'm familiar with plenty of other competitive LCGs, so I know the basics). Since we really want a game that can be played relatively quickly, if it takes as much time to setup LOTR as it does descent, we may just move back to descent...

I'm open to other ideas as well, if anyone has them. Here are the criteria:

1) co-op

2) quick setup and takedown

3) ability to play 4 players, but we have other 2 player games to play if we have split the baby.

LotR can easily handle 4 players just by getting a second core set. I will say however that most quests are designed with 2 players in mind, so you may find things a tad easy and may find yourself wanting nightmare expansions sooner than you might have with fewer players. While there are some quests that are designed with 3-4 players in mind, these tend to be special event quests or quests that come later in the line of expansions.

I will also warn that deck building is a significant component of LotR. Sadly, I don't play LotR as much as I'd like because I don't enjoy deckbuilding, but it's essential to the game. And with 4 players, I wouldn't be surprised if you spend more time crafting decks (and tweaking them between attempts) than actually playing the game.

Sorry if it sounds like I'm putting LotR down. I actually enjoy it a lot, when I am lucky enough to be able to play a series of quests without needing to make significant deckbuilding decisions. Personally I find the deckbuilding to be very onerous and off-putting. Many people say that the true game of LotR is building decks, and actually playing the game is almost an afterthought just to see how well you did the building.

I suppose you could try two core sets to test it out. If you don't like it, you should be able to eBay them for close to what you paid for them.

As far as other possible games to consider, Tiny Epic Defenders may be an option. Mage Knight is famous for having big set-up and tear-down times, but I've found it to be much faster with a Broken Token organizer, possibly enough so to be tolerable to your group. Sorry I don't have many suggestions.

One I quite like is Shadowrun:Crossfire not ffg but a nice, REALLY hard deck building game that let's you earn xp and upgrade between games. Starter is a bit expensive and only has 3 quests though. Add on its only atm expansion though and there is more than enough variations for a few months.

LotR is a simply fantastic game but deck building is 50% of the game so one/some/all of your group need to be ok with deckbuilding.

So if that aspect is ok then great, id say pop over to the LotR forums and ask about for stuff.

Seeing as there are so so many quests/packs/sagas/pods/nightmares the content is massive.

Setup depends if you prebuilt your decks. If you have the player decks AND the encounter deck for your scenario prebuilt, then setup is about 5mins max.

Otherwise, encounter deck build probably takes 5-10 mins but player decks can take anything from 10mins to 3 hours depending on how intricate you wish to craft the deck specific to a scenario and how much you want it to integrate with other player decks.

Myself, I play a new scenario solo with the last deck I used to get a feel for the scenario (lose badly after about 1hr) then I spend about half an hour building a specialised deck for the scenario and then replay (+1hr) and see how it goes. Then if needed, I tweak the deck between sessions to try and get it really balanced for the scenario (or just able to beat it). So for me a play session is anything from about 45mins quickest to 2.5 hours longest (but can be infinite just by adding more playthroughs maybe trying different skill-spheres)

If you dont want to deck build, there are plenty of players who get builds online from other players, though it is a game aspect you would miss out on in my opinion.

Many people build the decks as a seperate event to the game session and just have the decks already sorted and ready to go, with maybe a small sideboard of cards to tweak between plays.

I love whq and lotr as both very excellent but different cards games within the fantasy genre.

Pathfinder Adventure Card Game? It got some set up time due to location decks but:

0:It is co-op

1: Simpler than LotR

2: Deck building is totally optional. You got pre-built decks for every character and decks change organically when playing campaign.

3: You use dice to roll for attacks, spells etc. So a bit closer to WHQ card game in that regard.

4: You can level your character.

5; You get a lot more adventures when buying adventure packs.

6: Three different base games with campaigns with different themes.

Not as pretty like the LCG FFG titles. But it is alright.

Honestly if your looking for a coop with quick setup and no deck building I would fall back on Space Hulk Death Angel. It's the most similar to WHQ:ACG in my opinion. The depth and mechanics of WHQ are better, the theme is very different, but it's cheap and out of the box plays 4 players. I think there will be expansion for WHQ but this one may tide you over until they come.

Thanks for the comments everyone, we are going to try out Death Angel and very tentatively dip into LOTR. As for expansions, there are rumors that GW is doing a Warhammer quest board game set in age of Sigmar, so I'm afraid...very afraid...

So I just wanted to add that my copies of LOTR core set and death angel came from Amazon today. Haven't had a chance to try out LOTR, but death angel is pretty awesome. Less deep than WHQ and less of a story, but the game is amazing and plays really well, it gets that desperate "we aren't going to win" feeling across perfectly, until that last terminator reaches for the control panel, his battle brothers slain around him, his armored gauntlet dripping in blood and ichor, with his dying breath he triggers the sequence. They have succeeded, and the imperium faces one less threat this day. Tomorrow another threat will arise, however, and without 6 stalwart warriors of the Blood Angels First Company. Perhaps tomorrow, twilight comes at last...

I'm diving into this game full force, and I know my group will love it almost as much as WHQ. Bring on the expansions!

Here is a suggestion FatherTurin.

If you like WHQ:ACG so much, try playing the real WhQ game.

Never run out of adventures in that game.

The possible adventures abound in every light/open, dark/closed and in between place in the Olde World and beyond.

In other words, anywhere in the Warhammer world.

I have been playing that game for going on 21 years and am able to find & play new adventures still.

You can play with metal toy soldiers, resin/plastic toy soldiers, paper toy soldiers, icons or just about anything that you and your mates/friends decide represents what it represents.

Personally, I play with all of it with the end goal of having well-painted 3D toy soldiers for everything in the end.

If all you like about WHQ:ACG is the mechanism of the game, sure, play the games the others have told you.

If playing in the Warhammer world on adventures similar to what you have done in WHQ:ACG is what you like really, go play the original WhQ game.

It is easily acquired on eBay and in other similar places.

With just the core set in LotR lcg, building a deck isn't to bad. Just pick 2 spheres and cut 10 cards. Also Ringdb is a great place to net deck if you want a build deck but dont want to deck build.

http://ringsdb.com

Here is a suggestion FatherTurin.

If you like WHQ:ACG so much, try playing the real WhQ game.

Never run out of adventures in that game.

The possible adventures abound in every light/open, dark/closed and in between place in the Olde World and beyond.

In other words, anywhere in the Warhammer world.

I have been playing that game for going on 21 years and am able to find & play new adventures still.

You can play with metal toy soldiers, resin/plastic toy soldiers, paper toy soldiers, icons or just about anything that you and your mates/friends decide represents what it represents.

Personally, I play with all of it with the end goal of having well-painted 3D toy soldiers for everything in the end.

If all you like about WHQ:ACG is the mechanism of the game, sure, play the games the others have told you.

If playing in the Warhammer world on adventures similar to what you have done in WHQ:ACG is what you like really, go play the original WhQ game.

It is easily acquired on eBay and in other similar places.

I wouldnt get hopes up from this though, while it is indeed readily available on ebay it is always

, always very very expensive, so you need to have serious money to throw at it to make this work.

True you can proxy miniatures, but core set costs a ton.

Various dubious online places do contain the full game as an illegal print-n-play though, if you dont mind visiting those places and dont mind all the printing.

I wouldnt get hopes up from this though, while it is indeed readily available on ebay it is always

, always very very expensive, so you need to have serious money to throw at it to make this work.

True you can proxy miniatures, but core set costs a ton.

Various dubious online places do contain the full game as an illegal print-n-play though, if you dont mind visiting those places and dont mind all the printing.

Patience is what is required FatherTurin.

Any of you ever hunted in real life?

You do not find your quarry and take it down in just seconds or a few minutes.

It takes time to find the correct specimen and then to take it down the neatest way possible.

eBay is just like that.

It takes patience to get the best deal.

Thenagain, I am one of the Originals.

Been on eBay since '98.

I am a buyer almost exclusively.

I have had lots of practice "hunting" down my quarries.

If you are patient and exercise good judgment & perseverance FatherTurin, you will be able to acquire WhQ materials at a reasonable price.

I have in adding more materials to my collection; I most certainly do not have oodles of money to throw around on anything I do.

You might want to acquire White Dwarf magazines 184-202/204/208 first; these will give you the original prices of each WhQ item and secondly, additional WhQ game ideas and adventures.

This way you can intelligently set a maximum price you are willing to pay for each item you are hunting for.

FatherTurin, do not even entertain the thought of going to those less than honest sites to get copies of the rules and such.

It is not worth compromising your integrity to do so to play any game.

Moreover FatherTurin, there is no need to proxy out almost any of the toy soldiers needed to play WhQ.

One can find ~99.7% of what you need to play any of the Warriors or Monsters from GW-manufactured stocks.

I have only found that one needs to go afield for a very few female toy soldiers for the woman WhQ player.

Everything else GW made at one time or another.

Furthermore, I try to stay with GW-made toy soldiers in gratitude for their creation and then manufacture of the WhQ game.

Unfortunately, I find that this gratitude to be extremely rare in the two-three generations gamers younger than myself and it seems to be disappearing somewhat in my own generation.

That is truly sad.

Loyalty seems to be counting for less and less in our society these days; then again, so are honesty, faith, work and duty.

Best of luck and providence FatherTurin.

Why in the world do you keep using my screen name like you are lecturing me? The response you quoted wasn't even written by me. It just comes off as a cross between pedantic and a little creepy, just FYI. As for your points, how do I say this nicely...

Um...no. The only complete set currently on eBay is $715 PLUS SHIPPING. For the base game. Expansions are hundreds of dollars, hell, individual characters go for anywhere from 45-100. I can spend $780 at MSRP and get every single expansion for LOTR (sans nightmare decks), and on Amazon it's actually much lower with free shipping. Beyond that (and bear in mind, I played the original decades ago) I feel that the original rule set is atrocious, the miniatures are ugly, and the components are cheap and boring. If I wanted to play a full dungeon crawling experience, I have the vastly superior Descent and Imperial Assault sitting on my shelf. If I want an RPG experience, I have plenty of options ranging from D&D to Full Metal Fantasy to Dresden Files to FFGs Star Wars games to (soon) Call of Cthulhu 7th edition. If we wanted to spend an entire day playing a truly epic game with complex rules and far reaching narratives that allow us to spin our own tale of conquest and victory...we still wouldn't play WHQ, I have Twilight Imperium. I have no need or desire to spend that kind of money on an ancient, out dated board game.

Unfortunately, my gaming group now consists of people with families and careers who don't have a lot of time to get together and play, we are lucky if our various schedules line up once a month. When we do, we don't want to waste too much of our precious few hours just setting up a board and organizing piles of tokens. As I said in my initial post, my goal was a co-op game with quick setup and takedown times that can ideally play up to 4 players, with mechanics that are relatively easy to grasp but have the potential for deep strategy. WHQ the Adventure Card Game provides the absolute perfect experience for us. Death Angel is a little lighter, but almost as much fun, and LOTR looks like it will fall just on the more complicated side of things. Essentially I'm "goldilocks-ing" a new game for my group. We already have the "just right" (WHQ and to a lesser extent Elder Sign), and now I have the "too cold" (death angel) and the "too hot" (LOTR). If LOTR is "too hot" but still completely acceptable to my group, buying the original WHQ is like paying someone for the pleasure of throwing boiling water at us while beating us in the face with a hammer.

To those who actually read my post and gave me some excellent suggestions, thank you again.

Edit: for a more immediate comparison, WHQ costs as much as one of my student loan payments. Um...lol? I guess?

Wow, what a response.

Oyster irritants & Suidae evidently since I did meet the original three criteria specified by FatherTurin with the original WhQ suggestion and simply defended my position after that.

That is life though in the 21Century on-line apparently.

Good luck people.

Wow, what a response.

Oyster irritants & Suidae evidently since I did meet the original three criteria specified by FatherTurin with the original WhQ suggestion and simply defended my position after that.

That is life though in the 21Century on-line apparently.

Good luck people.

I don't want another expensive muscle car that's going to sit in the garage even more often than the one I have, I iust want a Subaru.

Edit: I really am sorry for coming off so strong, I swear I'm not really that much of an *******.

FatherTurin,

For one, fine, you had a bad day; we all have them.

For two, a 30 year old vette with a lot mileage and no options?

Come one, get with the analogy properly FatherTurin.

The actual WhQ game would be a ~20 year old classic Aston Martin DB7.

Sure it has some mileage, but it still had the wherewithal to go whereever you want to go in the Warhammer Olde World at any speed you want and get you & three or more friends there in style and comfort.

Sure the Shelby can smoke the DB7 on a track, but why are you limiting yourself to a track?

On the open road, the Shelby will be left in the dust by the Aston Martin!

For three, as to being done with 'GM, its "Chevy" division or any other part of GM' (rather GW), well, you can play the original WhQ game as an ungrateful sot-of-a-player with no gratitude for all of the design work GW did with "after market parts" from several companies out there and give GW not a single penny.

As for myself, well, I place gratitude where it belongs because without GW making this game, I would not have the fun I do and there would a lot fewer, if any, of the "dungeoncrawl" design copycats that are out there today for others to have fun with including this game.

I find more and more folks these days just have no handle on the ideal, let alone the term, of gratitude in any form or fashion whatsoever.

You might not be one of those folks FatherTurin, but in all honesty, you have to admit there is this problem these days.

For four, as to wanting just a Subaru, where is the joy in that?

It looks like GW is going to have FFG kill this game due to background design clashes.

Personally, pretty much expected that since AoS reared its ugly head, but this game came out and no expansions were specifically talked about at the beginning.

I mean really, what company does that these days other than GW?

The FFG fanboys/girls always talk about how open FFG is, but it was acting like GW about this game from the beginning.

So, I bought not and only play it at the local Hobbytown with their store copy.

AND I will continue to buy not & only play there until I see actual expansion(s) on store shelves; I do not have the disposable income like I see so many here have to buy into dead ends.

So, within this analogy, I see a semi-cheap back-from-somewhere-on-the-high-prairie-made car designed by some unknown to me engineers of one of the Big Three makers that has potential, but seems to only last for about 45,000 miles and really is not that all family friendly in actuality.

Why buy in and why stress?

And lastly FatherTurin, the "Aston Martin" meets the three criteria you started this thread with.

It is a reliable mode of transportation with time-tested features and gets you there in kick-ass style.

In the end, that is, of course, for you to choose to purchase or not.

Your prejudice against "Chevy" may be robbing you of a seriously fun drive after absolutely magnificent drive though.

As for me, I will just stay with my Aston Martin, have fun and encourage others to do so as well.

For many years GW only makes desicions based 100% on GW profit alone. This is their right as they are a business and need to make profit, but that also means that simply having a good product that they charge money for is not a cause for gratitude, just a cause to make sales.

When a company goes out of their way to help customers without a clear primary focus of making sales, thats when gratitude comes in.

When a company (lets say GW) makes desicions that actively harm existing/past customers without seemingly caring (as GW appear to have done many times this last decade) then thats when people start having ingratitude.

Understand what you are saying, but what you say appears to be a search for something.

"The other guy was mean to me so I can do whatever I want in return." thing.

You can always use the excuse of someone else's bad behavior to rationalize your own, but that never makes you right.

Personally, I am grateful that Andy Jones, Gav Thorpe, Ian Pickstock, et al created WhQ.

Furthermore, I am grateful that someone(s) at GW Studio considered the development of WhQ was worthwhile.

Moreover, I am grateful that someone(s) at GW Office financed the production of WhQ.

Additionally, I am grateful to the GW Staff members, who on their own time, donated their efforts to playtest WhQ.

Simply, I am grateful to "GW" for my fun at playing WhQ.

Pony up the real reasons for why you do (not) what you do (not) and live with the consequences.

Do not blame others for your decisions, prejudicial or not, when indeed they were simply your own choices.

just a quick one. WHQ was not the first "Dungeon crawl" boardgame. Heroquest at least came before that. that was MB games poss with GW help.

second the GW that created WHQ, Space Hulk, Bloodbowl, Man'o'War, Battlefleet Gothic and all the other things that became specialist games. is not the GW that exists now. That GW did still have a profit motive but also cared about customer experience. I hope WHQ:ACG carries on but I'm not holding my breath.

Look horseman Im not going to argue with you, I have my opinion and it stands, dont try pretending its anything different that I am hiding because it isnt and I do not in any way consider I have "bad behavior". Dont try claiming there are other "real reasons" as thats just rubbish and argumentative (which you seem to like doing here, sorry if that is accusatory). My opinion is as I stated, fact. Only my opinion. Your opinion differs and thats fine, leave it at that.

Well, I guess that can be called "feisty" nicely.

I find young people today confuse being forthright with argumentative for some unfathomable reason.

There is nothing wishy-washy as opinion within gratitude.

People earn my gratitude, not companies. Often times companies are used as a shorthand for the designers, but it's important not to confuse the 2. People like Richard Halliwell, Jay Little, Gav Thorpe, the Sadler brothers, Andy Chambers, Alessio Cavatore, Rick Priestly, Eric Lang, Chris Peterson, Corey Konieczka (my fellow Poles, represent!), the list of designers I admire and am grateful to is long. Because I have gratitude towards them, I will look into and perhaps buy games they design, no matter what corporation published it. Many of the designers I listed used to work at GW, none of them do now (except for some black library fiction here and there). Also, the secondary market does nothing for either the company or the designer, so shuffling through eBay does nothing to "show my gratitude," it rewards the foresight of a gamer who kept a game in good condition to resell. That's admirable in its own way, but does nothing to express gratitude. In fact, based on licensing, buying the current game gives GW more money than snagging an old copy of the original Warhammer Quest would.

Also, you talk a lot about "young people today" and things like gratitude, respect and faith (that last one is confusing as heck, doesn't seem to have any place in this coversation). At the same time you attempt to tear down analogies you don't like, accuse us of being fanboys (first of all, I am a fanboy, so that's no insult, second of all, pot meet kettle). To say nothing of the fact that you know nothing about us except our screen names and any info we put in our profiles. Just like I know nothing about you and have reacted solely to your statements without making any assumptions. So maybe back off the ridiculously over-broad ad hominem attacks? A little?

I see that I was right in my original reply to you.

Should have kept it there.

I just had too much faith.

And to have gratitude does not mean one is a fan because, indeed, they are two separate issues.

And if you do not understand that, you are the one trying too hard to make "... ridiculously over-broad ad hominem attacks ..." .

Indeed Pot v. Kettle with words like "tear", "accuse" and so forth.

Makes the signature and the apology perfectly disingenuous.

Causes one to wonder what else is too.

As to not knowing you all, 600 & 399 posts reveal a great deal about people.

If you do not think so, oh well.

And lastly "faith" is only confusing to those that have none.

They get it confused with so much garbage.

I see my original post arrived no where where it was intended or meant evidence by all of the shooting that has resulted.

Since it has all been in naught, I shall not bother further.

Y'all've won.

Be happy.

Cheers

um. Ok then.