[Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower] Inside the Silver Tower

[Sobek]

There and back again...

Hey there fellow Yakkers,

I was asked to show some of the stuff I did recently that was not Necromunda related, so here we go.

I got the boxed set for Christmas the year it was released (2017?) and there it sat for probably two years (not under the Christmas tree, but stowed away somewhere).
I knew from the start that I wanted to convert most of the heroes to get rid of the stupid AoS setting and make this more of my own project, so there was some heavy world building involved. Probably too much, but that's how we do things here in Croccoville.

The initial plan was to get my cat lady interested in this so we would spend rainy cold evenings in the darker seasons crawling through magic dungeons, so she would get a better unterstanding of why I loved this hobby of ours so much and that it was not all about sitting at the desk long hours painting fiddly plastic people or creating more and more Underhive terrain that would be harder and harder to find stowage for for probably two or three gaming nights a year. As some of you may know by now, things changed as we broke up after a long relationship last summer and I lost my hobby mojo for months to come.

I have found over the years I am into this hobby (about 18 years now I would guess) that I feel a lot more motivated to paint models when there's a gaming night or weekend planned so there's a deadline I can work towards. Because we all know playing with unpainted models sucks.

So me and some of the lovely guys I mostly game with found a weekend to meet up and I suggested we should play some Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower. Some self-imposed extrinsic pressure later I dug out my box to see what I had finished by then:

An old Warhammer Fantasy Battles Mummy (counts as Wight King Player Character)

Some Night Goblins (to replace the silly spider goblins from the set) and a mighty Ork Waaghboss (theres some Ork Boss Player Character)

Lovely!

That left me with at least two more Hero Characters (as we wanted to play four player games) and a whole lot of lesser daemons of Tzeentch, a Summoner-Brawler-type Doombull, Tzaangors (Tzeentch marked Beastmen), some Tzeentch Cultists and, of course, the Lord of the Silver Tower himself, the daemonic Gaunt Summoner with his funny minions Walking Talking Book, Walking Fish, Moonface and a little Birdman who thinks he actually is a great Lord of Change...

That brings us to...

 

[Sobek]

On World-Building

So while I did like the setting a lot, I am still having troubles getting into Age of Sigmar, mostly lore-wise. Having been introduced to this hobby at the age of maybe 15 by a friend in school that brought the WHFB 6th Edition rulebook we drooled over many lunch breaks, I really like the Old World setting deeply rooted in real world history a lot more than the high fantasy stuff that AoS has quickly become with dwarven air ships wholly made of metal yet flying high, naked fiery Slayers or giant Mountain Cow Creatures the High Elfs of old worship. Nah. Not for me.

So the first thing I thought about was why all these heroes would enter the Silver Tower. I liked the idea that some of them are quite randomly drawn into this magical maze by accident, some turn up there because they struggle with keeping up faith in their gods and Tzeentch wants to lure them into the arms of the Chaos Gods by trapping them in an everchanging labyrinth from which they may not ever escape until they probably realize they have just been worshipping the wrong deity and that Tzeentch alone, his powers manifested in the Gaunt Summoner, can save then. So faith and religion was one main theme I wanted to explore in my own version of the Silver Tower setting.

Another idea was to contextualize all the randomness that is happening in this game and having a Master`s degree in German and English Literature I thought it would be a cool idea if the adventures the heroes experience were stories from books the Gaunt Summoner reads to his daemonic minions in the Great Library at the heart of the Silver Tower to pass the time. I imagined never ending book shelves with living books jumping at the Master, flapping their pages, desperately trying to attract his attention so their story would be told. So if in one story there was maybe a Priest of Sigmar encountering all the Horrors of Tzeentch, that would be the game. I hope this makes sense for you guys, I found it hard already to explain that crazy idea to my fellow gamers in my mother tongue...

So one of the heroes is a Priest of Sigmar, but more grim-dark than the original model from the box. I imagine him travelling the corridors of the Silver Tower for a long long time, slowly giving in to the ever-present whispers of the dark gods. If Sigmar does not seem to answer his prayers and get him out of this hell, maybe some other God would listen, one that has power over the daemonic encounters and strange creatures living around here:

Also I was desperately trying to find a cool concept to replace the stupid Sigmarine. As the lore of Chaos was one of the most fascinating things for me about Warhammer (before End Times and AoS and all that crap, that is, so think Realms of Chaos books of the 80s and the like), I found it way more interesting to eventually replace any Sigmarine Hero I would make with Nurgle Heroes, as there is a strong rivalry going on between the forces of Nurgle and Tzeentch, the former all about entropy and the latter about progress and evolution.

So combining the main hero of the core set with the idea of the Living Library I came up with a Knight of Nurgle fighting angry books. Honestly, that did not sound any more crazy than the original concept of the Silver Tower.

What was even cooler than having Nurgle Heroes fight their way to the daemonic puppeteer was a rivalling Champion of Tzeentch, so for the Hero I played on that first (and so far only) Silver Tower gaming weekend I slightly tweaked a Chosen Champion of Tzeentch I had created probably ten years ago when I was collecting a Tzeentch Chaos Army for Warhammer Fantasy Battles:

I guess that should be enough for now to explain to you my thoughts and ideas on making this game my own.

Next up is some bad guys.

 

[Sobek]

Adversaries Pt. 1

As four heroes would be sufficient for our first games and three of them were already painted (Mummy Wight King, Tzeentch Sorcerer Lord and Ork Waaghboss) it was about time to get some work done on the adversaries. I flicked through the rulebook and realized what it was nigh impossible to foretell which miniatures would be required, as a lot of things are determined by dice rolls and charts, having bad guys pop up quite random.

So I would have to paint all types and enough of them to have half a dozen or more appear simultaneously if the rules said so.

Having already painted some Night Goblins I settled on the half moon theme to convert the Ogroid Thauam... erm... Tzeentchian Doombull, that's what it actually is, so stop giving that stuff stupid IP-friendly names! Anyway...

Enter The Moonbull. Yeah, that's right. Moon Bull. A moon-headed doombull, about the meanest adversary you can expect to meet in the Silver Tower. I imagine the Goblins being some sort of Moon Cult (remember what I said about faith and religion earlier?) worshipping the Moonbull as some sort of Greater Daemon of their Moon-God.

Probably one of my favourite conversions of all time and he was so much fun to paint!

I also converted more grim-dark and (what I think to be) mature versions of the little minions:

So stupid walking fish dude was used as a tiny companion to the Moonbull and replaced with a bigger, meaner legged fsh creature:

They turned out to become some kind of punks running wild in the Silver Tower looking for trouble or stealing from our heroes:

Then there's were kinds of Horrors (Pinks, when slain splitting into two Blues, splitting into two Fire Elementals each). Now imagine that grumpy Moonbull casting one or two Pinks every round when you finally reach his lair to slay him... it took us maybe five hours to finish that Quest!

The Blue Horrors were my favourite ones to paint so I just might show them:

Of course, there's Cultists all round, totally matching my concept of faithful worshippers clashing in the crystalline maze to find out whose God is the coolest. I wouldn't want to paint up several dozen of them (you can apparently have a full army of them in AoS), but they were quite fun to paint, especially the loincloth transitioning from blue to purple or burgundy red:

 

[Sobek]

Adversaries Pt. 2

What got me most excited about this boxed game when it was announced all these years ago was Plastic Tzaangors! I repeat: Tzaangors!
I did not think I would see the day there would be official models for them, and quite stunning ones too. Though again I would not want to paint a whole army of them because there's so many details on them I had to force myself a little to get six of them done to have two with each weapon option available (two hand weapons, hand weapon and shield, two-handed weapon - the guy with the split head counts as the latter):

These models are SO GORGEOUS!

But that's not all folks - with Skaven having become a Chaos subfaction in AoS there's a Skaven Assassin sneaking around in the Tower - yet it could only be an illusion, foul trickery of the Gaunt Summoner! So when the Assassin is slain (and he is a tough bastard, let me tell you!) you roll a die to determine whether you killed the actual Assassin or just the Doppelganger that will fade to magic mist and sparkles...! Love that idea!

And finally there's the master of the dungeon, the great storyteller, the Gaunt Summoner. As I imagined him to tell the stories we would live through while playing the game I thought it fitting to have him appear as a faceless and mysterious creature that could be anybody - could be my buddy just reading aloud from the game book what our next quest would be or what denizens of the deep would appear to take our bodies and souls.

Took special efforts to make this guy stand out and really show off the idea I had in mind for what he should represent. Think it came out nicely.

So here's the mad menagerie, most of them painted over the course of about five or six weeks this spring, before the pandemic - as I said, deadlines and gaming night come in handy to finally getting things done:

 

[Sobek]

Gaming Night At Silver Towers

So the final miniature to finish for the gaming weekend was another hero. As one of my buddies that wanted to participate owns hundreds of Skaven miniatures to play anything from Warhammer Fantasy Battles to Frostgrave to Warhammer Underworlds with sneaky treacherous rat people, I wanted to paint up a Skaven hero I had picked up years ago for him to use as his Player Character.

He was a joy to paint:

So the four of us had a quest for shards of the magic amulett that would maybe allow our heroes to escape the Silver Tower:

It's some kind of cardboard puzzle and at the end of every quest, in the final chamber (usually after some sort of Boss fight) one of the heroes gets to carry the shard for some in-game bonus actions. The game is completed when your party has got hold of all the shards and finished the puzzle - these kinds of fun mini games are a common feature of the game, like stacking up dice to test whether your hero falls off of a plank bridge or something.

I won't go into details but I can totally recommend that game to anyone who likes fun dungeon crawlers with lots of weird creatures to fight, easy to learn rules and a whole lot of random events that will make every game different from the one before.

Let me share some impressions from said game to give you an idea though.

I don't seem to have taken photos of the very first game we played the night I arrived with one of the guys where, right in the first game ever, we encountered the Gaunt Summoner himself in the final chamber, who could not be harmed by mere weapon strength, so we have to turn a giant crystal to burn him with magic beams of light. Hell Yeah!
Some of you may notive that the shards of the amulett have symbols on them representing the eight winds of magic from old Warhammer lore, which have found their way into AoS lore in the form of the eight realms that make up the world, influencing the look and life of the people inhabiting these realms. So the eight main quests to play through the game are each set in one of these realms.

First night: Realm of Light - done and dusted, we got the shard and moved on. Second realm was the realm of Life I think, where we encountered the evil Moonbull (behold!) in the final chamber, who spawned Pinkies (remember how they split up in more and more smaller Horrors?) and Tzaangors all day which even re-spawned unless one of our heroes snuck past him to destroy some magic fungus thingies. Eventually the Skaven snuck in, of course, because he is good at sneaky-sneaking and hitting things that are defenseless. But it took probably three hours to finally send that son of a moon back to the Gods.

Our final game was set in the Realm of Beasts, having to deal with numerous Tzaangors (which are quite tough, especially if equipped with shields) to get another shard of the amulett. But we also did that! Yeah!

So that's it for now.

I might update this thread with some more stuff, as there are probably a dozen additional heroes and some larger adversaries such as Screamers or even Daemonic Heralds of Tzeentch I will paint at some point, but the last weeks have been all about another GW game I am very interested in: Warcry.

I shall make another thread for my Warcry shenanigans after I’ve had a smoke and a beer, that was a lot of typing and sorting through my backlog of wargaming photos.

Let me know what you think, If you have played that game (or at least bought the set) or intend to give it a try.
Also if there is questions you might have, feel free to ask.

See you, guys. Take care everyone and stay healthy and safe!

 

[Coenus Scaldingus]

A most enjoyable thread to scroll through on a rainy Saturday morning!
The Tzeentch figures are indeed rather nice; I recently got a few to make a Mordheim warband out of them, looking forward to working with those. Liking the re-imagined/changed characters to replace the more AoS-y parts of the game too.

 

[Sobek]

Thank you, Sir. Looking through all these pictures makes me want to play some games. It took way too long to paint up the most essential collection of minis to actually play the game in technicolor, but that one weekend was a lot of fun. We'll see if/how that might be possible.

But I guess it should work alright in single player mode as well, considering all the random events and behaviour tables. Might be quite tough for a single hero though... Maybe I need to paint up more heroes?

 

[Aulenback]

Liking the re-imagined/changed characters to replace the more AoS-y parts of the game too.

I too like the shifting things to shift the narrative a bit. Heck, even with Blackstone Fortress, our crew have replaced "generic Black Legion Bad Guy" with "one of Fabius Bile's clones" to give an excuse to thematically play with it.

As a librarian, I too love Tzeentch stuff, and storytelling, and so your conversion of both theme and models are close to my heart. Nicely done! The various flying/floating books... are those something from the sprues? Or are those scratch-built gewgaws?

 

[Sobek]

Thank you. Still not sure of that re-imagined meta-fictional background is just way over the top for a boardgame, but I liked the basic idea and just ran with it.

The flying books are from the Chariot of Tzeentch kit I used for my chariots back when I had an Warhammer Fantasy Army with a strong Tzeentch Theme: Basically it was two robed Chaos Sorcerers on a Disc of Tzeentch and two Screamers. I had tons of spares from those kurs to use in all kinds of conversions.

The daemonic book (the one with the horror-like legs and tail) the Gaunt Summer it’s just reading out loud from in a GM fashion (at least that’s how I imagine this scene) is the actual book minion from the Silver Tower game.

 

[Nuttowntau]

Those are some gorgeous minis, and very well painted.

I kind of lost interest in fantasy when AoS came out so I haven't been paying a lot of attention of what's happening on that side of the hobby, but the silver tower seems like a great set. Probably a good thing it's sold out online or I might have been tempted

 

[Sobek]

It's been a while. Still having great fun painting the occasional Fantasy Hero for this game. I realized that there is a lot of stuff I painted for the Silver Tower I have yet to show you guys. Maybe you'll find inspiration for your own projects or just enjoy the pictures.

Here's some, more to come:

Daemonic Herald of Tzeentch

Slayer Hero with stripeypants

Nurgle Hero - some of the most fun I've had painting a mini in years !

 

[Sobek]

Still blown away by the theatrical experience that DUNE was last night. If you are interested in this movie for whatever reason, do yourself a favor and go see it on the big screen, with good stereo. Epic.

Anyway... there are a lot of "first time in what seems like forever" things happening these days. Finally going to the cinema to see Denis Villeneuve's adaptation of Dune was one of the things I had been looking forward to since the world stopped turning because of the COVID-19 pandemic, another one was playing tabletop games with my friends. Must have been one and a half years since our first few games of Silver Tower.

So I got to visit some friends and brought my copy of Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower with me as well as a box full of painted minis. Mostly adversaries, but also a growing number of heroes to chose from. We had some random introductory gaming (draw a random tile and play, just to make sure we remembered the rules).

Two players, our heroes were The Ork Boss (Savage Ork Boss ruleswise) and the Darkoath Chieftain. We ended up in a boss room right away, having to fight wave after wave of spider goblins that eventually wore us down. It was fun though and we caught up on some rules we apparently did not remember correctly. Such as shuffling the cards for the tiles / rooms in a certain way the rulebooks tell you so ending up in a final boss room right away won't ever happen. Anyway...

Second game was four players (Ork Boss, Skaven Grey Seer, Dwarf Slayer and Empire General) against some cultists and then a Skaven Assasin. He's called something else I don't remember right now, but basically it's this: A Skaven (Deathrunner, thats it!) sent in there by the Council of 13 to murder one of the heroes. Funny thing is because this is a dungeon full of Tzeentch-y magic stuff, there is a doppelganger running around and you don't know which one is the real Deathrunner until you kill it (and it probably has the second most wounds of any model in that game). So Ork and Slayer form an unusual alliance to fight the rat twins while the Grey Seer fears the assassin was sent for him. Meanwhile, the Empire General can't help himself but to open another door leading further away from his allies, on a literal road to ruin.

Here's what he looks like if he is not about to get his butt kicked by Cultists and Daemons. Fun minor conversion of Janus Draik from the Warhammer Quest: Blackstone Fortress thingy, apropriately re-named Jan van Drak. Armed with Varghulf Cloak, Striped Pants, Mustache of Power and Pipe of Destiny.
Played him in-character as a total egoistic douchebag.

Well, the Ork came for help but when yet another of those Pink Horrors appeared both were slain in a single turn. Ooops.
The Grey Seer fell into a portal chasing a shiny fish creature and the Slayer died an honorable death trying to clear the dungeon all by himself.

 

[Sobek]

One player dropped out but we could not help but start another quest into the Silver Tower, with all new heroes (as everyone died in the last game...).
So our party was a rivaling Sorcerer Lord of Tzeentch, a Nurgle Lord of Plagues and a Stormcast Knight Whatever (the guy with the magic lantern, represented by a Nurgle Blightking model because Sigmarines are lame and boring).

Our heroes found a treasure chamber as the ground was shaking and a moon-faced minion appeared. Sensing those fat knights and the treacherous Sorcerer were after the treasures of the Silver Tower, he called for his Master, the Gaunt Summoner.

No use going into the details of his rules if no one else has played this game, but let me tell you he is really mean. Lots of hit points, summons horrors, dis- and re-appears as he pleases, his magic flame spells can randomly change Hero's abilities (which is the primary way to level up heroes by taking out adversaries, exploring the dungeon etc. and gaining permanent upgrades such as aftersaves, free moves, special attacks, new spells etc.).

And there were also cultists swarming in, summoning Horrors and stuff...

Just one more...

We lost the Lantern Knight but eventually managed to clear the board of any enemies, which meant that our severly injured friend could make a re-appearance (still heavily injured though, so he would need at least one turn to recover).
But it was past two in the morning so we called it an evening and went to bed. Did I mention that I love the look of the gaming material such as these beautiful floor tiles? This game looks gorgeous, even with unpainted miniatures.

The following day we continued with our game, eventually finding the entrance to the final chamber with my Lord of Plagues getting hold of a shard of the magic amulet everyone is after in this game. Lots of fun to be had.

My generous hosts gifted me with some leftover sprues full of Tzeentch goodness (chariot and Underworlds warband). There was a moment in the game where a Pink Horror was to appear but didn't because we did not have a model to represent it (as two Pink Horrors were on the board already) and while it did make our situation slightly better it still felt like cheating. So I am going to make a third set of Horrors (1x Pink, 2x Blue, 2x Brimstone Pair).
I also want to create models for an Exalted Flamer of Tzeentch and a Tzaangor Shaman, both of which can appear as Mighty Adversaries during a quest.

 

[Crazy Ivan]

Lovely stuff, @Sobek! Really loved the Herald of Tzeentch but all the miniatures are amazing. Makes me want to play Silver Tower.

 

[Sobek]

Makes me want to play Silver Tower.

Haha, me too! I just heard my co-worker's elder son is moving back to the area and I know he is into Warhammer. From what she told me it seems he is trying to sell his 40k / AoS stuff to focus on more skirmish-y games. I asked her to find out what games he is interested in. We'll see.

That said, after our latest ventures into the Silver Tower my lovely hosts gifted me with spare sprues (that Chariot kit is like a Tzeentchian bits box!) so I could make another set of Horrors. Turned out we would have had to set up three Pinks at one point in the game but we only had two models.

Again, I took some care to make the Blue Horrors resemble the Pink Horror they are born from. And Angry Fire Horrors are just so much fun!

I also made a slightly converted Exalted Flamer as an "exotic adversary". I chose blue-green-ish flames to show this is a different and far more dangerous kind of daemonic beast. The picture is blurry by intention as the flames look best that way. My phone camera goes crazy over all the bright white fire stuff with strange brightness adjustments and stuff.

Spooky Demon Shrimp !

Take care everyone!

 

[Sobek]

I am actually converting House Escher Lasgun Ladies… but I felt like picking up a brush again earlier today and made quite some progress on this bald-headed girl:

This is the Warhammer Day exclusive mini, a Vampire Countess with a baby dragon pet I‘ll be painting up more like a bat-lizard-thingy.

The only conversion is the peg leg, because I‘ll be running her as a Black Ark Fleetmaster in Silver Tower.

She may get some games in this weekend, fingers crossed.

Stay safe and take care everyone!

 

[Kitcar]

ooooo.....my first wife!

 

[Sobek]

So we had another game of Silver Tower the other day. Got beaten up quite badly by the Moon Bull and his minions.

Two fat guys and two pale ladyboys walk into a bar. Here's the joke: On us.

Beating up spider goblins was a fun exercise, but the more doors were opened the more enemies appeared. Skaven Assassin-Doppelganger-Couple, a Daemonic Herald of Tzeentch, finally the Moon Bull himself, with an entourage of Tzaangors (and some cultists and Horrors from a nearby corridor where one of the greedy Vampyres had been opening closed doors in search of glory and the boss chamber.

Long story short, the fat guys were slain rather quickly and would only have returned after the Vampyres had cleared the rooms from any adversaries.
In good old Monty Python fashion, we called it a draw. And withdrew.

 

[Sobek]

I did not show the finished Sinéad O‘Connor Vampire, did I?

Sorting through my backlog I found an old Warhammer Fantasy Tzeentch-themed Chaos Marauder Champion I rebased for this game so it would maybe see a gaming table again.

And the latest addition to my Silver Tower miniature collection, a Saurus Oldblood.

Welcome our new Reptilian Overlords!

Roar loud, roar proud, Albino Dino!

 

[horizon]

This thread is absolutely amazing. Love the dedication to the game and the hobby.