Allow me to begin with a little trip down memory lane. Let me take you back to April 1995 and White Dwarf #184. That was my first GW hobby purchase! I’d looked at WD magazines belonging to friends, I’d seen all sorts of models and played Blood Bowl at friends’ houses. I’d been introduced to the GW hobby (I’d been building aeroplane kits for years) however that White Dwarf #184, that was mine. I remember it well*, an axe wielding barbarian on the front cover, inside were Ultramarine terminators, an Epic battle report, designs to build a cardboard 40k bunker**, and the game that shared the cover art – Warhammer Quest.

Warhammer Quest was released onto the world that month, costing £39.99 – out of my reach in ‘95. It looked cool but I settled for a Space Marine Terminator with Lightning Claws for £2.99 as my second hobby purchase. They had also just been released and looked just as cool, probably more importantly, it was something I could afford.

Fast forward 25 years, and given the current Covid situation, I’m sat here thinking wouldn’t it be cool to be playing some sort of dungeon crawler. I actually looked at Warhammer Quest Blackstone Fortress back towards the beginning of lockdown in the UK, but I’d not long since (Nov ’19) backed the Infinity Defiance KS, and so another scifi dungeon crawler didn’t seem that sensible – anyway, it ended up not mattering as I thought about it too long, and it was out of stock pretty quick. I guess I was late to the party of solo gaming during lockdown. I kept looking around the internet, there are loads of dungeon crawler games across a plethora of genres. More than I ever expected, although not being a boardgamer or roleplayer I guess I was just naive. Having spent way too much time (as you do) on the ‘net I stumbled upon what seems to be a thriving WHQ community around the original game. There’s a lot of activity in building up complete collections, and the value of original components on ebay is pretty good – aided by the covid-19 situation currently I suspect. However, pretty much everything is available to download from one source or another, rule books, cards, tiles etc. There is also a lot of fan made content out there, which in some cases looks as professionally put together as Games Workshop’s original.

So the point of this post then, after a little nostalgia, is that I really feel the need to build my own WHQ set***. I’m not going to buy up old WHQ minis, as there are loads of manufacturers these days, producing very good miniatures, not just GW. Over the years the scale of most miniature games has crept up and up, I suspect even just mixing old and new miniatures from GW may look odd. Although I’ll be borrowing from models within my own collection a lot too. For example, I bet an original WHQ barbarian would be dwarfed by a modern Dwarf by GW.

I’m on the lookout for good suggestions for miniatures to substitute in for the originals. Here are some of the companies I’m considering at the moment

• GW (obvs)
• Zealot Miniatures
• Avatars of War
• Mierce Minaitures
• Heresy Miniatures
• Hasslefree Miniatures
• Reaper Miniatures
• Otherworld Miniatures

That’s it for now, stayed tuned for more episodes of the Splayedhammer Quest project! ****

*although as I still have it in the loft I can go a look at it too – I have certainly looked at it more than once since ‘95. And like WHQ you can find old WD pdfs on the net too*****.

**I built one, I suspect with a trip home to my parents’ house and a rummage in the attic, I can put my hands on that too!

***Its not like I don’t have loads to do already, Titans to paint; I’m getting pestered to paint Malifaux; Indomitus is about to drop through the door. Surely another project is bound to succeed lol.

****Is it possible to have a splayed hammer?

*****Much more convenient for grabbing images from 🙂