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Cardboard Children - Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower 1

Diving deep into The Hobby

With the release of the new Warhammer Quest from Games Workshop – full name “Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower” - I thought it might be good to do a deeper exploration of what it is to go deep into a new Games Workshop game. Buying something like Warhammer Quest (isn't it exciting that there's a new Warhammer Quest?) is not the same as buying your average board game. First of all, it's a bigger investment. Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower retails for 95 pounds. That's not a game you buy on a whim – that's a commitment. And with that commitment comes a lot of work. Because as any fool knows, Games Workshop products aren't just about play. They're about construction, and painting, and that's why the whole Games Workshop thing – encapsulating Warhammer 40K, Age of Sigmar, and many more – is referred to as “The Hobby” by fans of the product.

The Hobby. If you want to play a new Games Workshop game, you're going to have to dip into The Hobby. Come with.

WARHAMMER QUEST: SILVER TOWER – CONSTRUCTION

Having bought your big box full of the new Warhammer Quest board game (isn't it exciting that there's a new Warhammer Quest?), your next step is to make sure you are prepped to construct the thing. Look, you're not taking this thing home and having it ready to play right away. That's just not happening, and you have to ride with that fact. There are over 50 plastic miniatures in the box, of outstanding quality, and they all come on plastic sprues, needing assembly. So you need tools.

Yeah, tools. But real talk here, all you really need are little snippers, little clippers, that can take the models cleanly from the sprues. That's if you don't care about the miniatures being perfect, of course. If you do care about your miniatures being perfect, then you need to have a little modelling blade of some kind, a scalpel-like tool that will let you clean any messy leftover bits away from the plastic, smoothing it off perfectly.

So you have all the stuff snipped off. No, wait! Don't snip them off yet. Use the instructions in the box, showing you how to assemble each mini. These instructions are beautifully laid out, nicely ordered, and won't steer you wrong. And you're going to need them. The dwarf model in the new Warhammer Quest (isn't it exciting that there's a new Warhammer Quest?) comes in many parts. Many parts. You have to assemble his beard for god's sake. But it's worth the work. Once you do that assembly, you'll be left with some of the finest looking models you've ever seen.

Glue. Let's talk glue now. Ideally you want a plastic cement that has a narrow dispensing tube or a “needle” that will let you apply it in very fine lines. With models as beautiful as these, you don't want to make a mess by melting all that detail away with sloppy big blobs of glue. You want to keep it all as clean as possible – so no rushing. Look at the instructions, at the model, see how it fits together, and then apply the minimum amount of glue that will effectively do the job of closing the parts together. Simple, right?

Now, with a game as large as the new Warhammer Quest (isn't it exciting that there's a new Warhammer Quest?) you're going to have to go through this process many, many, many times. So set aside a long afternoon or evening to do it. Again, don't stumble out and buy this game with the expectation you'll be playing it with your friends that same night. Not unless you have friends who can crunch some serious assembly with you before you get it on the table.

In fact, no, the hobby demands patience. Assembling a whole load of new Games Workshop miniatures is something to be relished, and something you should really do solo. So set aside the time, gather the sprues, and get constructing.

Once you have all your little grey heroes and villains laid out on the table, the next thing you're going to have to do is paint them. Okay, real talk again, you don't actually have to paint these things. But as beautiful as they are? Are you really going to leave them all grey like that? Are you going to take all of that amazing design work (and we'll go deeper into that next week) and just chuck it all over your table in drab grey? No, you need to paint.

Do you have paints? Okay. Okay. Maybe you need to buy paints. That's only if you're painting this stuff, of course. And you are. So you need to buy paints. Luckily for a guy like me, familiar with The Hobby for many many years, I have a whole load of paints and brushes. So I'm not really sure where you should start if you don't have that stuff. I'm sure someone in the comments section will help.

Or you could go and buy White Dwarf. That's the other thing about The Hobby. Once you go in, you go all in. I bought Warhammer Quest (isn't it exciting that there's a new Warhammer Quest?) and just two days later I was back in the Warhammer shop buying a couple of White Dwarfs that had painting guides inside. Yep, can ya believe it? I believed the hell out of it.

Because here's the truth about Games Workshop stuff. The products are fantastic. Everybody knows it. Sure, we can argue about the quality of the games themselves (and we'll get to that in the weeks ahead) but the standard of design and production are second to none. The stuff is expensive, that's a fact, but you never feel short-changed. You're buying premium quality stuff. And it's easy to get hooked into buying more, because that high quality stretches across the entire range.

Next week, we'll look a little bit more at the painting aspect of this business, and we'll start to move closer into a look at the new game. We have lots to cover – the game itself, the app, and the potential of this game going forward. Be excited. I am. And please, please, share any of your Games Workshop hobby experiences in the comments section below.

Yes, I said there's an app...

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Robert Florence

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