Board gaming through nostalgia glasses

Tullaris

Member
Let's have a glass of warm nostalgia and share some gaming knowledge/memory.

When I was young... er, that is pre my warhammer revelation, I played a lot of Hero Quest and space crusade with my friends.
We made our own campaigns, kings and warlords were created and brutally killed as well. Great deeds of valour were recorded on paper to be read again almost 30 years later (oh the cringe.....).
I even made a clay model of prince Magnus who was mentioned in the campaign storyline. Eventually he became emperor and later on beheaded by a chaos warrior, his decapitated corpse still rests in a clay sarcophagus around here somewhere, along with a sealed scroll which I cannot remember what it says.

After I discovered warhammer, I learned of all of the other games, Warhammer quest, Talisman, dungeon quest, space hulk etc.

Did you play any or all of these and if so, which one was your fav and why?
 
As a child I spent a lot of time searching through the Argos catalogue, dreaming of owning Hero Quest or Space Crusade.

For some reason, it never happened.

As a teenager I spent a lot of time in the Games Workshop store, dreaming of owning Warhammer Quest and Talisman.

For some reason, this never happened either.

As an adult with a decent-paying job, I actually purchased all of these games for extortionate prices on eBay! Aha! At last! They were mine!

Then I found them all rather dissatisfying and sold them again.

The end.
 

Berkut666

Member
Never played Hero Quest but fond memories of a mate getting Space Crusade for Xmas one year. There were 3 or 4 of us who already played some 40k and Blood/Dungeon Bowl. I only recall playing it a few times but seem to remember liking it. Atleast when I didnt play as Marines anyway! Have often been tempted to get it or Space on Ebay but not sure I would ever play it in among all the other bits and bobs I play now.
 

Zhu Bajie

Member
OK, way, way back...

Blood of Dracula - OMG this was awesome, run around Draculas castle, which was bright yellow, chased by vampire minions. I think if dracula caught up with you, that player became the vampire player or something? Can't quite remember. Probably my first map-game other than Cluedo which I remember playing on a neighbours front step and not having any idea of what was going on. Still rubbish at cluedo.

Ghost Castle OMG this was awesome, run around a haunted house, but a marble rolled down the stairs and knocked you over for some reason.

Then there were things like Rebound and Kerplunk that don't really qualify as board-games, but kind of are. My kerplunk-fu was strong as a young'un.

I was more heavily into D&D and Fighting Fantasy than boardgames back in the day, but we did have a few boardgames in our gaming group.

Talisman is great fun, a nice way to spend a sunday afternoon, in it's 2nd/1st edition it's a really nice fantasy game, has a dark fairy-tale charm that nothing else quite matches. The only real strategy being about when to go into the middle and inner region, and how to handle being a frog.

Star Fleet Battles, I don't think we played this properly, I just remember it being really complex and boring.

Kings & Things all I can remember is the brightly coloured hex tiles and it being quite fun, but only played a couple of times.

Dungeonquest I think I was the only one who enjoyed this, everyone else just got frustrated with all the dying, or me being super competitive and pointing and laughing while all the dying was going on. Not sure which. Nonetheless, I think it retains a certain gallows humour. Also the scissors-paper-stone combat resolution seemed really goofy at the time, but I really like it now.

Bloodbowl 1st edition. We played this a lot, as it was basically WFB2 with some ball rules. At the time there was also a chewing gum brand that came with a plastic American Football helmet as a cheap toy, or something like that. Anyway, everyone in the league had one of these painted up for their team. Can't remember what my team was called, Undead, traditional black and red, chaos arrows on the side, not sure I actually won any matches. Yeah!

Oh yeah, and then there was 4th Year Junior school when all the girls started doing Ouija boards (that counts a board game, right?) and formed a witch cult, and the head master had to tell everyone to stop summoning the spirits in assembly. True story.
 

Spinachcat

Member
Warhammer Quest remains the best dungeoncrawl boardgame for me and I've played many.

Our crew turned Space Hulk into a team game because we always had lots of people who wanted to play and only 1 board. That's why Mutant Chronicles: Siege of the Citadel got more play for our group overall. If you can ever snag Siege of the Citadel's original game, I highly recommend it.
 
I still love and play the old games I own, like Heroquest, Space Hulk or Blood Bowl.
At the moment I paint my old Heroquest models.
 

SamusDrake

Member
Mum and Dad bought me Space Crusade for my birthday( from "Index" ), which was new years eve and on the year of its release which I think was 1990?

Very cool time as me and my older brother had seen Aliens previously on ITV and Space Crusade had the movement blips and the sneaky alien-like genestealers - which appeared in that awesome live-action advert on tv. The Dreadnought was practically Ed from Robocop which also added to the excitement. The icing on the cake was the rule book which had snippets of a squad being picked off one-by-one, making it feel just like Aliens!

* * * TRANSMISSION TERMINATED * * * :twisted:

I think it was the summer of 1990 and Golden Axe was all the rage in the arcades, and we rented a property in Eye( somewhere in Suffolk or Norfolk, I forget ). The girl next door had a game which she honestly could not figure out for the life of her, and it was called Hero Quest. I remember giving them some bullshit about being part of the MB games club( I don't think there ever was such a thing! ) and knew how to play it, and her mum laughed when I took too long to set it up. So they let me and brother borrow it for the night and we played "The Maze" and "The Rescue of Sir Ragnar". Like Sarah Connor in The Terminator...

For the short time we had Heroquest, we played a life times worth!

Our Aunt bought us Thunder Road for Christmas( '88 or '89? ) and we thought it was awesome and certainly not your typical MB game. The miniatures were decent and the board system was pretty good too. Basically Mad-Max the board game! 8-)

Always wanted Space Hulk but had to settle for White Dwarf's Terminator and Genestealer Hybrid rules for Space Crusade. That said, my Mum took us into GW Maidstone one day and bought - all in one go - shit loads of Space Marines and Tyranids, and that included all the paints, brushes and the 40K:RT rule manual. We didnt have a gaming board but we did have a Snooker table which doubled up as our field of battle! Looking back on it, we didn't appreciate our parents enough so...

SUPER-BIG THANKS MUM AND DAD!!! :grin:

Moving forward to today, I'm working on a "Space Crusade revisited" project( Which I'd love to share with you all later, when its finished ) which is basically trying to recreate Space Crusade but with Solo-play features. The boards are smaller than the original but thats because its limited to a single Eldar squad vs Orks. Was thinking of a forest-like Maiden world( inspired by a trip to Sherwood ) setting with Orks plundering ancient Eldar sites and the Warlock and his mates being none to happy with them. I've also made a simple Heroquest mockup with skeletons and a Death=Adder like dude...and that was super fun. Practically though I've replaced Heroquest with Castle Ravenloft, which is awesome in itself.

Staying close to that, GW said something about a 40K-based Warhammer Quest game centered around something called a Black Fortress. So maybe we might have that Space Crusade / Heroquest nostaliga fix sooner than later...
 

SamusDrake

Member
Agreed. Silver Tower and Shadows over Hammerhal were simply too expensive, and the thought of having to wade through "sprue city" sent shivers up my spine. Granted, Ravenloft is token heavy but the minis are ready to go.

I sadly don't play D&D itself( it seens non-existant here in Suffolk ), but I bought the Curse of Strahd book which provides a lot of background and ideas for Ravenloft.
 
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