Creating My Own Warhammer Quest 1995 - [Part one - CARDS]

Yesterday I printed out a test run on the Dungeon cards. 

Firstly I printed out the Front of the card:

Then flipped the same sheet around to print out the back:

and luckily they matched position meaning that I would be able to cut these out and have a perfect card front and back, perfectly aligned. The only problem was that with the card Front up, the back of the card was upside down, so I need to work out the correct facing that the Front facing needs to be turned to when printing the back - a task for today.

My original plan was to print these out onto A4 sticky labels and then stick them to blank playing cards, but doing that would have cost a fair bit for all the cards in the set. What I'm going to do instead is simply print them doublesided onto A4 paper (once I've figured the correct orientation out), laminate them and then cut them out, rounding the edges and sleeve the cards. 

The laminate will give them a little extra sturdiness, plus sleeving them a little extra protection.

This means I'll print out:

• Dungeon Cards: 3 sheets
• Event Cards: 3 sheets
• Treasure Cards: 4 sheets
• Treasure Pack 1 Cards: 7 sheets
• Treasure Pack 2 Cards: 7 sheets
• Treasure Pack 3 Cards: 7 sheets

31 sheets of A4 double-sided and around 124 cards in total. Just need to make sure I've enough laminate sheets and card sleeves.

The board sections will be printed onto glossy A4 stickers and put onto thick card and cut out, and that'll be the next task for the project.

Reading The Shannara Series

My love for fantasy gaming was fuelled by what I read growing up, and alongside Terry Pratchett and his Discworld series (which my wife is now re-reading), and of course Tolkien's classic works, my main source of fantasy fiction was Terry Brooks and his Shannara series.

These are classic fantasy stories loaded with Elves, Dwarves, Trolls, Demons and man, with lots of quests being undertaken with travel across the Four Lands, large battles and dungeons being dlved. It's all very Warhammer Quest/Warhammer Fantasy Battles.

I've loved these books since the 80s, and had been collecting them as a new one was released over the years. It became a yearly ritual: another new book from either Brooks, Pratchett or Stephen King.

Anyway, I've begun reading the series and have collated a list of all the books across the series to mark off as I finish them, and give me something to aim for.

Going Back to the Old World

 

I have done it, treated myself to the three core books for the game that I loved and what drew me into fantasy gaming back when I was a kid. A Christmas present to myself, this completes my preparation for hobby projects starting in the new year.

The three books arrived yesterday - boy, are they heavy combined - and this morning I briefly looked at them in their shiny clingwrap before wrapping them up and placing them beneath our Christmas tree. I don't have any models yet, and I do plan on going full on down the nostalgia-hole by getting the official Old World minis (I can hear my wallet, and my wife, screaming already!) but as I approach 54 next year, I'm going back to a time in my hobby when I was truly happy, before the anxiety and depression set in. 

Just painting the Blood Bowl models this last month has given me a lot of joy and calm, (although finding a decent colour scheme for the Bretonnians has been a pain), along with watching some Blood Bowl matches and NFL games while I paint - just like I did with 3rd edition.

So what armies am I thinking of collecting for Warhammer?

Well, my army of choice in 1995 was Orcs and Goblins, so my natural inclination is to recreate that army once again. However, I am also working on a fantasy game of my own and have gathered forces of humans and undead so I may use these as Empire of Man and Vampire Counts for The Old World, although they are based entirely different (4 infantry on 40mm square bases, 2 cavalry on 50mm square bases).

That'll give me something to re-learn the game with, but the first official armies I think are going to be Orcs & Goblins and Warriors of Chaos. In fact, I'll probably start with the Warriors of Chaos and the first purchases will be a themed army of an aspiring champion and his Marauder warband:

But that's going to have to wait until February at the earliest as I have to pay off the Blood Bowl and paints purchases - and get some games in.

Looking forward to tearing open the presents and getting some Warhammer vibes on Christmas morning - just like it was back in the day.

And no doubt my plans will have changed when it comes to actually buying the first army.

Welcome to the Artois Crown Championship with Rattlecan Mckinley and Dork Alebeard

 

The Artois Crown Championship is the newest Blood Bowl League to join the Cabalvision Schedule. Formed at the tail end of the '25 season it comprises just three teams to start with. The newest duo of Blood Bowl Commentators, Rattlecan Mckinley and Dork Alebeard sit down to discuss the formation of the A.C.C. and what this means for fans of fantasy gridiorn.

Rattlecan Mckinley (RM): Good evening and welcome to this, our first sit down chat to discuss the exciting new league that has joined the prestigiuos ranks such as the Old World Classic, Blood Bowl Championship and Spike! Leagues.

I'm Rattlecan Mckinley, former lineman for the Decrepit Dead team of '98. A rough tackle by the captain of the Hamburger Horrors, Ganga Man, saw me leave the game. the Halfling Chef then used one of my thighbones for marrow in their mid-rush stew and I've been out of action ever since. But enough about me; let's meet my co-host, Dork Alebeard.

Dork Alebeard (DA): Well thanks for that kind introduction Rattlecan. It's as short as I am. Like you I'm an old hand at Blood Bowl, having played for a variety of teams over the years.

RM: An illustrious career, no doubt. We butted heads, figuritively and literally a few times on the pitch did we not?

DA: Certainly did. Always said it was a shame that your left leg ended up as Halfling stew, but it was mighty tasty, I'll tell you that. Well, I've got to say I'm really excited for this new season that's about to start, Rattlecan. What about you?

RM: I certainly am, Dork. It's been quite some time since we really dived in and followed Blood Bowl like we did back in the day and it's that nostalgia that's really driving home the feels for the upcoming games we get to watch. And as someone with no living tissue, getting those feels makes it all the more special.

But, we're coming to the end of this first get together. I understand the Halfling Hamburgers have now had their team kit delivered and will be taking to the pitch soon. Very much looking forward to seeing what these stunty guys get to do this new season.

DA: Really pumped as well, Rattlecan, especially for the new Bretonnian Team, the Couronne Crusaders. I can see that they are trying out some new team colours after the first kit arrived and looked a little off. they are going back to the classic red/blue mix, matching the grand army of Couronne.

Also, the Khemri Desert Scorpions are making their way to the stadium for the inaugural event but it is taking some time to get here. Who knows what colours they will be wearing, and then we have to wait for the fourth and final team to arrive. Any idea who that's going to be?

RM: Not got a clue Dork. I've heard it could be the Gouged Eye, or even the Sin City Renegades.

DA: Do we really want another human team in this first league? We should hope for perhaps a Dwarf or Elf team.

RM: I hear you, but whoever it is, they better hurry up and get here. 

DA: Well, that's us all done for now I guess. Tune in same time, same channel next week for another thrilling update from the ACC. It's a good night from me...

RM: ... and a good night from him.

RM/DA: Night folks!

Warhammer Quest 2026 Project

 

I played this game religiously back in the 90s, moving on from Advanced Heroquest to the more streamlined version. Gone were the long wanderings down endless corridors, the product of numerous rolls on the exploration table. Now you simply turned over a card and placed the next tile section down.

Re-starting my Warhammer hobby with Blood Bowl, I immediately fell back in love with painting Citadel miniatures with Citadel paints. I was watching NFL games while painting the Halfling Team, just like I did back in the day. It's really hard to put into words but for this 53 year old, it honestly felt like home. I felt true joy while painting once again - I'm now working on the Bretonnian Team, the Couronne Crusaders - and looking forward to the inaugural game of the Artois Crown Championship.

And then they announced a new version of Warhammer Quest - not set in the Old World but in the Age of Sigmar. I was initially excited, I love Nurgle and have always wanted to collect a force of the pustulent, but with no dungeon to explore and with a weird MTG-style game play where you tap your action cards to activate them, plus a steep £160 core box price, I decided this wasn't for me.

But the itch to go dungeon-diving still remaind, fuelled by my reading of the Shannara series - I am now on the second book, Elfstones of Shannara. The game I want to play is this:

Lots of rooms to explore, a different dungeon each time and the best thing about the game: the Roleplay book which allows you to expand with hundreds of different monsters, travel between dungeons, adventure in cities and grow your character. I lost hours to this game. I used my Warhammer Fantasy Orc & Goblin army as monsters, bought the odd blister now and then to increase the bestiary with the odd daemon or Dark Elf. It was a true hobby game.

And now in 2026 I am going to create my own version of this. 

I could buy a pristine copy from Ebay, but at £600 (£100 a month for 6 months) I don't think the wife would be too happy - I would be exstatic, but also most likely divorced! - so instead of risking marital self destruction, I'm going to slowly create my own version using pdf files of the components.

I've already sourced the rulebooks and ordered them - they'll come A4 in colour and spiral bound - and all for less than the price of the Adventure book on Ebay.

The plan is to print the components on A4 label paper and stick them down to 3mm card.

 

I will use Warhammer The Old World miniatures for the monsters, and find suitable Hero minis from a variety of sources including Oathmark and Frostgrave metals. To begin with though I may use paper minis stuck onto thinner card - I've found a source for all the monsters and heroes right through to the Level 10 Monster Table.

Just need to get some of those plastic stands - 20 for £1.99 from EM4 Miniatures - It's not ideal but a quick way to get playing the game while sourcing and painting the miniatures, and certainly a lot more cost effective.

I'll be starting this project properly in January when I will have the funds to get the A4 sticky labels and card and start printing out the board tiles.

The one thing I do plan on getting though is an empty original Warhammer Quest box to store them all in. Might take some time to find it though.

Prepping For The New Teams Arrival

Just a week to go now before the new edition of Blood Bowl arrives. As well as the box set and paints, I've also ordered the team I played religiously through the 90s - Halflings.

These were my favourite team - I was known for not being very good at game tactics, no matter the system, a trait I continued throughout my tabletop gaming "career". I remember fondly coming dead last in my one and only tournament I took part in, Kings Of War back in 2012(ish). I used Undead and only won one game thanks to my opponent, Matt Gilbert (who now is a partner CEO of Mantic Games) being extremely generous to the special kid.

Using Halflings I was already handicapped by the stunties, so I could concentrate more on just having fun. Captained by Ganga Man (the metal Halfling player wearing the collander), I actually won a few games with them, and so when the new edition was announced I just had to order the latest version of the team.

So, in a few days time, The Hamburger Horrors will once again take to the pitch, and here's their team logo and banner.

I'll be using the banner as turn or reroll marker.

I've also named the two teams that come in the box, the Bretonnians and Tomb Kings and have created their logos and banners as well.

BRETONNIANS: COURONNE CRUSADERS

TOMB KINGS: THE DESERT SCORPIONS

I'll be posting team histories shortly.

Revitalising my Hobby Mojo with the new Blood Bowl

Like many, I started in the tabletop gaming hobby with Games Workshop. This was back in the 80's for me, starting with White Dwarf magazine. I was around 12 at the time so this would have been 1984, the year that the first edition of Blood Bowl was released.

I remember going into Leeds with my aunt and uncle for our Saturday wander around the town. They would go off shopping and I would be given my pocket money and any extra for chores I had done through the week and sent off to explore on my own. I would visit HMV to look at videos and rock music albums, or disappear into bookshops for the main, but I stumbled across a shifty looking store down a back street that had boardgames and painted models in the window.

This is what it looks like recently - Games Workshop was the one on the corner.

This was back in the day when GW sold a variety of boardgames and roleplay games: Paranoia, Call of Cthulu, Dungeons & Dragons. Everything had a fantasy or scifi theme and it was captivating to wander the shelves and look at the artwork and imagine the multitude of possibilities held within these pages or box sets. I loved fantasy at the time: films like The Beastmaster, Krull and Star Wars (it's a scifi fantasy) and read Tolkien, Gemmel and had recently discovered Terry Brooks' The Sword of Shannara (which I am just re-reading right now).

However, with no one else in the family into fantasy like I was (although my uncle was a big reader of Tolkien) and with friends who were more into playing video games than boardgames, my only purchase would usually be the latest issue of White Dwarf. But on this occaision I saw a boxed game that I couldn't leave on the shelf.

Blood Bowl.

It was a card pitch and the players were card standees, but there were loads of them. All the races were included: humans, orcs, goblins, skeletons, zombies, werewolves, dwarfs, elves... Everything. You could make teams for any fantasy race you could think of, all in this one box.

I lost many hours with this game, setting up the board and playing through matches. The game used a slight variation on the full rules from Warhammer Fantasy Battles, and this led me to get the third edition of the mass battle game, and from there I was hooked. Over thirty years later and I am still hooked on tabletop games, all thanks to this game.

As the years moved on I got each new edition. Second had the styrofoam pitch; Third changed the rules and introduced the block dice. During this time I even started to work for Games Workshop, at the very Leeds store that got me hooked. Ten or eleven years I worked for them in various roles right up to regional manager and I look back on those years very fondly.

Since then I continued to work within the industry for various companies, as well as continuing my love for tabletop games and miniatures of many different flavours. Star Wars Shatterpoint, Frostgrave, Oathmark, Age of Sigmar to name a few. I even got into historicals with Flames of War, Bolt Action and Black Powder, but they never really caught me the way fantasy did.

Recently we had some severe turmoil in our family with my wife being diagnosed with cancer at the start of the year - on Valentines Day of all things. This totally sapped any interest in painting or playing toy soldiers as you can imagine, as my entire focus was on her and supporting her as best I could. Being a sufferer of anxiety and depression, and with some health issues of my own to contend with, 2025 did its best to rip all joy from our world.

I am so thankful to be able to say that she has been given now the all clear - or as close to 100% as they can - as at the last checkup they announced she was cancer free, though would need continual check ups to ensure it didn't return. The relief of this I can't describe. It's something I hope no one reading this ever has to experience. A fantasy lover through and through, I compare it to The Nothing from NeverEnding Story, that dark, featureless cloud that slowly devours everything, sucking all hope and joy from all it touches.

I lost all interest in tabletop games, a touch inconvienient as I still work for a tabletop games company shilling toy soldiers to retailers. That side I could do: it was a job, it paid the bills and I'm pretty good at it - it was tough at times, talking to stores about upcoming releases when I was terrified I was going to lose my best friend and soulmate - but I soldiered on (pun intended), but I just didn't want to spend time on WW2 or American Revolution models. There was no joy there.

I was actually set on moving on from tabletop gaming as a hobby when Games Workshop announced a new upcoming edition of Blood Bowl.

Tomb Kings vs Bretonnians in the box. A brand new rulebook, new models, tokens. I'd last dabbled with Blood Bowl back during the pandemic, in April 2021 with the Second season box set.

 

 

but it didn't last and I sold it on, like so many of the games I'd got over the years.

But I am really excited about the game. It has rekindled my love for tabletop gaming once again, bringing me back to the very beginning of my passion for this hobby. I've preordered the box set plus my all time favourite team, Halflings. I've started planning, as I want to get everything painted, and as is my wont, I've created a few spreadsheet trackers to keep everything organised.

Blood Bowl Wishlist

Project Tracker

Citadel Paints List

I know... I know.

But it's fun, and it has me excited and I can see there's a lot to collect, paint and play with over the coming months and years and I am really excited for that. It's why I've created this blog and a YouTube channel where I plan to record my hobby progress, more to try keep me focused and get things finished and played with for any other reason.

The game is released next week, so I am now sorting my desk out so I can keep all the hobby stuff within reach and space for the board so I can get games in and learn the latest edition of the game that got me started in tabletop wargames all those years ago.