It Came From Woolworths - Mighty Warriors
The Elder among us may remember a certain, strange time in the hobby. A time when the stars aligned in the correct formation (a celestial sign known as The Beard), and eldritch items of maligned power found themselves in places where such things had never existed before, or since, or had any right to be. This ancient place was named Woolworths, and the items were Board Games.
This is the tale of Mighty Warriors
Mighty Warriors was produced in the early 1990s by Games Workshop after the success of their partnership with MB Games, as part of a series of introductory-level miniatures games to reel in young players from places usually removed from usual beaten track of GW stores, and the local gaming shops. These included Mighty Warriors , Ultra Marines , Kerrunch , and Space Fleet, and for a short time, the almost now-forgotten classic Dungeonbowl
The game includes dice, floor tiles, door stand-ups, 36 Citadel Miniatures, and reference cards for army lists and spells, all taken from the Advanced Heroquest release, but cut down, and missing rooms and enemies. One of the more interesting parts is the fact that Mighty Warriors can be crossed over with Ultra Marines to form a Sci Fi vs Fantasy combat experience. Using the repacking model from Heroquest brought down the costs, and allowed a ready to use, out of the box experience similar to, but actually simpler than, Heroquest and Space Crusade.
It does have to be said, the cardboard was a lot thinner and less resilant than it's AH counterpart.
The game allows you to either pick from the Heroes (Knight, Dwarf or Elf leading a fearless band of archers and spearmen) or the dark forces of The Chaos Sorcerer (The Wizard from AH made some terrible decisions in life it seems) who controls 4 Skaven Champions (it's a plot) and a horde of Skaven Clanrats (many plots yes-yes). Both the Elf and Naughty Wizard have spells to throw at each other, while everyone else has a collection of combat abilities.
Not sure how well they do against the Ultra Marine bolters though....
The castle, dungeon or isolated mountain picnic is created from a series of modular tiles, connected by stand up door counters. Whilst these are a long way from the wonderous plastic sculpts of Warhammer Quest, they are a great evolution of the Heroquest doors.
Each force sets up in the rooms, each player declares one of the rooms the "Headquarters".....
and then....
The Shield is dropped.
The shield is the main thrust of the game. Capture the shield, and gain fortune and glory for your side. Granted, wiping out the other played to a man in a bloodbath of legendary proportions does the same thing, but I have a soft spot for the idea of a Capture The Shield game.
As mentioned before, Mighty Warriors is a very simple structure of a game. It utilizes a D6 system for fighting, and within the box lid exists a To Hit chart, which makes the entire process of skinning and wearing the filthy human man-things with your glorious Rat-Kin a simple affair, being a Hit, Miss or Stun result, and swarming your opponent when the entire team moves it's single square each turn may be a laborious experience to such a ancient and jaded creature as I, but my inner 10 year old still gets giddy as the two sides move ever closer to, as is taught in the upper crust of Altdorf..."sticking da pointy end in".
Magic also uses the D6 System. Roll dice, random spell gets cast. Not much to discuss there, and the spells were never the high point compared to kicking an elf in the face with a proud and just rat-paw. Roll the dice into box, and behold! Land in the "hit" square with your random spell, and be dazzled by damage being shaved from thy enemy!
Simple it may be, but my word, the minis are still to this day a thing of beauty, and it reminds me of a simpler time, and one where justice was served in a gory manner via a pointy sword.
By the Skaven. Obviously.
Now, how to get rid of the evil Wizard and get a Grey Seer installed, as is the proper ratty way.