Descent!!

So my comparision between Warhammer and Dragon Age aside, there are many things that I enjoy about the new incarnation of Warhammer. The production value being chief among them. Fantasy Flight games makes pretty toys. Lots of neat shiny bits, and cool runic dice. While researching Warhammer I came across FFG's dungeon hack board game Descent. Tempted by thoughts of the Heroquest box set back in the day I went and picked this up for my birthday a few days ago. Man is this game fun! I love everything about it from the amazing plastic figures, to the cool extra bits (wound and fatigue markers) to the puzzle piece dungeon maps! It's a great hack n' slash with no roleplay required.

Warhammer 3E vs. Dragon Age: Round 2

I had a great Holiday break. I caught up on all my rest, enjoyed the first Christmas with my daughter, and did a whole hell a lot of gaming. An old gaming buddy of mine from back in the day joined me and the Dandies for some good ole clickety clack. I ran 2 demos of Warhammer, ran one game of Dragon age and played in another. After a few more sessions, I can honestly say that I much prefer Dragon Age over Warhammer. Don't get me wrong. Warhammer is fun, and I'm starting to get into the mechanics a bit more, but Dragon Age runs like butter. It slips right into the background, and after a couple of combats, you really start to get the stunts. I really like simple elegant systems. Warhammer tends to be pretty crunchy (and I can acknowledge that much of that comes from learning the systems ins and outs). Dragon Age you can explain to a new character and just jump right into your story. There's a serious learning curve that comes with Warhammer. That said, there's also a lot of room for cool nuances in the dice mechanics.

Now these are still early impressions. I'm planning a WHRP game at the moment and I'm really curious to see how that goes. I'll post further impressions after I run a few sessions. 

(Oh btw- I planned on running a Earthdawn game from my buddy but switched at the last minute and wrote up a Dragon Age adventure on the spot. I scribbled down some notes, wrote down the adversaries stats and ran the game. I don't think I'd be able to do the same for Warhammer.)