Dungeon Crawler Friday: Blackstone Fortress Storms the Table

Stephen Ramsey
Jul 9
3 min read

Dungeon Crawler Friday delivered again this week, as we swapped fantasy dungeons for the cold, dark corridors of the 41st Millennium with a full session of Warhammer Quest: Blackstone Fortress. The table filled up fast, and it was brilliant to see a real mix of faces around it - a good few regulars back for more exploring, alongside several people trying the game, and Dungeon Crawler Friday, for the very first time.

A Full Table and a Great Game

There's a particular energy to a full Blackstone Fortress table - explorers picking their way through procedurally generated corridors, arguing over whether to push on for one more room or fall back to the Precipice to patch up. With new players learning the ropes alongside old hands who already know exactly how badly a bad initiative roll can go, the session had exactly the mix of tension, laughs and the odd groan of disbelief that makes Dungeon Crawler Friday one of our favourite nights on the calendar. Big thanks to everyone who came down, whether it was your first game with us or your fiftieth.

What Is Blackstone Fortress?

Warhammer Quest: Blackstone Fortress was released by Games Workshop in 2018, taking the Warhammer Quest dungeon-crawling formula and dropping it into the grim darkness of the far future for the first time. Instead of a fixed set of dungeons, the game uses a system of procedural generation, so every expedition into the fortress throws up a different layout, different enemies and different twists, meaning no two sessions ever play out quite the same way.

One to five players take on the role of a band of disparate explorers - Rogue Traders, Imperial Navigators, Ambulls, Chaos Space Marines and more - delving into a colossal, ancient xenos space station in search of long-lost technology. It plays as a full campaign across a series of expeditions, with characters growing stronger, gearing up and uncovering more of the fortress's buried secrets each time they venture back in.

Roots in a Classic

Blackstone Fortress is one chapter in a much longer story. The original Warhammer Quest launched all the way back in 1995, sending Barbarians, Elves, Dwarfs and Wizards crawling through the dungeons of the Old World. After nearly two decades away, Games Workshop brought the format back with Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower in 2016 and Shadows Over Hammerhal in 2017, both set in the Mortal Realms of Age of Sigmar. Blackstone Fortress followed in 2018 as the series' first step into the 40K universe, and the format has continued since with Cursed City in 2021, Lost Relics in 2022 and Darkwater in 2025.

The Club's Complete Collection

Between us, we've quietly built up the full Warhammer Quest lineage over the years, and that means Dungeon Crawler Friday is set up to rotate through every era of the series - Old World dungeons, the Mortal Realms, and the corridors of Blackstone Fortress and beyond. If fantasy dungeon-delving is more your thing than xenos space stations, or the other way round, there's a version of Warhammer Quest coming up that will suit you, and you'll never need to own any of it yourself to jump in and play.

Get Involved

Dungeon Crawler Friday is open to everyone, whether you're a veteran of every Warhammer Quest box going or you've never picked up a d20 in your life. No experience necessary, no army required, just come along, grab a character sheet and see where the fortress takes you. Keep an eye on our events page for the next session, and come find out which corner of the Warhammer Quest collection we're exploring next.