Into the Darkness — Warhammer Quest and the Wildlings' Dungeon Crawler Community

Most people who walk through the doors of West Allotment Wildlings come for Warhammer 40K. They leave with armies, league records, and opinions about detachments. But alongside the big competitive tables, something else has been quietly building — a dungeon crawler community that gathers around a very different kind of game. Smaller. Darker. More intimate. And in many ways, just as addictive.

The Warhammer Quest range sits at a fascinating crossroads between the miniature hobby you already love and the cooperative dungeon crawling experience that's taken the board game world by storm. If you've ever wanted to explore that space but weren't sure where to start, this is your guide to what we play at the Wildlings — and why it might be exactly what you've been missing.

What Is Warhammer Quest?

Warhammer Quest is Games Workshop's own dungeon crawler line — a series of cooperative games in which a small group of players take on the roles of heroes exploring hazardous locations, battling monsters, and uncovering loot, all set within the rich Warhammer universe. Unlike a standard Warhammer 40K game, there's no opponent to defeat. Everyone around the table is working together, making decisions as a group, managing resources, and trying not to die horribly.

The genius of the Warhammer Quest range is that it takes everything that makes the Warhammer hobby special — the incredible miniatures, the deep lore, the tactical decision-making — and wraps it in a format that's far more accessible for a casual evening's play. You don't need a 2,000 point army. You don't need to know your secondaries. You just need a group of friends, a box, and a Friday night.

The Games We Play

Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower

Set in the Age of Sigmar universe, Silver Tower drops a group of unlikely heroes into the twisted realm of a Gaunt Summoner. The dungeon is different every time you play, built from a deck of room cards that reveal the tower's labyrinthine interior one chamber at a time. Monsters emerge, traps trigger, and the group has to work together to overcome each encounter using a pool of dice that all players share collectively.

What makes Silver Tower special is its fairness to newcomers. The cooperative dice mechanic means experienced players aren't hoarding resources at the expense of beginners. Everyone's fate is tied together from the first roll. The miniatures in the box are also outstanding — the kind of detailed, characterful figures that are a joy to paint and then actually use in a game.

Warhammer Quest: Blackstone Fortress

This is where the range truly found its feet. Blackstone Fortress takes the dungeon crawler format and drops it into the grimdark heart of the 41st Millennium — a vast, ancient space station drifting in the wilderness of space, full of hostile automata, mutants, daemons, and worse. Your explorers venture deeper into the fortress across a campaign of linked expeditions, uncovering its secrets and hunting for a legendary weapon.

Blackstone Fortress introduced a proper campaign system to Warhammer Quest. Your heroes gain experience, unlock new abilities and find equipment between expeditions. Fail a mission and your character might be injured, or worse. The tension of watching a favourite character teeter on the edge of death during a desperate fight for survival is the kind of thing that gets talked about for weeks afterwards at the club.

For Warhammer 40K players, Blackstone Fortress offers the particular joy of seeing factions and characters you already know reimagined as playable heroes or fearsome adversaries. The Rogue Trader and her crew of misfits feel completely at home in the 40K universe while delivering a completely different gameplay experience.

Why Dungeon Crawlers Are Different

If you've only ever played competitive Warhammer, the shift to a cooperative dungeon crawler can feel almost disorienting at first — in the best possible way. There's no opponent. No one is trying to beat you. The game itself is your adversary, driven by AI rules that determine how monsters move and attack, and the experience lives or dies based on how well your group works together.

This changes the entire social dynamic around the table. Instead of trying to outmanoeuvre the person sitting opposite you, you're leaning over the board together, arguing about the best move, pooling dice, and cheering each other's successes. The camaraderie that builds over a campaign is genuinely something special — the kind that comes from shared struggle rather than shared competition.

It also removes a significant barrier for newcomers. In a competitive 40K game, turning up with an unpainted or inexperienced army against an optimised list can be a bruising experience. In a Warhammer Quest session, there's no such thing as an optimised opponent. Everyone is figuring it out together, and the person with the least experience is just as likely to make the decisive move that saves the group as the most seasoned player at the table.

The Hobby Side — Painting for a Different Purpose

One of the underrated joys of the Warhammer Quest range is what it does for your painting motivation. In competitive 40K, painting can sometimes feel like an obligation — something you need to do before you're allowed on the table. In Warhammer Quest, painting your heroes feels personal in a different way. These are characters with names, histories, and experiences accumulated over a campaign. Painting them becomes an act of investment rather than compliance.

The monster miniatures in the Quest range are also some of the most creative and original sculpts Games Workshop produces. The Tzaangors of Silver Tower, the Chaos Familiars, the robotic Spindle Drones of Blackstone Fortress — these are models that don't appear in standard army lists and bring something fresh to the painting table. Many Wildlings members have found that a Warhammer Quest campaign is exactly the creative reset they needed after finishing a competitive army.

The Benefits Go Beyond the Table

Research published by the Royal Society in April 2025 confirmed what tabletop gamers have known for years: cooperative role-playing and dungeon crawling games measurably reduce social anxiety and feelings of loneliness. A 2025 study in Behavioural Sciences found that games requiring collaborative storytelling and shared decision-making build real-world social skills, empathy and confidence in players across a wide range of backgrounds.

At the Wildlings, we see this play out every week. Players who describe themselves as quiet or anxious in other social settings find that the shared focus of a dungeon crawl — the problem to solve, the monster to defeat, the decision to make together — gives them a natural, low-pressure way to connect with others. There's always something to talk about when you're figuring out together whether to retreat or push deeper into the fortress.

It also fits beautifully into the Wildlings' ethos as a Community Interest Company. Cooperative gaming is, almost by definition, inclusive. There's no skill gap that locks someone out of enjoying the experience. There's no meta to study. There's just a group of people around a table, working together, and having a genuinely good time.

Come and Play

The dungeon crawler community at West Allotment Wildlings meets at our Friday night sessions at West Allotment Community Centre from 6pm. You don't need your own copy of the game, you don't need a painted army, and you don't need any prior experience with the Warhammer Quest range. You just need to turn up.

If you want to find out more before you come, join our Discord at discord.gg/QWzyXKZhRt and ask about our dungeon crawler sessions in the channel. We're a welcoming bunch — and we're always happy to have one more hero step into the darkness.