An adventurer’s guide to Warhammer Quest: Darkwater – The basic rules

This enemy action dice has a number of instructions on, such as Advance: move to the nearest hero, and Reposition: find the furthest enemy hero they could attack after moving and move towards them. There are also combo abilities like Reposition, then Quick Attack; Advance, then Onslaught; or Advance twice. Quick Attacks are weaker assaults where critical hits are turned into normal hits, while Onslaught is your standard attack action that can score critical hits.

Don’t think rolling Advance or Advance twice will save you if the enemy is already next to you – they will perform Quick Attacks instead of Advances, and there is a detailed chart governing all the possible behaviours in the rules. There’s also a Special Action symbol on the dice, which triggers each enemy’s ability. When the round progresses, the enemy behaviour moves on – to the red enemy action dice in the case of Mire Kelpies, which includes different faces, including Grievous Blow, an attack that turns all successful hits into critical hits.

On the next turn, a group of three Mire Kelpies will all Retch and give an enemy the Splattered status card, which prevents them from acting until they spend an energy to clean themselves off. There are other status cards to watch out for as well, and not all are quite so lenient as Splattered. There are instructions on what to do if your whole party is already covered head to toe in effluence, or if you’re all wisely hiding out of sight. After the third round, the behaviour track resets and you’re back to black enemy action dice.