Deck Building games have been around for a while now, it all started with Dominion but since then others have come to challenge the crown. The same cannot really be said about Quarriors, which took the deck building genre and added dice. 
Quarriors is a competitive and combative dice building game. Instead of buying cards to add to your deck you buy dice, when you score those dice you can cull your dice and in doing so increase the chances of drawing out the better dice. Dice only score if they can survive for a whole turn.
In deck building terms Quarriors is most similar to Nightfall, it’s all about attacking your opponent to stop them scoring and making sure they can’t defeat your creatures. Quarriors doesn't hit the table all that often in our house and here is why…
Deck Builders do it better. Quarriors is quirky and unique and fun but it is also more fiddly than a deck building game, it’s more random too. You can try and set up combos but most of the time you're just going to pull one creature and some basic dice. It’s not that I don't like Quarriors, I do, but it isn’t a strategic or even a tactical game, it’s just a dice rolling slugfest.
Does adding Quest of the Qladiator change that? Nope. What it does add are new dice and cards with some cool effects and a new type of symbol; the Locked Dice. This dice sits in your play area and adds a special ability, globally, until it is unlocked. While this is a really nice idea, it is again, a bit fiddly (the expansion comes with a doubled side piece of A4 paper for additional rules and most of them are about locked dice) but any player can spend 2 “Quiddity” to unlock it, which in real terms isn’t much at all given on an average turn I would roll between 4 and 6 quiddity.
I guess I sound like I’m coming down a little hard on this game, but it is expensive for what you get, especially given how lax quality control can be! I paid £20 ish for the expansion, but it retails at nearly double that and you get 2 new spells and 6 new creatures. Yes that is a total of 40 new dice, but at the same time if I bought a Thunderstone expansion I’d get 300 cards, adding dozens of new monsters, heroes and items and at nearly half the price!
Do I recommend Quarriors? Yes, but I’d definitely say try before you buy and don't expect the same level of depth you get from a deck builder and if you like Quarriors and you are just looking for more monsters and spells you could pick up Quest for the Qladiator, but I don't feel it’s a must add expansion. It doesn't fix any of the problems I have with the base game.
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