Descent: Journeys in the Dark | BoardGameGeek

Thread: Descent: Journeys in the Dark:: Rules:: Undying and Encounter Markers.

OnlyHuman — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 19:54:52 +0000

I read somewhere that the Undying rules have changed from the March '09 rulings saying that when and Undying monster comes back, there is no rollover damage. That would mean that the attack is done, they come back at full life with no lingering effects, is that true? OR, is undying the same as it ever was with rollover damage still hurting them (not going through armor again) and lingering effects stay?

Encounter markers say that a hero has to end his movement to activate it, fair enough. Now, can the hero end ONE of his actions on the encounter marker, activate it, and next activate a 'run' action and move his movement points again?

Also, if it is possible for any who answer to possibly link their findings for my players are rules-hounds. I know the undying in the FAQ would prove my first theory wrong so that baffles me if it is true, however I never found anywhere anything about the encounter markers.

Thanks so much everyone, BGG for life!

cheers,
Andy

File: Descent: Journeys in the Dark:: Descent Quest VASSAL Module

jmglidden — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 14:21:23 +0000

by jmglidden

Descent Quest VASSAL Module for Board Game: Descent: Journeys in the Dark ]]>

New Image for Descent: The Well of Darkness

harmengreven — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:55:22 +0000

by harmengreven

Descent_Well of darkness_countersheet 1a

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New Image for Descent: The Well of Darkness

harmengreven — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:52:01 +0000

by harmengreven

Descent_Well of darkness_countersheet_3a

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New Image for Descent: The Well of Darkness

harmengreven — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:51:55 +0000

by harmengreven

Descent_Well of darkness_countersheet_4a

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Thread: Descent: Journeys in the Dark:: General:: Newby needs help.

andywatkins1963 — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 11:52:56 +0000

by andywatkins1963

Playes 1st game of basic descent last night, had wOD did not use treachery. Played 1st scenario i was the OL.

Game went well as I had read the rules 100 times we had to refer back VERY rarely, pretty much what a monkey could do once he had been cursed and turned into a monkey. Found it quite quickly.

Despite it running so smoothly we played for 4 1/2 hours including 30 min setup and only made it half way through the 3rd area, at least another hour to go. I think problem was the heroes were VERY slow to advance, kept going back to kill monsters following them or go shopping in town.

As OL I only picked up 2 cards per turn and cleared the whole deck!! I ended up with about 40 threat spare with nothing to spend it on.

Advice please on how to make game go quicker, what heroes should have done better, and what OL can spend spare threat on?

Rules query - Spiders in narrow corridors with a rubble token. Can spiders get down a corridor 2 squares wide once you have dropped a 1 square rubble trap in it. We assumed it was blocked for large creatures. On other hand you would think a spider could climb around it??

Walkthrough....

Area 1 beastmen the heroes cleared this quite quickly for no real loss and moved onto area 2. They insisted on keep taking health potions to keep their health up and did not use fatigue much, certainly not to move faster.

Area 2 I shot them up with hell hounds with "rage" this intimidated the heroes quite a bit. They killed the 2 hell hounds but i retreated the master hell hound and the ogre as far down corridor as I could. The "tank" hero died once. This scared the others who were not prepared to go down what they called the corridor of death. Several turns wasted here, eventually they attacked and killed the ogre and hell hound but i killed a wizard and turned the one opening the silver chest into a monkey. Again chaos as they all regrouped and went shopping.

Eventually they opened area 3 with beastmen and razorwings skeletons master sorceror and a master spider.

During that two turns I also hit them with two swarms of beastmen, managed to kill a magician twice thus they were getting very low on conquest points. Then we stopped.

Thread: Descent: The Road to Legend:: Variants:: Seige Rules Variant - City Defence Parties

nickjanaway — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 11:44:47 +0000

by nickjanaway

We're on our second campaign, and we got bored of rolling surges to raze cities - seems such an anticlimactic way to settle such an important part of the game. We also wanted to get the other heroes out of the box sometimes! So, I've come up with these alternative seige rules - in summary, a hastily-formed band of slightly weaker heroes defends the city against the lieutenant and his minions. All the city's attributes are used in some way, meaning different cities are easier/harder to raze. These haven't been playtested, they're just ideas right now, and they are deliberately imbalanced to weaken the heroes... any suggestions and changes welcome.

Road to Legend - Alternative Seige Rules - City Defence Parties

In the "resolve seiges" stage of the game week, when a city (other than Tamalir) has seige tokens equal to its defense rating, do the following instead of rolling a power dice to resolve the seige.

1 - Draw Defence Party
*NB Do not draw a defence party for Tamalir - it already has one! If Tamalir is beseiged, the main party must return to fight off the lieutenant(s) there. If they cannot, Tamalir is AUTOMATICALLY razed.*

Draw four new heroes (not inlcuding the ones in the Tamalir Party). These heroes represent the local militia in the beseiged city, slightly weaker fighers that happen to live there. These randomly drawn heroes may NOT be swopped.

2 - Skills
Each hero in the defence party ends up with one (or possibly two) skills, by the following procedure.

Do not include any skills that are currently in play (in the Tamalir Party). Draw from the hero's normal combination of skill decks, except - each hero may only draw a maximum of ONE SKILL from any skill deck for which the corresponding DICE are not available at the beseiged city. For cities with no dice, it's a maximum one card in each skill category.
So, to spell it out - if there are no melee dice available at the city and you're allowed fighting skills, draw only one fighting skill in your initial selection. No ranged dice means maximum one subterfuge skill; no magic dice - maximum one wizardry skill.

E.g. If Runewitch Astarra appears to defend Forge, you may only draw ONE skill for her from the wizardry deck, even though she should get three. [This is because runewitches who live in forge are not likely to be particularly awesome ones.]
E.g. If Sillhouette appears to defend Forge, draw her full complement of three subterfuge skills.
E.g. If Red Scorpion appears to defend Frostgate, draw one skill from each category [finally, she has some advantages!]
E.g. If Battlemage Jaes appears to defend Dawnsmoor, draw one fighting and one wizardry skill (not two).

Once you have drawn appropriate cards for the four heroes, they each pick one to keep, like a starting Tamalir party. If any of the actual skills available at that city shows up, the hero may have that skill plus one of the other ones they drew. This is the only way a defence party hero can have 2 skills.

3 - Treasures & Items
Do not use any of the treasures currently in the Tamalir party.
For each hero, draw 2 treasures from the current campaign level deck. Apply any special effects from the beseiged city's market, e.g. Riverwatch: replace treasure caches, Nerekhall: keep drawing until you reach a rune. (Treasure caches drawn anywhere other than Riverwatch DO contain any potions listed.) If the current level treasure deck runs out, start drawing from the next one down. Distribute the final selection of treasures to the defence heroes in any legal combination. Any unwanted treasures may be exchanged for shop items ON A CARD-FOR-CARD BASIS, not by selling and buying. Shop items currently in the Tamalir party may not be used.

4 - Extra armour
After treasures and items have been finalised, any hero that is not wearing armour has their armour increased by 1 point. [this is because armour is rare in the treasure decks and the Tamalir party probably has a lot of the shop armour.]

5 - Alchemist
The defence party receives potions equal to the city's alchemist rating, or a minimum of 2. (The party players may choose which potions as usual.)

6 - The encounter itself
Draw a location card, and play a standard lieutenant encounter (treachery & all) using the new defence party.
Defence heroes cannot flee.
The defence party cannot permanently kill a lieutenant. If the defence party reduce the lieutenant to 0 wounds in this encounter, he/she returns to the Overlord's Keep and all seige tokens are removed. Only the Tamalir party may permanently kill a lieutenant, and they may of course move to the beseiged city and attack the lieutenant as normal.

If the lieutenant flees the encounter, he may try to tackle the same defence party again the following week, at full wounds and with full minions! Keep the defence party to one side as they are:
- Any defence heroes killed in this encounter are permanently killed. [Only the Tamalir party has access to glyphs!]
- Each hero may keep their weapons or discard them and draw again as in step 3.
- All surviving defence heroes are healed of wounds equal to their city's temple rating.
- The defence party receives another week's worth of potions from the Alchemist (again, minimum of 2) and may then use any to heal further wounds. They start again on full fatigue.

This means the lieutenant can "wear down" the city's defence party over several weeks if he doesn't manage it the first time. Unless of course the Tamalir party intervenes and drives him off. Once all four defence heroes have been killed, the city is razed.

NOTES:
If a Tamalir hero learns a skill that a defence hero has, the defence hero loses the skill.

If a city is 'saved' [ie lieutenant leaves] and subsequently beseiged again, an entirely new defence party is chosen, starting from step 1.

Neither the overlord nor the party recieve any conquest tokens or money during this defence encounter.

If there are multiple lieutenants, the defence party faces both/all of them each week - the Overlord chooses the order in which the lieutanants attack.

[These rules mean different cities will have be easier/harder to raze, and different lieutenants will be better/worse at it. I think that is great! Also defence parties will be relatively much much weaker at gold level, having no extra skills or dice. This is ok, as the Tamalir party will have wandered around by then and benefitted from several cities. If they really want to save a city at gold level, they'd better hustle. Possible modification - the defence heroes starting traits let them use power dice of the current campaign level, e.g. at gold level Mordrog uses 3 gold dice with melee attacks...]

Thread: Descent: Journeys in the Dark:: Rules:: Deeper into the Dark: Second Batch of Questions

Weloi Avala — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 08:25:08 +0000

by Weloi Avala

Hiya,

Well, three sessions of Descent under the belt and I'm starting to get the hang out of, though frequent searches through the FAQ's still necessary. A few more questions I couldn't find an answer for--the last ones for awhile, I suspect, as I don't see another chance to play for a bit.

1) Boneheaps: searching a bone heap can produce treasure equivalent to a chest; do these chests function as chest in all regards? That is, do the heroes get Conquest if no treasure appears? Does the Great Wyrm get Conquest as well? The OL can play a Trap(space) if the heroes search the pile; can the OL play a Trap(chest) if the pile produces a chest? (I suppose the same question applies to sarcophagi.)

2) Necromancy: does the raised creature get to act (assuming it doesn't collapse) immediately? Mage kills a creature, then the zombie acts? Or does it begin next turn?

3) Heroes/monsters in a pit have LOS to spaces adjacent to the pit. Does this mean you can attack creatures at the edge of a pit from within a pit? Do you suffer the penalty for elevation?

4) Can large creatures walk across a 1-space pit without effect? What happens when a large creature walks into a 2-space pit; the faq (p2) suggests it should.

5) In RtL, when the heroes head to a new level, the OL keeps his hand of cards, threat and any Power cards in play. However: what happens to the deck? Are the discards shuffled back in or left aside? If left, doesn’t this mean that the OL could theoretically finish off the deck on the first round of the new level (if there were only a few cards left) making it far more likely of ejecting the heroes for 2 cycles through the deck?

6) Villagers: do they block LOS for spawning purposes? As ‘Props’ they seem to--but doesn’t that make #27: the Monastery an almost impossible rescue mission? (It’s also thematically a bit weird.) But if they’re props, does that make them immune to bleed, burn, etc...?

Thanks! Hope the answers to these questions helps others as well.

-M.

New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

jhocar — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 22:17:24 +0000

by jhocar

Sabuesos Infernales

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File: Descent: Journeys in the Dark:: Descent Quest VASSAL Module

jmglidden — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 22:19:07 +0000

by jmglidden

Descent Quest VASSAL Module for Board Game: Descent: Journeys in the Dark ]]>

File: Descent: Journeys in the Dark:: Expanded List of All Descent Abilities / Keywords

refinery — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 22:17:41 +0000

by refinery

Expanded List of All Descent Abilities / Keywords for Board Game: Descent: Journeys in the Dark ]]>

Thread: Descent: The Road to Legend:: Strategy:: Encounter Markers

ssgtnelson — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 18:59:56 +0000

by ssgtnelson

Ok, I have a good idea how Encounter Markers work normally, but in Road to Legend there is a map where I'm not sure what to do with them; May 10 The Ancient Library has 10 Encounter Markers, but no description as to what they mean.

Can anyone tell me what to do if I get this map in the campaign? I just bought Road to Legend, so maybe I just skipped over something in the rules.

Thanks,
Nelson

New Image for Descent: The Well of Darkness

harmengreven — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 14:58:28 +0000

by harmengreven

Descent_Well of darkness_countersheet_2a

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Thread: Descent: Journeys in the Dark:: Rules:: Hiding from Blast attacks in pits

Antistone — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 23:36:25 +0000

by Antistone

Just noticed an interesting rules loophole I thought I'd share. The rules for Blast state that "a space is only affected by the Blast attack if it has line of sight to the target space (ignoring figures for this purpose)."

Read that carefully. It doesn't say that the target space must have line of sight to the affected space, but that the affected space must have line of sight to the target space.

Now, line of sight in Descent is mostly reciprocal (especially when you're ignoring figures), but not quite. You can see into pits but not out of them (except to adjacent spaces).

So that means that, by RAW, if you're standing in a pit, and a Blast attack is targeted 2 or more spaces away from you, you can't be damaged by it, because you don't have line of sight to the target space. Conversely, a Blast attack can be targeted inside of a pit without reducing its target area.

Of course, there's a good chance that's an error. And with the fix to pit LOS to deal with grapple, it doesn't even potentially matter unless you have at least 2 ranks of Blast. But it's an interesting and amusing result.

On a tangential note, fog shields you from Blast attacks, too, because the LOS ignores figures, but not obstacles.

New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

refinery — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 23:25:15 +0000

by refinery

Razorwing closeup.

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New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

refinery — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 23:19:44 +0000

by refinery

Razorwings right after a bloody meal consisting of unfortunate heroes.

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Thread: Descent: Journeys in the Dark:: Rules:: First Time Playing--First Batch of Questions!

Weloi Avala — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 22:01:04 +0000

by Weloi Avala

Hola!

After much waiting, I was finally able to get my hands on a copy of Descent--along with Road to Legend--and gave it a bit of a solo try to get familiar with the rules. Good fun, but a couple of questions came up through playing:

1) Melee attacks around a corner; is it okay?

2) Blast: is it a single attack applied to everyone in the area? Which means that a single person dodging in that area can make it miss for everyone?

3) How do trees--giving Shadowcloak--stand up to Breath?

4) In an RtL outside encounter: if the heroes kill everything on the board, but on his turn the OL paid threat for a reinforcement but hasn't brought in into play yet... is the encounter over? Or do the heroes have to kill the incoming baddy?

5) Burn: a hero is burning, taking damage, and an encounter/dungeon ends; do the markers go away?

6)RtL: Dungeon #4--the map is really hard to make out. Are their pits only in the first room?

7) If the OL plays 'Aim' on a Manticore, does the effect apply to both attacks of its Quickshot?

8) Can a hero use the starting glyph in the entrance of a dungeon to head straight back to town?

and finally...

9) Upon returning to a dungeon, does a hero have to arrive on the glyph, or is adjacent okay?

Sorry for all the questions! I'm enjoying what I've played so far, and just trying to shake out the uncertainties before dropping it on my school's gaming group.

Cheers,
-M.

Thread: Descent: Journeys in the Dark:: Rules:: Distance for ranged attacks? A few questions for a new gaming group.

StormbringerGT — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 08:46:00 +0000

by StormbringerGT

Okay we have a question that came up today.

Line of sight is pretty clear cut. However distance is not always it seems. Looking at this diagram for line of sight, do we count distance in the same way?
http://files.boardgamegeek.com/file/download/3a9r1yuco3/desc...

For example on the far right side, 3rd one down, the target is 6 squares away correct?

On the second one from the bottom he is 8 squares away and on the very bottom he is 4 squares away (both the far right side of the chart)?

Or does line of sight work like movement? Once we trace a line, to get LOS do we count range like we would count character movement, square by square. so for example looking at that chart, on the far right side, second one from the bottom the Line of sight travels though 8 squares, however if a character were to walk from that grey spot to the next he could do it in 5 moves. So how do calculate distance?

My second question, a hero has Aura 4... does this mean evertime I move a monster next to him he loses 4 health? Killing and almost killing almost every small monster that tries to melee him?

Can command go around corners? Since it is up to 3 spaces away, or do you have to draw line of sight 3 spaces away?

Also I think we got this right but I had a hero in a hallway and I dropped a rubble trap on him. Later another hero was coming down and I wanted to drop a second down, next to the first. I didn't though because that would block the hallway completely. Also the card states there cannot be any obstacles adjacent (makes it hard to play some traps I'll admit). So I didn't play the trap. Was I correct?

How the heck do I keep track of monsters health? I spawned some Kobolds and the heroes were getting some bad rolls and there were other monsters as well. It was Hit point chaos for my monsters.

Poison adds 1 token per damage dealt right? Web, Stun and Daze only add one token, for that attack round, if the hero took at least one damage. So If a stun monster dealt 4 damage to a hero that hero only takes one stun not 4 (like poison)?

Corners are hit and miss for us. When drawing line of sight, from the center of a square to another, and a dungeon corner touches that line of sight, does it break line of sight?

In the first quest the room right before the final room, had a rubble tile on it (3X1 I think) and it was diagonal from a wall. Can the hero cross or line of sight that diagonal where the corner of the rubble meets and the corner of the wall meets?

I think thats about it. Thanks to whoever takes the time to answer these questions. We are searching now for our own answers to help speed things up!

Session: Descent: The Road to Legend:: The Spider who wanted to be God - Session 3

Hankroyd — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 23:41:52 +0000

by Hankroyd

After a month hiatus we continued our descent campagn.

Here is the previous session :
Session 1 : http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/411731
Session 2 : http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/413227

So here is our heroes and Ispher:

Ozyree as
Landrec the Wise (26/37)
12 / 5 / 1 / 3 (8 wounds)
Magic : 3 black
Talent :
* Blessing
* Prodigy
Equipement :
* Fire Cone
* Leather Armor
* 1 Stamina Potion
* 1 Power Potion
Unequiped : Sun

Matt as
Astarra, Witch Runes (26/37)
12 / 5 / 2 / 5 (4 Wounds)
Magic : 1 silver, 2 black
Talent : Inner Fire
Equipement :
* Chastise Staff
* Heavy Leather Armor
* 1 Stamina Potion
* healing Potion
Unequiped :
* Immolate
* Leather Armor

Kakael as
Lord Hawthorne (6/37)
16 / 4 / 3 / 4
Melee : 3 black
Talent : Mighty
Equipement :
* Dragonteeth Hammer
* Chainmail
* 1 Stamina Potion
* 1 Healing Potion
* 1 Power Potion
Unequiped : Axe

Toramal as
Ispher (26/37)
12 / 5 / 1 / 6
Melee : 1 black
Ranged : 2 black
Talent :
* Tiger Tatoo
* Boggs the Rat
Equipement :
* Magic Bow
* Leather Armor
* Amulet of Archery
* 2 Stamina Potion
Unequiped : Iron Shield

And of course, here is your humble servant as the Spider Queen

Overlord
Ascension Plot (2 cards)

Upgrade :
* Siege Engine
* 1 Trap Threat
* Silver Eldrich

Lieutnent : Sir Alric Farrow (On the Whispering Forest)

Last game ended with Matt and Toramal pretty demoralized by their failling of a dungeon.
Will this campagn will end today, will the Heroes get over their pityful last session. Just read for the anser !

Week 10: First Encounter (Continued)

So the session began with Heroes ambushed by a bunch of Naga in a zone where everyone gets Armor-1.
There was an instant of ... malaise, when I asked who will be awake at the beginning of the encounter.
Players wanted to put Landrec on guard duty ... but choose not to do so and instead choose at random who will be awake.
Why ? Because, they have no way to know when they will be ambushed during the night and so they have no way to put the 'right guy' at the 'right time'.
I take a preventive step and explained the communist squad that it's not because it's an outside encounter that the game has become an RPG. It's still a boardgame and they can choose anyone without cheating. It's in the rules !

So Landrec was awake, ready to use his new powers.

Nagas and the ogre was put far away from each other to prevent a multikill from Landrec, blocking the exit to try the total party kill.
Ispher awakens in the first turn, and guard order began to be played to kill Nagas before they attacked.
I tried my best but Landrec alone manage to kill them one by one (with a little help from Ispher).
Lost for lost, The nage boss grips them all to prevent them escaping and have a +2 armor bonus.
It was at this time that the two others choose to awaken. My poor naga was killed without manage a single kill.

Not very important, but for the players, it means that this session will be better than the previous.

And they arrived at the Cavern of Thull, ready to steal as many gold as they could.

Cavern of thuul Legendary Dungeon

Level 1 : The Invocation (13)

I choose to began with 5 sorcerers and 4 skeletons. Hoping the skeletons would hold the heros long enough to let the sorcerer invoke the Demon.
Halas, with a no trap starting hand, I could do very much, so the sorcerers forgot about the Demon and went for the kill.
Ispher especially proved very vulnerale against the new silver eldricht, allowing me to (barely) stay ahead of the heroes in term of experience.

Level 2 : Call from the Deep (35)

I made a big error during the setup : I protected every items near the Boss with monster EXCEPT the glyph.
Ispher, immunised to pit, runned and activate it while others Heroes went to Tamalir, planning to come back next turn directly in the melee.
Of course Ispher died (again) but so did my monsters and my poor sorcerer boss.
On the good side for me, They were so afraid of failling in the poisonned pit, they left without the gold.

Level 3 : The Citadel (22)

Strategy for the Heroes was very simple : 'Whatever you do, don't stop in the trapped hallway.
I learn from my previous mistake and manage to protect the Treasure and put some Elite Beastmen near the (again) Sorcerer Boss to protect the glyph.
But ... Gosh ... is level is strange : A so big place, with so few monsters to protect it.

Ispher decided to go its way to try to get the Treasure, while the others go for the boss.
A little spawn (basic sorcerers) allowed me to dispose of Ispher (The only one to have died so far !) and take the others heroes by behind.
With Sorcery 4 and 2 command, the Boss, in fury, killed Landrec just after from very far away. (Why Landrec didn't die before ? For a simple reason, he's as easy as Ispher to kill but he worthes only 2 while Ispher worthes 3)
After that, the configuration of the map, allowed me to play a little game of cat and mouse with the heroes. Of course, heroes have the upper hand in this given their 'guard' orders, but it doesnt matter : It allowed me to get a very good hand and lot of threat for the last level.
And then after the demise of the Boss, I got a good surprise ... No not a successful immortalty roll ...

Overlord: O...K... Will he resurrect ... **Dice roll** ... No ... Why did I got the feeling I won't manage an immortality roll today. (I didn't know where this feeling came from, but unfortunately, it proved to be right : On 4 or 5 immortality roll I didn't manage a single one.)

... but the Heroes choose to allow Landrec and Hawthorn to make a 'rest' order before the last level while Ispher and Astara was protecting them with 'guard' order.
I didn't know why, but they though that I wouldn't pay 15 extra threat for a spawn before the last level. But I would, and a skeleton patrol entered the dance.

The first was killed by Astara, but the second manages to hurt Landrec and denied him the rest.
The Master Skeleton was intended for the kill but ...

Ozyree: Now, my rest order is out, I guess it's your turn Kaekael.
Overlord: So I attack Lan... what did you say ?
Ozyree : huh ?
Overlord: Oops, I forgot Kaekael, you were right, thanks Ozyree. I attack Kaekael.
Other playes: Geez, stupid moron, why did you tell him ????
Ozyree: Errr... to ... stay alive ?
Everyone: ...
Ozyree: To be fair, I was just thinking out loud. That wasn't mean to hear by Hankroyd.
Kaekael: Good job ! Next time, less talky, more thinky.

... but my cunning strategy was from the star to cancel the two rest orders ... so I did !
After that they spend some time discussing. Theme of discussion : Should we try to rest again or not ? Hopefully for them they choose not to try it again and they escaped to the last level.

To my regrets, during one trip to Tamalir, an 3 points armor against Magic dans Ranged was bought and given to Ispher, so he's becomes slighly harder to kill with sorcerers alone. Still not a major problems for skeletons though.

Level 4 : The Caverns of Thull

It has been a very long time since the player saw a level so big ... jeez ... a level with ... zones !
The starting zone was cleared and securised without any problems.
They choose to go to the right wing, assuming than the dragon would be in the central aera and that maybe they needs keys from the side aera before going to it.
Again in the new zone, monsters were easyly killed and the loot just waiting for them.
Surprise, when they took the 1000 Gold reward the dragon appeared. Unfortunately, everyone except Ozyree had played.
Forgetting that Hawthorne was just next the dragon, Landrec began to harass him twice, and then it was Astara with her 'guard' order : In one round, they managed to deal to Hawthorne more damage than I have done to him since the beginning of the session, making his 4 conquest point at kill range from my traps.
A cooper dragon doesn't deal that much damage, But Astara was really weakened, and if the dragon didn't kill her directly, the burn killed her the next turn.
After the demise of the Dragon, a new discussion arose : "Should we stay or should we go ?"
They choose after the overlong debate, to try another zone knowing that I will certainly gets 12xp (from the soon demise of Hawthorne, Landrec and Ispher and the cycling of the deck), but having been broke one time, they go for it.
Second overlong debate : The left zone or the central ?
Fews hours later (Relative time perspective from an overlord listening to a stupid and useless debate.) they choose the central zone because "there is less distance to cover".
But ... While going back they get careless with spanning, and a troops of skeleton attacked them from behind giving me immediatly the experience that I should have gained on the central zone. Worse, on next turn, more skeletons appeared on the starting zone, taking heroes by surprise : I was litteraly crawling on experience and in control of the start zone, pushing the heroes to withdraw, but they are reasonning in another way : Since I got so much advance, they have to catch me before leaving. They cleaned the starting zone and tried to go for the central zone, heading to an Manticore and retreating immediatly to be striked by the few remaining skeletons.
But they saw two glyphes aka 6 experience, so they still didn't let go.
Again they used guard order to kill the razorwing and the manticore. The poor beast tried to kill Hawthorne, but cooper manticore only deals 3-4 damage per attack, so the four furied attacks didn't weakened him significantly.
After that, this time they prepared themselves to fight the dragon. In two turn, the affair was finished.

Last zone was anticlimatic : Only Ispher went, taking the gems and activating the glyph while other waited 'outside' the dungeon for Ispher to die (Wich was fast thanks to some sorcerers).

At end of session, everyone was happy, Heroes choose spend the money in the secret training zone nearby. Near Lord Farrow. I guess it will be time for others lieutnents to come and serve me.

At the end of session :

Overlord : 30/70 xp
Heroes : 65 xp & 6800 gold
Campaign : 135 xp

Landrec the Wise (26/65)
12 / 5 / 1 / 3 (8 wounds)
Magic : 3 black
Talent :
* Blessing
* Prodigy
Equipement :
* Fire Cone
* Leather Armor
Unequiped :
* Sun
* Petrification

Ispher (26/65)
12 / 5 / 1 / 6
Melee : 1 black
Ranged : 2 black
Talent :
* Tiger Tatoo
* Boggs the Rat
Equipement :
* Magic Bow
* Elven Robe
* Amulet of Archery
* Stamina Potion
Unequiped :
* Iron Shield
* Leather Armor

Astarra, Witch Runes (26/65)
12 / 5 / 2 / 5
Magic : 1 silver, 2 black
Talent : Inner Fire
Equipement :
* Chastise Staff
* Heavy Leather Armor
Unequiped : Crystalization

Lord Hawthorne (6/65)
16 / 4 / 3 / 4
Melee : 3 black
Talent : Mighty
Equipement :
* Dragonteeth Hammer
* Chainmail
Unequiped : Axe

Group Enhancement :
* Magic Boat
* Bazaar

Overlord
Ascension Plot (2 cards)

Upgrade :
* Siege Engine
* 1 Trap Threat
* Silver Eldrich

Lieutnent : Sir Alric Farrow (On the Whispering Forest)

Miscealenous comments :

At least, the third was the good one : Heroes finally saw the power of silver and gold dice, and used them effectively.
The sceance was a big dungeon crawling, like vanilla descent. In the last level, I made everything to force them to quit but failed utterly, maybe if they didn't saw the two glyphes in the central zone ... As a player, I knew that in a zone roaming with sorcerers and skeletons with a runnaway Overlord, I would have escaped.
History is written by the winner. And if at first I rejoiced of their 'stupidy', I finished only with 5 more XP while I was previously at 10 more. They made the good choice.
I was fairly disapointed by silver Eldricht ... they don't last much longer than the copper ones ... but one the other hand, they last long enough, the amount of damage they dealt is really satisfying ... poor Ispher/Toramal.

One last quote to finnish the sceance.

Context :
Heroes decided to go to the central zone ready to give me 12xp.
One the next turn, I manage to steal 9 of those XP ... and a few more during the two next turn.
The starting aera is controlled by skeletons and ...

Matt: Hmmmmm ... Maybe finally, going back isn't a bad idea.
Ozyree: No ! We go on !
Matt: But the monsters, the kills Hankroyd makes each turn ... By taying we only give more power.
Ozyree: We have to stay ! We got a good reason for that.
Matt: Which one.
Ozuree: Three turns ago we choose to stay, we never talked about reconsidereing this if we get butt-kicked so we have to continue.
Matt: ~~But... but... try to use common sense !~~ ... Make sense to me, we continue.

Overlord (in this head): Wai ... What ?? Come on ! You've got to be kidding me ! You fall for that reasonning ! I'll have to send a Christmas present to Ozyree for all the XP he's giving me ...

Thread: Descent: Journeys in the Dark:: News:: Auction: Nara the Fang promo

GaryP — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 22:46:28 +0000

by GaryP

I have an extra Nara the Fang promo miniature and Descent stat card. Both are new and unused. (However, I cut open the baggie to get the Runebound stat card, which I am keeping.)

We'll do this as a blind auction (mostly since I have no idea what this goes for). GeekMail your bid to me. No additional shipping charges, even international! Highest bid by Saturday July 11th 11:59pm CDT wins it.

Paypal is acceptable ONLY if funded by Paypal Balance or a bank account (No credit or debit cards unless you make a BIG bid and cover the fees, too.) US Postal Money Orders also work. Again, international bids are acceptable if you can pay as described. The transaction will go through BGG Marketplace so they can get their commission and we can give each other feedback.

I will delete this post a while after the auction ends. Thanks for looking.

Thread: Descent: The Tomb of Ice:: News:: Auction: Nara the Fang promo

GaryP — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 22:44:40 +0000

by GaryP

Session: Descent: Journeys in the Dark:: First time AND 6 players...

crunk_posby — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 16:52:52 +0000

by crunk_posby

I picked up Descent almost a year ago and have been waiting a long time to play it. I finally decided that we would start this summer. However, I found that I had 5 people really interested in giving it a try (and how can I tell someone no?) So we had to have a game with 5 player characters and 1 Overlord (me).

The things I did differently: I passed out all the character cards (so each player had 4) and let them choose their favorite. I then let them draw 1 extra of each skill card set and discard the one they didn't want (a big mistake). I used monsters for a 5 player game and added 1 health point to each throughout the game. Also, my set has extra monsters (a used set), so I never experienced a time when I could not place whatever monster I needed or wanted on the board.

We played quest one. The humans easily walked through areas 1, 2 and 3. I killed one of the weaker characters (worth 2 conquest tokens) twice during this time, and never even came close to killing anybody else. Almost every creature they encountered was killed in a single hit. Many creatures didn't even have a chance to attack.

By the time they entered the last area, I was swimming in threat, had a hand full of rage, space/door traps, and dodge, and had already played two hordes of the things cards (and a the commander card). The room was filled with monsters when they opened the door (that was trapped twice) plus they walked over pit traps and falling rubble after opening the door. They dispatched almost all the smaller monsters with some flame spell one of the characters had, brought both Manticores down to 1 life, and the giant down about 1/3. Then another character killed 1 of the Manticores, all before I was able to activate any of the monsters. So now I have the giant, 1 manticore (w/ 1 health left) and 1 beastman. The manticore gets in with rage and kills the easy character for another 2 conquest points. The giant gets in and hits a character into the pit. Then on the players turn, they wipe everything out and win.

Once the characters went through 2 areas, I realized there was pretty much no way I could win. I thought maybe I'd have some fun in the final area, I had dreams of playing rage on both my manticores, and getting in 8 attacks in one turn. I thought the giant would get some great bashing in before they won.

But the heroes started off strong, and just got better and better. One of them had a staff of punishment that was doing about 12 damage every time he used it (he had some skill or something that gave free surges). Another had some sort of flame blast attack that was doing sometimes as much as 10 damage to every creature within 3 spaces of the target area. Another character was able to completely heal everyone in the party up to full health after my Manticore attack in area 4.

It was barely fun for me. Not so much because I wasn't winning, but because I had NO chance of winning, and my monsters just seemed wimpy compared to the heroes.

We also spent a lot of time thumbing through the rulebook. Pretty much during every single turn. That got a bit tedious, but that should lessen as we play it more.

Finally, I think next time, if it's a game with 4 or 5 player characters, then the overlord should get a larger hand size (10), the overlord should get to draw more cards each turn (3), the players will get a random character and random skills (as shown in the rules) and finally, I would like to think up an additional use for threat rather than just playing cards.

Could it be used to temporarily boost a monster? To add some health or armor to a monster? To upgrade a monster to red? I had so much threat that I could play everything I drew and still had tons left over. Seems like there could be a better use for it...

So, hopefully our next game will be a bit more balanced between the adventurers and the overlord!

File: Descent: Journeys in the Dark:: Descent Overlord Player Mat

refinery — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 13:14:31 +0000

by refinery

Descent Overlord Player Mat for Board Game: Descent: Journeys in the Dark ]]>

File: Descent: Journeys in the Dark:: Town Marker Replacement

refinery — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 13:04:40 +0000

by refinery

Town Marker Replacement for Board Game: Descent: Journeys in the Dark ]]>

Thread: Descent: The Road to Legend:: Rules:: Questions regarding Sleep in descent and Portals

cyberkp — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 11:22:10 +0000

by cyberkp

Can a hero make an unarmed attack to another hero, in order to wake him up ??

Also, as for the portals that are in the end of each dungeon level...
It says in the book "Heroes remain thusly in transit ((it means the heroes that are INSIDE the portal)) until all of them either enter the portal, or move to town, at which point all of the heroes are moved to the next level."

Does that mean that if 1 hero enters the portal, and the others get in a glyph to go to town, they ALL get to the other level ??

New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

refinery — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 02:17:52 +0000

by refinery

Colors came out closer to the real thing in this shot as opposed to th...

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New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

refinery — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 02:14:20 +0000

by refinery

I painted these 3 times over until I finally gave up and stuck with th...

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Thread: Descent: Journeys in the Dark:: Rules:: What are the "reduced penalties" that master monsters experience when stunned?

crunk_posby — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 22:48:38 +0000

by crunk_posby

It's mentioned in the rule book, but the reduced penalties aren't stated anywhere!

Also, how much gold does the player get for killing a red monster?

Thread: Descent: Journeys in the Dark:: General:: Do Newbies get chased by swarms of monsters?

andywatkins1963 — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 21:19:25 +0000

by andywatkins1963

I am playing my first real game of Descent this Wednesday but to get ready for the game (I will be OL) I am playing myself a solo game just to get the hang of the rules.

What I am noticing is that after the first few turns when the heroes open the doors to area 2, there are not many hidden spawn areas in the 2nd area of the 1st adventure so I am swarming 1 card, 3 monsters every turn in area one and then have them chase the heroes around area two.

This appears to cause an endless wave of monsters chasing behind the heroes all the time. I am assuming that the heroes should try and ignore them and keep charging ahead.

Am I doing something wrong in the game, using the wrong tactics or is this the way the game is supposed to play?

Ta

Andy

New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

forlorn — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 17:53:40 +0000

by forlorn

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New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

forlorn — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 17:52:25 +0000

by forlorn

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New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

forlorn — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 17:48:38 +0000

by forlorn

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New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

forlorn — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 17:47:06 +0000

by forlorn

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New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

forlorn — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 17:46:52 +0000

by forlorn

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New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

forlorn — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 17:46:41 +0000

by forlorn

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New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

forlorn — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 17:41:12 +0000

by forlorn

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New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

forlorn — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 17:40:38 +0000

by forlorn

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New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

forlorn — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 17:39:24 +0000

by forlorn

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New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

forlorn — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 17:36:05 +0000

by forlorn

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New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

andywatkins1963 — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 13:48:35 +0000

by andywatkins1963

Giant Spiders, you just can't go wrong with Giant Spiders can you!

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New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

andywatkins1963 — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 13:48:20 +0000

by andywatkins1963

Like the razorwings, pinched the black and white idea off someone else...

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New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

andywatkins1963 — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 13:40:08 +0000

by andywatkins1963

I thought the unpainted sorcerer models were rubbish, but painted up t...

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New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

andywatkins1963 — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 13:38:18 +0000

by andywatkins1963

Big Ogre's or whatever they are called, nice models very mean looking

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New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

andywatkins1963 — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 13:37:59 +0000

by andywatkins1963

Got bored with manticores so did a pretty base and did little more tha...

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New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

andywatkins1963 — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 13:35:01 +0000

by andywatkins1963

My Skeletons, not the best paint job but perfectly usable

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New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

andywatkins1963 — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 13:34:44 +0000

by andywatkins1963

Giant, my red one came out better than my blue one :)

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New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

andywatkins1963 — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 13:32:39 +0000

by andywatkins1963

Hellhounds, very difficult to do well i think.....

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New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

andywatkins1963 — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 13:31:04 +0000

by andywatkins1963

Sorry got skeletons and beastmen mixed up. I do like the beastmen, not...

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New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

andywatkins1963 — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 13:30:48 +0000

by andywatkins1963

My Ferrox, i LIKE these, they look like little Hulks

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New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

andywatkins1963 — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 13:29:16 +0000

by andywatkins1963

My Kobolds painted up fairly basic rotting flesh type colour

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Thread: Descent: The Road to Legend:: Rules:: Question on Harbinger Approaches

whipko — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 10:10:28 +0000

by whipko

IF hero enter the OL keep before the nine Comet tokens. And the OL keep is within three trails from the Nine comet.

Will the heroes wound and fatigue reduce by 1 also?

Thread: Descent: Journeys in the Dark:: General:: Some Newby Questions

andywatkins1963 — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 11:22:03 +0000

by andywatkins1963

We will be playing our first game of Descent on Wednesday, with me playing the overlord.

We will have 5 players I was planning to use the suggestion made earlier that the overlord take THREE cards per turn. Other than that stick to basic rules.

I have the WOD 1st expansion and will be using the "changes" in there like bow having pierce 1 etc. I will not be using Treachery at all. The other bits I was not so sure about...

I am planning to use the Ferrox and Kobold cards from WOD

I also thought it would be a good idea to put in the treasure chest cards from WOD as there are some good melee and ranged cards in there.

Any ideas....

Quick question on monsters. If as the OL I activate 3 skeletons, do I move all 3 and then fight with all 3? Or do I activate move and fight one entirely, and then the next one etc? I am assuming the latter, and I can activate each of my monsters in any sequence I like...

Andy

Thread: Descent: The Road to Legend:: News:: Treacherous Footing - the Second Card in the free downloadable Plot Deck

Aging One — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 20:22:30 +0000

by Aging One

From the Fantasy Flight Games website:

As the Summer heats up, Terrinoth, the world of Descent: Journeys in the Dark, grows colder. Ice is spreading across rivers and ponds, and snow falls in small flurries from the sky. In your home town of Tamalir, small groups of heroes are assembling to discover the source of this chiil wind.

As a special bonus to all fans of Descent, we are providing some free downloadable content to add to your Descent: Road to Legend game. Simply print out this card and you have a new plot to add to your Overlord's bag of tricks. Since plot cards do not need to be shuffled, you do not have to worry about sleeving this card or mounting it onto another card. This card is merely available when the heroes and Overlord begin a new Descent: Road to Legend campaign.

This second plot card, "Perilous Paths" will provide new fears as the heroes move about the land. Each path has the chance to prove deadly, as it makes tougher challenges a very real possibility.

http://new.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=648

Plot card: http://new.fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_content/descent/web_pl...

Icy Path tokens: http://new.fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_content/descent/web_pl...

File: Descent: The Road to Legend:: Monster stats for Rtl including AoD,WoD,ToI

tosc — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 19:37:57 +0000

by tosc

Monster stats for Rtl including AoD,WoD,ToI for Board Game: Descent: The Road to Legend ]]>

File: Descent: The Road to Legend:: Monster stats for Rtl including AoD,WoD,ToI

tosc — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 19:30:05 +0000

by tosc

Monster stats for Rtl including AoD,WoD,ToI for Board Game: Descent: The Road to Legend ]]>

Thread: Descent: Journeys in the Dark:: General:: Descent Player Mats

StormbringerGT — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 08:04:12 +0000

by StormbringerGT

I printed off a few copies of this player mat here: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/filepage/42759
at Kinkos.

They called me and said they sized them wrong and they did a reprint. So now I have 8 copies of this mat I was wondering if anyone would like to buy them from me? They are printed on High Quality Paper and are Laminated and Trimmed they look fantastic! Reply here or email Stormbringer at Hotmail.com

New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

bryanwooden — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 22:16:00 +0000

by bryanwooden

More close ups of tiles

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New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

bryanwooden — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 22:05:28 +0000

by bryanwooden

Close up of a 3-d board in action

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Thread: Descent: The Road to Legend:: Rules:: Rules question on Trait upgrades

katang — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 12:03:51 +0000

by katang

I don't understand this section of the Descent:RtL rulebook on Page 23:

"Second, trait upgrades are limited based on the current
campaign level. In a Copper campaign, a hero can upgrade a
maximum of three of his black dice to silver dice, and may not
upgrade silver dice at all. In a Silver campaign, a hero can
upgrade as many of his black dice to silver dice as he wants,
but only a maximum of three of his silver dice to gold dice. In
a Gold campaign, a hero can upgrade as many of his black and
silver dice as he wants, but only a maximum of one silver die
to a gold die."

I may just be dense, but it seems that a hero can upgrade three silver dice to gold dice in a Silver campaign, but only one silver die to gold in a Gold campaign. This seems odd to me. It seems like you should be able to upgrade more dice in a gold campaign. If anybody has any insight, it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Drew

Thread: Descent: Journeys in the Dark:: Variants:: Descent + Warhammer Quest = Descent Quest

TheGelatinousCube — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 01:14:54 +0000

by TheGelatinousCube

I've been quietly working on a mod for Descent that makes it play much like Warhammer Quest. I call it Descent Quest, of course. The primary changes this brings are the removal of the Overlord, which allows for true co-op play or even solo play. The goal is to have a game that is balanced for any reasonable number of heroes, and is easily expandable.

I'm looking for people willing to give it a shot while it is in "beta" form. The file below is the first one I've made publicly available. It contains the rules and all the cards necessary to play (currently just over 100 cards!). The final version will have more dungeon cards and more objective area cards.

http://www.thegelatinouscube.com/descent/Descent%20Quest%20R...

Please post here or email me (my email is in the pdf). I am interested in any comments you have, but particularly I want to know about balance.

Do you think the game is too hard or too easy? How many heroes did you play with? What do you think made it too hard or easy? Any info you can provide will make the final release better. Thanks and have fun!

New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

refinery — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 23:33:09 +0000

by refinery

Descent Overlord Player Mat. Coming soon!

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Thread: Descent: Journeys in the Dark:: Rules:: One Fist and his free attack

nyjil — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 23:13:28 +0000

by nyjil

Iron fist gets a red and green attack during a normal action, as I believe it states on his card. The question came up in a game when he had a Guard Order placed on him. He later activated during the Overlord's turn. It was argued whether or not he received this type of free attack in addition to his regular attack, because this was not considered not a "normal action", but rather a half action. This makes sense to a point because during a normal turn a player can choose 2 half actions to make a normal turn. On the turn when a player gets to use his Guard Action, he is technically only using a half action, and thus not a normal action. Anyway that was the ideology surrounding the arguement. The other side of the arguement was that he was attacking and gets to use his free attack. Does anyone know which way would be correct? I would appreciate any opinions or "official" responses. Thank you.

Thread: Descent: The Road to Legend:: General:: A briefer campaign.....

jcb231 — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 23:10:44 +0000

by jcb231

Fantasy Flight's way of shortening the campaign is to start at Silver or Gold level. My group was pondering an alternative way of shortening the campaign and wanted to see if any othr groups had tried it, and if so what success/failure it may have met with.

Basically, the idea is that instead of doing three dungeon levels for each dungeon, we'd do one. Ditto for Rumors, Legendary Areas, and the Keep. For those it would be just the level pictured. We felt like this would speed things up and put the focus on the world map. Seems like sometimes the big picture is lost while you trudge through three or four levels of a dungeon. Still a fun game, but it would be nice to have a rapid-fire alternative mode.

Also, we'd reduce the points needed to reach silver, gold, and keep levels, but we're not sure by how much.

Anybody try this?

Thread: Descent: The Road to Legend:: General:: A Question about Giants....

jcb231 — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 21:58:24 +0000

by jcb231

I was just idly flipping through the game components the other day while putting it all away, and when I got to the monster cards I got to thinking about what monsters my group rarely encounters in RtoL. Eventually I actually took the time to go through the Rumors, Encounters, Spawn Cards, Minions, and Reinforcements to see what monsters appear in the game and which don't.

The result? I could find only basic type of monster that doesn't seem to appear, so I'm posting here to see if I've missed something. That monster is the un-named version of any basic or master copper/silver Giant. I can't find a single instance where a copper or silver un-named giant (master or basic) can appear in Road to Legend. Can you?

The only time "regular" giants appear in RtoL is in the Keep of the Titan, and the heroes can only run that at gold level, thus only encountering regular giants in gold or diamond form. Every other giant from a rumor or legendary area or whatever is named.

If I've missed something let me know. Also let me know if I've overlooked another "regular" monster type that cannot appear in the campaign...I was pretty thorough.

Thread: Descent: Journeys in the Dark:: Rules:: threat tokens & overlord cards

neo.colpaert — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 20:31:43 +0000

by neo.colpaert

Are the first 2 cards drawn in the first Overlord turn also the first cards he gets? In other words does the Overlord not get a "beginners"-hand during set up?

Thread: Descent: Journeys in the Dark:: Rules:: Confusing Undying

UniversalHead — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 05:43:32 +0000

by UniversalHead

Can I clarify something that seems to be incorrect in both my vanilla Descent and Road to Legend player aids - the rules for 'Undying'.

Is this correct?

Roll 1 power die when the figure is killed; on a surge it is restored to full health; lingering effects remain and leftover damage is still applied.

For one thing, I thought lingering effects were removed (it says so in the basic rulebook) but it seems that has been changed in the FAQ.

if this definition is correct I'll update both of my sheets.

Cheers
Universal Head

New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

bryanwooden — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 05:29:37 +0000

by bryanwooden

A huge custom Descent Scenarios at Origins '09, two parties of five st...

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Thread: Descent: Journeys in the Dark:: General:: Quest 4 Rubble?

Cactusgod — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 02:14:03 +0000

by Cactusgod

So we finally made it to quest 4. In the middle of the first room are two double rubble spaces. The rest of the map also calls for double rubble spaces, which I'm out of. Are there more rubble spaces or am I missing something? I keep beautiful track of my pieces so the rubble was either not shipped in the box or you need to move the rubble around and whatnot.

Thanks for the replies!

Thread: Descent: The Road to Legend:: General:: Some ballance concerns

mbronkowski — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 18:58:51 +0000

by mbronkowski

I have played my first time RtL this week, for some time it was preaty fun and ballanced. The herose were a little behind the overloard and decided to visit a legendary area. We were on a copper level of the campaign, heroes had a team of two figthers one mage and one rouge. They already had every item they wanted from the copper deck and a couple of extra black power dices. (I think 2 herose had 1 extra and 2 heros had 2 extra dices). Overloard had already bought 3 avatars (they are realy cheap) and upgraded eldrih monsters to silver. Now here is the problem the first level of dungon contained 3 leaders, hell hound, dragon and a demon (I think it was number 34 but I ma be wrong). They managed to kill the hell hound and a dragon with not to much trouble, but the demon is an eldrih monster so we used silver stats for it. The problem is the heros were practicly unable to harm the deamon, it has fear 3 and 6 armor so on avarge thro they did about 0-3 damage and the demon had 39 health, on top of that he has a very powerful attack that eventualy killed even the heavy armored characters.
Since they where unable to kill the demon it rised the question should the named monsters stats be based on the campaign level (more like lieutenants) or on the purchased upgrades? It seams unfair that the herose can find a dungeon compleatly unbeatable because OL purchased a monster upgrade.
also there is a rule in the FAQ that when overlord is forced to reshuffle his deck for the secound time, heroes are ejected from the dungeon and they can never revisit, does this count for legendary areas because as I seen the firs one is preaty huge and I think it can be realy difficult to end it before secound reshuffle.

New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

macri2402 — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 12:19:11 +0000

by macri2402

Naga(Leader) varnishing

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New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

macri2402 — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 10:05:45 +0000

by macri2402

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Thread: Descent: The Road to Legend:: Rules:: RtL and corrupted terrain

Splurk — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 02:26:29 +0000

by Splurk

Are the red sections on the maps for RtL dungeons corrupted? cause i noticed some of them red areas are 4x2 corridors and i don't have any 4x2 red corridors. Also if those are Corrupted then nearly every dungeon has corrupted area, and that's a heck of a lot of corrupted for the heroes to deal with, so I'm guessing its not, but i wanna be sure.

New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

Cleitus the Black — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 21:09:40 +0000

by Cleitus the Black

One Fist

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New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

Cleitus the Black — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 21:04:56 +0000

by Cleitus the Black

Eliam

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New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

Cleitus the Black — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 21:04:33 +0000

by Cleitus the Black

Aurim

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New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

Cleitus the Black — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 17:53:03 +0000

by Cleitus the Black

A bunch of heroes

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New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

Cleitus the Black — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 17:52:46 +0000

by Cleitus the Black

Trenloe the Strong

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New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

Cleitus the Black — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 17:50:59 +0000

by Cleitus the Black

Nanok of the Blade

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Thread: Descent: The Road to Legend:: News:: Cooling Off The first card in a new plot deck for Descent: Road to Legend!

Aging One — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 20:47:30 +0000

by Aging One

Teaser: http://new.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=634

Thread: Descent: The Road to Legend:: General:: Descent online dice roller

whipko — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 02:06:18 +0000

by whipko

Hi guys,

I looking for the link whereby there is a descent online dice roller with updated stealth dice and calculated damage and surge.

thanks

New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

refinery — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 19:38:06 +0000

by refinery

Updated Town Marker Replacement

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Thread: Descent: The Road to Legend:: General:: Rumors: Which are worth to pursue and which can be made nigh impossible by the OL?

MordredofFairy — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 16:09:48 +0000

by MordredofFairy

Hi all,
the reason i am asking this, here, is because last night, rumor 3, prince of thieves, came up.
Knowing i would need threat to keep him alive, i played evil genius and the "hurry" treachery card(the one where you discard 2 cards for threat at beginning of every turn) as my might cards...additionally, i was the sorcerer king for another bonus threat/round. I had also saved up some threat from before.

Now, with 5 cards per round to discard and 5 threat gained naturally, my average "income" was more than 15 threat per round. So i could spawn the leader, attack, and inmediately remove him again.
Now, the heroes tried using guard orders, but unless all 4 are proficient with ranged weapons and have one available, there's always safe spots to spawn and disappear. eventually, they gave up on it since i could have cycled my deck twice for conquest and ejecting them(and occasionally had enough to pay a card extra(crushing block came to mind)...

so with some preparation, it was basically impossible for them to do this rumor.

A little while ago, we had Rumor 1: The Twins, where i saved up a "lights out"-card allowing spawning beyond 5 fields, a dead legion card(but really, substitute anything fast or with range...razorwings if beasts are upgraded etc...), 2 double-movement cards, 2 aim-cards and a "double move, double attack"-treachery-card. I claim that with a "allow spawning beyond 5 fields", a spawn card, and the 2 movement cards, it should be impossible for most groups to prevent one of the boys being killed before they get out...and the master sorcerers can be used incredibly offensive here, since the heroes CAN'T kill them before they are ready(everything else killed and in position to prevent spawning....which also includes being on opposite areas on the map dealing damage to each other when moving).
I really can't see the heroes win that one if the OL prepares even in the slightest...(or has INCREDIBLY bad luck with the dice)...

I don't remember if Rumor 8: A mothers Lament requires the cub to exit through the portal, if so, i could imagine it to have similar problems...

on the other hand, i was UNDERwhelmed by "The Dark Shard"...easy to blast the starting area loadout, a trapped leader, and possible to basically shut down or severely limit spawning...

what is your experience with rumors? which one's are worth pursuing?
That is, to the Overlords the reverse Question: What's your strategy for the Rumors, if you have one?

Most of my partys decide that if they go through a whole dungeon(after blitzing early) they want to get a reward for that, and do rumors...of course, that allows the OL to prepare for that final level...so how do you do that? Any other "unbeatable" strategies(for both Overlord and Hero side)?

Session: Descent: The Road to Legend:: Campaign 2: Sorcerer King bringing on the Endless Night - Part 7

edroz — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 14:44:48 +0000

by edroz

Previous reports:
Session 1 / Session 2 / Session 3 / Session 4 / Session 5 / Session 6

Overlord
Avatar: Sorcerer King
Conquest: 129 total / 54 unspent
Upgrades: Snipers. Silver Eldritch, Sir Alric Farrow, Lord Merick Farrow, Lady Eliza Farrow, 2 Event Treachery, 1 Trap Treachery

Party
Conquest: 55
Money: 1500
Upgrades: Bazaar, Enchanted Boat, Kerak’s Map
Nanok of the Blade: 19 XP. 2 additional black power dice, Taunt, Mace of Aver, Axe, Ring of Protection
Varikas the Dead: 29 XP. 1 silver melee power die upgrade, Leadership, Plate Mail, Skull Shield, Iron Shield, Sword
Landrec the Wise: 49 XP. Quick Casting, Ghost Armor, Elven Robe, Mana Weave, Immolation Rune, Sunburst Rune
Grey Ker: 29 XP. 1 silver range power die upgrade, Eagle Eye, Archer’s Charm, Ripper, Crossbow, Chain Mail, Crystal Shield

Our group had a running email discussion between sessions. Basically, the heroes were demoralized after the last session. Three lieutenants were poised on the doorstep of Tamalir, the party had been stripped of several copper weapons last session, they were low on cash and did not have enough time to hit both the special training and the copper legendary dungeon. Personally, I didn’t want to "win" the game razing Tamalir. Been there, done that. I wanted to see if the OL can win via the plot and/or the final battle. Yes, I have read a lot that the final battle is very hard to win for the OL. But, Descent is as much an experience game as a competitive game and I wanted to explore more of the game.

In the end we agreed to make sure the game continued. The OL would not raze Tamalir (yet) and would give the heroes a saving throw when using Crushing Blow (a blank on a power die). The heroes’ plan was to spend the last of their money on the Staff of the Wild and race to the Caverns of Thuul to raise some cash. In doing so they would miss out on the copper level special training, but that was pretty much out anyway. They would then train and hit the silver legendary dungeon. Once they were done with that, we would reevaluate the campaign.

With that decided, we began playing. We pick up the action with the party recovering in Tamalir from the total party kill during the encounter at the end of last session.

Overlord CP shown in [], Hero CP shown in ()

Week 19:
With the two city razes during week 18 I am now getting 3 conquest a week. [+3 CP] This is another reason for the heroes needing to buy the Staff of the Wild. The extra conquest would really add up if they are plodding along one trail at a time. With the hope of being able to refill my XP total during the copper legendary dungeon, I power up my arsenal by buying a second point of Trap treachery. [-10 XP] Sir Alric and Lord Merrick meet in Tamalir and scout out the city, gathering information for later use. Lady Eliza moves to the Bitter Downs with new instructions from the Sorcerer King.

Feeling a chill in the air from the presence of the two evil lieutenants in town, the heroes move north to Greyhaven. It was a peaceful trip. Even through the party has just enough money to buy the Staff of the Wild, they decide to check out the market as well, just in case. And what shows up? The Staff of the Grave! Argh! I just destroyed that last dungeon!

Tempted by the need for a decent copper weapon and the need of the Staff of the Wild, the heroes sell off every backup weapon they have and Varikas’ sword to have just enough money to buy both staffs. This leaves Varikas with no weapon! They figure they can buy the sword back with the first pile of gold from the dungeon. Basically, they pawned Varikas’ sword for the Staff.

CP: Heroes: 55 / OL: 132 / 47

Week 20:
Another easy week for me as I get my conquest handout [+3 CP] and continue beefing up by purchasing my third point of Trap treachery [-10 XP]. The Farrow brothers move out to the Red Echo River and Lady Eliza moves to the Smokeblue Hills. Powered by their new Staff of the Wild, the heroes move directly to the Caverns of Thuul (+1 CP). They elect to roll on the low probably green encounter and therefore have a safe and quiet trip.

The Caverns of Thuul Level 1: 40 : Shreds of Night
Given that the heroes were planning to do the three levels plus the legendary level of this dungeon, I was prepared to concede this first level and prep for the lower levels. However, when the level came up with a dragon as the level leader I had to try to delay the heroes as long as possible. I went with the Master Beastman for the command boost and the kobolds to provide targets.

Early on the heroes moved up and took out a couple of the early kobold cannon fodder. However, they seemed to forget about the dragon’s breath attack. After spawning some skeletons and taking some pot shots at the heroes I attacked with the dragon. I was able to play Charge and have extra movement to attack and retreat. The dragon raced up, breathed on three of the heroes and then raced backed.

More cautious, the heroes advanced, taking out more kobolds and picked up the first gold pile. As Landrec moved up to take a shot on the dragon he fell into a pit for the OL’s first kill of the dungeon [+3 CP]. Nanok eventually makes a run for the dragon. Quaffing a power potion the mighty Nanok takes swing at the menacing beast and misses! Strike one. Grey Ker takes his shot at the dragon with super range and pierce. When we count up the attack damage we see the Grey Ker has no surges to conquer the dragon induced fear. Strike two. At the start of the Overlord’s turn, Nanok takes his guard order attack (from Varikas’ leadership) and misses again. Strike three! Hero frustration sets in.

The dragon, skeletons and master kobold gang up on Nanok but cannot bring him down. However, the attacks leave Nanok barely alive. As Nanok makes the run to the glyph (hoping to open a back door for Landrec to return) a crushing block finds Nanok’s head sending him to visit Landrec at the healing temple. [+4 CP]. This leaves Grey Ker to make the run to the glyph which he survives (for now). (+3 CP)

The two remaining skeletons and dragon leave Grey Ker burning with one hit point. So, at the start of Ker’s next turn he fails his saving throw and turns into Crispy Ker. [+3 CP]. On the OL turn I draw one of the power cards I was waiting for, Evil Genius. I was saving threat just in case this showed up so I was able to play it right away.

The heroes were finally able to clear out the supporting cast of skeletons and master kobold and ganged up on the dragon. They were able to take down the dragon with Grey Ker’s massive pierce attack getting through the dragon’s armor, (+2 CP) but not before Landrec wasted another power potion on a missed attack.

With the level cleared, Nanok makes for the chest which explodes in his face. This is not enough to take him out, but he’s hurting. The chest gives up two potions and some gold, but no treasure. Level conquest totals: OL: 10, Heroes 7

CP: Heroes: 62 / OL: 145 / 50

The Caverns of Thuul Level 2: 16 : What Lies Beneath
Hurting from the chest fragments still embedded in his tough skin, Nanok starts off by heading to the temple to heal. Meanwhile, Grey Ker leads the remaining heroes into the level and triggers my first new treacherous surprise, the scything blade trap across the entry hallway. Grey Ker and the others end up taking some damage and bleed tokens which will take their toll in a bit.

After the heroes took out a Bane Spider on the first turn I spawned some beastmen to go with the starting monsters. With no taunting Nanok around they ganged up on Grey Ker leaving him with two hit points. Landrec was able to blast the beastmen and a spider. However, the bleeding Ker loses just enough blood to drop dead [+3 CP] giving him the honor of the first hero to both burn and bleed to death. With Nanok just returning from town, Varikas took up the tanking chore but since he still had no weapon, he was only able to do basic melee attacks.

I then Dark Charmed Landrec but his blast on Varikas did no damage however it did blast back on Landrec himself. I spawned some Dark Priests who quickly took on Nanok. With a full charged Critical Strike attack on Nanok, the master priest was able to send Nanok back for a full recharge at the temple. [+4 CP] The remaining monsters were able to gang up Landrec and Varikas sending Landrec to the healers [+3 CP] and leaving Varikas with one hit point.

The three recently deceased heroes return to help Varikas clear a path through the monsters. Nanok makes the run for the glyph (+3 CP). Eventually the dark priests gets through Varikas’ armor and double shield defense and finally bring down the undead warrior [+5 CP]. Varikas returns through the newly opened glyph to dig up one of the encounter tokens to find the Staff of Punishment.

I was not out of tricks yet. Since Landrec had finally equipped the Staff of the Grave, I played my second Dark Charm (more trap treachery). This charmed attack did much more damage and greatly hurt Grey Ker. The remaining dark priest was able to finish Ker off [+3 CP]. Some newly spawned sorcerers and the manticore level leader were able to gang up on the twice cursed Landrec, sending him back to town. [+4 CP]

Grey Ker quickly returned and was able to kill the level leader (+2 CP) but not before getting hit with a crushing block trap. The remaining sorcerer was able to finish the job and sent Grey Ker packing again [+3 CP]. Just before the heroes left the level I was able to cycle my deck. [+3 CP] Also during this level I was able to get the Trapmaster power card in play. Level conquest totals: OL: 28, Heroes 5

CP: Heroes: 67 / OL: 173 / 78
Total Conquest: 240

Comments:
I think today was a bit of a draw. The heroes did accomplish what they set out for, getting more cash. After these two levels they have about 2400 gold. With one more level plus the final legendary level they may leave the dungeon well funded. They also have restocked with a few copper level weapons, increasing their firepower again.

However, for the Overlord, I got a total of 38 conquest to 12 for the heroes. I am also well stocked for the next level with 37 threat, a mostly full hand of cards, a fresh deck and two good power cards in play.

Overall we are sitting at 240 total conquest so the campaign will go to Silver level after this dungeon. In fact, we could be well into the silver level after this dungeon. With the conquest I have now plus 3 conquest a week, I will be able to do a complete round of monster upgrades after this dungeon.

A carefully reader will note that I cycled my deck and did not play Crushing Blow. With a bit of a soft spot I left it out of my deck this dungeon. It’s not gone for good, it’s just resting. I was happy that my other treachery did well. The Critical Strike did its job by allowing me to basically one-shot the tank Nanok. The scything blade was perfectly placed in an entry hallway forcing the heroes to pass through it multiple times. And with Trapmaster now in play the extra traps in the deck will be causing even more havoc during the next two levels.

I’m itching to get back to the table and complete this dungeon but it’s going to be several weeks before we can get the gang back together. So until then, happy descending.

Thread: Descent: Journeys in the Dark:: Rules:: Some questions

darkb1u3 — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 10:49:54 +0000

by darkb1u3

Ok, our group have been playing close to 10 Descent games/sessions now, with me being the OL on all of these occasions. Out of these 10 games, I believe I have won 2 of them, which makes me wonder if I just suck at playing as an OL or if we are doing something wrong. To make it clear, we have been playing all the quests in order. At times it even feels like it's not worth playing because it just feels so... unbalanced and not very challenging for either part.

1. Fatigue, is it meant to be as overpowered as we believe it to be? As in, do a Run "action", which can mean sprint around the whole room, picking up items, trading things, or healing people sometimes for up to 18 HP (believe this was the most we managed to use that one item for, can't remember the name of it), or sometimes even use Telekenesis to move a monster 10+ squares/spaces away?

2. I am at work atm so can't check up on the name of certain things, but there is this one ability that lets a player shoot through an obstacle, does this include doors?

3. Another skill lets a player shoot from one square away from him, does this include doors aswell, that is to say, stand on one side of a closed door and shoot as if from the other side of it?

4. Should I see monsters as more of a timestop (so they loose Conquest when I have drawn all my cards) then an actual threat to the heroes? Because it feels more like, I spawn some mobs and they die instantly or the players just charge into a newly revealed area and kill everything without me getting a chance to activate them once?

5. As a quest goes on it seems very easy for the heroes to pick up weapons that just makes them unstoppable, weapons that end up giving them like... Pierce 10+ (with lots of surges that is... which isn't hard to get), aswell as armors that make it almost impossible for me to get through with my normal mobs... which means I can just forget about killing certain players, so the question would be, is there no soft/hard cap for how much something can stack?

6. Expansions, do they fix some of these issues, as in... actually make it challanging for the heroes?

Thread: Descent: The Road to Legend:: Rules:: Dark Shard Rumor

DavidT — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 22:09:23 +0000

by DavidT

We're gearing up for our next game this week, and the heroes will be entering the third (and last) level of their first rumor dungeon--The Dark Shard. I have a couple of questions I'd like to clear up in preparation:

1. Is the Demon Leader on this level really trapped in place until the shard is destroyed?

2. How do you explain the extra rules for the dungeon to the players without giving them information from the section you're not supposed to read to them?

Would you just tell them the leader has four extra armor, then amend that once the shard is destroyed?

Would you tell them the shard blocks movement when they first enter the room and see it, or would you just wait until they try to move through it? I could see a big difference in their initial strategy if they know going in that the demon is stuck.

3. For those who've played this dungeon, how long has it generally taken the hero players to discover that they must start attacking the shard? Nothing in the quest text read to the heroes indicates that this is the proper course of action, so I'm hoping it actually takes them a couple of turns. I could see a group actually thinking that they will get the gem once the demon is destroyed and making life much more painful for themselves.

Thanks for any answers!

New Image for Descent: The Tomb of Ice

Biernath_John — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 18:37:00 +0000

by Biernath_John

Heroines arguing about who should go first (quest 6)

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New Image for Descent: The Tomb of Ice

Biernath_John — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 18:24:31 +0000

by Biernath_John

Final room of quest 6 - heroines die, arched to death

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New Image for Descent: The Tomb of Ice

Biernath_John — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 18:22:34 +0000

by Biernath_John

Swarmed by kobolds, far from being afraid (quest 6)

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New Image for Descent: The Tomb of Ice

Biernath_John — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 18:19:40 +0000

by Biernath_John

Lord Hawthorne unleashes the wolf (quest 6)

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New Image for Descent: The Well of Darkness

mgoddard — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 20:12:51 +0000

by mgoddard

Hi-Res Unpunched Bits Sheet 4 / 4

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New Image for Descent: The Well of Darkness

mgoddard — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 20:11:40 +0000

by mgoddard

Hi-Res Unpunched Bits Sheet 2 / 4

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New Image for Descent: The Well of Darkness

mgoddard — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 20:11:40 +0000

by mgoddard

Hi-Res Unpunched Bits Sheet 3 / 4

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New Image for Descent: The Well of Darkness

mgoddard — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 20:10:24 +0000

by mgoddard

Unpunched Bits Sheet 1 / 4

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Thread: Descent: Journeys in the Dark:: Rules:: Jumping into mud

mbronkowski — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 09:25:16 +0000

by mbronkowski

Hi
I have a question regarding jumping and mud obstacles. Lets say that hero stands near a pit and on the other side of a pit is a mud token. Can hero jump the pit, if so how many movement points will this cost?
a) 3 MP because hero spends 3 MP for each squere he jumps and "is placed directly on the other side of the obstacle (pit)
OR
b) 4 MP because entering mud cost 2MP so we can asume it cost +1 MP

I searched a forum for a while and haven't found an answer to this.
Similiar problem is when you have more then one mud obstacles... if it would cost 3 MP to jump into a mud hero could jump the first mud obstacle landing in the secound one and saving one MP.

Thread: Descent: Journeys in the Dark:: General:: Painted figure question

twinim — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 05:18:34 +0000

by twinim

So I read in another post http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/399990 that there may be people out there willing to trade their painted set of Descent figures for an unpainted set. I was just curious if people are actually willing to do this. If so, would the best course of action be to check out local game stores, which there are only a couple that I know of here in Phoenix, or would BGG be a better bet to look for someone willing to do this?

I love the idea of painting my own figures, but I have neither the time nor the space in my home with two small children and two cats (yes I read the petition, but in all fairness they are not allowed near my games). I am wondering if this is a viable solution to my dilemma.

Thread: Descent: The Road to Legend:: General:: RtL Campaing Sheet for Excel

Ladoik — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 18:58:48 +0000

by Ladoik

For thos of you that are useing my Excel Sheet for RtL.
I've updated the Sheet to include all ToI stuff.

If i don't miss anything you should be able to note all infos of your RtL session you need, including all expansions.

Link:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/file/info/31362

File: Descent: The Road to Legend:: 20 new dungeons, Version 1.0

fireschupps — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 17:51:14 +0000

by fireschupps

20 new dungeons, Version 1.0 for Board Game: Descent: The Road to Legend ]]>

File: Descent: The Road to Legend:: RtL Campaing Sheet for Excel

Ladoik — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 17:07:07 +0000

by Ladoik

RtL Campaing Sheet for Excel for Board Game: Descent: The Road to Legend ]]>

Thread: Descent: The Road to Legend:: Rules:: Spiritwalker range in RtL

cknorr — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 03:03:22 +0000

by cknorr

Is the range of spiritwalker reduced to 5 spaces instead of 10 in RtL? I've seen mentions of it on the forums but nowhere official.

Thread: Descent: Journeys in the Dark:: General:: Rank the monsters

MrSkeletor — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 12:36:49 +0000

by MrSkeletor

Based on tiers - where a monsters tier is based on the number of figures you get in the box - how would you the monsters from weakest to strongest in standard descent?

Here is my attempt

TIER 1
Kobold (I counted these as tier 1's)
Bane Spider
Skeleton
Beastman

TIER 2
Hell Hound
Razorwing
Lava Beetle
Shade
Sorcerer
Dark Priest
Ferrox
Blood Ape

TIER 3
Medusa
Ogre
Manticore
Wendigo
Deep Elf
Naga
Golem
Troll
Ice Wyrm

TIER 4
Giant
Dragon
Demon

New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

refinery — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 23:41:01 +0000

by refinery

My fifth attempt at painting miniatures.

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Thread: Descent: The Road to Legend:: Rules:: Breath Attack Type & reinforcements (of Lts)

Putenbrust — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 20:11:29 +0000

by Putenbrust

I'm sorry I'm mixing up a RtL-specifi-question with a general one, but two things have been nagging my mind ever since our first RtL session:

1. Are breath attacks (by Hell Hounds for example) by all means RANGED attacks? I was asking because one of my characters wears the armor that protects from ranged attacks. In my opinion, a breath attack is not a ranged attack, since neither range nor LoS play a role in it.

2. When a Lt. reinforcement sheet states "2 Beastmen" for example, does that mean that I can either

- spawn two beastmen for the cost of a Beastman Reinforcement in the Rulebook or

- spawn two beastmen for the cost of 2x the Beastman Reinforcement or

- spawn UP TO two beastmen for the Beastman reinforcement cost EACH.

I've been skipping through this forum but haven't found a definitie answer yet. Thanks in advance,
Michael

Session: Descent: The Road to Legend:: Sessions:: "The Descent RPG: A 345 page hardcover" or how an RPG gamer experiences RtL

Putenbrust — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 22:48:58 +0000

by Putenbrust

Chapter I: What is Role-Playing?

Hello everyone,
I have been a passionate yet passive member of this community for about a year now, but today I feel obliged to post my first message on BGG. Why? Frankly, because the German Version of “Road To Legend” has been published and we had our first session.

For whom is this session report?
For everyone who bothers reading! Ha, that was a cheap one. Seriously, as the title suggests, I wanted to try to capture the atmosphere of Road to Legend for everyone who is/was not only a board- but also an RPG gamer. Many reviews state that Road to Legend is NOT an RPG substitute, and I partly agree. But still, it seems to hit a nerve in us that satisfies the urge to role play. But see for yourself, and make your own mind up.

Note: I will be deploying italic texts inbetween the session report that kind of wrap up what I want to say. Who doesn’t have the time to fully read this thread might want to skip to the italics in order to get my point in all this.

First of all, let’s have a look in the past. There were 5 young adults sitting around a big table. It’s barely holding all the plastic pieces, the cardstock and the cards that pave its entire surface. The faces of 4 of the gamers turn long when their plastic heroes open the next door. “So many monsters with the Undying Ability again? Aww, damn, we’ve already been playing for hours.”, moans one of them.

Being used to playing RPGs, we are not utterly satisfied with running through neverending dungeons with the same monsters again and again. Sorry guys, but D&D does that all better PLUS your character can have complex emotional or social conflicts the moment you leave the dungeon. In my opinion, this phenomenon is the main reason why I know some RPGlers who dislike Descent.

The last sessions of Descent JitD haven’t been so satisfying. As the quests grew larger and larger, boredom took over. After Quest 5 we all agreed it made no sense to us anymore. (Quest 5 ended with me instant-killing the fierce dragon that we all should doth fear so much. Biggest letdown #2 for RPGlers).

Then, the tide turned. I bought RtL, and one week later explained its rules to my gaming group. We all settled for a date, and there we go.

Chapter II: Creating your Character

We used the standard 3-shuffle draft for player characters, and, being a lousy decision-maker, I as the overlord got assigned a 2-shuffle draft. With my favourite, the Spider Queen, among the two, my choice was easy. The heroes had it a bit harder, though. Although everyone was hoping to get one of the new heroes (which we hadn’t tested before), they didn’t have one in their pools and tanks were scarce.

We use Road to Legend together with the “Altar of Despair”-Expansion. Just for your information. Although many features of that expansion are not in the campaign (prolonged actions, invulnerability potions..), I think AoD is the better expansion to get just for the mere mass of additional monsters you have available (compared to three lousy monsters in WoD), as seeing only the same monsters again and again is, as I have stated before, one of the most feared mood-killers for RPG gamers.

They settled for:

Mordrok the Mighty, whose fatigue-restoring ability would soon drive me nuts,
(Ability: Knight)
Lyssa the Fragile, who was picked for reasons unknown to my simple mind. Her power dice and special ability just don’t strike me as too useful…
(Ability: Shadow Soul)
Astarra, the teenage rune-bi.. erm.. witch whose special ability, although nerfed in RtL, has already proven to be useful
(Ability: Vampiric Blood) and of course
Jaes the Jack-of-all-Spells. I call him like this, because his special ability is kind of bad paraphrased. I already mailed Fantay Flight games to make it a bit clearer. The old one

“Jaes can wear heavy armor and still wear runes”

isn’t as catchy as my take, I think. It goes like:

“Yes, you CAN eat the cake and have it!”

Let’s see if there will be replacement character cards for him in the next expansion.
I chose “In my parlour” as my starting upgrade by the way, and, man, it was soo on..

Chapter III: Dungeons & Dragons

The troop started with a dungeon right away. Nope, no encounter, get straight to fighting. While Sir Alric Farrow moved closer to Frostgate, the heroes went south and had bad luck with their first dungeon level: “Dragon’s Lair” was getting them on the wrong foot. Although they managed to kill the monsters without casualties an exploding chest and falling rocks took out Jaes and Lyssa. This is the first point where I was so gentle to remind the heroes of why FOR ALL THINGS PURE AND SACRED a hero with three hitpoints would want to open a chest when there’s still a trap card in my parlour. Mark my words, of course it will happen again…

The fun parts of Road to Legend all shone right at the first dungeon level. What, monsters that don’t drop after one hit? New. Chests that didn’t turn a hard fight into a cakewalk in a second? Absolutely new. A thrilling tension, almost RPGesque along the lines of “oh my god, should we really charge the dragon? He seems kinda strong..” .. Please marry me, RtL. I know we haven’t known each other for so long, but it just feels so right with you.

Level two didn’t get any better for the brave adventurers; not only did the two chests of level 1 not contain ANY copper treasure (they merely exploded or started biting and tearing and running away; in both cases only leaving behind gold and potions.. bad luck), meaning they were ill-equipped. Level two also sucked.
Literally.
The level was called “Sucking darkness” (I’m sorry for being too lazy to look up the English rulebook for correct translation) and that level’s boss was anything but fun. I managed to get the heroes stunned with my razorwings and they consequently didn’t get forward too fast, as the level would keep sucking them back to the pits.. where Mordrok the heavy armoured tank (Ring of Protection + chainmail.. ouch) lost a nice bunch of his hitpoints (I managed to have rocks fall at him and make him in turn fall into the pits). When the crazy mage of this dungeon started throwing the heroes into the pits like rabbits out of hats (oh my god I am so sorry for this very misleading allegory), things went wild.

I ran out of poison markers.
The elite dark elf smashed Mordroks weapon AND armor.
The mage level boss was revived two times.
The heroes died again and again, but they refused to let go of the dungeon. Mordrog, weaponless, armorless, and with 12 poison markers, kept returning after LONG temple visits.

RPG gamers, watch out with the “dungeon mentality”: It is hard to grasp for guys like us that not every dungeon is meant to be explored up to the last corner of the most meaningless resting room of the goblin patrols. Level 2 of the first dungeon was when things turned really ugly for the heroes, and I even told them that retreat might be the best choice now, but their eagerness and pride won over their rationales. If you introduce this game to RPGlers, you might want to make them sensible for this special case.

Oh, did I mention? Of course, Mordrok opened the rune door leading down when he was down to 4 hitpoints.. when he tried to open the door, he found a very small scribbling on it: “I prepared explosive runes this mor-“ Bang. You’re dead, Jimbo. What more can an OL do than to warn the heroes..

After a long fight that has taken its tolls, level three was everyones’ big hope. Yet, with threat markers beyond the borders of “it’s-worth-counting-them” (I think about 40) and two might cards (Trap master and Evil Genius), I already foresaw another massacre. And a massacre it would be. Dungeon level three was “Broken Pillars” and the ever-sniping skeleton hero of this level shot down Lyssa more than once. In fact, with the huge pile of threat, I shot out two beastmen troops in two rounds, adding up with their commando to +5 range, + 2 damage and pierce 2 for the level boss, whose ability allowed him to aim every round automatically. Well, let’s just have a moment of silence for all those who lost their lives more than twice on this level..

..

Ok, I feel better now. When I saw the heroes dying but still trying, my inner GM took control and I made a few.. let’s say sub-par decisions. So, my level-leader, who played some nice cats-and-mouse beforehands, got accidentally trapped in one very narrow corner by Mordrok the tank who tore his new old axe in the skeleton again and again. But the skeleton proved to be hard to kill, like the crazy mage who was slain a few meters closer to the surface. Even cornered, it managed a fantastically ridiculous long-distance kill on Lyssa, the poor soul that had already run to the farthest corner of the dungeon she could reach. (I would have liked to record this one. It went like “I use THIS adjacent square to target Lyssa, who will be 7 spaces away and can barely be seen with all the pillars almost blocking line of sight. Let’s see…. HOLY CRAP. I hit! With 6 damage…” Luckily for me, the players enjoyed this hilarious kill as much as me, meaning I wasn’t the only one who was laughing after that last humiliation of poor Lyssa who got literally shot in the head out of nowhere. The Gamers, anyone?).

I think RPG gamers might have one advantage over hardcore-competition-boardgamers: Albeit all love of winning the game, we know when it’s enough. Ever had a TPK happen in your role playing game? You don’t want to experience that again. That’s how I felt when wiping the heroes for Conquest tokens again and again. If I had just kept raping them (believe me, I would have had enough spawn cards to do so) it might have been that they turned sour like some people who now troll the forums stating the game was broken and no fun because they kept getting their jawbones broken in-game. If you have ever GMed, you might have a feeling for when the fun ends. That is a huge advantage, since I don’t want to have what even some reviewers have experienced: Animosity on the gaming table; hate instead of laughter or a bitter coldness after every kill *shudder*)

Chapter IV: Character Development

So, that’s how the story ends. The heroes made their way to the next city and started buying stuff while I prepared everything for a nice Frostgate-Raze and upgraded my Beasts to silver.
We called it a night and EVERYONE assured me that this was the most awesome Descent night we have ever had.

I must admit, I am a bit afraid of the future. The heroes have barely gotten any treasures (thanks to a certain dark elf and bad luck when rolling chests) and our CT count is 61/20 atm. My silver beasts might wipe them straight out of the next dungeon and I will probably raze Frostgate without many worries. I have hope, however, since BGG keeps telling me that it will shift in favour of the heros later, and that is what I told my gaming group.

To wrap it up, we all enjoyed ourselves. Of course, this is no RPG: A dwarf would never shout his warcry and charge the freaking dragon although he knows there is no chance of survival. This doesn’t happen in Descent. It still bogs down to “Hey, if I move my figure that one space farther, the OL can’t spawn here. Also, I will give you the guard, no wait, evasion order with my leadership ability” – it is a tactical board game, not an RPG. But I will be damned if it isn’t fun nevertheless. And I must admit, when I noticed with what devotion my players packed their items and skills into the “save tuckboxes”, stating that they already loved this completely new game, I saw it in their eyes. They are, as in RPGs, gathering again. They gather XP, equipment and whacky tales of how although webbed, the barbarian beheaded the dragon while being telekinesed around by the group’s mage. They are gathering, and soon they will start to hunt. The Spider Queen should be on guard.

Please, if you liked my report (or didn’t like it), leave a short comment. I will make continuing this thread dependant on if anyone’s interested, since I don’t want to waste precious internet data with my gibberings. If you have come as far as this, fellow geek, thank you very much for reading!

Thread: Descent: The Road to Legend:: Rules:: Dodge cards and Battle actions?

Andy_X — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 15:59:54 +0000

by Andy_X

What happens if the OL plays a Dodge-card when a monster comes under attack from a Battling hero? Does the Overlord get to force rerolls on both attacks, or just the first?

Also, you can play the Dodge AFTER the hero has rolled dice for the attack, yes?

Thread: Descent: Journeys in the Dark:: Rules:: Some Rules Questions For You Fine Folks

Cactusgod — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 06:49:18 +0000

by Cactusgod

So the last time we played this was September 24th 2008 and I pulled it out today and everyone was game. Forgot how fun this game is. So essentially, we came up with a few questions. I remember some of them, but not all, so I'll try and re-post in here from time to time in order to keep the boards less cluttery. Anyone who takes the time to answer my questions is very kind indeed ;p.

1)Lets say we have a hero and a monster above this wall of rubble (its in Area 3 of the Journeys in the Dark quest book) here ------ and a monster below it. The hero dies from the one monster above but has the Divine Retribution (which kills every monster within 3 spaces) Would the monster below the rubble, since its technically only 2 spaces away, still be killed despite being behind the rubble? I know breath can go through rubble but we just wanted to be sure.

2)Does breath hurt anything in it's range, including monsters?

3)I know in the rulebook they show an example of a heroine running "circles" around a monster. I'm not sure what page this is on. So I know that monsters and people can run diagonally across a space that contains rubble. Can they also move diagonally across a wall space? So lets say a hero is coming from a hallway thats going south to north, two blocks wide. He stops before he gets into the next room. Above him are the two spaces that would be considered inside the room. To his upper left, is another spot that is considered inside the room, but he would have to go diagonally "through the wall" to get to it. Otherwise he'd have to go up, and then left. Can the hero simply move diagonally into the room?

I can't remember anymore at the moment but I have no doubt that once I lie down to sleep they'll all flood back at me.

Thanks guys

Thread: Descent: The Road to Legend:: General:: first campaign which plot OL?

Splurk — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 01:43:58 +0000

by Splurk

Ill be OL for our first campaign next week, and not sure which OL and plot i want to take. We are all new to the game, will only have played one vanilla game to learn the rules before starting our RTL game. I have WoD, I have read alot of strategy on here and the FFG forums, i dont wanna go for a early win, but i also dont want to let the heroes have an easy game either. Any advice for this first campaign will be appreciated.

File: Descent: Journeys in the Dark:: Descent Player Summary Card

lmckenzi — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 01:03:13 +0000

by lmckenzi

Descent Player Summary Card for Board Game: Descent: Journeys in the Dark ]]>

File: Descent: The Road to Legend:: Monster stats for Rtl including AoD,WoD,ToI

tosc — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 00:59:48 +0000

by tosc

Monster stats for Rtl including AoD,WoD,ToI for Board Game: Descent: The Road to Legend ]]>

Thread: Descent: The Road to Legend:: General:: Worst cases of bad luck in a game of RtL?

Andy_X — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 20:54:36 +0000

by Andy_X

Last night I managed to roll 4 consecutive misses: 2 Master Beastmen, 1 Master Skeleton and 1 ordinary Beastmen all managed to roll an X on their respective dices, when attacking a Landrec with only 4 wounds left. I believe the odds of that happening are somewhere around 1:1300.

Any particularly memorable fails in your campaigns?

Thread: Descent: The Road to Legend:: General:: CT's: What am I doing wrong?

Andy_X — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 17:05:38 +0000

by Andy_X

Long story short: we've just finished our 2nd game of RtL, with me Overlord-ing it.

The score right now is heroes: 46, OL: 29.

In our last dungeon I killed 3 of the heroes twice (2 x 3-CT heroes and 1 x 2-CT hero), which netted me the princely amount of 16 CT's. Add another 3 for going through my deck once, and a final one for the "default" OL-CT, and I came out of the dungeon with 20 CT's.

The heroes, meanwhile, got 9 CT's from glyphs and 10 from leaders (one of the levels had 2 bosses) - which meant that I "won" that game week by a pathetic 1 CT. The heroes also got tons and tons of gold - think they've got around 4 grand in the bank at the moment.

Going by the word on these forums that the OL should have a comfortable CT-lead when going into silver, I'm setting myself up for a pretty nasty hammering later in the game - but I don't know what I'm doing wrong! I think I played the last dungeon really, really well (6 kills) - yet that was only enough to draw even!

I haven't upgraded anything yet (treachery or monsters), so I'm hoping that will help me a bit - but as it is, they're just going through my minions like they weren't even there. :{

Thread: Descent: The Road to Legend:: Variants:: Rough idea for a new endgame.

MrSkeletor — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 03:05:53 +0000

by MrSkeletor

Lots of people seem to think the final showdown is bit of a letdown, so here is a potential alternative. I had this idea for the final dungeon while sitting on the toilet so none of it has been playtested in the slightest, and all of the numbers and formulas I have used I have pulled straight out of my ass and will most likely need adjusting. If there seems to be interest in this I will develop it further.

The basic idea is that instead of the Overlord being the only part of the final showdown, the entire overlords keep becomes the showdown. You will need to find some markers to act as ‘resurrection tokens’. Here is how it works:
As normal, once the overlord and the heroes pass a combined total of 600 conquest tokens, the Final Battle begins. When the Final Battle is determined to have begun at the beginning of a game week the players immediately stop carrying out the normal game week steps and instead do the following, in order:
1. The party marker is moved to Tamalir, and each hero may
train once, in one of the buildings there.
2. The party marker is moved to the location of the Overlord’s
Keep.
3. The players reduce the heroes’ conquest token totals to zero, with any unspent XP being lost. the overlord does not reduce his conquest token total, it remains as is!
4. The heroes explore the Overlord’s Keep.

The Overlord’s Keep is explored like a normal save that it has five levels rather than
three. The first four levels are explored like normal dungeon levels, with each level’s portal leading to the next level. Players may still restock in Talimar as they do so in other dungeons. Heroes may not however flee from the final dungeon.
The fifth level of the dungeon is laid out as per the rules in the RTL rulebook, however there are no changes made when the avatar appears – he is treated as a normal dungeon leader or lieutenant. In other words when the avatar appears:
- Other monsters are NOT removed from the board.
- The overlord keeps his Overlord cards and deck.
- The rules for increasing the heroes and Avatar’s maximum wounds based on conquest totals are ignored.
- The Avatar can still “battle”, “run” and “advance” like a lieutenant.
- Heroes killed by the avatar are not gone forever (they may resurrect as normal, see below), but if the Avatar struck the killing blow he does still heal 2 wounds for every conquest token that hero was worth.

Due to the Avatar feeding off death, resurrection is more difficult in the OL’s keep. When a hero is killed the OL does not get any conquest points straight away, rather he gets them when the hero attempts to resurrect. A hero may resurrect at the beginning of any of his turns – if he doesn’t resurrect his turn is passed, if he does then the amount of Conquest the OL gains is based on the following formula:

TOTAL = CP * 2^R

Where:
TOTAL is the total conquest added to the OL score (remember this number is added to the amount the OL gained throughout the campaign – the OL did not reset his CP to 0 at the start of this dungeon.)
CP is the Conquest Point value of the hero in question.
R is the amount of Resurrection Tokens that hero has.

If the total conquest gained by the overlord would take his Conquest Total over 350 then the hero may NOT resurrect!
After a hero is resurrected (and the overlord gains his Conquest), he appears in the temple as normal and also adds one resurrection token to his sheet. Thus the more times the hero resurrects in the final dungeon, the more Conquest the OL gains!

Heroes may spend the Conquest Tokens they gather in the final dungeon at any time for one of the following effects:
- For 2 Conquest, the reinforcement token is immediately flipped to its ‘spent’ side (ie eyes down.)
- For 5 Conquest, 1 resurrection token may be removed from one hero’s sheet.

If the heroes kill the avatar, they immediately win (the remaining monsters flee the dungeon.)
If there are no more heroes on the board, and none of them can resurrect doing so will give the OL more than 350 conquest points, then the overlord is victorious!

Thoughts?

Thread: Descent: Journeys in the Dark:: General:: Game length, availability and Road to Legend

Weloi Avala — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 22:13:35 +0000

by Weloi Avala

Hello,

SO, after much deliberation I decided to buy Descent: Journeys in the Dark. I run a gaming club at my high school and, though we usually play D&D 4e, there are times when I simply haven't had time to prepare the necessary material, or we'd like a change of pace. Battlestar Galactica's been a good alternative--though it's galling to be thrown in the brig by pupils crying out, "he's a teacher, he's got enough power already, don't let him be admiral!"--but I though something closer to the sword-and-sorcery theme would be good. The fact that the floorpieces and the minatures could serve double duty for D&D were a final selling point.

A few questions have popped up, though:
1) Is the game out of print? It's sold out on all the online UK retailers--from amazon.co.uk to the various shops. It's even gone from the FFG website. Any word on when it'll be available again?

2) With the gaming club, we normally start at 3pm and finish at 5:30; it's when the cleaners kick us out of the school. The game time seems a bit longer than that. Is it possible to finish a scenario in 2 1/2 hours?

3) Does the Roads to Legend expansion make it easier to divide the playing time into smaller chunks?

and finally,

4) There's normally 5 kids and myself playing; can Descent be played with 6 people, or does that break the balance?

Cheers,
-M.

Thread: Descent: The Road to Legend:: Rules:: End of the week?

wattman74 — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 13:14:12 +0000

by wattman74

Hi all!
I don't understand.. In the faq:
Can the party land on or move through a dungeon location that has been explored using a week's move action?
They may end on or move through the location. They may not re-enter an already explored dungeon.
Does it mean that the heroes can go along a second trail during the same week?
if not, why in the rules
"End of the Week:
Once all encounterS and/or dungeonS are completed, a
new game week begins."
EncounterS: because 2 lieutenants can be in same place
DungeonS: Is it possible enter more than one dungeon during a week?
Thanks for responses

New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

forlorn — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 11:59:44 +0000

by forlorn

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New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

forlorn — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 11:59:38 +0000

by forlorn

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New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

forlorn — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 11:49:04 +0000

by forlorn

Nagas

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New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

forlorn — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 11:47:11 +0000

by forlorn

Manticores

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forlorn — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 11:47:07 +0000

by forlorn

Hell Hounds

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New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

forlorn — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 11:47:03 +0000

by forlorn

Ogre

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New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

forlorn — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 11:40:46 +0000

by forlorn

Ogre

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Thread: Descent: The Road to Legend:: Rules:: TRTL, errors made - remove XP. help?

Draagyn — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 07:38:00 +0000

by Draagyn

We're playing a session of road to legend, and is quite new to this game
I'm managing the overlord, and we have played for about 6-7 rounds.

The players have entered some dungeons, but have left after the first level. It means that i had about 10 xp total, while the players had more.
They decided to enter the legendary dungeon: Caverns of Thuul
They killed the one crystal dragon, then entered room 2, grabbed the treasure and just fled. Which means they got 2000 gold in total.
I got 63 XP total. I got alot of lucky rolls, and they died alot. I had the evil genious in play from the first level, so i got alot of exra cards that could be discarded for threat.

error 1: We have calculated the surges wrong. We thought that the OL got a threat token for all 2 surges he rolled that did'nt missed. The OL have to give damage in order to gain threat from the surges.

Error 2: The players made one of their heroes run into a group of monsters, and then they shot her themself. When she died she took alot of unnamed monsters with her. Some rules says that that cannot be done.

My main questions is:
1) As we have calculated the surges wrong, and the error 2. will it be fair to remove some of my XP, and how much?

2) Can the players just grap the gold and leave without killing the dragon?

Session: Descent: The Road to Legend:: Sessions:: First Road to Legend Campaign with the new arrived German Version of the Game

CJoe — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 15:16:13 +0000

by CJoe

Wow, we waited so long for this Expansion, so we played for 13 hours in our first Session.

We used Altar of Destpair, because you can´t buy the other Expansions in Germany at present.

So we startet our first Round with
me as the OL with Sorcerer King and Obsidian Shackles and a Sniper Upgrade, and 4 Heroes (played by two Players, the Others didn´t have time to join...)

The Party consisted of
Andira Runehand with Spiritwalker (this skill is made for Andira!)
Kirga with Skilled
Red Skorpion with Blessing (this Char is a little to weak...)
Tahlia with Tiger Tattoo (and much Armor...:-( )

The Heroes went to Starfallto Forest, and after losing 4 Health from an encounter card they started their First Dungeon

We did the Levels 18, 21 an 10.

The Heroes did well on the first floor, but without copper treasures and the cheapest weapons like daggers and no potions, because Andire needed a ring of Protection... they were a little messed up.
On the second floor, they did a good job (i dont like this map...) and finally bought some Copper treasures (two shields, one of it Unholy for the Tank Tahlia)
The last floor was good balanced and really fun.

Sorry, not to describe the exact dungeons, because after 13 hours of playing, i was a little too tired to do some notes to remember...
Score after that:OL 36, Heroes 20

After a little Training, (Kirga +1 Range Dice; Tahlia +Mighty; OL +Silver Eltrich +Sir Merric) the Heroes decided to save Dawnsmoor from Sir Alric.
The Journey was interrupted by a Caos Beast witch took out two Heroes and regained so much Health that the others fled.
After that, they entered Blackwing Swamp (so that Alric could "join" with his Powercard ;-) )
We played the Levels 38 and 37.

The first Round was fun for the OL, throwing Stones around was funny (one kill in first round, if i remember correctly) but because of too many Questions regarding throwing stones, i used that Special only once!
The second Level on the other hand was a total hit in the face for the OL. The Spiders were Trapped all in the eastern Hall, with the Tank blocking the way and no chance of doing damage!!! The elite Troll (Power card made it elite) missed two attacks that could have hurt three Heroes and died without doing harm...

Only some Wizards, spawned after killing the tourches of the Heros to shorten their line of sight, were able to do some OL exp.

Endscore of the Day:
OL: 65
Heroes: 35

For the next session, we also drew the last Dungeon Card, and it was No. 15!! (three Bosses, two of the on Silver! i´m looking forward to that ;-P )

Half through copper in our first session, i am looking forward to our next meeting!

Question to all Veterans in Descent: What happens when a rubble Block is thrown and hits a wall? Does it stop were it is, is it reflected like in Billiard, does it even come back and kill the Level Boss himself?

Thread: Descent: The Road to Legend:: General:: other expansions necessary?

scottandkimr — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 14:50:57 +0000

by scottandkimr

Which, if any, other expansions do you need to play RTL? Would it be possible to play RTL with just the base set? Thanks

Thread: Descent: Journeys in the Dark:: Rules:: Newbie Questions

Cadu Carioca — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 13:38:19 +0000

by Cadu Carioca

Hello

Im noob Descent player, and after few quests some questions raised up:

1) Hellhound breath abilitie

Is breath abilitie mandatory? Or can OL make a normal attack (with hellhound, for instance) if position in dungeon makes a breath useless?

2) AoD question and OL power

We played a AoD quest yesterday. I didnt remember which quest was, but there a beast named monster in final room and some priests worshipping it. The OL player make this changes in rules:

a) The heroes choose a character from 3 options and they can discuss about the better party to go inside dungeon;
b) OL draws only one card per turn. In addition several spawn cards are took out from the deck, remaining five or six including some cards from expansion.
c) Breath abilitie attack only can made straigth foward hellhound position.

My friend said that house-rules are to makes OL less powerfull and the game faster.

What are you think?
In your opinion is OL (with all spawn cards and draws) too much strong, making heroes efforts something like a bad joke?

Thanks.

Thread: Descent: Journeys in the Dark:: Rules:: Preparing for Quest 3 as the Overlord. A few questions.

JeiWo — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 08:04:04 +0000

by JeiWo

So I'm going to be playing my third game of Descent tomorrow, and it will also be my third time as Overlord. I'm still definitely getting used to the role, and the game itself. I've looked over Quest 3, which looks like a lot of fun, but I have a few questions that I'd like to resolve before I start the game:

The rules state the Overlord is only supposed to read out loud the text in the gray box. So I'm trying to figure out how to handle the riddle area. I presume that I don't specifically tell them "the nagas are statues, and won't attack you unless you attack them", but I'll be sure to emphasize the flavor text so they can gather that they are harmless statues. But when they trip the encounter, what exactly do I tell them? Do I specifically say "Roll the power dice equal to your Magic trait, and you need to roll a surge."? Or perhaps tell them to roll the die (you pretty much at least have to say that), but not tell them that it's a surge they need to roll? What if I notice that they don't have any dice to roll, should I tell them automatically fail and not explain why? Or at that point should I explain it?

Personally I'm using Descent as much as a role playing experience as it is a competitive board game. I realize that once the heroes play the quest through once, they'll be able to play it again and PREPARE for the riddle room, but a lot of the appeal to me is that the heroes face a riddle that they don't know about, and have to figure out. I'm anxious to see how it all plays out tomorrow. But if anyone can tell me how they handled this, or what the "correct" way to do it is, it would be very informative.

Thread: Descent: Journeys in the Dark:: Rules:: Guarding and even of the overlords turn question

GeminiWeb — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 03:27:29 +0000

by GeminiWeb

While I've played a reasonable amount of Descent and are well into Gold level for Road to Legend, I still haven't resolved the question of the "if you're doing this, then I'm doing that instead".

Consider the following example:
- Battlemage Jaes is guarding, hoping to hit (and kill) the mighty giant.
- Overlord sends in a couple of beastman to attack and Jaes withholds his guard attack.
- The Overlord doesn't want to risk the giant dieing so decides against moving him, announcing that his turn has ended.

(Q1) Can Jaes now say "In that case, I'm attacking with my guard action at one of the beastman"?

(Q2) If Jaes is permitted to do this, can the Overlord now say "now that the guard action has been exhausted, I will now move the giant up to attack"?

In other words, the giant has been activated last. Jaes interupts the ending of the giant's turn to attack the beastman, concerned he won't get to use his guard attack. After this, the overlord then decides against ending the giant's turn and uses him to attack Jaes.

Thoughts?

New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

forlorn — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 08:50:18 +0000

by forlorn

Bane Spiders

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forlorn — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 08:44:02 +0000

by forlorn

Beastmen

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forlorn — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 08:40:47 +0000

by forlorn

Sorcerers

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forlorn — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 08:40:29 +0000

by forlorn

Razorwings

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New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

forlorn — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 08:40:27 +0000

by forlorn

Skeletons

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Thread: Descent: Journeys in the Dark:: General:: Descent Storage: Plano 777 - almost perfect storage solution for Descent + all expansions

chaosportal — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 08:12:41 +0000

by chaosportal

This is my first post here at the BGG. I hope it is helpful and informative.

After searching long and hard for a storage solution for all my Descent stuff I finally found what I think is just about perfect. Ladies and gentlemen I present to you the Plano 777.

It comes with all the storage boxes pictured except the two in the top lid which are small Plano 3500 boxes and the short length card box which is just a typical CCG storage box.

I purchased the Plano 777 from the Bass Pro Shop for $65. That seems to be the average price for this box.

Without further ado, here's some pics....

Top view. All closed up tight.
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Top lids opened. All the small/medium figures fit in the dividers on the left. On the right is the aforementioned card box containing all the cards I use, they are separated by little dividers. This is all the cards except the monster cards which I have stowed away since I use a reference sheet for their stats.
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Main case lid opened. On the left is two small Plano 3500 cases stacked, one contains player chits, the other contains overlord chits. In the middle is the large figures, on the right is the card box.
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Front view.
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Front view, lids opened. Two split level drawer boxes on left, large bucket box on right. The bucket contains most of the map pieces.
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How you organize your pieces is up to you, this just shows what it looks like opened and filled with bits. This is the top level of a drawer box opened.
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This is the bottom level of a drawer box.
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The only things that don't fit in the box are the oversized map pieces and the rulebooks. I keep them in the RtL expansion box.

I hope this is useful to those seeking a storage solution. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask.

** edited to clean up some typos

Session: Descent: Journeys in the Dark:: Problems with Quest 2: What did we do wrong???

JeiWo — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 02:31:07 +0000

by JeiWo

Alright, so I just played a game with 3 heroes (as opposed to 2 heroes my first game, on the first quest). I read about quest 2, and it seemed a lot more interesting than the first quest (since there's a small little puzzle involved).

But let's cut right to the chase: The heroes simply couldn't kill the first giant. No, they didn't know that once they killed the giant it'd just come back to life, and they didn't know that they should of just ran in to get the loot then get out of there. They're not SUPPOSED to know. Naturally they tried to kill the giant. I sent the giant through the hallway, so they couldn't even get back to get the loot.

They simply couldn't get past his armor. Occasionally they'd roll a 7 or 8 damage, but it was nowhere near enough to dispatch him easily. We spent over 2 hours slowly wittling him down, and by that point no one wanted to continue. I mean... they only had equipment bought from the town, and they were trying to kill something as hard as the last boss from the first quest. This seems... utterly broken.

As I mentioned before, if they knew about the quest beforehand (that he couldn't be killed), sure they could've just ran like they should have. But as is, they played it like it was meant to be played, and it didn't work. Did we do something wrong? Am I missing something? I almost thought, for a sec, that you're supposed to still have your equipment from the first quest.

Regardless, we're not going to be playing that quest again. Even if I did miss something, the map seemed sort of redundant and repetitive. After nearly 3 hours of fighting a giant, no one wanted to do another room. Please, let me know other thoughts and opinions on this quest.

Thread: Descent: The Road to Legend:: General:: Did anyone play a RtL campaign with only vanilla Descent and enjoyed it?

Jumo — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 08:08:00 +0000

by Jumo

I own JitD and all expansions, but somehow would like to start my first RtL campaign with only the base game as I didn't use the expansions yet. Probably, hopefully I'll introduce these later.

I know that previous questions concerning RtL and expansions always got the advice of at least adding WoD, mainly for the Treachery cards.

Therefore this stubborn question. Did anyone actually play a RtL campaign with only vanilla Descent and enjoyed it? Or is it a complete waste (of a lot) of time? If it's a complete waste of time, I wouldn't like to be the first one to find this out.

Many thanks for your answers!

Thread: Descent: The Road to Legend:: Rules:: A Few Clarifications, Please

longclaw16 — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 20:50:49 +0000

by longclaw16

1) Blast and Breath do nothing to enemy figures in trees (figures with Shadowcloak - unless you're adjacent to them, of course)?

2) When drawing market cards for places like Forge, draw until the first X card comes up. The rules state to draw the given Market rating number of cards and then choose from the drawn cards. Does the party get to choose from all the extra cards drawn before one of the specific cards came up? (We've bought all but one Rune in the Copper deck and our Overlord was wanting confirmation that it worked this way for purposes of the Market that searches for Runes.)

3) When interrupting the OL for a Guard order, suppose the OL has just declared an attack on a hero. Does the OL have to attack that particular hero after the Guard order has been resolved, or can he change his target?

Thread: Descent: Journeys in the Dark:: General:: wallpaper

scottandkimr — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 20:00:55 +0000

by scottandkimr

Does anyone know if any Descent wallpaper featuring the dragon from the original box is available? If so, please post the link. Thanks

Thread: Descent: The Road to Legend:: General:: My dice are way dark

Magic Pink — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 14:20:55 +0000

by Magic Pink

Mine don't look anything like the picture here: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/314496

They're crazy dark; you can barely tell if they're silver or gold. Were they replaced at some point or something?

Session: Descent: The Road to Legend:: The spider who wanted to be god. Session 2

Hankroyd — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 13:48:01 +0000

by Hankroyd

Here is the second session of our campaign

Overlord : 18 xp
Heroes : 27 xp & 3325 gold
Campaign : 45xp

The protagonists are :

Ozyree as Landrec the Wise (6/27)
12 / 5 / 1 / 3 (8 wounds)
Magic : 3 black
Talent : Blessing
Equipement :
* Sun
* Leather Armor
* 2 Stamina Potion
Unequiped : Falcon Talons

Toramal as Ispher (6/27)
12 / 5 / 1 / 6
Melee : 1 black
Ranged : 2 black
Talent : Tiger Tatoo
Equipement :
* Magic Bow
* Leather Armor
* 1 Stamina Potion
Unequiped :
* Bone Blade
* Iron Shield

Matt as Astarra, Witch Runes (6/27)
12 / 5 / 2 / 5 (4 Wounds)
Magic : 3 black
Talent : Inner Fire
Equipement :
* Immolate
* Heavy Leather Armor
Unequiped : Leather Armor

Kaekael as Lord Hawthorne (6/27)
16 / 4 / 3 / 4
Melee : 3 black
Talent : Mighty
Equipement :
* Dragonteeth Hammer
* Chainmail
Unequiped : Axe

and me as your humble god-to-be Spider Queen.

Week 6(Continued): We gonna need bigger weapons

Riverwatch and his full five cards market ... one nice rune is gained, allowing Landrec to blow fire and Ispher now is the proud owner of Boggs the Rats.

Confindent, they look to see which dungeon they will be looting next week. Morshan River is chosen.

Week 7: Grandeur and decadence

The last counter is added to Forge, now each week it will be dice fest to destroy that puny city.

The travel to Morshan River is unventful.

Morshan River Dungeon

Level 1 : Lifeweb (37)

A super Spider Boss, but nothing else.
The new burning power of Landrec immediatly proven to be a major pain in my ... err ... poisonnous sting. Clearing almost everything in the dungeon. Other Heroes with Guard orders manage to kill my monsters before them attacking.
Worth, I wasted 15 good xp to an useless spawn after making a mistake with line of sight.
I decided to go for Lord Hawthorne, the only one I managed to hurt. Of course, as a melee fighter, my webs was useless, but with ten wounds and 10 poison counter I hoped to take revanche on the next turn.
After a slight miscalculation of their own, Heroes left one of the villager in the level rescuing the three others.

... And the heroes rejoiced.

Level 2 : King of the Hill (37)

By seeing the level, Heroes were cautious ... should they go or stay ? But since they were in the lead for the XP and they didn't want to return to Tamalir, they choose to go for it (bad for me) but staying ready for retreat (very good me).
So they began to harrass the Boss, but its superregeneration made miracles. No one bothered to go in the second half of the dungeon.

So, after crushing Lord Hawthorn with a rock, I spawned some extra squeletons and played : 'Shoot the Heroes', after the game, only Astarra remained in the dungeon. Unfortunately, all my monster were grouped, so Landrec came back to male a total annihilation of my troops ... but rolled 'X'. At that point heroes were totally demoralised, and Astarra retreated.

They get some last hope : My skeletons only manage to decrease Landrec to 2 life. But one last card 'Charge' allowed a sorcerer to deliver the killing blow, sending Landrec again in Tamalir in a very painful way.

... And the Spider Queen rejoiced.

Week 8: An all time low

To add the insult at the injury, in his first try, Lord Farrow razed Forge (Overlod - Wow this must must have been built with something very frail like papier maché ... or Landrec), giving me 7xp and allowing me to upgrade my Eldricht !

As players, Toramal and Matt took their defeat very badly and wanted to stop the session here. Even if XP were evenly matched, apparently they thought that, like in movies, Heroes should always win ... Too bad ...
We choosed to continue to play until the next dungeon or encounter.

Heroes after a fast calculation saw that I'll be very soon ahead of them, so they choose to go to the legendary aera getting some money.

At Greyhaven, Astarra bought a silver magic dice and Landrec, the Prodigy skill. (Ouch, 4 surge guaranted).

Week 9: The plot advance

2 xp for me, and the First temple is built on the remain of Forge.

The Heroes met nothing while while going to Nerekhall.

Week 10: First Encounter

2 xp for me, and my first treachery trap bought.
Going to Cavern of Thuul, Heroes has their first encounter.
It will be in a zone where everyone has -1 armor.
Heroes will be ambused by a bunch of Naga and Ogre. It will be a good occasion for Landrec to test his new skill...

Meanwile in the Queen's Lair ...

SQ - Ahh, Lord Farrow, We are pleased to see you. We never though that you'll be so efficient. Here, take this extra 5.000 gold as a reward.
LF - Thanks, O my Queen. I immediatly go to Frosgate.
SQ - Thanks a lot for serving us so perfectly. Now, if you want to excuse us, we are going to give birth.
LF - What ? Birth, my Queen.
SQ - Yes, when We become god, we will rule the whole universe. And you, as our second will become immortal and will be in charge for this galaxy. Planets will need personnal supervisors and we want someone very special for this one. It will be our Heir... Now, if you want to excuse us.
LF - As you wish my queen, and congratulation in advance for the Heir.
(Lord Farrow leaved the throne room and, returning to the surface, began to sing a little song.)
LF - Spider Heir, Spider Heir. Does whatever the Spider Queen does. Can he swing from a web ? Yes he can, like the Queen. LOOK OUT !! Here is a Spider Heir.

At the end of session :

Overlord : 1/41 xp
Heroes : 37 xp & 225 gold
Campaign : 78xp

Landrec the Wise (26/37)
12 / 5 / 1 / 3 (8 wounds)
Magic : 3 black
Talent :
* Blessing
* Prodigy
Equipement :
* Fire Cone
* Leather Armor
* 1 Stamina Potion
* 1 Power Potion
Unequiped : Sun

Ispher (26/37)
12 / 5 / 1 / 6
Melee : 1 black
Ranged : 2 black
Talent :
* Tiger Tatoo
* Boggs the Rat
Equipement :
* Magic Bow
* Leather Armor
* Amulet of Archery
* 2 Stamina Potion
Unequiped : Iron Shield

Astarra, Witch Runes (26/37)
12 / 5 / 2 / 5 (4 Wounds)
Magic : 1 silver, 2 black
Talent : Inner Fire
Equipement :
* Chastise Staff
* Heavy Leather Armor
* 1 Stamina Potion
* healing Potion
Unequiped :
* Immolate
* Leather Armor

Lord Hawthorne (6/37)
16 / 4 / 3 / 4
Melee : 3 black
Talent : Mighty
Equipement :
* Dragonteeth Hammer
* Chainmail
* 1 Stamina Potion
* 1 Healing Potion
* 1 Power Potion
Unequiped : Axe

Group Enhancement :
* Magic Boat
* Bazaar

Overlord
Ascension Plot (2 cards)

Upgrade :
* Siege Engine
* 1 Trap Threat
* Silver Eldrich

Lieutnent : Sir Alric Farrow (On the Whispering Forest)

Miscealenous comments :

One bad play and one 'X' ruined the sceance for two players.
Allowing me to spawn extra skeletons in the second level of the dungeon and getting an 'X' to kill more than half my monster was too much.
At least when Ozyree said : 'I have survived !' before dying, no one was surprised.
The very small area are clearly in favor of the Heroes, while larger are more for the Overlord.
All in all, the game is fun. If only we could get rid of the neverending complaints of Toramal about how useless is his character, everything would be perfect... But since we have this whenever he plays a melee or ranged or magic or runner character in vanilla Descent too, it is become like a blank noise.
After the game, I tempted to rise the morale of the troops by saying that generally, Overlord is 2:1 ration with the Heroes and so I miss 30 xp. I guess they have trouble with their caracters 'dying'.

Now we will have a month without playing. I hope that next month, they will gain confidence in them again ... if they survive the encounter ... and do not met too many Eldrich ... and not roll 'X' ... So, no major problems ...

Thread: Descent: Journeys in the Dark:: Rules:: Doom, Rage and Brothers Durnog

Blofish — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 13:04:35 +0000

by Blofish

We played Quest 2 and have some questions -

The effect of the Doom card (an extra power die for monsters) - is that in effect for the whole game like evil genius or does it last one turn?

Can the rage card be used to move a monster and them attack or only used on a creature that is already adjacent to a hero?

In the Brothers Durnog Quest (#2) can the dead giant regenerate anywhere in the dungeon (8 squares away from the heroes) - including unexplored areas etc.?

Session: Descent: The Road to Legend:: Against the Lich King, 1st session

wujenta — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 10:02:18 +0000

by wujenta

Against the Lich King, Session 1

We just started our first RtL campaign and as I liked a lot reading about other campaigns, I´ll do the same and tell you about our adventures.

The party was composed of:

Nanok the Blade with Ox Tatoo (this is my hero), axe and several potions
Grey Kerr with Master Archer, chain mail, crossbow, and potions
Landrec the Wise with Wild Talent, Sunburst and Ghost armor
Silhouette with Eagle eye, throwing knives, leather armor and potions

• Week one

The OL started sending his lieutenant in way to Dawnsmoor and we started our trip going to RiverWatch to get some treasures as the city is well known for his great market. On our way we didn’t have any encounter and entered the dungeon.

o Dungeon level 1: the first dungeon was number 23, the Pit Fiend and was a tough one, the overlord moved well all the razorwings and we had a hard time hitting them. In top of that , he got some priest to help and some sorcerers too…he was lucky to have Danger in his first hand, so with the starting conquest as sorcerer king and the conquest he received during play he was able to really hurt us. Finally we managed to kill the leader and went deep in the dungeon…
o Dungeon Level 2: as the first dungeon was good for the OL, the second one was easier for us… it was lvl 30 Stuck in the middle and the OL here didn’t have any luck, as the 2 master skeletons died and stayed dead… the other monster were not a problem …except the 2 blood apes he brought for help…they hit hard and that leap ability is nasty.
o Dungeon Level 3: didn’t care what number was, think the OL told me it included a giant and other nasty creatures and we were in bad shape… the overlord had 21 conquest points at this time and we had 15 (1 for exploring, 6 for glyphs, 6 for 3 bosses and 2 for the chests in the dungeons, as we didn’t get any magic item in them) so I told the other players to flee the dungeon so the OL can´t upgrade his monster to silver for the next dungeon.

So we ended week one with the following score

OL: 21 conquest
Heroes: 15 conquest

• Week two

The OL spent some of his hard earned XP in buying his second lieutenant for 5 XP and move closer to Dawnsmoor his first one and send in the same direction his just bought one. We arrived at Riverwatch and some visited the market, other went for a little healing (emphasis in little as the temple is not a good one) and other went to the tavern to get a rumor. The 5 objects that showed up at the market were all good… at least some luck, as we didn’t find any item in the 2 dungeon levels we did last week. We picked the boat too so we can sail now, but we spend all the money doing so. The rumor was a good one too, X Marks the spot. Perhaps we will wait to go there until silver to get a new and good weapon as soon as we hit the silver part of the campaign.

So we ended week two with the following score

OL: 22 conquest (5 spent)
Heroes: 15 conquest

• Week three

The OL reached Dawnsmoor with his first lieutenant, moved the second one near to Dawnsmoor too and finally bought Alissa (5 xp) as his third lieutenant and send her in the same direction as the other 2… meanwhile we started our journey to Vynelvale, as there are some skill there we wanted. Again there was no encounter during the road (I wanted one… we need money for the skills and dice upgrades we are planning to buy) and reached the dungeon.

o Dungeon level 1: the first level was an easy one now that we have magic weapons… it was dungeon number 3, the Dragon´s lair and we beat him fairly easy… the only disappointing thing was that there was not a single pile of gold in the level…what kind of dragon don’t have piles of gold to sleep over them…? There were 2 chests, and both of them gave a magic item. We got here 6 conquest (1 for exploring, 3 for the glyph and 2 for the dragon)

We have been playing for nearly 6 hours and didn’t want to start a new dungeon lvl so we agree to leave it as we were and continue in 2 weeks. The final conquest totals were:

Overlord: 30 (spent 10 already)
Heroes: 21

As I was writing the report at home, I noticed we made a mistake, as we continued our trip to Riverwatch and we should have returned to Tamalir, as we had not completed the dungeon… as I told it to our OL, we agree that we continue as we were and do not make the same mistake again.

For now it has been difficult, but now that we have magic weapons should be more easy for us... at least until the OL uograde his eldrtich monsters to silver...

See you in a few days

Thread: Descent: Journeys in the Dark:: General:: need urgent quest recomendation!

ColdLucid — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 00:30:18 +0000

by ColdLucid

I have friends comming over tonight at 7:30 and I know if we play a game of descent we'll be up till 1 in the morning. I need a really short quest. Please help me!

Thread: Descent: The Road to Legend:: Rules:: Question Re: Knockback

DavidT — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 23:02:37 +0000

by DavidT

When moving a figure following a successful attack with the 'knockback' ability, the rules indicate that the figure must be moved three spaces away from its current position. Is there any limitation on the direction in which the figure may be moved (i.e., could it be moved toward the figure that attacked it)?

Edit: It looks like, from the FAQ, the figure can be moved in any direction. However, does this have to be in a straight line?

Thread: Descent: Journeys in the Dark:: Rules:: First game- Few Questions

JeiWo — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 19:16:29 +0000

by JeiWo

So I just had my first game last night. It went well. I had read through the rule book a couple times, so it wasn't a struggle to get through the game. We played 2 heroes vs. 1 overlord (me), and our impression was that it'd be much better with 4 heroes. They still won, though it was actually pretty close, but they felt like I was able to spawn monsters faster than they could kill them, and they just got bogged down several times. We figure that with 4 heroes, they will be able to clear rooms out quicker, even though the stats are slightly upscaled.

Anyway, as does everyone, I have a few questions. I can't remember all of them, so I'll post them as I think of them:

1. When the Overlord plays a trap card that states "when the hero moves into an empty space", when exactly can this be played? Can it be played DURING the hero's movement? Only at the end? Can you interrupt his "advance" by springing a trap before he gets to attack?

2. Large monster movement: Mostly hellhound confused me. I know they can twist or move diagonally, but can they also sidestep to the left or right, or move backwards? Also, I understood that large monsters aren't affected by pits (unless they're fully in one), but can they walk over rubble? It seems like spiders and other large monsters can get stuck in places pretty easily, if they can't squeeze through rubble. I'm not sure if I was playing it right.

3. The hero players thought there should be a way to "rest at an inn" or something at the Town to regain their health. I think this makes sense thematically, and was surprised that there didn't seem any easy way to regain your health back. Does anyone else feel this way? Pay gold in town to regain your health or something? Or am I missing something, and there is something like this?

4. I could've swore I read somewhere in the rules that you can only use one potion of any type per turn, but then I couldn't seem to find it again. Am I mistaken about this rule? Maybe I read something else like that.

That's all I can think of for now, but I'm sure I'll think of some more later on. Sorry if these questions have been answered numerous times before, but it seems "first time game newb" threads are sort of obligatory for all of us.

Thread: Descent: Journeys in the Dark:: General:: Which expansion first?

zarajess — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 06:56:31 +0000

by zarajess

I know that this question has been asked before, but I'm wondering which expansion my group should get first. I have a one-at-a-time philosophy, unlike many Ameritrash gamers, who love to jump in all at once and buy the whole lot. Here's what I know about the different expansions:

Well of Darkness- sounds cool, like the monsters. The Treachery mechanic sounds like the most innovative of those added in all the expansions. I also want to increase difficulty for heroes. Does it balance things out or just make things impossible for the heroes?

Altar of Despair- once again monsters sound great. Prolonged Actions don't sound that cool, but scenarios sound neat. Have heard a lot of the stuff in this one doesn't have that big an impact on actual gameplay overall.

Tomb of Ice- heard it doesn't give bang for your buck. Low # of scenarios and rarely used monsters is almost a deal-breaker. Other than that sounds neat, but I've read that it tilts the game in favor of the heroes, which I absolutely don't want.

Road to Legend- campaign play would be awesome once I exhaust most of the scenarios across a few expansions. Sounds like a great concept but I'm not sure about the time investment.

So, here's what I'm looking for in my first expansion buy for Descent:
Increases difficulty for heroes (don't want them getting creamed constantly, but more tension would be nice at least)
Mechanics significantly improve/change gameplay
Monsters are reasonably well balanced & integrated
Changes Descent experience & offers a distinct storytelling flavor

Thanks fellow geeks!

Thread: Descent: The Tomb of Ice:: Rules:: Does skull shield make a hero impervious to swallow?

randusnuder — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 15:45:58 +0000

by randusnuder

Is it possible to use the skull shield to prevent 2 damage each turn after a hero has been swallowed?

If so, this makes the hero with skull shield unkillable inside the Wyrm, correct?

Cross posted since I am not sure where this actually fits...

Thread: Descent: Journeys in the Dark:: Rules:: Does skull shield make a hero impervious to swallow?

randusnuder — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 15:44:41 +0000

by randusnuder

Is it possible to use the skull shield to prevent 2 damage each turn after a hero has been swallowed?

If so, this makes the hero with skull shield unkillable inside the Wyrm, correct?

Thread: Descent: The Road to Legend:: Rules:: A slew of questions for RtL

Magic Pink — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 15:10:18 +0000

by Magic Pink

We had a our first game last night. It went VERY slowly. I'm talking three hours for half of one dungeon level.

Anyway:

1: Does every town have a Tavern and a Training Ground?

2: I have a LOT of Threat it seems. I still get 1 per hero at the start of the OL turn yes? Can I do anything with this crap besides spend it on my cards?

3: Can a hero use a surge abilty on an off hand weapon?

4: Where do Epic Weapons come from? I'm talking these two sided cards, like the market cards, but with no cost. How do the heroes get these?

5:Can heros do anything with surges besides abilties printed on armor or weapons?

Thread: Descent: Journeys in the Dark:: General:: After a sub-par first play, what changes can we make to get Descent back on the table?

MikeyMike79 — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 10:57:45 +0000

by MikeyMike79

We played the intro scenario with our gaming group last week and the consensus was that the game felt like too much of a grind.

What changes can we make to the game so that:

- There are fewer creature spawns
- The end bosses aren't so much of a joke

We have the RTL expansion... will this help? Will any of the other expansions help?

Off the top of my head, I could imagine doubling or tripling the hit points of all creatures in the final room of a dungeon. In addition, allowing far fewer spawn cards to be played.

Any other ideas?

New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

Bien — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 04:28:44 +0000

by Bien

The players taking it out on the dungeon master.

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Thread: Descent: Journeys in the Dark:: General:: Newb balance question

andywatkins1963 — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 13:27:01 +0000

by andywatkins1963

Hi guys,

As far as I can tell most monsters die 1st time you hit them whether they are 2 player strength monsters or 5 player strength monsters. In other words the balancing feature in the game for scaling is not terribly effective. Has anyone used other methods to scale the game?

I am new to the game and am purchasing the basic game plus well of darkness. I am assuming 3 heroes (4 player game) of the base game is about the right balance. If we played a game with the full 4 heroes I get the impression the basic game might be too easy for the Heroes. Would it be worth introducing Treachery when playing with 4 heroes, and perhaps not using treachery when using less heroes?

I don’t have the experience to say at the moment and want to make sure the first couple of games are fun for the heroe players or they will lose interest. I will play as overlord and do not mind losing a few games to get them into it. On the other hand of course if it is too easy they will get bored.

All players are about 40 years old and fairly experienced gamers, though most have little experience of dungeon crawls. I would be interested in your opinions for getting the best out of this game

Ta

Andy

Thread: Descent: The Altar of Despair:: General:: Treachery and skill cards in the expansion ... any spoilers ?

Cain_hu — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 12:01:22 +0000

by Cain_hu

Hi all,

I just bought WoD, and I'm thinking about AoD. In the forums I see that the quests are great as the new monsters are etc... but there is no information about the treachery cards and skill cards witch are both important.

Could anybody give some information ?

Thread: Descent: Journeys in the Dark:: Rules:: Newb question about Runes

andywatkins1963 — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 10:58:03 +0000

by andywatkins1963

Guys,

I am new to the game, basic game and well of darkness are in the post, but I have downloaded and read all the rules and extra tables etc I can find on the web. I have a small question about Runes. Chainmail seems to be good, but says it can not be used with rune based weapons, or something like that. I can’t find any reference anywhere else about Runes. Are these something you buy, or pick up in the dungeon, how do you equip weapons, shields or armour with a rune, what does it do?

Hope this makes sense

Ta

Andy

Thread: Descent: The Road to Legend:: Rules:: OK - the definitive lowdown on gold in RtL (especially re: looting the Gemstone Dragon's lair...)

Andy_X — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 08:10:14 +0000

by Andy_X

Right - it's probably just me who's thick as... mud... but the exact way that gold is awarded to the heroes in RtL still eludes me.

I know that a standard Gold Pile awards the heroes with 4 x 100 gold = 400 gold.

I also know that when opening a chest, each hero rolls one black dies, and the amount of coin he is awarded is added to the party treasury = typically somewhere around 100-250 gold TOTAL to the party.

Level leaders also grant 200 gold - TOTAL - to the heroes (AFAIK).

However, the rules do not state how much gold is awarded for killing ordinary master monsters (which was worth 50 gold in vanilla Descent), and if this reward is quaddrupled (i.e. 200 gold to the treasury).

Finally, what about the gemstone caches in the Caverns of Thuul? Are these worth 1000 gold each TOTAL, or 4 x 1000 gold = 4000 gold each?
The latter would mean that, combined with the ordinary gold piles on that level, there's almost 14.000 gold to be found if you defeat all 3 dragons - which sounds pretty insane to me...

Again, sorry for being a spanner, but the rules really could do with some clarification on this point, IMO.

Thread: Descent: Journeys in the Dark:: General:: Going to buy Descent...question about expansion Road to Legend

myndreach — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 06:55:20 +0000

by myndreach

I'm worried about playing vanilla Descent in one-shots, and then getting Road to Legend and starting a campaign, and then having to replay those vanilla scenarios from the original box again to get them in the campaign mode that RtL offers.

Wouldn't it just be best to get RtL so those first missions can be part of the campaign?

Session: Descent: The Road to Legend:: The Spider who wanted to be god. Session 1

Hankroyd — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 15:53:58 +0000

by Hankroyd

At least, after countless century of waiting, Road to Legend is released in french.
As soon as the birthday copy for Ozyree has arrived, be began our campaign.

Let's introduce the protagonists :

Me as The Spider Queen with the Ascension plot and the siege engine upgrade.

Ozyree as Landrec the Wise (aka the Demonologist (If you wonder why this surname, look under)) with Blessing.

Toramal as Ispher (aka the Demonist's pet, aka SuperBoggsMataKata) with Tiger Tatoo.

Matt as Astarra, Rune Witch (aka the Wizard) with Inner Fire

Kakael as Lord Hawthorne (aka the Melee Guy) with Mighty.

Week 1 : So far everything is good ... for the Overlord

Sir Alric began his journey towards Forge
The heroes decided to start with no equipment at all, hoping that the market will provide good item to begin with. Unfortunately for them, they only got a ranged weapon for Ispher.
They bought 2 fatigue potion for him too and get a rumor (Lost Inheritence they put in Guardian Hills).

Week 2: So far everything is good ... for the Heroes

Sir Alric continues his journey.
And, after an unventul travel, the Heroes arrived to Starfall Forest.

Starfall Forest Dungeon

Level 1 : The Monster's Mask (36)

Well it was an easy start for the Heroes and a great surprise for the player ("Oooooooohhhh, look at the tiny cute baby dungeon").
I choose to go with a full beastmen party ... Bad idea ... Landrec blast weapon almost cleaned the dungeon by himself while Ispher was looting the level.
The Boss tried to save the honor, but reduced at 1 live by the spellcaster, he was killed when his mask finnaly shattered on the combined assault of Ispher and Hawthorne.

Level 2 : The Monastery (27)

Well ... at cooper level, monsters didn't have that much range and damage.
Despite two extra spider I get from an Horde of Thing card played previously, I manage to inflict only 2 wounds to a paysan before the total annihilation of my monsters. So without fighting a boss, Heroes gets a whooping 6xp while I get ... nothing.

Level 3 : The Barracks (5)

For the first time, the Heroes were unsure of their superiority. Sorcerer on table and encountering for the first time the Shadow Elves (with their camouflage) made them realised that not every dungeon will be walk in the park. Having a good lead, they choose to leave, sacrificing Ispher to activate the level's glyph.
Since my monster was far away, he hoped to be able to came back to Tamalir before dying, but a war beast party next to him let me gain 3 final xp.

This dungeon gave me 6xp and ... 20xp for the Heroes.
Fortunately, the only treasure they get was another ranged weapon. Meaning that except Ispher, everyone is still on basic equipment.

Week 3: The calm before the storm

Sir Alric arrive at least at Forge
Heroes choose to spend some XP to upgrade Tamalir's market. They found two melee weapon (a normal and a cursed one). Fearing that I manage to kill too often Lord Hawthorne for 5xp, he choosed to buy the non cursed one. (** sight of soulagement **, the cursed one was damn to deadly).

Week 4: The sweet taste of revenge

First siege counter on Forge.
Heroes travel without problems and begin the Thelsvan Highway Dungeon.

Thelsvan Highway Dungeon

Level 1 : The Arena (25)

When entering and seeing the Ogre, heroes where unsure about what to do.
But the bones pile and the promesses of hidden richess helped by their previous victory made them not to flee ... fools.

While everything began in favor of Heroes, able to decimate most of my attackers without malus given Landrec's blast capacity. The master sorcerer was able to revive. A warbeast spawn later, I got Ispher.

After a moment, the aera was cleaned (except for the Ogre) and almost all bone heap searched (and EVERYONE gave a treasure !), Heroes went for the kill. Unfortunately, only Hawthorne had a weapon powerful enough to inflict tremendous damage to it. Other one would only deal between 0-4 damage per attack.

It was at this moment that the nightmare began for the Heroes.

The last bone heap gave me an unexpected skeleton that manage a kill. Meanwhile I was playing as much as I can the traps from my hand to hinder Heroes. Ispher had pass the Ogre to take what was near the exit. The ogre now was placed to prevent him to leave (To get as much as I can have by killing other people or by having 6 xp by forcing them to leave and cycle my deck twice).
As the major menace Hawthorne was my target and he was repeatly thrown behing the rumble wall to prevent him to attack twice.
A well placed pit, prevented him for attacking me during a full rund, and then a double 'X' made him innefective an extra turn.
Meanwhile I was able to put evil genius and the card that add an extra black dice to my attacks in play, and I was swimming in menace point.

Lady luck was with me when the Ogre finnaly died :

Toramal - At least. I think he's dead for good.
** rolling immortality dice : surge ! **
Toramal - ... Or not

and the second time

Toramal - He won't be able to regenerate twice in a row.
** rolling immortality dice : surge ! **
Toramal - ... Oups
Others - Toramal, please shut up.

and the third ...

Toramal - It's impossible it regenerates thrice in a row.
Others - Don't say that !!!!!
** rolling immortality dice : surge ! **
** Paper ball began to be thrown to the poor Toramal **
Toramal - It's not my fault !
Others - Yes, it is !
Overlord - Naaah, it's just statistics ... thanks all the same

The fourth, Toramal shut up and my Ogre didn't regenerate ... but at least I get Lord Hawthorne killed with a well placed dark charm giving me a final 4 xp.

With Heroes greatly injured and me with 8 cards in hand and 35 threats, they choose all the same to check the next level 'just in case'. I tried to get Landrec one last time, but he escape my 'Rock / Rock / Pit' combo with 1 life.

Level 2 : The Night Shreds (40)

When they saw the boss was a dragon, they didn't even bother to try it and went back to Tamalir.

Well ... even if I managed to give them hard time, it was a technical draw, since both camp scored 7xp.

Week 5 & 6: We gonna need bigger weapons

With more than 3000 gold, Heroes decided that they must get a better equipement and directly travels towards Riverwatch to buy it. The journey is uneventful.
Meanwhile, sir Alric continue to siege Forge and the Spider Queen rejoice.

At the end of session :

Overlord : 18 xp
Heroes : 27 xp & 3325 gold
Campaign : 45xp

Landrec the Wise (6/27)
12 / 5 / 1 / 3 (8 wounds)
Magic : 3 black
Talent : Blessing
Equipement :
* Sun
* Leather Armor
* 2 Stamina Potion
Unequiped : Falcon Talons

Ispher (6/27)
12 / 5 / 1 / 6
Melee : 1 black
Ranged : 2 black
Talent : Tiger Tatoo
Equipement :
* Magic Bow
* Leather Armor
* 1 Stamina Potion
Unequiped :
* Bone Blade
* Iron Shield

Astarra, Witch Runes (6/27)
12 / 5 / 2 / 5 (4 Wounds)
Magic : 3 black
Talent : Inner Fire
Equipement :
* Immolate
* Heavy Leather Armor
Unequiped : Leather Armor

Lord Hawthorne (6/27)
16 / 4 / 3 / 4
Melee : 3 black
Talent : Mighty
Equipement :
* Dragonteeth Hammer
* Chainmail
Unequiped : Axe

Group Enhancement :
* Magic Boat
* Bazaar

Overlord
Ascension Plot (1 card)

Upgrade : Siege Engine

Lieutnent : Sir Alric Farrow (Attacking Forge (3 counters))

Miscealenous comments :

What's the heck ??
I though that early campaign was in favor of the Overlord and I get humiliated in the very first dungeon. And only got a draw in the second (Copper Ogre don't deals damage).

Now I'm sure, I'll try to avoid the final battle if I can.

Dungeon weren't easy for me and I had to add that heroes helped me by playing 'poorly' : For a reason I don't understand they want to kill the same number of monsters each, and they want that the looter of the room change regulary (No, Ispher with his ludicrous amount of speed and stamina must NOT loot, it's Landrec's turn to pick something.) ...
They even go so far to say that when they will be spending Xp if one of them buy a skill, everyone has to buy a skill. At this point I took pity, and tell them how stupid it is to not advance their character the best way for them.
They don't have a team spirit ... well, I think my friends are communists. Yeah, Vanilla Descent gave them communism spirit ('Don't kill the red one, or you'll have more money than us !)
When I am a player, I tried to show them the light of reason, but here I'll have to teach them the hard way.

Until the end of session, Heroes didn't saw how much powerful Power potion had becomes. After the session, I did some maths with them (2 gold and a silver dices are WAY better than 3 black.). I talked about the variance, and why sometimes it's best to spend some fatigue to upgrade BEFORE rolling the dice.
Well, I think those advice hadn't fallen in a dead hear, and I expect the new dices will be rolled in the next session.

Thread: Descent: The Road to Legend:: Rules:: Crushing blow + Lieutenant Abuse?

lochrist — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 14:44:24 +0000

by lochrist

From what I understand in rules, when a Lieutenant encounters the Heroes he can build a hand of treachery cards corresponding to the Treachery value of the Overlord.

That means if you have access to Crushing blow, each time a lieutenant encounters the player you can destroy one of their big item! It's not that difficult to amass the Threat tokens required for the card and to hit the hero you want to nerf.

Am I understandaing the rules correctly? If so, do you find that abusive?

Thanks,

Sebastien

File: Descent: The Road to Legend:: FFG Forums Q&A

Jeff Greening — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 06:15:38 +0000

by Jeff Greening

FFG Forums Q&A for Board Game: Descent: The Road to Legend ]]>

Thread: Descent: The Road to Legend:: News:: Origins Pre-orders for Cavern Sets

bryanwooden — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 04:48:03 +0000

by bryanwooden

Higher Ground Games - in conjunction with Farrow Studios - is pleased to announce that we are taking pre-orders for Origins (and/or Gen Con) on our high-quality painted and unpainted Hirst Arts cavern sets. Why pay shipping if you'll be going to either of these major summer cons?]]>
he cavern set is perfect for any dungeoncrawl game, including D&D, Fantasy Flight's Descent, and many others. Each set is made with our "one-piece-cast" process that provides strength and weight to each room and hallway tile.

The unpainted set retails for $100 USD, and the painted, sub-assembled and non-slip cork-based set retails for $200 USD. Also, the first ten orders will receive a 20% discount on any other order placed prior to September 1st. This is a great way to pick up complimentary accessory sets or other terrain items. To take advantage of the Origins pre-order process (i.e. free shipping, and pick-up at the show), please use the code Origins09 when checking out.

Sets are available directly through the HGG webstore http://www.highergroundgames.com/catalog/index.php?cPath=8_1...

Additional photos of a recently completed pair of painted sets can be found http://farrowstudios.webs.com/apps/photos/album?albumid=5531...

Hurry, as supplies are limited, and there is less than a month until Origins!

Higher Ground Games is a fully licensed distributor of Hirst Arts designs. Please feel free to call 317-750-5569 or email ben@highergroundgames.com to discuss delivery of this product - or any other ideas you may have for the use of Hirst Arts blocks to elevate the quality of your terrain.

Thread: Descent: Journeys in the Dark:: News:: Origins Pre-orders for Cavern Sets

bryanwooden — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 04:42:41 +0000

by bryanwooden

Higher Ground Games - in conjunction with Farrow Studios - is pleased to announce that we are taking pre-orders for Origins (and/or Gen Con) on our high-quality painted and unpainted Hirst Arts cavern sets. Why pay shipping if you'll be going to either of these major summer cons?
]]>
The cavern set is perfect for any dungeoncrawl game, including D&D, Fantasy Flight's Descent, and many others. Each set is made with our "one-piece-cast" process that provides strength and weight to each room and hallway tile.

The unpainted set retails for $100 USD, and the painted, sub-assembled and non-slip cork-based set retails for $200 USD. Also, the first ten orders will receive a 20% discount on any other order placed prior to September 1st. This is a great way to pick up complimentary accessory sets or other terrain items. To take advantage of the Origins pre-order process (i.e. free shipping, and pick-up at the show), please use the code Origins09 when checking out.

Sets are available directly through the HGG webstore http://www.highergroundgames.com/catalog/index.php?cPath=8_1...

Additional photos of a recently completed pair of painted sets can be found http://farrowstudios.webs.com/apps/photos/album?albumid=5531...

Hurry, as supplies are limited, and there is less than a month until Origins!

Higher Ground Games is a fully licensed distributor of Hirst Arts designs. Please feel free to call 317-750-5569 or email ben@highergroundgames.com to discuss delivery of this product - or any other ideas you may have for the use of Hirst Arts blocks to elevate the quality of your terrain.

Thread: Descent: Journeys in the Dark:: General:: Need help finding two tools

johncraven — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 01:38:50 +0000

by johncraven

Hi,

Some time ago I came across two nifty programs. For some reason I didn't save/bookmark them and I can't find them anymore...

One is a charactor creator. What's good about this particular creator is that it had a very easy interface to use. I believe it was created using Flash. It is NOT one of the excel sheets we have in the files section.

The other one is a dice roller. What's good about that one is that it also gave the sum of damage/range/surge from the dice rolled, which makes it easier to read.

I believe both are online services.

Thanks!

Thread: Descent: The Road to Legend:: Strategy:: OL Upgrade Priority

DavidT — Sun, 31 May 2009 20:04:45 +0000

by DavidT

I see a lot of advice here indicating that upgrading Eldritch first is the best way to go. However, looking through the cards, it seems like upgrading Beasts would be better. Is there any good reason to choose one over the other? (I'm playing the SK, if that helps, and my only upgrade thus far was siege engines [with the initial 15xp, which I regret now that I know a bit more about the game]).

Thanks for any advice!

Thread: Descent: The Road to Legend:: General:: Bridge of Death typo ? (Possible spoiler)

Hankroyd — Sun, 31 May 2009 00:23:43 +0000

by Hankroyd

Hello, I just get a french version of RtL.

As the futur evil overlord wanting to take over the world, I checked the dungeon, and I saw a little problem.

In the "Bridge of Death" dungeon, it is said that heroes falling in one of the starting pit immediatly die.

Problem is : on this dungeon there is no pit ...

Is there a typo on the map ? If so can someone post a scan of the correct version of dungeon or at least say where the pit are ?

Or does this mean that heroes can be knocked back outside the boundary of the board and immediatly die ?

Thanks in advance for the answer.

Thread: Descent: The Road to Legend:: Rules:: Dice Boosting for Overlord

DavidT — Sat, 30 May 2009 15:42:09 +0000

by DavidT

So, the OL can boost dice in encounters by spending two threat. Does the OL have any ability to boost dice during dungeons? The FAQ says that cards awarding extra black dice (such as "DOOM!") provide extra dice boosts instead, as if the subject were spending fatigue. But, I've read comments on these boards that seem to indicate the OL can't spend threat to boost dice in dungeons.

Thanks!

Edit: Bad grammar.

Thread: Descent: Journeys in the Dark:: Rules:: Simple Question Re: Ranged/Magic Attacks

DavidT — Sat, 30 May 2009 15:39:37 +0000

by DavidT

If an attack with a ranged or magic weapon (i.e., bow or mage staff) is declared against an adjacent space, does the attack still qualify as a "ranged" or "magic" attack? Can the attacker choose to declare such an attack as a "melee" attack instead?

Thanks!

Thread: Descent: Journeys in the Dark:: Rules:: guard and spending fatigue

kadorn1007 — Sat, 30 May 2009 14:56:30 +0000

by kadorn1007

Maybe I'm just missing it in the rules, but can fatigue be used to move before using a guard attack?

New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

arminger — Fri, 29 May 2009 19:07:15 +0000

by arminger

Priests

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New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

arminger — Fri, 29 May 2009 19:07:09 +0000

by arminger

Beastmen

]]>

New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

arminger — Fri, 29 May 2009 19:06:58 +0000

by arminger

Skeletons

]]>

New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

refinery — Thu, 28 May 2009 18:44:20 +0000

by refinery

Closeup of the beastman.

]]>

New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

refinery — Thu, 28 May 2009 18:14:07 +0000

by refinery

My fourth attempt at painting miniatures.

]]>

New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

refinery — Thu, 28 May 2009 06:52:11 +0000

by refinery

Another closeup of the skeleton. I read quite a few guides online on m...

]]>

New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

refinery — Thu, 28 May 2009 06:46:38 +0000

by refinery

My second attempt at painting miniatures. I really like the way the pi...

]]>

New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

refinery — Thu, 28 May 2009 06:45:46 +0000

by refinery

My third attempt at painting miniatures.

]]>

New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

refinery — Thu, 28 May 2009 06:21:16 +0000

by refinery

My first attempt at painting miniatures using some examples from BBG. ...

]]>

Thread: Descent: The Road to Legend:: Rules:: SK's Soul Ward

griffitz62 — Wed, 27 May 2009 04:54:04 +0000

by griffitz62

The Sorcerer King has an upgrade called Soul Ward for 5 XP. "All surges rolled in any attack targeting your Avatar are canceled without effect." This seems awfully powerful for a 5 XP card so here is the debate.

In Descent, hero's don't target monsters, they target spaces (see page 9 of the rulebook which reads: "Note that the attacking player designates a space to attack and not necessarily another figure.").

So...does that mean that my rolled surges will affect the SK since my attack is not targeting the Avatar, but instead the space he is in?

What if I have a Blast weapon and blast into him, or a Breath weapon that catches him in the template?

Yet another seemingly easy card brought low by rules lawyers. Please help.

Thread: Descent: The Well of Darkness:: General:: Newb Query

andywatkins1963 — Tue, 26 May 2009 19:35:46 +0000

by andywatkins1963

I have just ordered the basic Descent game and the well of darkness. I will of course want to play through the basic game scenarios. Do you use any of the rules / models / etc from the expansion when playing the basic game scenarios??

Ta

Andy

Thread: Descent: The Road to Legend:: Rules:: Shadow Clones - extra wounds from CT?

nickjanaway — Tue, 26 May 2009 19:13:00 +0000

by nickjanaway

We're playing our final battle RIGHT NOW, very exciting.

The party is in the Beastman Lord's final room and is facing 3 beastmen with 139 wounds each, after adding wounds for conquest scored in the keep. (They also all have shadowcloak, ironskin and unstoppable btw). And despite all being on masses of silver/gold dice, most of them have had their fatigue reduced to zero by the Ascension comets.

Can this be right? It now seems a bit impossible for the party to do anything...

Should the BL's clones receive these extra wounds, or should they be back down on 17 (regular diamond master beastmen)?

Thread: Descent: Journeys in the Dark:: Rules:: Another Noob player asking a few questions

ravanah — Tue, 26 May 2009 17:43:24 +0000

by ravanah

Hi everyone,

I recently joined this community since I decided to start a new hobby and start collecting games. After consulting with fellow gamer Tom Vassel as well as a personal friend of mine, both suggested that i tried Descent. I purchased the game and I played my first game on Sunday. I played as the Overlord and I had 2 players with me. I had already read the rule book a few times before but i had a few questions for you experts.

1- I understand that when the Overlord spawns new monsters with the summon card, he needs to spawn the monsters in a space that is not in a line of sight of the players. I know they can't spawn in non-explored areas but my first question is , Can the Overlord spawn the monsters in a previous room the heroe's been in ? If so, this could lead to ambushes from both sides.

2- A player found a gold chest where it said there were 2 "Maledictions" along with a gold item. I say "Maledictions" since i bought the game in French (for the wife) and in french it says Maledictions but the english term could be different. Also, when the quest book says that there is 1 Gold treasure, do each player get 1 gold treasure card or is it 1 and only 1 card for the whole group? In my game (i did the first quest where the players must kill a Ginat Narthak or something like that) There were about 2-3 gold chests and the players were way overpowered with the items. 1 of the items was an amulet that could be tapped to regain full health + fatigue. If anyone knows what Gold amulet i'm talking about, is this amulet only good once or can it be used every turn ?

3- There are some componants that are stacks of Gold coins, the Quest log does not specify how many coins the stack is composed of. Do stacks of gold found in donjons have a specific value or is it to the discretion of the overlord ?

I think these are my only questions for now ... Don't worry i'll have some more soon .

Oh and BTW, i also bought Heroscape and I can't wait to try it but that's another story.

Please to meet all you guys
Drake Bauer AKA Ravanah

Thread: Descent: The Road to Legend:: Rules:: Dark Charm Question

wujenta — Tue, 26 May 2009 12:14:54 +0000

by wujenta

Last night we were playing our regular RtL game and the OL played Dark Charm against one of us...and just after seeing that the Hero has been affected, he played the card that allows monster to do 2 attacks...fury i think its called. I said that I didnt think that he could play it, and he said that the last faq stated that the overlord can play cards like aim to help the controlled hero and because i like to play and not discuss , we agreed to allow that and ask for advice here...so...

would you allow playing fury on a controlled hero using dark charm to make him do 2 attacks?

Thread: Descent: Journeys in the Dark:: Rules:: Card conflicts

MrBoffo105 — Mon, 25 May 2009 21:16:12 +0000

by MrBoffo105

Hey all,

I have a question about the interaction of two cards. I'm playing with the Tomb of Ice expansion and it has a Feat card that reads "Play after a monster has made a successful melee or ranged attack against you ( a melee attack that doesn't miss). You must roll a power die. If the result is a surge, there is no effect. If the result is a surge, that monster's attack against you becomes a miss."

Ok, one player attempted to play this card after the overlord used dark charm to force another player to hit him. The overlord (ok, it's me) contends that the card doesn't apply because the attacker is a hero and not a monster. The players disagree (obviously). Any help would be appreciated.

Thread: Descent: Journeys in the Dark:: General:: Funny Stuff!

Geekerton — Mon, 25 May 2009 16:53:43 +0000

by Geekerton

I just found this stuff over at cafepress and I thought I'd pass it along. Descent based humor ROCKS! I bought a trucker hat fot myself.

http://shop.cafepress.com/descent?sort=by_date_desc

Review: Descent: The Tomb of Ice:: Tomb of Ice: A Detailed Review

Bruzza — Mon, 25 May 2009 16:26:33 +0000

by Bruzza

Descent: Tomb of Ice is the latest expansion for Fantasy Flight games flagship game Descent: Journeys in the Dark. The expansion features an ice theme, which is something new to the game series. This is my first review, so any feedback is appreciated!

The box contains new heroes, new monsters (cards and miniatures), new tiles for the dungeon levels, new counters, a new rulebook, new overlord cards, a new stealth die, hero feat cards, miniatures for the new heroes and a few new cards for use with the Road to Legend expansion.

Rather than write another exhaustive description of the new rules, I’ll jump right into some evaluations and how I feel the expansion plays.

New Components and Mechanics:
Tomb of Ice adds a number of new mechanics to the game. First up is ice. Ice is a new obstacle that does not block movement or line of sight. When a hero or monster moves onto a patch of ice, you roll a die. On a surge that figure falls and its turn ends immediately. I think this adds to the game, though jumping across the ice occurred far more in our games than walking across it. It does force some decisions at times though, and that makes for some fun and tense moments.

Another new ability is stealth. Stealth requires that an attacker include a new clear die in any attack executed against the figure with stealth. This die has two miss sides and four blank sides. This additional chance to miss can be great or frustrating, depending on the perspective of the person missing the attack. This ability can also be gained by drinking one of the new invisibility potions. I like this ability, as it adds some unpredictability and can lead to the formulation of some desperate gambles on the part of the players.

The Ghost ability grants the shadowcloak ability to the possessor. Any attack that will do damage needs to originate from a non-adjacent square. Since the shade creatures have this ability, and they are used heavily in the quests, it’s very important to have a character to two capable of doing ranged or magic damage. This ability encourages new tactics and approaches to combating figures with this ability.

Each hero now has the ability to use feats. Feats are single-use cards that have effects similar to overlord cards. They allow the heroes to perform a wide range of actions, including forcing the overlord to discard threat or cards, set all of the dice in an attack, gain additional attacks or surges. These are not as overpowered as I’d feared they’d be, and I think they add something fresh to the game. They do help swing the balance of the game toward the heroes, but they are not the main reason that this happens in my opinion.

There are a number of new town items, but the real winner in my mind is the morning star. It makes a terrific offhand weapon, which comes in handy when you get a nice one-handed melee weapon from a chest. The rest of the items add some selection to the town deck, but I have not experimented with many of them.

The new treasure cards seem pretty solid. There seems to be less concentration on items that use surges at the copper level, but most of the items will have a use in some games depending on the heroes involved. There are treasures at each level that I would want to draw from the deck as a hero, so I think that speaks to the quality of the treasures included.

The new Overlord cards allow the overlord to spawn the new creatures for the expansion, freeze the ground in an area and turn it to ice, and a new spell that can put a stun token on all of the heroes in a given area. Nothing that seems too overpowered here, but some nice effects that are useful in the game and will create some hero deaths and chaos in the quests!

The new tiles are labeled with letters, making set up much faster than before. The tiles are also no longer perfectly symmetrical, so the dungeons have more potential to have odd turns and nooks and crannies for spawning. I quite like the new tiles. The new tiles are also double-sided as to allow the creation of outdoor maps for Road to Legend.

I have not used the new Road to Legend cards as of this writing, so I cannot evaluate them at this time.

New Heroes:
The expansion includes new heroes, each with its own miniature. These heroes differ from the norm in that they do not appear to follow the rules the other expansions have used for hero creation.

Karnon is a hero that uses all five power dice in melee combat, but has fewer skills than normal. He is a yeti, so he has the tread ice ability and is immune to fear and frost. He moves fairly well, has 16 wounds and four fatigue, but at the cost of 4 conquest and 1 armour. I think he’s decent, but not amazing. The inability to add power dice to combat seems wrong to me, despite knowing that rolling all five dice saves me fatigue later.

Okaluk and Rhakash (a single hero riding a wolf) is a new melee hero that moves quite quickly and does good damage, but is lightly armoured. He also uses the new stealth ability to add to his survivability, which is something I enjoyed. He has low fatigue to keep him from getting too crazy, but also has 16 wounds for 3 conquest. In my opinion, he’s a very solid hero.

Shiver is a new hero that has the Aura 4 ability during the Overlord’s turn. That ability is pretty amazing, and leads to some very interesting movement choices for both the overlord and the heroes as they try to avoid or take advantage of the ability. 12 wounds, zero armour, move and fatigue 4, conquest 3 and three dice in magic make Shiver a pretty good caster. The Aura ability will not always come into play due to the fact that Shiver is ranged, but that adds fun to playing this hero.

Laughlin Buldar is a barbaric looking fellow. He can wield a two-handed weapon one-handed, so he’s a melee powerhouse if you go with an axe and morning star right out of the town deck, or slightly more durable with an axe and shield. He’s lightly armoured, but 16 wounds, 3 fatigue, 3 melee dice and 4 move make him quite flexible. Conquest 4 means that the overlord is going to concentrate on killing him, and likely will be able to do so. On a lot of quests he’s able to do so much damage that he overkills normal monsters easily, so I recommend using a shield or carrying the morning star and shield and equipping as required.

Arvel is a new hero that I have not used yet. Arvel has only two trait dice, one in melee, one in ranged. Her ability is to have a larger hand of feats and may draw two feat cards instead of one. The stat line is mediocre, 12 wounds, 4 fatigue, 1 armour and 4 move. I don’t think that this hero would work out well, but I have yet to play her.

Zyla is the other character I have not played. She is a fairy-looking character with 8 wounds, 5 fatigue, 0 armour, is worth only 1 conquest and move 4. She has the fly ability and ghost, and one trait die in each type. Ghost means that she’s difficult to kill with melee unless the monster has reach, but she’s quite simple to kill with ranged attacks. At a single conquest point, the overlord really should not concentrate too many attacks on her unless there really is not a better option. She looks like she’d not really perform well in any given role.

Monsters:
The expansion includes some nicely sculpted new monsters.
Shades are flying ghosts with pierce and stealth. They don’t hit terribly hard, but can be quite difficult to kill and do chip away to the heroes. They use a magical attack with the white and yellow dice. I think these are excellent monsters from all perspectives and seem very well balanced.

Medusae are magical attackers that specialize in delivering stun tokens. They do decent damage, but the real value is in the stun tokens, especially with the master medusa that also has quickshot. These are quite a pain to deal with, excellent creatures!

Lava Beetles are the first creature to have the blast ability. They have a ranged attack, but do not have a particularly long range. Damage tends to be ok, but they usually end up needing to be in the blast range for maximum damage rolls. Useful for keeping heroes spread apart and getting rid of guard orders before something runs into them and dies!

Wendigo are fast melee attackers with reach that do excellent damage. They are a two square monster so they are not as mobile as I’d like, but have a great model and demand respect on the table. They are only spawnable if the overlord buys the spawn card using treachery.

Ice Wyrms are the big critter in the bunch. They are quite tough and look like they can stand toe-to-toe with the other big critters in the base game and other expansions. They are a ranged attacker that does good damage, and have the option to swallow a hero which removes them from the board and kills them over a number of rounds unless the wyrm is killed first. It’s a neat mechanic, but not one you’ll see much in the quests as I believe the ice wyrm only appears in one quest and is not spawnable via the overlord deck.

Quests:
The quests in this expansion seem like they are designed less in favor of the overlord than in the other expansions. I’m not sure if they are designed to favor the heroes, but in our group of experienced players the heroes certainly seem to have the advantage in the included quests. There are six quests, and they seem to play more quickly than the quests out of the base game and the other expansions. I feel that they are well designed and fun, it’s a pity that there are not more of them.

Overall:
Overall I think Descent: Tomb of Ice is an excellent expansion for the game. It’s well produced (as usual for Fantasy Flight Games), well designed and fun, which is very important for an expansion in my eyes. For people with only the base game that feel the overlord is still winning a large percentage of the games, I’d make this my first expansion. If these players feel the overlord is winning too small a percentage of the games, I’d purchase Altar of Despair first. For players with the other expansions, I recommend this expansion as well, as I feel it’s well balanced and interesting for all of the players. Tomb of Ice is a fun romp through the dungeons of Terrinoth and an excellent purchase for anyone that enjoys the game of Descent!

Thread: Descent: The Road to Legend:: Rules:: Monster placement and Hero Death

DavidT — Mon, 25 May 2009 16:20:03 +0000

by DavidT

After our first session, we had a couple of questions:

- Unlike vanilla Descent, monsters in RtL are all placed on the map at the very beginning. Can these monsters open doors?

- Can monsters be spawned into areas behind closed doors (i.e., that the heroes haven't explored yet)?

- When a hero dies in a dungeon and reappears at the Tamalir temple, does he have full health and fatigue?

- If the remaining heroes in the dungeon enter the portal to go to the second dungeon level (while the hero that died is still in Tamalir), can the resurrected hero transport into level 2 with them (from Tamalir), or must he enter level 1 and then enter the portal?

- If all heroes want to go to town to restock, does it count as "fleeing" the dungeon if they all go at once?

Thanks!

Thread: Descent: The Road to Legend:: General:: Conquest levels after first session

DavidT — Mon, 25 May 2009 16:12:20 +0000

by DavidT

So, we played our first session of RtL last night. A couple of us had played Vanilla Descent before, but most were entirely new to the game. The consensus was very positive, and we're looking forward to getting together once a week to play this thing. I am curious, however, about the conquest earned in our first session, because the impression I've gotten from reading posts in this forum is that the OL and Heroes tend to stay pretty close in terms of Conquest totals.

In our game yesterday, the Heroes entered a dungeon on their first turn and we completed one level of that dungeon. I managed to kill one of the Heroes during that level and gained 4 CP for it, bringing the OL total for the session to 5. The heroes, however, earned 10: 'discovering' the dungeon (+1), killing the first level leader (+2), activating a glyph (+3), and saving four villagers (+4).

I realize this is only the first session, but just wanted to check and make sure I was distributing CP correctly. If the heroes commonly earn double the OL on each dungeon level, then it seems like the OL will certainly fall behind quickly. I felt lucky to even earn '5', as the one kill I netted was a lucky combination of fortunate die rolls--I don't foresee being able to kill one of these guys on each level of the dungeon.

So, is the follow CP breakdown correct?

Ways Heroes Can Earn CP:

- Activating a glyph (+3)
- Killing leaders (+2 or +4)
- Discovering new dungeons (+1)
- Quest-specific goals, such as saving villagers (varies)

Ways OL Can Earn CP:

- Cycle the deck (+3)
- Beginning of each week (+1, +1 for each razed city)
- Killing Heroes

New Image for Descent: The Road to Legend

karl69 — Mon, 25 May 2009 11:27:38 +0000

by karl69

My Monkey Markers

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New Image for Descent: The Tomb of Ice

casterlyrock — Mon, 25 May 2009 09:48:46 +0000

by casterlyrock

"Burn, Baby Burn"

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Thread: Descent: The Road to Legend:: General:: Scan of tiles for RtL?

Robbage — Sun, 24 May 2009 16:35:20 +0000

by Robbage

Does anyone know where a guy can find a scan of the tiles for this expansion?

Thanks,
robbage

Session: Descent: The Road to Legend:: Victory for SK in Final Battle

Jeff Greening — Sun, 24 May 2009 15:39:15 +0000

by Jeff Greening

Last night saw the final battle of our RTL Campaign.

I played the Sorcerer King and had played all along to try to win the final battle a risky strategy but I wanted some FUN.

I had bought:
3x Dark Power (Extra Gold Dice)
1x Protective Magic (Extra Armour)
1x Toughened (Extra 25 wounds)

Soul Ward (Cancel Surges)
Phylancropy (Extra 100 Wounds)
Sorcerers gain Blast

Brother against brother (permanent possible Dark Charm)

I had ruled before that Brother v Brother wouldn't come into effect until the mirrors were smashed and that the mirrors gained no benefit from Soul Ward. (Although no official ruling exists yet on either)

Over the final Keep the Heroes managed to get 35 Campaign points for a total reward of 17 wounds. I however went for the kill and scored 55 campaign points for a total of 110 bonus wounds!

The heroes entered the room and proceeded to smash the mirrors with disappointing ease. They all ran in and smashed the opening four in a turn. They realized that if they stayed out of sight I couldn't attack them as I couldn't move from the mirrors. This left the party archer a long job of running around the corner, shooting and ducking back behind cover in order to finish the last four.

Then I finally appeared with a MASSIVE 246 wounds!

The real fun would now begin. First the heroes drew counters for Brother against brother. I hoped for one of the two party tanks and was not disappointed. I got the Yeti armed with the stone-cutter sword.
After the other tank and the Mage had small goes at me - doing 63 wounds between them (Soul Ward is a Lifesaver!!), I rolled for the Yeti - a got a surge! Since two of the heroes had wisely drunk invisibility potions I walked over to the only hero that hadn't - the mage. (In hindsight this was an error since the stone-cutter rolls the stealth dice anyway, but hey ho). The blow connected - doing all but three of his life in damage! The Sorcerer King then blasted at Nanock (the other tank) doing 15 wounds to him.

It was then I realized what a fantastic combo I had. Brother V Brother would get the Yeti next to another hero and attack him, then my Overlord could attack them both since I had blast!!

The Heroes then took a stalwart turn. The party archer leveled two aimed salvos of fire down at the Sorcerer (He had the skill which makes all two handed attacks aimed) doing some hefty damage, followed by two more salvos using rapid fire. Next the Mage blasted me with a staff that gave me burn tokens, before teleporting out of the range of the Yeti. Finally Nanock took a battle action and spent fatigue to get three attacks. After swigging a power potion he played Killing Blow and decimated my life down to 90! This was going to be hard.

Now it was the Yeti's turn - I rolled a second surge! He now walked over to Nanock and hit him hard. Combined with the Sorcercer King's battle action, Nanock fell. The Sorcerer King regained life to 98 as he absorbed Nanock's essence.

In a rage the Archer and Mage rained down fury upon the Sorcerer King, decimating him down to 51. The end was now in sight for the three remaining heroes. The Yeti then stood up to take his turn. I picked the dice - and rolled my third consecutive surge!

He walked over the the archer and once again despite rolling the stealth dice, the blow connected - for a huge 35 points of damage, instantly killing the archer. The Sorcerer King then came round the corner and blasted the Mage, killing him also. His life once again swelled, this time to 61.

Now only the Yeti and Sorcerer King remained. The sorcercer king had two burn tokens remaining from the Mage's attacks. The Yeti's turn had come gain, but he resisted the Sorcerer's power and smashed him hard, battling him and playing hurry to get a total of three attacks, taking the King down to 36. The sorcerer blasted back, but almost all the damage was absorbed by the Yeti's Elven cloak.

Next the Yeti came at the Sorcerer again. He resisted the power of Brother against Brother again and hit hard with an aimed attack, taking the Sorcerer down to 21.

The SK then took a further 2 wounds from burn tokens (down to 19) before finally felling the mighty beast before him.

A deep calm set in.

Actually it was total silence as the heroes realized that nearly a year had been spent on getting to this fight, only to lose!

This silence lasted almost the whole packing up time. Still they started to discuss what they could have done better. I suggested that the archer should have been dodging as his attacks are already aimed. The Yeti would never have hit a dodging target rolling both the red and stealth die - 75% chance of a miss!

Actually most of the party could have befitted from dodging as the real weapon against them was the Yeti, not the Sorcerer King. The Yeti could still spend his surges against the heroes whereas the Sorcerer King got no benefit from them.

Still, maybe next year!

The above account really does show how hard it is for the Overlord to win in the final battle. The odds of me controlling the Yeti for three vital turns at the start are tiny, yet it proved game deciding. If just one of those rolls had failed, I would have certainly died as I would have killed less heroes and had to survive more Yeti attacks.

Is it balanced - I don't know.
It would be unfair if certain power cards and upgrades gave the overlord a guaranteed victory at the final fight.

What do you all think?

Thread: Descent: Journeys in the Dark:: Rules:: Monsters blocking access to treasures / glyphs / other?

Olvenskol — Sun, 24 May 2009 11:54:53 +0000

by Olvenskol

So far, I've been Overlord every game I've played. My group has managed to get through quest 2 so far (we play very infrequently!) Frankly, the heroes have not been impressive to date (they lost quest 1 twice and only won the third time because we mistakenly thought the giant could not cross the pit). First time with quest 2, they got smooshed, but the second play they handled it easily with the right strategic approach. I think the right sort of strategies have been figured out by the group now and I'm starting to think of more determined defense by the Overlord.

One question I have: is the overlord allowed to spawn monsters on top of chests, unactivated glyphs or other floor items if the space is otherwise legal? Can the monsters move onto these spaces to prevent access to them?

New Image for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

mgoddard — Sun, 24 May 2009 05:07:47 +0000

by mgoddard

Maybe we should have left the door closed?

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Thread: Descent: The Road to Legend:: Rules:: Crushing block on a treasure chest?

ckessel — Sun, 24 May 2009 02:51:30 +0000

by ckessel

Question came up in today's game. I cast crushing block as the hero moves into a spot with a chest. The hero is budged aside afterwards, but what about the chest? Is it destroyed? Is it still in the square, but unreachable because it's under the rubble?

Thread: Descent: The Road to Legend:: General:: time segments

scottandkimr — Sat, 23 May 2009 20:17:04 +0000

by scottandkimr

I was watching Tom Vasel's review of RTL and he said that RTL really made Descent a great game for him b/c you could now play Descent in 2 hour segments. Also different people could come and go in the different segments. Have other people had that experience? Does it really break the game down into 2 hour segments and is there good flow if you have different people play the characters in different segments? Thanks

Thread: Descent: The Road to Legend:: Rules:: Purchasing Plots, Lieutenants, and Utilizing Expansion Creatures

DavidT — Sat, 23 May 2009 19:32:49 +0000

by DavidT

We've played a few games of vanilla Descent, but the playtime was a bit too long for us. So, I decided to buy RtL in hopes of getting smaller, bite-sized chunks to the table more often. Along with RtL, though, I also purchased AoD and WoD. I haven't played with those expansions before but intend to slip them into our Descent campaign that we're starting tomorrow.

You probably don't need all of the background info, but here are my three quick questions:

1. Are the Overlord Plot cards just purchased in his upgrade phase as his single upgrade for the turn?

2. Are Lieutenants purchased and activated in the same way?

3. Looking at a few of the creatures (such as the Chaos Beast) from the expansions, it doesn't appear that there are any spawn cards for them in the decks. Is it correct to assume that these creatures only hit the table if indicated on a relevant dungeon map, or possibly through some other method (e.g., and Incident card)?

Thanks!

Thread: Descent: The Road to Legend:: Rules:: Rotating Overlords?

Lamrok — Sat, 23 May 2009 16:59:35 +0000

by Lamrok

We have the base game, and have no set Overlord. My sons have been taking turns at it. Will we be able to do this during a Return to Legend game, rotating overlords between sessions?

Thread: Descent: The Road to Legend:: Rules:: Scything blades and Spider queen trap damage?

ckessel — Sat, 23 May 2009 16:59:19 +0000

by ckessel

The spider queen card reads +1 damage for "trap cards that deal damage". For most cards, it's quite clear. A pit says it deals X damage, so it's X+1. The scything blades are a little less clear. They don't deal damage directly on the card, but say that players on the space take damage for being on them. I'd think the +1 applies, but the card doesn't explicitly state the damage so I'm not sure.

While I'm even less sure about is what about subsequent players moving over the scything blades after it's been played? I wouldn't think the +1 would apply to them any more than someone falling into a pit I'd placed 5 turns ago. At that point, it's a trap in place, not a card I'm playing.

Thoughts?

Thread: Descent: The Road to Legend:: Rules:: Lt's reinforcement ability apply to Legendary and Overlord dungeons?

ckessel — Sat, 23 May 2009 16:49:03 +0000

by ckessel

I'm pretty sure the LT's reinforcement ability applies to the legendary areas, but I'm less sure about the final Overlord dungeon.

Does anyone know? Seems like, as the OL, I'd want all my minions near home base when the final battle comes so they could help with their abilities.

Thread: Descent: The Road to Legend:: Rules:: Sorcerer King Final Battle

Jeff Greening — Sat, 23 May 2009 11:52:12 +0000

by Jeff Greening

Hi all,
My group will be finishing our first (6 month long) descent campaign tonight

I've played the sorcerer king and have played all along to win the final fight. I have all his upgrades (including Soul Ward) and have "Brother against Brother".

I have a couple of timing questions that I'd like your opinions on.

1. The card for brother against brother states it activates when the overlord figure is placed on the map. For all the other overlords that is at the start of the final battle, but the placing of the Sorcerer King on the map could be happen at two different times depending on how you read the rules, either :
(A). At the start of the battle or
(B). When all the mirrors are broken

What would you all suggest?

2. Soul Ward states that all surges against the Sorcerer King are canceled with no effect. - does this include:
(A) the mirrors and the Sorcerer or
(B) just the King himself?

How have you played it? Has anyone seen an official ruling of either.

Thanks

Thread: Descent: Journeys in the Dark:: Strategy:: Chest rush

scottandkimr — Fri, 22 May 2009 21:53:01 +0000

by scottandkimr

Is it a viable strategy for a character to rush into a room to open a chest without defeating the monsters? What is the monsters stand a good chance of killing him? Is getting the upgraded treasures worth the loss in conquest tokens?

Review: Descent: The Road to Legend:: A Review from the Perspective of Irregular and Infrequent Play

Brent Johnson — Thu, 21 May 2009 21:36:34 +0000

by Brent Johnson

I’ve been getting together with a group of friends every couple of months for a "game day" and one of the games we’ve played each time has been Descent. We’ve played the base game once and Road to Legend three times - as in a total of four sessions, of course, rather than four complete games! That’s not really a lot of experience on which to base a review, especially considering the number of reviews already available, but I decided to write one anyway in order to share my perspective on Road to Legend as a game suitable for people who do not have regularly or frequently scheduled sessions. (I am assuming here that the reader already knows something about the game, e.g. by reading Rob "Bodhi" Wolff’s definitive review or Scott Hall’s comprehensive description or C. Robledo’s concise overview or even David Moore’s negative critique.)

First, a word about the base game. Our only play was the introductory "Into the Dark" scenario, and to be honest we didn’t actually finish it: we ran out of time after completing the first three areas. We are slow players in general, with virtually every game we play taking considerably longer than BGG would suggest, and Descent is not a quick game in any case. And of course when you only play once every couple of months there will always be plenty of pauses to look up rules.

But my primary objection to the base game is not its long play-time. Rather, it is the ridiculous escalation in power that takes place within a single dungeon. Your excitement over pulling a copper-level sword out of a treasure chest is tempered by the knowledge that just through that next door you are likely to find a weapon that will make your shiny new possession look like plastic cutlery - and even if not, you might be able to buy something better by taking a quick side trip around the corner. The pace just felt all wrong to me, and after that one session I for one had no great desire to play the base game again. So we decided to tackle Road to Legend immediately, despite all the recommendations for becoming "experienced players" of the base game first.

And now, after three 4- to 5-hour sessions of Road to Legend, we have managed to get through the first level of our second dungeon. Conquest stands at Overlord 48 to Heroes 29, which puts us about one-eighth of the way to the end game. So at our current pace, it should take us about four years to play the entire campaign - assuming we keep choosing to continue, which is by no means certain.

The rules are full of holes, and it doesn’t help that they are scattered about in FAQs and expansions. (We are incorporating Well of Darkness and Altar of Despair.) Furthermore, I have no doubt that the game is badly unbalanced in some circumstances, and juggling all the bits is an organizational nightmare. Combat is klunky, with the need to account for modifiers coming from all over the place each time you make an attack. Some dungeon levels are frustrating for the heroes, while others are frustrating for the overlord, and there doesn’t seem to be any clear way to determine at any given point in time which side is "winning" - although from what I’ve read this could be a moot point, since it may be that pretty much the only way to end a campaign is either with a premature razing of Tamalir or with an anti-climactic slaughter of the overlord’s Avatar. I consider the game to be seriously flawed.

But the thing is, I really don’t care one way or another who wins, or whether we will ever complete the campaign. We’re having fun now! The dungeon levels can be completed within a manageable timeframe, and the campaign setting gives us a sense of context which the base game lacks. Much like an RPG it gives us a nicely-paced sense of anticipation regarding development of character and overlord abilities, which effectively substitutes for the motivation of "winning." However, unlike an RPG, the overlord actually gets to focus on defeating the heroes! (Not that the GM role in an RPG is a bad one, but this makes for a nice change in perspective.) The detail in the game - the richness of its flavor - is almost enough to make up for its fiddliness, and in my opinion the game concept is brilliant. I suspect that somehow the essence of this game could be distilled into something more streamlined, but at this time I don’t know of anything else even remotely like it.

The bottom line for me is that I consider this game to have been very worth my investment of time and money, even if I never play it again.

But I do want to keep playing.

New Image for Descent: The Tomb of Ice

Bruzza — Wed, 20 May 2009 05:38:43 +0000

by Bruzza

Painted Descent Master Shades, rear

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