Descent

[Retreater]

I'm looking at picking up Descent: Journeys in the Dark, but the massive size of the game, number of expansions, cost, and past experience with Fantasy Flight is giving me pause. I'm wondering if anyone can answer some questions about it.

First, I have fond memories of Milton Bradley's board game HeroQuest. I have been searching for something for years that can match the quick, customizable gameplay. The D&D Boardgames are getting close, but playing against the board and the lack of continuance from scenario to scenario makes it an imperfect match.

Second, I haven't been too impressed with several Fantasy Flight products. Given the high cost of Descent - and the level to which I did not enjoy previous offerings - this makes me a little nervous.

1) Doom was way too difficult to win as the marine.
2) Arkham Horror was confusing, too difficult to win at, and playing the board removed the personal interaction between players and the DM.
3) Warhammer Fantasy RPG 3E. While not a board game, I thought this was poorly balanced. Characters were either demigods or worthless.

Does Descent address these concerns? Is it a fun game? Or should I just stick to D&D?

Retreater

 

[MerricB]

Honestly, as someone who owns Descent and all its expansions (save the individual minis), if you play D&D regularly, Descent is unlikely to serve your needs. It has a number of features - I hesitate to call them flaws - that make it what it is.

The game is far better balanced than Doom, insofar as a full set of heroes generally have a good chance of winning (although 2 heroes vs overlord can be very unbalanced). The game occasionally skews too far towards the heroes, but both sides have won in the games I've played, with the proportion slightly higher towards the heroes. This doesn't bother me.

More problematic is the set-up and playing time. This isn't a short game. Most of the scenarios in the basic book will take a similar amount of time to a RPG session, perhaps 3-4 hours is good average (this depends on familiarity with the game, of course). Setting up is a lot slower than HeroQuest. On the other hand, you've got these great looking passages and rooms to show for it - and, once the expansions are added - there's a great deal of customisation possible.

The basic game isn't in campaign form. Heroes restart between adventures, although the adventures in the base game give an overarching storyline. An expansion - Road to Legend - gives you the opportunity to run a big, big campaign game that sees the heroes striving against the plans of the Overlord in many smaller dungeons and in the wilderness. It's long to play through (100 hours?), but it's designed to be played in a lot of shorter sessions. Balance for it is somewhat questionable.

The biggest problem with the game for D&D players is this: why aren't you playing D&D instead? You're basically playing with a DM plus 2-4 players, and it takes a similar amount of time as for a D&D session.

You can download the rules from the FFG website, which will give you an idea whether or not the game is to your taste. Boardgamegeek has a number of reviews.

Finally, here are a few pictorial session reports I've written about the game:
* Narthak in an Epic Battle (first scenario).

* Perhaps we should have opened the door? - two heroes don't make it out of the starting chamber.

* Four adventures fall short - same scenario as previous session, but the heroes almost won.

Hope this helps!

Cheers!

 

[Mark CMG]

If you don't mind painting minis and you use diungeon tiles, you could get the main game and, if you don't like it, repurpose the accessories (or just resell it, as it seems to retain value pretty well from what I have seen).


[MENTION=3586]MerricB[/MENTION] can you verify that?

 

[MerricB]

Not sure about retaining value (as I'm not actively looking at the secondary market for Descent), but the minis are D&D-scale, likewise the dungeon tiles are 1" squares.

Note that the tiles use a jigsaw method to fit together, which means they don't work so well with D&D Dungeon Tiles, but they're pretty nice on their own.

Cheers!

 

[Mark CMG]

Thanks, Merric!

I think the jigsawed ends of hallways can utilize the little endcap pieces to square them off and butt up against regular tiles (see bottom of pic), plus the doors (they come with stands), and counters for treasure chests and coin piles, the obstacle markers like fire, pits, and poison, rubble, rocks, standing water, webs, Familiar tokens, fiery breath weapon, could all be used cross-game -

Descent: Journeys in the Dark | Image | BoardGameGeek

Descent: Journeys in the Dark | Image | BoardGameGeek

There's a lot of pics of painted figures among those others, to check out the (decent) quality of the miniatures. Also, some of the markers (hearts, fatigue, etc.) are the same as those used in Runebound, so if you have that game they could be transferred over, I suppose.

The resale rates (at least some guesses) can be checked here -

Descent: Journeys in the Dark | Board Game | BoardGameGeek

If you could pick up a complete game in good condition, you could probably play it a few times and turn it around, getting most or all of your money back.

That's what I did and then decided to keep it anyway.

 

[frankthedm]

1) Doom was way too difficult to win as the marine.

Doom and decent are quite similar, but they definitively differ on the difficulty. Indeed after you look at Descent's rules, it will kinda look like DooM was used as a beta-test for Descent.

That said, the players are forced to take certain play styles and if they can't be bothered to do things like

• Carefully plan their turns before acting.
• Take efforts to reduce Monster Spawning.
• Take tactical options over fun / instant gratification options

Then they would be DooMed.

DooM is hard even with a good grasp of the system. Decent takes some learning, but has a much more swingy difficulty, with some complaints of it being too easy for tactical players. Notably the difficulty pendulum swings on the first treasure chest the party gets. Before that the overlord can get good hits in on the Heroes possibly making that dungeon unwinnable. After that, the party will often begin to swiftly build momentum.