Sliced Bread, Move Over. Descent: The Road to Legend is Here

[Felon]

I posted about Descent in this forum before, and it was ruled OK by the powers-that-be since there was no forum for tactical boardgaming, so hopefully it's still OK.

Anyway, haven't seen any hoopla about it at ENWorld, but the campaign rules for Descent were recently released. You can now play Descent as ongoing game, where the heroes earn XP, acquire new treasures, visit different towns, and explore a world. And the heroes aren't the only ones who evolve over the course of the campaign. Not to be outdone, the Overlord selects one of six different avatars (e.g. the Sorcerer-King, the Great Wyrm). He gains XP with which he can recruit lieutenants capable of seiging cities and attacking the heroes directly. He can also spend XP to buy upgrades for his avatar, his deck, or his minions,

I'd say RtL does a great job of patching every major problem my gaming group had with Descent-namely, the excessive length of its dungeons, and the constant threat of the game ending to a sudden TPK.

Anyone else picked it up?

 

[Dragonblade]

I picked it up. I now have all the expansions for it.

I always liked Descent and my group breaks it out sometimes when our D&D game is called off for whatever reason.

We always wanted some kind of campaign rules so that we could keep playing the same characters and have them level up over time. I haven't played the new expansion yet but it looks like it has the features I have always wanted.

I've seriously thought about dropping my 3.5 game and running a Descent campaign until 4e comes out.

 

[pogre]

I have it and the expansions. It takes a while to set up, but is generally fun. I like Warhammer Quest a little better personally.

 

[Numion]

Do I have to ask?

 

[Asmo]

Probably.

 

[Ruined]

I've always wanted to try Descent, but with time as limited as it is, I don't think I could get my normal group together for a game. I know my FLGS has it and they tend to have board game nights. Maybe I can con someone into a game of it there.

 

[Felon]

I've seriously thought about dropping my 3.5 game and running a Descent campaign until 4e comes out.

That's what we've done in my group. One of my players remarked that it's funny how Descent is turning into a campaign and D&D is turning into a baord game. It might not be an entirely fair comment, but it was amusing nonetheless.

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

Do you get bonus miniatures with each new expansion, too?

I'm still tempted to get Descent - it sounds like it'd do a great job of getting me a bunch of miniatures and templates to help with 4e, plus it's a game all on it's own!

Still, £50 is a lot for a boardgame. Next time I'm in a FLGS I'll have to see if I can check it out.

 

[MerricB]

It's on my wish list - I've been playing a lot of CC:E, ASL, Twilight Struggle, Year of the Dragon, Last Night on Earth and Agricola of late...

Cheers!

 

[Felon]

Do you get bonus miniatures with each new expansion, too?

I'm still tempted to get Descent - it sounds like it'd do a great job of getting me a bunch of miniatures and templates to help with 4e, plus it's a game all on it's own!

Still, £50 is a lot for a boardgame. Next time I'm in a FLGS I'll have to see if I can check it out.

You get miniatures with the first two expansions, but not RtL. They're unpainted though, and it's not really what you buy Descent for.

Now, as for the map tiles, they are perfect for D&D. You also get a lot of cool prop tiles to place on the map.

Understand, we aren't talking about a board game in the sense of moving pieces around based on a random die roll, drawing cards, and having battles that are just a dice like in, say, Talisman. The game is basically the D&D dungeoncrawl with the RP elements stripped out. If you enjoy tactical skirmish combat, the thrill of looting a chest, and upgrading your character, this is your game. And if you wanted to be the evil DM who's up-front and unabashed about his sole goal being to wipe out the other players with his team of monsters, then is also your game.