Descent and me go back a few years. Descent is a whopper of a game to try and take on from any angle but what kind of Dungeonslinger would I be if I didn't take a shot at it? Now for those of you who are not complete board game nerds Descent is a fantasy board game that simulates the dungeon crawling you would normally find in roleplaying games such as Dungeons and Dragons but minus all of the roleplaying. For people that know me they would think that this would be an instant buy for someone like me. This was not entirely true. I remember the first time I seen a copy of Descent on a game store shelf it was at the now defunct Gamers Paradise.
Gamers Paradise in my neck of the woods (Chicago land area) was a chain of mall only game stores where you could get all the Magic cards, board games, and RPGs a boy could want. Their biggest downfall I like to think was they were all so small that there was nowhere in the store you could actually play said games. Anyways I remember being at a particularly small Gamers Paradise and looking at the huge Fantasy Flight coffin box that contained Descent. I was in my early 20s and was sort of in a transition phase. Partying and women were more my interest but the nerd still yearned to be unleashed if at all possible. Gaming wasn’t at the forefront of my life mainly due to not having anyone to play with but I digress. In my hands I looked at this giant of a game, which was heavy as all get out and had a raging dragon battling a group of no good thieves some would call heroes. Upon flipping the box over I would read that it was packed with a modular board and 80 plastic figures. This alone could break the average rpg nerd but something was not right to me.
I realized at that moment that I had huge expectations for this game that I never had even heard of before I picked up this box. Those expectations had come from my childhood from a little something people with taste will call HEROQUEST! Yeah I know that capitol letters are obnoxious but I don’t give one damned. Any kid from the 80s that grew up playing Heroquest will tell you that the game fn rules. I will review that holy grail of mine another day but today we are talking Descent. Who is this pretender to the throne? The box art is cool but it doesn’t reek of 80s metal like Heroquest. It’s got a purple dragon so already it’s doing it wrong. Everybody knows that red dragons beat face harder than everything else. What the hell was up with these minis? They looked flimsy to me and not detailed enough. I don’t know what nerve Descent struck with me that day but it did not get my hard earned duckets.
I wasn’t as into board games at the time as I am today but a couple of years later my girlfriend would get Descent for me for Xmas and I would put this pretender to the test. Upon opening the box I would find myself a bit overwhelmed. There is something about getting tons of cardboard, miniatures and cards in one package that can make even the most jaded gamer excited. The fact that it was a gift also took off a huge edge. How can you not like a gifted board game? I also am a huge fan of Christmas so things were looking up for Descent. I spent the rest of the day hammering out the rules so I could play this with my girl and our family. I read excitedly uncovering new twists and turns at every corner. 20 different heroes, spell cards that could be played by the Overlord (evil player), custom skill cards, and special dice? All things a dungeon crawl nerd wants to hear.
Dungeonslingers Review
Objectives: To break it down for you Descent is a game for 2 to 5 players that pits a party of up to 4 heroes against one Overlord player. For anyone who has ever played Heroquest this seems a little more than familiar. Now the object in most of the scenarios is for the heroes to enter the dungeon, kill as many monsters as they can, and fight the end boss. The entire time they are gaining better and better treasure. Easy enough concept for people who have played dungeon crawlers before. Now the difference comes with the Overlord. In Heroquest the game master villain player would only unveil monsters when the players would search new portions of the map. In Descent the Overlord is always hammering on the players with his deck of Overlord cards. This deck is filled with traps and monsters that he can summon at the drop of a dime. Not only this but the Overlord also has the benefit of controlling the monsters that already populate the dungeon when the heroes uncover them. His goal is to pretty much defeat the heroes enough times that they have to forfeit due to being overwhelmed. Like any good rpg sometimes the dungeon is just too hard and the heroes have to exit to fight again another day.
The Setup: First off depending on how many players there are you have to decide who gets to be the Overlord and who is the party of heroes. On paper it doesn’t seem like there is a loser at this point. Would you A: like to be one of the adventurous heroes who is descending deeper into the dungeon looking for treasure and glory or B: be the evil Overlord who controls all of the evil denizens trying to thwart all of your friends. Like any co-op game that has a gamemaster player most of the time the Overlord will be the person who knows the rules the best especially during the first play through or so. This honor will also usually go to the sucker who shelled out the cash so the rest of there friends can enjoy the bounty. If you like being the GM (gamemaster for noobs) then this is probably ok with you. The only downside to these types of games is sometimes you get stuck with this permanent position.... I digress.
After the group has decided who will be the Overlord then the hero players then select their characters. Now this is really where Descent has potential to shine. I couldn’t believe when I found out that Descent didn’t have just 4 classic archetypes but a whopping 20! That is right there are 20 different heroes. This alone makes me a bit jealous of the players when you are stuck running the game. Now the rules manual instructs the players to shuffle the hero sheets and draw randomly. I prefer this way of play personally due to some of the heroes being out right better than others. You can pick which hero you want to play if everyone agrees to this but I find that with a perfectly chosen party things can be really rough for the GM. Face it if you had a choice between a monster hero like Varikas the Dead, a Lich Warrior who has a ton of hit points, can shoot magic, and never gets tired or Battlemage Jaes who is a elf wizard whose only boon is to equip runes and armor. Who you gonna call? We house ruled that you get a redraw if you don’t like your first hero but you have to keep the second hero regardless. It works out pretty fun this way letting some of the heroes who would never get chosen see the light of day.
At this point everyone will need their starting game tokens. This is the point where you realize how big of a game that Descent really is. There are tokens for everything such as hearts that count as hit points. Gold, silver, and bronze coins that work as game currency. Special order tokens and fatigue counters which allow heroes to take special actions. The Overlord will get threat tokens, which act as a special evil currency that allows him to play cards from his Overlord deck. Hell there is even a token for each player just to remind you who has gone during the turn. The heroes draw cards from three different skill decks depending on what type of character they are. These decks range from fighting, subterfuge, and wizardry. This lets you further customize your player characters a bit more to your liking.
Everyone is ready to play some Descent now right??? Wrong the heroes still have to purchase there starting equipment with their starting cash. They buy their equipment from a shared deck of generic items that is passed around until everyone has got what they want. Then it is the Overlords task to review the mission and build the first section of the game board laying out the tiles, doors, and monsters of the starting area. We like to lay out the entire board with the doors to save a little time because sometimes it can be a pain to stop the game and build a section of the dungeon. For us the pros outweigh the cons of game length vs. the unknown board setup. After this step the Overlord should check the adventure to see how many Conquest tokens the players receive. This is important because conquest tokens are basically respawns the heroes have to share amongst there entire party. Every time you die you lose a conquest token and if you ever run out the Overlord wins the game. That’s right the heroes don’t just fail the Overlord wins! Unlike normal DnD there is a winner and you will know who it is at the end of each session. Now after all of this the Overlord should have chosen one of the missions that are supplied with the game and now you are ready to play!
Mechanics: Descent basically has two phases every turn. The Heroes turn which consists of the players choosing a order in which they activate and then the Overlord players turn. The Heroes player order can change each turn as they see fit to hopefully optimize there move actions and when they are done the Overlord can try time and again to murder them. Sound easy enough well lets look a little deeper.
The Hero Turn: During the Heroes turn each hero basically chooses one action from the four possible actions and does what said action allows him to do. The four actions are Run which allows you to move up to the number of your speed stat doubled. Battle which lets you take two separate attacks at targets of your choosing. An Advance action which will probably be the bulk of your turns is the move and attack action. This action is really a great choice due to the ability of being able to move a couple of steps take an attack and then finish your movement if you have any move points left over. Often overlooked in our games but great when you are on your tactical game. The final option you have is the Ready action. The Ready action lets you make one move or attack and also use one of the four ready tokens. These tokens all improve your chances at survival in some way or the other. You may Aim which lets you get a re-roll on a dice attack. Dodge which lets you re-roll one of the Overlords monster attacks. Guard which lets you interrupt the Overlords turn to make one attack whenever you like(just like Overwatch in Space Hulk for all the cool kids). The final ready order you may take is Rest which allows you to regain all of your fatigue tokens as long as you are not wounded until your next activations. Now what do these fatigue tokens do? Funny you should ask.
Fatigue tokens greatly improve the Heroes survivability by allowing them to cheat or surge just when they need to. I believe its supposed to emulate the great acts you see in action movies or read in fantasy books(I know that im stretching for some of you but just stay with me)! Fatigue tokens let you buy extra dice during attack rolls, take extra movements to inch a little closer to your target to save your parties ass right when they need you and some characters have special abilities that they can activate when they spend fatigue tokens.
Now after the Heroes have finished there activations its on to the Overlords part of the turn. Now what tricks does the lord of the dungeon have up his sleeve to thwart the invading thieves? He has a ton of plastic monsters and cards that are all pretty dastardly( I love when I get to use words like dastardly). Lets face it these so called Heroes are breaking and entering, looking for loots, and murdering all of the Overlords guests and pets. Why shouldn't the OL break every rule in the book to kill every last one of them? Im on his side even when I play the Heroes because if you read any of the backstory to some of these jerks you kind of hope what they got coming to them. Most of these guys are looking for treasure to be famous! Come on, I know most of the missions have some half dead poor soul stumble into the local tavern and ask anyone for help getting back something they lost. First of all what the hell is an old man doing in a Dragons lair to begin with? Second when looking for Heroes does anyone just go to the local bar? These degenerates are all drunkards and party girls looking to score big off of any scheme to get famous quick... I digress but its also one thing that makes this game so good. How little the story matters but the fun shines through anyway.
Overlords Turn: The OL has three parts to his turn. First off they collect Threat tokens equal to the number of Heroes they are up against. Threat act as your evil currency you use to play the cards in your hand. The OL also draws two new cards every turn so they always have new options to smite the Heroes with. For the most part the cards are played on the OL players turn but he does have some out of activation cards like traps and magic that they can use during the Heroes turns. The Overlord can play cards as they see fit as long as they have the Threat tokens.
Next the Overlord can Spawn new monsters if she has a Spawn card in her hand. The OL can only use one Spawn card a turn but most of the time the Spawns generate more then one monster. The only rule to placement is that they have to spawn out of the Heroes line of site. Only dark shadowy corners for these monsters just like I like em!
Finally the best part of the Overlord players turn is the activation of all of the monsters they have in there control. Now the monsters dont have as many options as the Heroes but what they got is gold! Each monster can move and make one attack. That doesnt sound like much but when you realize that all of the monsters have special abilities of there own and that most of them have a synergy if played in the correct order your in pretty good shape. Once you pick up this element of the game then the OL will be looking for the perfect order to move his monsters so that they all benefit. For example if you have a monster that has the Command ability like the Master Beastman you will obtain the ability to give friendly monsters within 3 spaces of the commander a +1 to range and damage. With this knowledge you will likely want to place him in an optimal position to as many monsters that can benefit from this +1 buff as possible. It takes a little while but once the Overlord starts picking up on all of these little things then the Heroes lives become a bit harsher.
Combat: Finally the best part of the entire game and the bulk of everyones turn is going to be combat. Once you have built up the nerve to attack your opponents you pick up the special custom Descent dice (which I personally think are pretty awesome!) that correspond with your weapon of choice and damage bonuses and roll away. After you roll you check to see how many wounds(hearts) you have rolled and then count up the amount of surges(lightening bolts on the dice) you get as well. Surges are basically bonuses you can use for special attacks and damage boosts. Now you compare the wounds to the opponents armor and anything that gets over the target number is the amount of damage you inflict. Now a couple of factors may affect this. If you roll a X you miss the attack all together. If you hit but want to raise the amount of damage you put out you could use fatigue to buy more power dice to increase your chances for more wounds. If you are making a ranged attack you have to count the number of spaces the target is away first. Then you roll the same dice and on the same attack roll you count the numbers on the dice to see if it is equal/greater to the number of spaces your target is away. If you dont get that target number you miss the same as getting a X. Now after you have hit and inflicted wounds the player takes a number of heart tokens away from there character until they run out wounds. If you have no more wounds you are dead. For monsters we just keep track by putting the heart tokens next to the injured monster.
Game Flow: With these rules applied the Heroes will uncover the map that they are on little by little whenever they open a new door. When they do open a new door the game is paused while the OL reveals all the monsters, obstacles, items,Glyphs,and treasure in this area. The Overlord then reads the next part of the story and the game continues. Glyphs are important because they let you fast travel back to town so you can buy and sell loots! Once back in town you can travel back and forth to any of the Glyphs that have been activated in the dungeon. This works well if you need to get out of one area fast or maneuver towards a treasure and get out of dodge. Speaking of treasure whenever a new treasure chest is opened the OL will check the contents and depending on if it is a Bronze, Silver, or Gold treasure the Heroes will choose from the 3 corresponding decks. Sometimes the OL will have a trap set but more often then not the Heroes will get a great item that will help there cause towards victory. Now in my opinion once the Heroes start loading up with loot the power creep in the core game can get a little one sided. If your Overlord is not ever vigilant the Heroes will get really powerful and be hard as hell to kill. Early on the OL can dismantle the Heroes if they stay on them but the longer it goes the better the Heroes chances are. Now one of the biggest issues most people have with Descent is the length of the games. I dont think I have ever sat down for a game that didnt take at least two hours. Descent is a grind that can go upwards of 8 hours if you let it. If you are the type of player that suffers from analysis paralysis this game can take forever. Yet we still play....
Several hours later if the Heroes were crafty enough they will reach the climax of the dungeon and if everyone is playing there part it will be a great finale. Man does this game shine when there is an epic boss fight and the heroes win by the skin of there teeth. Now sadly that is not the case most of the time and the reality is that alot of the time the Heroes will be way more powerful than the end boss by the time they have got to the end of the game and thats no fun for anyone. When you do have that perfect game though man do you get a buzz and cant wait to get back into the dungeon.
Winning: Now either the Heroes win or the Overlord wins but make no mistake about it there is always a winner of Descent. The Heroes win if they complete whatever objective is set for them by the Quest. The base game of Descent comes with 9 different Quests. Each quest has a different map layout, monster locations and winning objectives for the players. These objectives are usually either kill the boss monster or find some artifact hidden within a given dungeon. If the players meet all of the requirements of the Quest they win the game. The Overlords win condition is usually a bit more straight forward. Kill the Heroes enough times that they run out of Conquest tokens. What are Conquest tokens you ask? They are basically respawn tokens that the party shares. At the start of each game the party is given a number of conquest tokens as indicated by the Quest they are playing. Each character has a Conquest token value on his character card and if he is killed during the dungeon crawl the team loses an amount of tokens equal to the characters value. In the base game you start with 5 Conquest in each dungeon. If the Heroes ever run out of Conquest the Overlord wins!
Dungeonslingers Thoughts: I wont argue I feel Descent is a great game but it is not without its flaws. Descents biggest flaw to me is the amount of time it takes to play one session. That alone makes sure it doesnt see as much table time as I would like with my family. The game is just too long. If I had the space in my house to play one or two areas of a Dungeon and leave it until the next time my group wanted to play it would greatly improve the experience. The fact is most people play boardgames because you sit at the table with your friends and family and complete the game in one sitting. Descent is just too damn epic for two hours though. You need an entire day off to get in some good old fashion dungeon crawling in this game. Great for some but not always ideal when you have more than one game you want to play or just other things to do. I find that even though the game pits the Heroes vs the Overlord sometimes I feel like it is more of a iron man competition between all of the players and the game itself. If after 6 hours your Overlord can still hammer on you like it was hour 1 then you are probably having a good session. If everyone just wishes the game was over by the 5th hour then your whole group is in serious trouble. I personally usually burn out near the end if im the Overlord and make decisions based upon game length. For example am I going to play more Beastmen cards near the end of the game when the heroes are so powered up all im doing is slowing down the game. Me personally no but my girlfriend is a better Overlord then me because she wants to win at all cost and will try to break the players through attrition just like this. In a recent game we played she did just this by walking her Demon boss backwards little by little putting beastmen in front of her and using trap card after trap card to brutalize the team.Half of the team was hiding in town recovering while one player just couldnt take it anymore and went to bed!(to be fair it was like 3 in the morning and he was dying of allergies) The boss fight was over an hour by itself but was awesome when the Heroes did win.
The meat and potatoes of this game are awesome! The components are great, the combat is fantastic for the most part.(sometimes the math can get in the way after your brain is fried) Its really fun when both sides are really laying into each other and its not one sided. When everything is running smoothly it feels like a great game of chess with move and counter move.
Im a hobby gamer so not only do I play my games but I trick them out when I can by painting the miniatures, sleeving the cards, and putting the bits into tackle boxes for ease of use. The first two steps are for nerds I know but the last step will save you hours of time during your games if everything is separate in some sort of divider. Believe me it sucks looking for a piece through the hundreds of bits in this coffin when it is organized so you will save yourself so much time if you just spend a couple of bucks on a tackle box or at least ziplock bags to help speed up your game.
The only thing this game is missing in the base game is a campaign of some sort that lets you level up your characters. Its only a bad thing if you really wanted to play the same hero over and over and keep all of your loots. I dont think that was the original intention of Descent when it was invented. I think the appeal is to sit down each time with a different character and get through a hard as hell dungeon with a new set of abilities and still find a way to win. If that is making you all huffy and puffy then fear not at least two of the expansions for the game have got you covered and you can take one hero and play him through a campaign of endless missions.
Descent vs Heroquest: When it comes down to it Heroquest is still my favorite dungeon crawl boardgame of all time. The components were amazing from the figures to the dungeon scenery HQ to me is still untouchable. Its been a couple of years since ive played a game of Heroquest but I remember it standing up pretty well to the test of time. The expansions for the game were also some kind of awesome giving you new monsters and quests to play with. This was something unheard of to me as a kid so I dug it to no end. Now with all of that said it pains me to say I think Heroquest was king up until 2005 when Descent released. The amount of characters combined with new gameplay and having the Dungeonmaster having an active role at all times really gives Descent the edge to me. It always sucked in Heroquest when you were the DM and had to wait for the players to quit bickering about who would go first into the new area. Descent always has the OL scheming which makes them an active player all of the time. Now Heroquest is not the only game that can lay claim to the throne of Dungeoncrawls but I think it is a great representative of all of the Games Workshop versions. Warhammer Quest to me is a better game than Heroquest with its amazing campaign setting but it too has been retired from print. I have not played any of Descents expansions with the campaign play so it is unfair for me to judge it against Warhammer Quest but I will say that right out of the box WHQ is more brutal than Descent and WHQ doesnt even have a Overlord! In the end I will stand in the camp of Games Workshops masterpieces but I know the truth is Descent is the reigning king of Dungeon crawls being readily available online, has tons of expansions and is moving into its second edition very soon. I wish for reprints of all of Games Workshops Dungeon crawls but even if they do happen im sure they will be a small fortune if they do come out.
These days Fantasy Flight has other competition and it is in the form of Wizards of the Coast via its line of Dungeons and Dragons boardgames. To tell you the truth these games are not bad because they have excellent gameplay, components, and are played in about two hours. The one thing I think that breaks it for me is that there is no DungeonMaster player in DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS but some people like that I guess. Descent still gets the nod here from me as well.
Final Review:
This game pretty much brought Dungeon Crawls back for lots of gamers. The amount of hours you can get out of the standard box set alone is staggering.(good or bad its pretty impressive) It doesnt have the soul of Heroquest but if you get a chance to play this game I say take it. If you get bored with the basic game there are 5 expansions and one Quest Compendium that will give you endless hours of gameplay anyway you see fit. Most exciting for me is the 2nd edition is supposed to work on this games biggest flaw being length by breaking up the Quests into portions and have some sort of backwards compatibility that Fantasy Flight still has not spilled the beans on completely. Regardless of all of that I still think this game is amazing and should be played by people who love Dungeon Crawl boardgames.
Scale of 0-10 adventurers : 0 Total Party Kill= horrible dont play - 10: Amazing Dungeon entire party survived and will gladly enter dungeon again due to greedy awesomeness.
Descent : 9 Adventurers survived
Even with its huge flaws this game is at its core a great Dungeon Crawling experience.
Until next time: Dungeonslinger.....
A few words and a second opinion from my girlfriend Battle Princess the other Overlord.....
Battle Princess:The game is a bit too long but the victories feel great! I made one person quit after my boss took one step back so he could bait and trap him by placing a rubble piece where he had stepped. After he climbed out of that crap hole that my overlord dug (I imagined with his big toe as the players were trying to attack him) he failed an attack and quit . Overall, after you wipe the tears from your face due to the exhaustion that you had placed in getting to the end, the ending sucked. The game was fun, the story....yuck. Who in the world would reflect after they kill a big boss? They should have gone to the local pub, found them some tramps and drank until they threw up on their tramps.
Decent : 8 Adventurers survived
I enjoy being the evil Overlord and victory is sweet to kill and create total anarchy for my family but after they get better weapons because of the treasures they get, the fight is pretty much one sided (for the heroes, boo). The story is a bit weak but it's fun to wipe their party out and make them feel totally hopeless in the beginning of the game.
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