Are you kidding me? What star wars analog gamer/dungeon crawl enthusiast wouldn't want a Star Wars Descent game? This is exactly what I would want from FFG as their first official Star Wars board game.

There is still plenty to go as far as Star Wars and FFG are concerned. This is only the beginning...

This is what I was going to ask is this a Decent type game. =)

As a fan of Descent, a gamer in his mid-thirties with a family who wishes he had time for a 600 page RPG experience, fan of the WEG and SAGA versions of the SW RPG (prior to family), this is probably the best thing that could happen. These plug and play pseudo-rpg's like Descent are just awesome for gamers who are getting older and have meaningful lives. To people like me (and there are a lot of us) this is more than a Tactical Miniatures Game, they are a window into something we wish we could still do, but simply cannot devote the time anymore. I say thanks FFG!

I assume you did not try the Dungeon World Indie RPG, there you could create story on the fly, without much preperation, its a simple system, and provides you with a far deeper opportunity than this type of boardgames. I played now several campaigns of Descent (1st and 2nd Edition) and i got disappointed over time, the reason is that with a tactical game i need to be able to make tactical choices, for positioning. I need to take advantage of heights, of distance and for example an engaged rule. When this is all stripped down from the game, it runs down who has the better dice rolls, if the dice cant be influenced by positioning there is no point in a combat system. Descent 2 made it so, that the Overlords miniatures didnt scale well throughout the campaign and the balancing got very bad, this was counterd by a mission design which was at the end often raceconditions between the minis of the overlord vs the the minis of the players. Sometimes the final mission was decided by better dice rolls.

I think its okay to have a good amount of luck in the game, but if you compare the fight system from descent with the one provided in Battlelore, you see that the system of Battlelore is far superior, because it allows to even the odds with strategic decisions. (Flanking, morale in your troups)

Also the campaign system needs to heavy reworked to keep the balancing intact, this is a major problem, and before FFG doesn’t show that this is addressed, i wont buy a reskin of that game system, which has nevertheless some very good ideas included. (Especially the surge /distance system is very neatly done.) Each RPG system does a campaign scaling mechanism, and it could be done in Descent a swell, also the small vs large miniature problem should be addressed, because its often far more beneficial to bring large monsters to the table vs. a group of small monsters. )

I wish I had played Descent before so I could contribute to the discussion a little more. Having said that, I couldn't be more psyched to play this game. I have always been curious about Descent, but I never picked it up due to the fact that I know I would have trouble gathering players for it. However, now that Imperial Assault is coming out, I know I will be able to rope in players just because of the Star Wars title.

People can call FFG cheap for putting a Star Wars skin over Descent and selling it as a new game. I think it is freaking smart. It gives players who are not necessarily interested in the high fantasy setting a new way to experience this type of game.

I'm not sure I understand the anger of the OP. This isn't meant to be an X-Wing level game, where you have squadrons facing off against one another. The Battle of Yavin/Hoth/Endor it's not, nor is is meant to be.

It's tactical squad missions...trying to set charges on the shield generator protecting Death Star 2 in Endor....or trying to rescue Han, Leia, and Chewie from Cloud City...or stealing the plans to the original Death Star....

And I'm pretty sure the Imperial Assault release didn't say anything like "this is our LAST Star Wars game that we're producing! After this, we're done, kaput, fini, no more. So all you folks looking for us to issue a ground-combat game on the same scale as X-Wing can Suck It!"

Meaning....FFG probably has that game in the works right now, maybe coming out next year at Gen Con.

Also, as a huge fan of Descent, I'm pretty excited about Assault. I like the Descent 2.0 system a ton, and I'm really looking forward to seeing it applied to one of my favorite genres. Descent 2.0's narrative quest format would fit in really well in a Star Wars themed campaign.

I think no one's saying anything against having AT-ST coming for X-Wing sooner or later. Both games are complementary, and should give a bigger audience something to play with.

Plus, Assault will lead to Campaigns (not so possible in X-Wing), and the possibilities are endless. The base box will be good, but what's next could be even better