So what is the news from gen con?

The day 2 video said there was descent news in the in flight report but didn't say what it was.

As far as I know the only news where:

- Descent 2nd is still number one seller of board games

- there will be more co-op expansions for Descent

- "Nature's Ire" 2nd POD will be avaliable before the end of this year and more to come

No new title announced or shown, or maybe I missed something

strange nothing was announced so far. Curious.

maybe after the event ? a big new thing ?

There a moment now I think they will do co-op expansion with monsters, and cards to allow players to uses thoses in "classic" game.

I'm honestly really, really surprised there was no reveals for Descent. If it's their #1 game, you'd think they'd want to hype up something new for it. They have been releasing expansions rapidly... but I always buy them without second thought anyway. Hopefully they announce a big box expansion within the next month or two.

Descent isn't their #1 game though, I'm pretty sure that's X-Wing. Netrunner is up there too.

Actually, it was announced at Gen Con that Descent is the number 1 selling board game. X-Wing (which is not a board game) is the number 1 selling overall game.

day 3, and yet nothing ?

Really strange ! see 2 possibilites :

1- they didn't had the stuff to show

2- they are hiding something big

Throughout the year:

- Manor of Ravens released

- A couple new Co-Op scenarios got released

- 4 Hero and Monsters collections

- Constant stream of new LT's

Our wallets need time to heal.

Also on a side note, there is less "sky is falling" talk in the Descent forums than the X-wing forums whenever something new comes out.

My wallet doesn't needs time to heal. And even if it does, I do not.

the more expansions I get, the better I go. And "pause" with not the same number of class for each archetype is strange.

Hope they will at least announce 1 more small boxes, even if I hope they will announced more things as they used to do for 2-3 more years

Throughout the year:

- Manor of Ravens released

- A couple new Co-Op scenarios got released

- 4 Hero and Monsters collections

- Constant stream of new LT's

Our wallets need time to heal.

Also on a side note, there is less "sky is falling" talk in the Descent forums than the X-wing forums whenever something new comes out.

didn't you forgot nerekhall ?

My wallet doesn't needs time to heal. And even if it does, I do not.

the more expansions I get, the better I go. And "pause" with not the same number of class for each archetype is strange.

Hope they will at least announce 1 more small boxes, even if I hope they will announced more things as they used to do for 2-3 more years

I think you might be in the minority, Rugal. A lot of people felt that the low quality of Nerekhall had a lot to do with the fact that they pumped out something like 20 additions to the game over the course of a year, and quite a number of people (myself included) seemed to be of the opinion that FFG should slow down and take time to get things right rather than just pumping out product as quickly as possible.

I would be perfectly happy if they put out a big box next summer, and nothing till then. I would love to see them hit it out of the park again rather than get a box full of "hmm... really?"

My wallet doesn't needs time to heal. And even if it does, I do not.

the more expansions I get, the better I go. And "pause" with not the same number of class for each archetype is strange.

Hope they will at least announce 1 more small boxes, even if I hope they will announced more things as they used to do for 2-3 more years

I think you might be in the minority, Rugal. A lot of people felt that the low quality of Nerekhall had a lot to do with the fact that they pumped out something like 20 additions to the game over the course of a year, and quite a number of people (myself included) seemed to be of the opinion that FFG should slow down and take time to get things right rather than just pumping out product as quickly as possible.

I would be perfectly happy if they put out a big box next summer, and nothing till then. I would love to see them hit it out of the park again rather than get a box full of "hmm... really?"

How was Nerekhall low quality (apart from the hero-minis)? I thought most of the people see it as the best expansion so far.

I haven't heard anyone claim that it's the best expansion so far... I found everything in the box pretty boring. A LOT of the stuff is just a retread of stuff they've already printed. One of the items is actually just the Soul Stone from Labyrinth of Ruin, and none of the items struck me as particularly interesting. Shadowmancer isn't bad, but again, it's good because the 3-xp card is just a more powerful version of one of the best OL cards.

The classes are a mixed bag - not a good bag, though. Shadow Walker isn't bad but it doesn't do anything particularly interesting, and isn't well thought out. For example, one of the 3-costs teleports you to a shadow soul... but your shadow soul is almost always either a few spaces away from you or right behind you. It's not an interesting ability. Skirmisher is another poorly-thought out class - its theme is supposed to be dual-wielding but it doesn't really do anything for that theme. However, it does have two incredibly good 3-cost abilities that happen to combo spectacularly well with one another, so I can see playing it - but because it's powerful, not because it's interesting or strategically challenging. And while you're comboing them you want the biggest axe you can get - you certainly don't want to be dual wielding.

Bard has the least well thought out starting ability in the game - according to FFG it amounts to a free stand-up for anyone within 3 spaces of the healer at the end of the healer's turn. I've seen it at work, and it's insane - it basically eliminates "knock down the heroes" as a way for the overlord to win. In one of the Shadows adventures I literally knocked down their entire team three turns in a row, and they just didn't care - it didn't stop them from achieving any of their objectives, because all they had to do was stand up the bard and everyone else stood up for free. And conjuror... oh god this guy is a mess. He's boring to play, his abilities stink, and it requires the same level of micromanagement as the (FAR superior) Geomancer.

None of the IDEAS in Shadows are bad - but the implementation is terrible, across the board. The rules and cards are written with FFG's trademark lack of attention to detail, inability to template or keyword, etc, etc - although they stepped it up a bit in Shadows, making some new and fascinating mistakes. There were even a few flat-out "it's clear nobody bothered to proofread this set" typos.

Oh, and according to SteveO, the actual physical card quality is lower than in previous expansions, although I don't have that level of attention to detail.

On the flip side, I found the quests themselves moderately fun, and am glad they are trying to push the game design forward a bit. I think the Changeling mechanic is neat, and Rat Swarms are a good monster design, if perhaps a bit OP. In general, though, I found the overall quality of the set to be astoundingly low.

I think the big news for Descent is just Imperial Assault. Seriously.

Yeah, sure pal, you'll still get your big box expansion for Descent at some point, but by the time it gets released Imperial Forces will have the third miniature version of Leia in bikini released, a H&M pack with 37 Ewoks in it, and so many mechanisms that are plain better than the ones in Descent that you can just go ahead right away and shelf the whole thing, and wait for Descent 3.0 which is basically due once the IA fan base's seriously shrinked, with all Star Wars characters already printed with different flavors of clothing and weapons. and so many tiles so you can put them on every wall in your gaming room and still have enough to play the game. I reckon in 50 years time, once the Star Wars generation has started to fade away. Fantasy will still be there one way or another? Should we ask FFG to bring in the Lord of the Ring franchise to Descent so we can maintain interest to the game? Should we have a crossover with Star Wars and have fantasy versions of Bobba Fett and a 4x4 Jabba the Hutt Lieutenant into Descent?

I cannot see how this announcement can be any good to Descent. Sure, they will carry on releasing content for us, but the attention will clearly shift to IA. Had this game been a sci-fi version of Descent without the SW franchise then it would have been a different thing in my reckoning. I can understand that FFG want to use the license as much as possible, but copying Descent to make the same thing plus the franchise is just so dirty. I feel backstabbed. I hate how they used the franchise to kill a game. People will come in and say "come on man, it just won't kill it", but yes it will, not in one blow, but you will soon or later notice how quickly Descent will fall in popularity.

To Amoshias

I'm not according to you at all !

As a player, I think sometimes that the expansions are comming a bit too fast (the most notable example is for lieutenants packs, agents are too much of unusable most of time), but as me, I can't wait for expansions to come, and 3 a year (2 small and 1 big) sounds good with the lieutenant. As I do not care at all about cooperative play, I ignore it totaly.

But Nerekhall is not a bad expansion, and in some ways, maybe one of the better :

Monster a really good and inventive : rats, changelins, and Hulks are new and plays really differently from other monster, that's cool.
Classes are some good, somes not. The bard needs some balances, but the shadow hunter is really OP. The illusionnist is strange, but since I hate the geomancer, it's a good alternative one.
The skirmisher is okay.

The shadowmancer class is strange, it can be really powerfull and really weak, I don't like OL cards with tests, and all cards should give at least 1 card to draw if all the tests of the cards are passed.

The voyage cards are remade, and more in the advantage of the OL, so that's cool

About the item, yes, it's like the relic of LoR, but in act2 and a good way to have it outside of LoR with luck. That's not a bad idea.

The real disapointement is that none of the farrow family appears in the whole campaign.

I only wished there was a 3rd basic deck

Finnally, the worse expansion to me is indeed : Lair of the Wyrm. The relics are way to powerfull for heroes and weak for OL, I don't like at all (if not hate) the heroes classes, and the items are broken (runeplate)

About expansions, the game is made for. Now, we are all waiting for expansions, and like magic, as long as the game as some, it lives ! When they would stop, we would have so much stuff that anyone could do his own campaign. Where the problem to not take time ? I do not see the point.

To Indalecia

the announcement of Imperial Assault is the worse thing ever ! I hate Star wars universe, and now the game will be before descent, and the expansions games will take way much time to come. If the game works, descent will be forgotten, and I will be so angry ! I only hope that if will not work as they intend, the better would be the game to be abandonned, and descent back.

We will see, But I already hate that ******* game !

In case some people have missed it, Imperial Assault IS Descent 3.0 from both functional and business perspective.

It's clear that Imperial Assault is surfing on the wave of Descent, an already proven game and still very popular. Take the best parts of it, improve the few things that were a bit crappy, and replace the minis by Star Wars collector figures, which every SW addict will be wanting to invest in even if it implies ignoring the rest of the box contents. They target both Descent players to invite them to diversify their gaming experience, and of course all Star Wars afficiodanos. People who really love Descent are likely to invest in Imperial Assault bar the few who dislike the franchise. More money, and a streamlined way to support two major product lines at the same time. They just need to replicate what they are doing currently for Descent. Content shouldn't be a hassle to throw out given the huge story material around the Star Wars license.

A fantastic way to promote a new game is to build upon one that has been working great, dust it off (theme-wise Descent is not a new game really) and put the most awesome franchise in the world on top of it, GenCon package, profit. There will be a huge wave of customers willing to purchase the product.

I don't blame FFG for making this marketing decision.

However, one game has to be inevitably ahead of the other one, and Descent will unfortunaley bite the bullet and become second in priority next to Imperial Assault. Even worse, because of the competition, Descent will lose further attention and lose fans because there is simply a much better alternative to it currently on the market. Think Arkham Horror and Eldritch Horror. Oh I'm sure Descent will still get played in many circles, but we should be able to see a noteable change in the way the product is supported and within the community. Fans may therefore lose interest in a subpar product since all design efforts and support are clearly going to go towards the new game. Want a new LoS mechanism? Look no further, here's Imperial Assault!

You would probably ask yourself why FFG would take the risk for bringing down (or putting in decline, whichever terminology you prefer) one of their flag games. But when you think about it, there is no loss. FFG know well Imperial Assault will get the huge success people are predicting, probably even better than Descent actually, They know that a great % of Descent fans will equally invest into Imperial Assault, building further up the online community for the new game, and that the rather small % of Descent fans who dislike the Star Wars franchise will carry on buying Descent products anyway as they have always done.

But think about Descent now. Sure, you can throw out tiles for every type of landscape there is, all monsters from various mythologies, 57 more elves each with unique bow made of 100 different trees etc. But in terms of skills and mechanisms, don't you feel like we have gone deep already? Not implying that we've reached the bottom of the bag by any means, but don't you think given the latest releases that the quality and creativity has somehow reached a certain level of stagnation? Sure, you can design a new type of Healer and come up with a cool OL card, but isn't it all overlapping in a way in order to preserve game balance? The further you go, the more you affect game balance and the gaming experience in general. Going off with a new mechanism can break a game, as we've seen with BBTM. So following this logic, as the risk grows bigger to introduce flaws to an established game like Descent, can it possibly be a part of the decision that FFG think it would be easier to design content for Imperial Assault than Descent? Or at least start fresh, which probably allows for early mistakes instead of having to integrate a new mechanism to 253 others, plus that said mechanism has to provide something to the game experience?

I know this is all a business, but considering Descent and its current competitors on the market, I find very strange to see this type of decision being made, unless they think the sci-fi title they just announced can compete with its fantasy competitors. Again, the franchise matters a huge deal in the equation.

I guess it is still possible that it won't disrupt Descent as much as I think it will, at least in terms of release frequency and support (although quality may well decrease), but I don't think for a second the fan base will remain intact once Imperial Assault gets released on the market.

And finally, I think it would have been slightly more diplomatic towards the Descent fan base to announce this game BEFORE GenCon, even if it would have implied not revealing its contents before GenCon. They could have gotten their surprise effect in another way than this. Because right now it feels like a "take this right in your face, pal" to every Descent fan expecting news for his favorite game and only being provided with the information that the exact same game is being released by the same company with all the goodies and the "Star Wars awesomeness" combined. Feels tough on us.

Let us hope now that descent and Imperial assault can live together at the same time !

I'm not so sure that descent is lacking of some sort of ideas. For sure, there's nothing really new, but is it really a problem ? Sometimes, too much of new ideas kills the main game, so I like the way it goes.

Descent was meant to be the game I was searching : With a ton of figures to chooses from, a ton a classes, cards, and stuff, so I would have the biggest game ever. But now my dream is going away ...

I liked the "board live game". Even if it will finishes as many games and the base content would be useless, the game is living !

by the way, what is BBTM ?

by the way, what is BBTM ?

Blood Bowl Team Manager, the game of fantasy football by FFG. Their latest expansion "Foul Play" was meant to introduce "great fun" by allowing even more cheating into the matchups, but it ended up ripping apart all that remained of strategy in this game, and putting up so many restrictions that basically when I play this game nowadays I don't even care anymore about my plays or my hand since anything I do can be completely blanked out by raw randomness. The "great fun" is there if you want complete chaos in a game, for me as a strategist it killed my experience completely. BBTM is awesome otherwise, the expansion crushed it imho. If you want to play with the new teams you are stuck with the new mechanisms, so that also enforced the expansion into the game so ignoring the new rules that are destroying it is not an easy thing to implement..

I see. I'm not a fan of GWS stuff, so I never play it once.

But I see what you're talking about. I don't think descent will into this. But Imperial assault could indeed be eaten by its own succes, and I wouldn't at all !

Well it's always a risk, because FFG could theoratically introduce an overpowered class so that all other ones would become instantly redundant. Typically something players could abuse or combo off with. That would kill a good chunk of the combinations you can have in this game. Same goes for monsters, if they introduced a monster type that is always going to be a better choice than 90% of all other monsters then why bother releasing more subpar monsters? If FFG don't do proper game balance testing then you could end up being in such situation.

I don't care about GW stuff either, nonetheless playing football with Orcs and Undead is a funny thing to experience

That already the problem : Giants are too powerfull.

but hopefully the icons are not always present, and the game is still a game and players could also try and plays for the fun, not to be the better combo and the best of the beast.

At least I see the game like that. I like to try some things, not finding always what's the best

To Amoshias

I'm not according to you at all !

As a player, I think sometimes that the expansions are comming a bit too fast (the most notable example is for lieutenants packs, agents are too much of unusable most of time), but as me, I can't wait for expansions to come, and 3 a year (2 small and 1 big) sounds good with the lieutenant. As I do not care at all about cooperative play, I ignore it totaly.

But Nerekhall is not a bad expansion, and in some ways, maybe one of the better :

Monster a really good and inventive : rats, changelins, and Hulks are new and plays really differently from other monster, that's cool.

Classes are some good, somes not. The bard needs some balances, but the shadow hunter is really OP. The illusionnist is strange, but since I hate the geomancer, it's a good alternative one.

The skirmisher is okay.

The shadowmancer class is strange, it can be really powerfull and really weak, I don't like OL cards with tests, and all cards should give at least 1 card to draw if all the tests of the cards are passed.

The voyage cards are remade, and more in the advantage of the OL, so that's cool

About the item, yes, it's like the relic of LoR, but in act2 and a good way to have it outside of LoR with luck. That's not a bad idea.

The real disapointement is that none of the farrow family appears in the whole campaign.

I only wished there was a 3rd basic deck

Finnally, the worse expansion to me is indeed : Lair of the Wyrm. The relics are way to powerfull for heroes and weak for OL, I don't like at all (if not hate) the heroes classes, and the items are broken (runeplate)

About expansions, the game is made for. Now, we are all waiting for expansions, and like magic, as long as the game as some, it lives ! When they would stop, we would have so much stuff that anyone could do his own campaign. Where the problem to not take time ? I do not see the point.

To Indalecia

the announcement of Imperial Assault is the worse thing ever ! I hate Star wars universe, and now the game will be before descent, and the expansions games will take way much time to come. If the game works, descent will be forgotten, and I will be so angry ! I only hope that if will not work as they intend, the better would be the game to be abandonned, and descent back.

We will see, But I already hate that ******* game !

Calm down man, the sky is not falling. Look, I think that IA is the best thing that could have happened right now to descent. I never agreed with the direction that FFG choose to go with Descent 2 in the first place. Sure, tactical miniatures games are fun (so is Descent 2) but the expansions have felt rehashed and stale and the game just does not live up to it's namesake. Let Imperial Assault debut, garner support, bring more player interest back to the table and yes, let Imperial Assault phase out Descent 2. From what I saw of the demo, I believe Imperial Asssault to be the better tactical experience, so let the game bring in newcomers to the gaming community and become the flagship tactical minis game. This will allow FFG game designers to go back to the drawing-board and create Descent (3rd,) complete with a fresh new additude and proper dungeon delving experience.

Calm down man, the sky is not falling. Look, I think that IA is the best thing that could have happened right now to descent.

It is ! The only game I care is descent, so i'm worried

No, because this game will have all the attention, and no more descent will.

And on top of that, it's star wars universe. If only it was Twilight imperium, I would have taken this differently

Well it's always a risk, because FFG could theoratically introduce an overpowered class so that all other ones would become instantly redundant. Typically something players could abuse or combo off with. That would kill a good chunk of the combinations you can have in this game. Same goes for monsters, if they introduced a monster type that is always going to be a better choice than 90% of all other monsters then why bother releasing more subpar monsters? If FFG don't do proper game balance testing then you could end up being in such situation.

I don't care about GW stuff either, nonetheless playing football with Orcs and Undead is a funny thing to experience

This has already happened, to some extent - Treasure Hunter is basically a more powerful reprint of the Thief class, which was definitely on the weaker side but hardly so terrible it needed to be replaced.

On the other hand, Kobolds ARE the monster type you're talking about - there is virtually never a reason to use a different monster group if Kobolds are available.

On the other hand, Kobolds ARE the monster type you're talking about - there is virtually never a reason to use a different monster group if Kobolds are available.

With the reinforcement rule, Giants are always a better choice.