So here's the deal....

I've gotten the bug to paint my entire Descent 2nd Ed collection, (All big and and small box expansion included) and host a campaign weekend at the house. The Mrs is away and I get a "Hallpass" to play nonstop over a weekend.

Couple of questions for those of you out there that have much more experience with gameplay than me. Other than the "once in awhile" quest, I've never done an entire campaign.

1. Which campaign should we play? Which one is the funnest for a group of people who just want to have fun and drink beer playing a good campaign of Descent?

2. It's a weekend event, so if I wanted to run 2 simultaneous campaigns (might have 8-10 people over to play) can I do it effectively with everything that I have? (Pretty much everything minus 1 hero pack and the Lieutenant packs)

3. Can we complete a campaign over a weekend with 10-12hr gameplay both days?

4. And which are the best hero combo's for my situation? Which one's do you think have the best chance of winning?

5. On the other side of that coin....which is the best growth tree for the overlord to gain in his/her cards? Benefits of certain paths you have taken?

Thank you for your thoughts!

Once done with painting I'll post some pics. I'm pretty proud of the work I've done!!!

1. They're all fun, but the Shadow Rune has the most confusing rules and is the most poorly written, so I'd say to play either Labyrinth of Ruin or Shadow of Nerekhall instead.

2. Of course you can run multiple simultaneous groups, but you'll probably have to clean up the board because you'd need to re-use pieces. I always end the night of a campaign immediately after an encounter and record data to the letter on a piece of paper. I write down all the equipment and abilities each player has, along with their class and hero. I write down their current hit points (easier between quests rather than encounters) and conditions, along with search cards picked up. I record rumor cards played, hand of overlord cards and cards played, threat tokens and deck, etc. etc. etc.

That way when the group comes back to play more, you can just set it right back up where you left off. I usually have 4-5 campaigns running simultaneously, and they can take a month or more to finish.

3. Campaigns usually take around 20 hours to finish, longer with new groups. It's unlikely you'll finish one in 10-12 hours.

4. There are so many good hero options and build choices. This is too wide open a question to answer.

5. The overlord cards should be chosen based on hero choices, to punish weaknesses. Same goes for which lieutenant, unless you're choosing Baron Zachareth's deck, in which case it doesn't matter, it's the right choice.

If you are going to run more than one simultaneous campaign, and you are going to run encounters from each campaign at the same time, then you will need multiple base game sets at least, because you will need multiples of map tiles, multibple overlord decks, etc.

For record keeping, I find that using the included sheets works for basic info (gold, xp, wins, etc.), but for everything else, I prefer to lay each player's play area out clearly on the table, and to take a photo of each play area with my phone. That way it is very easy to set everything up exactly the way it was during the last play session, and I can reorganize everything back into the box after each session, in case a different group wants to play in the mean time.

The group I'm playing with is about to finish their second campaign- we played the Shadow Rune, and then Labyrinth of Ruin. Each quest was played on a separate night, and each night took 3-4 hours. We have some meticulous planners among us.

I would think you'd be better off running campaigns sequentially, rather than simultaneously, for the limitations above. Alternately, you could probably finish two mini-campaigns.