Hi All,

I got Descent 2e for my 2 teen daughters and I have been struggling to draw them in. We have played First Blood twice -- once with 1 hero each and once with 2 heroes each as a beginning to our first campaign. In between, we played the first encounter of Fat Goblin. In each, they have won but I pulled a few punches.

Here are my questions:

Reanimate: I found the rules a bit lean on this. As the necromancer, does there need to be a dead monster in order to reanimate? If the reanimate familiar is killed, can the necro reanimate it again or do they need another dead monster?

LOS: do friendlies block LOS? I thought the answer was no but then my daughter got a skill card for her bowman that said she can ignore friendlies blocking LOS.

Masquerade Ball: Ugh! We must have done something very wrong because encounter 1 was a stupid joke. The heroes started, jumped on the 2 guests nearest them, both were nobles. I had my zombies jump on 2 guests in their room, 1 cultist, 1 noble. Goblins jumped on 2 in the library, both cultists and 2 in the hallway, 1 cultist, 1 noble. The rest piled into the hallway entrance to block the heroes intercepting the escorted nobles. That was just he first turn. We all realized before the second turn even started that what was going to happen was they were easily going to escort their two guests away this turn, I was going to get my two guests away and that fighting was superfluous. That is exactly what happened and the entire encounter took longer to set up then to play and all of us were disappointed. Even though they made a successful roll to secure Theodir, all of us were unsatisfied. Please tell me we did something wrong because this was a horrible play session in trying to hook my daughters on this game.

Necromancer- No, you do not need a dead monster to summon the reanimate. It is a familiar treated as a hero figure.

All figures block LOS, friendly or not.

You may have played masquarade ball wrong, but you may have just had bad luck. I would to look at the quest guide.

I read, re-read and read the quest guide a third time and found nothing wrong. At the end of the first turn , the heroes had 2 nobles, I (as the OL) had 2 nobles, all of the flesh moulders had been revealed and I had packed the hallway with zombies, goblin archers and flesh moulders. Nothing was going to change that--we played it out and that is exactly what happened.

It seems like that encounter in badly broken.

On Masquerade Ball, the heroes aren't actually supposed to try to retrieve guests on the first turn, they're supposed to blitz the monsters and try to take out as many as possible. The monters can't really grab the ones the heroes didn't pick off and escape with them next turn, so the heroes can always retrieve the ones near the entrance later.

In a 4 hero game, who has the advantage in retrieving the guests depends on the group makeups and monster choices. A runemaster with exploding rune makes this encounter much tougher for the overlord, as does Syn'drael's heroic feat, as a couple of examples. You want to force the overlord to spend his actions uncovering guests while you just murder monsters, and if you flip over the 2 nearest you in the first turn and uncover flesh moulders, you probably just lose. Heroes should ignore guests and try to kill monsters kidnapping guests and everything else as fast as possible on this one, then try to rescue the guests later. For the overlord on this one, the ideal (if no runemaster) is just to choose monsters that are small but come in big numbers (like goblin archers). I Generally run with Goblin Archers and Fire Imps for this reason on this encounter. The Runemaster's exploding rune ability makes it very hard to do that well in a map with such tight chokes, so you're forced into less efficient monster choices. Regardless, I think, if played correctly, this quest is in the heroes favor.

Playing the heroes well is mostly about action economy and priorities, and timing of decisions. Even if the heroes only rescue 1 or 2 guests, they still have a reasonable shot at winning the encounter.

As a general rule of thumb, quests which encompass 2 encounters are favored for the heroes in the first encounter. The reason for that is that the second encounter is generally unwinnable for heroes if the overlord wins the first part and plays the second part out well. Thus, as overlord, I usually don't bother to try to win encounter 1 and just stockpile my overlord cards for the second encounter, while trying to do as much harassing damage and other annoying things as possible in the first part.

Another hero option if you can blitz the first room... take 2 tanky heroes (say disciple and knight) and block the door that the overlord can use to take out guests. You will have a little bit of an issue with the vampiress forcibly moving you... but generally it works well and really drains some action economy out of the overlord. If they monsters stack up to attack your human shield... they are concentrated to be taken out with blast.

Moral of the story... all these suggested hero strategies involve blitzing out the first room. If you do anything else you are asking for a "dicey" outcome and if the overlord wins encounter 1, encounter 2 is impossible.

Thanks for all of the responses!

We replayed Masquerade Ball and my girl's ran to the hallway leading to the exit. Goblin archers scampered behind them with zombies and flesh monsters surrounded them. My troops where weak and obviously not whittling the heroes very fast but Lady Farrow was a big help. In the end, my guys got away with zero nobles but we bloodied the heroes noses.

Does the damage to the heroes and OL deck carry over to the next encounter (part 2)? I didn't see anything specifically mention that but it did say that all damage is healed when the heroes go back to Ahrynn.

Thanks for all of the responses!

We replayed Masquerade Ball and my girl's ran to the hallway leading to the exit. Goblin archers scampered behind them with zombies and flesh monsters surrounded them. My troops where weak and obviously not whittling the heroes very fast but Lady Farrow was a big help. In the end, my guys got away with zero nobles but we bloodied the heroes noses.

Does the damage to the heroes and OL deck carry over to the next encounter (part 2)? I didn't see anything specifically mention that but it did say that all damage is healed when the heroes go back to Ahrynn.

Page 18 of your rulebook, under Quests

When moving from one encounter in a quest to the next (but not the next quest):

Heroes keep all damage

Hereos recover all fatigue

Heroes keep all conditions

Each Hero flips their sheet faceup (gets their heroic feat back)

Heroes keep all search cards, all used search cards remain flipped

All knocked out heroes may perform a stand up action for free

Overlord keeps current hand of overlord cards

Many thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

Our group always has to search for this as well. Wishful thinking , I guess.

"I swear... we all heal up, it's the fatigue that stays,... right?"