New preview: Sea of Blood!

By shnar, in Descent: Journeys in the Dark

It sounds like it has less overall content than RtL. But with the dangling carrot of Nara the Fang, I'll probably attempt to get a first run copy. :)

Does anyone know when they will allow pre-orders for this? I checked the online store and there is a placeholder for it, but there isn't an ability for pre-order. I was hoping they would take my money now while I'm thinking about it so I don't miss out on the cool figure.

Thanx,

Kizan

Less content? Seems like more to me. The boat is just cool! And the extra attackers (i.e. sharks) as well as overland island and sea map, I'm really excited for this one. Especially since you can mix half of RtL's components in, this should be an awesome campaign setting :)

-shnar

Nara the Fang chance!

Looks cool :)

Some thoughts:

Looks like during the ocean encounters, there is wind or current that will cause the boat to drift (white die- upper left of encounter card).

Looks like there's a glyph on the boat. Maybe that's where hero's go to when they use glyphs? maybe they can rest on the boat? (the blanked looking piece near the glyph) and maybe with no Tamalir to destroy, the overlord can destroy their boat. I don't see a ships wheel on the boat, still trying to figure out how someone steers (moves) the thing.

Also looks like the heroes can place cannons on the rubble looking pieces. They can soften up the monsters with cannon fire before they melee the monsters.

Lots of neat possibilities with this one.

Thundercles said:

Nara the Fang chance!

What is the Nara the Fang "chance?"

Veinman said:

It sounds like it has less overall content than RtL. But with the dangling carrot of Nara the Fang, I'll probably attempt to get a first run copy. :)

It's hard to say if there is less content. Sounds like 40 dungeon levels (although it's 10 island encounter levels and 30 dungeon levels), that same as RtL. Looking at the campaign log sheet there are 30 dungeon locations, same as RtL. There are rumors, but we don't know how many. They don't mention if there are legendary dungeons or not.

Certainly there are fewer Avatars and lieutenants. I am not too concerned about that. I have only played 2 RtL campaigns and I feel I have gotten my money's worth. I don't think I'l ever play all 7 Avatars from RtL.

I'm curious about the "streamlined campaign rules".

After reading the preview for SoB, and seeing that there will be seven new L Ts, does this mean that the three generic L Ts cannot be used?

Also, the Avatars from the separate expansions cannot be swapped because of the Overlords Keep is written right on the card....I'm sure you could just ignore that....but who knows what happen.

Also, if this expansion is separate from RtL, its safe to assume we are going to be getting a whole new set of monster cards for the different levels of the campaign....extra cards I don't need :(

With all this being said though, I am looking forward to the expansion and will be glad to add it to my collection of Descent. :)

**** - I was thinking of avoiding this one as I don't really have time for campaigns but now they're dangling Nara the Fang in front of us...perhaps they'll add a little more stuff that can be useful in non-campaign games as well (eg equipment, treasure cards, skills, feats etc).

Who is Nara The Fang? Is that one of the Lieutenants? I don't recognize the name...

-shnar

shnar said:

Who is Nara The Fang? Is that one of the Lieutenants? I don't recognize the name...

-shnar

Nara the Fang was a promo hero from GenCon last year IIRC.

Nara the Fang was a Gencon Promotional figure that FFG produced. She's Ok. Definitely not overpowered. As I'm going to get this set regardless, it's nice that I'll get a little bonus.

Taking a look at the card, I don't think that's the Hero's ship, I think its the enemy ship tied up on the rocks.

On the little card it's the shipwrecked ship that the makes up the Heroes encounter I think. It says if The Revenge (the heroes ship) rams it then the revenge sinks (ending the campaign presumably if the ship is the substitute Tamilir). On the Island layout...I think that is supposed to be the Revenge set up area, but it could be an enemy ship. If that's the case, where would the party's ship fit?

edit: In addition to the sharks in the water, it looks like there are some carnivorous plants too.

Yeah, on that big map its the Revenge.

From the description, it sounds like the first level of each dungeon will always be an outdoor encounter on that large map. That is going to suck, especially with the current Soar rules.

Big Remy said:

From the description, it sounds like the first level of each dungeon will always be an outdoor encounter on that large map. That is going to suck, especially with the current Soar rules.

Soar will hopefully be not that big of a problem any more, as you will probably be able to shoot the soaring monsters with the canons on the "Revenge". But, of course, this is, as almost everything else, pure speculation.

I'm worried that the sea-entrance to dungeon map fills too much.

It looks awfully big for my table :( which folds out to 1,2 meter times 3 meters)

Seems larger than an average RtL-dungeon to be sure, but not larger than a vanilla Descent dungeon.

Big Remy said:

shnar said:

Who is Nara The Fang? Is that one of the Lieutenants? I don't recognize the name...

-shnar

Nara the Fang was a promo hero from GenCon last year IIRC.

Ooo! Excellent! I was wondering how I was going to get a hold of this hero. Now I just need to figure out how to get those 2 Spanish Promo figs...

-shnar

SamVimes said:

edit: In addition to the sharks in the water, it looks like there are some carnivorous plants too.

I thought those were sharks too, but some on BGG think they're just rocks. Which if they are makes me wonder how sharks work.

And carnivorous plants? I just thought they were extra palm trees?

-shnar

I'm just assuming they are carnivorous plants. They look all tentacle-y and not like the palm trees. As for the shark rocks...they look like fins to me, and FFG has already said they are doing sharks.

The one thing that has me worried is that there are only 10 dungeon entrances. Given the standard tactic of collect a bunch of crap on first level (overland) then flee, we are going to be seeing these overland dungeon bits a lot. Much more than the 30 other dungeon levels. Unless FFG change some of the flee rules, I think we are going to be seeing far to much of those 10 entrance levels.

Yeah, I have to admit, 3 treasure chests and 2 glyphs, if you have a good sprinter, you could get a lot of milage out of these maps...

I wonder if the levels are enticing enough to not just flee? Maybe there's fewer dungeon locations on the overland map?

-shnar

SamVimes said:

The one thing that has me worried is that there are only 10 dungeon entrances. Given the standard tactic of collect a bunch of crap on first level (overland) then flee, we are going to be seeing these overland dungeon bits a lot. Much more than the 30 other dungeon levels. Unless FFG change some of the flee rules, I think we are going to be seeing far to much of those 10 entrance levels.

Look at the overland map picture from GenCon www.thegelatinouscube.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/gencon-002.jpg

You can see there are both island and normal land dungeons. It's a little hard to count, but there appears to only be about 10 island dungeons. So I guess we would probably use each one once and not have to repeat.

If the News update applies only to those map locations (which would make sense as there are only 10 and convienently 10 cards) then I'd be cool with that. If it applies to all the dungeons (which admittedly makes no sense) then I'm not too thrilled about that.

Side note, looking at the map there are 6 yellow locations with a big X on them and dashed trails leading from them. Overlord locations maybe? They aren't named, so I presume the OL can pick which he likes.