Just finished out first campaign and a couple questions

By krejaton, in Descent: Journeys in the Dark

We got Descent 2e for Christmas and (finally!) finished our first campaign. It was back and forth and we had a great time. As we played the finale (The man who would be king), a couple questions came up.

Leoric (Necromancer) spent her first action to summon a minion. That minion attacked my lieutenant Lord Merrick. He has Aftershock which causes a willpower test against the hero. Since the minion cannot do attribute tests, the minion died. But Aftershock says it applies to heroes. Do "heroes as figures" suffer Aftershock?

Second question: for her second action, Leoric wanted to re-summon the minion and then have the minion attack my beloved shadow dragon. The issue we wrestled over was can the re-summoned minion get a second attack?

Leoric (Necromancer) spent her first action to summon a minion. That minion attacked my lieutenant Lord Merrick. He has Aftershock which causes a willpower test against the hero. Since the minion cannot do attribute tests, the minion died. But Aftershock says it applies to heroes. Do "heroes as figures" suffer Aftershock?

Aftershock is a monster ability, and thus affects all figures that are treated as heroes as well. However, familiars do not have attributes, so will automatically fail any attribute tests. Familiars also do not have stamina, so they suffer fatigue as hearts. Therefore, if a familiar attacks Lord Merrick it will suffer 1 heart of damage.

However, this is not enough to kill the Reanimate, so I'm not sure why it died in your example. It had just been summoned, so it should have had full health to start.

Second question: for her second action, Leoric wanted to re-summon the minion and then have the minion attack my beloved shadow dragon. The issue we wrestled over was can the re-summoned minion get a second attack?

You didn't quite play this correctly. The reanimate has a separate activation from the Necromancer themself. This activation occurs either directly before, or directly after the Necromancer.

Thus, if your Necromancer spent their first action to summon the reanimate, the hero will then have to complete their own activation, and THEN the reanimate would get to activate after them.

Additionally, the familiar is only allowed one activation per turn under normal circumstances, so if they were alive from a previous turn and activated before the Necromancer and died, and then was resummoned during the Necromancer's activation, they would not be allowed to activate again that turn.

The skill Fury of Undeath circumvents the normal rules by allowing a 'bonus' activation to occur that interrupts the Necromancer's own activation. This is a special case however.

Edited by Charmy

Thanks for the clarification, Charmy. Having never played as a necro (or any hero), I am not as up on their mechanics as I need to be. I was working from the idea that if monster cannot pass an attribute test, they are eliminated, but I see now that reanimates are treated differently. I was counting on my daughters to know the specifics about how to play their classes but that might have been expecting a little much. :lol:

That isn't true about momsters, either- if a monster fails a poison test, for example, it is poisoned- not defeated.y

So who won?

MOMsters?

So who won?

With only 2 rooms, I struggled with placement for my zombies and placed them close to the entrance, which proved disastrous as they all died before the end of the first hero turn.

My shadow dragons did some sweet damage but they fell too quickly to the OP heroes. So it was up to Lord Merrick and Baron Z and whatever zombies I could stagger in.

I decided to whittle them down to minimize their effectiveness, so I focused my attacks and dropped Leoric with Merrick (sidebar: LOVED Merrick's ignite ability!) and then turned my attention to the already-damaged Jain and took her down--two left (Syndreal and Avric). I tried to stay mobile with Baron Z while using the reinforcement zombies in the small hallway to immobilize the heroes.

From there, it was a battle of attrition for a couple turns that I was winning because of wonderful cards like frenzy. Oh and the Dark Charm was a wonderful addition. Merrick was going in for the kill on Avric (3 health) when the dratted X popped up on my dice. Looked desperately for a card to bail me out but no. So I decided to chance it and move in the man who would be king for the kill and he too crapped out on the dice.

Seeing that their chances were waning for victory, Syndreal used his heroic feet (spelled wrong on purpose) and they both piled on The Baron, finishing him.

Edited by krejaton