My husband and I just started playing Descent last week and we have run into a few problems that I cant seem to find the answer to online or in the rules.

1. While playing with a Shadow Dragon, what does it mean for the hero to spend a surge to attack? Is that surge only used to let an attack happen, or does that mean the hero gets to use the surge ability on their card in that attack?

2. If a hero wins the quest or encounter, do they automatically get to collect any remaining search tokens still on the board? This was especially prevalent in First Blood because there are no campaign advantages that would encourage the OL to move his Ettin any further than to block the entrance of the fire pit. Thus ending the round before the Heros can get to the search token behind him.

Welcome to the game, it's nice to see new blood joining our community.

1. A person attacking the dragon, while adjacent it, needs to spend a surge for the attack to hit.

2. No, when the quest ends all remaining search tokens are lost. There is a plot deck that triggers events off of unsearched tokens.

Thanks,

Cursain

Exactly. To further elaborate:

1. If the heroes attack dice rolled do not have a surge on them, then the attack is a miss.

If he does have surges, he needs to spend one of them to make the attack not miss. This means that if he rolled 1 surge, he need to use that to hit the dragon, and it can't be used for any other abilities.

2. As said above, they are lost.

One step further- the hero does NOT need to be attacking the dragon for shadow to kick in. The text is: A hero adjacent to this monster that declares an attack must spend 1 surge or the attack is considered a miss.

So, if a hero (or something treated as a hero for monster abilities, like a reanimate, wolf, or brightblaze) is adjacent to a shadow dragon, all of his attacks gain "surge: this attack is not a miss." If he does not spend that surge, the attack is a miss. Spending the surge means losing the surge, as a single surge cannot be spent multiple times.

That's exactly what I thought the rules were but my husband, playing as 4 Heros, disagreed with me. He said it put him a an unfair advantage. Glad to have that settled as he has already texted from work asking to play more when he gets home. Haha. This forum should be helpful for our future questions as well. Thanks!

haha I still disagree, but I'll concede to the consensus. Reading the card literally says that you have to spend it for the attack not to miss, if I spend it on another buff I am still spending a surge for the attack not to miss. To me, it makes pretty decent sense.

As for the unsearched items, my concern mostly applies to the "First Blood" map. Since both players gain the same benefit win or lose it seems like the only true goal for the first round is to get as many of the search tokens as possible, which undermines the game's written goal of "get the archers to the exit" and "kill Mauler". Plus... simply based on logic... if I've already killed every monster, shouldn't I reasonably be able to search everything in the area? The game rules even say that we "take our time" on the way back, which is why there are no travel events.

That's my side of things haha

That's basically the strategy when dealing with Shadow Dragons. They're weak against ranged heroes.