Almost Vanilla - What expansion stuff integrates well without adding more rules?

Hey all,

I have Descent and all the expansions but I have only played once and none of us had a good handle one the rules. As a result it took forever and we were always looking up stuff. As a result the experience was really hurt by it.

I'm know I can get my buddies back to the table but this time I'm making a big effort to learn the rules well and I'm going to try very hard to keep the game flowing nicely.

As I play test I can't help but get excited about adding more content from all these expansions. At the same time I worry about adding complexities that might slow things down (for a lack of knowing all the new rules).

What (if any) do you think are good expansion components at add the to vanilla game?

Here are some of my thoughts:

I've been adding all OL cards that don't have 'treachery'. I've also excluded OL cards that let me spawn monsters from expansions. Maybe those new monsters would be ok?
Is there an issue with making my OL desk larger (causing it to take longer to cycle the deck for points)?

I've excluded any cards that make reference to an effect, ability, item or status that is not from vanilla descent. So this means I have been able to add some of the treasure and market items.

Do you think I should stick with only vanilla items or am I ok to add a few things.

I would love to hear all of your thoughts and suggestions.

TIA!

By default, adding the new OL cards, and the slower flip that causes, is balanced by the use of treachery to make the OL deck more powerful so you're more likely to get a kill on each pass through. My advice would be to add everything in, and print this out . It's got double-sided reference sheets for the heroes and the overlord, as well as a bunch of other stuff that probably won't be needed (like stats for every hero). The actual rules content of the expansions is pretty small and mostly involves new gimmicks in the form of skills, familiars, and monster abilities. Unless the first session was a complete and utter rules disaster, the distance between vanilla and a game that runs all 3 expansions is pretty negligible (as long as it's the OL who knows the rules, since he's the only one that ever has to worry about the mechanics of treachery).

James McMurray said:

James, in the WoD expantion it states to add the non-treachery OL cards to the base deck . Do you feel this is only when playing with the WoD expansion or is this ment to "fix" some problems with the standard deck like the revised cards were?

The only two non-treachery cards in WOD are Kobold Swarm and Ferrox tribe. I assume they were added to "spice things up" and let the commonest new creatures appear in dungeons. If not using WOD, you have to take them out because the creatures they spawn won't exist. Tomb of Ice also only ads spawns in the non-treachery cards.

Altar of Despair's non-treachery cards are 2 spawns, 2 traps, and 2 events. One of the traps is a reprint of Crushing Block and the other is Paralyzing Gas. Neither of them seem to fix any holes in previous editions. The events are Dark Balm, which removes effect tokens from a monster; and Danger which discards for 10 threat. Those are the only two that might be considered fixes, if AOD's designer felt that effect tokens on monsters (especially stun ones) were too powerful and that OL's didn't get enough threat.

We've only ever played the base set with no expansions and Road to Legends with all of the expansions (with 2 sessions without AOD because it hadn't arrived yet). I can't really say if the new cards in AOD fixed anything. Our experiences with just the base set seemed pretty balanced as long as there were 4 heroes, but we were also new and made mistakes left and right.

I would recommend leaving out the Prolonged Actions mechanic, initially. For new players, that may be a bit much. You can add it later. If it was me, I would include the treachery cards (if you are the overlord, you will be the only player who has to understand the treachery mechanic...it will be just another overlord card to the heroes, albeit a stronger one). But to balance out the added power that the treachery cards bring to the Overlord, you will want to add the Feat cards.

For each treachery card (not point) that you add to the overlord deck, you need to remove one regular overlord card from the deck, like "dodge", for example..

None of these "add-ons" are game-breakingly difficult to incorporate (except maybe Prolonged Actions). There is simply going to be a stiff learning curve phase that you will have to soldier through early on, there's no getting around it....but once you're past it, you will all truly love this game.

Adding additional monsters, treasures or items is kind of a horizontal "stacking" of the complexity level...not so much a vertical one, if that makes any sense. So I'd add them all in, if I were you. If you play a quest or two solo, that will help greatly.

Schmiegel said:

Treachery came out in Well of Darkness. Feats were in Tomb of Ice. Was treachery unbalanced through 2 expansions and the campaign setting?

The Campaign setting...? I thought he was referencing Vanilla Descent. That's not the campaign setting. In my experience, the Overlord gained increasing power with the addition of each expansion up until Tomb of Ice, when Feat cards balanced the equation back out again. So subtracting the campaign setting (which is another story entirely), my answer would be "yes".

Hein99 said:

Yup, I'm quoting myself.

Ok, here's what I ended up doing. I spent a lot of time reading 'everytying' for Descent. And in the end I added almost everything from the WoD, AoD and ToI.

1) When I realized that the OL card deck was suppose to have ALL cards included, that do NOT have 'treachery' that made it easy. So, as a result of this I ended up including spawn cards for monster from the expansions. I'm glad I did this!

When I figured out how 'treachery' worked I realized it was very easy to include and REALLY helps the OL a lot. Basically the rule book from one of the expansions tells the OL how many points of each 'treachery' type he has to start with and you just pick 'treachery' cards of each type that add up to those values. You then count the number of these 'treachery' cards that you now have and before shuffling them into your OL deck you first remove the same number of cards from the base deck (all OL cards that do not have 'treachery' value). During the game there is nothing to think about. Just draw your OL cards as normal.

2) I do NOT exclude cards that referenced effects, abilities or status' that were from the expansions. I started to realize that even though there are sooo many different things like this to remember they are all so cool and work so well. My group did have to pause every now and again when something came up but this wasn't really an issue. It never took long to learn and apply the new 'thing'.

The one thing I didn't add were 'Feat' cards for the Heroes. This was a mistake. At first I thought they had too much to keep track of with skills and weapons and their special abilities. But I think they would have been ok with added Feat cards. I was able to spawn Master Blood Apes because of my Treachery and they didn't get Feats. I'll change that for next time.

To no fault of the expansions the Hero's spent too much time doing anything and eveything except pushing forward. On the very first Vanilla quest they only got to see two areas. Area 1 and 3 before losing all of the CT point. The didn't like my raging master blood apes but we still had a great time. (4 Heroes, 3 players, 3 hours - 2nd game for me and first for them.)

Thanks everyone for you input! It really helped. This one of those games where you really have to take them time to learn and even play test. But the pay off is HUGE! Amazing game!