http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=971

A time to read...

A lot of this we already knew:

• for every 25xp the OL is ahead, hero conquest values by 1 (minimum 0), and for every 25 the heroes are ahead, their values go up by 1.
• 24 new skills replace 24 old ones: Bear Tattoo, Brawny, Furr the Spirit Wolf, Knight, Leadership, Parry, Taunt, Unmovable, Acrobat, Alertness, Deflect Arrows, Ranger, Rapid Fire, Shadow Soul, Skilled, Swift, Bardic Lore, Divine Retribution, Earth Pact, Sharr the Brightwing, Spiritwalker, Telekinesis, Water Pact, and Willpower are all gone.
• They neutered Nanok: his armor equals his melee trait instead of his melee + 2
• Lieutenants don't get a hand of treachery, but they're only chased one space if they run away, and they can use the ready action to place orders.
• All of the encounters are at sea, and use ship combat rules. There's sharks in the water and swimming rules, which would make knockback pretty scary. Ships are placed from smallest to largest, and an ambush means that the Overlord gets to take his turn first.
• There's no Tamalir, instead you have a home port for your ship and you can reassign it as you travel.
• If you go through all three levels of a dungeon you get a piece of a treasure map. When you've got 4 pieces you can go to a treasure site and dig up the reward.
• Islands have dungeons, too; but they use a large island map in place of the first level.
• Heroes get +1 wound each per 4 conquest they earned in the entire campaign. The Overlord gets +2 wounds per 1 conquest he earned in the campaign.
• Mata and Kata got an upgrade: they can move together if they're in the same space. If they do, they get to carry a chest, runekey, or treasure pile.
• The only things compatible between Road to Legend and Sea of Blood are the rumors and dungeon levels.

That's just the big stuff. I didn't read the rules completely.

The more exciting news is the quote in the news article:

Sea of Blood, the much-anticipated campaign expansion for Descent: Journeys in the Dark, has endured a perilous journey across rough waters to arrive in the FFG warehouse. Finally, it will begin shipping to distributors this week!

Oh Santa...

For every full 25 conquest tokens the heroes’ conquest total is below the overlord’s total, each hero’s conquest value is reduced by 1, to a minimum of 0

urrm..... Kevin?

Another big rule change: if the OL razes any 5 citiies.... game over.

Nice. I like that rule.

No overland encounters. Also nice.

inle_badger said:

I like this, too. That way, if the OL gets WAY ahead, the Players get a chance to catch up. Or vice versa

No... reducing a hero's conquest to a minimum of 1 means the conquest would balance out. Reducing it to a minimum of 0 is.... pretty silly.

Just send in Mad Carthos at 0 Conquest to the the first level of every dungeon and clear it of treasure, carefully avoiding all glyphs.

I'm actually all in favour of the Divine Favour rule... just not to a minimum of 0

I think that's the point... if the heroes are seriously down 50 conquest, then yeah, the OL should focus on other heroes beside Mad Carthos to get XP.

Sending in Mad Carthos (or some equally powerful dude), avoiding Glyphs for the sake of gathering treasure might have a short term immediate effect, but overall, the heroes will get crushed. If they are down 50 conquest, the OL must have been doing something right, and is going to have 50 more XP tp spend on upgrades or lieutenants. If the players want to pass up free XP by skipping glyphs then by all means, have at it.

Upgrades and skills cost XP as well as gold. Heroes will need XPs to advance.

I'm more concerned with the bookkeeping involved. The rules state:

Conquest value changes take place immediately after an event takes place that widens the conquest token gap past one of these thresholds. However, conquest gained by a single event (such as several heroes being killed by a single blast attack) is all accumulated at once before the values can change.

That seems to imply that the values can during a dungeon. It's possible for the hero values to change multiple time on the same level. Bookkeeping nightmare. I may have to ask my group if they want to evaluate the gap only after each level or encounter, not mid level.

James McMurray said:

Also, Mata and Kata can exchange items between themselves, even if they are not adjacent to each other. I believe that's an update too.

They added a new Familiar, the birdie. They also updated Pico to add a powerdie of the current campaign level (I think that's an update).

-shnar

Reactions...

Page 6 is all bold.

Page 8: "Overloard" typo. Also, what happens if the Heroes' "Home Port" is razed? Do they have to move the home port to another city before they can use the buildings in dungeons?

Nanok Nerf: Doesn't make sense. He goes from being quite powerful to almost a liability. His problem wasn't that he was overpowered, it was that he didn't scale properly during the campaign (too strong early on, adequate at high levels). Then again, playing him just got very interesting, and keeping him in armor is going to require judicious skill and item choices.

Runewitch Astarra's nerf still weirds me out. Is there anyone who's used her and can attest to her being fine/overpowered/sucky with the nerf active?

Page 12 is all bold.

Page 12-14: Begin at X level rules don't make sense: why doesn't the OL get to spend conquest while the heroes train? Am I just looking for an explicit reference that is already implied?

Page 15 is all bold.

Heroes aren't allowed to visit after a dungeon fleeing...but no such exception is listed for attacking lieutenants.

Sharks are awesome, infinitely respawning death machines.

Treachery has been removed from Lt. Encounters entirely, because water-based encounters have many added OL tools...Are there any land-based Lt's? Encountering an Lt. in a landlocked location and suddenly being on water is pretty weird.

So if heroes still permadie in encounters, where are the glyphs on an Island map? They can't be on the revenge itself....

Page 17: Flee by moving off the edge of the map. Can you use telekinesis/knockback to force figures off the edge of the map?

Page 21: Heroes with Soar don't die if you flee an island...so can heroes have soar now? Or is that just a catch-all in case heroes are somehow given soar later?

Page 22 is all bold.

Page 24 "If the anchor is raised, it is automatically flipped to its raised side. If the anchor is lowered, the hero tries to catch the anchor on the sea bottom." I think the first raised should be "lowered" instead. I think the second sentence is talking about raised anchors. I think the copy editor is having some difficulties.

page 26 is all bold.

If cannons explode, are they destroyed? Looks like no.

Page 28 is all bold.

Page 33: All bold again?

Feat cards get tossed for the final battle, offical rulebook-like.

Searching a Barrel allows for a Trap - Chest card....does a successful Treasure (treat Barrel as Chest) let you play a second one? I'm leaning no, on the concept that the Barrel drops treasure like a chest, but isn't actually supposed to be a new chest open. Same concept with Bone Heaps and Sarcophagi, but one could easily argue the opposite (2nd trap opportunity).

Deep water drowns you hella fast. Deep water is like Nanok's Achilles' heel...or would be if he weren't nerfed so hard.

Boulders are treated as walls! Take that Flyers/Acrobats/Stupid "obstacle" problems!

They haven't fixed the problem with the old cards referring to obstacles and the new list ignoring that nomenclature entirely. They should really fix that glaring inconsistency.

Blast is now optional, along with Bolt and Breath...so Ironskin doesn't make Blast runes/Sorcerers useless.

Does Command work on Constrict? No, constrict is not an attack: "instead of attacking".

Dark Prayer subtle change: Surges rolled = +1 range, +1 damage. Surges spent = +1 threat. This could mean that Fear doesn't prevent Dark Prayer's damage, just its threat generation. Then again, surges spent on fear "can't be used" for another purpose; if it had said "can't be spent " I'd have a better argument.

Avatars ignore Ghost and Ironskin. Excellent.

Leap update incorporates FAQ ruling: was that in Tomb of Ice? Don't remember.....

Flying change: "A flying figure may end its turn in a space containing an obstacle that inflicts damage without suffering damage or effects from that obstacle." Used to just be move through, end turn is nice. This doesn't affect Aura, Flying creatures get full damage still...Also, heroes not having soar conflicts with page 21.

The ridiculous Sorcery vs Ironskin argument didn't get represented (Figures with Ironskin negate sorcery for the entire attack, protecting everyone included in the attack).

Soar no longer grants "ignore terrain" explicitly, although it implies that terrain is ignored as long as the figure isn't swooping. It's kind of a stretch from the RAW though.

"heroes cannot have soar " error in the Sorcery entry is back. Someone forgot to check/fix the errata for the RtL book before copying it verbatim.

Page 44 is all bold. Dude, copy editor, step up.

Mata and Kata powerup: hilariously awesome.

Thundercles said:

Um...is this somehow different from how they've always worked?

WoD: "Boulders block line of sight and are treated as a wall for purposes of blocking line of sight, attacks, and movement."

SoB: "Boulders are treated as walls for purposes of line of sight, attacks, and movement."

Thundercles said:

Blast was made optional in the last FAQ. Bolt being optional is new. Of course, since abilities are arbitrarily different with no explanation between vanilla and extended campaigns, it's anyone's guess whether this is supposed to apply outside of SoB.

Thundercles said:

The entire ability description is exactly the same as that used in the original AoD rules. Verbatim.

Which is shocking, actually.

Thundercles said:

It incorporates the most recent FAQ ruling for Guard. It doesn't incorporate any of the other rulings, nor is it worded any more clearly than the original.

Thundercles said:

Original JitD rules, page 22: " A flying figure may end its turn in a space containing an obstacle that inflicts damage without effect."

We should disguise random excerpts from the basic rulebooks as errata and see how you react.

inle_badger said:

Yeah...that should be a minimum of 1. Consider it errata'ed.

KevinW said:

Wiew! I was having a few frantic nightmares daydreaming ways the heroes could abuse reducing thier CT to 0. I probably would've just house-ruled it to minimum 1, but it's good to know I now have official support for that =)

Also, I use the same avatar pic as Kevin! Woot!

How does curse interact with Divine Favor? Do curse tokens add to the heroes' conquest values before or after the adjustment for Favor? Example:

2CT hero with 1 curse token, overlord ahead by 52. Is the hero worth 2(base)-2(DF,min 1)+1(curse)=2, or 2(base)+1(curse)-2(DF,min 1)=1?

From a balance point of view, I could see either way. The second way makes cursed weapons really strong if the heroes are behind, but maybe they need that strength.

KevinW said:

Quick! Someone add this to the GLOAQ, preferably with a pointer to Kevin's post. Who knows when a new FAQ will be out.

I smell...I smell a FAQ coming.

Also, I know they said you can't...but if anyone thinks I won't be attempting to combine RtL and SoB is crazy. I'll be working on that as soon as I digest the rule book.

Radical suggestion: Now that this rulebook is out, is anyone interested in working with me on going through it, finding all the FAQ/errata worthy stuff to report to them? I have the full version of adobe, so its not problem for me to add comment boxes in the places where we need/want thing clarified and then we could always send that to FFG and see if they can at least make an updated rulebook with the fixes available as a pdf for download.

Antistone said:

If you hadn't noticed already, my memory is pretty terrible . You'd probably get me every time, hahahahaha.

Is Nanok's ability not immune to water? I would have thought that his "armor", being his natural tough skin, would not weigh him down in water, so he would be a good swimmer (another positive thing about Nanok)...

-shnar

Big Remy said:

Big Remy said:

Current List I've noticed:

Page 8: "each hero’s conquest value is reduced by 1, to a minimum of 0." - Should be a minimum of 1 as per KW's answer.

Page 8: "for every full 25 conquest tokens the heroes’ total is above the overlord’s total, the overlord’s conquest value is increased by 1." - It's each hero's conquest value that is increased, not the overlord's. The overlord doesn't have a conquest value as such.

Page 24: "If the anchor is raised, it is automatically flipped to its raised side. If the anchor is lowered, the hero tries to catch the anchor on the sea bottom." The if conditions are swapped: if...raised should be if...lowered, and vice versa.

shnar said:

The swimming rules don't care if your armor is natural or not, just what the total value is. If you want a great swimmer, you need a figure with the Swim ability. I assume there's a subterfugre skill and/or some treasures that can grant that to heroes.

shark tattoo skill card gives swim and +2 health to the hero, and is a skill card

Something I noticed...

Under contents of the game, it says there are 40 monster reference cards. But, when you look at RtL and the added ToI cards, you have 50 total.

Reading further on in the rules under encounters, it lists all the monsters that you can reinforce, which is 25 monsters. So nothing was removed from the campaign.

I assume it was just a typo, but something I did notice

Jonny WS said: Published on 12/4/2009 - 14:29:26
Something I noticed...

Under contents of the game, it says there are 40 monster reference cards. But, when you look at RtL and the added ToI cards, you have 50 total.

Reading further on in the rules under encounters, it lists all the monsters that you can reinforce, which is 25 monsters. So nothing was removed from the campaign.

I assume it was just a typo, but something I did notice

Perhaps the assumption is that if you own ToI, the campaign monster cards are in that expansion and you don't need them repreinted.