Hi

After playing a friends Imperial Assault and many of its expansions over the last year or so I decided to buy Descent as I personally prefer the fantasy theme etc.

Obviously the two games mechanics are very similar so understanding the game has not been difficult although the one thing that me and my play group do not understand is why the Heroes are allowed to read the quests prior to choosing them.

Does anyone use 'house' rules when choosing the quests to make them for of a surprise for the Heroes. I have The Shadow Rune & Heirs of Blood.

Thanks

The reason to make the information of Quest public is because there are certain mechanics between SW:IA and Descent that make them completely different during a campaign game .

1. Reinforcements : In SW:IA the Imperial receives Threat that needs to be spent on units in order to bring them to the map. In Descent, this does not happen. Each quest has a predefine rule for reinforcements. This creates a need for heroes to have a previous strategy before playing a Quest, either to focus their energy to kill the non-respawning monsters or to just control/avoid them because is useless to kill an endless line of reinforcements.

2. Quest choosing : The campaign structure for these two games are different. While SW:IA have some sort of straight line of mixed quest, Descent have some sort of branched known quest. This creates a reason to choose a determinate quest corresponding to the heroes’ preferences, strength, player's expirience and needs. Besides, in some campaigns (like Shadow Rune) the quests in Act I have a direct impact on the Act II quests, meaning that heroes need to know which quest is link to each other quest in order to have a proper campaign.

3. Action economy : Because of the turn alternation difference, hiding information from the heroes could possibly lead the whole party to wait before advancing, losing time and actions in the way. Imagine a moment where the second hero activate (in a 4-hero game) just finished killing a monster and now the only thing aviable is to “Open a door” (sounds familiar RtL?) but because of not knowing what lies behind it, the other two heroes prefer to stay behind and repositioned, and have the full party ready, losing their turns. This because it will be too risky to trigger and event and then leaving a whole round of monster activations for the Overlord, IMO.

At the moment, those 3 are the only ones that come to my mind. There could be more but I think those three are enough for making a Quest information public.

I haven't played Imperial Assault (sadly), so I can't say much about how it relates to that, but when it comes to your question, I think that'd be very hard, at least as far as blanket house rules go.

You'd basically have to rewrite all the quests, sometimes completely. It's often imperitive that the players know how the quest works, or they wouldn't stand a chance. Not a snowball's chance in hell. Each quest is tailored and almost all have special rules and events.

I cannot stress this enough. The players need to know what happens in the quest, unless otherwise noted, and then (assuming you're the one sitting there with the quest book open in front of you, like a good Overlord) you'll have to remind them as the Encounter goes on. Probably several times.

yeap in the basic game all players have to know what happens. In Nerekhall though you have some hidden inormation for the heroes.
If you want some surprise and hidden information try the app

Thank you all for the reply's, they have been a great help. I suppose I just need to think that despite the massive similarities they are in fact different games.

Just one more thing, what happens to the Hero cards that have the Action symbol and Exhaust written on them? Do they become active again for the next round of play or are they exhausted for the rest of the encounter?

Thank you all for the reply's, they have been a great help. I suppose I just need to think that despite the massive similarities they are in fact different games.

Just one more thing, what happens to the Hero cards that have the Action symbol and Exhaust written on them? Do they become active again for the next round of play or are they exhausted for the rest of the encounter?

The thing to notice is that there is a différence between IA and Descent about the Action symbol :

On IA you can use those only once per activation, on Descent you can use them as many times as your number of actions.

So some cards ask for both the Action symbol and the exhausting so it can be used only once

By default all exhausted cards are restored at the start of the hero turn.

Thank you all for the reply's, they have been a great help. I suppose I just need to think that despite the massive similarities they are in fact different games.

Just one more thing, what happens to the Hero cards that have the Action symbol and Exhaust written on them? Do they become active again for the next round of play or are they exhausted for the rest of the encounter?

The thing to notice is that there is a différence between IA and Descent about the Action symbol :

On IA you can use those only once per activation, on Descent you can use them as many times as your number of actions.

So some cards ask for both the Action symbol and the exhausting so it can be used only once

By default all exhausted cards are restored at the start of the hero turn.

Brilliant, thank you. Just learning the subtle differences between the two games.

Hi again

Two more questions that have popped up through out campaign if someone can answer please:

1. If a Rumour Card is played does the Overlord draw another Rumour Card so the hand size stays at three?

2. Is there an errata that allows Heroes to pass through Monsters (and vice versa) similar to Imperial Assault?

2. No, as some of the heroes (During) have that as a special ability

1. Nope, unless the card played specifically instructs you to do so

2. Nope, but some monsters are able to do so through abilities: http://d2etracker.com/stats_monster_attributes.php?filters=unobstructed

Sorry to derail the tread but I recently purchased descent 2ndE and after checking out the forms for expansion ideas I keep seeing people say they have The Shadow Rune campaign. I couldn't find this expansion anywhere so a bit more digging revealed that TSR campaign comes in the core set. All I have in mine is the Heirs of Blood campaign. Should I have got TSR too or did this come in an older print of the core set?

I'm pretty sure that my set was printed December 15 if that helps.

Cheers guys

The base game campaign was recently changed (for the better) to the Heirs of Blood campaign. It used to come with The Shadow Rune (but that one was a bit unbalanced)

Ok thanks for the response. So in your opinion it's not even worth trying to track down as an alternative campaign to play to heirs of blood?

With what is currently available out there in the form of expansion campaigns, I'd say no.

The people who have the Shadow Rune edition can get the Heirs of Blood expansion as a separate campaign book. There has been speculation (or at least wishful thinking) that The Shadow Rune might get updated and released as a campaign book as well in the future. To (legally) acquire it now, you'd have to either buy an older version of Descent 2nd edition, or find somebody who wants to part with just the quest manual alone. Doesn't seem worth it. (Unless you've played all other campaigns 5 times or something, however, in that case, you can also look to the Quest Vault for more, free, options)

Well as we're currently all the way up to quest 2 in heirs of blood on our first run through, I guess I'll let it lie for now then I've been trying to figure out what to get to in terms of early expansions and what what I can see the general recommended 'play set' is a big box fo 2nd campaign, a little box for rumour mechanics, 2-3 hero & monster packs for flavour and a couple of lieutenant packs for the additional overlord mechanics.

As I'm about to turn my X-wing prize haul for the year into cash money to invest in descent I'm probably going to bulk buy the above. You seem to know what you're talking about, seem like a reason set up to get started?

P.s. Thanks for letting me pick your brains on this!!