Hi all,

I've recently just finished painting the core set and in the absence of my usual gaming group was hoping to get the wife into the RtL campaign. The wife currently is a fairly avid board gamer and enjoys anything from Zombicide to Carcassonne, however games with a more fantasy driven, rules heavy element have bored her. Keep in mind I haven't played Descent for a long time, so it will be somewhat of a reintroduction for myself.

I'm looking to do a playthrough of either the intro Goblin campaign and/or kindred fire and had a few questions on your recommendations:

• Should we play 2 heroes each or 1 hero each? (Keep in mind I want to keep the micromanagement simple, but still serve as a bit of a challenge)
• What difficulty level?
• Which campaign to start with?
• Which core set heroes are great for beginners (I've painted Leoric, Avric, Jain, Syndrael)?
• Has anyone else played with their wife/partner and had similar experiences worth noting?
• What expansions should I consider introducing at a later stage? (I went a bit nuts and bought all the boxed expansions)

Cheers!

Hey "FunkheaD",

I've been playing RTL with my wife. Some thoughts/suggestions.

• My wife likes playing games but we're not big board game geeks. When we play, we are usually pretty free with re-rolling particularly bad rolls We play on the easy setting as we're going more for fun. If you guys enjoy being defeated with higher frequency, you may enjoy the harder difficulty (I haven't tried it).
• We've been playing with 2 heroes each. While this is fun as you have more options, the downside is that there are more/harder monsters and things just take longer. If you're concerned about the pacing, you may want to attempt 1 hero each (remembering the 2-hero advantage of an extra attack or healing each turn). This would keep things moving faster. I would recommend a Warrior and a Healer. The Knight's Advance skill is pretty invaluable as with two players (and 1 healer) attacks are less plentiful and more important. There are several good options for healers. Again this is up to your discretion.
• I might suggest playing the short campaign first on your own so you can reacquaint yourself with the rules and specifics so you don't have to keep halting the game with your wife to lookup rules (though, of course, it will still happen). To speed things up, I find this rules summary pretty useful. Lots of good links here including Zaltyre's excellent Glossary of Terms and Guide To Range and LOS .
• Yeah... I bought most of the expansions as well. I added a few of the boxed expansions. The nice advantage there is that you'll face a wider assortment of monsters. Downside is that many of the monsters won't be painted Adding an expansion also adds optional sidequests that may randomly become available as you play.
• Closing thought. I started playing with my wife on the regular "Shadow Rune" campaign. This was sometimes frustrating for both of us as we at times felt that the other player's actions or abilities "were not fair". This problem is totally mitigated with this co-op mode so that's super nice. We've had a pretty good time playing together though we've been taking our time.

Thanks!

trevorade

Thanks Trevor, great advice. What is the Shadow Rune campaign?

Shadow Rune is the base game campaign where 1 of the players has to be overlord.

Thanks Trevor, great advice. What is the Shadow Rune campaign?

Shadow Rune was the campaign that Descent used to come packaged with. That has now been replaced in more recent copies with Heirs of Blood.

Apologies for going slightly off-topic, generally not having an interest in RtL (or any app-driven game), but I must ask:

Thanks Trevor, great advice. What is the Shadow Rune campaign?

Shadow Rune was the campaign that Descent used to come packaged with. That has now been replaced in more recent copies with Heirs of Blood.

As someone that got The Shadow Rune; is it actually replaced , or does more recent copies come with both ? I was always feeling like I was unlucky for not getting one of the Heirs of Blood-copies, but if it actually replaces the The Shadow Rune campaign, I feel like I lucked out, because I can always buy Heirs of Blood separately.

Heirs of Blood completely replaces The Shadow Rune in new boxes of Decent now. You technically lucked out, but most people seem to think you got the worse campaign to actually play.

That said it would be rather silly for FFG to not publish a rebalanced Shadow Rune 2.0 as a stand alone campaign in the future. Could be a wash either way really.

Heirs of Blood completely replaces The Shadow Rune in new boxes of Decent now. You technically lucked out, but most people seem to think you got the worse campaign to actually play.

That said it would be rather silly for FFG to not publish a rebalanced Shadow Rune 2.0 as a stand alone campaign in the future. Could be a wash either way really.

Yeah, I'm pretty convinced that Heirs of Blood is technically superior, especially in a narrative sense (I love that narrative/background aspects seem to get better with each expansion, it's just sad that the small-box expansions are introduced in a manner which largely ignores most of it), but at least I can buy Heirs of Blood separately, meaning I end up with both The Shadow Rune and Heirs of Blood.

It'd be cool to see a rebalanced/reimagined/expanded The Shadow Rune campaign, in a format matching Heirs of Blood, but I honestly have a hard time seeing it happening, especially since most (or at least many) people already have the original The Shadow Rune. But I'd probably still get it.

Also, I'd actually rather see a campaign book utilizing cross-expansion content, such as, for example, a full-campaign expansion using Mists of Bilehall, The Chains that Rust, and The Trollfens, at the same time. Or Labyrinth of Ruin and Lair of the Wyrm. Or Shadow of Nerekhall and Manor of Ravens. Or all at once, even. I wouldn't even mind if they just re-use the general narrative and quest-lines of pre-existing campaigns, and just expand upon them and change some of the quests. Bonus points if it includes H&M-based alternative setup options.

But anyway, thanks for the answer.