I've been thinking about it, and the more I play these two games, the more I get the sense that IA is the test bed for Descent 3rd Ed.

Given the new minis game, and the skirmish mode from IA, I wouldn't be surprised if they went this route for Descent in the next couple of years. You could tie in figures to 3 games (descent, it's skirmish version and to the RuneWars), and create a lot of cross purchasing potential. Thoughts?

Doubt it, they just released the miniatures game, why change Descent (which is doing so well anyway) to compete with your new product? No one wins.

I agree with Taki. I think 3rd edition won't come out for quite some time if it does, and by then I don't think it would interfere with Imperial Assault.

Edit: Oops, we're talking about Runewars here too aren't we?

Arguably Descent 1st Ed was doing well when they created 2nd Ed. They seem to want to tinker and streamline every few years...

What I really want to see in Descent 3rd edition is the IA rule where the OL gets to activate a monster group after a hero has finished, instead of doing it after every hero has finished. It really makes the game a lot more fun.

Really enjoying IA at the moment. It seems more balanced than Descent (50/50 win rate). As an OL I got steamrolled most of the time in Descent. The play group has always been the same.

I'm a little concerned D3 will go in the direction where the OL will be replaced by an APP.

I don't think they will do a 3rd edition for awhile.. but I WOULD like to see an updated and clarified official rulebook with IA LoS rules... (I would also like to see the 'using movement points via fatigue does not require a move action' ruling removed (ie fatigue can only be used to add movement to a move action, not move 3 squares and attack twice).... but thats probably only cause I play OL most of the time.

18 hours ago, Silidus said:

I would also like to see the 'using movement points via fatigue does not require a move action' ruling removed (ie fatigue can only be used to add movement to a move action, not move 3 squares and attack twice

I mean... that would just make the game a free win for the Overlord.

About the initial subject, seeing the effect of Road to Legends App, I doubt they are planning a 3rd edition very soon. RtL is basically a Descent 2.5 already.

43 minutes ago, Amuny said:

I mean... that would just make the game a free win for the Overlord.

About the initial subject, seeing the effect of Road to Legends App, I doubt they are planning a 3rd edition very soon. RtL is basically a Descent 2.5 already.

Yeah, it probably would... but just once I would like my minions in the first room to last through the heroes turn... I also kinda feel like this one rule, the use of movement points outside a movement action, is responsible for 80% of the rule issues in descent. From pit trap/trip wire cards, to issues declaring movement, to the definition of 'move' and 'moved' (think Syndreals hero ability) etc.

20 hours ago, Sidious78 said:

What I really want to see in Descent 3rd edition is the IA rule where the OL gets to activate a monster group after a hero has finished, instead of doing it after every hero has finished. It really makes the game a lot more fun.

Really enjoying IA at the moment. It seems more balanced than Descent (50/50 win rate). As an OL I got steamrolled most of the time in Descent. The play group has always been the same.

I'm a little concerned D3 will go in the direction where the OL will be replaced by an APP.

Are we playing the same IA and Descent? In IA I as the IP had no problem dominating the Rebels every mission despite making intentional suboptimal plays in critical situations and giving tips to them constantly and rewarding them as if they won every mission and searched all crates. It went so far that I knew they can't win this after I read the secret information of the missions and the hero favoring finale was over in 3 rounds. winrate was 10-1 (The Rebels won the first mission).

In Descent it always felt like the heroes can win, yet I always won the campaigns as OL in the end.

Seeing how little the upgrade would be to a 3rd edition (from an aesthetical point of view) compared to 1ed->2ed and the fact FFG is updating all their Terrinoth products to the aesthetics of Descent 2ed, I don't see a 3rd edition coming anytime soon. Also there are no real structural problems in Desecent 2ed that would justify an update such as the Road to Legend campaign frankenstein's monster that Descent 1ed was.

22 hours ago, DAMaz said:

Are we playing the same IA and Descent? In IA I as the IP had no problem dominating the Rebels every mission despite making intentional suboptimal plays in critical situations and giving tips to them constantly and rewarding them as if they won every mission and searched all crates. It went so far that I knew they can't win this after I read the secret information of the missions and the hero favoring finale was over in 3 rounds. winrate was 10-1 (The Rebels won the first mission).

In Descent it always felt like the heroes can win, yet I always won the campaigns as OL in the end.

Seeing how little the upgrade would be to a 3rd edition (from an aesthetical point of view) compared to 1ed->2ed and the fact FFG is updating all their Terrinoth products to the aesthetics of Descent 2ed, I don't see a 3rd edition coming anytime soon. Also there are no real structural problems in Desecent 2ed that would justify an update such as the Road to Legend campaign frankenstein's monster that Descent 1ed was.

Apparently not, I find that in IA the win rate is 3 out of 4 for the rebels. Maybe you roll well, or your players are... sub optimal? Or maybe one of us is playing wrong.

22 hours ago, Taki said:

Apparently not, I find that in IA the win rate is 3 out of 4 for the rebels. Maybe you roll well, or your players are... sub optimal? Or maybe one of us is playing wrong.

The fun fact is that my play group has been the same all the time, with me being the OL. I would say they are *very* good, they rarely screw up anything and are only hurt by RNG. We played through all the campaigns except Bilehall/Chains. Only during Nerekhall I managed to stay fairly competitive. We played Heirs of Blood as the last one, and it was a complete steam roll from start to finish. It really hurt my love for Descent.

Come IA and the same group got hit so hard that we had to restart the campaign. They tried to use the Descent-strategies and failed miserably. Even now, they are still struggling with my Military Might-deck.

14 minutes ago, Sidious78 said:

The fun fact is that my play group has been the same all the time, with me being the OL. I would say they are *very* good, they rarely screw up anything and are only hurt by RNG. We played through all the campaigns except Bilehall/Chains. Only during Nerekhall I managed to stay fairly competitive. We played Heirs of Blood as the last one, and it was a complete steam roll from start to finish. It really hurt my love for Descent.

Come IA and the same group got hit so hard that we had to restart the campaign. They tried to use the Descent-strategies and failed miserably. Even now, they are still struggling with my Military Might-deck.

That's totally weird, we've had very different experiences with IA. My group does about 50/50 at descent, but like I said, smoke IA. I wonder if there are ways to tone down or ratchet up the difficulty coming in the next round of redesigns

It seems like being able to move through enemy figures like you can in IA would make it much harder on the OL. You can't really block choke points in IA unless you can put enough bodies in the way that the heroes won't have enough movement points to get through.

36 minutes ago, WWHSD said:

It seems like being able to move through enemy figures like you can in IA would make it much harder on the OL . You can't really block choke points in IA unless you can put enough bodies in the way that the heroes won't have enough movement points to get through.

True, Large monster movement would be a pain as well, since there are no squeeze rule in IA.

Mind you, moving a shadow dragon into the heroes and forcing them to move into lava would be nice.

On 3.2.2017 at 3:40 PM, Sidious78 said:

The fun fact is that my play group has been the same all the time, with me being the OL. I would say they are *very* good, they rarely screw up anything and are only hurt by RNG. We played through all the campaigns except Bilehall/Chains. Only during Nerekhall I managed to stay fairly competitive. We played Heirs of Blood as the last one, and it was a complete steam roll from start to finish. It really hurt my love for Descent.

Come IA and the same group got hit so hard that we had to restart the campaign. They tried to use the Descent-strategies and failed miserably. Even now, they are still struggling with my Military Might-deck.

The truth is that IA is badly balanced as I found out on BGG when I discussed my frustration with the game on those boards.

There is a thread on BGG that tracks the win% for all the missions and only 2-3 story missions and a few side-missions (including the introduction) feature a win-loss rate that isn't 2/3s to 1/3. Especailly if the Rebels win the introduction, they have to play 2 story missions that are lost with a chance of around 70%.

Adding to that the IP classes are badly balanced as well. Subversive tactics is said to be the most OP deck, only getting managable in late game (when all your losses probably make winning unlikely) and Military Might, which is also OP, but only really starts to get imbalanced in the latter half of the campaign.

Also BGGers run a few play-by-forums campaigns where people play the missions the 2nd time (meaning the secret information becomes a non-factor there) and it seems to be much closer this way.

All in all IA is badly balanced and I think this game shouldn't be recommended for the core-campaign if you don't plan to GM this game (and play the game as intended), as long as there is Descent 2ed. If you want to play a fair game at the first go, you have to pick the least interesting IP class (meaning no choices in IP-classes and basically 2/3s of the IP content being unusable). The story-part of the campaign basically features one excact path that isn't unwinnable for the rebels, yet I even played the hero-favoring finale and won it as the IP in 3 (out of 11) rounds despite gifting the rebels XP and gold as if they won every mission and searched every crate (yes I played also with military might, because I thought only subversive tactics is OP). So if you respect the design-decision of secret information, this game has practically one fairly balanced playthrough that comes with an finale that is an automatic win for every decent IP, no class-choices for the IP and no second playthrough.

I really don't understand how no review mentions this glaring problem with the game.

On 3.2.2017 at 6:05 PM, WWHSD said:

It seems like being able to move through enemy figures like you can in IA would make it much harder on the OL. You can't really block choke points in IA unless you can put enough bodies in the way that the heroes won't have enough movement points to get through.

True and not true.

While there are no natural choke points in IA you can utilise like in De2ed, there are programmed choke-points also known as doors all the time.

Doors can only be opened if a rebel is in the 2 spaces in front of the door. This means the IP places all his units on and near these spaces, requiring the Rebels to kill them. The Rebels can only prey to the dice that they kill the monster with their first action, so they can actually move onto that space before (courtusy of alternating activation) another enemy moves onto the space and the hassle starts again.

On 3.2.2017 at 6:42 PM, Silidus said:

True, Large monster movement would be a pain as well, since there are no squeeze rule in IA.

Mind you, moving a shadow dragon into the heroes and forcing them to move into lava would be nice.

True in theory, but in practice there is not much difference.

All the large, massive and super-large monsters in the core set either shouldn't move (the Gunner), don't need to move since they are ranged, or are mobile or massive that lets them freely move through blocked terrain and whatnot. The only melee large creature (Nexu) doesn't only have 8MPs but also an action that let's them count 3 spaces and attack, basically being even easier to navigate than the Descent monsters even with the shrinking rule.