Being new to all these Board games, I just took a look at Descents App as it was mentioned somewhere in a thread here.

Very impressive and a great idea imo.

Got me thinking, do many of you play IA AND Descent? Looks great but all my time taken up with painting IS figures atm in preparation for starting to play.

I got into Imperial Assault because I love Star Wars. Before that I was always put off Descent because of it's price, and now I'd be tempted, but there's no way I could afford it, and if I could, none of my friends would have time to play both. As it is I only get to play one mission of the campaign a month at best, though currently the last time we got together for Return to Hoth was November

I play both games and own all components of both. I actually have all of Descent painted excluding about 10 heroes and about 60% of IA painted. I enjoy both systems and look forward to the IA App.

I used to own and play Descent and the two first small box expansions, but I eventually sold it. The game was extremely frustrating for all parties involved. The quests in the core set and early expansions were bland and often unbalanced with a lackluster narrative. The game incentivized the Overlord to continuously hammer on the weakest hero on the team and then whack him down again the second he recovered, which essentially meant one player was out of the game for most of the time. Reinforcement rules made a couple of monsters the obvious, invariable choice for almost every scenario. The lack of integrated turns meant that either the Overlord would pounce first on the heroes to keel them over and pin them in one room for several turns, or the heroes would steamroll all the monsters and the Overlord would be playing the rest of the quest with just the one monster that was reinforced every round. To boot, expansions wouldn't integrate with the base game very well - you either played the campaign from the expansion or not, there were no 'side quests' that you could insert into a campaign from another box (beyond the Rumor mechanic, which was pretty clunky and offered maybe 1 or 2 quest throughout the entire campaign). Quite frankly, it wasn't fun, so I pounced on Imperial Assault as soon as it came out. It offered very similar gameplay while fixing pretty much all of the above and provided a separate 2-player head-to-head game mode, plus the Star Wars theming.

However, recently I've had Descent on my mind (or TBH, Terrinoth games in general with the impending RWM release) and I'm wondering if I maybe should re-buy it. IA is all fun and dandy, but sometimes I'm just in a sword-and-sorcery kind of mood. From what I understand, the game rules have been cleaned up a bit from when I played it last and the quests from Nerekhall onwards are much better than the earlier stuff both in terms of balance and narrative. The app is also a big argument and looks very impressive. I watched the gameplay of it online and it seems to fix many of the gripes I had with original Descent (monster wipeouts for the Overlord, targeted whack-a-mole for the Heroes, lack of integrated turns), makes it easier to round up a group of 4 instead of 5, i has no Overlord shoes to fill and seemingly better player count scaling. It even provides solo play should I ever want to do that.

I came in late to the Descent game, March 2016, I've played only 3 quests without the App, dozens with. So I'm used to the alternating turns same as IA. Much better system IMHO.

Always wondered about overlap. I might get descent someday, but having owned all of IA, I certainly don't need the other content that an entirely new game would provide.

3 minutes ago, subtrendy said:

Always wondered about overlap. I might get descent someday, but having owned all of IA, I certainly don't need the other content that an entirely new game would provide.

The games have so much overlap in how they play, I think at this point it's a matter of theme more than anything else. And possibly co-op play the app allows, at least until/unless we get a similar thing for IA.

I bought into Descent with another friend and we play it together with a few other friends. Being able to split the cost was huge and has allowed us to expand our collection rapidly. It's a great game, the main reason we bought it though was for the App. I doubt we will ever play the OL side of it because if we want to play that style we just play IA.

It's nice to get a bit of both sides, Co-Op games like Descent, LOTR: LCG and MoM 2nd and then me vs. them in IA. When the app comes out for IA it will be nice but I still will want to play the regular campaigns, I actually enjoy playing as the Imperial and the story/structure has only gotten better over time.

TL:DR Split Descent with the friends you plan to play the Co-Op app with, then everyone wins!

I had descent first edition and got second edition when it came out. I think it's still in my storage unit with the rest of my "games I haven't played in years" collection. IA takes the ruleset of descent and refines it, while at the same time adding the skirmish game which brings IA to an entirely new level. Now if you can't get a whole group together to play through a campaign, you can still muck around with a skirmish match or three. Plus, Star Wars.

Still, there are times I want a fantasy hack and slash that's lighter than a D&D campaign. Descent though really doesn't scratch that itch for me any more. Every time I think about digging it out of storage I think of the system and that I would just rather play IA. So until Massive Darkness eventually ships to backers, I'm gonna stick with IA and some Zombicide Black Plague when I really need some sword and sorcery style action.

Have you tried the app though? It's a whole new take on the game, really fun.

I have played both, but now only play Descent. Too many games, not enough time.

The only main difference other than theme is the relative lack of time limits and KO limits in Descent. Personally, I prefer this balance, because I find IA campaign a little too easy for the Imperial to focus kill heroes.

I got into Descent back in 2013 when I first got into FFG. I have probably 75% of the material release this far and have only neglected to stay current on material because of IA. Otherwise, I would still be buying all the Descent stuff I could. I've clocked a ton of hours playing Descent in different groups and with the multitude of expansions, I still have years of new combos to try. I haven't bothered painting the Descent stuff because I'm too busy working on IA figures, but the Descent Minis are great for the game or any other type of RPGing. I haven't gotten into the app, only because I'm an old school paper and pencil kinda gamer and I'd rather have physical material that I can use anywhere anytime. Unfortunately, news on future expansions for Descent seem few and far between.

I got in IA the minute it was announced and have tried to stay current, but I do have some catching up to do. I'm a huge Star Wars fan and this game really has it all for me. Campaign mode provides a pseudo-RPG experience. Skirmish provides a quick battle mode that puts WOTC's old minis game to shame. The minis themselves are the best ever produced, though given that West End and WOTC were the only prior minis, that's not saying a lot.

Overall both have a place in my gaming collection.

I love both systems, but - at the moment - descent has much more replay value than IA.

The choice of class for heroes in Descent means you really should never see the character build more than once (unless you want to, of course!). Also the insane amount of monster groups available means you can really mix up the dungeons.

IA just doesn't have the breadth or depth for creative party builds at the moment, and some of the heroes are so narrowly focused that it's hard for a player to build the hero in a way different to someone else. That's my biggest regret with IA, and I hope it could be fixed with e.g. Some generic XP skills that anyone could take. I don't want to see another Wookiee hero anytime soon, but I would like to see a way to make Gaarkhan something a bit different to a simple battering ram.

but as others have already mentioned, Descent lets itself down on the narrative - some of the flavour text is so ambiguous or badly worded that it takes several reads just to work out what the heck is supposed to be happening.

I think both systems give you something different - IA for the narrative and fantastic fluff that is the Star Wars universe; and Descent for a more creative hero building experience.

4 hours ago, subtrendy said:

Always wondered about overlap. I might get descent someday, but having owned all of IA, I certainly don't need the other content that an entirely new game would provide.

So, Doom?

48 minutes ago, qwertyuiop said:

So, Doom?

Haha, not gonna lie, some of the Doom minis look pretty tempting.

But out of the three (IA, Doom, Descent) I'd pretty easily pick IA first and Descent second. I'm just not all that invested in the Doom franchise (yet).