We were playing the first quest in Well of Darkness a few weeks ago. One hero drew the Wind Pact skill card which is a WoD card. This states:

" When a new area is revealed, you may immediately look at the Overlord's hand and force him to discard 1 card of your choice. "

Q1: When this card came up as we were setting up the game the Hero in question said he could see my initial draw of cards since I had just revealed the starting area by placing monsters and tiles. I insisted this was not the case since this was a special area, not Area 1, 2, 3 and beyond. I probably didn't even have any cards when I 'revealed' the starting area as I was building the table at the time. Does he get to look at my initial draw of cards for the starting area?

Q2: How do you folks handle the Hero looking at the Overlord cards and then rattling off their contents to the other Heroes? As Overlord I was very much against this. I didn't think he should memorise my hand and then, Generation Game style, quickly list them all to the other Heroes. If anything I think it's up to him to use the information at appropriate times. If he tells everybody else in the party then the skill card might as well say " when a new area is revealed pass your entire hand around the table to all heroes one by one. " This caused a serious discussion right from the beginning so the hero offered to return the skill to the deck in favour of something else, presumably hoping for something 'better' I guess!

Any thoughts?

In my opinion, it's a pretty worthless skill without the heroes knowing the overlords cards.

Wind Pact is, without a doubt, one of the strongest skills in the game. Also, Descent in general has no rules governing communication between players, and prior to Tomb of Ice, there is no hidden information between players other than I suppose ARGUABLY the wind pact case mentioned here.

However, for us, since most of the time we have only 2 players controlling 4 Heroes, it makes no sense for information not to be shared. And it's impossible for the players to have a sensible conversation about their turn if one player knows the Overlord's cards but "isn't allowed" to talk about them. This quickly gets rather silly, so you pretty much have to allow all players to see the cards.

Can you give reasons as to why it's a powerful card?

First of all, being able to see the Overlord's hand on the turn a new area is revealed is extremely valuable. This is because that first turn is the most important, and seeing the hand lets you plan things perfectly, as opposed to worrying about a crushing block that the Overlord might or might not have. Usually, if you know what to do on the first turn of a new area, you can take control of the situation and then the subsequent turns don't matter.

But if that wasn't enough, you get to drop the Overlord's best card. This makes it impossible for him to build up a 'perfect' hand that is nicely tailored to stopping the Heroes in their tracks in a particular area, which is usually how he wins. This forces the Overlord to play good cards as he gets them, as opposed to saving them for the perfect moment, the latter being far more effective.

Finally, the ability to ignore pits is actually quite a nice little bonus. Much better than ignoring lava in any case.

Yeah, um, wind pact doesn't work in the starting area of Vanilla Descent, because the area is not "revealed" per se; it's part of the setup steps (step 5B, to be precise - see the JitD rulebook). Things in the starting area are simply "placed" there, not revealed. Wind pact works for all numbered areas, just as the OP theorized.

what about wind pact and rtl.

if you start the first level of a dungeon, it´s the heroes turn and after that the OL receives his first cards (if i´m remembering this right).

that would mean you could only take a look at the OL´s cards at every second level of a dungeon, and never in an encounter (except for it´s an encounter involving a LT because the OL can have his treasury/treachery-cards(sorry, i´m always confused by those two) if he bought that upgrade).

or am i wrong?

wulf said:

In RtL, an encounter and the first level of each dungeon counts as a new area. So Wind Pact applies in both cases.

wulf said:

In a normal (non RtL) Descent Quest taking OL cards on hand is part of the game setup. This means the OL has cards in the first hero turn.

In a normal Descent Quest the starting area should not trigger wind pact.

ok, thank you.

i hardly remember that our OL once refused to show us his set of cards because he said first it´s our turn and afterwards he starts drawing cards. i´m not really sure in what case this happened.

normally dungeons are set up, the OL draws his cards and then it´s the heroes turn. so the heroes can take a look at the cards?

what about the second level of a dungeon or a LT involving encounter? heroes enter the second level, OL draws his cards and then wind pact comes to play?

wulf said:

Even in RTL, the OL draws 3 cards as part of the Dungeon Setup as expained on p17 of the rules. Wind Pact applies the first level of an RTL dungeon too. For the second and subsequent dungeon levels, the OL retains his hand from the previous level and doesn't draw any additional cards until it is his turn again.

Some of the rumor/legendary dungeons have "areas" marked by colored arrows. Those count as new areas as well. Also, encounter setup counts as "revealing a new area" for wind pact (and horde of things too!)

Joram said:

Can you please quote the rules on this?

@Telling the others: When a player gets to see the OLs hand, he has to make his own choice. No meddling from the others. Later he can share what he saw but they seldom do.

it's in the FAQ:

Q: When a lieutenant encounter begins, can the heroes use

Wind Pact to discard a card from the overlord’s hand (if

any)?

A: Yes.