Hello!

Few weeks ago I've bought Descent and in the following weekend had a first quest played with my friend.That time we've chosen to play with 2 heroes , I was the overlord.We had a great time even fact that it was a cakewalk.So the next weekened ( today) , we played Quest 2 , with 4 heroes.Now we're both exprienced in RPG genres and board games , so it wasn't complex for him ( my friend ) to manage to control 4 heroes at a time.But this time I've won when I slayed all the heroes in a narrow corridor.So here's how it happened :

NOTE** We are playing by only JitD rules.

The 4 following hereoes were :

Grey Ker ( ranged ) (abilities) - +1 armor vs ranged , 2 free magic surges when magic atk , the other I can't remember but it had not impact to game

Steelhorns ( melee) - (abilities) - Leadership , 2+ DMG when Melee Atk , 2+ Surges when Melee Atk

Runewitch Astarra ( magic) - (abilities) - Blessing ( Command ability) , Telekinesis , Bogs the Rat

Battlemage Jaes (magic) - (abilities) - Knight , 1 more magic atk if offer 2 fatigue , Holy Aura

As you can see ,the party was pretty decent , we both admired Steelhorns and decided that he was the best in the party.

How it went :

Well in the first few turns my friend cleaned the monsters in the starting area and opened the first door for the red rune key.After his shock ( I felt pretty evil then ) discovering that he has to face already a named monster , I spawned 2 more sorcerers in the corners of the room.His idea was to keep using Telekinesis on the giant to keep him away from the party , while giving Rest order to Runewitch Astarra so she could continue doing that.It worked once , then I blocked Astarra's LoS with my 4 sorcerers and kept approaching with the giant.After my friend killed all the sorcerers he had to face the giant , because I used Charge! ability at him , so he had no choice but to suffer the mighty swing.Sweep reached everyone except Grey Ker.After some irritating rolls and turns , he finally got down.But he knew in the next 2 turns he will need to face him again.So he took the loot and runekey from the room , continuing to from the corridor to open the rune locked door.But to his surprise the Giant came back to life once again and he had to fight him with no other choice.After burning him down with Grey Ker with Bow of Bone , he managed to open the doors , but he only managed to kill the hound , sorcerer and few beastman , before the ogre approached him the front , the spawned sorcerers from far away back and the giant himself YET again.Realizing he has no hope , his party was slayed with a mighty swing from a giant , theyre corpres even now rot in that **** straight corridor.

Now I am too busy to write every single detail how I did my job as overlord , but he was always under pressure , with monsters beeing spawned , exploding doors , charging Giant , pesky sorcerers and Evil Genius , DOOM! , Brilliant Commander power cards.

It just felt kinda strange after I won.After the game , we both later discussed the events that happened in that game , but we decided to that this quest was a big jump from cakewalk , to hard mode.Or maybe we read rules wrong?Do you have to ALWAYS penetrate WITH EVERY hero the armor the Giant has , or only once in a turn?Because penetrating 6 armor sounds quite hard , only Steelhorns managed to do about 7 damage rolled with Command from Astarra , 3 - 5 ( that's 3 - 5 dmg from axe surge bonus) and 2+ dmg from the skill card.The others had trouble rolling some decent dmg , because of lack of weapons , only able to use shop gear or the only silver treasure Bow of Bone.My point is , is Quest 2 hard or am I just a brilliant Overlord ? And maybe got any tips with rules applying from Descent : JitD?

I played as OL in the same adventure and the heroes were squished badly.

The only way to the uber-giant is with a treasure weapon or by spending oodles of fatigue to add to surges/damage on a single big attack. Axe is basically the only weapon from the purchase cards with a chance of damaging.

I did wonder, however, what exactly to tell the heroes. The main thing is that the flavor text that's boxed doesn't always have all the relevant data needed. How are they to discover the giant's invulnerability, except to kill him? And by then, it's been 3-4 turns, there's 6+ sorcerers and beastmen spawned, and the heroes are toast. I just don't see how they can hope to win.

Yeah well I wanted to keep the game smooth , so after my friend killed the giant , I roleplayed a little by talking as a giant that "I have hidden my heart , as long as it's safe , you will never kill me" or something like that.

You played armor correctly; it reduces the damage of every attack.

Quest 2 is designed to teach the heroes a very specific lesson about strategy. Once they learn it, the quest is arguably the single easiest one FFG has published. It doesn't give the heroes a particularly big window of opportunity to learn the lesson without losing the quest once, though.

That lesson is...

...monsters are optional.

When the heroes open the door to a giant's room, the correct play is to have one or more heroes sprint down the corridor (run action + fatigue + vitality potion), grab the rune key, open the chest, activate the glyph, and (ideally) teleport to town. And the only part of that that's really critical is grabbing the rune key. Then, the heroes prepare to open the rune-locked door at the start of their next turn. Run in again, activate the glyph (letting any heroes currently in town teleport directly into the room), open the gold chest, and then maybe think about killing some monsters, now that they've got gold weapons and have either already destroyed the giant's heart or now have an opportunity to do so.

The heroes might not know they have to destroy the giant's heart before killing him the first time they play the quest, but if they try to attack him with shop weapons, they haven't learned how to play Descent yet, because that's unnecessary and grossly inefficient.

Cheers , Antistone ! That really helped me a lot and our other upcoming game