Is it me or Biv (on the front page of the rulebook) is finally realizing (just like many of us have already did) that his "close and personal" attack is not as powerful as he thought

12 minutes ago, FSD said:

Question for those that have played one of FFGs app based games:

Do these work well on a smartphone or will the screen be too small for a quality game experience?

A smart phone is definitely too small. We use a Microsoft surface pro and that is the smallest I would suggest.

14 minutes ago, FSD said:

Question for those that have played one of FFGs app based games:

Do these work well on a smartphone or will the screen be too small for a quality game experience?

For Road to Legend we use Miracast to project from my Surface Book Pro to my 75" 4K TV. So everyone can see the screen...including the neighbours.

16 minutes ago, FSD said:

Question for those that have played one of FFGs app based games:

Do these work well on a smartphone or will the screen be too small for a quality game experience?

Double Post

12 hours ago, Zrob314 said:

Moot

The word is moot, you can look it up.

The point is not "mute" it is "moot." (Its nothing personal, I will do this every time)

And I suppose you say Han Solo and not Hans Solo

Minor detail, but I like how the doors and the supply crates are rendered as 3D objects and not just flat tokens like in the Descent and MoM apps. I am also curious as to what the sound design will be like with the app. At least with Star Wars, FFG has a huge library of sounds and music to draw from.

It would be nice if they had full narration for all the in=app text (at least for dialog from/between characters). But I am not holding my breath for that one...

6 hours ago, Villakarvarousku said:

It's phrased a bit weirdly for sure, but I think what they mean is "then it finishes the rest of its activation". It's strange that they only used that phrasing ("the rest of") in the Move X to Engage example and not the others, but that's what makes the most sense to me at least.

Anyway, I'm super excited for this! I really like the exploration aspect and the fact that they can do more interesting and varied stuff with crates. Moving armor and accessories to mission rewards so they don't have to compete with weapons seems like a smart decision. I was also never a fan of saving for the 4 xp cards first, even though it's often the smartest thing to do, so the more gradual class deck system sounds good.

I agree. I think this is just an example of the move action so it's not indicative of the full activation. They probably left it vague because it might have already performed an action prior to the move X (so it may or may not have finished it's activation).

11 hours ago, Armandhammer said:

The Instruction List section uses a "top to bottom" approach when resolving instructions. Nothing about returning to previous instructions or ensuring that Imperial figures max out on actions.

Maybe this is where the Imperial Rule comes into play?

1) Can't attack. Skip

2) Resolve Move

3) Stormtrooper is now in LOS of attack target. What's more punishing: attacking or moving?

I fully agree this may be a good question for FFG. RAW I would guess that they wouldn't get an attack. It seems to me that this should be worded more similarly to spending surges, which are listed from top to bottom in order of priority so it works a bit different:

But even when spending surges there is similar question:

I think that accuracy is will always be first, to make sure you they have range, then probably damage second- to ensure the attack hits, and conditions last because you can't apply most conditions without doing damage; BUT this is another case where the imperial rule would seem to come into play since STUN and BLEED (for example) hurts the rebel players a lot more than damage.

So I guess the question is: Does the Imperial Rule override action sequence and surge priorities?

Surge priority says that if the surge doesn't affect the result, it will be skipped. p.17 The same applies to Stun and Bleed. They can be high in priority, because they will be skipped if the target would not suffer damage. It is thus handled by the surge priority rules and you don't usually need to apply Imperial Rule.

About sensible actions. See Move X to Attack from page 16.

The rule book says the app can't tell where your characters are at any given time.

If so, how does it make relevant decisions?

6 minutes ago, caseycheesecake said:

If so, how does it make relevant decisions?

Through the chain of command through Imperial Officers and messengers.

Seriously: there is no imperial player AI to plan everything. It's a different co-op way to play. All of the imperial groups are after the heroes separately. However, the app knows which heroes have activated and which are healthy/wounded/withdrawn, and how quickly the rebel players defeat the imperial figures, so it's not working totally blind. And like with the printed campaign missions, when a terminal, token, or door is interacted with, the app knows there's someone there.

5 minutes ago, caseycheesecake said:

The rule book says the app can't tell where your characters are at any given time.

If so, how does it make relevant decisions?

It doesn't really....it expects the players to keep track of all the important stuff. All it really does is reveal the map and then randomly activate enemy groups.

7 minutes ago, VadersMarchKazoo said:

I fully agree this may be a good question for FFG. RAW I would guess that they wouldn't get an attack. It seems to me that this should be worded more similarly to spending surges, which are listed from top to bottom in order of priority so it works a bit different:

But even when spending surges there is similar question:

I think that accuracy is will always be first, to make sure you they have range, then probably damage second- to ensure the attack hits, and conditions last because you can't apply most conditions without doing damage; BUT this is another case where the imperial rule would seem to come into play since STUN and BLEED (for example) hurts the rebel players a lot more than damage.

So I guess the question is: Does the Imperial Rule override action sequence and surge priorities?

The way I'm reading it is the Imperial Rule applies when two or more possibilities fulfill the instruction; it doesn't override anything, but helps make decisions. So if a Stormtrooper is attacking "the character with the lowest speed" but Fenn and Gideon are both three spaces away then you need to select the target who is going to be easier to wound.

I'm guessing conditions are listed before damage in Surge Priority since it goes back to the top after it goes through the list if surges remain. So if the condition is first priority but no damage has been done it gets skipped (as @a1bert pointed out), the surge could then be used to apply damage. Back to the top of the list, a remaining surge could come back to the condition.

Just now, caseycheesecake said:

The rule book says the app can't tell where your characters are at any given time.

If so, how does it make relevant decisions?

My gut says @Union might have described that nicely .

2 hours ago, Corver said:

Better do do on PC or a tablet. Too fiddly for smartphone unless its a larger screen.

It's definitely better on a tablet, but I've run the Descent app on my smartphone. It worked fine, even if not ideal.

-ryanjamal

2 hours ago, FSD said:

Question for those that have played one of FFGs app based games:

Do these work well on a smartphone or will the screen be too small for a quality game experience?

It’s playable and most of the apps are stable enough to run on smartphone but I’d rather drive a screwdriver through my eyes than play it that way, because that’s how it feels.

2 hours ago, Uninvited Guest said:

The way I'm reading it is the Imperial Rule applies when two or more possibilities fulfill the instruction; it doesn't override anything, but helps make decisions. So if a Stormtrooper is attacking "the character with the lowest speed" but Fenn and Gideon are both three spaces away then you need to select the target who is going to be easier to wound.

I'm guessing conditions are listed before damage in Surge Priority since it goes back to the top after it goes through the list if surges remain. So if the condition is first priority but no damage has been done it gets skipped (as @a1bert pointed out), the surge could then be used to apply damage. Back to the top of the list, a remaining surge could come back to the condition.

My gut says @Union might have described that nicely .

Agreed. I think the simplest thing is to just do things as written. The Imperial Rule, as you say, really only applies when several options are available (such as a space with cover vs a space that does not, or who to attack). I really like this design.

I'm out of likes for the day (first time for me) but I like your and A1berts response. Keep it simple.

4 hours ago, a1bert said:

Through the chain of command through Imperial Officers and messengers.

Seriously: there is no imperial player AI to plan everything. It's a different co-op way to play. All of the imperial groups are after the heroes separately. However, the app knows which heroes have activated and which are healthy/wounded/withdrawn, and how quickly the rebel players defeat the imperial figures, so it's not working totally blind. And like with the printed campaign missions, when a terminal, token, or door is interacted with, the app knows there's someone there.

I think in a lot of ways this will be lead to more thematic play. I mean think of all the chaos of a real battle- like the hero's running around the death star in ANH. I love player vs player driven IA but often the strategy (especially by the empire) is not particularly thematic, I mean why would a trooper run past a healthy hero to attack (focus fire) another. I'm thinking that this is a move towards the RPG style of gameplay and slightly away from the chess part of the continuum. I originally bought IA as a dungeon crawler, so this is all fine by me.

Side note: My guess is that the computer will make up for less strategy with overwhelming numbers. Meaning more enemies to shoot- also a good thing:)

QUESTION: They obviously put together a really nice rule book to accompany the app. Will this be available in hard copy, perhaps print on demand? Have the other apps (Descent) had printed rulebooks or were they just web-based?

QUESTION 2: The second image in the article is a "3D" perspective of the tiles and door (as if it is a picture of the tiles on a table and not a 2D illustration (like the campaign guide maps). Is this what the app would actually look like? Do you think it interfaces with your camera? Why this perspective? Maybe this image is not taken straight from the app?

Lol we literally have the rulebook that explains how the app works and people are still making wild speculations.

I am really glad they released the rulebook this early, it is going to take a while for me to wrap my head around how the Imperial activations work and all the rules changes. "Move 2 to reposition 4" is complete nonsensical gobbledeegook to my brain when I read it.

The Descent app was playable on a cellphone and okay for solo play, but if you are going to be playing with a group and want everyone to be able to see the screen at once, tablet or laptop is going to be the way to go.

18 minutes ago, Tvboy said:

Lol we literally have the rulebook that explains how the app works and people are still making wild speculations.

I am really glad they released the rulebook this early, it is going to take a while for me to wrap my head around how the Imperial activations work and all the rules changes. "Move 2 to reposition 4" is complete nonsensical gobbledeegook to my brain when I read it.

The Descent app was playable on a cellphone and okay for solo play, but if you are going to be playing with a group and want everyone to be able to see the screen at once, tablet or laptop is going to be the way to go.

I'm already thinking about appletv or a mini-projector for this haven't made my mind up yet but I will need to soon ™

14 minutes ago, Masterchiefspiff said:

I'm already thinking about appletv or a mini-projector for this haven't made my mind up yet but I will need to soon ™

Thinking of trying the same thing before I go out and buy a tablet.

Just trying to remember if appleTV actually lets me still use my iPhone while it's projecting to the TV...

18 hours ago, Zrob314 said:

Moot

The word is moot, you can look it up.

The point is not "mute" it is "moot." (Its nothing personal, I will do this every time)

Theirs’s knot enough ours in the knight too tri and waist time righting every witch word perfectly you no? I jest use spellcheck end let it altar my spelling and fix any miner mistakes that I mist, so yule have to tel me if I maid sum mistakes.

12 minutes ago, Tvboy said:

Theirs’s knot enough ours in the knight too tri and waist time righting every witch word perfectly you no? I jest use spellcheck end let it altar my spelling and fix any miner mistakes that I mist, so yule have to tel me if I maid sum mistakes.

This broke my brain bit I love every word of it.

Get an HDMI cable and hook the laptop up to your TV, makes things way better. I've got apple TV so I just stream it from my ipad on the flat screen and my team mates can follow along on there while I ping away at the tablet.

Much easier to use the tablet as well when you don't have to crane your neck to read something that you want everyone else to be able to see.

23 minutes ago, Tvboy said:

Theirs’s knot enough ours in the knight too tri and waist time righting every witch word perfectly you no? I jest use spellcheck end let it altar my spelling and fix any miner mistakes that I mist, so yule have to tel me if I maid sum mistakes.

Nyce treye butt tha wurds rnt evan homynyms.

18 hours ago, Zrob314 said:

Moot

The word is moot, you can look it up.

The point is not "mute" it is "moot." (Its nothing personal, I will do this every time)

I believe you mean it's a "moo" point