My old roommate had a copy of Warhammer Quest and we played weekly on whichever night he had off.

He, his brother, my brother, my fiance and I would run and we had a blast.

He's since moved out, and my brother's moved in with us. I've been looking for a good replacement game that we could enjoy instead. We've still got access to myself, my fiance, my brother, my former roommate's brother and his fiance, so we've got 5 enough for 4 players and an Overlord.

I've been told that this would be a good replacement game for us since Quest is no longer available retail-wise. Has anyone out there played both?

How does Descent compare? We understand there will be differences, but really just want to know if it'll be easy enough to learn/enjoy coming from a heavy Warhammer/40k/Quest background.

Also, if this is what we end up picking up, with all the expansions available, are there any you'd list as 'gotta-have' or should we just pick them up in the order they were released?

Thanks ahead of time for taking the time to read, even if you haven't played Quest, I'd love to hear your opinion on the expansions.

bmaynard said:

I haven't played WQ myself, but I did play the crap out of it's precursors - HeroQuest and Advanced HeroQuest. Working on that basis, I'd say Descent is probably a good replacement. Just be aware that the Overlord player has a much better chance of defeating the heroes in Descent than the Zargon player did in those older games.

maxvon_d said:

If your background is primarily board games and tabletop wargames (as opposed to RPGs) then you'll probably have an easier time adapting to Descent than some people. As far as how they compare, well:

- both games have quests you set up with modular maps.

- both games have heroes with special abilities and weaknesses.

- both games have fantasy style adventure and combat, no doubt you are aware of this.

- AHQ involved rolling stats and picking weapons/items from a relatively small pool, IIRC. Descent still has the picking weapons and items bit, but the heroes are mostly static except for a few skill cards that are randomly assigned. This means character generation in Descent will likely be shorter (depending on how much time they spend pouring over the town items deck) but it's also a bit more random. To clarify, heroes can be improved during play with training and new skills, etc. When I said "mostly static" I was refering mainly to setting up at the start of the game.

- AHQ, the map was set up in stages as the heroes uncovered line of sight. In Descent, the whole map is set up at first and individually marked "areas" are revealed as the heroes uncover line of sight. This might sound disappointing at first, but it saves time during play and Descent can take a LONG time to play, so this is important.

maxvon_d said:

I suppose that depends on whether or not you want a continuing camapign or just a series of one-shot dungeons. The base game was not designed to advance one quest to the next. The heroes are reset to their starting skills after each dungeon (and according to some the party should be completely redrawn, although we don't usually do that.)

The Advanced Campaign expansions (Road to Legend and Sea of Blood) are designed to give you a slower game with continuing progress from start to finish. By slower, I mean it will takes you several play sessions of the course of a couple months to complete it. These campaigns includes rules and game components to help you "save" your game so you cna tear it down without losing your progress.

As far as the "vanilla" expansions (WoD, AoD, ToI) I don't know that any of them are "must own." They each add cool new things. Well of Darkness and Altar of Despair both add a lot of stuff to make the Overlord scarier, so those two would be good if you find the heroes win too easily and want more of a challenge. Tomb of Ice's biggest contributions help the heroes, so that one might be worth looking at if you think the OL is too strong.

Man, it has been so long since my Warhammer days that I can't even remember if I've played Quest or not. Regardless, if you can swing Warhammer and 40K, and enjoy them, you can swing Descent, and will probably like it - and five is the perfect number of people. The rules are a complicated *****, but it's a fun game, and has plenty of potential for making your own quests, if you're into that. The one thing to remember going in that a lot of people get wrong is that it's a competitive game, and the Overlord should win roughly as much as s/he loses.

Regarding the expansions, it kind of depends on your money situation, but I'd get the base game, play a few missions, and see if you like it. if you do, and have cash, I'd get Well of Darkness, Altar of Despair, and Tomb of Ice. Once you have those, if an extended campaign that will last a few dozen play sessions and involves leveling up and all of that stuff sounds fun to you, I'd pick up Road to Legend. Road to Legend and Sea of Blood conflict - they're both advanced campaigns, and you can't play both at the same time, so you really only need one or the other. All other expansions will slot into RtL, however. If you're on more of a budget, play Vanilla, see how the balance is, and buy Tomb of Ice if the heroes are hurting, and either Well or Altar if the OL is hurting.

Very nice!

Just what I was hoping I'd get feedback-wise.

Thank you both very much.

Spoke with the fiance last night and she okay'd the initial Descent acquisition, so We'll probably pick that up soon and play it for a good while.

I guess we'll have to see whether the overlord or the heroes gets the upper hand most of the time after that.

One big thing that is good to know is that the first quest in Descent is made to be really easy on the heroes. If you play it and the heroes just trample anything the OL throws at them then you are probably doing things correctly, things will change later on. However if you play and the heroes get killed every time, then it might be time to re-read the rules, because you probably missed something

Honn said:

That's a good point. Don't judge the balance based solely on the first two or three missions. If you can stand to wait until you've tried them all from the base game before getting into expansions, that would be the ideal. If not, at least make sure you get a couple of the later quests under your belt first. As I mentioned before, there's no real continuing story in the vanilla quests (except the last two I think are sort of tied together) so you won't miss anything important by playing out of order.