I was looking to pre-order the new descent novel on amazon (UK).

To my surprise I found 2 novels available to pre-order.

The one that hasn't been mentioned before is: The Shield of Daqan: A Descent: Journeys in the Dark Novel Paperback – 2 Feb. 2021

in the description on amazon it mentions introducing a new edition of the Board game.

For those that don't want to bother, this is what shows within the description of the book:

Mighty warriors fight to save the realm from blood magic and evil, in this battle-soaked epic fantasy novel, introducing the brand new edition of the hugely popular game, Descent: Journeys in the Dark

You know, I hadn't looked that closely before at the cover of the 1st Descent novel Aconyte is publishing, but the "Descent: Journeys in the Dark" branding has been redesigned compared to 2E, which would make sense with a new edition and similar to what they did with the switch from 1E.

I expect the 2nd novel description getting out this soon was probably a slip up in scheduling as they probably would have been announcing this in that live event happening in a few weeks.

I suppose I’m getting my hopes up.

I was actually wondering if we would see any Terrinoth products this fall.

The first novel is foreseen for October and there is no mentioning of the new game version.

The second novel (with the mentioning) is foreseen for February 2021.

So my best estimate is that the new version will be out no sooner then July 2021, April 2021 if you want to be very optimistic 😉

Solid detective work by BGG user @solod:

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Hmm...googling "Descent: Legends of the Dark" brought up this trademark registration:

https://uspto.report/TM/88962065

The quote is actually this on the official publishing company's website:

"Mighty warriors fight to save the realm from blood magic and evil, in this battle-soaked epic fantasy novel, introducing the brand new edition of the hugely popular game, Descent: Legends of the Dark "

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Shield-of-Daqan/D...

It seems like it's a new edition incoming...

When they announced twilight imperium during an in-flight report it was available to buy once the in-flight was over.

6 hours ago, any2cards said:

Solid detective work by BGG user @solod:

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Hmm...googling "Descent: Legends of the Dark" brought up this trademark registration:

https://uspto.report/TM/88962065

The quote is actually this on the official publishing company's website:

"Mighty warriors fight to save the realm from blood magic and evil, in this battle-soaked epic fantasy novel, introducing the brand new edition of the hugely popular game, Descent: Legends of the Dark "

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Shield-of-Daqan/D...

It seems like it's a new edition incoming...

That actually opens up some new questions. The "Descent: Legends of the Dark" was just updated on the Simon and Schuster site, it previously showed "Journeys in the Dark" and I had previously copy/pasted it here . Google Play still shows the "Descent: Journeys in the Dark" tag :

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Mighty warriors fight to save the realm from blood magic and evil, in this battle-soaked epic fantasy novel, introducing the brand new edition of the hugely popular game, Descent: Journeys in the Dark

The application was filed on June 12th, which is well after first novel The Doom of Fallowhearth details came out in May with the existing"Journeys in the Dark" branding. So either...

• it sounds like Descent is being rebranded from "Journeys in the Dark" to "Legends of the Dark" and a 3rd edition is coming out.
• there is a new Terrinoth IP-based game "Descent: Legends of the Dark" being developed, and for some reason was called a new edition by marketing.

I think the strongest thing is Descent is getting rebranded and a newish name and a 3rd edition.

Dammit.. I'm almost done painting second edition minis. 🤪

I think it is a third edition. The name is probably an attempt to distance it from LOTR: Journeys in Middle-Earth (even though Descent came first)

my own hunch is that they may be doing something similar to what Gloomhaven did with their recent expansion.

...

which is to say: instead of cardboard tiles the maps will be self contained within a spiral-bound book. Definitely a lot cheaper to produce and allows for that single-scenario-use design instance that 1st edition was fond of

Ah eventually we come to our old argument about Conversion kit or not ^^.
Hopefully the old stuff will be compatible.

6 hours ago, Tintaglia said:

Ah eventually we come to our old argument about Conversion kit or not ^^.
Hopefully the old stuff will be compatible.

Well, my guess is app enhanced full coop. It's been working for them and a criticism of gloomhaven is that the monster system is cumbersome so it makes sense they'd play to their strengths. Ergo it would be fairly trivial to import things, but that's a lot of monsters and heroes at this point. The games downright cumbersome if you have everything right now, imagine if you keep that snowball rolling.

4 hours ago, Bucho said:

..., but that's a lot of monsters and heroes at this point. The games downright cumbersome if you have everything right now, imagine if you keep that snowball rolling.

Yeah you re right about Gloomhaven combat system. Nevertheless what i really appreciate in Descent is the huge choice in mobs (strategy, variety...) for me it has never been a drawback, all the contrary i would say. I would be thrill to let the snowball grow a bit more.

3 hours ago, Tintaglia said:

Yeah you re right about Gloomhaven combat system. Nevertheless what i really appreciate in Descent is the huge choice in mobs (strategy, variety...) for me it has never been a drawback, all the contrary i would say. I would be thrill to let the snowball grow a bit

Same here ! That's the point of descent. And I would love more but won't happen unless home made

5 hours ago, Tintaglia said:

Nevertheless what i really appreciate in Descent is the huge choice in mobs (strategy, variety...)

Even with the app? Sure there are a bunch of overlords who have horded monsters with minor ability differences to gain an advantage on their players. But to a lot of players (maybe even most) a bunch of the monsters end up feeling pretty darn similar.

Once you take the cards away does the average player detect a difference between Giants, Ettins, Trolls, Ogres, and whatever they pick to fill the same niche in 3e?

Sure a savvy tactical player can read the difference between say sweep and backswing and plan accordingly but when we're fighting a mindless automaton and those differences are hidden behind an app wall...who even notices?

It's a problem that Mansions of Madness 2e started running into fairly early in the games expansions:

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https://www.miniaturemarket.com/reviewcorner/mansions-of-madness-streets-of-arkham-review

Less useful are the new monsters. The Skeletons are a set of miniatures desperately looking for a niche to fill and coming up empty handed. The Star Vampires look stellar, but I'm not sure what they offer that previous entities don't. The real problem here is that the baddies in this game don't really act or function all that differently. Their unique attacks all do the same thing and more often than not it's a static piece defined by a hit point value and the amount of damage it deals. Behind the scenes the math of each monstrosity may vary and actually form a unique set of properties, but that's lost on the player and does little to help the experience of play.

3 hours ago, rugal said:

Same here ! That's the point of descent. And I would love more but won't happen unless home made

Yes and no, Runebound 3e plus the conversion kit let me add heroes with updated sculpts to Descent 2e.

I think starting 3e with the 12 missing heroes could go a long way toward placating some of their more hardcore fans.

I'm almost sure that the v3 if any is going to happen will be like MoM v2 or Middle earth with an app and few figures and tiles to justify the board game thing.

And if it ever goes that way, I'm out

2 hours ago, Bucho said:

Even with the app? Sure there are a bunch of overlords who have horded monsters with minor ability differences to gain an advantage on their players. But to a lot of players (maybe even most) a bunch of the monsters end up feeling pretty darn similar.

Sure a savvy tactical player can read the difference between say sweep and backswing and plan accordingly but when we're fighting a mindless automaton and those differences are hidden behind an app wall...who even notices?

I don't know for the others but as a overlord i read precisely the quest i pick up the mobs most adapted to players and quest. I analyse all the attributes of heroes party and construct my deck based on that. You can have really a nasty combo. And i indeed see a difference between a giant an ogre, an ettin and troll.

Sure the app reduces a bit the added value of having a lot, but basically it is not due to the variety of monsters. The app is to be blamed if it is not able to reach the full potential of the collection. They had plenty of time to correct that and i expect that they would be able to design something as interesting as in Gloomhaven for each mob. (dreaming alive)

^---- This +1,000,000

59 minutes ago, Tintaglia said:

I don't know for the others but as a overlord i read precisely the quest i pick up the mobs most adapted to players and quest. I analyse all the attributes of heroes party and construct my deck based on that. You can have really a nasty combo. And i indeed see a difference between a giant an ogre, an ettin and troll.

Sure a bunch of overlords do, but your average player I don't think does. Even watching FFG's livestream of the people who designed Lost Legends playing Road to Legend, they clearly did not have things memorized the way hardcore fans here do.

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Sure the app reduces a bit the added value of having a lot, but basically it is not due to the variety of monsters.

No, It really kind of is. 1e had a single type of monster to fill a particular niche and that works well. But 2e we already had all those monsters, so we end up with the B list of monsters. Take LoR, we're fighting the spider queen so FFG *should* be selling us bane spiders, but by supporting 1e plastic they can't.

So we end up with a weird knock off bane spider and in a heavily tactical game against a human player that works fine. They can fiddle with it to make it different-ish. But in an app where that plastic gets reduced to theme and some flavor text it stops working. Three versions of the same monster are not going to be particularly appealing to their general audience.

This is something a standalone game can just plain do better than one that's stuck selling you the ethnic knockoffs of the monsters they actually wanted to include. It's an issue reviews often comment on since the very first big expansion for Mansions of Madness 2e.

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The app is to be blamed if it is not able to reach the full potential of the collection. They had plenty of time to correct that and i expect that they would be able to design something as interesting as in Gloomhaven for each mob. (dreaming alive)

Gloomhaven is a stand alone game, if FFG did a standalone Descent Legacy and were remotely as unmiserly about the contents and the content they would absolutely have a hit.

But I just don't think Financing Fight Games has that in them. I expect every penny to be pinched and the game to be riddled with weird comity compromises that made no one happy. And I don't think that will compete well in an arena where Frosthaven and Jaws of the Lion are the new hotness.

I can agree with @Bucho 's comment that the game can get unwieldy for large collections. I started playing a lot of Road to Legends since the 'Rona, and all I have is the 2E Core Box and the Conversion Kit. I had all 1E box expansions for the game, so I have a very large stack of monsters and heroes to pull from and I have only been turning on two of the Monster and Hero Collections at a time. I add a little bit of monster variety, and a few heroes, but mainly I don't want to have to search through the massive collection of figures that I have looking for things in the middle of a game. I can just set aside what was enabled, beforehand.

That's not saying that I don't want them to support the 1E and 2E content in 3E; I absolutely do! But, as long as expansions can be enabled and disabled as desired, its good. Also, while it can mess with development time, if they continue to consider possible existing expansions when developing encounter maps to keep the variety happening, that would be cool. You definitely want to make sure the game's content stands on its own, though, so you are not requiring players to track down out-of-print expansions for anything.

Also, there is a bit of a developmental Catch-22 there. They have to create enemies for the new edition that fill certain roles because they cannot assume that new players will have access to the old content. Therefore, you end up with multiple monster groups filling a similar role in the game, but with minor differences, such as the Ettin, Ogre, Troll situation.

What i can say is that here you can't find the expansions anymore. People are begging and crying to get the Labyrinth or the Troll but no reprint is planned, so i assume that it means that there should be some physical content coming.

... or we can just pass it, unless it is a real masterpiece 🙂 If it is based on an app I will pass for sure 🙂