Hi,

Myself and two friends have just bought Descent and tried giving it a go at the weekend. Unfortunately I think we got the set-up wrong, so please can you advise:

I was the Overlord player and the two Hero players each took two heroes to use (so four heroes in total). I took the monster cards with the number 2 on it, as I thought it meant there were two *hero* players. Monsters were, therefore, very easy to kill and each encounter was a breeze, so I think that was wrong....

Having double and triple-checked the rules, I'm still a little confused! Should each hero player have chosen *one* hero character to use and I should have selected the monsters with 3 as the number of players?? In our game we played, if each person took two heroes, should I have in fact used the monster cards with the 5 on them?

I'd appreciate any advise on what is right / where we went wrong!! Also, if anyone wants to suggest a good way of playing with three people (one hero each, multiple heroes, etc) then I would welcome your comments!

Thanks,
Zoetrope

Zoetrope said:

You should have used the 5-player cards.

It is the number of players in the game, except that both of your hero players played as if they were two players. So your number of players was 2+2+1=5

Really, it just means number of heroes +1 (the 2 player and 3 player cards are identical because in a 2 player game the hero player controls two heroes).

How you played is actually the best way to go (if you use the 5 player cards of course). The game scales very badly, and just two heroes doesn't work very well. 3 heroes is fine for the easier quests, or experienced players, but 4 heroes is the 'true design' and is best for beginners or on the harder quests.

Monsters will still, generally, be fairly easy to kill though. They are expendables, designed to delay and attrit the heroes, ideally attriting them away entirely!

Excellent, thanks for the advice. It certainly worked well with the 2 x 2 heroes, each choosing a melee and ranged hero to play with, which gave plenty of options for things to do. Next time I'll just have to remember to choose the correct monster cards!

Cheers,
Adrian