So I finally convinced my closeted-geek poker buddies to try DESCENT this weekend instead of our normal poker game. I'll be the Overlord, and I've got a full squad of four (4) newbie heroes playing the game. Some of them have never played anything like this game, and some of them are veteren RPG players who've played D&D to Warhammer.

After thinking it over, I decided that instead of playing the original "Into the Dark" (vanilla descent, quest 1), I would start them with the 1st TOMB OF ICE quest. (I own all of the expansions except ALTAR OF DESPAIR)

My questions for you:

- Is the ToI quest any good?

- Will it present a decent, yet not overwhelming challenge for the heroes?

- Any tips for the Overlord and/or heroes regarding this dungeon?

I'll report back if you like. My main goal is to get these guys to come back next month.

J

I just got ToI and played a bit of the first quest. I was playing against myself, and only ended up playing 4 turns, but in that time the heroes had explored 3 areas, collected all the treasure, and killed all monsters on the board (including ones created by spawn cards). And none of them had died. That's...pretty amazing for the heroes, on the face of it, but there aren't a lot of glyphs of transport in that quest, so I don't think they're supposed to die a lot.

So I don't have a lot of data to base this on, but my impression is that it's a relatively short and easy quest, but not as easy as some JitD quests, and short on treasure and glyphs--the heroes will need to buy intelligent equipment and move quickly to be effective. There's a bunch of shades, so they'll need one or two good damage dealers using ranged, magic, or reach weapons, but you really want a diverse party in every quest, so with 4 heroes they'd probably do that anyway.

Just following up on my own post. We had a great time. The dungeon was perect for this group. They all want to come back and play again.

Photos here , if you're interested.