I have a problem. We are six childhood buddies, who nowadays get to play maybe once or twice a month with 5+ players. We also have a lot of games, which leads to a situation that with five or six players the majority of the people wish to play either A Game of Thrones or Battlestar Galactica, which both we all enjoy a lot. I bought Descent last autumn and we played the first two quests, a total of three games. The last game (quest 2 with heroes winning) took us a whopping SEVEN hours to complete, setup/packing up included. Also some of the players raised a worry that they didn't feel like they were doing that much in the game. Going through a small dungeon shouldn't really take that long and there was too much downtime compared what you can achieve during your turn. Of course we had to check the rules every now and then, but 7 hours is just too much. Hell, four hours is too much. With this way overlong game everyone got a bit weary of Descent and afraid to "waste a perfectly good gaming night with 5 people" to play it again.

We've recently been playing Mansions of Madness too and everyone seems to enjoy it and is really keen to play it again. This is mostly about time invested vs the story experienced. A story MoM can be finished in 2-2,5h with "more" happening story- and adventure-wise than in our last 7 hour Descent marathon.

Still. I prefer the fantasy setting to Cthulhu-stuff (which is cool too, don't get me wrong) and I think we haven't given Descent a fair chance. But the basic box quest 2 really was a painful gaming experience. Not only by lenght but by design too. Is that a good Descent quest???

I'm looking for a way to pull the group back into Descent as I think it might be something we enjoy if we get it right. I need advice for finding the absolute best quest to begin with, something that really shows the best of what this game has to offer. I doesn't hurt if it is short, actually it has to be short it wont happen otherwise. I'm not looking for balanced that much as we're Descent beginners, challenging yes (the quest one in the basic box was a joke).

Also do you think the basic expansions (ToI, WoD, AoD) bring more depth and dimensions to the game? I'm willing to invest into the expansions if that is what it takes. Just wish to have great Descent games with my friends (and when they love the game, then play RtL campaign with them ).

Descent was a hard sell for my group, and early on there were similiar issues. I had bought the main game and we played it the next time we got together, spent most of it learning how to play, it was just three of us. The next time it was four of us and we redid the first level playing thru in much less time. We switched overlords for the second level and a mistake in laying out the dungeon map handed the overlord the game. We replayed the level with the original OL and four heroes, still took forever. I havn't played into further Vanilla dungeon levels though I would love to try a few or I'd recommend them. If we had stuck with the Vanilla version we would have rarely played the game, my group was losing interest fast. What saved it was getting RtL, the biggest thing they liked was having advancable characters and a more involved game quest. Also the dungeon levels in RtL are usually quick and fast to play (about an hour to two hours a level depending on how hard it is), only some of the more advanced levels might take longer (the last rumor level we played took four hours but at least two of those can't be guaranteed as focused game time, baby, breaks, food, etc). It is also very easy to stop between levels of a dungeon or where ever your group is on a map, mark down important information and set it all aside for later with easy hero and overlord storage. Having the option of shorter gaming sessions really sold Descent to my group, they love it and are enjoying Road to Legend far more than the Vanilla version.

As for the expansions, I can't complain about any of them, they were all worth adding to the mix.

In the end, this may just turn out to be a very hard sell for your group, but if they keep at it they'll find it to be better than first impressions. Also, it helps if you as the one who is most interested takes the time to really familiarize yourself with the game to help "keep the fllow" next time you game together and give Descent a run. As well, Descent doesn't "require" 5 gamers, it can be played with as little as 2 or 3, So if another member or two of your group want to practice with you all the better, keep it for those nights when there's only a few, then let them sell it for you .

Also organize, the sheer amount of tokens, markers, monsters, tiles in this game can slow you down to a crawl. Find multi compartment trays and sort the tokens out some, this will help in so many ways. Pre setting up for the game before the group gets there is another good idea. Having the dungeon laid out saves alot of time. Keep handy the monsters that will appear when areas are revealed, same with tokens and markers used in the level. A prepared OL will have everything ready so the hero group just has to choose their characters and set up.

Ouch! 7 hours is a very long game for that particular quest.

I have to say it's not a favourite of mine at all. Once the heroes understand what they need to do t becomes a trivial and quite dull quest. If you're looking at the expansion then I would recommend the 1st quest from Well of Darkness. It has a clock which will punish slow play. You can't afford to hang around in that quest or the dungeon will crush you - literally. I also have a soft spot for the 1st quest from Altar of Despair but be advised that this is a long quest and very challenging for the heroes. The third AoD request is very different and shows the possibilities of the game to good effect. Finally, the quests in Tomb of Ice tend to have smaller dungeons which leads to shorter games that are well balanced and seem to give a fairly even conquest with victory being possible for either side.

The other route you could go is to look at Road to LEgend and/or Sea of Blood. These completely change the feel of the game they are Advanced campaigns where your hheroes will gain experience and become more skilled as the campaign progresses. The dungeon levels in these expansions are much smaller and typically can be played in 1 - 1.5 hours. However, the Advanced campaigns are definitely not for beginning players. You really do need to have got the tactics of the vanilla game taped before you embark on the advanced campaign otherwise a lot of frustration and a sense of wasted time can ensue.

I hope that you can manage to convince your group to give Descent another go because the game has a lot to give.

Veritech said:

These are exactly the kind of stories I need to sell Descent back to my group. I might use your tactic and get two people to play with me a three player game through which a five player game is much more viable later. I need encouraging stories where players weren't feeling the game, but when getting deeper they fell in love and it became their number one love. I need stories of good times with Descent and that once you get the flow of the game down, even the longest quest only takes maximum of three hours to solve.

Did you start playing RtL straight with the Vanilla Box rules or did you first get the basic expansions and learn the rules through one off quests before going for the campaign? A lot of people have recommended to learn the game before starting a campaign, but what if the group find Descent without campaign dull? And is there a point in playing RtL without the basic expansions?

I have plano-boxes for all the chits and tokens, but I should maybe be even more systematic. Getting the "room spawn" minis out and ready beforehand is a great idea. Will use that next time we play (if I can make it happen).

And efidm, what you said is exactly what I wanted to hear about the Vanilla Box quest 2 as I was afraid that if it was the best Descent has to offer I just lost 80 euros. Great advice on the expansion quests as well. Tomb of Ice sounds lucrative, mainly because of the shorter quests. I really need to cut down the time needed for one game of Descent.

I would probably stay away from the Advanced Campaigns until your group is either very familiar with the game, or willing to invest a lot of time researching strategies for them, preferably both. I would suggest though that in addition to some organization, you setup the quest ahead of time if possible. Yes this does pretty much require you to be the overlord, but if you've built the map, etc. before anyone even gets there it will help them just "get into the action" that much quicker. Going a step further by putting all the tokens you need for each room in a baggie under the table or something so when then open you a new room you just "plop" it onto the table and arrange it quickly will help speed things up a little to.

And yes Quest 2 is boring and it is designed to teach the heroes some simple Descent lessons which once learned make it trivial. I don't think you really need to move onto any expansion quests though there are some fun ones, the base game's quest have some pretty decent ones. Quest 4 was one of my favorites I believe, though 3 is pretty decent to. Also the " Bonus Quests " you can get from the official Descent website are fun and best of all are free . I particularly liked The Aerie of Death, though Cult of the 100 was good to.

Overall like others have said, even one person becoming much more familiar with the rules will greatly help speed gameplay, though as players pick it up and become more familiar with it it will go quicker as well. Besides that I'd just say try to prepare and setup ahead of time as much as possible.

Mordjinn said:

7 hours is unusually long, especially for quest 2, but even when everyone knows what they're doing, the average running time for vanilla is roughly 4 hours (this particular quest is shorter than that, but in general, I mean.) Especially large dungeons will take longer. It sounds like you're taking longer than usual, likely due to inexperience with the game, but even for experienced players, this is a long game. The OL can speed things up by not spawning as much, but of course that will also likely throw the game in the heroes' favour (if you're willing to take a dive it might help, though.)

Descent is a game that people either "get" or "don't get." I'm not saying it's impossible for people to change their minds, but the complaints your friends have against the game are legitimate weaknesses of the system. There is room for improvement in performance, but it might not be enough to get them to enjoy the game again.

Mordjinn said:

RtL is perfectly playable with or without other expansions. There will be a few things you can't use, but compared to the whole, it's not much that gets left out.

However, RtL doesn't really add a whole lot of story to the game. It adds a larger, more strategic map on top of the dungeons, and makes the dungeons themselves smaller. It also changes a game that takes on average 4-5 hours to complete into a game that takes, on average, 20-30 hours to complete, and is designed - on purpose - to be played over the course of several sessions. The individual dungeons are shorter, that's true, but the game as a whole is much, much longer. If your friends are already complaining about "wasting an entire night" on Descent, moving to the campaign game is not going in the right direction.

In fact, it's unlikely that any expansion will add anything that will drastically alter the game in the way your friends seem to want. ToI is widely lauded as providing more benefits for the heroes than it does for the OL, but that just means the game is easier for them, I don't think it really makes it play faster. Based on what you've said, your friends don't seem to be bothered about difficulty, just length of play.

Here's what I would suggest to try and get your friends back into the game:

1) organize all your tokens and bits for easy access. Plano boxes are a good start. Make sure you have them arranged so everything you need is easy to find. Try to keep all the tiles organized by type, too, so you can find what you need to build the dungeon faster. When building the dungeon, assemble everything except dead end bits, then throw out the pile of dead ends and tell everyone to cap off open ends. Makes it go a lot faster, I find.

2) learn the rules (as a group) and play will speed up. If people understand what each action entails and how the orders work without needing to check the rules, things move along better. This, of course, requires people to play fairly regularly, unfortunately.

3) the idea about getting 2 or 3 people together and playing is a good idea, especially if you can't get all your friends together every week. Once 2 or 3 people have a firm grasp of the rules, they can help the others as the group grows. But I would still recommend playing with 4 heroes, no matter how many players.

4) assuming you're always the OL, don't spawn as much as you could. It might mean losing the game but it will also make things end faster, which is what it sounds like your friends need to see right now.

5) even in the best case scenario, you probably won't see too many games clock in under 3 hours. Keep your expectations realistic, here. Length of play is a legitimate weakness of Descent.

*****

Kevin once suggested a variant game he called "dungeon delve" which basically involved using the dungeon cards from RtL and just seeing how many levels the heroes could get through in one shot. The good news is you can easily make the game as long or as short as you like - each dungeon level will take about ten minutes, plus set-up time (sped up if you keep the tiles organized, as above) and you can play for as long as you like and then stop. This, I think, would be an ideal way to keep the game short and light-hearted with your group. The bad news is it requires you to buy one of the AC expansions and then proceed to ignore 90% of the material in the box, which is probably too expensive for you, especially if your friends are already looking at the game in a negative light. It also removes any semblance of "story" that the vanilla game might have held for your group, since you're literally just drawing random levels in sequence. Unfortunately, I don't know of any freely available fan-made "dungeon card" levels that could be used as a replacement for the ones that come in the AC expansions.

I suppose you could design your own easily enough, though. Each "level" is roughly the size of one "area" in a normal vanilla dungeon - use a runelocked door in place of the portal as an exit point. Each level has at least one chest and at least one named leader, as well as other assorted loot comparable to one "area." You can either print up cards (if you're crafty) or just assign each level you design to a card from a standard deck of playing cards and use that to determine which dungeon level is "drawn."

Mordjinn said:

Steve-O made alot of good points, answered alot of what I was going to say. In my case it went something like this. I bought the main game, sat down to play, and found it too complicated for just place and play (passed on it that first time since it took an hour to setup and I was still reading rules). After that, I had a week to read the rules and familiarize myself with the basic game. I sat down myself and played out Dungeon #4 (chose out four heroes, set everything up, and played it all myself). By the time I finished the level I pretty much had the basics of the original game down (yes I still had occasional confusions and questions after). Then we played the first dungeon level twice (once with 3, then once with 4 players), then level 2 we tried to switch OL's around, after we replayed level 2 again with me returning to the OL position and my Hero players climbing to four so there were five of us. They liked the game well eneogh but had every complaint you put forward, too time consuming, don't want to waste an entire day sitting around. I can tell you this, if you think 7 hours is long, playing thru by myself and keeping track of everything alone it took me near 9 to do Quest #4. It should be noted I tried Steve-O's advice about not spawning so much, and letting the hero group kinda have the game rather than fighting to win as OL. They ended up pointing out to me at the end of the game that I didn't seem to be playing that hard against them and they felt cheated of a challenge lol.

I bought the expansions AoD and WoD, at about this time I also discovered the bonuses of token and marker containers to help organize. We played out Quest #3 (I forgot to look at the quest guide so my previous post was a little in error) using the addition of Treachery to the game (and a few new monster spawn cards). With each game running 3-6 hours my gamers were ok with it, to a point, but I could tell it was wearing on them, the length of each dungeon level varies with how hard the OL fights back, how big the level is, and how complex it can be. After learning everything from the base game, and with the rarity of the "new" abilities coming up in game, it wasn't hard at all to convert over to the additons of these game.

After I bought RtL, the moment my group found out I had bought it (I didn't really plan to jump into it so fast, wanted to play thru more of the levels first in Vanilla myself), they wanted an upgrade. We had only been playing Vanilla Descent for a month (4-5 sessions plus my original familiarization with the game). And so I spent another week familiarizing myself with the "Advanced" campaign play of RtL. I laid out things like the map and went over everything so I could get a feel for the way the two systems were different. The next week we sat down to play, I had already bought ToI by this point and added it's parts and extra's to the overall game and we started to play. Admittedly the first two sessions were a little bumpy, but overall things flowed smoothly and now we are well into the game (almost to Gold level) three months later. Our sessions range from 2 hours to 6 depending on how much we are all into playing and for how long. Sometimes we just keep going (at least one campaign sesson ran 9 hours).

My group consists of one ADD sufferer (really hard to keep his attention on the game for long periods), a serious rules nazi (is most likely to slow the game down with strategy play and rule calls), a single mom (who constantly has to step aside to deal with her baby), and someone like me (just loves a good game and some fun with friends). We are an ex RPG gaming group who needed a break from the uber amount of rules that come with most RPG's and wasn't as simple as HeroQuest (not that I didn't love that game). Descent filled the void for our "Fantasy Dungeon Crawl" needs, and is played on and off (other board games, card games or darts take over the other game days). If I can get my group hooked, and yours already love a good board game, then half of your work is done.

Pre setup as you've seen is recommended by more than just myself. Having the monsters and needed markers ready to go can save alot of time with Vanilla Descent, setting up before everyone gets there also works. Another thing, if you aren't already, though the game does rely on random draw, maybe let the hero players choose their group the first time or few (making sure they understand this isn't the norm or the rule). Playing heroes they "want" to play may help them like the game more. Really sell it to a few first, and yes as Steve-O said, even if you play with only two, three or four players, make sure someone takes on those extra hero slots and fills them playing two, three or even four heroes, this game plays best with 3-4 heroes.

In RtL I noticed that you rarely if ever need more than 8 encounter markers, 4 pit and boulder markers (random trap cards), 2 chests, 4 glyphs, 4 treasure piles, and one or two other things, I put these in my OL storage box between games and keep them in my play area, this really saves me time grabbing extra parts (on the rare occasion a dungeon will require addtional obstacles to be added at which point I go into the container they are sorted in). RtL may be short in gaming sessions (or long if you want), but as Steve-O pointed out it will take about 15-20 completed dungeons at 3 levels in the average dungeon to come to the end of the game. If you can get them hooked, this is the way you'll likely end up going. My group will likely not go back to Vanilla Descent for a long time, already they are looking forward to playing the second time thru RtL and we havn't even finished the first run.

It helped that I'm an experienced "dungeon" gamer and so was my group, it also helped that I was dedicated eneogh to learn it all myself, not one of my hero players has bothered to read the rules and FAQ and familiarize themselves further. This meant if I hadn't learned the game we wouldn't be playing. I kinda "rushed" into RtL but it was worth it for our group. Make sure you keep a printout of the FAQ handy if you can, peruse it a few times to make sure you have the basic understanding of changes to the rules. The forums here are great for finding answers (not all will be answered but most can).

In the end Descent is a long game any way you look at it. Though I love that just pull dungeon level cards to see how far the hero group can get, might make learning the game simple, fast and fun for the hero group (though they'll likely be disappointed with the tiny dungeons, till they realize it saves them from spawn hell).

Steve-O did make another good point. It is rare for Descent to be short, and is the biggest complaint of most who play it. Only a very experienced group, in which everyone has experience playing both hero and overlord will likely ever reduce every dungeon level in Vanilla to under 3 hours. Rtl is long, it takes months to play and the group needs to be dedicated to at least some playtime (once a month would take forever, once every two...), this will be worse if your group likes shorter sessions when they do get together. It might be better to stick with Vanilla for awhile and make sure everyone is hooked before you go there.

One nice option in RtL is the hero party ability to "leave" a dungeon if they find it too hard. This gives the group an out if they are making little headway and dying often. Of course this depends on how stubborn the hero players are. I agree with Slaphead six about the first level in WoD being really time limited as the dungeon collapses with each round. The max amount of rounds for this dungeon is 17 before there is no more dungeon to play in, it might be the perfect level to start with. Sadly from looking at the map layouts for the rest of the quests, the rest in AoD and WoD are huge, most are double the size of the original 11 if not three to four times the size. These are not small map layouts, this would make them very long to play, "Hold the Line" is a small map and looks like it is limited in rounds (there are several things that are round specific on this level, like when each wave of monster attacks comes). The last wave hits at round 9 which means the game wouldn't last much longer after that. ToI has 3 of the six levels being smaller than the original base game dungeons, two others are about the same size.

I just looked at the quest log again and we did actually play dungeon 5 the week we decided that we would play RtL instead the next time we got together (I remember an arguement about whether I could spawn on different levels the hero group had left already behind them and use that to block LoS for spawning purposes). None of the first five dungeon levels were short in play time, the shortest I think was 4 hours. I do have a "busy" group so this is hard for me to judge, a group that sits down and just plays might go through much faster.

Amazing answers. A big thanks for taking the time to explain your views. We will (at some point) try the game again and I'll keep in mind what you said. As the time is limited and we own other very good games too I think that the best way for now is just to play one game at the time when we can. Maybe Descent is for us and people will wish to play it more often or maybe it just isn't scratching the itch the right way. Lets see. Maybe there will be time for RtL in the retirement centre

Hook a few players first, play it with those who are more willing to sit thru longer games and lean more towards fantasy settings, those who showed more interest. Try to elicite their interest and get their enthusiasm for future games fueled, this will help in convincing the other players. Sadly those who are already biased against this game may never change their opinions about it.

Also you noted that some of the heroes felt like they weren't doing anything and had lots of downtime, less players means less downtime for each between turns (though the OL still has to wait if there are still four heroes in play). As for individual downtime for players, this does come up here and there, especially when it comes to those who play the "Tanks" or who are playing slow moving hero characters. Ranged and magic characters have devastating attacks that can inflict alot of harm on more than one target depending on their weapon, effectively stealing the game out from under the other players. I only went through three games where a hero ended up barely doing everything thru the hours of gameplay, once was in Vanilla, another was thru an entire copper level dungeon, the Tank was pretty much left in the dust as the other heroes (2 ranged, 1 magic) proceeded to clear out the dungeon before he could even move forward. This happened through all three levels of that dungeon and was a little bit complained about at the end. The third time it was one of the ranged heroes, by the time his turn came around everything else had been cleared, and this happened again often. It isn't common for a player to have to sit and wait feeling useless, but it does happen here and there, this is more dependent on how well the hero group cooperates than anything the overlord player did. Also, the hero players have the advantage of being able to choose what order they take their turns in, so if one player feels a little left out the others should let them go first to give them a chance to play.

Once you get the hang of it, barring too much time spent by individuals strategizing, the average hero turn will run about five minutes, the overlord turns will rarely max out beyond ten minutes (sometimes the OL just draws, collects threat and can't do anything). A full round (overlord and five heroes turns) will last somewhere between 15 minutes to as long as 45 depending on how quick everyone takes their turn. While the overlord is a fifth player and not the game master, that players turn should never exceed the time required for the four heroes together to take their turn, being the most involved player their turn will be longer on average, but a good overlord will do their best to keep things running smooth on their end, insuring that the players controlling the heroes get their turns fast and with little waiting.

One suggestion, if your group is willing, maybe play the game out over two sessions, have a point where the players will stop (a certain time or certain amount of rooms). Have each hero put all their tokens, character sheet, skills and equip cards in individual ziplock bags (or other means of storing), make notations of which part of the deck is graveyard and which is draw, what power cards you have in play, and what cards are in your hand. Take a picture of the board, or the room they are in (any cell cam would do this well enough) to mark where the hero figures are, then when all five players are available again, setup, do a quick recap and continue playing where you left off the last time you played.

I hope they do take an interest, if they like a good board game, Descent is a good way to go. I think of some of the Risk and Magic the Gathering games I used to play that took hours longer than Descent, sometimes in the case of Risk, entire days. Games like this are great for people who want to sit down for several hours and just play, but sadly if your limit is around 2 hours, it makes it very hard to play Vanilla Descent at all.

Veritech, thanks a lot for taking the time to answer. I really appreciate it.

Last night we had a chance to return to the dungeons. We played the 3rd quest of the vanilla box with four heroes (Mad Carthos, Bogran the Shadow, Steelhorns and Grey Ker) and it took us five hours to complete. Overall it was a bit frustrating experience for me as I didn't stand a chance after the area 2 when the four heroes got their first bronze treasure draw and just blew their way through the dungeon one shotting nagas. First I didn't have a chance to spawn in start area and area 1 as they covered the rooms nicely and didn't have any traps in my hand. After that they got so tough that killing them was really hard and each of them killed two or three enemies per turn. No chance. The absolute worst part was area 4 where one hero had the Flute of "Something" that stunned all the monsters in the room. My evening didn't get better when I played the Dark Charm(?) trap on blast wand mage, forced him to attack a hero next to him to get three heros in the blast and he MISSED the attack!!!

Excuses aside, they played a really strong game and I missed a couple of chances and played badly.

I'm still quite pleased with the outcome of the game as the players seemed to have ok time. It was way too easy for them, but of course as they didn't know what was to come they didn't feel it was too easy, except when they started one shotting the real big guys (or group shotting with blast). I guess I can get them to play again, when we have time again (first we have AGoT, Mansions of Madness and Galactica on the list). I followed the advice on speeding up the game here and it worked. The heroes took ages every turn to decide what to do, who should go first and how to optimize their turn. Especially near the end when they had over 20 conquest and silver super armors they still used a huge amount of time running through the store, selling and trading and phew... Or maybe I just felt like it took a lot of time.

This time I let them pick their heroes "take 3 keep 1" method, which I guess gives them quite an advantage. What do you think, does it make the game much easier for the heroes? I know they like it because they can get the kind of characters they like, but that way they can also optimize the group a lot more.

Also giving the heroes three conquest from every activated glyph feels like a lot. And them having three skills each right from the beginning. Did we do it right?

I like the game, but I dislike that the heroes go from 0 to 100 in such a short time. Once they got the bronze magic stuff, there was no way for me to win. After silver treasure they got so overpowered that there was no challenge and after gold treasure the end boss fight was a joke.

Mordjinn said:

The amount of time they spend deliberating over their turn will decrease as they become more familiar with the rules. In our group these days the heroes usually know what they're going to do before I'm finished taking my turn, barring the odd surprise or second-guess.

Mordjinn said:

This drawing method does lend itself to hero parties that are slightly above average, or highly above average if they get lucky with their draws. It's true that makes things harder for the OL in general, but it keeps things light and entertaining and it doesn't make things impossible for the OL, just more challenging.

Mordjinn said:

You did it right. This is how vanilla works.

Mordjinn said:

This is a legitimate flaw with the game, probably the biggest one in my personal opinion. Heroes decked out in copper can still be dealt with usually, but silver and especially gold treasures make hero victory basically assured. If the OL wants to win, he usually has to do it by crushing them quickly, or at least bleeding off enough CT that they don't have much to lose later on.

It would be better, IMHO, if things stayed roughly even throughout the quest, and either side had a reasonable chance of winning right up to the end. If you want to get into some house rules to address this, there are a few floating around. In particular the "negative conquest" variant is a good one, since the OL can beat on the early heroes into negative CT without ending the quest prematurely. I'm sure there are others out there. I don't use too many house rules myself, so I'm not that familiar with them.

Wow, that idea of negative conquest is really a cool one. I'm definitely going to introduce it to my group. The feeling of ending the game with hero kill somehow always leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

When it comes to trying ot become more "evil" OL, I've studied some of the OL tactics posts. But good advice is always needed. Is there such a thing as "good" and "bad" spawns or does it really depend on the situation? Should I try to spawn each and every round? Should I try to always charge on heroes or hold the monsters back and hope that the heroes go out of their way to kill each and every one of them? Aim and dodge cards seem quite useless, but are they?

Thanks for taking the time to answer Steve-O, you really are a great great help for us noobs.

Mordjinn said:

I agree, wish I had thought of that, kinda gives the game back a sense of sportsmanship. I agree on the bad taste in mouth bit, I prefer a challenge, not a cheap thrill.

Every spawn depends on the situation, some spawn timing and choices will always outweigh others. One that hits them in an exposed place from behind when they least expect it can be especially satisfying. Now that I understand the full use of Gust of Wind it will become one of those hated cards by my hero players. Save your best spawns for just the right moment, but don't stress about throwing out attack wasters (light monsters who seem more threatening than they are, ie; hellhounds, skeletons, etc.). My hero players hate the Beastman spawn card, as it is almost guaranteed to get them every time.

If you can avoid line of fire for a round sometimes it's better to hold back, especially if you don't have alot of cards to support an attack that will likely leave you fully vulnerable for a round and have little advantage for you other than exposing monsters to a barrage of attacks. There does come a point where you cannot wait, choosing out your timing there is something you'll have to figure out.

Aim and Dodge cards will occasionally come around at the right time, and be more usable than disposable (ie; tons of Threat, almost full hand, playable in the moment and quite cheap). On the other hand I usually end up dropping them, mostly because they rarely turn out good and sometimes their play is just a waste, rolling an X on an Aim twice or getting the best possible hit anyway, having to play Aim before an attack rather than after a successful attack makes this an occasional eneogh waste of Threat. Dodge is still more useful, but since you can't wait to see if they throw an X it occasionally turns out to be a waste of Threat as well, and sometimes the reroll just gives them a better roll than a worse one. If you expand and add Treachery to your game like I have, you may find these worth being trade cards (even replacing them with something that gives you higher threat when you drop them makes them more worth it). Having the Treachery additions to the first dungeons changes how they play as well, and does put the game more in the OL's favor. That would be from WoD, and AoD.

Glad to see the ideas helped speed things up. It will get faster, nice to see they didn't seem to mind the longer game (the 7 hour run is probably what put them off the first time).

Great dissection of cards and their usage Veritech. We were surprised to notice that we remembered the rules quite well. Occasional bump was encountered, but the main lenghtener of the game was the hero turn. I think everyone is willing to play again and while waiting for Descent five player game - slot (as we have tons of other interesting games too) I'll try to get two guys to play with me so we can practice a bit and make the next "big game" smoother. I think I'll add treachery to our games and try to come up with a short campaign or something. Maybe that more story driven Descent variant I proposed in the other thread.

The nice thing about Treachery is they include a chart for adding it to the original games dungeons for use. If the hero group finds you too powerful, ToI and Feats give something back to them... though as an OL, I can say honestly, you'll hate those cards.

Veritech said:

I don't think this is quite correct. It is my understanding that Dodge is played after the hero rolls the dice, meaning that you can wait to see what you are Dodging. This makes it particularly gross against hero's aimed attacks, since you can play it right after they miss to cancel their re-roll. This is also different from the way that Aim works (which has to be played before the roll).

Kartigan said:

I wasn't refering to players, I was refering to OL cards. The dodge order for a hero does allow them to use it to re-roll any dice used in the attack roll. Quoted from the book.

"A hero that has placed a dodge order may, when attacked, force his attacker (usually the overlord player) to re-roll any number of dice rolled for this attack, and must accept the second result." as well as "Important: If an aimed attack is made against a target that has placed a dodge order, both abilities are ignored for that attack." It also states that the hero can dodge multiple attacks made at him so it can be used mulitiple times, I did state it was better than "Aim", in several ways.

Meaning that yes, a hero player using a dodge order can choose when to use the dodge order, obviously not wasting it if the attack rolled an "X". The OL card Dodge also states that it is used after a hero has attacked a monster ( Dodge : Event: Play after a hero has attacked a monster. The monster dodges the attack.). I would read this to mean you follow the above hero action as stated above, but at the same time unlike Aim, which clearly states on both the card and rules of Aim in the book that it has to be applied before the dice are rolled, which makes it open to interpretation... so I would need a more official call on this.

In the case of the OL card ( Aim : Event: Play immediately after declaring an attack but before rolling the dice. Your attack is an aimed attack.")

In which case you go to the rules on aim orders "Before the hero rolls dice for an attack, he may use the aim order to declare that he is making an aimed attack. This allows him to re-roll any number of dice after rolling for the attack (including any dice showing the "miss" result). The hero must keep the second result."

So in both cases playing Aim Card or Aim Order comes purely down to chance and what the dice end up rolling anyway, the are a good backup, and will have their moments, but they will be rare comparatively with other options, eneogh that most people do drop them for better, course that depends on how one chooses to alter their decks with Treachery as well. Certain deck setups would utilize this better.

I will also clarify that when Stealth and ToI monsters are added to the game, Dodge and Aim both jump significantly in useage for certain battles. But without it, their use is quite rare.

Huh, I got confused.

If the hero is making an aimed attack, is it ok to play a dodge OL card immediately after the dice have been rolled if there's a miss thus preventing the aim-reroll? Then aim is even worse. Guard is so much better than aim as it gives you a free attack, where aim just gives you a chance to reroll, or am I missing something here?.

Can the OL play aim card on the attack caused by the "Dark Charm" (or what ever the card that makes one hero attack himself or some other hero is called) - trap OL card? That will make it significantly more powerful as when you have an option to reroll all the bad results you can kill the whole hero group with a lucky blast hero attack.

Veritech said:

I think you're a little confused about how dodges work.

A hero's Dodge order must be placed during his turn by declaring a Ready action. It lasts until the start of his next turn. It allows him to use the dodge re-roll once on each and every attack that targets him for that time. Using this dodge on one attack does not remove the order token for future attacks. That part you seem to have straight.

The OL's Dodge card only works against one attack targetting the monster in question, but the triggering condition is "after a hero has attacked a monster" so the OL can wait to see if the attack actually hits before deciding to play the card. He will never waste threat playing the card on an attack that rolls an X anyway.

Veritech said:

Yes, it means the monster invokes the dodge ability as described in the rules, however, it does not mean the monster gets a dodge order token placed beside it. Thus the effect will not continue to work against future attacks. Descent, like many FFG games, is designed to have no memory (or at least very little memory) so things that aren't marked by a token or other element of the physical game state do not generally linger beyond the resolution of the effect that caused them.

Veritech said:

Dodge doesn't actually jump that much, since Stealth is one of few (perhaps the only) effect that explicitly only affects figures with Stealth. If a blast attack only misses due to the Stealth die, figures with Stealth will be exempt, but other figures will get hit by the attack. Figures that have Stealth love to dodge and re-roll that extra X-die, but figures without the ability don't see any mechanical difference.

Aim is still Aim. Anything Aim can do, Battle actions can do better. Even with Stealth in the mix.

Mordjinn said:

Yes, the OL can do this to cancel an Aimed attack. The Guard attack isn't technically "free" since placing the order consumes a half-action from your turn that could just as easily have been an attack then and there. It's displaced to the OL's turn, but your hero still "acts the same amount." That said, you're correct that Guard is much better than Aim. Also, keep in mind that you can only use Guard during the OL's turn, not during other heroes' turns. It's a subtle difference, but it can be important sometimes.

Mordjinn said:

Yes, the OL can use Aim on a DC'd hero attack. The OL's Aim card is occasionally useful, especially if the heroes never use Dodge. The hero's Aim order is almost never useful. If they want an extra attack, they should Battle instead since they then have the potential to make TWO attacks if the first one works out okay, and if the first one misses they still have the second. The only thing an Aim order does for a hero is potentially cancel the OL's ability to Dodge, but since the OL knows when you're Aiming, he can withhold his Dodge card for later, unless he really wants to cancel your Aim for some reason. It's a gambit that only pays off when the OL agrees to let it happen, which is generally not in the heroes' favour.

Steve-O said:

Something got lost in translation there... I am aware and play Dodge orders and Ready actions exactly as you have pointed out, I am also aware that it lasts the duration till the start of that hero players next turn and allows him to reroll once for every attack directed at him. I don't think at any point I said he pulls back his ready token, in fact in the next paragraph where I typed text from the book I specifically included "It also states that the hero can dodge multiple attacks made at him so it can be used mulitiple times" in the next paragraph to follow the one you clipped this from.

Steve-O said:

I don't think at any point I did, I said refer to the dodge rules, not the ready rules, they are in two different places. The rules for Dodge that the OL refers to are on page14 of the main rulebook for Vanilla Descent, since nothing else is specified I would take that to mean that. I am aware that the OL card Dodge is a one time play against one single attack, and then it is discarded, I know it doesn't carry on for further defense rolls. As quoted from the rules of Dodge under Hero Orders "A hero that has placed a dodge order may, when attacked, force his attacker (usually the overlord player) to re-roll any number of dice rolled for this attack, and must accept the second result." The only difference is that for the OL it would read something like this "An overlord player that has played a Dodge card may, when attacked, force his attacker (usually the hero player) to re-roll any number of dice rolled for this attack, and must accept the second result. then discard this card."

Steve-O said:

I had a battle with every hero using stealth potions and half the creatures in use as well, yes sometimes, it does come in significantly useful to play dodge and aim orders. But yes, I totally agree on you, it is rare, even if you own ToI. I have never had a moment to use aim pop up in any battle I've done as an OL, which is why I agree it is pretty much a throwaway card, unless I use a hero and get an item that gives it to me for free, I doubt I ever will.

Steve-O said:

I didn't have clarification on this, and asked for it earlier, did a dodge card play after or before a die roll, rolling after makes a huge difference. The cards are just foggy eneogh to have left this up to interpretation. Thanx for clearing that up. and yes, using aim or dodge to "Cancel" a dodge or aim does slightly enhance the use of these cards for the OL, if they are in his hand at that critical point.

Steve-O said:

Yet another reason I never see Aim orders used by my hero players.

Kartigan said:

I had mentioned I wanted clarification on this, since the cards are abit foggy in clarity when it comes to dodge, but crystal clear when it comes to aim. I already had this cleared up in another post, but thanx for mentioning.

On the other hand Kartigan, that was the one thing I did have wrong about Dodge, and only in the case of the OL's card, not the hero orders. I sat down as a group with the hero players to make sure they understood how their side of things worked, made sure each of them read the rules, they are pretty clear considering, and very simple to read. We pretty much agreed that it works the way has been said here. Correct me if I seem to be confused.

Hero chooses a Ready action, moves his dodge token up placing a dodge order, moves or attacks, he can reroll any, all or none of the dice from an attack against himself, once for each attack, this applies to all attacks till the start of the hero players next turn. Dice cannot be rerolled more than once. Remove Ready token if hero dies or at the start of his next turn.

If the hero players can wait to play dodge until after the attack is rolled it would make sense that the OL can to.

Aim for an OL, especially being so cheap will have occasional uses. When Darkcharm is played, even if there are no Dodge orders in play it grants a second chance to roll if the first one fails, since Darkcharm is usually a very high damage attack and likely to kill a hero this can be a big advantage to save you from the waste of threat on Darkcharm turning into a "miss" roll. This makes it effective in any large damage attack leveled against the hero players from a Monster, Leader, or Lieutenant (Avatars don't get to use the OL deck cards).

It is has rare moments of usefulness when it comes to Feat cards, the Rogue selection has a card called "Foiled Plans" which allows them to choose two from your hand showing them to everyone and discarding one. Useful if you are down to two cards, one is about to be used by you and the other is Aim, makes a cheap quick discard, though it comes up extremely rare, and not at all if you don't have Feat cards in your game.

If the hero players ever use Dodge orders against you then you can use it to counter their dodge ability.

If you are playing with Stealth in the game and a hero has drunk a potion (granting them stealth like dodge till the start of their next turn unless they roll a surge and keep the stealth potion for another turn). Making it useful in one attack, and even then not that much, still very random chance. By this time there are Treachery cards you would have added that far outclassed these cards and made them worth removing.

Aim for the Hero players. If they are playing against Monsters with the Stealth ability. Otherwise any other action or ready choice (battle, advance, rest, guard, run) far outweighs it in strategic usefulness. Unless your shot is going to end the game or the battle, and even then, if you can get one attack off and an Aim, better to go for Battle and do two attacks instead, not only do you have twice the chance to hit, but double the damage chances unlike just an Aim and one attack which just gives you two chances to hit and only if the first one missed.

Dodge for an OL again being so cheap and being more strategically playable has more uses then Aim. Has similar uses when it comes to Feats and Aim orders as Aim has listed above. Can enhance Stealth defense rolls for a creature that you might want to protect.

Good for heroes but there are still better ones to use, Guard far outweighs dodge in pretty much every situation that comes to mind, even Rest will find far more use than Dodge. Rare use

Weaknesses overlord, there is only two of each in the deck making them come up at the right times not as often as one would like. One time one moment use only. Low toss for threat cost makes them worth having hover in your hand when there is no risk of breaching limit, having them be tossable in the moment does keep them in my hand alot longer than normal but most of the time, they are still dropped. When trading for Treachery cards, these are some of the most replaceable and ones worth trading off for far better (in both playability, and threat drop potential).

Weaknesses heroes, there are far better things to use than either Aim or Dodge orders, in any situation where either of these might be useful, there is always a better alternative.

If anyone can add some better uses, feel free.