Hi everyone,

I'm more or less new to board games, although I used to play d&d and stuff. I was looking for something to play with my fellow casual gamers, so to speak, something easy and fun, you know, such as carcassone or catan.
While looking at just every box on the shelves of the small but crowded shop, the huge Descent box caught my eye. The box is so heavy it must be filled with good stuff - I thought. It looks good, too.
So I read a million reviews and considered a million other games and at last I made up my mind and I went back to the shop, picked it up and paid, a little nervous, I sure hope we enjoy this cause it's no cheap game...

So this is my first game of this kind, part rpg, part miniature game, part board game... I can't wait to play it!
meanwhile I read the rulebook and the pdf faq on the site, and already I have a very basic question:

About the READY action.

it says in the rulebook that a hero that readies can either move or attack, AND can also place a hero order token. Then on the hero orders section it says that the ready order allows an hero to place an order and either move or make an attack. Doesnt this mean, if I place an aimed attack token, that I'd be attacking twice ?
I ready my hero and decide to attack, then place an aimed attack token and -as per the rules saying I can place an aimed attack and attack in the same turn- execute the aimed attack too...

it would seem so, as the actions allowed are two (move or attack, place token to be used 'later in the round') but two attacks in one round doesnt feel right....

thanks for your time and help!

S.

Severino said:

Hello,

you're quoting the rulebook & FAQ properly. The only thing you misinterpreted is: placing an Aim token allows you to make an aimed attack. Not true. The Aim order is discarded to make a normal attack an Aimed attack, nothing more. The clarification you've found was about making an aimed attack immediately during a READY action (1st half action: place Aim token; 2nd half action: attack, discarding the token to have an aimed attack).

The best way to understand your turn is to divide it in two half actions.

Run action: move twice your base speed (= 2 movement half actions)

Battle action: make two attacks (= 2 attack half actions)

Advance action: you both move and attack (=2 different half actions), being able to attack at any time during movement (before, after, or in the middle of movement)

Ready action: it is identical to Advance, but you have to replace one half action with an order placement, being aware that some conditions make you lose the order (such as moving). Usually you place the order after completing movement or making an attack, as the last part of your Hero turn; an exception is the Aim order that can be placed as 1st half action and discarded to make the following attack (2nd half action) an Aimed attack.

I hope this helps.

There's nothing that prevents you from doing two actions in a round; in fact, that's exactly what a Battle Action is. However, in this case, you are misunderstanding how an Aim action works. Making use of an Aim does not give you an attack; it simply modifies the rules slightly for the character's next attack. So you declare a Ready action, do your movement and place your Aim token. Then, the next time you attack (on your next turn presumably, though there are special abilities that can get around this), you get the benefit of being able to re-roll any and all dice of your choice for that attack.

In summary, Aim does not give you an attack. It's causes you to use up an action in order to make your next attack more powerful.

The rule that confuses you actually only allows you to declare a ready action and then you have the choice to attack OR move, in addition to placing an order token. But you are actually allowed to place the order FIRST and THEN move or attack. And so, if you place an AIM order you can then immediately use your attack to make an aimed attack.

Thanks for your help, everybody, I got it now!

Also to think about the turn in two half actions really helps understanding how everything flows.

After our first play test I can say we had a lot of fun!

Another quick question... just to be extra sure...

it never says in the manual that I can't make a ranged attack targeting an adjacent space... although common sense would dictate one should be at least one space away

You can do a ranged attack to an adjacent square, but you need to obtain a 1 in the dice roll.

Severino said:

You are allowed to make ranged (and magic) attacks against adjacent spaces if you want to. The advantage of melee attacks is that they generally do more damage per hit and they don't calculate range (although the odds of rolling less than 1 range are slim, they are not theoretically impossible, at least with some weapons.)

Thanks for the clarification!

we're playing a lot and everyone seem to love this game, to my surpise even the girls!

anyway every now and then a situation we're not sure how to deal with arises.. I hope it's ok if I ask here:

1) Can a hero with ONE remaining movement point in his turn start opening a treasure chest (which takes 2) and spend just an additional movement to at last open it on his next turn? Or, can a hero open a chest between turns?

2) Must a hero dealing 2 attacks declare 2 targets first? Or can he decide the second target when/if the first one has been killed?

Severino said:

I envy you, not only because of the girls but because you actually manage to play Descent. For me it has turned into an almost impossible dream.

However:

1) To perform a movement action you need to spend all movement points in the same Turn. You can't open a chest (or jump over a pit) between turns. Sometimes it will also be difficult to remember how many points did you spend the turn before. To complete the action, spend Fatigue if able; it's usually worth it, especially if you are opening a Chest.

2) No, you have to declare the target only before every single attack. A succesfull first attack may open new possibilities for the second (e.g. wider line of sight).

The_Warlock said:

After having played with my closest friends I decided to try Descent with a second group of people.
I assembled a few friends from my d&d and cthulhu days... everyone of us quite expert in gaming being it cards, table, miniature or computer.
I don't know, I though with these 'gamers' it would be more fun, right?
Wrong.
Sure, they all took advantage of every possibility in the rules, whereas the inexperienced players resorted to move and attack, move and attack.
But they were sooo noisy: a lot of 'this rule doesn't make sense' or 'it should be like this instead' or even 'what is this advanced hero quest?'
and when they crushed my monsters it was 'this game is too easy!'
and when I crushed their heroes it was 'you must be cheating!'
so busy were they laughing and making fun of every one of my mistakes (including spawning a spider where I couldnt move it cause I didn't notice the rubble) that it took the whole night for them to do just 3 rooms, so much for being a 'pro'!
I, while still laughing with them, immediately felt the desire to shred the arrogant looters to pieces, I guess I really felt like the Overlord, I laughed and drank and laughed and drank with them but deep inside I wanted to HURT them
Not because they were winning, hell I even helped my other team win the first scenarios, but because of their attitude!
But the **** heroes were too strong!!
They were soon covered with powerful items and I resorted to attacking the weakest everytime, which I guess is ok by an Overlord standard.
I really need to improve my villainy. It will be really hard to win against them, they're not likely to make any strategic mistake...
**** pro heroes...
I heard with the first expansion the overlord's got more chances at winning?
maybe it's time to buy

this happened to me when i played with d&d'ers. people just don't understand that this is a game that is entirely different than most games.

Severino said:

Things are definitely harder on the heroes in WoD and AoD. You really need four heroes to keep things level (as opposed to the base game where it's merely suggested.) That said, the same dynamic of "you need to crush them before they get gold items" remains. It sounds like you weren't really trying to beat the heroes until later in the session, presumably after they at least had silver gear, and if that's true then it's not really surprising that the heroes won.

If there's one thing that annoys me about the game it's this - the OL can win easily while the heroes have town items or copper gear, if he really works at crushing them early. The OL's chances of winning dwindle rapidly as the heroes gear up, to the point where his odds of beating them after they have gold items are pretty slim indeed. I'd like it better if things stayed roughly even throughout the gearing process, but I'm not sure how to accomplish that without completely rewriting the game (which I'm too lazy to do, of course. =P)

Some other quick questions

1) Amulet of Healing: does it remove poison tokens?
2) In vanilla, heroes don't recover fatigue when in city, am I right? I've downloaded and printed a rule summary sheet from some site but there are also rules for expansions and there's something about recovering so I though I forgot about something...
3) heroes in the city (vanilla) are considered o be adjacent, so they can trade. But they still pay 1 movement point?
4) My heroes like to stuff themselves with potions. What happens if they buy them all and I don't have any more tokens to place when a new area is revealed? Are potions in a limited amount?

Severino said:

Yes. You cannot replace wounds until you remove poison tokens, that is what poison tokens do. Amulet of health instructs you to 'refill' your wounds back up to maximum, which by default means removing poison tokens first.

Severino said:

No fatigue recovery in town.
You might be remembering Advanced Campaign rules where heroes recover fatigue every time they go back onto the campaign map - there maybe be days or even weeks each time they are on the campaign map between dungeons or encounters.

Severino said:

Yes.

Severino said:

Yes, potions are limited in amount. If there are none left you simply don't place them.
Note also that there are only three potion 'slots' on each hero's belt, although the hero may use backpack slots to carry potions as well.

One Fist and Guard: I assumed One Fist can make an extra attack in his turn. But reading at his ability, it says ALWAYS, suggesting he can make two attacks in the overlord turn if he's got the Guard order.

If this is true then it must also be true with the Alertness skill ("When an enemy figure movess into a space adjacent to you, you may spend 2 fatigue to immediately make 1 attack against that figure."). The card does say ONE attack, but then the ability says he can always make the extra melee attack in addition to his normal action so I guess the question is.. does the Guard count as normal action? Does the activation of alertness count as normal action?

Severino said:

Action is a keyword from the base Rulebook, page 8. It has a specific meaning in Descent.

Quoting:

Step 3: Take an Action
A hero player must choose one action from the four listed
below. A hero is not allowed to do anything except
refresh and equip before he declares the action he is taking.
After the hero has resolved his entire action , his turn
is over and play passes to the player on his left.
The four possible actions are:

A.Run

B.Battle

C.Advance

D.Ready

I added enphasis to show that the entire action is resolved during a Hero's Turn. Following effects such as Alertness and Guard Order resolution are not to be considered part of the Hero action, therefore you do not apply One Fist's extra attack there.

By the way, you already got the extra attack on your previous turn, during your normal action, no matter if you used it or not.

thanks for the explanation.

we're not yet done with the basic scenarios and it seems everytime a new question arise.
Last time we were discussing about the Able Warrior ability, which reads:

"When you declare an Advance action, you may immediately spend 2 fatigue to make 2 attacks this turn instead of 1"

one of the players says what IMMEDIATELY mean is that you have to have those two fatigues altready at the start of your turn in order to trigger the ablity, and that you can't drink a potion in order to recover fatigues before.

but the card says 'when i declare an Advance action', so there's no reason it should work differenty than any Advance action, so even if I don't have the two fatigues I can:

declare advace
spend movement to drink a potion and recover all fatigue
spend fatigue to trigger Able Warrior
execute the 2 attacks and spend remaining movement as usual

so what's the meaning of that 'immediately'?

I hope we get better soon at this game because right now it takes us more than six hours to complete a map, so playing at night when you have to work on the next day is out of the question

Severino said:

What your player said.

In your version you did not immediately spend 2 fatigue when you declared Advance, so you did not follow the requirements of the Able Warrior skill. You have to trigger Able Warrior immediately , when you declare the Advance action .