Tons of questions from newbie to Descent!

By Flatusjae, in Descent: Journeys in the Dark

Hiya!

I'm very new player to Descent 2nd edition, with never played 1st edition. Today I finally got my playgroup together, with me playing as OL, and 4 of my friends playing heroes. Very very soon in the introduction quest First Blood, big debate started. Stun and Ashrian's hero ability for example. These debates took most of our gameplaytime, and what was advertised as 40min-1h per quest was soon 3h for the introduction quest. Granted, me and one other player argued more than neccessary. In the end, we tried differend ways to see which worked better, which still didn't help that much.

I'll list my questions here, all help is greatly appreciated :) I will be googling these things after creating this thread too.

ABOUT STUN:

1. How does Stun work excatly? It says that " This is the only action you may perform on your turn while you have this card or token. " But this gives way too easy opportunities for stunlocking lot of monsters at the time. We debated that does removing stun take only one action, or WHOLE turn. We never reached real conclusion. I believe it works much better if removing stun takes one action.

2. Does Stun work to ALL monsters, quest specific bosses (like Mauler on First Blood), Master monsters, lieutenants?

3. Does Ashrian's Hero Ability work on ALL adjacent enemies, or just one? It reads: " When a minion monster begins it's activation adjacent to you, it is Stunned " Our healer basicly just kept monsters stunlocked all the time, including "boss" monsters, which I now believe to be mistake, as it says "minion", and aren't the red monsters Master monsters? Does that wording matter? Confusing.

Other stuff:

4. Are Search Cards discarded after use? For example after using health potion, is it basicly out of game for that quest/encounter? It says so many times that you just flip it over, and I understand that it's used to count gold ammount at the end of the quest, but we found it much easier to just record the gold, then discard the card. But even this brought debate to our table. It didn't say "discard" anywhere, so could it be assumed that it's reusable in the same quest? I believe not, but not everyone else saw this in the same way as I.

5. How the hell you go against Warrior? He kills everything so easily, and with counterattack skill there's absolutely no point attacking warrior if he has Stamina left. Granted, we only played two quests, but still, I'm bit concerned that warrior will become unstoppable killing machine in our future gameplay sessions. This happened too often in Doom boardgame with certain talents, and especially talent combinations (chainsaw marine with triple attacks, 4 space movement, +2 attack and 3+ armour = godmode).

Here's biggest problems that we encountered, there was few small things, but these were what hindered us. All clarifications and help is once again greatly greatly appreciated! :)

Flatusjae said:

Hiya!

I'm very new player to Descent 2nd edition, with never played 1st edition. Today I finally got my playgroup together, with me playing as OL, and 4 of my friends playing heroes. Very very soon in the introduction quest First Blood, big debate started. Stun and Ashrian's hero ability for example. These debates took most of our gameplaytime, and what was advertised as 40min-1h per quest was soon 3h for the introduction quest. Granted, me and one other player argued more than neccessary. In the end, we tried differend ways to see which worked better, which still didn't help that much.

I'll list my questions here, all help is greatly appreciated :) I will be googling these things after creating this thread too.

ABOUT STUN:

1. How does Stun work excatly? It says that " This is the only action you may perform on your turn while you have this card or token. " But this gives way too easy opportunities for stunlocking lot of monsters at the time. We debated that does removing stun take only one action, or WHOLE turn. We never reached real conclusion. I believe it works much better if removing stun takes one action.

2. Does Stun work to ALL monsters, quest specific bosses (like Mauler on First Blood), Master monsters, lieutenants?

3. Does Ashrian's Hero Ability work on ALL adjacent enemies, or just one? It reads: " When a minion monster begins it's activation adjacent to you, it is Stunned " Our healer basicly just kept monsters stunlocked all the time, including "boss" monsters, which I now believe to be mistake, as it says "minion", and aren't the red monsters Master monsters? Does that wording matter? Confusing.

Other stuff:

4. Are Search Cards discarded after use? For example after using health potion, is it basicly out of game for that quest/encounter? It says so many times that you just flip it over, and I understand that it's used to count gold ammount at the end of the quest, but we found it much easier to just record the gold, then discard the card. But even this brought debate to our table. It didn't say "discard" anywhere, so could it be assumed that it's reusable in the same quest? I believe not, but not everyone else saw this in the same way as I.

5. How the hell you go against Warrior? He kills everything so easily, and with counterattack skill there's absolutely no point attacking warrior if he has Stamina left. Granted, we only played two quests, but still, I'm bit concerned that warrior will become unstoppable killing machine in our future gameplay sessions. This happened too often in Doom boardgame with certain talents, and especially talent combinations (chainsaw marine with triple attacks, 4 space movement, +2 attack and 3+ armour = godmode).

Here's biggest problems that we encountered, there was few small things, but these were what hindered us. All clarifications and help is once again greatly greatly appreciated! :)

1. This is a matter of some debate on these forums. I personally feel that once you have taken the action and discarded the card, you no longer have it, and can then perform any other actions available to you.

2. It works on any monster that it's source is able to target (see answer to #3)

3. Ashrian's ability does specifically state that it only affects minions, who are the white colored models. Red master models and lieutenants are not affected. Yes, the wording matters.

4. They are not discarded, they are flipped over. However, they cannot be used again. If you really want to physically remove them from the table, I don't see any reason why that would cause a problem.

5. Do you mean Berzerker? I believe that is the class that has Counter-attack. My answer there would be ranged attacks. Counter attack only works if the enemy is adjacent, so an Ettin attacking from the extra range due to his Reach, or a Goblin shooting his bow from at least one square away, etc. is not counter-attackable.

KristoffStark said:

Flatusjae said:

Hiya!

I'm very new player to Descent 2nd edition, with never played 1st edition. Today I finally got my playgroup together, with me playing as OL, and 4 of my friends playing heroes. Very very soon in the introduction quest First Blood, big debate started. Stun and Ashrian's hero ability for example. These debates took most of our gameplaytime, and what was advertised as 40min-1h per quest was soon 3h for the introduction quest. Granted, me and one other player argued more than neccessary. In the end, we tried differend ways to see which worked better, which still didn't help that much.

I'll list my questions here, all help is greatly appreciated :) I will be googling these things after creating this thread too.

ABOUT STUN:

1. How does Stun work excatly? It says that " This is the only action you may perform on your turn while you have this card or token. " But this gives way too easy opportunities for stunlocking lot of monsters at the time. We debated that does removing stun take only one action, or WHOLE turn. We never reached real conclusion. I believe it works much better if removing stun takes one action.

2. Does Stun work to ALL monsters, quest specific bosses (like Mauler on First Blood), Master monsters, lieutenants?

3. Does Ashrian's Hero Ability work on ALL adjacent enemies, or just one? It reads: " When a minion monster begins it's activation adjacent to you, it is Stunned " Our healer basicly just kept monsters stunlocked all the time, including "boss" monsters, which I now believe to be mistake, as it says "minion", and aren't the red monsters Master monsters? Does that wording matter? Confusing.

Other stuff:

4. Are Search Cards discarded after use? For example after using health potion, is it basicly out of game for that quest/encounter? It says so many times that you just flip it over, and I understand that it's used to count gold ammount at the end of the quest, but we found it much easier to just record the gold, then discard the card. But even this brought debate to our table. It didn't say "discard" anywhere, so could it be assumed that it's reusable in the same quest? I believe not, but not everyone else saw this in the same way as I.

5. How the hell you go against Warrior? He kills everything so easily, and with counterattack skill there's absolutely no point attacking warrior if he has Stamina left. Granted, we only played two quests, but still, I'm bit concerned that warrior will become unstoppable killing machine in our future gameplay sessions. This happened too often in Doom boardgame with certain talents, and especially talent combinations (chainsaw marine with triple attacks, 4 space movement, +2 attack and 3+ armour = godmode).

Here's biggest problems that we encountered, there was few small things, but these were what hindered us. All clarifications and help is once again greatly greatly appreciated! :)

1. This is a matter of some debate on these forums. I personally feel that once you have taken the action and discarded the card, you no longer have it, and can then perform any other actions available to you.

2. It works on any monster that it's source is able to target (see answer to #3)

3. Ashrian's ability does specifically state that it only affects minions, who are the white colored models. Red master models and lieutenants are not affected. Yes, the wording matters.

4. They are not discarded, they are flipped over. However, they cannot be used again. If you really want to physically remove them from the table, I don't see any reason why that would cause a problem.

5. Do you mean Berzerker? I believe that is the class that has Counter-attack. My answer there would be ranged attacks. Counter attack only works if the enemy is adjacent, so an Ettin attacking from the extra range due to his Reach, or a Goblin shooting his bow from at least one square away, etc. is not counter-attackable.

I second all of the answers here. I play Stun the same way. It consumes your first action and you cannot perform any other action until you resolve Stun.

As for Counter Attack, that card, if I recall correctly requires at least 2xp to purchase. Are you playing with epic level rules? You stated, you only played two quests, so you could not have gained enough xp to purchase it if you were playing campaign mode. If you weren't using epic level rules, then you might be playing it wrong as those skills are things you have to earn via the campaign (or you do the epic rules and the Overlord gets big time bonuses in addition to you). I suggest that by the time you get that card (via the campaign), the Overlord has his own diabolical cards to make your life difficult as well. But, yeah, the berzerker is crazy good. The heroes have great skills, I like them all.

schmoo34 said:

KristoffStark said:

I second all of the answers here. I play Stun the same way. It consumes your first action and you cannot perform any other action until you resolve Stun.

As for Counter Attack, that card, if I recall correctly requires at least 2xp to purchase. Are you playing with epic level rules? You stated, you only played two quests, so you could not have gained enough xp to purchase it if you were playing campaign mode. If you weren't using epic level rules, then you might be playing it wrong as those skills are things you have to earn via the campaign (or you do the epic rules and the Overlord gets big time bonuses in addition to you). I suggest that by the time you get that card (via the campaign), the Overlord has his own diabolical cards to make your life difficult as well. But, yeah, the berzerker is crazy good. The heroes have great skills, I like them all.

Counterattack actually only costs 1 XP, which is kinda weird considering how good it is. I believe I've gathered good plan to go against warrior for now, with fatigue losses, and ranged attacks :) Also hinder his movement as much as possible, which is allready lowest out of the group(3, **** dwarf keeps tripping over his own beard! :D )

Thanks for confirming the previous post as well!

KristoffStark said:

1. This is a matter of some debate on these forums. I personally feel that once you have taken the action and discarded the card, you no longer have it, and can then perform any other actions available to you.

2. It works on any monster that it's source is able to target (see answer to #3)

3. Ashrian's ability does specifically state that it only affects minions, who are the white colored models. Red master models and lieutenants are not affected. Yes, the wording matters.

4. They are not discarded, they are flipped over. However, they cannot be used again. If you really want to physically remove them from the table, I don't see any reason why that would cause a problem.

5. Do you mean Berzerker? I believe that is the class that has Counter-attack. My answer there would be ranged attacks. Counter attack only works if the enemy is adjacent, so an Ettin attacking from the extra range due to his Reach, or a Goblin shooting his bow from at least one square away, etc. is not counter-attackable.

Thanks for the very fast reply :) I waited a bit to research and test these things as well, and what you say seems most reasoanable indeed! My only concern is that Ashrian isn't that good with these stun rules compared to other heroes, but this remains to be seen. If it feels too weak compared to everyone else, we might buff her somehow with house rule.

And big thanks for the tip against Berserker, I'm allready forming evil plans against our group's little dwarf warrior > :)