Has anyone come-up with a set of rules to play Descent battles as opposed to a basic dungeon crawl? The Altar of Despair quest titled, Hold the Line offers some battle ideas. I have not played this quest yet, but it looks good. I have several maps from the Dungeons & Dragons Fantastic Locations line. The maps are great, and I got a lot of use out of them playing D & D Miniatures . When WoTC took a flying leap off the deep end and I realized they were re-hashing the same product in a different package, and charging outrageously for it, I swore off D & D once and for all. Still, I'd like to use the maps for some battles. I suppose a variation of the Hold the Line ruls would work. Still, the monsters in Descent have single stat. cards representing them. The heroes, on the other hand, have a lot of stats and items, representing them, making it unbalanced and inconvenient to run a large group of heroes vs. monsters on a battlefield. Perhaps FFG or someone might put together some very simplified heroes cards comparable to the monster cards so you could have battles...more of a slugfest where each turn the heros/monsters move and attack, and there is no overlord deck. Also, some rules coverning different battle objectives such as capture the flag, last man standing, deathmatch, etc. would be cool. I know Doom the Boardgame has this, but still, it's kind of a three-on-three thing. I'd like to be able to field armies of five to ten warriors per side...with the various Descent expansions, there are more than enough miniatures to do this. Just thought it would add another dimension to the game.

There's several threads on the BGG Descent Variants Forum that look like they might scratch this itch. I haven't looked closely at any of them, though.

Have you considered just using monsters for both sides?

Interceptor said:

It seems to me that if you just use the hero cards without regards to equipment, you've got exactly what you want. Assume the heroes are weilding equipment for flavour purposes, but don't use any of the cards. If you don't think the heroes are cool enough naked (or if you want a breakdown of copper/silver/gold heroes, then just make "preconstructed" equipment sets for each level. ie: Red Scorpion has <this equipment> and whoever's playing her doesn't get the option to change her gear.)

The biggest problem with Vanilla heroes (and this is let-down of One-Fist's extra attack) is that you don't get to spend surges on anything. If you're not spending surges, Power Dice lose 1/3 their purpose...

So I'd at least let the Heroes have something, or maybe house-rule something like +1DMG every 2 Surge...

-shnar

These are all good ideas. I like a lot of what I'm seeing on boardgamegeek, as well, concerning alternate methods of playing Descent. I'll try a few things, and when I find an idea that works really well, I'll post about it. Thanks!