Descent: Round Two!

A few months ago I posted a sort blurb about a gigantic new board game called Descent: Journeys in the Dark. Recently, my son (age 13) and I returned to the game for another round. Last time, my daughter and I played a character each and were overrun by the Overlord’s (my son) forces.

This run was a little different.

First of all, I didn’t have my trusty partner with me. I had to play two characters on my own. I was hoping this would speed up the gameplay a bit, however it did not. I chose the paladin (Valadir) and a powerful mage (Landrec). I wanted a ranged/magic user and a tank type that could use some magic. This was a decent combination for two characters, however in hindsight I believe a third, ranged character (all bow) would have been an excellent addition.

It took two hours to get out of the first room. We did have to consult the manual a few times since we had forgotten some of the rules. Line of sight was still an issue, but we came to some agreements on our own of how it should work, specifically around “blind” corners. Lance kept spawning wave upon wave of creatures on my poor heroes, basically halting my progress. Once I made it out of the first room, the game started to take off.

This particular dungeon contained five normal rooms and a final room containing the boss character, a giant! Since I had played this map before, I knew where the rune key lay that was required to open the door to the giant’s room. I ended up skipping one of the farthest rooms as my heroes had uncovered just enough power up items to ready me for the big guy. So, after another two hours, I was ready for the final assault.

The “final assault” consisted of another two hours of near death battles and crafty use of potions and movements for my heroes. I managed to get close enough to Narthak to whittle him down to just two hit points, when Lance retreated him to the back of his cavern and spawned waves of bane spiders, sorcerers, and skeletons upon me. I was forced to pull back into the center room where my mage died twice. The second time, Lance charmed my paladin who easily dispatched poor Landrec (the mage). By this time, I was fuming. I was running out of conquest tokens (each time a character dies, you discard a number of tokens) and beginning to feel that I would lose (again).

Some time during the fifth wave of spawns from the Overlord, I started to feel that the game was imbalanced. Every attack I made that rolled up a few surge symbols, gave Lance more threat tokens which in turn allowed him to spawn more monsters. I felt that the quest was hopeless. The tide began to turn when I finally was able to dispatch 2-3 creatures per round by using a lot of fatigue points and simply not moving (not moving allows you two rounds of attacks per character). A third, ranged character would have been a major help during this phase.

As the clock dinged 11pm, I was finally able to make it back towards the giant’s lair and after another couple rounds of his attacks (which stun and knock heroes backward), I finally had Landrec blast the poor monster into oblivion. Huzzah!! My characters each gained a level and were ready for the second quest.

The bottom line is, Descent was great fun, but very long. If you have the patience, the game is rewarding. Next time we’re going to play it in sessions rather than by entire levels.

You can buy Descent: Journeys in the Dark at Amazon and many other online gaming stores.