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Following a recent nostalgic conversation about the joys of Heroquest, I've decided to invest in a nice dungeon-crawler.

As with all FFG games, Descent looks awesome. I like the idea of having a wide choice of heroes (most of the players will be long-time RPGers) and it will be nice to have something to paint that isn't the 50th model in the same colour scheme for *insert army here* .

My question - is it as good as it looks?
If anyone could give any feedback, mini-review, watever, that would be great.

P.S. I'm at work so links to games, blogs and forums are blocked (except for Dakka for some reason... ). Feel free to post them but I won't be able to check them out until the weekend.

cheers in advance. C_C

Yes, get this game.

Do a search this games has een covered and gets very favourable reviews.

The only note of warning is that the game breaksdown if you have too few characters. Despitre what it says you need four heroes to win.

Also gold treasures are given out too readily.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/210030.page

Thanks for the link, Malfred.

I haven't had time to go back and listen to d6g:4 yet (I started at about episode 8/9) but is it fair to say from the comments that it gets much better with the expansions?

The way to know if you will enjoy Descent is simple. As yourself this question:

Did I like the DOOM board game?

If the answer is yes, you will like Descent. If you didn't like DOOM, this isn't going to be a good purchase for you.

If I had ever played DOOM, I could answer that question.

But as I haven't....

It is a very grinding style of game. The "Overlord" generally gets to just keep throwing wave after wave of enemies at you.

THe last game I played had 5 rooms to explore in a cross pattern. We started in the middle. By the time we explored the third room my fighter character had killed 37 monsters of various sizes, and had died twice.

That took 4 hours. It isn't a bad game, but it has it's flaws.

4 hours to do three rooms...?

I don't think we're in Heroquest any more tonto...

Chimera_Calvin wrote:4 hours to do three rooms...?

I don't think we're in Heroquest any more tonto...

Yeah. It's HeroQuest on steroids, but not the overly helpful kinds.

I played a game this weekend of it, a friend introduced me to it. We had 3 heroes and did the easiest map, it took about 4hrs to finish.
We found it helpful to get chests as soon as possible, the items in them help a huge amount and make it much easier to farm the next tier of chests.

Dexy wrote:I played a game this weekend of it, a friend introduced me to it. We had 3 heroes and did the easiest map, it took about 4hrs to finish.
We found it helpful to get chests as soon as possible, the items in them help a huge amount and make it much easier to farm the next tier of chests.

That's really what the game boils down to. Can you get to the upgrades fast enough before you have to grind your way to them?

Descent is actually like a hack&slash DnD-lite game. I had an absolutely fantastic time of it this weekend and immediately purchased the Road to Legend expansion so we can run it as a campaign.

Definitely recommend this game.

I do enjoy this game. I have a soft spot for anything in the Dungeon Crawl genre. I'll always hold Warhammer Quest up as one of my all-time favorite GW games.

Descent has some odd gameplay mechanics that make me balk at it, but overall it is a good, fun game. With a few expansions thrown in, it becomes a pretty unwieldy/bulky game and we often just play it right out of the main box. I also wish the board scope was somehow larger, but I suppose all these games follow a similar scope.

Overall (even with an $89.99 price tag) - a definite yes. Although I'd hold off on any expansion until your group gives it the thumbs up. The FFG website has tons of good freebie downloads that will keep you busy for a long time.

Holy Threadomancy, Batman!!!

I'd forgotten I'd asked about this!

Got it for christmas, there was a piece missing but an e-mail to FFG and it arrived in the post soon after.
Game looks great, the cardstock and accessories are all really high quality. If I had one gripe it's that the quality of plastic used for the pieces was not that great. I think I would have preferred multi-part stuff on sprues, or at least seperate bases. Then again, I accept this is probably a function of playing GW for 20 years...

All I need to do know is corral my gaming group in one place for long enough to try a game! (Honestly, its like trying to herd cats... )

I played Descent a few times. The thing I liked about it was that it reminded me of Hero Quest a lot, which I was playing when I was a little boy.
Unfortunately I never got to the more advanced scenarios in the back of the adventure book. But seems like a game worth getting.

Chimera_Calvin wrote:Holy Threadomancy, Batman!!!

I'd forgotten I'd asked about this!

Got it for christmas, there was a piece missing but an e-mail to FFG and it arrived in the post soon after.
Game looks great, the cardstock and accessories are all really high quality. If I had one gripe it's that the quality of plastic used for the pieces was not that great. I think I would have preferred multi-part stuff on sprues, or at least seperate bases. Then again, I accept this is probably a function of playing GW for 20 years...

All I need to do know is corral my gaming group in one place for long enough to try a game! (Honestly, its like trying to herd cats... )

Yeah Fantasy Flight Games has never released plastic figures on Sprues. They've done some stuff in harder (more brittle too) plastic then what comes in descent, but never really any multi-piece construction required stuff. They sell board games not hobby board games (ala Blood Bowl, Space Hulk, etc).

Descent is a truly fun time.

I still need to get the latest expansion (Tomb of Ice.)

I took a look at this a few months back and was put off by the huge amount of tokens and other gubbins in the box. It just struck me as overblown and unnecessarily complex. Given also that the playing time is quoted at 4 hours I decided not to bother.

In the end I managed to pick up copies of Heroquest and Advanced Heroquest on E-bay for less than a copy of Decent (WHQ being like goldust!). These satisfy my dungeon crawling needs quite nicely and a game generally only takes about 60-90 minutes.

LuciusAR wrote:I took a look at this a few months back and was put off by the huge amount of tokens and other gubbins in the box. It just struck me as overblown and unnecessarily complex. Given also that the playing time is quoted at 4 hours I decided not to bother.

In the end I managed to pick up copies of Heroquest and Advanced Heroquest on E-bay for less than a copy of Decent (WHQ being like goldust!). These satisfy my dungeon crawling needs quite nicely and a game generally only takes about 60-90 minutes.

It's no more complex than Warhammer 40K.

You can download the complete rulebook from Fantasy Flight Games at their website.

Most good board game publishers offer rulebooks for their board games online these days.