Re: [Board/Tactical Game]: Descent: Journeys in the Dark, reviewed by Beckett (4/4)
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The game's biggest flaw is balance. The game starts out pretty balanced, perhaps with the heroes at a disadvantage. Each treasure chest opened tips things more to the heroes, until the Gold treasures make them almost unstoppable.
My group has house ruled so that the chests that give two treasures only give them to the person that opens it - everyone else just gets one.
Re: [Board/Tactical Game]: Descent: Journeys in the Dark, reviewed by Beckett (4/4)
Fantastic review, Scott. You really got across how the game plays. Sounds like it could be a lot of fun, and I'm not that big on boardgames.
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Re: [Board/Tactical Game]: Descent: Journeys in the Dark, reviewed by Beckett (4/4)
As far as balance goes. The original game was kinda tipped towards the players. Especially with 4 players. But the expansions help introduce some more Overload tricks that really balance the game out more and in some cases tip it towards the Overlord.
My groups main complaints with the game are
1) Once you play and adventure you lose everything. We understand from a design perspective that keeping equipment between adventures would just make the game to easy, but my players always get sad when they get a great mix of skills and equipment one game and lose it alll after they win. I guess the next expansion is gonna introduce campaign play rules to allow some carry over
2) The person who owns the game(ie me) is always stuck being the Overlord
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Re: [Board/Tactical Game]: Descent: Journeys in the Dark, reviewed by Beckett (4/4)
Thank you. Nice to get some praise on my first review. I'm glad I was able to make it clear and readable; one of my earlier drafts was basically retyping the entire rule book.
Re: [Board/Tactical Game]: Descent: Journeys in the Dark, reviewed by Beckett (4/4)
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Originally Posted by Nilus
2) The person who owns the game(ie me) is always stuck being the Overlord
Well, not for my group. The owner did play Overlord the first time through, but he had wanted to wait to open it until everyone was there, which meant he was learning the rules as we went ("that master beastman you just killed had Command. Wonder what that does?") As the Rules Guy of my group, I had read through the pdf before coming, so I was able to help things along (some mistakes were made, such as the bit about Large Monsters and how they interact with pits being under "Large Monsters" and not "Pits").
After that, I took over and everyone's fun has increased greatly. Another group member has stepped up a couple of times so I can play, which is a nice change, but I prefer to be Overlord. And as the main OL, I get to be the first to run each new quest, and the first to spring the new surprises on the heroes.
Re: [Board/Tactical Game]: Descent: Journeys in the Dark, reviewed by Beckett (4/4)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nilus
1) Once you play and adventure you lose everything. We understand from a design perspective that keeping equipment between adventures would just make the game to easy, but my players always get sad when they get a great mix of skills and equipment one game and lose it alll after they win. I guess the next expansion is gonna introduce campaign play rules to allow some carry over
I understand there's a Campaign expansion in the works for Descent.
Thanks for the review! I've got a copy of it myself, and I agree that it's got some great parts - you could almost just buy it and use it with D&D, really.
Re: [Board/Tactical Game]: Descent: Journeys in the Dark, reviewed by Beckett (4/4)
The game is heavily reliant on the balance between character types and skills. With certain combinations, the odds get heavily stacked against the players, and with other combinations, the players walk all over the Overlord. Which, in certain respects, is a welcome change from Doom, where the game was stacked against the players no matter what.
The expansions can highlight the balance problem as well, since the Overlord gets more tools, so with certain bad character/skill combinations, the game is almost over before the characters get much past the first room.
very late reaction, but we played it last week for the first time...
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This time figure also doesn't include quests that the heroes lose; my players will usually get beaten once or twice before they're able to figure out how best to win the quest.
Players get beating with just the basic rules? How? If they get a decent combination of characters, they can almost always win without giving the Overlord a chance. And I'm not talking about the first quest alone.
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