Descent: Legends of the Dark

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Ghost Whistler

Ghost Whistler

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Descent: Legends of the Dark

Announcing the Definitive Dungeon-Crawling Board Game
www.fantasyflightgames.com www.fantasyflightgames.com

Because in 2020 FFG said, hold my beer.

TBH given that they are clearly going to take quite the leaf from their Journeys in Middle Earth dungeon crawler game I'm not sure. What put me off that was that the entire game was continuous set up. Take turn, reveal 29 tiles, add 39 tokens, add these monsters, read the text, now take your turn...and do it all again. It's a good game, but it was pretty exhausing to play
 
This is going to cost a fortune. The basic campaign's are always a bit shit anyway. I'm not opposed to aps but constantly having to set up the board during play is a buzzkill. Probably better off with Gloomhaven and a mortgage (and a hernia)
 
$175. Integrated app. Not compatible with 2e. Claims of being the definitive dungeon crawler before release. Bland tile art. Only 6 heroes.

Not a lot to like here for me. This feels a lot like when WotC focussed on trying to win back market leader position of D&D from Pathfinder with 4e and kind of missed the point. However, in this case, it’s Gloomhaven and Descent.

Ghost Whistler said:
TBH given that they are clearly going to take quite the leaf from their Journeys in Middle Earth dungeon crawler game I'm not sure. What put me off that was that the entire game was continuous set up. Take turn, reveal 29 tiles, add 39 tokens, add these monsters, read the text, now take your turn...and do it all again. It's a good game, but it was pretty exhausing to play
Click to expand...

I agree. I remember people wailing over Mansions of Madness 1e set up. But honestly it wouldn’t take long and I actually found it did a lot to make me feel like a GM getting to know and seed the secrets into each game.

I am most disturbed by the constant claims that having the app obscure what is going on as a feature that adds to the feeling of roleplaying and having a GM. I personally found this to be a source of annoyance in Journeys and Mansions 2.
 
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Ghost Whistler said:
This is going to cost a fortune. The basic campaign's are always a bit shit anyway. I'm not opposed to aps but constantly having to set up the board during play is a buzzkill. Probably better off with Gloomhaven and a mortgage (and a hernia)
Click to expand...

Gloomhaven's totally not the same vibe, at least for me. That's one of my biggest board game regrets.

Journeys in Middle Earth was fine for me. My only issue is that my tablet is a Window 2-in-1, so I have to emulate Android for it to work, but otherwise it's fine. Plan to start picking up the expansions soon.
 
Descent Legend of the Dark seems to be moving away from the previous Descent flavour though and toward a Gloomhaven flavour. So much of the new game seems a direct attempt to be a claim of “Gloomhaven but better!”
 
Tommy Brownell said:
Gloomhaven's totally not the same vibe, at least for me. That's one of my biggest board game regrets.

Journeys in Middle Earth was fine for me. My only issue is that my tablet is a Window 2-in-1, so I have to emulate Android for it to work, but otherwise it's fine. Plan to start picking up the expansions soon.
Click to expand...
TBH I'm kinda surprised there isn't a native Windows port, but at least Android is easy to emulate or screen share from.
 
Ladybird said:
TBH I'm kinda surprised there isn't a native Windows port, but at least Android is easy to emulate or screen share from.
Click to expand...

There's a Steam version, but my 2 in 1 is so weak I'm honestly afraid to mess with adding Steam to it. :grin:
 
I wonder if there is supposed to be Descent 3e early next year, or if this had been mistaken as a 3e?

If Descent 3e is still coming, this and 3e will probably share resources. I'd imagine they'd use the same miniatures, tiles, and art.

But, just being realistic, this is going to be a money sink because all FFG games are. It seems like it would be aimed at a similar base to 3e. Would FFG really release both this and 3e in such a short timeframe?

Well, they did release Runewars and then a few months later drop Star Wars Legions and pretty much kill any momentum Runewars might have had. So it's not like there isn't precedent for them to kill their own game lines by releasing games for the same general audience in short order.
 
I am pretty sure that there will be no other version of Descent. So this version of Descent is to be "3e".

There was a comment in the designer video that Descent 2e may continue to be supported as it was recognised as filling a different space, but I would say that is wishful thinking given FFG's usual strategy of ditching older editions when a new editions is released.
 
It looks like Descent: Legends in the Dark is out. I had forgotten all about it.
 
I forgot we had a thread about this.

Once I got an Android tablet, I started playing Journeys in Middle Earth again and the app is great when it's not being emulated. To the point it had me looking at Mansion of Madness and this.
 
At the same price point, I much prefer Arydia that just went up in KS. It goes extravagant in the right areas unlike Descent’s focus on 3D terrain and app use.

 
Its from the same designer as Xia: Legends of a Drift System, which I enjoy quite a bit. He has a tendency of designing great games that ignore a bunch of modern developments (which I don't tend to like), such as story books, app use etc
 
A positive review of Descent (to counter the negative ones to date):
 
I'm seeing a fair amount of positive feedback on BoardGameGeek from people once they had it in hand.
 
Yeah...

Very glad I decided to skip this. Very, very glad.
 
I've tried Descent 1e and 2e, and...it's not what I want. I've come to understand that my base criteria for a dungeon crawler is a huge bestiary that includes more than the minis included in the box. Warhammer Quest '95 spoiled me that way.
 
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