Post by dexblair on Dec 22, 2005 16:03:23 GMT 8
In Descent: Journeys in the Dark, heroic adventurers delve into the darkness that lies beneath the surface of the earth. There, they fight powerful monsters, recover ancient magics, and search for mighty relics to help them in their battle against evil.
Descent is a board game that set you in the world of fantasy, dungeon crawling. It come in a big box, same size as the Twilight Imperium3 boxset. The box is fill up with miniatures of Heroes and monsters, counters, tokens, markers, dices, cards and tiles. One rules book and one quest book. You need to spend sometime on punching out pieces from boardsheets.
Box included 10 quests to get you start with the game. Better than doom, which doom only come with 5 scenarios. You can always download the extra quests from the net. In quest, you get to slay the master monster in the dungeon, pick up potions and loot all treasure.
Game is set for 2 to 5 players. One player get to play as the Overlord (evil who control monsters and setting up the dungeons), the other players play as Heroes. There is 20 Heroes to choose from. All Heroes and monsters comes with miniatures and stat cards. Heroes start with a number of skills indicated in their character sheets. Skills include fighting, subterfuge and wizardry. Fighting skill increase the ability of Hero fighting, subterfuge enhance Hero capability and wizardry enhance the magic skills. All skills are draw randomly, total of 30 over skills available to play with, so you don’t get the same skills each time you play the Hero.
Tiles are use for the Overlord to layout his dungeon, like a jigsaw puzzle… remember Doom: the boardgame. All tiles are nicely printed with good dungeon textures on them.
Overlord will layout and place all necessary treasure and encounter as the quest guide indicate.
Gameplay is straight forward, Heroes into dungeon, slay monsters, loot all treasures and get to face the master monster at the end of the quest (always happen).
Battle system run by rolling dices, similar to doom. A set of color dices are set according for different type of attacks, melee, range and magic. What you have on the dice, numbers count the range of attack, heart icon indicate the damage apply and lightbolt icon indicate the surge - bonuses that trigger the special abilities of specific weapons and skills used.
When Heroes killed, heroes get to spawn back in the town and later can travel back into the dungeon through activated Glyph (portal/teleport). Overlord use deck of cards to stop the Heroes from advancing. Cards consist of traps, events, power and cards that spawn monsters. Overlord have to pay a threat cost indicate on the card in order to use the effects or triggering the trap. Threat cost is collect in the beginning of every turn by Overlord. Every time a hero killed, overlord get to collect extra threat cost. Not like doom, spawn and events cards play out as long as the invader have the cards on hand. In descent, you get to face the monsters: beastman, giant spider, giant, skeleton and many other, not to forget the dragon too.
Heroes get to win the game by killing the master of the dungeon. Overlord win the the game by removing all Conquest tokens from Heroes. Conquest tokens are collect by how well the heroes play, through activating glyph, opening chest or triggering encounters. Heroes loses conquest tokens when killed.
Town is available for Heroes buying and selling items. When Heroes killed, always get to resurrect back in the town temple then back to dungeon again.
Artworks is good. Monsters miniatures are well details, except for heroes. I love the tiles in descent, again good artworks.
Descent is not really into the dungeons and dragons role playing, a lot of us find it troublesome to play the dungeons and dragons role play. I love the dungeon crawling style like descent, into dungeons and fight, no need role play and not pencil and paper recording. If you think doom board game is not a fair game for you, then you may consider Descent. You may think that Descent is a re-tool of doom, but you have a whole new experience in Descent.
Well, after punching and separating the pieces, you find that the box come with nothing to hold them. I use storage bags and small pudding plastic containers. Who cares, is the gameplay that I want.
Descent should be around hobby and game shops, available in a few shopping mall too. The game cost around RM350, I’m sure you can get a discount in any hobby or games shops. Does Descent worth RM350? YES at least to me, with good amount of miniatures and not forgetting good artwork again. Sadly, it came late in the GameCon1 in early December, not many demo around. Doom board game is still around; after all they are two different type of worlds, fantasy and sci-fi. For those who love Doom board game, the expansion is set to be out on January06.
Overall this is a great game for a fantasy board game.
www.fantasyflightgames.com/descent.html
Images linked :
share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8AYs2rVizbuXiA¬ag=1
Descent is a board game that set you in the world of fantasy, dungeon crawling. It come in a big box, same size as the Twilight Imperium3 boxset. The box is fill up with miniatures of Heroes and monsters, counters, tokens, markers, dices, cards and tiles. One rules book and one quest book. You need to spend sometime on punching out pieces from boardsheets.
Box included 10 quests to get you start with the game. Better than doom, which doom only come with 5 scenarios. You can always download the extra quests from the net. In quest, you get to slay the master monster in the dungeon, pick up potions and loot all treasure.
Game is set for 2 to 5 players. One player get to play as the Overlord (evil who control monsters and setting up the dungeons), the other players play as Heroes. There is 20 Heroes to choose from. All Heroes and monsters comes with miniatures and stat cards. Heroes start with a number of skills indicated in their character sheets. Skills include fighting, subterfuge and wizardry. Fighting skill increase the ability of Hero fighting, subterfuge enhance Hero capability and wizardry enhance the magic skills. All skills are draw randomly, total of 30 over skills available to play with, so you don’t get the same skills each time you play the Hero.
Tiles are use for the Overlord to layout his dungeon, like a jigsaw puzzle… remember Doom: the boardgame. All tiles are nicely printed with good dungeon textures on them.
Overlord will layout and place all necessary treasure and encounter as the quest guide indicate.
Gameplay is straight forward, Heroes into dungeon, slay monsters, loot all treasures and get to face the master monster at the end of the quest (always happen).
Battle system run by rolling dices, similar to doom. A set of color dices are set according for different type of attacks, melee, range and magic. What you have on the dice, numbers count the range of attack, heart icon indicate the damage apply and lightbolt icon indicate the surge - bonuses that trigger the special abilities of specific weapons and skills used.
When Heroes killed, heroes get to spawn back in the town and later can travel back into the dungeon through activated Glyph (portal/teleport). Overlord use deck of cards to stop the Heroes from advancing. Cards consist of traps, events, power and cards that spawn monsters. Overlord have to pay a threat cost indicate on the card in order to use the effects or triggering the trap. Threat cost is collect in the beginning of every turn by Overlord. Every time a hero killed, overlord get to collect extra threat cost. Not like doom, spawn and events cards play out as long as the invader have the cards on hand. In descent, you get to face the monsters: beastman, giant spider, giant, skeleton and many other, not to forget the dragon too.
Heroes get to win the game by killing the master of the dungeon. Overlord win the the game by removing all Conquest tokens from Heroes. Conquest tokens are collect by how well the heroes play, through activating glyph, opening chest or triggering encounters. Heroes loses conquest tokens when killed.
Town is available for Heroes buying and selling items. When Heroes killed, always get to resurrect back in the town temple then back to dungeon again.
Artworks is good. Monsters miniatures are well details, except for heroes. I love the tiles in descent, again good artworks.
Descent is not really into the dungeons and dragons role playing, a lot of us find it troublesome to play the dungeons and dragons role play. I love the dungeon crawling style like descent, into dungeons and fight, no need role play and not pencil and paper recording. If you think doom board game is not a fair game for you, then you may consider Descent. You may think that Descent is a re-tool of doom, but you have a whole new experience in Descent.
Well, after punching and separating the pieces, you find that the box come with nothing to hold them. I use storage bags and small pudding plastic containers. Who cares, is the gameplay that I want.
Descent should be around hobby and game shops, available in a few shopping mall too. The game cost around RM350, I’m sure you can get a discount in any hobby or games shops. Does Descent worth RM350? YES at least to me, with good amount of miniatures and not forgetting good artwork again. Sadly, it came late in the GameCon1 in early December, not many demo around. Doom board game is still around; after all they are two different type of worlds, fantasy and sci-fi. For those who love Doom board game, the expansion is set to be out on January06.
Overall this is a great game for a fantasy board game.
www.fantasyflightgames.com/descent.html
Images linked :
share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8AYs2rVizbuXiA¬ag=1