Descent: Journeys in the Dark (2nd Edition)

1st quest, pregame - waiting for players...

"Descent" is a dungeon crawl game similar to the old Hero Quest game that MB put out in the early 90's; however, they've added some steroids and crack to it. The game comes with about 8x hero models and 30x or so monster models. They're not GW quality but well done for the amount you are given. Check out the workbench to get a glimpse. You also get a ton of map tiles for the various environments and hundreds of cards which encompass skills, spells, items, monsters, effects... etc. By the way, the image to the top left is the first and of course smallest map in the game; at one point, the map will grow to such a size that I'm not sure it will fit on my small game table. 

So take the best parts of the fantasy role playing games we used to play (remove most of the role playing) and you end up with a campaign of multiple 2x hour quests where your characters grow more powerful and a story unfurls. One of the players gets to assume the role of the Overlord and controls all the bad stuff that's happening during the game and he incurs experience which bolster his evil powers as well!

We played for several hours this past Saturday and it was a blast! As Overlord, I may have won some of the less meaningful battles but overall I got me arse kicked by Rob, Darlene, and Cody. Unfortunately, Ryan wasn't able to make it. The trio took on the roles of a Human Cleric, Elven Ranger and Dwarven Berserker. The first quests were plagued by a greedy Berserker Dwarf that went for the loot before the monsters. That costed our heroes dearly but around the 3rd quest the group combined their special skills and benefits and really had a synergy going against the Overlord (Me).

The image to the right shows Cody's Dwarf Berserker, who was a badass after 3 quests! Hell... before 3x quests he was a badass! Monsters just couldn't do enough damage to him and he had "counter-strike" which gave him the ability to strike back pretty much giving him an extra chance to kill one of my  monsters. 

With all that said, I'm going to start painting the associated miniatures that came with the game. There are quite a few, something like 40 but I figure even with a basic coat of paint and the proper wash, they'll all pass for decent table top quality... the good thing about 25mm models being less detail.

I've also seen where others in the community have made their own game boards from Hirst arts molds. That might be a worthy adventure!!!

I'll post the next game as a narrative to better capture the undertakings of our would-be heroes. Stay tuned!