I’ve been playing Descent: Journeys in the Dark for a week and let me tell you: it’s great!

Descent is a dungeon crawl in the form of a board game, I’ve always had an urge to try a session of D&D, but haven’t ever got a group to join or to form. With Descent my dungeon delving thirst has been quenched.

I’ve been rolling power and combat dies like there’s no tomorrow!

Of course more experienced gamers may say that Descent doesn’t really do all that D&D does, and it’s true, but for me Descent does it.

The only downside to Descent? Well being sort of an RPG makes it long, and with no save game feature or the ability to pause a session, you either finish a dungeon or keep it neatly in a corner awaiting your next gaming session and praying the cat won’t jump onto the table and gives all the figures a critical hit.

That’s where Road to Legend the 3rd Descent expansion due March comes in. You can check out a lot of cool features on the design notes page, but one of them really sticks out to me: they’re dividing the game play to allow 1 hour chunks of game to be played. Though I’ve learned to take these time measures and multiply them by a 1.5 or 2 factor (or more when the group you’re playing is learning the rules to the game), having smaller amounts of quest to play and being able to stop playing and resuming play later without leaving a board setup is great.

The overlord having an avatar to represent him in the game makes it more personal and adventuring out of a dungeon for once seems like a breath of fresh air (yeah, that pun was totally intended).

I’ll be waiting for this expansion while grinding all the other quests I was still unable to win.

Wrote a little session report on the first dungeon of Descent. It’s not very extensive, but still has the main interest points. Check it out

Another preview for Descent: Road to Legend has surfaced.

This preview is all about the monsters, here’s what’s new:

Monsters are now divided into three types: humanoid, beast or eldricht. This will be relevant because upgrades to monsters are available one type at a time. There are some strange things in this change, for example: Beastman isn’t a beast and Sorcerers are not humanoid they’re eldricht, I’m sure these two will be some of the more confusing guys.

Monsters now have 4 levels (there are cards included on RtL for every monster already printed), the levels are Copper, Silver, Gold and Diamond. As the monsters progress they get better stats and more and better dice to roll.

Here’s an example with razorwings’ new evolution line:

The FAQ to Descent has changed to further clarify some questions and to add Road to Legend questions.

Clarification includes what happens first when you open a chest (the Overlord gets the threat from the curses first and may play cards before the heroes get the contents of the chest) and answers about actions available while transformed.

Sweep is also included but to me it’s still weird that a guy with sweep does not deal damage to friendlies.

*WOOSH* - oh wait a friend - *continues WOOSH*

Discuss on the forum 

The Road to Legend Rules have in published on Fantasy Flight’s site.

Now we get to see what Road to Legend is all about and drool even more.