2008.01.27

Descent: Journeys in the Dark

Posted in Board Games at 6:00 pm by Jeremiah Wittevrongel

Today, Jason and I finally got around to giving Descent: Journeys in the Dark a try. Sentry Box has a demo copy, and we were able to get a table this time. In fact, it was the perfect way to spend a Sunday afternoon since winter decided to arrive.

I played the Overlord, and Jason randomly chose two heroes to play. Rather than reading the rules up front, we decided to just sort of muddle through the game after reading the bare minimum required, and figure out the rest as it came up.

Which leads to my only real complaint about the game: the rule book isn’t laid out as well as it could have been, so there were lots of pauses to look things up. We misplayed a few rules here and there, but after about an hour we had it mostly figured out. Also, Fantasy Flight loses points for not putting an index in the rules. It took me about five minutes to find out how a Curse worked.

Aside from the rulebook needing a bit of revamping, both Jason and I really enjoyed the game. Descent is a dungeon-crawling role-playing game in a condensed, simplified board game form. The combat rules are very simple and easy to use, so it’s not as big a dice-fest as you could imagine. The overlord sets up the map at the beginning of the game, and then reveals the contents of the area that the players start in. As the heroes advance through the dungeon, the overlord reveals the contents of each new area, along with some monsters in most cases. The overlord controls the monsters, and can also play cards to spring traps, introduce yet more monsters, or do other generally nasty things to the heroes.

Each game is played as a scenario, and the goal of the heroes varies – usually they want to kill some horrible villain, and of course, all of the underlings that get in their way. The overlord simply wants to defeat the heroes, and the game uses an interesting system for this. At the start of the scenario, the heroes collectively get a number of tokens. Each time one of them dies, they lose tokens. Each time they activate a new glyph in the dungeon (sort of like a save point), they gain tokens. If they ever hit 0 tokens, they lose the game, and the overlord wins.

The components of the game are so numerous as to be slightly overwhelming, but they are all of the typical high quality seen in every Fantasy Flight game. There are plastic figures for all of the heroes and beasties, several decks of cards, and lots of cardboard counters. The map tiles are fit together like puzzle pieces, so you can build many different maps using the same set of pieces.

Interestingly, Descent shares some of its artwork and theme elements with Runebound, which also means that it uses some of the same counters. This is a great way to reduce the cost of the game, and the re-use is very well done, not detracting from either game.

Because the game would in theory be easier with more heroes, the monsters scale in difficulty proportionally to the number of players. Our initial playing seemed to indicate that the game was balanced slightly in favour of the overlord, but I’m guessing that as the heroes gain experience they will find the game easier (much like Arkham Horror or Lord of the Rings). Of course, the scenarios can be made more difficult to compensate, and the two expansions available for Descent undoubtedly up the ante against the heroes.

The game seems expensive, but I feel the cost is justified.

  1. There’s a lot in the box.
  2. The game is scenario-based, and you could easily write your own scenarios. Fantasy Flight does have a semi-official scenario editor for Windows and Mac computers, with a Flash version (cross platform) on the way.
  3. If you’re not the creative type, Fantasy Flight has released a couple of official bonus scenarios. Plus, there’s a section of their web site where you can download literally dozens of fan-created scenarios – each scenario suggests a number of players, a playing time, and is rated on a scale of 1 to 5.

So, even though the game may seem to have limited replayability at first glance, it has a lot of potential to be played dozens of times and never be the same game twice.

I’ll likely be picking up a copy of the game when the store gets it back in stock, although I can tell you right now it won’t fit on my shelf. C’est la vie.

2008.01.17

Swiss Express

Posted in Board Games at 9:25 pm by Jeremiah Wittevrongel

Last weekend Jason and I played Ticket to Ride: Switzerland. I’ve only played a few games, but this last game really made me appreciate just how well-balanced the game is when playing with 2 players.

The tension started early for me. I tried to avoid tipping my hand for a while, but Jason kept monopolizing all of the white wagon cards, and my planned rail network included several white routes. I responded by monopolizing all of the locomotives, since I had a few longer tunnels in my plan. This stalemate continued for about 10 turns, and then in frustration, I opted to move. It was earlier than I wanted, but I was hoping to push Jason off balance and plug up a few of the routes near Zurich. I succeeded, and then we were both embroiled in a rather ugly struggle for routes through the West. Both of us played cards we had been saving for other routes, and neither of us got the routes we really wanted.

This turned out to be a mere prelude for the rest of the game. There was a lot of tension, a few ticket draws, and we both played it right down to the last turn (and our last train cars).

Unlike our previous games, this time there was a definite feeling of time pressure. Neither of us drew many tickets, and it turned it we didn’t have the turns to waste with the way we were both playing. The final scores reflected this, with each of us scoring less than 120 points.

In the end, I eked out a victory by only 2 points. The longest route saved me. And had Jason opted to draw tickets on his final turn (as I would have done in his situation), he would have won.

The narrow victory just underscores what I’ve discovered so far. Two player games are a lot more tense using the Switzerland board than they are with the other variants of Ticket to Ride. In the end, Ticket to Ride is all about the agony of indecision. When there’s only two players, Switzerland does it better than the others.