The first and second articles in this series covered Talisman 4e and Runebound. The third and final game in our series, also published by Fantasy Flight Games, is as close to playing a D&D skirmish game as you’ll get without having to roll for hit points and allocate skills.

Descent: Descent is another board game from Fantasy Flight Games that highlights their quality dominance in the American board game market. In fact, I believe Descent was their first brave entry into the $80 board game market…that might just be a market they created! As you can see, it’s a huge double-sized box that dwarfs even the giant Euro boxes published here by Rio Grande Games, like El Grande.

The game is meant to recreate the best of dungeon crawling without all that pesky roleplaying. Sounds like a certain card game, eh? Still, this is a more serious take on dungeon crawling. The game board consists of different-sized dungeon puzzle tiles that fit together according to pre-determined configurations found in the Scenario Book (which contains a dozen or so linked adventures that can form a campaign).

Thick cardboard chits, something Fantasy Flight Games is well known for, represent chests, potions, pits and other traps, and other effects and objects. Three-dimensional doors stand between rooms, which are only revealed when the characters can see them, much like drawing a roleplaying map. The characters are represented by plastic miniatures, as are the monsters, some of which are large and truly frightening. None of them are painted, unfortunately, but they are color coded depending on how powerful they are (each monster has a weak and strong version).

The gameplay works basically like the tactical portion of Dungeons and Dragons, except that since it’s a board game you have some “action point” resources to decide on. Anyone who’s played Doom: the Boardgame will be familiar with how Descent works, as the latter is a “fixed” version of the former. Doom had some balance and mechanics issues that were solved in Descent. You basically have the choice to attack twice, move twice, attack and move, or use special abilities. It’s not uncommon to see someone decide to go open a chest or pick up a potion while his buddies fight it out.

The combat dice in Descent are unique, like the movement dice in Runebound, and they come in several colors. Each color is good for a different thing…so some dice have more range, some have more damage, and others have more special ability triggers. Your weapon and magic attacks determine which dice you combine to make your attack. There are several portals to town, which are important for the heroes to find as they replenish their stock of Conquest Tokens.

The game is competitive between the Overlord and the players. The Overlord reveals the basic setup of rooms, but he also has special cards that let him rain hell on the characters when it seems like they’re having too easy a go of it. There’s a constant tug-of-war between the threat tokens of the Overlord and the Conquest Tokens of the players: if the characters run out of Conquest Tokens, the Overlord wins. He can sap their reserves primarily by killing them.

This adversarial play is necessary to make the game run, because the basic Scenario setups are simple, and it’s only the surprises that the Overlord can tailor to each adventure that make it exciting for all involved.

Descent, unlike Runebound, is not a good game for two players. While it’s technically possible to play with as few as two or three, the game really shines with 4-5. Any time a player has to run more than one character, the game is going to bog down, and the player is probably going to have less fun as he juggles too many options and abilities each turn.

I heartily recommend picking up Descent, as even if you can’t get a group to play the game, the pieces are great for building D&D dungeons, and owning such a big, heavy box will certainly make you feel like an alpha gamer.

Coming up for air never felt so bad.

Links of Interest
Official Site
Descent on Boardgamegeek

Reviews: RPG.net – 1up.com
Purchase: Descent: Journeys in the Dark