Sadly, it looks dead for releasing new expansions to this game. I don't think we´re even close to it, folks. FFG's focus is elsewhere currently I will say however that the game is pretty stuffed as it is. New teams means new abilities, which means abilities old teams do not have, etc. I´d be all over a new expansion for the teams only, but content-wise I was hugely disappointed by Foul Play, so I´m not directly holding my breath for a quality expansion. I´d like to be proven wrong, however.

Yeah your interpretation is correct. Love this card, by the way. Tristayne's Unstable Forces deck is one of the (very) few that I call a decent plot deck.

The Passing coach card (not 100% sure about the name) gives the Passing skill to a player you just commited to a matchup so it's definitely not the same thing. Chaotic Fury allows you to execute the Passing skill on ANY downed player as a matchup action. So you can commit Player A and then play Chaotic Fury to execute the Passing skill on Player B at any matchup, the only requirement being that Player B is downed. Player B can also be Player A if Player A went down by his own tackle (or a response).

So I went to see how this X-Wing FAQ looked like. I literally had to pick up my chin from the floor. If only few % of that kind of effort could be utilized on the Descent FAQ then it would probably double its current value if not more. I really agree with the general disappointment. Without continuous support from our community members, my playgroup would have certainly dropped interest in that game very quickly as there are simply too many situations that require referring to the rules or an interpretation of these one way or another. The game is like this by design and is not alone on that fact, and that's perfectly fine, but you got to give these kind of tools to the gamers so they can sort out these situations in the most practical manner. A game shouldn't be a hassle to play. Descent can be like this at times, even more so that it is a campaign driven game so the resolution of said situations often have an impact on the long term, leading to rewards that shouldn't have be given, or quests played wrong leading to other quest being wrongly chosen. Things can go fast with a hero getting KO:ed for the wrong reason and an additional card being dealt to the OL allowing him/her to win on the next turn. The opposite is also true with heroes steamrolling because of simple rule mistakes. A campaign-articulated game has to be clean, or at least suggest a way for its players to handle rules conflicts. A bunch of paragraphs in a bad formatted document, badly organized so the information is even harder to find (by expansion, really?), that only represent a % of all rules being clarified officially and unofficially, cannot possibly be that solution? So yeah, as the rules master in my playgroup and the person trying to put this together for our own personal needs, I literally do not know what to do with this FAQ. I want to print out something giving me all answers we would ever need, like I do with all of my other games. Why would it be different with Descent? I can't either use the unofficial FAQ on BGG because... it's unofficial. A text found on the internet is hardly evidence of anything these days. The good old alternative is to google up the question on my cell phone and hope for the best. How can this possibly be the way FFG intended their customers to look for answers for this game? I want to be able to get or even purchase (I´m that desperate) an updated quest book and errata:ed cards. I cannot possibly refer to a half dozen of large side documents to figure out if a given piece of text has been errata:ed or not at any point in time, or subject to other rules. I NEED to be able to pick the game where we left it. I don't want to be forced to make several sources of information converge to make my own interpretation of the rules. My players wouldn't believe me anyway and honestly why would they? And then you have stuff that is not even controversial that got changed, like the campaign steps. I mean fine, no big deal here, but it makes the game less stable overall to swap steps in a procedure without any real idea of its justification. Like it was ever a problem for my heroes to choose their skills before or after the shopping phase. Hitting a particular item with strong affinity with a skill for a class you happen to have chosen is minimal anyway. Have people actually complained about the campaign phase order? Where from if not on these forums? How could we have missed it? I am also of the opinion that FFG could do much better than this, so the problem has to be their willingness to commit to such task. Not doing so only confirms the general feeling/fear that Descent has become a product whose life only gets sustained by the (few) community members here (any2cards and Zaltyre come directly to mind, but there are others). Yeah they release new stuff, but they don't try to consolidate the core rules/game so there is no real evolution for the main issues this game has. Also the co-op quests, I mean this is so blatant now. I am puzzled by these. They really threw them on the market and then that was it. Some people actually welcomed the initiative as a bowl of fresh air to the Descent franchise, but it really turned up being just a variant of the game packed in an overpriced box with no real intention of raising interest into said franchise. So much for that new branch of the franchise, now fading into mediocrity like the rest of it. Because it could have been a possibility that the co-op success kind of drove the whole franchise upwards and led to quality work being done on things like the FAQ, or increased support. It's "funny" because this would never be allowed in my branch, where everything has to be normalized. You wouldn't be able to throw out such difference in quality even if the layout has to differ because of game theme. I don't know, somebody from quality assurance should have picked up the things that went missing. It's really not hard. Somebody should have INSTANTLY picked up the wrong document version. Somebody should have made the remark that it should be on the news. I would have waited and worked on a better FAQ instead of releasing this?

Right so as the overlord in our group I will pretend the Mists Finale has no sequel

No, the whole base needs to be on the map.

Sorry yes Introduction then three quests and the finale. So 5 quests total. You have the Choice between two quests each time you need to select the next one. Then you choose between 2 new quests as your second act 1 quest, the again between two new ones for the third act 1 quest. Only one finale but variable encounter 2. So the book gives you the specs for the introduction quest, 6 single encounter quests and 3 encounters for the finale. However only two of these three encounters will be played.

Introduction, then 3 act 1 quests (all single encounters) and then two encounters finale. Note you can use the items and travel cards in other campaigns. Terrified condition automatically follows with the items and monsters.

It is difficult to say anything having not played the campaign yet. The quests are all single encounters and do look interesting. The Finale is a two encounters quest and is litterally stuffed with rules. Rewards seem nice, relics look good, new terrain rules are interesting, monsters too etc. so first impression is definitely positive. Note the Introduction quest says everybody starts with 1 XP they can immediately spend, which is new. The only issue I have though is the announcement of Chains as the continuation of Mists. Knowing my play group, I would probably need to wait until chains gets released to be able to play Mists. We were prepared to the fact Mists would be an act 1 campaign only, but the announcement of the act 2 makes us lose interest in playing Mists as stand alone. I personally don't care if there are no rumor cards in Mists. I don't like rumors anyway.

There is one Relic called The White Crown, for the heroes, which adds +1 Willpower to all heroes. There are a couple of weapons dealing Terrified status upon surge, which I think is very powerful since most monsters need surges to be able to do anything. One blade in particular capitalizes on it to deal additional damage if the target is terrified and allows you to heal as well.

From the Mists of Bilehall rulesbook: "The Mists of Bilehall expansion can also be combined with The Chains that Rust (an expansion to be released in 2016) to form a larger, two-act campaign.Together these expansions weave the two stories into a single, seamless narrative. Instructions for how to combine the two can be found on The Chains that Rust." I think it's kind of odd, as part of me now considers Mists as the first half of an incomplete campaign. Should we wait until Chains get released before starting a Mists campaign? I´m not sure here. I´m also wondering if Chains might include the Act II version of the Mists lieutenants, or if it introduces new ones and only their Act II variant? Interesting...

No rumor cards indeed. It's an Act I campaign but all monster cards come with an Act II variant so that's great for using in other campaigns. Each lieutenant comes with a single Act I card. There are 5 extra travel cards as well. Miniatures look AWESOME. New Terrified status card where the figure cannot spend any surge while it has it. The three relics are insanely good for both sides. I missed a few heartbeats while looking at them. There are also some rather expensive Item I cards and many of them look powerful. The Soulbond Sword in particular has Pierce 4 on surge, additional damage and deals terrified condition at the price of a small drawback. There is a book with ranged attack where you can stack some tokens and then when you find appropriate unleash a +X damage attack by spending the tokens. There are a couple of very interesting other ones too. Then Hazard terrain is back, Elevation as well, but new types too. Sludge terrain which works as water except your speed is reduced to 1 and cannot be altered if you start your turn on a sludge space. I read this very quickly so don't take my word for the ultimate ruling. But that's very interesting. Of course there is a special cloak in the items cards to walk on these sludge spaces without penalty. Like we had the Lava boots or whatever it's called. Also there is crumbling terrain. It overrides the terrain beneath it but if you step on it you need to pass a test, otherwise it collapses and reveals the terrain underneath (so you suffer eventual consequences). Some quests start with crumbing terrain. Otherwise we have the Tainted cards and some "Old wall" terrain which I guess is unique to the campaign. nice!

Got my copy today, will check the contents once I get the time.

When production is done in China (typically) the product is stored in containers and put on a vessel. Boat sails from Asia (takes a few weeks time) to distribution hubs. Since FFG is an American company I suppose there´s at least one boat to one of the US hubs, although we europeans apparently get the product surprisingly early compared to the US so I´m thinking there might be a second boat to the EU, Germany typically. once the product has passed customs they may further ship to a storage hub or warehouse. From there you start distributing the product to stores.

Well it's quite easy for me. Lieutenants/Agents are the most powerful monsters in the game, so they need to be better representated than these pieces of cardboard. Think of the situation where you setup the map and place your dragons, and then you place a tiny piece of cardboard to represent the big bad guy. It's awful. Cardboard is fine is everything else is cardboard made. Plastic minis and cardboard "minis" aren't quite compatible in my mind. On the other hand I will be getting Gloomhaven with cardboard heroes (but the monsters weren't in plastic either, only heroes could be plastic minis at an additional cost). I also have zero problems with Dead of Winter. I could see myself playing D2E with cardboard monsters/heroes, it would ease my pain of having to paint it all, lol. But I would expect lieutenants to be easily recognizable from the rest to represent their might and influence in the quest.

Very true about the fear of dying in the final encounter, that actually makes the Overlord presence stronger psychologically, and also because heroes try to be more careful and "waste" actions trying to re-group or search for potions while you get your monsters to activate. The possibility of dying is actually one of the best parts of the Finale in my opinion. Gryvorn is brutal but only if he gets in range, which is the problem once heroes have found out how to kite him with help from conditions.

I think that feeling is pretty classic for new players playing Descent. Big monsters are not epic as they would be in some other games. Lieutenants/Agents are, however, so I wouldn't say Descent cannot have its "epic" moments. But the bad guy is truly the overlord, only seconded by his lieutenants, and the monsters are just puppets, being Kobolds or Dragons. So yeah it's completely normal that a geared up hero party can chew through a couple of Shadow Dragons. After all they get so many attacks. Once the heros are reasonably powerful you will find the most useful monsters are the ones with utility abilities and not the ones entirely geared towards combat. Defeating a hero is always a good thing and should not be taken lightly, but more often than not you need serious support from monsters with abilities making the heroes more vulnerable. Ultimateley what you want to do as the overlord is forcing the heroes to waste actions against your monsters. As for the Finale, I also share the feeling that they are often poor endings to the campaign. Gryvorn is a formidable opponent on its own, but conditions can destroy him in no time, which I think is a big let down for what he is meant to represent for the campaign.

For Skarn, check here if you haven't already: http://boardgamegeek.com/images/boardgame/156936/descent-journeys-dark-second-edition-skarn-lieuten Mine is still primed and waiting, I am having difficulties finding the time to start painting him. I could find a couple of pictures for the Crypt Dragons but nothing painted at professional level. This said I don't think these dragons are any "special" and could be painted like Shadow Dragons with a different color scheme, as per the monster card. That's what I had in mind for them. I would have painted them without need to find a picture for them. Skarn however I can understand, lol. FFG should really hire somebody to paint their minis. It would be very nice to find these available somewhere on their website, and m sure it would promote their products.

You´re probably aware, but there are three new lieutenant packs for this expansion.

Good guess I can definitely see myself playing a hero, but I like playing the Evil side too much for doing so. Plotting in the dark and calculating my chances of getting my plan through is all I crave.

Mine has shipped, however the weekend will likely delay the delivery till Monday at the earliest. Not having the lieutenant packs feels a bit meh, though, but I assume they´ll soon be following. Edit: if you have the lieutenant packs placed in the same order then maybe that's why the order is delayed till end of january? I´m guessing orders with the expansion alone should ship quite soon?

I totally agree that a game should be played for fun. If nobody is having fun then it should definitely be avoided. This said you can find fun in many different things. While it's fun to deal a 10+ damage attack with a lucky roll, or fun to get that treasure chest card from the search deck, it's also fun (at least in my opinion) to try and catch the heroes off guard when they feel strong. It can also be motivating to lose a quest just to try to plan for a come back later in the campaign. Tailoring your strategy to your opposition, micro-managing your abilities, some players will find it way too involving and some players will find the mathematical game awesome. I´m always exhausted after a session of Descent.

Mists of Bilehall is now available here in Sweden. The lieutenant packs haven't hit them yet, though.

I think Monopoly, Risk, Catan etc. are still popular because many grew up with these games and seen them played as a family tradition. There is also the fact these games are still being released in new settings, like coupled with the Star Wars franchise for instance. This makes them attractive to the non.gamer community that are being fans of the IP. They are also being sold in virtually any store, including book stores and toy stores so they are a lot more exposed to the public than games like Descent which require you to do a bit of research before you find them (mostly to figure out whether they´re good or not). Mind you, I actually find the IP is the prime reason for games hitting stores, you can find EVERYTHING Star Wars, Catan, Carcassone etc. But I also found a single copy of Legend of Drizzt and Lords of Waterdeep (D&D franchise) so I guess it's not impossible to find the gem in the middle of that main stream ocean. But these games are not really bad games at all. I would therefore refrain for judging the people playing them (not that I think anybody has done that in that topic). They are just outshadowed by more modern game concepts. When talking to the average dude on the street it's not really surprising to find out these are about the only board games that person knows. More complex games are often compared to video games because of the required investment in these games. You can certainly be a 40k fan and play XBOX games, but you´d often get the question why you don't play 40k on a computer instead. But you would be suprised how you can find interest just out of asking what people used to do in their youth. I recently started a bunch of D&D adventure games sessions just after finding out some friends had been playing the role playing game before. It was more than enough for them to recognize the various characters and appreciate the game.

My general "reaction" to the co-op adventures is that they are a nice alternative way to play Descent, but are vastly inferior to other co-op games in the genra. If you like to play solo then you would find additional interest in getting them to the table, though.