I too got all of this HQ awesomeness, but then where do you put the Heroquest furnitures on the tiles? I know Shadows over Nerekhall had some sort of library tile with bookshelves figures couldn't walk on, so these work great for the two Heroquest shelves, but other than that I find difficult to find tiles that allow such thing. I also think the base game had three treasure chests only, 4 would have been cool for representing the search tokens in a 4-players par, barring the cases when you need one to be unique. I was thinking about ways to pimp up the map without redesigning things, and came up with the idea of designing tile frames. I don't have a picture at hand of something that could even remotely look like what I have in mind, but basically you could design an underlay for every tile size and opening configuration (alternatively make it modular) that you could connect like the tiles, giving you rocks/vegetals on the exterior of outdoor tiles, and bricks/walls on the edge of indoor tiles. That would look awesome but would be a true challenge in modelism. Somebody needs to throw out a project on KS

That's cool and all, but what are the arguments then for porting the IA system for attribute testing into Descent? Because we can keep comparing the two games, but I guess the big question is if people here would prefer the IA way over the Descent way, and for what reasons. I exposed mine but I am yet to hear somebody tell the benefits in gameplay for moving to the IA way.

I don't know if attribute rolls are more straighforward in Descent than in Imperial Assault, but I like the simplicity of using the same dices regardless of hero or attribute, and adding up the shields on them rather than having each hero have his own little way of testing said attribute. I fail to see what's inherently intuitive in doing it the IA way; if you mean that it's intuitive to find the information directly on the hero sheet then yeah, the information surely helps, but it doesn't mean the system is intuitive as such. I can also throw out a custom-made hero sheet with weird abilities that don't make sense at all, the fact that my wording tells exactly the player what to do doesn't make my system any good or intuitive. What's intuitive in my opinion with regards to attribute testing is to roll a fixed set of dices (with modifiers) and roll UNDER a value, like in most games I´ve played. It's intuitive because it's a proven system that many people will be able to recognize. All they need to know is what dices to use, and then they´re set for all the games. I also like that in D2E you can easily compare your attributes with other players and decide who is going to take on that **** travel card challenge. I don't think you can do that easily if everybody rolls differents sets of dices. I´m not saying it's bad to do it differently, I´m saying that I don't see why the D2E way would be inherently inferior to the IA one. I can appreciate other systems than the ones I have learnt to use, but the points mentioned so far don't convince me to believe that the IA system would be better in that respect. To me there seems to be a ton of possibilities for altering or even customizing attribute testing through the use of equipment or skills. Maybe one of them could replace the black dice by a grey dice, if you really think changing the dices would be a good thing. I think re-rolling dices or taking away X shields depending on Y and Z are more finer ways to deal with the same goal. I don't want the game basics to be too complex. Cards are designed to "break" or modify the game thus making it more complex as a result, so why not using them to do this customization rather than introducing yet another mechanism. For what it's worth, I absolutely champion more variation in the attack and defense dice pools for combat purpose. I wouldn't mind if each character would roll his own set of dices for attack or defense. But that's because I think it would bring so much to the game by including more effects on the dice especially for its possible interaction with things like surges and abilities like Blast, Pierce etc. I see that it would bring additional tools to combat these things. I just don't feel like attribute testing needs something of that kind. The variation I would seek would be on the trigger instead (the OL card or travel/quest event) more than the actual roll you make.

My own rankings would be quite similar with a few differences, but the only major one between yours and mine would be the Dark Elves. I rank them as top-tier. To your defense I know there has been a lot of reticence on these forums earlier from other players and I think I am one of the few to rank them high. But like you said this is all depending on your meta. I wouldn't say it's completely subjective because I base this on the result of many games with my playgroup and it includes as such the thoughts and opinions of a bunch of other players in my group. So yeah it is subjective in the context of one playgroup. The reason for ranking them high is that I win every time I draft them. Ok, that's not a valid reason But seriously, my highest win-ratio is with this team. What what I find extremely valuable with the Dark Elves team is the fact that most cards have two inbuilt choices. I can go nuts with every player commitment because I can evaluate cheating tokens on the fly and choose whether I should get one or not. I find this team to be the most flexible of all, bar humans who just beat everybody out no matter how you look at it, lol. Other than that the cards are solid, you have access to the most powerful star players deck, and upgrades are good too (deathlace comes to mind). I´ll go as far as saying that I would be perfectly happy if the only team I could play with in all of future games of BBTM was the Dark Elves. I´d be interested to hear your reasons about why you would rank them that low.

This said, you can still house-rule a Zlatopramen beer as a reward to any quest you win.

I can see some viability for solo play in this game, even if I don't see myself doing it or at least doing it for an entire quest. You can easily make abstration of the OL cards or hidden information by making your decisions informed for the side you represent. It just requires that you differentiate the context of the OL and the context of the heroes. It's perfectly doable. You can therefore still being trapped by the OL because you estimated that Hero A had to execute that action and Overlord had to play this card in response, as this is is how you would have played it yourself against a party of heroes. This is where I have a picture of Sheldon Cooper in my head playing Descent in solo mode and screaming in total surprise upon playing Web Trap on himself. I wish they released this episode, lol. I don't think you can get much fun out of this, though. I would only do it for testing purpose. Like in most other games, the fun comes out of the social experience. But if you´re Sheldon then go ahead dude, you´ll be fine.

I still see zero reason to switch defense dices to attack dices when it comes to testing attributes. Why make such simple and effective mechanism complicated by using a three-symbol dice when there are already equipment pieces, skills and whatnot modifying the test result? Is attribute testing all of a sudden perceived as being too straight forward? What is wrong with it, I wonder? I largely prefer the simplicity of the defense dices over the presumed variety of the attack dices bearing in mind what the latter brings to the game, which is basically stone nothing unless you want to masturbate with the idea of another unnecessary calculation in the game. One of my core expectations of the game is for it to be relatively fast paced so I would really find it dreadful to be stuck on a freaking dice roll every time we need to calculate the dice pool of the target. This is one of these things, along many other points concerning IA where I can only contemplate and ask "why? what does it bring to the game?" It would also make decisions for purchasing/playing attribute-related OL cards impossible to make. At this point why not rolling a D6 to see if said card succeeded or not. That seems infinitely superior to slowing the game down for something that should remain a basic thing to do.

1- no Overlord deck: So where do the OL abilities come from if not from a pool of cards you can purchase? I like decks, I like puchasing/drafting cards, I like the semi-unkown factor the heroes have upon planning their actions (semi because they know what is in my deck but not necessarly my hand). If this is gone then it better has to be replaced by a mechanism equally satisfying, otherwise I can only see this as a major nerf to the OL's capabilties to challenge the heroes in a quest. If they say each monster group has its own deck of cards then I can see it as being a potential replacement to the OL classes, although I really like the ability to specialize myself in a skill tree as the OL and gather generic cards rather than relying entirely on the monsters' abilities. I would really miss that opportunity. Some of my (hero) players say that the OL deck is one of the best thing in the game in terms of how much tension and calculation it forces them to make.From my perspective as the OL, these cards are my everything. 3- Threat is the mechanic for reinforcements, the Overlord need to have the same value of threat as the cost of a monster he want's to summon. Each enemy group has now a threat cost that must be paid by the Overlord to put that group back on the map. The same goes for really big big/hard enemies for example Darth Vader has a threat cost of 18 and a Stromtrooper just 6 Sounds like a very good idea to implement in Descent for open group reinforcements, but in most quests I would prefer to keep the quest's own settings for theme purpose. 4- no X on the attack dice, so no miss That's weird. An attack should always have a slight chance to miss, unless it is clearly stated to ignore X because the attack is automatically a hit. Or maybe blasters and light sabers always find their way through? Makes no sense in Descent anyway. 5- on the defense dice are symbols that cancel surge and one symbol dodge that cancels all damage Really great idea. I don't see any problem managing 10+ sorts of attack dices and 10+ sorts of defense dices, like at all, on the contrary I think it would be awesome as it would provide so much variety to combat. A counter to Pierce would be nice to have as well, on top of the anti-surge or anti-damage ones. Heck, one side of a defense die could even be: "you fumbled terribly, add +2 damage to the attack", likewise on an attack die "you suffer 1 damage due to your sword boucning back to you". Why not? 6- LoS rules are better because now You need to trace two lines from one corner to two corners of the target space, the line must be strait an can’t pass through blacked squares (in Descent You needed only one such line to say that You see the target) Sounds way overcomplicated to me. I fail to see what's plain "better". I'm neither for or against it, I admit the rules in Descent are sometimes weird to apply, but this double line thingy seems like it's going to drain some more time when playing quests. Descent is not a simulation, it's an arcade-like game. Who cares, really. 7- a player can use only 2 strain (stamina) for extra movement Great idea. I was thinking about limiting this kind use of stamina in our games but as you can expect my heroes don't really agree with my proposal 8- there are only 3 skills (in Descent there are 4: Knowledge, Might, Willpower, Awareness) and the test are now made with attack dice I like the fact we have 4 in Descent. I think it balances well with the OL class cards and the quest mechanisms which constantly ask the heroes to test one or several of them. Not sure what decreasing this number to 3 would bring to the game, I don't think it would simplify anything in practice. Thematically, the 4 we have is good as it is and I like the symmetry between the values and the hero classes, even if said figure varies from hero to hero. About using attack dices: for what reason are defense dices not good enough? 9- Endurance is the new healing/rest mechanic. You can use Rest action to get back Strain (in Descent Stamina) equal to your Endurance, each point above heals 1 point of Health I like this a lot. I would implement this right away if I could. 10- scaling and balance is now done by giving players more activations. So if the Overlord has more enemy groups then heroes the heroes get to activate more times That's a weird way to achieve balance in a game. Sounds like a major nerf to the OL. So basically there is no point in bringing in more monsters because Han Solo is going to shoot 12 times during the same round? Seriously? So if the OL ever has the upper hand, it is automatically negated by granting heroes more activations? I may be missing something but that sounds horrible to me. Let me bring a new game to you. If I'm winning, I'm winning. if you're winning, then there is a rule that nerfs that so I can win in the end. Riiiiight... 11- there is no Overlord turn and then Heroes turn. The Heroes get to activate one hero and then Overlord activates one of him monster groups, then another hero activates and once again the Overlord one monster group, and so on until all heroes activate. After that the a game round ends. Still at the activation You can do 2 actions similar to D2e So over the course of two "game rounds", a monster can very well activate twice between the activations of one given hero? I think it is very confusing, and potentially breaks the planning potential of the heroes, making every action reactive at best. There is no more sequencing like, you shoot and run, then I rest and Radiant Light the corridor and finally Scout runs between the corpses for the search token. Instead of that OL can throw more monsters into the corridor between the activations so the scout cannot reach the search token any longer. It forces you to attack more because the only way to achieve anything is when the path is clear to 100%. Me not like at all. 14- each time a Hero get’s KO he changes his hero sheet to the wounded site (it has one less ability). If a Hero is KO for the second time he is removed from the mission and can come back in another one. So the prime purpose for the OL is to kill the heroes instead of going for objectives. What a disaster. I don't like either the fact heroes in Descent are immortal, but I don't care in reality. It makes for some balance in the game. I think all players should be in the game at all times instead of being removed from it. Thematically, heroes could well revive at a spawnpoint or bonfire of some sort. Who cares! But I get that in IA heroes are really powerful and can't be killed as easily, unlike in Descent (err... I guess?). So no, I give this a pass. 15- Heroes win quests by completing mission objectives, Overlord wins by removing all Heroes from the mission (maybe also has some objectives - I do not know) Yeah, that sucks balls. 16- there are no archetypes but every Hero has his own class and a deck of advances Fantasy probably needs archetypes more than sci-fi. I wouldn't mind if each hero had his/her own set of abilities. On the other hand each hero will automatically embrace a certain role, and what better way to define this role by dedicating skills to it and call it a class. It's a question about the form. Archetypes is not a problem in Descent, combined with personal hero skills plus equipment which makes the Hero truly unique in every way. 17- each Hero has his own personal mission that can be added to every campaign and by completing it he get a personal special item That's kind of cool, except that it reminds me too much about Rumor quests, which are currently broken in Descent. 18- items in search deck have now credit value and cannot be traded with other Heroes1 Why???? Makes no sense at all. Leaves the impression that because heroes look so overpowered in this game, something ridiculous had to be implemented in order to restrict their capabilities? 19- all about the missions knows only the Overlord. He knows what is behind what door and what awaits the Heroes on every map. Heroes only know what objective to complete. I prefer the Descent 2E way of handling the map along with the open information WAY over this. I fail to see why the "action" in a game should be restricted to where the heroes are. Some monsters are in motion somewhere else and do stuff, how do you represent this if you're not allowed to reveal these sections of the dungeon? So yeah, 3.5/23 from me. The rest I did not comment in this post is classified as being "whatever, man". Not impressed. If some people see this as the renewal of Descent then feel free to switch, dudes. I can see that the few things I like about these spoilers I could well house rule in Descent without the need of a D3E to be released. Well, not the dices maybe, lol. But yeah, I mean, it doesn't feel to me like Descent is getting outshadowed by Imperial Assault at all in terms of gameplay, considering the information I have so far. Sounds to me like Imperial Assault is a worse game in comparison with the above points in mind, but that the fuzz about it and its franchise made people overlook the gameplay. I realize it cannot be in FFG's intention to make Descent obsolete, but looking at the posts on these forums and on BGG, it looks like many players already want to dismiss D2E for IA, or even D1E. Which I find absurd.

I don't mind that system, as what the OL lacks in the ability to rapidly ascend a tree he gains in the wide range of abilities available to him. A hero must choose his class at the beginning of a campaign and is stuck with it. The OL is free to not commit to a class at any point. I've heard of houserules that let universal cards stand in for cards of another class (that is, they're a "wild" class when it comes to leveling up) but I don't really advocate that. I don't dislike the system either, I think it makes sense. But it indirectly makes these Universal cards subpar, not in terms of how powerful they are (because they are indeed good for the most part), but in terms of class card selection. I guess it depends on how you are doing your skill roadmap as the OL. About the heroes: you are correct that the heroes are stuck with the class they chose originally, but they also have permanent access to all abilities they invest in. I mean, if you knew you could use Dash every time you needed it (which is always, lol) would you bother invest in cards that allow you to recycle your discard pile? Not sure what my exact point is here but consistency in this game seems to pay off more often than diversity, bearing in mind the randomness in the dice and card draw from the OL's perspective.

I agree with many of your points, however I have a few things to add. For "Danger Sense," it costs an action and 2 fatigue to force the OL to discard 1 card at random. If the OL is forced to discard a "Tripwire," for example, that's actually to the OL benefit. If Jane had moved and he played it, it would only have cost her an action. Danger sense cost her an action and 2 fatigue. Additionally, if the OL's goal was to use that card to keep a hero from moving, that's one action that was not used for a move action anyway. (I realize this case is limited to some trap cards, and it's different when you're sacrificing 1 hero action to deprive 1 shadow dragon of an attack action ("Frenzy"), for instance.) For Mok's feat, it's limited to once per encounter, though it's very powerful in that the heroes get to see the hand. However, since Nerekhall, the OL has options for avoiding the card hoarding strategy- like "Refresh" which lets him shuffle the discard pile back into the deck sooner than it would be- allowing him to burn through really useful cards like "Dash" and "Frenzy" (getting them out of reach of Mok and Jane) and then put them back in his deck quickly where he can draw them again (this also helps if Mok threw away "Dash," though you do have to hope the shuffle is in your favor- but that's always the case for the OL.) And there are cards like Placebo, which let the OL return the favor to the heroes by flipping down search cards before they can use them. I just had a couple of comments to the post you made: - I agree that the 2 fatigue cost on Danger Sense is not a nothing, but it can be easily recovered through the use of other class abilities. Honestly, this game from the heroes' perspective is about managing stamina, nothing else comes even close. I even have a group with a Stalker placing traps next to players and use Makeshift Trap so they can recover stamina when they take their turn. There are tons of ways to recover these 2 staminas. I would say these 2 staminas is the reasonable cost for such ability, but I don't consider this as being a hinder for using said skill every turn, in most cases. - There are indeed some utility cards at the OL's disposal, I just hate to be forced to invest in such purely reactive cards when I should be spending my XP on trying to grant me more options rather than fighting to keep the ones I should already be having. I would agree that parts of my investments/choices should be dedicated to react to my evergrowing heroes' abilities so I can counter them the best I can, however XP for the OL is not exactly flowing out the gates. I think what kills it in my opinion is the system that forces you to invest in class 1 cards before you can get a class 2 card. The only bad thing about this system is that you are forced to invest in subpar cards (which will mostly become redundant after some point) in order to keep going with the upgrades. It means that I am forced to invest in a crappy class 1 card instead of a better universal card if I want to go deep in one of the OL trees. Then sure, you can get the re-spec award from rumor quests (which I'm not playing for half a million other reasons), where you can get rid of the class 1 stuff and invest in these universal cards. I just don't find the investment in Universal cards as being that trivial in this game, or at least until you find yourself in a spot when you sit happy with your class and wonder about what to invest in next. And before somebody says it, yeah Web Trap is a fine class 1 card and there are some other good ones too, but the point remains

I also hope FFG watch these discussions closely, although I seriously doubt they do especially since the prime FFG discussion forum is probably not FFG's own but BBG ,and listen to the criticism so they can enhance the quality of their designs. I play BBTM a lot and we all love this game. This said, we didn't like Foul Play at all. We're just one playgroup though. That doesn't invalidate our views, though You can go ahead and praise FP here but FFG may snap the 100% positive feedback and keep the same direction for their next coming expansions. Which is fine if you like FP. I personally would hate this. Because I think the games we have had with Foul Play have drained our experience of many good things and turned the game into a completely different one, along with the fact the game takes too much time to run now (bearing in mind we have 4-5 players sessions). I'm not going to write another wall of text explaining my views about this since they remain the same as previously exposed. I will however reiterate that the referee, while not random per say, is completely unmanageable unless you commit players to every matchup, hold good cards for the sole purpose of moving him instead of commiting same resources to a matchup where you really need said resources, and even then the final decision about its final position does not only depend on you unless plenty of conditions are met (it is not as given as you make it sound like). Yes, you can control some of his moves but that often comes at the price of not putting your resources where they should be put in, plus the fact that every referee move will often upset another manager as a result, who will then in return commit a player and move the ref one more time, so that's square 1 again, not necessarly for you but at least for somebody else. I like this circular logic, mind you, I like that you have to play along with this risk until the risk directly affects your own matchup and your players. then you get rid of said risk, it moves off, and then comes back to you etc. But if you have played your last card and somebody sent the ref to your matchup which you suddenly lose on the spot, I fail to see what you can do about that. Even the last player does not have control of the ref if he has not commited to the matchup he's currently at. I will disclaim that the referee is one of the best parts of Foul Play. I don't like it much in a sense, but I cannot deny that it brings another factor in the equation without ruining the game in exchange. I am fine keeping him in. He makes ejections more interesting. This said I am still concerned about how Chaos may take advantage of the extra cheating tokens, but we haven't seen them run yet with the expansion so I can't say more for now. However about Fouling, there is no question about it, I got to bash on it as hard as I can because it's utterly terrible along with stadiums. Our experience of Foul Play in the games we've played so far with it over the past month is that it made the game less fun to play and had us a lot more stressed out. It added tension to the game, but not in a good way. It forced us to make assumptions as for who would be picking on you rather than just dealing with your opponents "in the game". Fouling is a in-game skill by definition since players themselves carry it out, but the effect is definitely at manager level and does nothing to the matchup per say. I just don't like a mechanism building on those values. Like I said earlier, there could have been a much finer way to achieve the same thing, like a player ability stating that none of the two managers at the matchup can commit star players to it as long as said player is still standing. It could have been that you have another ability stating that every time your opponent commits a player and execute a tackle, you may execute a sprint in response. That would have been a lot more interesting. You don't spoil any player of his options, but instead you make the opposition gain a slight advantage for doing so. On the other side, Fouling, discard a card. BAM! Your only sprint player. Coooool, dude! And it's not only terrible for the guy who's already winning the game, it's a disaster if you play this run-up team who already struggles and you get that slice through your own neck all of a sudden. What's your playgroup like? No way I would invite "anybody" to a session when we have a significant risk of having plays like that. With my game experience, I can take it even if that means it makes me hate the game, but bringing a friend to this and having him pulled apart by a **** card liike this? No ******* way, excuse my French. If there are people out there who think this is a great skill then by any means enjoy that. Not going to shut up for saying it's wrong for us though. I don't think my playgroup is special or anything but we don't see what it brings to the BBTM experience aside from removing even more options from your hand, limiting your choices, forcing you to make bad plays etc. Like stadiums. I don't know what you guys talk about after your sessions, but we talk about these awesome plays we made at the last second, we talked about that guy who held a star player up to the right moment and then devastated a whole matchup. We talk about the upgrades we drafted, not the ones we lost due to a stupid penalty. We don't jiggle over this Morg N Thorg I stripped off this other guy or this player with Sprint ability who was the only way Dwarves could achieve something in the game. I'm just perplex about how can people think of this as a cool thing to implement.

... and Star Players. Yes, you are totally right, but you seem to forget that only a % of these decks give you what you need, and that you draw randomly from those. Bearing in mind that you don't get access to these decks unless you pick the correct matchups, and often win them on top of that especially if you want to draft the reward instead of topdecking one, on top of having to prioritize which of the three you want to go for. Because you do indeed end up with a team having all three sorts of upgrades, but the first two rounds are truly the ones where you need to get your team up to speed and put the stakes on a chance to get the most vital upgrades before you can level up the rest. I guess my point is that even if the teams even up themselves when considering all upgrades they have access to, the problem is getting to these rewards. Some teams have a hell of a job to do in order to do so while other teams get them just as easily. To me every team should have equal chance to get to these upgrades. Then of course we can talk whether the teams WITH their team upgrades and star players are balanced between each other but that's another discussion and I fear it wouldn't be as relevant as discussing the former. For what it's worth, Orcs and Chaos tend to perform okay in our playgroup. Dark Elves are very strong. Dwarves are... Dwarves... lol

Additional OL discard strategies in MoR? I wasn't too much on the spoilers before then but I've played against the Wildlander and did not get much "joy" out of it. I agree that it must be a ton of fun for the heroes who can scream "hurray" after you just discarded Dash, but I strongly disagree that players make a sacrifice for playing this type of effect. It's the best thing they can play every turn, period.The only unknown factor they have upon planning their actions is the OL hand. Take away this risk and you can safely plan for anything you like, AND in addition prevent the OL from doing his side of the planning. No surprise attack. No surprise move. You have 5 health left? No way this goblin will kill you if no OL card involved so let's spend my two actions attacking. This to me is a very viable strategy. I absolutely HATE discard mechanisms as they remove options from the player and force them to make bad choices (like playing a card too soon by fear of losing it later). It puts a lot of pressure on the OL who already has a bunch of it against 4 other minds and a set of abilities and equipment he can hardly compete against... bar the use of the OL cards which are truly the only help to the OL. Relics and plot cards are a nothing compared to that. However, I will go ahead and say that hoarding OL cards during encounter 1 to win encounter 2 off the back of these cards is not the most beautiful way of claiming a victory, and I can understand the frustration from hero players when this happens. Even if I hate discard in all possible ways, I can see how it would prevent this strategy from being carried out and as such I am not completely opposed to it in that particular situation. What I'm opposed to however is heroes spanning discard OL card abilities turn after turn to negate the few options the OL has to do anything against the heroes. OL in topdeck mode is not a pretty sight. It's a powerful mechanism put in the hands of the heroes (should they choose the class using this obviously). I agree that it comes at the price of not doing something else, but that's a valid point for any class/ability in the game. I don't see how running this strategy wouldn't be a very eficient way of supporting the team, so who cares if you are not attacking twice a round or spending an action to do whatever if the best option you have is to force a discard.

Yeah I know I was under the impression that the rules made a clear distinction between skills and abilities, although I can agree that it makes sense thematically. Not going to argue about that if the game designer himself says you can do it, lol.

Justin Walden replied to my query and he confirmed that you CAN chain Spree.

Holy bananas! 2 hours, seriously? Man, you´re killing me. This is a pro job unless you've really been in the painting hobby for a long time. Hats off in any case, you are truly talented. What material do you use?

I noticed that too a few days ago, and that was after a time when I could not access the forums at all for a good hour or so, so my conclusion is that FFG brought the forums down to release whatever change they made, and what you experienced is probably part of it. Sounds like it was planned. These objects display as soon as I enter any forum. On a side note, I cannot copy/paste text on these forums nor can I quote any post any longer. It's been like this since this morning. I don't know if more people have the same issues.

Quoting, copy/paste, and probably a bunch of other things don't seem to work at all for me right now on these forums, so please bear with me Responding to mulletcheese: I see what you mean, but you cannot have this depth in the storyline in a game that focuses on running short encounters. One of the main appeals of Descent 2E is that you can play this thing without having to spend a ton of time running just one quest, like you would do if you played a role playing game. It is closer to an arcade game, obviously framed by a campaign mechanism to link your events together and allow some depth to some extent in the way you build up your characters and carry on your adventure with friends and foes coming back and so on. So of course, the storyline gets shortened and you might not feel a total immersion as a result, but you can also throw in as much fluff as you want and expand the game with your own knowledge of the Terrinoth world if you and your playgroup think it would spice up your experience. My players want to know about the story behind the characters and the quests they´re playing, but above all they want to rush into the action as soon as possible. They also play role playing game, but the mindset is different with Descent. So yeah, the fantasy theme is streamlined and probably a lot more anonymous compared to heavier games, but it also implies a gain in accessibility that I believe makes the game what it is. Of course you are free to either like it or prefer games that emphasize a lot more on the background story. I like the latter too but I can't afford the time investment, so to me D2E is the perfect game in its genre.

I think people underestimate the effect Imperial Assault will have on Descent. I personally don't care anyway, as somebody pointed out earlier there is so much content in Descent currently to warrant several years of play and we probably don't "need" in fact more expansions to enjoy the game because of the plethora of combinations you may have every time you run a campaign. I'm also sure FFG has both means and motivation to drive both product lines and basically keeping everybody happy. What I´m concerned about is that IA will drain the Descent fan base and shift development focus from FFG, even if you deny that it will, for the reason that Imperial Assault is Descent 3.0 so you have to try hard sticking to the old system while they release the goodies in the new system. Bluntly put, there is zero reason now to further develop the D2 system other than releasing quests and H&M collections while a new system is on its way, very likely to shape up the future system used in D3E. I´m sure more expansions with new classes and skills will be released for Descent, but that would be just to keep us busy with more content while the big drawing lines for the system itself are being defined in Imperial Assault. Gaming industry or not, putting two exact copies of the same product in your product line will invariably generate competition between the two products and generally require a lot of investment and support to keep alive. Like I said earlier, the Star Wars franchise is the only reason why this product came to life, and for me the only reason why it's so is because this game will very likely sell better than Descent. It's a marketing operation, you have the right to be happy about it because you can just acquire your copy in due time, but at the end of the day it is a way to suck more money from you more than releasing stuff to make you happy. It is a brilliant calculation and a perfect timing for the anouncement by FFG. Not saying that it's wrong, this is a business, but people should realize that such release is not made to "diversify" the game experience, or "build a bridge between sci-fi and fantasy". These are the cute words. By the way it's not just sci-fi, it's Star Wars, and most of you have already your hand at your wallet when reading these words. I am also concerned that the game bringing Descent off his throne will have flaws. I am concerned about game balance, some of this being justified by the fact imperials do not look like they can do anything at all compared to the heroes (but I hope I´m wrong). I´m afraid that this marketing operation left out some quality in the design during the process. Again, I hope I´m wrong. But I wouldn't be surprised if it does, I´ve seen the exact same things in other businesses. It always comes at the cost of something, quality above all. The worst that can happen is that FFG think that whatever what's in the rules, the SW minis are so awesome that we will have plenty of people to buy them. Let's just hope they won't play the game. Nah, that would be a stretch, but not completely imposible either. Seriously, I hope IA is a good game. But 100$ a copy only seems to confirm my fears. The people on these forums often own several FFG games already and will likely pick up Imperial Assault, most of you say so anyway. From the outsider's perspective though, I don't think many will be able to invest in both games for cost reasons. For the same reason that I cannot see myself invest in Myth while I put up with Descent. The Star Wars license means that it is likely that most SW fans will want to get every mini there is in IA. Honestly, if you were buying the game (and assuming you like it), wouldn't you want to play with more SW characters and therefore wait for these products to hit the market and get them once they get released? I would. Between playing Han Solo and a random Elf hero, there is one choice that is way cooler than the other one. Or so does most people think I´m not a Star Wars fan, but I wouldn't mind having a light saber in my shop items deck, lol. So yeah, Descent will lose some steam and this might also imply a resurgence for Myth and Arcadia Quest in the competition for the number 1 fantasy adventure game.

Come on, man I fail to see what is innerly wrong with Descent 2 for not being a "reveal next room" dungeon delver. I get that a % of the Descent 1 fans did not get exactly what they expected with Descent 2, but does that invalidate this game for providing a different gaming experience? So what you are saying is, "sky is is not falling but btw I did not like Descent 2 anyway"? How does that contribute to the discussion as for how people that enjoy D2 as it is should react to the latest anouncement? X-Wing will show end of support next month, so I claim. Let me go to their community and say that it's the best news ever because I've always hated the game anyway? Really? Plus the fact that it's a stretch to believe that most players in the Descent community would actually enjoy a D1-like game rather than D2 for the next installment. What if I prefer having an overlord, and a preset map of the dungeon? Or is it too much heresy for your taste? Let's stop assuming things here. Descent 3 will certainly be awesome, but that's not the game I am playing or invest in currently. I'm not paying money nor invest time in things so the next version making everything unusable will become better. Descent 3.0 should be implemented once Descent 2.0 has stagnated, which it has not as for yet. Is descent 2 so full of flaws so that the next inevitable step would be to release a brand new installment? With all the H&M collections being pumped out? Seriously, man? Just discussing here, meaning no offense but you can't just say these things and not expecting people to find it strange to say the least... Otherwise I agree that the newcoming Imperial Assault fan base will also comprise of new players that may well be interested into Descent, but in all honestly I don't think many of them will be willing to invest in a second class game that might not have a future.

Well it's always a risk, because FFG could theoratically introduce an overpowered class so that all other ones would become instantly redundant. Typically something players could abuse or combo off with. That would kill a good chunk of the combinations you can have in this game. Same goes for monsters, if they introduced a monster type that is always going to be a better choice than 90% of all other monsters then why bother releasing more subpar monsters? If FFG don't do proper game balance testing then you could end up being in such situation. I don't care about GW stuff either, nonetheless playing football with Orcs and Undead is a funny thing to experience

Blood Bowl Team Manager, the game of fantasy football by FFG. Their latest expansion "Foul Play" was meant to introduce "great fun" by allowing even more cheating into the matchups, but it ended up ripping apart all that remained of strategy in this game, and putting up so many restrictions that basically when I play this game nowadays I don't even care anymore about my plays or my hand since anything I do can be completely blanked out by raw randomness. The "great fun" is there if you want complete chaos in a game, for me as a strategist it killed my experience completely. BBTM is awesome otherwise, the expansion crushed it imho. If you want to play with the new teams you are stuck with the new mechanisms, so that also enforced the expansion into the game so ignoring the new rules that are destroying it is not an easy thing to implement..

In case some people have missed it, Imperial Assault IS Descent 3.0 from both functional and business perspective. It's clear that Imperial Assault is surfing on the wave of Descent, an already proven game and still very popular. Take the best parts of it, improve the few things that were a bit crappy, and replace the minis by Star Wars collector figures, which every SW addict will be wanting to invest in even if it implies ignoring the rest of the box contents. They target both Descent players to invite them to diversify their gaming experience, and of course all Star Wars afficiodanos. People who really love Descent are likely to invest in Imperial Assault bar the few who dislike the franchise. More money, and a streamlined way to support two major product lines at the same time. They just need to replicate what they are doing currently for Descent. Content shouldn't be a hassle to throw out given the huge story material around the Star Wars license. A fantastic way to promote a new game is to build upon one that has been working great, dust it off (theme-wise Descent is not a new game really) and put the most awesome franchise in the world on top of it, GenCon package, profit. There will be a huge wave of customers willing to purchase the product. I don't blame FFG for making this marketing decision. However, one game has to be inevitably ahead of the other one, and Descent will unfortunaley bite the bullet and become second in priority next to Imperial Assault. Even worse, because of the competition, Descent will lose further attention and lose fans because there is simply a much better alternative to it currently on the market. Think Arkham Horror and Eldritch Horror. Oh I'm sure Descent will still get played in many circles, but we should be able to see a noteable change in the way the product is supported and within the community. Fans may therefore lose interest in a subpar product since all design efforts and support are clearly going to go towards the new game. Want a new LoS mechanism? Look no further, here's Imperial Assault! You would probably ask yourself why FFG would take the risk for bringing down (or putting in decline, whichever terminology you prefer) one of their flag games. But when you think about it, there is no loss. FFG know well Imperial Assault will get the huge success people are predicting, probably even better than Descent actually, They know that a great % of Descent fans will equally invest into Imperial Assault, building further up the online community for the new game, and that the rather small % of Descent fans who dislike the Star Wars franchise will carry on buying Descent products anyway as they have always done. But think about Descent now. Sure, you can throw out tiles for every type of landscape there is, all monsters from various mythologies, 57 more elves each with unique bow made of 100 different trees etc. But in terms of skills and mechanisms, don't you feel like we have gone deep already? Not implying that we've reached the bottom of the bag by any means, but don't you think given the latest releases that the quality and creativity has somehow reached a certain level of stagnation? Sure, you can design a new type of Healer and come up with a cool OL card, but isn't it all overlapping in a way in order to preserve game balance? The further you go, the more you affect game balance and the gaming experience in general. Going off with a new mechanism can break a game, as we've seen with BBTM. So following this logic, as the risk grows bigger to introduce flaws to an established game like Descent, can it possibly be a part of the decision that FFG think it would be easier to design content for Imperial Assault than Descent? Or at least start fresh, which probably allows for early mistakes instead of having to integrate a new mechanism to 253 others, plus that said mechanism has to provide something to the game experience? I know this is all a business, but considering Descent and its current competitors on the market, I find very strange to see this type of decision being made, unless they think the sci-fi title they just announced can compete with its fantasy competitors. Again, the franchise matters a huge deal in the equation. I guess it is still possible that it won't disrupt Descent as much as I think it will, at least in terms of release frequency and support (although quality may well decrease), but I don't think for a second the fan base will remain intact once Imperial Assault gets released on the market. And finally, I think it would have been slightly more diplomatic towards the Descent fan base to announce this game BEFORE GenCon, even if it would have implied not revealing its contents before GenCon. They could have gotten their surprise effect in another way than this. Because right now it feels like a "take this right in your face, pal" to every Descent fan expecting news for his favorite game and only being provided with the information that the exact same game is being released by the same company with all the goodies and the "Star Wars awesomeness" combined. Feels tough on us.

I think the big news for Descent is just Imperial Assault. Seriously. Yeah, sure pal, you'll still get your big box expansion for Descent at some point, but by the time it gets released Imperial Forces will have the third miniature version of Leia in bikini released, a H&M pack with 37 Ewoks in it, and so many mechanisms that are plain better than the ones in Descent that you can just go ahead right away and shelf the whole thing, and wait for Descent 3.0 which is basically due once the IA fan base's seriously shrinked, with all Star Wars characters already printed with different flavors of clothing and weapons. and so many tiles so you can put them on every wall in your gaming room and still have enough to play the game. I reckon in 50 years time, once the Star Wars generation has started to fade away. Fantasy will still be there one way or another? Should we ask FFG to bring in the Lord of the Ring franchise to Descent so we can maintain interest to the game? Should we have a crossover with Star Wars and have fantasy versions of Bobba Fett and a 4x4 Jabba the Hutt Lieutenant into Descent? I cannot see how this announcement can be any good to Descent. Sure, they will carry on releasing content for us, but the attention will clearly shift to IA. Had this game been a sci-fi version of Descent without the SW franchise then it would have been a different thing in my reckoning. I can understand that FFG want to use the license as much as possible, but copying Descent to make the same thing plus the franchise is just so dirty. I feel backstabbed. I hate how they used the franchise to kill a game. People will come in and say "come on man, it just won't kill it", but yes it will, not in one blow, but you will soon or later notice how quickly Descent will fall in popularity.

I submitted the question to FFG just in case. Will let you know once I get the answer.