Descent: Journeys in the Dark 2nd Edition

I love this game.  I f*#king love this game.  Seriously.  I'm going to talk a little bit about it today.

I'm not going to talk about how it's a damned cool dungeon crawler, even though it is.  I'm not going to talk about how the integrated iOS/Android app allows for truly cooperative and even solo play, even though it does.  I'm not even going to talk about how the array of tiles lets you build endless variations and unique dungeons to explore.  The one pictured below is tiny in comparison to some of the monstrosities I've seen.  Mechanically, this game has a lot to like, but I'm not going to talk about any of that.

What I'm going to talk about is that my wife loves it.  This is huge.  It's something we can play together.

I've been a gamer for years.  My gaming habit has taken many forms, but the most common have been role-playing video games and tabletop miniatures.  Role-playing video games tend to be solo affairs.  When my wife was still in college, she'd do her schoolwork while watching me play.  I secretly understood this to mean that she wasn't really interested in the games, but really just wanted to hang out with me while doing her work.  The video games were something she could sort of tune out.  Tabletop miniature games like Warhammer 40k are definitely social...  well, at least part of the time.  Sure, there's the fun of going up against an opponent, but there are also literally hundreds of hours of prep work involved if you get into painting and reading the fluff.  Tabletop miniatures games require mental, emotional and time commitments that aren't to be taken lightly.  In my wife's words, she "made two commitments in [her] life...  to [her] education and to [her] husband".  Making a commitment to a tabletop game simply isn't in the cards.

So, what does all this mean?  It means that I've found a game that she genuinely enjoys playing with me.  I'll come home from wok and she asks if I want to run through a Descent mission.  Yes.  Yes I do.

I guess my advice here is that if you have someone in your life that you want to share your love of games with, keep trying different things.  Eventually you'll find something you both enjoy.  I'm happy that we found Descent and I'm sure that we'll be able to grow this into a love of other cooperative games.

...

Ok, totally gonna talk about the game a little.  FFG has gotten much better at making minis.  The newest set looks amazing.  I've sen these up close and the detail below is completely true to real life.

Descent Minis Painted

I should start off by saying that this is not my work.  My buddy Jon and I have been playing lots of Descent: Journeys in the Dark 2nd Edition lately.  It's a fantastic game and I recommend you try it out.  The core game is all you need to start and it's always on sale on Amazon.

I have way too many painting projects that aren't currently getting attention, so I'm happy to say I get to benefit from my buddy's artwork.  He's fantastic at duplicating the card art onto the miniatures.  I wish I had more to show you, but these will have to do for now...

Descent: Journeys in the Dark Hero Rims

I thought this was cool.  A friend did it and I stole the idea.  Thanks, Jon!

In the FFG game Descent, there are four hero archetypes.  Warriors have red icons, mages yellow and so on.  Painting all of the minis is the end goal, but realistically speaking, isn't going to happen anytime soon.  This is the next best thing.

I used some acrylic paint markers that I bought at AC Moore.  They're pretty useful.  I'm happy with the results and this took about 5 minutes total.  They're not in the picture, but I painted the rims of the big bosses (who are the same color plastic) in black.

LEGO Descent: Journeys in the Dark Character Dashboard

Hello all!  This post is a little stranger than most.  I've been playing a lot of Descent: Journeys in the Dark ever since the Road to Legend app came out.  For those of you who don't know, Descent is a cooperative dungeon crawl board game where the enemies are controlled by an Overlord player.  The Road to Legend app eliminates the need for an Overlord player and allows you to play solo or with up to three other friends.

This is one of those FFG games with a ton of cards and tokens that are hard to keep organized.  I've seen a couple of people online who built organization dashboards out of card stock, laser cut acrylic, etc.

Hey, if they can do it, why can't I?  Of course, I don't have a laser cutter or a 3D printer or any of the other fancy tools one would use to really manufacture something.  I do have tons of LEGOs though.  Hence...

Works great, keeps my table organized and was free!  Boom.

Miscellany

Today's post is sort of an assortment of things I've been working on, looking forward to and buying.

First up is this little doodad.  I bought it at an arts and crafts store.  It was in the scrap booking section.  It's a fancy hole punch that makes leaves that should work pretty well for 40k and AoS base decorations.  I punched some sample leaves out of 110lb card stock and am pretty happy with the results.  I'm going to try gluing them down to a sample base over the course of this week and painting them up.

Next up is something I want to buy. Fantasy Flight Games put out a card game version of Warhammer Quest.  It's a ton of fun.  They just released two character expansions that give a little needed variety to the game.  These expansions are only $5 each.

Lastly, something I did actually buy.  I've been really enjoying Descent: Journeys in the Dark a lot lately.  As I've mentioned a couple of times, the Road to Legend app allows you to play without the need for an Overlord "bad guy" player.  It allows gives you expanded options, characters and missions as you buy more of the physical expansion packs to support the game.  To whit...  I used some Amazon.com credit today and picked up two of the expansions.  Lair of the Wyrm is the first small expansion and The Trollfens is the second.  There was an expansion released between the two that was bigger, more expensive and with more content, but wasn't discounted.  I got both of these at about 25% off.  I'm pretty excited for these to come in.  I think I'll start a new campaign with my wife when this stuff shows up.

I think I'm most excited about The Trollfens expansion.  The tiles look really cool and add a wet, swampy look to the outdoors areas.

Descent Road to Legend Solo Mode

My wife was out of town from Friday night to Sunday morning, so it seemed like a good time to try out the new Kindred Fire campaign for Descent via the Road to Legend app.  This app eliminates the need for an Overlord (Dungeon Master Guy) and allows anywhere from 1-4 players to run a campaign.

It was fun.

I didn't do well.

I ended up choosing a Barbarian class character and a Thief class character.  In retrospect, I needed more defense and some healing.  I though the thief would be useful as it's easier to grab the various search tokens and get more potions/what not.  I didn't really use them though.  The Barbarian wasn't bad, but if you roll poorly on defense, you're boned.  I didn't really have any way to heal.

The first mission started out pretty well.  I was scouting out a local temple, looking for an escaped cultist when a Merriod (like a shark with legs and eel like tentacles coming out of it's head) attacked.  A band of Kobolds ran to its aid.

I dealt with the welcoming party without real issue.  Opening the door you see above showed me a Crypt Dragon.  Seems legit.  Dragons are friendly, right?  Oh, and that door on the right of the photo?  The game told me that the area in front of it was just coated with sprays of blood and gore.  Awesome.  Note to self...  avoid that door.

Turns out that Barbarians don't back down from challenges and Thieves want to open ALL OF THE DOORS, so I caved and opened it.  Had to pass multiple skill challenges, but made it work.  Inside I found a pair of enchanted dice that let me stress myself out a little to re-roll a single result per activation.  Pretty cool to find a relic right off the bat.  I went on to finish the first mission successfully.

The next two though...

The below photo is shortly before I died.  The game has a mechanic called morale.  Your morale starts at the number of heroes you have and goes down by one each time someone dies.  When you go to town, morale rests.  Essentially, if you have two heroes like I did, you get two deaths "for free".  The third ends the mission.  The photo below is shortly before both heroes died.  The Barbarian then stood back up and died again.  The Zombies just kept spawning and I couldn't figure out how to "shut them off".

I wasn't able to return to town after the above side mission and had to try the next story mission.  Because I hadn't been back to town, my morale was still set at zero.  I entered the map to find five Goblin Archers and another Merriod.  I killed the Merriod in my first activation, but then the Goblins went.  The game gave them an automatic +2 damage to each attack.  My dude only had 14 health and rolled terrible for defense.  The first monster activation of the mission caused me to fail it.  Awesome.  

Overall, the solo mode campaign is a ton of fun.  I'm seriously considering starting over with different classes though.  I think I might need a healer of some sort to replace the Thief.  I'm thinking of switching to the default Knight and "Battle Cleric" type characters.  They look like they could take (and dish out) a beating.

Painting Class!

I met up with a couple of friends, one of whom is brand new to the hobby, Wednesday night.  We went over some basic techniques, like how to get a proper basecoat, how to drybrush and basic layering/line highlighting.  As a practice mini, our brand new miniature painter worked on an Ultramarine Assault Dude.  We haven't gotten to basing yet, but I think he did a pretty amazing job considering it was his first effort and one of his thumbs is broken!

I thought he did a particularly good job on the plasma pistol.  We went with green coils since it's halfway between the yellow and blue.  Always gotta tie your colors together.

My other buddy painted a model from Descent.  He's always trying to match the art on the cards.  I think he nailed it.  What do you think?  Seriously...  I wish my color perception was good enough to just pick colors like this without a tutorial.

I spent most of the time "teaching" and offering feedback.  All I did was get to practice a little on the sort of reflective edge highlighting that I see every once in awhile.  I like how it turned out, but can't imagine painting a whole army like this.  It's so time consuming.

Waiting Sucks

Anyone who reads this blog likely knows that I'm a fan of many different games.  This blog started out as a way of keeping myself focused on my hobby projects, but has morphed a little into general thoughts on the hobby and gaming in general.

One of the things I'm terrible at when it comes to gaming is waiting.  We always know that there is a cool new release around the corner, and I hate having to wait.  All the new shinies I want right now come out next week.  Oddly, they all come from the same company...  Fantasy Flight Games.

First up is the Legions of Death Expansion for Warhammer 40k Conquest.  If you haven't given this game a try yet, do so.  The core box is only $40 or so and gives you enough stuff for two players to play.  Not every 40k Faction was represented in the core box.  The Tyranids were added in a previous expansion and the Necrons are added in this one.  The game does a really good job of capturing the "feel" of 40k.  Planets are taken down quickly.  Orks attack en masse.  It's great.

Next up is The Bespin Gambit for Imperial Assault.  I've been playing through a campaign with my friends and am enjoying the game immensely.  This box adds several heroes and a mini campaign, but more importantly for me (playing as the Imperial side), several new open groups of bad guys that I can use to terrorize my Rebel Scum friends!

Last up is a Descent Hero and Monster Collection.  My buddy is a big Descent fan.  He has almost everything they've made so far.  Descent is more or less identical to Imperial Assault, where one player controls the dungeon and monsters and the others control players.  As I've mentioned in previous posts, FFG released an app that takes over this job, turning the game into a truly cooperative 1-4 player experience.  I've ordered a copy of the core Descent game, which should be in my hands by the time this post goes up.  I've played enough to know I like it and intend on slowly buying some of the additional content.  Each of these Hero and Monster Collections comes with 4 new heroes and 3 groups of monsters.  Jazzes up the game a bit.

I'll be posting up unboxings and reviews as I'm able to get these things.  They all release around 5/26, so I might have to stagger the purchases a littler.