Descent: Journeys In The Dark

This is without a shadow of a doubt my favourite game of the moment. It has become a weekly event in fact and I have introduced a number of friends and family to it. Much the same as the World of Warcraft Board Game (also manufactured by Fantasy Flight Games), Descent will take a few hours to play and the box comes stuffed with figures (monsters and Heroes), cards (for Skills, weapons...), Dungeon map pieces and tokens (for health, familiars...).

Descent is a dungeon-crawling game (and in this respect is similar to `Heroquest') in which one person runs the game and the rest each take a single hero and try to conquer the dungeon and the monsters and traps therein.

The Heroes: there are about twenty different Hero characters to choose from each with his or her own figure, stats and special ability. They have varying rating in traits such as health levels, fatigue (a resource that can be drained to increase movement or add dice to attacks), armour and movement. The characters have varying numbers of dice for each of the three different types of attack: Melee, Ranged and Magic. Additional special abilities are provided to each character by drawing cards from three different decks: Fighting, Subterfuge and Wizardry (these tend to apply to Melee, Ranged and Magic actions respectively) - some characters specialise in certain skills, others have a balance. The sheer diversity of final characters once you take into account the various random Skill card draws is massive.

Before the game starts the Overlord (whoever is running the dungeon) puts the map pieces together following instructions from the book. There are 9 levels details in the Quest Book with many more available online (www.fantasyflightgames.com). The Overlord has a deck of cards from which to draw - these allow him to Spawn extra monsters, play specific event cards and set off traps to harm the heroes. Each type of monster (of which there are 12 including Beastmen, Skeletons, Ogres and Dragons amongst others) has their own health levels and powers. Master monsters exist for all monster types which are essentially powered up versions of the basic monsters with more health levels/armour and additionally powers.

Before entering the dungeon Heroes must each purchase equipment (weapons, armour, potions...) from the town shop. The gear on offer at the beginning of the game is rather basic but never fear treasure chests exist in the dungeons which offer a host of more powerful weapons, spells and armour amongst other things.

The idea of each Quest is that the players must venture through the dungeon slaying monsters and trying to stay alive in order to finally confront the end boss and defeat it. I must say that the game takes a long time to play - you should be setting aside at least 4 hours. I must add however that I cannot think of a better way to spend a day of gaming: this is co-operative so the Heroes are all together battling the evil Overlord and his minions. The rules are at first a little daunting but the level of complexity of the game is part of it's beauty - no two games are likely to be the same especially when you consider the character + skill card combinations.

If you and your friends are happy to sit down for a few hours and play a game that all will enjoy then you cannot go wrong with Descent.

Firstly, a little explanation. I gave this game three stars for durability because it comes with lots of cards and loads of 1"x1" tokens (as well as huge sack of monster piecves) which will undoubtedly get worn over time and/or disappear up the hoover. Also, one of the many, many plastic monsters in my box was already broken when I opened it up. So we lose points there.

But to be honest, that's as much criticism as I can give. I played this for the first time with three mates (who, like me, played a lot of Hero Quest and other games as youngster) and we had a great time. The learning curve is steep though, and it took us just over five hours to play through the first mission! I reckon if we were to play it agin then we'd probably do it in two or three hours. Quicker, but still a very long time for one game!

But, if you've got the time (we did) this won't be a problem and is indicative of the complexity of the rules. There are lots of strategic decisions to make as you play - especially for whoever ends up controlling the dungeon! A great fun, immersive and challenging game. If you fancy playing "grown up" Hero Quest then you can do a lot worse than give this a bash!

It's an amazing boardgame, great quality, good replayability but one manticore figurine was missing. Of course was a product failure.