Descent Second Edition - How To Play - Setup

hi welcome to watch it played my name is rodney smith in our series we take a game we show you how it's played and then over the following episodes we play the game and we're possible put a seat at the table just for you so you can play along with us and help us make some of the gameplay decisions between the episodes by doing so we believe that you'll be able to decide for yourself whether or not a game would be a good fit for you your family or your gaming group now in this series we're going to be playing descent journeys in the dark second edition by Fantasy Flight Games here one to four players will control the heroes on an adventurous quest and one player will be the overlord controlling the monsters and hazards that they're going to face the game comes with several adventures and you can play them as single quests or string several of them together to create a campaign where players both overlord and heroes will gain new powers and abilities to aid them until the final battle where one side will be declared the victor in this series we're going to be playing a single quest and in this video I'm going to focus on how you set up the game to play there are important rules here so I hope you'll stick around and when we come back we'll go over how to set up the table to play descent to play dissent you need one player as overlord and we're going to set things up assuming that we have three players controlling the heroes so the first thing we have to do is pick a quest to play from the quest guide there are several to choose from but we're going to play the twin idols at the bottom of the page we see the dungeon that the quest will take place in and this is made up from tiles that come with the game these are double-sided but in the corners you'll find a code and this matches what is shown in the quest book so you can easily assemble the dungeon and there you have it the dungeon is formed in the quest guide it does show other things that need to be added to the dungeon for example this red bar here represents a door so we take one of the supplied door tokens and add it to the dungeon these other tokens will be added in a moment but let's look at how we set up the heroes each of the possible heroes in the game come with a hero sheet each player is going to pick one of the heroes to control unless there's only one hero player in which case they'll control two of the characters in this case our heroes have chosen Grzyb and the thirsty avrech albright and the ORAC of the book now the players can customize their hero by picking a class for it notice the heroes have a background color behind the portrait and a symbol to match this represents their archetype this is the color and symbol for a warrior and this is the color and symbol for a mage archetype as an example our warrior hero can then pick to be either a night or Berserker class by claiming one of these decks of cards that match the color and symbol as shown on the hero card our dwarf Griezmann will claim the Berserker class so we can return these cards back to the box no other warrior hero can now claim the Berserker class so players will need to come to an agreement or choose randomly here are all the cards for the Berserker class and from this deck we take the equipment card this is easy to identify it has a picture on it as well as the starting skill this you can distinguish from the rest of the skills because it doesn't have an experience symbol as shown on these cards here these cards are only used if you're playing a full campaign they give you additional abilities that you can add to your hero while they adventure so we can return these to the box now each hero takes an activation card and the tokens that match it which set you choose is irrelevant these will just allow the players to uniquely identify their own tokens when required to place them on the map as we'll see in later episodes each hero has an unpainted miniature to represent it our miniatures were painted for us by Peninsula painting services the heroes are then placed on the entrance tile as shown here in the quest guide each tile has a series of squares indicated on it and the players place their heroes on the entrance tile one per square in whatever arrangement they choose but hey it's not all about the heroes here our overlord needs to set up as well and that starts by choosing the monsters in the quest guide it tells us that the Overlord will use the Etten's and one open group the ends are simple no choice there they must be used each monster has two cards to represent them an act one and an act two version the act two cards are only used in a campaign to represent the monsters getting more and more powerful so we'll ignore them during this quest setup instead collect the act 1 monster cards only now we get to pick one open group and this is where we have some choice here are the other act 1 monster cards if we flip them over we'll notice at the top they have some symbols these symbols represent the monsters traits and at the top of the quest book page you can see some of these traits are shown so I'll be able to pick any one of these monsters that has at least one of the symbols shown here so I've decided that I'm going to choose the cave spiders now we need to collect the monsters miniatures this part of the card here shows you how many and which kind to take based on the number of Heroes the part of the symbol shows you how many heroes you have in the party we have three heroes so we'll be looking at these numbers here there are also both minion and master versions of the monsters the number with the yellowish backing is the number of minion monsters you collect and the number with the reddish backing is the number of master monsters you collect the miniatures in the game come unpainted so it's quite easy to tell the master monsters from the minion monsters but even though my managers are painted the trim around the base reminds us that this is the master monster and these are the minion monsters so for this game I'm told I will collect one master monster and three of the minion monsters so I'll remove this minion from the game and likewise with yet I'm told I can collect one master version of the miniature the setup section of the quest tells the Overlord where to place the monsters at the beginning of the adventure we're told to place the Aten anywhere within the Aetna's layer which is this tile here as indicated by the note the open group is then placed on the stairs tile but we're told they must be placed as close as possible to the exit tile as indicated here and in case you haven't guessed already I am going to be playing the Overlord in our playthrough so I'm gonna place the Aten here in his lair and next to the fire I'm sure even monsters like to stay warm and then I'm going to put the spiders as close to the exit tile as possible in this arrangement here the setup also explains that I need to choose one of the monsters from my open group to carry this token known as the idol of skulls and so I will give it to this monster here by placing it under its base and speaking of tokens we have others to place as well these symbols on the map here with the numbers and the stars represent search tokens like this token here a star on a search token symbol unlike those marked with a number indicate that these will likely be used in some way towards the quests objective in this case one of them will be the key most search tokens are the same on both sides but one of them is unique as you can see on one side it shows the key symbol but on the other it looks like a regular search token so we'll need to collect as many of these tokens as there are stars so a total of 3 ensuring that one of them is the key the overlord is allowed to know the exact location of the special token but should ensure the heroes are sufficiently confused about which one it is after they're placed on the map then based on the number of heroes on the adventure additional search tokens are placed on the numbered spaces we have three heroes so we will place this search token but this would only be used if you had four heroes after placing our search tokens then we can see in the quest book we have to place another token with this symbol and it goes here behind the door so there it is and that's all of the tokens that we need to place next we have a series of rules specific to the quest explaining things like how these idol tokens work and what the key is used for there's also a section for reinforcements this outlines how the overlord can bring more monsters into the dungeon as well as the victory conditions so you know when either the heroes or the overlord has won the game but we'll look at these in a later episode for now let's finish the overlords setup these are the overlord cards 15 of them are labeled as basic right here in the bottom left hand corner of the card the rest of them have different labels on the bottom these you can return to the box they're only used in campaign play so that is overlord you can add to and customize your deck with more varied and dangerous effects that you can inflict on the heroes these Overlord cards are then shuffled and then to create an opening hand I will collect one card for each hero on the adventure so a total of three now we just need to set up the rest of the tokens and cards on the table so here's the rest of the setup complete we've put out our damage and fatigue tokens we've taken all the search cards and shuffled them placing them facedown to form a search deck and over here we have our four condition decks each card within these decks is so you don't need to shuffle them just make sure you have the matching tokens nearby as well and finally we have the dice and now you're ready to play after completing encounter one you would then go over to the next page and set up the second and final part of the quest encounter - however based on the outcome from this first encounter either the heroes or the overlord will have a unique advantage as they go into the last part of the quest whoever wins encounter 2 is considered the winner of that adventure well I hope this was very clear if you have any questions about the setup at all please don't hesitate to ask them in the comments I'd be happy to answer your questions as soon as possible when we come back in the next episode we're going to go over exactly how you play descent journeys in the dark I hope you'll join me and until then thanks for watching Oh

Channel: Watch It Played

Views: 190,617

Keywords: Learn, Rules, How To Play, Descent, Rodney Smith, tabletop, Learn To Play, Learn How To Play, Fantasy Flight Games, Board Games, Watch It Played, Card Games, Second Edition, instructions, Game Rules, Descent: Journeys in the Dark

Id: zYARDF6lbvo

Length: 11min 53sec (713 seconds)

Published: Thu May 23 2013