Descent: Journeys in the Dark

Curse you, Wil Wheaton! Curse you TableTop! Darn you for opening a door to entertainment that gets me away from the television and hanging out with my friends. If not for you I would probably not have wonderful new games to play or be willing to try new games that you haven't featured on TableTop, because they look like fun. Every time I watch TableTop I want to open my wallet and give you all the money and play all of the games. One of the games that has not been featured on TableTop that has made it into the house is Descent: Journeys in the Dark. 

Descent: Journeys in the Dark is a game that my husband researched and picked up. He spent a lot of time painting all of the game pieces. Decent is a dungeon crawler with a hundred different pieces. There is an entire story line that goes with the game and the objectives change with each twist and turn of the story. Each time you play the game the experience from previous boards follow your character to the next plot twist in the story. It sounds complicated and it is, somewhat. It is one of those games, that while it may take a while to set up the dungeon because there are different snap together boards and to set up the tokens and game markers. Once everything is set up, it is actually a pretty smooth game of strategy mixed with chance.

Today we played part of the second mission called The Fat Goblin. We enter into the town of Arhynn to trade and restock supplies when the Goblin Horde ransacks the place and is trying to make off with the harvested crops, which would leave the town destitute in the winter. Not only are there goblins scampering all over the place pillaging the once peaceful village, they brought with them a pack of ill mannered zombie dogs that have fleas and maggots and are running a muck, scaring small children in rough simple clothes. The rudeness knows no bounds.  It is not easy being a hero, when stuff like this happens. I am pretty sure that all Grisban the Thirsty wants to be doing is not wielding an axe at the scruffy mutts and would rather be raising a mug and telling drunk tales of the adventure he just came from. A heroes work is never done.

With a combination of good card play and really bad dice throws on my part, Grisban the Thirsty along with the help of his fellow hero companions, Asherian, Leoric of the Book and Avric Albright, the heroes were able to wrestle two out of the four harvest bundles from the scampering mischievous goblins with minimum damage to their health and stamina.  I am pretty sure that more villagers and crop bundles would have been lost if not for the strategic planning of Leoric of the Book.

Rescuing the bundles of harvested crops is only part of the quest, because now the fearsome foursome have to go rescue all those idiots that weren't smart enough to run and hide when a goblin horde is messing up the neighborhood. There is a farmer that believes his brother is being targeted in this, and even though Grisban thinks the blood spattered farmer in rough simple clothes has had one too many knocks to the head from fending off some maggoty zombie dogs, he has agreed to get drunk after they rescue his brother and the rest of the missing villagers, despite the fact that he fights better drunk.  Asherian thinks that is really big of him, but Grisban is pretty sure that Asherian is just being sarcastic about the whole thing.

And this is the end of part one of The Fat Goblin. The next part of the journey is where the heroes invade the Goblin Horde's home base and try to take back what is theirs, while trying to keep from dying. A lot of Goblins have been made orphans by these heroes and are probably out for revenge and farmers probably taste good in stew.

I am looking forward to the next round of this game. The more you play, the more you get into the different twists and turns of the story, and the more you come to appreciate the different aspects of the characters involved. If you are interested in seeing more of the amazing games pieces that my husband painted, here is a link to his blog on Board Game Geek.