D&D Heroscape and Heroscape D&D

D&D Heroscape
I finally played a game of D&D Heroscape, and was trounced. I played the first scenario which seemed very simple: defeat the Troll and save your teammate from his sinking cage. Unfortunately, I misplayed my healer and my wife used her brutish troll to great effect. Man. I guess I'm not very good when I don't have all the cards memorized. On the other hand, maybe she'll be more likely to play it again later.

Heroscape with D&D

I also played in another game of 4E D&D! An ad-hoc delve built with Heroscape tiles by Jesse, and it was pretty awesome. It really gets a lot more fun as a player when you get more comfortable and familiar with your powers. When I don't have to read my character sheet all the time, I can think more about what would be fun or cool to do instead of what the sheet says. Also, I had a lot of fun talking in character. The high point for me was definitely the introduction to a helpful centaur named Chargin' Charlie. He helped us fight some gnolls, ran off and called Snaggletooth a hag, and was later obliterated by Snaggle Cracking the Sky and blasting him off a 30 foot high bridge. RIP Chargin' Charlie.

Descent, of course!

Last but not least was a solo game of Descent using the Descent Quest rules. I picked two heroes and stumbled my way through a game that took about 3 hours. I'm still pretty new to the vanilla Descent rules, so rule lookups and a general unfamiliarity with the player side of things certainly slowed me down. Regardless, I really enjoyed the decisions Descent combat gave me, and the flow of the game cracked me up with its similarity to old school Warhammer Quest. Lots of surprise attacks from big scary monsters and pit traps right when you think you're going to get a treasure. All the game needs is the chance to drop your lantern and die in a panicked sprint for the dungeon entrance. I might have to add that. Anyway, I'm excited to try it co-op with some friends now that I'm more familiar with the rules.

Descent and DnD - Also, I love resource management!

The last two weekends were fun; I got to play D&D and Descent the weekend before last, and played Descent again this past weekend.

For DnD we finished up one delve and started another. I'm thoroughly enjoying my Gnoll Cleric "Snaggletooth". I didn't settle on a name before I started playing her, but everyone else settled on Snaggletooth pretty quickly. Maybe her real name will come out later, maybe not.

Our party of 4 (Wild Sorceror, Battle Cleric, Paladin, and Rogue) has been doing pretty well on delves a level or two above our own. Maybe the DM is going easy on us, but I think it also might have something to do with the fact that guaranteed 3-encounter dungeons make resource management easier. If we make it to the final encounter of the delve without using our daily, the only question left is "how soon?", not "should I?".

For Descent, I played the overlord both times, and it was fun. Definitely different from being a DM, but that was good. I liked being adversarial for a bit instead of cooperative. The first game seemed a little easy for the heroes, but I realized afterwards I had neglected to collect threat when monsters rolled surges on attacks on the heroes. That little difference might have puched me closer to winning, since I rarely had enough threat to play any traps until the very end of the game. Even though I was doing it wrong, though, it was a neat way to regulate my damage dealing potential.

The second game did not go so well for the heroes. In fact, they lost in the first room of the dungeon, blasted by sorcerors and torn to pieces by beastmen. It didn't feel very satisfying to "win" as the Overlord. I kind of wish I had pulled some punches so we could have continued through the rest of the dungeon...oh well. We did get to play some tiddlywinks...I mean X-bugs...I mean Micro Mutants: Evolution. Also, I got this awesome picture:

Wife is not happy. Pictures = evidence of her nerd gaming.

I really enjoy the tension caused in 4E DnD and Descent by the decisions you have to make regarding your actions and resources. You can only do so much in a turn, but there are 15 monsters coming after you! You can do cool stuff if you spend a daily/encounter/action point/fatigue but then what do you do if something even bigger comes around the corner? I love being provided with those tactical (and sometimes even strategic) decisions.

Long D&D break, hopefully over soon

No dnd for a long time now. After finishing up Thunderspire we've all just played my other board games when we get together, which is fine. They don't get enough play otherwise. To make matters worse (better!) I got a bunch of awesome games for Christmas. Cave Troll, Drakon, Micro Mutants Advanced, Beowulf: The Legend, Doom: The Boardgame, and Descent: Journeys in the Dark. Beowulf, Doom, and Descent are magnificent time suckers, so they'll probably eat up a good amount of otherwise fine dnd time. The other three look to be great shorter games, for different kinds of nights. Anyway, I've got time. And I am super excited to put some in to these games. Maybe I'll put play reports here. A good session report (with pictures) is always fun to read.

My newly acquired copy of Descent. Thanks Mom and Dad!