Descent: Journeys in the Dark (Second Edition) came out in 2012, published by the company famous for publishing Cosmic Encounter and Mansions of Madness – Fantasy Flight Games.
Descent: Journeys in the Dark Second Edition was designed by Corey Konieczka, Daniel Clark, Adam Sandler, and Kevin Wilson.
The illustrations were done by Alex Aparin, Devon Caddy-Lee, Sylvain Decaux, Tod Gelle, Charlène le Scanff, Henning Ludvigsen, Allison Theus, and Sandara Tang Sin Yun.
Box Contents
- The Rulebook;
- 1 Quest Guide;
- 8 Hero Figures;
- 31 Monster Figures;
- 9 Custom Six–sided Dice;
- 7 Plastic Stands;
- 8 Hero Sheets;
- 1 Pad of Campaign Sheets;
- 152 Small Cards;
- 84 Bridge-sized Cards;
- 205 Tokens, consisting of:
- 48 Map Tiles;
- 45 Damage Tokens;
- 35 Fatigue Tokens;
- 7 Doors;
- 16 Hero Tokens;
- 9 Search Tokens;
- 6 Lieutenant Tokens;
- 10 Objective Tokens;
- 8 Villager Tokens;
- 20 Condition Tokens;
- 1 Reanimate Familiar Token;
Gameplay
The players are divided into two teams: Good and Evil. Evil takes just 1 player to represent its dark forces – that is the malicious overlord who is threatening to take over the world. The rest of the gaming party have to prevent this from happening. The heroes go on a journey that brings them to the underground dungeon full of monsters they have to battle. You lead battles using a cleverly designed system of dice. The game may include from 2 to 5 people.
At the beginning of the game, you choose your characters and one of the quests from the quest guide. Heroes choose from 4 classes and 2 different ability decks. Choosing an ability deck, you choose your weapons and starting hero abilities.
Each quest holds different objectives for heroes and the villain. One of the sides accomplishes their goal first – that will be the winner.
Different quests with different goals create different game atmosphere: the gameplay depends hugely on whether the heroes and the overlord are fighting over the same thing or their missions belong to totally different spheres. In the latter case, you need to decide on your tactics: how much effort you should spend on stopping the overlord and how much of it – on getting to your own noble goal.
Descent Journeys in the Dark 2nd Edition is a cheaper and a lighter version of the First Edition with a range of new features.
Errata
There is a number of misprints found in Descent: Journey in the Dark Second Edition. You can download corrections for all of them in PDF.
Rules
Heroes go first. They choose themselves the order in which they act. A hero performs two actions from the list:
- Move: Relocate your figure.
- Attack: Attack a monster.
- Rest: Recover from all fatigue.
- Search: Reveal the search token.
- Stand Up: When you are knocked out, you stand