Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans! Looking at last week’s blog post, I didn’t get to play Age of Steam for personal reasons and we didn’t get Heat because our local game shop had a great deal on Descent! 

Our first session of Descent was smooth and fun. It really shows that Fantasy Flight has been making big boxes overflowing with thematic goodness and attractive rules for a long time. We started the app and only skimmed the rules when we came across them and we still had a great experience. The app highlights keywords and rules in the app, which you can quickly look up by clicking the highlighted words, so you never have to doubt if you got the rules for keywords like “prepared” right. 

The app also incorporates enough thematic and mystery elements from the Mansions of Madness app. Trees can be interacted with and while you can deduct what most actions do, there seem to be some sprinkled in to reward the curious player. It’s nice to have some uncertainty when every second counts.

As shown in the comic, we did stumble a bit on what we should call our little adventuring party and strangely we settled on the name “Eleven days” which is a reference to the glorious and short life of Spurt, the Kobold in Critical Role. Let’s see if our group can last a bit longer than that though.

Other than playing Descent, we also played some Beverbende, Tsuro and a round of Shamans. We didn’t get to finish Shamans because it was getting too late but everybody wanted to try it again next time.

I’ve also started playing Voyages over play-by-mail with some friends, a roll-and-write about traveling the seas. I’ve only done three turns but if does feel like it started from the same brainstorming session as Age of Merchant Explorers, which is also a game designed by Matthew Dunstan. It’s not the most unique roll-and-write design ever but for just four pounds, you can enjoy sailing the seas and have your heroic sailors beat the Dread while discovering islands and selling goods.