The Full Stop - Descent: Legends of the Dark

Across the gripping quests of an unfolding campaign, 

you and your fellow heroes will venture across the realm, 

battling terrifying monsters, unlocking new skills, 

and exploring a wondrous fantasy world. 

- Fantasy Flight Games

Hello one and all! Welcome to The Art of Caesura!

Today marks something of an excursion. I painted a miniature (or three) from a game that I've never done before and haven't really mentioned on the blog before either. Now, this in itself is nothing too out of the ordinary (as long-time followers of my Kickstarter exploits will know). But what is different about the subject of today post is that it's an aesthetic that I shouldn't love, but I do. 

Now, the game is Descent: Legends of the Dark - Act 1. A couple of months ago I saw Act 2 (The Betrayer's War) in a Friendly Local Gaming Store and remembered how excited I was about Act 1 when I got it a couple years ago - I had opened it, looked at all the minis, read all the rules, and then...kind of forgot about it. I think it arrived around the same time as Oathsworn - which garnered quite a bit of attention here on the blog. 

Anyway, I really loved Descent when I first got it and that excitement has completely rekindled itself now that I'm starting to properly dive into it. I think the thing I love the most so far is the aesthetic and quality of everything. I am used to these big boxed games being Kickstarters, where the quality can be variable - even within a product. The minis might be great, but the rule book might be a mess. So to have a game such as this be developed in house and just straight up released by the company (Fantasy Flight Games) really seems to pay off in terms of consistency. 

These are, hands down, the best board game minis I have ever seen. They seem to be made out of the same HIPS plastic that Games Workshop uses and they come pre-assembled. Through whatever trickery they used in their production process, I found myself really looking for mould lines and sprue gates, and pretty much coming up empty. I really don't know how they managed to keep these elements for clean-up to a bare minimum. 

The posing of the minis is really fun and dynamic and they all come on textured bases. 

I opened this post by saying that I shouldn't like this aesthetic, but I do. What I meant by that is that I really don't like really inconsistently exaggerated or overly cartoony proportions (some zombicide abominations and the Games Workshop Gellerpox Infected brutes are among the worst offenders for me). And the miniatures in this game are quite cartoony, but they are cartoony in a different way. They are more symmetrically proportioned, and very characterful - some of them look like they have burst out of an old 2D Disney animation which is just very charming. 

The artistic style of the minis fits perfectly with that of the cardboard cut-out terrain and the companion app. 

Speaking of the App, I had heard initial concerns that the app would basically play the game for you, but having now played a few missions with my wife, I have found that it really just excels at what it was designed to do - reduce the overhead clutter and book-keeping. Having played a few missions of Oathsworn (and trying to keep track of the tokens, conditions and items there) I am enjoying what the app has to offer. I also like that, while it will calculate various conditions for you (if one of your weapons had a special ability that "enfeebled" the foe, the app will keep track of this and automatically consider it when calculating damage. However, if you don't trust the machine, there is a convenient button where you can always display the calculation that went into a certain result. For me it's the best of both worlds. 

I listened to an interview with one of the creators of Descent, who said that they really analyzed the uniquely fun aspects of miniatures board games: moving miniatures across immersive (and in this case, 3D) terrain, and rolling dice; among others. They were careful to retain those areas and keep the app away from them - it would have been easy to integrate a random number generator in the app, but that's less fun than rolling a dice. It would be easy to look at all the minis in the app, but that's neither as fun nor as immersive as actually holding the minis and physically seeing how they interact with their environment; this is one of the reasons that the minis aren't even displayed in the environments. 

My wife and I are only a few missions in, so there is a sense that things will ramp up, but so far the game is paced well enough to introduce us to new mechanics with each mission (and in town, between missions) without being overwhelming. 

I am looking forward to sharing some of these minis with you in the coming weeks. See you then on The Art of Caesura!

Watching: Flash Gordon

Reading: Priests of Mars - Graham McNeill

Next Week:

Awoooooo!!