by Enroth186
Hi folks.As Descent 2.0 is getting its second life now as a coop/solo game, mainly due to the release of the Road to Legend app, there seems to be an increasing interest in playing existing Descent 2.0 campaigns coop or solitaire. There have been multiple variants of bgg users over the past years that try to simulate an overlord so that no human player has to take that role. The main contributors are Redjak and Nerdook who have refined their variants ever since and provided lots of professional looking components and playtested rulesets for all players to enjoy.
In request of a quick comparison of some of these methods for a newcomer, i want to list some pros and cons for these variants. These are my personal opinions and everybody can come to his own conlcusion, i just want to give a short comparison so that you dont have to read through the complete rules to see which variant is suited better for your tastes.
Redjak's automated Overlord variant (RAOV):
pro:
+very few additional components needed (only a 36 card deck needs to be printed out. this can be done at home and does not need a lot of time/money.)
+this variant uses a lot of the original components (overlord cards, monster cards...) and stays very true to the original game.
+the monsters dont act in a predictable manner. Every turn you draw a card for each monster to see how it behaves this turn.
con:
- the rules are a little bit more involved/longer than the monster variant.
- the rules have a few special cases and priority lists which you have to know by hard if you dont want to flip through the rules all the time.
- you need to keep in mind all the overlord cards in the overlord's hand and make sure to check if they will be triggered during the game. Also, the overlord cards dont come as a big surprise since you know they are in his hand and are ready to play.
- you have to flip a lot of cards from the AI deck during the game. Everytime when you activate each monster and every time you have to make a random decision.
Redjak's automated monster variant (RAMV):
pro:
+ shorter/cleaner ruleset.
+ the rules are almost all on the cards, you dont need to keep a lot of rules in your head.
+ the events are triggered at a regular step in the turn and you dont have to check constantly if events are triggered by hero actions.
+ this variant uses a custom event deck which results in a little bit variety and unpredictability from turn to turn.
+ changes turn order to alternating, like in imperial assault. This promises to be a more tactical and dynamic approach to the turn order.
con:
- you will have to print out a lot of cards. I think all in all there are over 300+ cards you will need if you want to use all monsters / campaigns.
- the monsters act in a predictable manner. You can always see the different actions and conditions after which a monster manages its actions and you could counteract/exploit this.
- You can not use the overlord cards. In this variant, custom event cards are used.
- changes turn order to alternating, like in imperial assault. This changes the ballance and flow that existed in the core game.
Nerdook's D6 variant (RAMV): - Text is Coming soon
Conclusion:
I personally like that RAOV stays very true to the original gameplay. I like the smaller footprint and the unpredictable monster behaviour of RAOV better (although the events are more unpredictable in RAMV), even if it means that you have to remember some more rules and take care not to forget something important. If you plan to play this coop with other players, i think this is not such a big problem, but if you plan to play this solo with 4 heroes, it might be a bit much at first. It gets better over time though.