What I Played Today: April 10

Descent: The Road to Legend, Civilization Revolution

Today was Descent Campaign day, and it went a lot better...for the Overlord. The game started with a city being razed to the ground, which is just too bad, and with three lieutenants fast approaching the cities, it’s become clear that we are pretty screwed at the moment, so we’ve got to start killing some lieutenants. We went through a couple of encounters, which were pretty easy considering, although we took a few hits, and then we went into the dungeon from hell. We only barely made it through the first floor.

This was because it was a level from the Tomb of Ice expansion, an expansion specifically designed to slow the heroes down. You have ice on the ground that will randomly stop you, frost on your weapons that could potentially destroy them, and stealthy creatures that make you randomly miss. It is a bitch of an expansion, with only the addition of the feat cards making it easier for the heroes. But this particular level was practically covered with ice, with a boss monster that could frost multiple heroes at once, and the key was hidden in a block of ice that took us three turns to break through.

I also died for the first time! The overlord managed to spawn a couple of beastmen behind me, which I have absolutely no defense against, and it took two swipes from them for me to fall over. And that’s AFTER I played a card to increase my armor. Man, beastmen are scary. Hopefully next week we can get past the next two floors of the dungeon in a reasonable amount of time.

Out of boredom I also lost a couple games of Civilization Revolution. After playing Civilization IV, I’ve forgotten some of the basics of the game, mainly, that warriors are much harder to build in this version of the game, and you should really leave some defense units behind, and the nearby civilizations are a lot closer than you think. There was a moment where Germany, who had been pretty cool so far, just saw the perfect opportunity and took one of my cities in an instant. Like Germany does, the bastards. I even saw his troops moving on my position and didn’t think to reinforce because I was more used to the less expansionist-happy civilizations in the computer games.

The console version is a pretty good streamlined version of the series though. A lot less to worry about, which makes it easier to track what’s going on, and the bonuses are a lot more interesting and varied between civilizations. I’m looking forward to V, because it’s clear from the previews that they’re taking a lot of elements from this version and expanding them.