The Dejark Table

Last week I wrote an article detailing some of the mechanics in Descent: Journeys in the Dark 2nd Ed. that I actually preferred over Imperial Assault.  This week, I want to turn the tables, and feature some of the things I think Imperial Assault does better. 1. Mission Structure Imperial Assault: Much of the mission's information is initially hidden from the Rebels during gameplay, including Imperial deployments, effects, and even some triggers.   Descent: All information is available to any player at any time.  From what I can tell, the board state doesn't go through significant changes during a singular Encounter. One of my favorite parts of playing as the Empire in IA is being able to watch my Rebels be paranoid about what might happen when they activate a terminal or open a door.  In fact, I even wrote an article last August about how the Imperial player can use this hidden information to their advantage, though I think that keeping some info from the Rebels is

Sorry for basically being AWOL for a month- I've been really busy!  (Including writing a book!) Among other things, one thing that I've been doing is looking into Descent: Journeys in the Dark 2nd Edition .  I've always kind of seen Descent as a sort of primitive Imperial Assault , but the more I look into it, the more I see some huge departures from what I know in IA.  In fact, there are some things that I really like about Descent that I wish were in the Star Wars game.  I figured that I'd make a list of some of these things, and next week follow up with a list of things that I think IA improved upon. 1. Class System Imperial Assault: Classes are directly linked to the hero chosen. Descent: Heroes belong to one of four archetypes (Warrior, Mage, Healer, and Scout).  The hero's archetype determines the class that the hero can choose from, with hybrid classes being added in later expansions. I initially didn't like this idea because I thought tha