On Wednesday, it was cold. Oh, not Minnesota-in-January cold, but cold enough that the schools were closed, lest children freeze solid at the bus stop, shatter, and file lawsuits. As fate would have it, I was off work that day too, so broke out Descent for the first time in over a year to continue my daughters’ geek game indoctrination.
The girls were all over the little figures. Loved them. Immediately chose their favorites. I used this time of distraction to build out the dungeon and re-read how you play this game anyway. My beautiful gamer wife joined us, and we were off.
For the sake of time (and since the youngest isn’t quite 6 and therefore isn’t up to reading the fine print on cards), I decided to simplify things. If you’re looking to play the game with your kids, I’d recommend these tweaks:
- No starting skill cards – Too much reading and game text to remember right away.
- No “Ready” order – Yes, it removes a huge chunk of tactics from the game, but it makes the heroes’ turns go much faster. Once the players get the basics, you can easily add it in later.
- No Overlord cads other than spawn cards – This might have been making it too easy, but we didn’t play long enough to find out for sure.
Even with these tweaks, Thing 2 got bored and restless, and started stacking dice. She requested to bail out before they’d finished the first full room. But Thing 1 was pretty well engaged — even though she’d started out questioning the very premise of the game. (“How do we know these are bad monsters? They’re just trying to live their lives here.”)
…And then the girl from down the street showed up with a handful of those shrieking horrors, the Zhu Zhu Pets, and all thoughts of boardgames disappeared.
