Fantasy Flight Games

Branching Out

Published 20 July 2016 | Descent: Journeys in the Dark

Branching Out

Preview the Hybrid Class Cards of The Chains That Rust

You’ve been trapped in the Mistlands for months now—bound by foul sorcery and imprisoned by cruel monsters, even as a plan to destroy all of Terrinoth festers and grows around you. Yet despite the unchanging, ceaseless motion of life as a prisoner, a turning point is coming. You must escape before you lose all strength, but the struggle to survive may push you into places you never thought you would go.

In the announcement of The Chains That Rust expansion for Descent: Journeys in the Dark, we took a brief look at the new hybrid classes introduced in this expansion. These classes essentially allow a hero to bridge two archetypes and unlock powerful new abilities. For instance, your hero may belong to the scout archetype, but when you take the Monk class, you can choose any healer Class deck and use its Class cards as your own.

Today, we’ll take a closer look at the other new hybrid classes that you can explore within The Chains That Rust!

Battlemage

All mages are powerful spellcasters, more than capable of dealing massive amounts of damage with their powerful runic spells. Still, some find they have a talent for the more physical arts of war and work to develop their martial skills while augmenting those skills with magic. Now, with the Battlemage hybrid class introduced in The Chains That Rust, your mages have a way to follow this path as well.

Like all other hybrid classes, this class begins by giving you access to a second Class deck. In this case, Arcane Veteran allows your mage to take a Class deck from the warrior archetype and learn all but the most advanced skills from this class. Though there are plenty of exciting combinations to explore just by combining mage heroes with warrior Class decks, the Battlemage hybrid class also includes its own cards to make your hero a worthy opponent on the field of battle.

The first lesson a Battlemage learns is how to forge his runestones into Planar Weapons. With this Class card, each of your Rune weapons becomes a Melee weapon and loses one hand icon, allowing you to hold two at once, if you so choose. What’s more, you can exhaust this card before you attack with a Rune weapon to add one surge to your results, helping to trigger your weapon’s explosive special abilities.

You’ll also learn how to weave rune magic into your armor itself. Runic Weave increases your health for each Rune you have equipped, making you much more difficult to bring down. What’s more, when you would exhaust a Cloak or Shield, you can exhaust Runic Weave instead, giving you increased defense in any situation. Finally, some Battlemages have advanced to a point of near invincibility as they absorb life energy from the very foes they slay. Death Siphon allows you to recover one damage or one fatigue every time an adjacent monster is defeated, but more importantly, it allows you to cheat death. You can exhaust Death Siphon before you would be knocked out to immediately perform an attack. If you defeat your target, you recover one damage, giving you a foothold to continue the battle!

Steelcaster

Just as some mages grow fond of more brutal, hand-to-hand combat, many warriors can see the benefits of mixing their tactical might with the power of sorcery. The Chains That Rust also includes the Steelcaster hybrid class, starting with Runeguard, a Class card that allows your warrior to take a Class deck from the mage archetype.

Steelcasters are experts at protecting themselves and their compatriots, willing to take massive amounts of damage to protect the other heroes in their party. Of course, most of the Heavy Armor in the game prevents you from equipping Rune weapons. It’s fortunate, therefore, that one of the cheapest Class cards for Steelcasters is Rune Grafting. This Class card offers a massive variety of effects. First, it improves your knowledge, shoring up one of the warrior archetype’s traditionally weaker traits. Secondly, it causes your armor to lose all text that would prevent you from equipping Runes. And finally, it rewards you for attacking with Runes while wearing Heavy Armor by giving you another surge ability to let you recover both health and fatigue!

You can further increase your defensive power with Iron Blooded. This Class card slightly reduces your speed, but more than makes up for it with bonuses to your health and stamina. It also allows you to add shields whenever you roll blanks on defense, and it even lets you discard a Condition card that you receive, keeping you free from ailments. Finally, you can extend your protection to your fellow heroes with Shield Mage. Not only does this allow you to wield a shield without sacrificing your hands, it allows a friendly hero within three spaces to benefit from your shield, gaining its defense dice and special abilities for the entire attack! No matter where you adventure in Terrinoth, your fellow heroes will always be glad to have a Steelcaster by their side.

In the diagram above, Pathfinder Durik is a warrior using the Steelcaster class. Triggering Shield Mage, he’s able to help protect Ulma Grimstone from the flesh moulder’s attack.

Transcend Your Boundaries

For the first time in Descent: Journeys in the Dark, The Chains That Rust gives you the ability to take your hero beyond its archetype and experience the classes of other archetypes. There’s still plenty to discover within this expansion, including the Watchman hybrid class, so come join us at Gen Con Indy 2016 on August 4th-7th to get your advance copies!

Discuss this article
in our forums!

The copyrightable portions of Descent: Journeys in the Dark Second Edition, its expansions and miniatures are © 2005-2012 Fantasy Flight Publishing, Inc. Descent: Journeys in the Dark, its expansion titles and Fantasy Flight Supply are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Fantasy Flight Publishing, Inc.

The Undead Rise

Published 6 July 2016 | Descent: Journeys in the Dark

The Undead Rise

Preview the Monsters of The Chains That Rust

Few from Terrinoth have ever traveled as far into the Mistlands as you. Few have seen the monstrosities you have witnessed. Perhaps it is the swirling mists that worm their way into the minds of necromancers and drive them to create beasts of foul magic. Or perhaps the presence of so many undead has twisted the meaning of life itself. Either way, it is not merely your chains that hold you imprisoned here—a cell is no stronger than its jailers…

You and your fellow heroes must escape from the Mistlands in The Chains That Rust, an upcoming expansion for Descent: Journeys in the Dark! Here, you’ll find dozens of new threats, including Tainted cards with new penalties for being knocked out, terrifying new monsters under the command of the overlord player, and a deadly class of Overlord cards. Still, not all is dangerous—the heroes themselves gain the ability to step outside their normal classes with the brand-new addition of hybrid classes.

In our last preview, we looked at the overlord player’s new servant: the Scourge. Today, however, we turn our attention to a few of the other monsters that join your forces in The Chains That Rust!

Spirits of the Mist

The Mistlands are haunted by all manner of otherworldly creatures, not all of which are the products of the necromancer’s art. Some are shaped by forces beyond the knowledge of any necromancer—but that doesn’t make them any less dangerous.

Within the Mistlands, spirits that have forgotten themselves commonly pull together into powerful collectives of hunger, pain, and fear. Called “the dispossessed” by those unfortunate enough to encounter them, these spirits often fixate on a single living creature. They flicker through the swamps of the Mistlands—always just at the edge of vision. When their target’s fear is at its peak, the dispossessed strike, countless spectral hands dragging their victim down to death. And then, another spirit begins its eternal wandering, gradually forgetting itself, and the cycle begins again.

As monsters in the service of the overlord player, the dispossessed excel at hunting individual heroes. Not only do these monsters feature high health and good defense dice, making them hard to kill, they can also spend surges to deal more damage, or in the master’s case, to terrify their target. Their only true weakness is their speed—the dispossessed can only move two spaces per turn, making it relatively easy for the heroes to simply outrun these ghastly spirits.

Fortunately, the dispossessed are tenacious, and with two of their abilities, you’ll find it quite easy to keep up with the hero you’ve chosen to haunt to his doom. First, you must spend an action as the dispossessed to trigger Fearbrand—this ability allows you to choose any hero in your line of sight and place its hero token on your figure’s base. Then, at the start of your turn, you can trigger Ethereal Hold to discard a hero token from the dispossessed and immediately place them anywhere within three spaces of the corresponding hero. From there, it’s easy to launch an attack and even trigger Fearbrand again, allowing you to haunt a single hero until his eventual demise.

One hero flees deeper into the chamber, but the dispossessed triggers Ethereal Hold—discarding the hero token to appear next to its target and attack!

The Worship of Death

All mortal men and women are bound by one inescapable truth: someday, they will die. Not everyone is willing to accept this inevitability, and necromancy is a seductive promise in the unending quest for immortality. Many such tormented souls choose to flee to the Mistlands in search of arcane secrets, and the most gifted among these become known as marrow priests.

Marrow priests do not fear death—indeed, they embrace it. They revel in the impermanence of their lives, and of all living things, making each death an act of devotion. Considered mad by most, they work dangerous magic with artifacts of deathly power, sapping the vitality of the living to speed them on their way to oblivion. Ironically, their devotion to death makes the marrow priests quite hardy and difficult to kill, so it is fortunate that these foul necromancers are few in number.

Marrow priests are ever eager to serve your dark designs as the overlord player—provided that they can reap their share of death. These monsters are fast and dangerous, but their true value can be found in their unique special abilities. During an attack, for instance, a marrow priest may spend a surge to trigger Mortal Binding, forcing his target to test knowledge. If the hero fails, you can place his hero token on your Monster card, preventing it from recovering damage by any means! As soon as a marrow priest is defeated or a hero is knocked out, however, all hero tokens are discarded from the Monster card.

With this potent ability, your marrow priests may dive in to strike and trigger Mortal Binding, and then spend the rest of the quest staying just outside the heroes’ reach. If you can keep them from healing, it’ll become much easier to knock the heroes out and force them to suffer the consequences of new Tainted cards like Perfect Peace or Vile Shadow . Of course, the heroes may catch on and target your marrow priests—but the Shadow Step ability is the perfect defense. Each time a hero attacks one of your marrow priests, the hero may spend a surge: if he doesn’t, your marrow priest gains five movement points immediately after the attack! Shadow Step can prove essential to keeping your marrow priests out of he heroes’ reach.

Call Upon the Dead

The dead are everywhere within the Mistlands, and with The Chains That Rust, you have the tools you need to take control and crush the heroes. Journey deep into Waiqar’s domain, and take command of your monsters when you pre-order your copy of The Chains That Rust at your local retailer today.

Join us next time for a preview of the new hybrid hero classes introduced in this expansion!

Discuss this article
in our forums!

The Scourge

Published 21 June 2016 | Descent: Journeys in the Dark

The Scourge

Preview the New Overlord Class in The Chains That Rust

In the Mistlands, the dead rest uneasy. Some say the swirling mists that cover this entire land are truly the spirits of the dead, wandering through the living world in search of warmth. Others say the mists are the exhalations of undead warriors, trapped beneath the ground until they can escape. Even if the mists are only mundane, the heroes will fight countless enemies as they try to escape the Mistlands, and some will rise from death to charge into battle again and again.

In The Chains That Rust, the newest expansion for Descent: Journeys in the Dark, both the heroes and the overlord players find new tricks and tactics. As the heroes experiment with crossing the boundaries between archetypes, the overlord gains access to terrifying undead monsters and a deadly new Overlord class. In today’s preview, we’ll start our exploration of the overlord player’s new powers by exploring the new servant and Overlord cards introduced in this expansion!

The Binding of Spirits

When you play as the overlord player, the heroes are already trapped within your domain at the beginning of The Chains That Rust. With the monstrous lieutenants first introduced in the Mists of Bilehall expansion and an assortment of new monsters, you’ll be able to plague the heroes at every turn—and you’ll also be able to take advantage of an entirely new overlord servant: the Scourge.

The Scourge only enters play when you purchase the first card in the new Soulbinder class: Ties That Bind. Rather than being shuffled into a deck with your other Overlord cards, Ties that Bind remains in play in front of you in every quest you play. Whenever one of your other monsters is destroyed, you can exhaust Ties that Bind to capture the spirit of the fallen monster as the Scourge, a vengeful, ethereal creature bent on slaying those who destroyed its mortal form.

As your servant, you can use the Scourge to devastating effect against a party of heroes. It offers powerful melee attacks, and whenever an adjacent hero suffers fatigue, you can force another hero to suffer fatigue as well—steadily whittling away your opponents’ options and forcing the heroes to play by your rules. Of course, the Scourge can be dispatched relatively easily if a few heroes concentrate their attacks on it, but because you can resurrect the Scourge whenever another monster dies, the heroes may decide that their best plan is to ignore the Scourge and simply allow you to plague their footsteps throughout the quest.

Perhaps the most important weakness of the Scourge is its speed. Because it can only move a single space on each activation, it’s entirely possible that the heroes may simply outpace the Scourge, leaving it behind and out of range. Fortunately, several Overlord cards in the Soulbinder class help address this weakness, starting with Restless Spirit. This Overlord card simply increases the Scourge’s speed by two, allowing you to move much more quickly and potentially keep pace with the heroes throughout the quest. Alternatively, you may follow a hero of your choice with Haunted Steps. While this card is in play, you can move the Scourge a single space whenever an adjacent hero moves away, allowing you to dog the steps of your chosen target until you finally overwhelm him.

You’ll find another way for the Scourge to catch up with the heroes by playing Dark Silhouette. You can play this card when a hero attacks a monster within three spaces of your servant. Instead of the attack resolving as normal, the monster and the servant switch places, keeping your monsters safe from harm and placing your servant right next to a hapless hero. Of course, there’s always the risk that the Scourge will be defeated by the attack, but in that case, you can play Possessive to immediately deal damage to the attacking hero. What’s more, if the hero is still standing, you can now perform an attack with that hero as if he were one of your monsters, helping you turn the heroes against each other and tear them apart from within.

Once you’ve advanced far enough within the Soulbinder class, you don’t even need to be adjacent to a hero to catch them in your spectral grasp. Unblinking allows you to force each hero in your servant’s line of sight to suffer fatigue or damage. If they choose to do neither, you draw more Overlord cards, giving you even more options for undermining the heroes’ efforts. Finally, you may ensnare the heroes in a deadly Danse Macabre. With this card, you can trace a path of spaces away from your servant. Each hero caught in that path suffers fatigue up to his stamina—and then, you can move your servant and each of those heroes up to three spaces! By fatiguing the heroes and moving them away from their goal, you can easily lead them into a trap of your own devising and defeat them, granting you the ultimate victory!

In the diagram above, the overlord player plays Danse Macabre and ensnares two heroes, forcing them to suffer fatigue up to their stamina. Next, the overlord player will be able to move both heroes and the Scourge, luring the heroes into greater danger.

Your Soul Is in Danger

Danger is everywhere in the Mistlands. It creeps up from the ground with rising mists, bringing corruption and the foul stench of death. It falls from the sky without warning, stooping to squash a hero like an insignificant insect. As the overlord player, this is your domain, and in The Chains That Rust, you gain the tools you need to crush the heroes.

Join us in our next preview for a closer look at the new monsters in this expansion, and pre-order your copy of The Chains That Rust at your local retailer today!

Discuss this article
in our forums!

The Chains That Rust

Published 11 May 2016 | Descent: Journeys in the Dark

The Chains That Rust

Announcing a New Expansion for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

You have traveled these accursed lands for far too long. Bound here by Kyndrithul, the manic vampire lord, your bodies and souls are his ongoing experiment. Something foul taints your blood. You are both living and dead—a little of both or perhaps not quite either. Regardless, you now know your last hope for a remedy. If you will ever escape, Kyndrithul must die.

Fantasy Flight Games is proud to announce The Chains That Rust, a new expansion for Descent: Journeys in the Dark!

Your journey thus far has taken you deep into the Mistlands and the domain of Waiqar the Undying. In this land of shifting mists, uncertain footing, and terrifying undead, you are certain of little. The heroes that you’ve fought alongside for years seem suddenly alien and unknowable. Spirits loom up out of the fog and vanish moments before they touch you. Even the air you breathe seems to be worming its way inside you, tainting your blood and binding you to the Mistlands with indelible bonds. More and more, you are sure of only one thing: you must find a way to escape.

The heroes’ adventures through the Mistlands continue with The Chains That Rust, a new Descent expansion that pits your might against ever more deadly dangers. Within this expansion, you’ll discover an entirely new one-act campaign that can be played on its own or as a sequel to the campaign included in Mists of Bilehall. New Tainted cards and a new Overlord class give the overlord player new tools, even as eight plastic figures swell his armies with new monsters. Finally, you can stretch beyond your hero’s traditional Class decks for the first time with the addition of hybrid classes!

Where Warriors Go to Rust

Playing off of the themes first introduced in Mists of Bilehall, the Mistlands are no less dangerous in The Chains That Rust. As in Mists of Bilehall, the noxious mists afflict each of your heroes with new Tainted cards. Although a Tainted card may initially seem to give your hero the benefit of extra health, its true, insidious nature is only revealed after you’re knocked out. After your hero is knocked out, the Tainted card is flipped over to reveal a dangerous effect, such as Dream Walk . Worst of all, you also become tainted, which means you can only recover damage through untainted heroes and heroic feats.

It’s not just the mists you have to worry about as you seek to free yourself from bondage to Kyndrithul. The very ground beneath your feet may shake and give way with the addition of crumbling terrain and old walls might suddenly fall to reveal an undead monster stalking you. You’ll also have to face the horrors unleashed by an entirely new Overlord class—the Soulbinder.

Soulbinder cards offer a variety of powerful effects, but they all start with Ties that Bind . Once you’ve purchased this card, it remains in play for the rest of the campaign. By exhausting this card after a monster is defeated, you can bring the Scourge servant into play. Servants were first introduced by the Manor of Ravens expansion, and in The Chains That Rust, you can use the Scourge to help your monsters crush the heroes. Called forth from the souls of dead monsters, the Scourge is slow-moving and deadly in a fight. What’s more, it can quickly increase the level of fatigue that the heroes suffer—whenever a hero adjacent to the Scourge suffers fatigue, you can choose another hero to suffer a fatigue! With such dangerous effects, your opponent will want to kill the Scourge quickly, but if they do destroy it, you can simply summon it again as soon as a different monster is slain.

Undead Terrors

The mists obscure many things from the heroes’ sight. A flicker of motion may be a reed bowing in a phantom wind, or an undead creature scuttling past. You’ll find three brand-new monster groups within The Chains That Rust, and each poses unique dangers to those who battle against them. One such group is the shambling colossuses—monstrous undead constructs, created by the arts of foul necromancy and animated by hate and agony. A single blow from the bony spur of a shambling colossus can puncture a hero’s body, leaving him drained and empty.

Some of these shambling colossuses undoubtedly answer to the marrow priests. These monsters are priests utterly devoted to the worship of death. Their fanaticism has given them unnatural resilience and power, which makes them powerful enemies. Unlucky heroes may even be forced to contend with the dispossessed—bands of spirits that have gathered together into a vengeful whole. These ghosts flicker through the Mistlands, choosing their targets and driving them mad with fearful, spectral visions.

Moreover, the heroes will face three lieutenants over the course of the campaign. These lieutenants—Kyndrithul, Zarihell, and Ardus Ix’Erebus—were already featured in the Mists of Bilehall expansion, but even if you’re planning on playing The Chains That Rust as a standalone expansion, you can benefit from adding these Lieutenant Packs to your collection.

The Rules Have Changed

Though most of the new cards and content in The Chains That Rust are focused on the overlord player, one crucial aspect massively increases the options available to the hero players: the addition of hybrid classes. These new classes allow you to bring a Class deck from one archetype to a hero from a different archetype, massively increasing the number of classes you’re able to choose from at the beginning of any campaign.

For instance, as a Scout, you may choose to take the new Monk hybrid class. The first Class card for this class is Greater Calling , which reads, “When you gain this card, choose 1 standard Class deck belonging to the Healer archetype. When you spend experience points, you may purchase skills from either Class deck, excluding cards with an XP cost of 3 from the chosen standard Class deck.” Not only does this allow your Scout to immediately gain a Healer Class deck, along with all of that deck’s starting Class cards and items, you also gain access to three powerful Class cards from the Monk Class deck to give your hero a unique identity.

For instance, you may purchase Inner Balance , which you can use to heal your allies’ conditions and boost your attributes. Openhanded rewards you with greatly increased attacks for daring to attack your enemies with your bare hands. Finally, you may take a Vow of Freedom , eschewing traditional weapons or armor in exchange for the ability to dramatically increase the power of your attacks and defenses.

Three other hybrid classes in The Chains That Rust give every hero archetype access to hybrid classes, and your options for customizing your hero have never been more open. Whether you take the holy vows of a Monk or wield sword and magic interchangeably as a Battlemage, these hybrid classes offer new tactics for every hero.

Break Your Chains

The Mistlands have tainted your blood and enslaved your body, but they have not yet broken your spirit. Fight for freedom and bring down the power of the Mistlands with The Chains That Rust, a new expansion for Descent: Journeys in the Dark!

Look for The Chains That Rust at your local retailer in the third quarter of 2016.

Discuss this article
in our forums!