A hard fought, 5- hour Descent slugfest, with adventurers Jeff, Jon, Simon, newcomer Chad versus the poor, innocent creatures of the Evil Invincible Overlord Ben. The forces of light initially made short work of my unprepared spiders, skeletons, and beast men, but in the end the forces of darkness prevailed!
Despite their ever increasing arsenal of magical bazookas, enchanted plasma-powered armor, and ethereal targeting lasers, each room the adventurers busted in on became a little tougher. Though Jeff could merely wiggle his wizardly finger at one of my creatures to instantly blast the poor creature into its component atoms, my dark powers were quietly growing ever stronger as well. The heroes fired a couple magic bazooka rounds into the chest of Igor, my elite giant ogre, but it was their first big mistake. Igor, a huge flaming mountain of rage, did his dark lord proud by rushing forward and literally mopping the floor with Jeff and Simon. Sadly, Igor when down fighting with about twelve flame tokens on top of him....
The dastardly heroes armored up, met up with the resurrected Jeff and Simon, and confidently trotted down to take on the final boss room. I had nursed my pile of threat tokens to near maximum and cycled through a whole deck of bad guy cards to have just the right final mix. As the final door opened, I quickly launched an exploding door trap on Simon sending him reeling. Chad moved forward, and I dropped him in to a series of spiked trap pits, sending him to the graveyard.
Jon, the armored wrecking machine with the ability to cleave through a whole pile of monsters in a single turn, ran into my dragons lair, only to see the dragon, two giants, two sorcerers, two beatmen, and two skeletons all facing him. Unafraid, he waded through three of my weakest monsters and lopped off the head of an elite sorceror. Alas, invoking devlish incantations, the sorceror sprang back to life without a scratch, blocking Jon with a now fully awake horde about to pounce.
Jeff, with his death ray, fired two long range shots at my ancient dragon, hitting both times. Jeff scored wicked wounds on the beast, knocking it down to below half strength, but not killing it. Then it was my turn...
I cast a dark charm on Jeff and forced him to shoot the death ray directly at himself. Jeff hit himself pretty badly, but most of the damage was absorbed by his eldritch armor. Drat! Next my mob of sorcerors, beast men, and skeletons pounced on Jon, hacking him down to just a few health. Then it was the dragon's turn, who blasted both Jon and Simon, leaving nothing but a smoking pile of charcoal and molten mithril where Jon used to be. My elite Giant then moved forward to lay down a killing blow on Simon. Simon vainly tried to fight him off, scratching him slightly with a glancing blow. With a hearty laugh, the giant brought down his mighty hammer on top of Simon to end the game with a mighty, squishy, crunch! (Insert evil laughter here....)
We played from roughly 1030 to 1530 without a break, which made everyone pretty hungry and ready for the game to be over. However, I had a blast the entire time and was never bored. If better food and beverage provisions had been in stock, I don't think the time factor would have even been an issue. I totally thought I was getting beat down by the heroes until the last room, but the climax was just ugly enough to knock them back down to size. A very close game that literally came down to the last turn. I'd have to rate this game an 8.5, marking it down slightly for the length. With the expansions that are doubtlessly on the way, I'm sure it'll soon be in the solid 9 range.