Its first app-driven game, XCOM: The Board Game was released way back in 2014. In fact, you canвЂ™t play the game without it.Д«ut this is nothing new for Fantasy Flight either. Of course, this is far from a traditional board game because all of the set-up and the action is managed by a digital app. This is the first time that miniatures of this type will be included in one of the companyвЂ™s more traditional board games. It featured prominently in games like Star Wars: Legion. Producer Walden says the technology to make these kinds of minis has been in the Fantasy Flight pipeline for some time now. Hobbyists and miniature painters will love them. The results are stiff, slightly more brittle miniatures that have crisp details, including weapons and other features that extend well past the round base. ItвЂ™s a similar process to high-end models from BritainвЂ™s Games Workshop and PolandвЂ™s Archon Studio. Fantasy Flight tells Polygon that the models that come with Descent: Legends of the Dark are made from polystyrene, injected into laser-cut metal molds. The heavy, pliable composite makes minis that are nearly indestructible, but it also leaves their features soft and their flat bases sometimes warp. Previous editions of Descent have included similar plastic miniatures made of PVC. ThatвЂ™s right: Fantasy Flight is paying a premium to ship half-empty boxes from China. The final product is fan service all the way down, including into the empty void at the bottom of the box to hold all that cardboard terrain safely between games. Many have attempted to copy its complexity, but none have yet matched its success.ДЇantasy Flight reasoned that if consumers were ready to put down that much money for new, unproven designs on Kickstarter, why not go the extra mile for fans, new and old, of Descent? ItвЂ™s the kind of extravagance that tabletop fans can only dream about - or one that hobbyists will spend months or years crafting by hand - and soon it will be available in stores. Even though it costs $150, it remains one of the most critically and commercially successful new products of this generation. The nearly 20-pound retail product comes with dozens of miniatures, hundreds of cards, and a similar two-dimensional collection of terrain and cardboard monsters. The most popular game in the dungeon-crawling genre, called Gloomhaven, disrupted the entire industry when it launched a crowdfunding campaign in 2015. This kind of production value would be out of the question for a $60 game, but the market has changed considerably over the last five years. It includes more than 20 individual cardboard terrain components.

One of our graphic designers, Joe Olson, suggested it and then it just kind of started to snowball.вЂќДЄ sample set-up based loosely on the stock photography on the back of the box. вЂњThat punch board,вЂќ producer Jason Walden told Polygon, вЂњwas not part of the original vision. Imagine the most intricate dioramas, the type created for shows like Critical Role and Dimension 20, all rendered in papercraft, and youвЂ™re on the right track. Best of all is a clever set of notched columns that allow you to create platforms that rise up off the surface of the table.

There are double-sided floor tiles with special underlays representing water and lava massive double doors in multiple designs bookcases and magical cauldrons spell books mounted on tables, and more. After the better part of two hours of carefully popping things out and gingerly assembling everything, I had all the bits needed to create a massive 3D level from a dungeon. ThereвЂ™s also a four-page leaflet filled with instructions. Opening up the big blue box, I encountered a nearly two-inch thick stack of cardboard punch boards.

Descent legends of the dark bandit