L'Autel du Désespoir - El Altar de la Desesperación - Altar der Verzweiflung

Altar of Despair (AOD)

Expansion

Overview

The Altar of Despair is the second expansion to Descent : Journeys in the Dark and was released in 2007. It introduces the new game concepts of cursed items and Dark Relics and also expands options for Treachery with dark glyphs.

Heroes. The heroes found in the Altar of Despair are a bit disappointing except for Kirga. This pure rogue has a very useful ability that stops the overlord from spawning minions within 5 spaces of him. Corbin is a stout dwarf who can absorb a bit of damage, Tahlia a decent pure fighter, Eliam a fighter/mage who can use fatigue to do sweep attacks and Sahla a mage/rogue who has some way of discarding effect tokens. The last one and the least, Aurim, is a lame alchemist with 8 wounds who can exchange potions.

Monsters. The monsters added in Altar of Despair are stronger than the ones introduced in the first expansion, the Well of Darkness. The Dark Priests are good to generate threat tokens for the overlord, the Trolls are powerful and the Master Deep Elves have the vicious Frost special ability and high Pierce as well. Blood Apes can attack multiple heroes by leaping over them and the Chaos Beasts can adapt their attack dice to better damage their targets.

The full rules (without the quests) can be downloaded in PDF format on the Descent support page of Fantasy Flight Games' website.

Components

Note: after buying a new expansion, make sure you have all the components listed below. Some players have reported missing or wrong components. However, it is said that Fantasy Fligh Game's service is really good and that they will send you the missing ones.

1 Rulebook

1 Quest Guide

6 Hero Sheets

6 Plastic Heroes

21 Plastic Monsters

• 4 Blood Apes
• 2 Blood Apes (master)
• 4 Dark Priests
• 2 Dark Priests (master)
• 2 Deep Elves
• 1 Deep Elf (master)
• 2 Trolls
• 1 Troll (master)
• 2 Chaos Beasts
• 1 Chaos Beast (master)

110 Cards

• 10 Monster Reference Cards
• 49 Overlord Cards
• 4 Subterfuge Skill Cards
• 4 Fighting Skill Cards
• 4 Wizardry Skill Cards
• 5 Town Store Cards
• 12 Copper Treasure Cards
• 10 Silver Treasure Cards
• 6 Gold Treasure Cards
• 5 Dark Relic Cards
• 1 Replacement Descent: Journeys in the Dark Card

8 Map Pieces

• 2 Corrupted Room Pieces
• 2 Corrupted Corridor Pieces
• 1 Corrupted Intersection Piece
• 3 Corrupted Dead End Pieces

48 Prop Markers

• 30 Obstacle Markers
• 2 Glyph Markers
• 6 Dark Glyph Markers
• 6 Altar Markers
• 1 Large Pit Marker
• 2 Encounter Markers
• 3 Crushing Wall Markers

4 Crushing Wall Plastic Stands

28 Effect Tokens

• 14 Curse Tokens
• 14 Frost Tokens

18 Treasure Markers

• 9 Invulnerability Potion Markers
• 9 Money Tokens

15 Progress Tokens

4 Prolonged Action Hero Order Tokens

7 Miscellaneous Markers

• 1 Sharr the Brightwing Marker
• 1 Shadow Soul Marker
• 1 Bottle Imp Marker
• 1 Eyes of Thara Marker
• 3 Monkey Markers