Descent: Journeys in the Dark (Second Edition) vs Star Wars: Imperial Assault: Which Should You Buy?

Descent is a dungeon crawl with a campaign spine. One player runs the overlord, controlling every monster and trap, while up to four heroes push through a branching story of linked quests. Between battles your heroes level up, spend gold, and buy new gear, so it plays like a tabletop RPG with the bookkeeping stripped out. The Second Edition's big win was speed. A quest runs about an hour, and the combat is fast and tactical with almost no dead time between turns. The catch is the villain seat: real players keep saying the overlord can feel underpowered and left out once the heroes get rolling.

Imperial Assault takes that same skeleton and tightens the screws. One of you plays the Empire, up to four play Rebel heroes, and you grind through a branching campaign of missions set in the original trilogy. You alternate one figure at a time instead of moving a whole army at once, line of sight is cleaner, and the custom dice make every blaster shot feel like a tiny scene from the films. Players keep coming back to that combat, and it also packs a second game in the box: a competitive skirmish mode Descent doesn't offer. The Imperial player still carries a real load, almost a dungeon master, but the role feels more like a rival and less like a referee.

Neither of these is a pick-up-and-play night, I'll be upfront about that. Both are medium-heavy, both are rated 14+, and both ask one player to shoulder the villain role, which is its own little teaching job. Descent's line of sight rules take a game to click, and setup and teardown are real. Imperial Assault's rulebook will flat-out overwhelm a casual group before mission one, so plan a learning session where nobody's keeping score.

If I'm handing one to the slightly less patient group, it's Imperial Assault, because the one-figure-at-a-time activations and cleaner line of sight mean less rules arguing mid-battle, and the Star Wars theme does half the teaching for you. Everybody already knows what a stormtrooper does. Descent's fantasy setting is cozy and familiar too, but you'll spend that first quest untangling sightlines instead of savoring the story.

Descent's long game is genuinely impressive. It's hugely supported, with expansions, hero packs, and the free Road to Legend app for full co-op or solo play, and the persistent campaign pays you back over many sittings rather than one. The honest caveats: balance swings hard with player count, and because the whole map gets built before you start, there's no fog-of-war mystery as you push deeper. It rewards a committed group, and it needs one person who actually enjoys playing the bad guy (or the app to fill that chair).

Imperial Assault brings gorgeous minis and map tiles that pull you straight into the setting, plus that skirmish mode when you want a shorter fight. A full campaign runs fifteen-plus sessions, with four heroes widely considered the sweet spot. Two things sting, though. The campaign often hinges on the very last mission no matter how earlier ones went, and the winner gets stronger rewards, so leads snowball. And the ally packs and expansions never stop coming. Players compare them to microtransactions, and the base box is just the doorway. Legends of the Alliance covers you for co-op and solo, same as Descent's app.