Although we were planning on going to Pendragon Games on Friday, plans changed quickly after talking with Charles on the phone. He was feeling too sick to come out so Chris decided that he'd rather come to my place than go to Pendragon Games. The distance is about the same for him, while access to Coca-Cola and table space are better. Mac arrived right after I got off the phone with Charles and Chris, before I could even finish leaving a voice message for him, but he was fine with the change.
My wife was home and interested in playing a game by the time we were ready, so I suggested Bohnanza (http://funagain.com/control/product/~product_id=008127/~affil=DRGH). It took a bit longer to play than expected, probably because we hadn't played the game in such a long time that had to go over all the rules again. Everyone had fun. Mac won with 21 gold, if I remember correctly, and Chris got second place. Beth and I finished with a tie of 16 gold.
After that, Chris, Mac, and I played Descent (http://funagain.com/control/product/~product_id=015340/~affil=DRGH), continuing on with the previous campaign. I had left off escaping through the "red rune door" of the second level in the Caverns of Thul, a "Legendary Area." Mac took over the two warrior characters, Trenloe and Kirga, while I used the mages, Astarra and Carthos. As a way to "speed up the campaign," Chris decided to have us skip the 3rd level of the dungeon. (I'm wondering now if that gives an advantage to him in the campaign. Not that he's trying to weight the game, but it's already going to his side and skipping past the money and treasures that I could pick up from playing one more level before going back to for another "game week" could mean the difference in training before another city gets attacked.)
(https://www.dragonshobbies.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fdragonhobbies.com%2Fforum%2Findex.php%3Faction%3Ddlattach%3Btopic%3D9.0%3Battach%3D20%3Bimage&hash=b497a01fd7134e1a8867cc4fff7af008297606de)
Although I was expecting for the level to take a little longer than the average ones that I've seen so far, I had no idea that it would take this long to complete. I sent my mages back to town for healing once after they were severely injured, even though it took a while for those two to get back into action. Chris saw this as seriously slowing down the game, which I agreed with then but wonder now if it's not primarily because my characters were not equipped enough to handle the dungeon. After nearly 5 hours of game play we we had only completed 1/3rd of the dungeon. At this point Chris had accumulated nearly 20 conquest tokens while the heroes had gained only 5. We recorded our stopping point, preparing to continue with the dungeon at the next session, but next time we don't plan on sticking around to fight with the Gem Dragon.