Preview the Verminous Lieutenant Pack for Descent: Journeys in the Dark

The Rat-Thing King is only a story, they say. The sly and dangerous creature that haunts the sewers and alleys of Nerekhall is a phantasm, a bogeyman invented by mothers to make their children behave. Thieves and rat-catchers sometimes claim they’ve seen the creature, though, a dark, powerful figure flitting from shadow to shadow. Whatever the truth may be, Nerekhall’s rats have behaved oddly of late.

You can tap into the power of Verminous, the Rat-Thing King with the Verminous Lieutenant Pack, an upcoming expansion for Descent: Journeys in the Dark Second Edition. In this Lieutenant Pack, you’ll find a detailed plastic figure, replacing the lieutenant token from Shadow of Nerekhall. In addition to the plastic figure, you’ll receive a ten-card Plot deck, inviting you to spread Verminous’s schemes to any campaign beyond Shadow of Nerekhall. (For the full Lieutenant Pack rules, visit the Descent support page.)

Previously, we looked at the chaos and magic within the Tristayne Olliven Lieutenant Pack. Today, though, we’ll venture into the sewers to preview the power of Verminous, the legendary Rat-Thing King!

An Army in the Sewers

When you use Verminous’s Unseen Legions Plot deck, you can count on two themes – enhancing your normally weak minion monsters, and manipulating your overall plan through your Overlord cards.

Unseen Legions begins with the Mouths to Feed Plot card. By exhausting this card when a monster with four or less Health defeats a hero, you can immediately gain one threat token, helping you fuel other Plot cards. In addition to providing threat tokens, this Plot card allows Plot cards that require monsters with four or less Health to require monsters with six or less Health during Act II, keeping your Plot cards relevant even after your monsters gain health in the the second Act. Many of Verminous’s Plot cards use monsters with four or less Health, which automatically covers many minion monsters, including rat swarms, changelings, goblin archers, flesh moulders and barghests.

Mouths to Feed is not the only trick you’ll be able play using your monsters with four or less Health. Verminous’s Plot deck also includes Into the Shadows, which allows you to remove a monster with four or less Health from the map when you activate it. These monsters are temporarily removed from the battle, but they’ll be back with a vengeance: whenever a hero declares a rest action, you can place each monster on Into the Shadows into an empty space adjacent to that hero. Then, each of those monsters can attack the hero. Even by placing one monster on this Plot card, you threaten any hero that dares to take a moment to rest from the heat of battle.

Verminous’s Plot deck also offers you several options for getting the most out of your Overlord cards. By exhausting In Every Shadow and discarding a Trap Overlord card, you can force a hero to test his Awareness when he opens a door or searches. If the hero fails the test, you may immediately perform an attack against that hero using a monster with four or less Health, ignoring range and line of sight! And if you’re looking for a specific Overlord card, you can find it faster with Always Watching. This Plot card allows you to look at the top card of the Overlord deck at the start of your turn for an entire encounter. After you look at the card, you can choose to put the card on the top or bottom of the Overlord deck, helping you to get the cards you need.

All Part of the Plan

If you choose to summon Verminous as your agent in a campaign outside of Shadow of Nerekhall, the heroes will face quite the challenge destroying him. Verminous has the Stealthy ability, meaning that any attack against Verminous must roll three additional range, or the attack is considered a miss, allowing Verminous to slink away, unscathed by the heroes’ attacks.

Your power will only grow stronger when you spend a surge to trigger Verminous’s Scheme ability. Scheme allows you to discard an Overlord card from your hand to draw an Overlord card, helping you to cycle through your deck to get the cards you need at that moment. When you start playing those Overlord cards, Master Plan only makes those cards more punishing by forcing a hero within three spaces of Verminous to suffer a damage whenever you play an Overlord card. Since Verminous can also surge for extra damage in combat, you can wait until the time is right, then rush in to deliver the coup de grace to an injured hero.

Biding Time

Verminous, the Rat-Thing King, lurks in the sewers of Nerekhall, waiting for his plans to come to fruition. As the overlord, you can use Verminous’s schemes to further your own goals throughout the land of Terrinoth. Lead your favored agents out of the Shadow of Nerekhall, and preorder your favorite Descent Lieutenant Packs today!

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