by DA_Maz
I don't want this to be a balance debate first and foremost. It can be balanced if you generally can achieve more with heroes than the OL, but need much more skill to achieve the same level of play.So to put something up front: The hero players of my groups never played just one hero, but always at least 2, up to 4 heroes.
I play the OL in every group but one, where I took over the 3 or 4 heroes for a few games, so I guess I'm somewhat the most expirienced of us in that game.
This is usually how the encounters play out:
The heroes start off well until 2 or 3 turns in the game, but as soon as the objective shifts and the OL has enough cards on his hand to do some combos, the heroes fall apart or are simply outpositioned (usually by some dash/frenzy/reroll combination of cards), meaning there are one or two turns left for the OL to win and for the heroes to have nearly no chance of winning.
To be fair that never happened to that extreme when I played the heroes (apart from the finale without a healer ouch!), but I lose with 3 or 4 heroes more often than in the OL position. To me it's not such a big concern, because I find these uphill battles entertaining and exciting and most of the time get more enjoyment of at least putting up a good and close fight than looking out for a quick ending.
This is what they criticise:
-) The OL cards are not visible to the heroes unlike the abilities of the heroes as well as their resource to use them (fatigue). To win angainst an OL you have to know each OL card by heart and even then you can't plan for every OL card in the game each turn. The OL has complete knowledge about what skills can and can't be used.
-) It's much harder to anticipate monster movement and actions than hero movement and action, because there are much more monsters than heroes on the board i.e. much more the heroes have to consider in great detail concerning positioning.
-) The OL can listen in on the discussions of the heroes and know their tactic to a somewhat basic degree, while the OL acts in total secrecy. Then he can screw up the heroes by playing cards at the right moment.
-) The reinforcement rules make it nearly impossible for the heroes to advance a blocked off way. You need to kill enough of the group to achieve something and in some cases killing a monster can have no effect, if the heroes needed all actions to kill the monsters and can't advance past their attack and if the reinforcement point is so near that the OL can walk his monster in the same position within one turn.
-) Blocking parts is one of the most powerfull strategies in this game. The OL can do this with ease and the heroes have to waste their time clearing the monsters, the OL can often use his cards or monster abilities to get past hero barriers with ease.
-) Heroes tend to lose because of tiny mistakes they make, while the OL doesn't.
So how are you guys feeling about these arguments?
Did you expirience something similar or different?
Do you ultimatly think there's an easier role in the game?
regards
DA_Maz