by Frostlord
So i just tried out this game yesterday with Road to Legend app playing the "Rise of Goblins" campaign. My first play of the game leaves a very bad impression. We (2 players) are playing co-op with each of us controlling 2 heroes each. Maybe it's because I'm playing it wrong so I want to get some rules clarification/feedback herePS : some name of cities/ability/monster below might have the wrong name.
1) Campaign ended in 6 hours
The co-op campaign (or maybe this particular one) is way too short. We took 6 hours to finish the entire campaign. And this is inclusive of unboxing, setting up the maps and frequent checking on the rules on the rulebook/googling. The core set campaign has 9 quest (1 Intro > 3 Act I > Interlude > 3 Act II > Finale) but we only played 2 quests in Rise of Goblins.
When we start the quest, we travel to Tahmir (the city where we can buy equipments) and spend some golds on the equipments. after leaving the town we are given choices of 2 quest, shadow dragon or a quest near the forest. We chose the latter. I'll be referencing this quest as Quest1 later. We completed it and find out the shadow dragon quest is no longer there. Thinking new quest will pop up later, we continue our way to Tahmir and spend our gold/exp. Upon leaving the town, there's still no quest present except the main quest. So we went in and completed the main quest. I'll be referencing this quest as Quest2. And..... thats it! Campaign completed.
Is it supposed to be this short? If I bought the co-op expansions such as Forgotten Souls, how many quest do i need to complete to finish the campaign? Honestly 2 quest for 1 campaign is way too short
2) Poorly written rules
Now this might be just me. My experience from board game/miniatures come from Warmachine and the rules is very comprehensive. What can be done and can't is clearly written out and there is close to no leeway to argue about it (except Mk3. that's a mess at the moment). I cant say the same about this. I've listed out some rules question that I'm not sure how to go about it below
2-1) LOS
Draw a line from your corner to target corner. Is there anything that blocks that line? No? Good. You have LOS to target. Seems simple enough... BUT does enemy model count as obstruction? How about friendly model? How about drawing LOS to a bigger base? None of this is stated in the rulebook except its mentioned in the KO status that you dont block LOS. Hence we play as every model blocks LOS.
But the problem with this is there's a few incident where the ettins is blocked by their own models and cant attack me. They have reach but both squares in front is blocked by the minions that can heal (cant remember the name. will be naming it Min1). It makes taking out the Ettins a trivial job as the knight just finished 1 of the Min1, take another attack at Ettins (he's using the reach spear) then fatigue away 1 square to the right. The Thief and Leoric then finish the job via bow and magic. The Master Ettins move up and suffer the similar fate since Min1 has not move and altough my Knight is 2 box away from Master Ettin the LOS is blocked by Min1. This seems weird...
2-2) Status condition on Master/minions
Our healer has the ability to stun minions starting next to her. Since it mention minion, I'm assuming Master monster doesnt get stun. Is this correct? But this is the lesser issue as Leoric is broken.
Runemaster Leoric has an ability to give a condition to a monster (no mention of minions so we assume it applies to both) as long as he damages it. By giving a Stunned condition to a Master, they couldn't activate at all! Just rinse and repeat. Thats how we defeat the Master element in Quest1. He has 2 turns of being stunned and not doing anything. Secondly, We tried to give out poison with Leoric to Master Shadow Dragon. Then we found out that monster has no attribute. So they cant do attribute test and this leads to the poison remaining forever? We go with stun instead after finding out about this
2-3) Dice
My knight has a skill (Defence training i think) that gives 1 additional brown dice to defending if I have a shield equipped. My leather armor gives another brown dice. so in each defence, i have 2 brown dice? but the core set only provide 1 dice? This seems odd because they give multiple yellow, red and gray dice. We end up buying another armor that gives a gray dice and traded off this armor to a healer to prevent this
2-4) Monster spawning
Everytime we open a gate, there will be new tiles and new monster. Some of the monster are mentioned as group, some just mentioned "put x in x tiles" with circle (white) on the map and circle (red -> indicating master i assume) on the board. Some just mention put Monster group on the map. For the former its no issue. just follow the app. For the latter what does Monster group consists of? On page 16 it just mentioned "The size of the monster group is determined by the number of
heroes in the game". So if we have 4 heroes they spawn 3minions+1master? How about large monster? They only give 1 minions and 1 master in the box.
What happens when there is no miniatures left to spawn that particular monster? Or if there is no space to spawn it? This happens in Quest2 as we ignore the goblins to focus on the giant-lion (sorry. forgot the name again). During the start of a new turn, it ask us to add 1 more goblin archer next to the banner. But they are all out there? There's also a scenario where we surround the objective and they have no adjacent box to spawn. What happen then?
In one of the gate opening event, it ask us to spawn 5 goblin archers and 1 elemental group. the location of the goblin archers are given but there's no space to put 2 elemental in the remaining box. We end up only placing the master elemental. Is this correct?
The onyx gate that summon Min1 each turn. Each turn the app ask us to summon Min1 using white circle to indicate the location on the map. This means summon minion Min1 and not master min1 right? Because later in Min1 activation, master Min1 is shown as well. Also before they activate, it ask us to spawn 2 more using white circle. As there is only 3 min1 given, we end up did not spawn the 4th minion min1. Whats the correct way to do all this?
2-5) Search gold
When we search for item we're supposed to add the gold amount to our reserves. How do we do this in the app?
2-6) Experience points
Can we unlearn skill? Nothing explicitly state this in the rule, but it also did not stop us from doing this. The app let us do this though
2-7) Equipment
Just to check is there a limit to what equipment a class can wear? It looks odd that my thief is a bow/platemail thief
3) Crazy event even on basic
Not on the monster but on the event. In one of the event, each hero suffers 5 damage and if my knight is alive, immediately recover back 5hp. Though my knight and healer survive, this event kills off my thief and leoric immediately. They stood up back immediately due to recovering 5hp but their fatigue is now full and we lost 2 morale. This couple with the poison conditions event (deal 3 damage to each hero with poison. If they are not poison, they are now) that happens a couple times before this and the Master elemental (final boss in Quest1) that heals hp equals to the amount of monster in play and deals any excessive amounts to each hero (thats 4 damage; 2 from the 2 shadow dragon blocking the way and 2 more from min1 that just spawned at the start of that turn) we lost the game. The shadow dragon spawn point is blocking the way. Is this normal where an event just outright deals 5 damage which is more than 50% health to a lot of hero. This doesnt make the game difficult, just outright ridiculous as there's no way to prevent this damage. We open the door, the event happens and 3 of our guys died. Even on the poison damage event we can only save 2 heroes. the knight has high might and the healer removes the poison from 1 of the hero.
Did i play the game correctly? If i make any mistake above, please let me know