by tombrun
Started playing this game yesterday with overlord and two heroes. I have played the first edition countless times, so I know this kind of game. After reading the rules a couple of times, I felt I knew this game enough to try it. I own the first print of the game, so the included campaign is the Shadow Rune.The first quest went okay. The heroes won, so they chose "A Fat Goblin" as their second quest. When we got to Encounter 2, the problems started.
As my open group, I chose Sorcerers. The first round, one of the heroes searched the token in the first room, but drew the "Nothing" card. The other hero healed himself with a potion found in the first encounter and rested to heal some fatigue. My turn. I rushed in with the spiders, opened the door from the Cave to the Spider Den and rushed in with the sorcerers. The heroes didn't manage to kill the spiders the first round. My turn. I attacked again with the spiders and the now the sorcerers were close enough so I attacked with them too. All the while, I was dragging prisoners from the Prison to the Torture Chamber. The heroes died. The heroes resurrected. My turn! I attacked with my spiders and my sorcerers and dragged a couple prisoners. The heroes died. The heroes resurrected. My turn! I attacked again and now rushed forward with my goblin archers. The heroes died.
Do you start to see a pattern? One of the heroes didn't even get to move during the whole quest! After a while we house ruled in that the heroes get an extra action when they resurrect. In that way, they managed to get in a shot here and there, but not enough to kill anything. They still died every single turn. I realized later that the official errata say that in a 2-hero game, each hero get an extra action. But that was exactly what we house ruled! It didn't exactly help.
What did we do wrong? Is there some obscure rule that is SO different from first edition that it would break second edition completely?
I really want to like this game and to start buying the expansions, but if this is how it works, I would never play this again.