by Vandervecken
Please help me figure out what I am doing wrong in Descent 2nd Edition!I have the base game and Lair of the Wyrm opened. I also own several other expansions in shrink-wrap I'm afraid to open because I can't figure out how to make this game fun. It has so many excellent gameplay components! Cool monsters, excellent miniatures, modular dungeons, a cool campaign system, upgrades, equipment, etc.
But I keep running into a few systems that utterly derail the experience. I keep thinking that if there's some way I can tweak these systems I can have a good time, but haven't managed to do it. My observations:
1) The monsters have essentially no chance to defeat a well-designed party. It's not even close. Monsters die to 1 or at most 2 hits. Monster attacks barely scratch heroes. If the heroes play even vaguely competently, monsters simply present no challenge.
2) Because the monsters present no challenge, their only value is as time sinks, and every adventure is structured as a race. Can the Overlord accomplish X before the heroes accomplish Y? Can the monsters in the game buy enough time for this to happen? This style of play is very unpleasant. Most victories by the Overlord leaves the party feeling like there was a dirty trick, and most victories by the heroes tends to leave the Overlord feeling helpless and steamrolled.
3) The Hero experience and advancement system is very well done, but the Overlord's advancement is extremely unsatisfying. At the end of each adventure the heroes each get 1 XP that they can use to buy a cool power that they can use ever turn, or quite regularly during the game. The Overlord gets a new card for his deck, that may or may not come up, and may or may not do much when it does. After 3-4 XP the Heroes have cool synergistic powers, and the Overlord has a few random cards tossed into his deck. It's completely uninteresting, and seems wildly unbalanced in favour of the heroes.
How do I fix this?
Or do I just abandon the Overlord entirely and focus on co-op (via the app or the co-op mini-expansions?
I want to like this game, I really do. It has so many excellent systems. It comes so very close to being excellent, and yet it seems so very far from fun.