by LJeffe
Hello all!Long time rule checker, first time poster.
have some questions about this game and its balance.
We have played this game twice, and between setup, rule overview, rule arguing, rule internet searching, rule arguing, rule searching again, and take down between quests and setup, our two games have netted both the intro (Acolyte of Saradyn) and first quest Rellegars first time, intro and siege 2nd time. Each playing session was 4-6 hours of overlord happiness and 4 others dismayed to get either close, or just blown out of the water.
On the 2nd game session, our heroes were indeed triumphant (horns blasting) during the Acolyte intro, but only on our last hit of our last turn did we take down the final barghest. As we were setting up for the 2nd quest, we realized we had only given the OL 4 goblin archers instead of 5, so we probably should have lost that one as well.
Our Team :
Synadrael Knight. Avric Disciple. Leoric Runemaster. Jain Wildlander.
The OL both times even somewhat made it easy for us, by running the barghests into the middle of our group and attacking, until we killed all but 1. He ran that one away. Of course Leoric had died 3 or 4 times, giving the ol more cards, as healing is difficult, at least to any extent that makes a difference.
"I heal you for"...rolls dice... "2", oop three archers just shot you for 3 dmg each, roll your gray dice and see how many of the 9 you are going to take.
Rellegars was just a headache, and we stood zero chance (though that game was quite a while ago, i just remember giving up after like round 3).
Siege was just a few hours ago, so I remember the pain well.
OL chose Fleshy guys (the ones that heal themselves, and the master heals others) and Shadow Dragons (is there ever another choice???). Our group did pretty well, the knight and cleric killed most the spiders by the end of the 2nd round and our ranged took out the minion dragon on turn one and wounded the master pretty well. By this point he had archers at every entrance, the LT halfway down the hall, and on turn one he had jumped the master flesh guy next to a door by the dragons. With the use of two dashes, he got his master and one minion archer off the map on his 2nd turn. So at the end of round 2 he had 3 pts, 1 or 2 spiders, 3 archers halfway down the map. a half dead master dragon which he backed up towards his healer(and oh look, after 1 stun he got healed for 3) and flesh guys coming from all sides (8 spaces from entrance). At this point we were able to get two good shots on the dragon on turn 3 to kill it off. we also killed most of his approaching archers and flesh moulders, shut the door on the LT and the Healing Flesh guy, and managed to search 1 token (yay it was nothing).
another round of him moving guys and us mostly killing spiders and resting fatigue. then comes the end of round 4 and he puts the two dragons back at the entrance. Well they can not both fit in the entrance so one takes up the whole thing, and the master sits out in the lawn. With his 3 movement and expanding, he expands onto the waterfall tunnel w/o having to use any water movement. Shrinks up, spends two to go through the tunnel, one to move into the hallway, and he is back inside the castle in 1 turn. his other dragon makes his way down the hallway opposite the closed door. He does more dmg / poisoning with his spiders, and our cleric finally gets to use his heroic feat and heals everyone but the knight (distance) to full. We are pretty happy at this point. Then the ol's strategy makes sense. He marches his dragons down the hallways blocking us from getting to his archers and his flesh guys (the ones that get him points). We waste a whole turn killing the minion dragon, and his guys are now 5 spaces from our ranged, who used 3 of their 4 attacks to kill the minion. Runemaster trys a long shot, but can not get the range.
This by the way is the Ol's part of turn 7. All we have to do is stop the OL from getting 5 pts in his next two turns. Unfortunately on one side of the map is a full life master shadow dragon with 3 archers and 2 flesh behind him, and another hallway with a dead dragon and 2 archers and 2 flesh including the master that he jumped over the previous turn so his stun was done. 5 archers = 6 pts, and 4 flesh = 5 pts.
Because he blocked the hallway with his dragon, we were forced to kill the dragon to get to the point mobs, wasting a turn. Now on our 8th turn he had one shadow dragon standing next to our wildlander and runemaster (no one had any fatigue left by this point) so they had to use a surge to hit guys across the room they were shooting at. A knight who managed to stay alive with 1 hp, but got trapped on his move to actually go and hit something. And a healer that was all out assaulted and dropped from full life to dead by his dragon and flesh maulers the previous turn. Once the knight was tripped, it was up to a Runemaster and a Ranger to kill 6 pts worth of creatures in one turn having to roll an extra surge each roll just to make sure the attack did not miss. (they did not)
-Of the 5 search tokens, we had enough time to search 1 (it was the nothing card (grats us on 2nd time getting that in 2 quests)).
-We had enough time to close one door, though we might have been able to switch, if he did not have 5 pts (the LT and the Master Flesh) sitting right outside it.
-The side quest to attack and kill the LT so the heroes get the relic is laughable. 16 dmg? We barely killed the shadow dragon the first time who had 9 hps, and the dragon could not escape off the map netting the OL 3 of 8 victory pts.
So you can see the game was 'somewhat' close, but not a single one of the side objectives, or even making it back to the lever room was a possibility. Searching was futile, the things were so far away, and if we went after them, his archers just 10 space moved way on past us, so the searcher would have been mostly useless to the main objective.
I gave all that setup so you can see how people can play for multiple hours, on one map, and feel like they stand no chance.
1)My question is can I tell my play group it gets better?
2)Do the heroes ever stand a chance in 4 player against a competent OL who rarely makes the same mistake twice?
3a)Does it matter if the heroes lose all the quests, are they still able to win the finale? 3b) Or along the same lines, are we just going to play for what currently would be 3-4 gaming sessions, just to lose time and time again to the OL...fun for a round or two, disheartening if it is for a day or three..
4) If anyone has any tips for newbie heroes, or if perhaps we picked poor class/hero combos, that advice would be appreciated as well.
We enjoy the concept of the game, but finding 3-4 people that want to get beat up on every game day is difficult, specially since it is the only game you can play that day, between set up and play time. Maybe expansions help, with different classes, but I am sure the new monsters even that out as well. Perhaps if someone can just give advice on how to easily kill Master Shadow Dragons on the 2nd quest with only starting gear and 1 xp skills, maybe that would help us slug out the rest of the campaign. (the runemaster did by the AOE skill, but the OL was smart enough to keep his guys 1 space apart from each other most of the quest. Knight got advance, Wildlander got the skill that lets you reroll an attack die each bow shot, and healer got attack and heal some people nearby if you do dmg)