by xilconic
Hey, our group finished our first whole Vanilla compaign. Our composition was:* Alys Raine as Marshal
* Avric Albright as Disciple
* Widow Tarha as Geomancer
* Reynhart the Worthy as Steelcaster + Battlemage
Overlord playing Enchanter using 'Cursed by Power' plot deck.
What we noticed was that after a couple of missions and especially once we reached Act 2, the damage capabilities of both groups grew to the point that the heroes were capable of taking out (or neutering) a whole monster group in 1 go and the Overlord had the potential of taking our 1 hero in 1 go.
Perhaps this was due to the OL winning most scenarios while the heroes still got lucky on receiving multiple free powerful weapons through looking/events:
* Avric with a sword that could negate 1 defence die
* Tarha first with a bow that dealt bonus damage when having surplus range, then replaced this for a bow that negates the Line of Sight requirements
* Alys using a bow that had the ability to stun
The heroes were typically able to murder a whole group of monster due to Area of Effect attacks or disable them due to Stun/Immobilize conditions.
The OL would typically use Scenario 1 to build his hand of cards and in Scenario 2 'go for the throat' by using the 'Cursed by Power' plot deck to pull some bonus damage by spending threat, typically combined with Hybrid Sentinel or Shadow Dragons' Area of Effect attacks and cards like Critical Strike and Frenzy.
We probably did some things incorrectly in this playthrough:
* We allowed conditions to be stacked on monsters and heroes. While this didn't really affect heroes all that much (they might end of with 2 poison or 2 doom markers), stacking stun conditions enabled the heroes to stun-lock a luitenant or master minion.
* Taking out a hero resuling in both a card dawn and threat token for the OL. Seemed that the OL was quickly swimming in threat tokens; We suspect that we missed some 'either a card or a threat token' rule?
* We played the wrong finale scenario in the campaign, therefore having the heroes face a Boss-monster dragon with Area and bonus actions that essentially wiped the party in 2 turns. Which is kind of an anti-climactic ending of the campaign.
So by the end of the campaign, the group was left with the question: Will every campaign of Descent end up like 'insta-gib' matches? Or was this just a result of (un)lucky card draws that boosted heroes attack power at the cost of defensive capabilities (we did note a severe lack of defensive options in the shopping display)? Was this just a result of the Hero builds vs OL Build?
We feel a bit disheartened playing a new campaign, as neither the OL player and Hero players really enjoyed this 'insta-gib' meta. Both sides experiences a kind of arms race: each felt needing to improve their 'alpha strike' capabilities in order to stand a chance.