by gspeager
So this is kind of a session report with some questions about how the game should balance out.So I got the game as a Christmas gift and finally got it to the table about a month ago with three friends I normally play games with. For their heroes they chose:
- High Mage Quelling as a Geomancer
- Avric Albright as a Spiritspeaker
- Syndrael as a Knight
We started our campaign with First Blood and everyone had a blast. The heroes won killed Mauler just before I could move my last goblin off the map. Unfortunately they didn't manage to collect any search tokens.
Next up was A Fat Goblin. We split the first encounter with each side collecting two crops each. But the second encounter is when everything started going down hill. I used the Hybrid Sentinels for my open group and even though the heroes pretty much walked through the spiders, Splig found the prisoner on the second token, and they had to start rushing ahead to catch Splig. The sentinels ate the geomancer alive and Splig escaped unscathed. Again, not a single search token and was found. The heroes commented after that they didn't think there was any time to waste on searching.
Tonight we finally got to it with Castle Daerion. This was different though, we added Tomble the thief to the party in hopes that he'd be able to gather some search tokens and help out. Basically, I kind of killed the heroes in the first encounter, while only playing 3-4 OL cards, and even while letting up a bit and giving the heroes some free turns basically. This time they managed to get a few search tokens as well as light 3 of the beacons. If I didn't win when I did they probably could have on their next turn.
After this encounter our geomancer decided his heroic great was pretty useless and wanted out change out High Mage Quellan for the Widow Tarha. I obliged if it meant he'd have more fun and utilize his hero better. So I started out with four zombies in the throne room by winning the first encounter and chose flesh molders as my open group. This time around I blocked the heroes in the stairwell for a good portion of the game then blocked then from getting to the back of the throne room with my master ettin who I healed one with dark resilience for 4 health. I think I played 2 OL cards that round and finished with 7 or 8 still in my hand. I managed to kill Sir Palamano while he only had 3 fatigue tokens, even while throwing the heroes some bones. They never managed any search tokens this encounter either. Although they eventually got into the throne room but it was after Sir Palamano already had 22 damage on him.
After we finished the Geomancer player got pretty grumpy and ranted about how he couldn't they could release such an unbalanced game, and he was questioning whether they play tested it at all.
So I know my info is pretty general and I can give more if necessary, but are there significant balancing issues? If I went all out tonight I could have blown them out. I felt slightly bad that our games couldn't have been a little closer, and all I do is select what I think is the best open group and try and use monsters to block hallways, nothing fancy yet. Should our games be closer?