I'm wondering what other people's experience with this quest is. Unlike the intro to Shadow Rune, you're actually playing for something with a TON of game significance. And also unlike the intro to Shadow Rune, this encounter seems weighted in the OL's favor.

I've played it three times now. In one of them, the OL played it cagey - waited for his moment then jumped on the objective. The heroes had a HUGE advantage - we were able to whittle him down to a fairly small number of goblins, because he was taking it slow. We eventually won, but not before - on the last turn - the OL took his last remaining forces, and through judicious use of cards, was nearly able to make it to the exit. He started the turn with three goblins on the board and no goblin closer than four spaces from the objective token - and he ended the turn three spaces from the exit. If we had rolled slightly worse - missed a goblin or two, even if we killed the ball-carrier - he just spawns a reinforcement, and wins.

The other two times were complete blowouts. The overlord (same friend in both cases) saw no reason to play anything other than aggressive as possible. The heroes basically waste their first turn - it's extremely hard to kill enough monsters to make it a positive, unless you've got a ton of ranged ability and some good die rolls. In the game I just finished, the OL just charged straight for the objective on turn 1, leaving a line of helper goblins. Now, my rolls were crap - both he and I expected Jonas the Kind's Heroic Feat to do a huge amount of damage to his team, instead I failed 4 out of 5 rolls and the only hit did zero damage. My remaining rolls continued to be crappy - it took my skirmisher two attacks (using his special) to finish off a goblin, and my apothecary also took two shots to off one. I moved my last character away from where he was positioned to pick off stragglers into a position to block. On the OL's turn, he Dark Charmed my blocker, picked up the objective, Dashed it away, and pushed his guy two spaces from the exit, with a pile of blockers. (The push ability is move one space, so pushers can push him through the water as though it isn't there.) I actually could have caught up with and killed the goblin, but there was no point - after reinforcements he still had 8 guys on the board. I would have needed to 1-shot every one of them to win; if I missed even one, he just places a reinforcement, picks up the objective, and wins. So I just searched the board and ignored the goblins (and as a final kick in the balls the game gave me the Secret Room token, with no way to search anything in it - just a zero gold token and a place to hide so as not to give the OL more Threat.)

The other game I played against the same OL was similar; I rolled a bit better, but even though I was taking goblins off the board left and right it just wasn't possible to wipe him out to the last man before he was close enough to just spawn a goblin, grab the token, and run it off the board.

Am I missing something about this adventure? Are other people's experiences different? The OL just seems to be holding - if not all - at least a lot of the cards on this one.

I've played this a couple times, and the OL has always won. The closest the heroes have come is holding a stalemate by blocking the exit tiles for a couple turns until the OL was able to successfully get through. In general, the Sun Stone is a very difficult relic for the heroes to have- they are in constant peril of losing it, while the OL, once he secures it, can never lose it. Also consider that it's functionally the equivalent of an Act 2 shop item (the Star of Kellos.)

I don't think you're missing anything- I don't think this is supposed to be the hero cakewalk that "First Blood" is. "A Demonstration" is hard for the OL to win, but it's very easy for the OL to get his corrupt citizen card.

This one is deliberately intended to be harder for the heroes than it is for the overlord: the rewards for the heroes are incredible.

That said, I've had heroes beat me on this one occasionally. Roganna the shade really wrecked my day on this with her heroic feat, and her damage output as the wildlander was significant enough that she could kill 2 goblins a turn pretty easily. They all turtled up super hard in front of woman and just slaughtered goblins if they came near. I decided to sit back and stack overlord cards, but they slowly pushed up, and backed right back up any time I pressed forwards to be able to make a break for it. The speed drop you get for grabbing the woman is significant, and the loss of scamper hurts a lot.

I think it's easier for the overlord but still winnable with careful tactics. The main difficulty is that the goblins do insane damage and can just wreck the heroes, so having an ability or two that can stop that from happening is powerful.

That seems like the same experience I had - If the OL sits back and tries to play it cagey, he loses, but the heroes are incredibly hard-pressed to stop an all-out assault.

I've gotta admit, even though I like what I've seen of LoR, this seems like a terrible setup for the intro. Especially considering (I assume) most people playing LoR will have access to Rumor cards, this means that the heroes will probably follow up their loss immediately with a failed rumor quest (the ones I've seen are pretty hard for the OL to lose if the heroes have only an intro's worth of gear/XP) and then the OL gets to send the heroes towards whichever ally is less helpful to the hero group.

That seems like a really negative start... and considering that it seems like it's the LIKELY start, seems like a bad way to structure the campaign. Sure, the heroes have a nice upside on the off chance they win (and it's definitely possible, especially as discussed if the OL is timid) but most of that upside consists of NOT having all that bad stuff happen!

And the worst thing of all? The heroes carrying around the Sun Stone is a GREAT mechanic! It creates a really nice tension in the game, giving the heroes something else to worry about and the OL a separate objective to go after. On the other hand, the OL getting it adds absolutely nothing to the game. Just a weird, weird way to set things up.

This quest in particular favors picking heroes (e.g. Nanok) or classes (e.g. Bounty Hunter) that start off really strong offensively right from the start. Since this sets the tone for the whole campaign, I think it does slant hero selection a bit towards certain compositions.

If your team has heroes that begin a little weaker (more BY or BG attacks, less damage/attack-related hero abililties) then the risks increase that you don't score enough kills and get overwhelmed, particularly if the travelers move in the overlord's favor and start to protect the goblins from melee attacks.

If the goblins on their initial push (which the OL can actually delay gathering overlord cards if they position carefully) can take out a hero or two with their heavy offense and start to snowball the action-wastage on hero revivals and resting, then its a done deal. Some heroes may even be 'baited' into approaching the spawn points of the goblins, which will be good news for the OL. I'd argue the OL shouldn't even go for the woman until he can score a few knockouts. Yes, the heroes will get back up and continue the assault, but with depleted stamina and easy to bowl over once again.

This sort of aggressive approach usually isn't a good idea, but in this quest I believe it is, as the heroes are as weak as they're going to get and easy to beat up.

I recently played this quest as the heroes however, and we won. We got some luck on our rolls and our OL was a little inexperienced. If the initial assault can be weathered then the odds of success swing heavily in the heroes favor. This is even more true if the OL simply continues to move their fresh reinforcements in to attack, rather than holding back another turn or two to build up a larger force before moving out again against a hero team that hopefully has already used up some of their feats and taken damage. The OL wants the heroes to fight closer to his turf so he can ensure his reinforcements can attack right away.

Yeah, I think Roganna the Shade might actually be the best overall hero for this quest. Her damage bonus makes one shotting goblins fairly reliable, and her heroic feat is insanely good for this quest.

Also, heroes need to focus on the archers over the witchers. The witchers do less damage, have more health, and frankly, curse rarely matters in the first quest, there aren't that many first level characters that are noticeably hindered by it. Archers are faster, do more damage, and are squishier: heroes would do well to wipe them off the map before bothering with the witchers, when possible.

I have a question. The quest seems to imply that only the goblins can pick up and carry the objective token (the lady) My heroes made the argument that the they aren't forbidden from interacting with the objective token and the only reason the goblins are mentioned specifically is because they have a movement restriction when carrying the token, but the heroes do not.
How would some of you respond to this line of reasoning. Is there an official clarification from FFG that says this is a no no? I couldn't find one.

Thanks,

The first and only time I solo played this quest, the heroes lost in spectacular fashion. It was a comedy of errors basically. I had the OL using the Basic II cards and used them on all the specific classes. Suffice to say, the heroes lost every attribute test. Blinding Speeds just increased goblin MPs, while a Grease Trap moved Dezra WAY out of position. By the time the heroes could even regroup, the OL had won the quest, received a ton of threat tokens and left the heroes without so much as a search token. Even if that hadn't all happened, it would have been hard to win it regardless.

The fact that the winner of the next quest gets to decide which Ally/Storyline of the Campaign you'll be seeing in ACT1 makes me wish this quest was a bit more balanced.

I have a question. The quest seems to imply that only the goblins can pick up and carry the objective token (the lady) My heroes made the argument that the they aren't forbidden from interacting with the objective token and the only reason the goblins are mentioned specifically is because they have a movement restriction when carrying the token, but the heroes do not.

How would some of you respond to this line of reasoning. Is there an official clarification from FFG that says this is a no no? I couldn't find one.

Generally speaking, quest rules are there to list anything diferent from or beyond what is laid out in the rulebook. That is, if there is a quest rule that conflicts with a rule in the rulebook, follow the quest rule instead. If there is no mention in the quest rules of something, it's assumed to act like it would in the rulebook.

That being said, there is no default rule that heroes can pick up villagers or objective tokens. What there is, however, is a section that explains what to do when a quest allows the heroes to pick up objective tokens . In other words, unless the quest rules explicitly allow the heroes to pick them up, they cannot. Your hero players' logic is not sound, and will lead to problems if other encounter rules are interpreted that way.

According to the stats on the unofficial campaign tracker , the Overlord wins this quest about 2 times out of 3 (the stats look to be out of about 45 reported games.) It's a difficult quest for the heroes, but it is winnable- the times (multiple) I have played it and won it was all about dealing damage to the goblins quickly (reducing their numbers) and not letting them form a line of helpers.