First, let me start with the disclaimers.
1) I have only played the game when 4 heroes are used.
2) This thread is ONLY about the First Blood quest.
3) I am not attacking the game or anyone on this forum. I love the game!
If you're interested in a Wall-Of-Text background, expand the spoiler...
I have been playing games of all sorts for several decades. My first game involving miniatures on a table was D&D back in the ‘70s, but focusing on tactical-style board games, I started with Squad Leader in the mid ‘80s.
My gaming group tried Imperial Assault for the first time a few months ago. We liked the idea of a tactical game with light RPG elements, especially in the Star Wars universe. However, we got hung up on the opening scenario. The rebels were defeated. “Ok, let’s try that again!” we rebels said. This time, being more familiar with game mechanics, we formulated a plan to stop the Imperials. But to no avail, the rebels were stomped again, even more quickly and efficiently this time, since the overlord was also now more familiar with the system. After the Imps handed the Rebels their collective butts a third time, we all started analyzing the scenario, and found that it was impossible for the Rebs to win, there was no way to stop the Imps from simply rushing past us and pushing a button. We went online and were told things like “it’s just a learning scenario” and “the rest of the game is more balanced” and “Oh, I never played it, we just played the first quest.” We were also asked “why didn’t you use X or Y ability?” and in truth it was because the Read This First told us to Stop Here, don’t read the rest of the book or worry about those pesky abilities, just go play the opening scenario.
A few days later, we all decided that we would probably enjoy the game if we were to finish reading the rules, and try the actual quests, but we never got around to playing IA again. The momentum was lost, I guess. It sits on the shelf. We all still had a bad feeling about it, since the opening scenario was happy with crushing defeat for 4 of the 5 players.
Last month, I discovered Descent. I read the rulebook, watched a youtube playthrough, and thought “hey, this looks good” and bought it. Our group played the intro scenario “First Blood” a few nights ago, and the Heroes won, unquestioningly. Sure, they took a beating – the healer spent most of his time “2D” (as a token, being knocked out), but the overlord was still only able to get 2 goblins of the initial 5 through, and not one after that. In fact, we didn’t see a way that the OL could possibly lose this scenario unless the heroes rolled all X’s against the goblins (or the OL rolled 3 shields for all goblins every time), for the first 2 rounds. Once the first pack of goblins is off the board (Dead or Exited), the OL only gets one goblin per turn after that. That barely kept the mage busy. The warrior and healer were fighting with the ettins, and the scout was running around picking up all the loot. Once all the search tokens were cleaned up, the heroes dropped Mauler to end the quest. All the OL cards did was cost the heroes a few turns, at best; there was no way to change the outcome. The only worry the heroes had was whether they would accidentally kill Mauler before getting all the search tokens.
This seems to be similarly lopsided, like IA’s intro quest, but in the opposite direction. The funny thing is, this seemed perfectly OK. 4 of the 5 people “won”, and the loser was the bad guy anyway, so we were all very interested in playing it again.
Otherwise, here's my question.
I saw someone post that the Overlord won “First Blood”.
How on earth can the OL win this quest without horrible, horrible die rolling by the heroes, combined with phenomenal die rolling by the OL for the first two rounds?
Please remember that I have no problem with certain quests favoring the OL and certain quests favoring the Heroes. To me, this is obviously one favoring the Heroes, and rightly so – it sets up the story arc and leads the Heroes into the remainder of the quests.
Edited by Lifer4700
