So I just finished playing the 5th quest of the campaign. I played solo, running the Ironbreaker and Bright Wizard.

Overall everything worked pretty well. I always felt I had important, meaningful choices to make each turn, and very rarely did it feel like a turn was "wasted". I didn't use the Rest actions very much, mostly because it didn't heal very many points; it is almost always better to rid yourself of enemies or aid your friend to help take down more enemies. In the first few quests I didn't use Aid that much either, as it seemed like a pretty weak move. But its importance became very clear to me halfway through the campaign and I got through many sticky situations merely because I had used one or more Aid actions previously.

The items and dungeon events cards are mostly nothing special. I like the variety of the dungeon cards more, though. Yes, a handful of items are really excellent (helloooo Lucky Coin!) and a handful of dungeon cards provide much needed help or interesting effects. But the vast majority of the dungeon events and items are pretty narrow in their situational appropriateness, and more often than not you'll draw a dungeon card that won't do much of anything or you'll find an item that you don't want.

Now, I'm not really complaining about these two decks. In fact, I think the dungeon deck especially is spot-on. Although, in future quests I'd like to see a couple special quest-specific dungeon cards that are added to the play deck (after you've selected the dozen from all the open dungeon cards). The items deck is also fine, really. It's pretty realistic to find tons of gear that you might not have a use for at the moment, but in another play through that same "useless" item might be the exact thing that saves your bacon.

It is pretty frustrating though, trying to explore and hoping you get a useful dungeon card, and possibly even a useful item, only to get zilch (or actually be harmed) 4 times out of 5.

Enemies were overall well balanced. Some of the nemeses were extremely annoying though. And I'm pretty sure it's literally impossible to kill the Abomination with only 2 characters...

Locations were also nicely designed, with effects that gave just enough flavor to make it feel like a real location, without bogging down the game with unnecessary rules or conditions. My only quibble about locations might be that a few seemed to require an unreasonably high amount of progress tokens to advance though. But that's probably related to my biggest concern with the game...

Now, I get that the game is supposed to be pretty tough. And I like that. Most of the time, it felt nicely challenging without being so frustrating as to make me pull my hair out (unlike Lord of the Rings LCG...). Still though, I am not sure about the difficulty.

It appears they tried to balance this by giving additional actions for fewer than 4 players, such that no matter how many characters you have the heroes will get a total of 4 actions per round. While superficially that may seem to "balance" things out, in reality it is not the same. The flexibility and combinations of abilities and Aid actions creates quite a bit more power and synergy. They wildly different amount of health the heroes have depending on the player count attempts to counteract this, but without having played with more than 2 characters I can't comment on whether it balances appropriately.

Even if the hit point differences and the flexibility of multiple players do balance out however, there is still the matter of multiple enemies being engaged with fewer heroes. With only 2 heroes especially, it is very easy for a hero to be overwhelmed with 3 engaged enemies. This makes it more difficult to kill enemies, and more likely a hero will be simply damaged should more enemies spawn. I'm wondering if the location spawn numbers should be lowered by 1 if there are only 2 players or something... Well, maybe it's okay as is, but I think it's something worth keeping an eye on.

Out of the 5 quests in the campaign, I only won one (#2). This gave me a legendary fortune card, but I didn't draw it during the next quest. I later lost the 4th quest, losing myself the fortune card.

Due to one of these losses, I had Snak Kraggle in my campaign pool, which made the 5th quest nigh impossible. Snak kept spawning peeps (as did the peril track) which eventually overwhelmed me. Grr. Never even got to Garrok Gorelord's lair.

The story and connectedness of the quests was okay I guess. They seemed only incidentally linked though: (1) There is a bad guy. You find his lair. Try to kill him. (2) At the end of the quest, he mentions the name of another bad guy. (3) Wash and repeat. Meh.

The reward/penalty system is nice I suppose. The whole purpose of the earlier quests is to try and obtain legendary gear, while at the same time avoiding making the later quests harder by loosing out on the gear and adding enemies and bad dungeon events to the campaign pool. While this makes sense in a way, it can quickly create a large divergence between "things are going well" and "things are going terribly". That is, winning one quest makes the next one easier, while loosing makes the next one harder. Thus, there is a chance that winnings pile up on each other, and losses pile upon losses.

While this makes sense, it also makes later quests less exciting. It seems like you could easily reach the final quest in one of two general states: (1) You lost most of the previous quests, so you have no legendary gear, and there are nasty dungeon cards and nemesis enemies in the decks waiting for you, so you might as well not even try to win the last quest it will be so hard. Or: (2) You won most of the previous quests, so you could have several legendary gear items and other goodies, and the prior nemeses and bad dungeon cards will be nowhere to be found, so the last quest will be a cake walk.

Of course, that's an extreme. But the way the system works, those extremes can be expected to occur more often than random chance would suggest.

In summary, I am very pleased with the game and can't wait for more! I'm going to try out the delve quest next, then I'll redo the campaign with the Warrior Priest and Waywatcher. Even though it appears that replayability will be pretty high, I am still a bit concerned about the relatively few quests getting stale. The number of cards and other components is pretty fair for the price, but still it would have been truly amazing if they had included just one more campaign - just five little cards would have given so much more play!

Oh well. I have very little to complain about, truly.

Thanks for the write-up. Very good information.

Good writeup, but I would call you a bit on a new campaign being just 5 sheets. There's a location and Nemesis for each. There were Dungeon cards as well. Not to mention all the playtesting that has to go into it. I'm happy with what's there and look forward to expansions that are more than just Campaigns. Though I'd be fine with those as well.

Twelve plays in and I finally got my first win. I just kept playing "A Foul Stench" with the Dwarven Ironbreaker and the Battle Priest. This last go through, the BP limped out with one health left. Well, I think I won... I went for exploration on my last turn (missed out on one turn since the IB bought it), and the BP was whittled down to one health when I got to the "location phase". Since the location phase happens before peril and I had the progress tokens on the location, I didn't have to deal with Grump spawning and activating-readying-activating-readying.

Honestly, I'm pretty "meh" on the game right now, but I'm guessing it plays a lot better with 3+ ppl.

Twelve plays in and I finally got my first win. I just kept playing "A Foul Stench" with the Dwarven Ironbreaker and the Battle Priest. This last go through, the BP limped out with one health left. Well, I think I won... I went for exploration on my last turn (missed out on one turn since the IB bought it), and the BP was whittled down to one health when I got to the "location phase". Since the location phase happens before peril and I had the progress tokens on the location, I didn't have to deal with Grump spawning and activating-readying-activating-readying.

Honestly, I'm pretty "meh" on the game right now, but I'm guessing it plays a lot better with 3+ ppl.

The four activations are hard to figure out any synergy for me. Any other combos come to mind that you used in your gameplay? I've played a lot of Death Angle and it has the same kind of activation system, I got the hang of it but it took a few games. Does anyone else having trouble with the hero activations?

Twelve plays in and I finally got my first win. I just kept playing "A Foul Stench" with the Dwarven Ironbreaker and the Battle Priest. This last go through, the BP limped out with one health left. Well, I think I won... I went for exploration on my last turn (missed out on one turn since the IB bought it), and the BP was whittled down to one health when I got to the "location phase". Since the location phase happens before peril and I had the progress tokens on the location, I didn't have to deal with Grump spawning and activating-readying-activating-readying.

Honestly, I'm pretty "meh" on the game right now, but I'm guessing it plays a lot better with 3+ ppl.

The four activations are hard to figure out any synergy for me. Any other combos come to mind that you used in your gameplay? I've played a lot of Death Angle and it has the same kind of activation system, I got the hang of it but it took a few games. Does anyone else having trouble with the hero activations?

For the win, it was less a matter of combos for me, and more a matter of exploring through the first couple of locations quickly. The combo that I did use frequently was the Battle Priests "Aid" to heal a wound from him and the Iron Breaker - followed by "Inexorable Advance" by the dwarf. This allowed them to both heal a bit after the first couple of explorations and take out a few monsters. Now, I'm not completely sure that I'm doing the attack/target correctly - I assume that when the dwarf "targets" two enemies with which he is engaged, he can split the damage how he likes(?).

It kinda feels like in order to win you need to have better than average luck. Draw the locations with a low amount of successes required, the elite enemies at the bottom of the monster deck, exploration giving gear cards and no traps, and then no catastrophic dice rolls. That may be wrong but managing the tightrope between killing monsters and exploring in this game feels a little too hard and with average luck you will definitely fail once the progress marker gets to the end of the track. The progress track is definitely the thing that makes the game difficult since at least in quest one if it gets to the last triangle you have lost unless you are just an inch away from completion.

I may be wrong but at least one person in my group felt like the game wasn't fair due to us doing fairly well and having half of quest one's final location explored and then the boss just killing everyone.

I'm liking the game but I'm just hoping that it's a matter of strategy that is causing our loses since that is a decent reason to lose and not having luck come out in our favor in every instance it affects the game is not. I might do some solo testing to see how it fairs.

I felt like luck was an overly important aspect as well (at least so far). In my win, I drew two cards from the dungeon deck that healed, and one cannon.

Time to start working on that LOTR style "Easy Mode". haha...seriously.

Time to start working on that LOTR style "Easy Mode". haha...seriously.

Yes. So much yes.

It's why LOTR sucked for me for so long. Once Easy Mode came, casual play was possible.

I felt like luck was an overly important aspect as well (at least so far). In my win, I drew two cards from the dungeon deck that healed, and one cannon.

I agree that the amount of luck is concerning. With more plays, hopefully luck will prove to be less significant than it appears.

I don't think you should have been able to draw the cannon from the deck in these adventures. The cannon card has the quest symbol, which means it is only added when explicitly mentioned by the quest card. But in the case of the core adventures the quest that uses the cannon tells you to put it in the nemesis lair instead of the deck.

It's why LOTR sucked for me for so long. Once Easy Mode came, casual play was possible.

Yeah, easy mode makes LotR less insane. But it makes me sad, too. There are a ton of interesting encounter cards that get pulled out in easy mode! It's like you only get half of the game you paid for. I prefer easy modes that bump your resources or let you start with 1 set card of your choice, instead of modes that require you to reduce the variety of your experience.

I don't think you should have been able to draw the cannon from the deck in these adventures. The cannon card has the quest symbol, which means it is only added when...

Pretty sure you're right... Which means I wouldn't have won my last try either. That's not good. ;-)

For me "easy mode" in quest one would simply have the nemesis activate once per peril phase instead of twice on the last space.

That or in "easy mode" the last peril space happens one time and then the game ignores the tracker. I've only done quest one so I don't know if that breaks anything.

Is it possible to make it easier by using Hero's with Higher Health? Or would that only work in say a 3 or 4 player game? Maybe Start with X Success Tokens per hero?

We honestly haven't found the game to be so cripplingly difficult, although we've mainly played the first scenario so far. We have played with either 3 or 4 each time, which I think is a big deal. The game is more balanced towards 4 players, which gives you flexibility to not rely on your (weaker) refresh action so much.

I also think it's worth changing up the characters. A lot of people seem to ignore the Bright Wizard and Waywatcher for 2-player games, which IMHO is a mistake. The Waywatcher's exhaust abilities are great, and both have bonuses on Explore that the others have a hard time matching. That flexibility in the actions is key.

My group has so far only tried the Delve. Three attempts now with 3 characters. Da Pain!

I played this again solo to test some strategies using all four characters and squeaked out a victory on quest one; one survivor was able to finish the last location. The locations I drew were terrible (7+ exploration tokens required) and most of my dungeon deck was traps and cards that didn't give gear so it's possible with non-optimal cards. Basically I aided characters until they all had two success tokens on their attack card and when the boss showed up burned him quickly to gain the four location tokens. I micromanaged it so that I didn't waste activations exploring when I only needed about four tokens. I also had to be REALLY careful of who was hurt the most in order to tank the boss effectively due to his prey ability. I didn't record die rolls but it felt like luck was average (had a few awesome rolls but some duds as well). I'm not sure if this type of play is as possible when you have four people with different ideas and plans bouncing off each other. I think it's not TOO hard but it does feel like it would require some failed attempts to understand the gimmicks and what you should do in order to beat a quest.

I'd rather it be that way than a game where you just win the first time since it's too easy.

We've found the 2 player game with the Bright wizard to be the hardest; two player with any of the other 3 isn't as bad. However, the game does seem to get easier at 3 and 4 players...and in those (3 or 4 player) games the bright wizard performs fine if you work together to keep enemies off her. Finally, the Warpriest is the best of the bunch in any number of player game so be sure to include him in a 2 player game.

As for quests, the third and the fifth seem the hardest.

I finished my first campaign (solo) using all four heroes today. I won the first two missions fairly comfortably, lost pursuit fairly badly (I suspect that to win it you just need to go all out in the first couple of turns to kill him), firepower came down to the wire with the warrior priest needing to roll 5 successes on his last attack to to win (this was after making the conscious decision that killing Snak Kraggle was more important than winning the mission) and won Waaagh!! a couple of turns before spawning enemies got too much to handle. I feel like getting the stiletto was a really big deal in my success. I also felt that the ironbreaker's skills were generally meh.

I'd rather keep the game as it is than introducing an easy mode with which people could just run through the campaign without any challenge. I say this especially because, once you get the right strategy, most scenarios are easily doable (maybe all of them, I just haven't found the right one for #3). A good example is the first quest, at which I failed five times before finding a suitable strategy. After that, it was a walk in the park.

It is also true that the game gets somewhat harder with less that four heroes, but it still remains fairly balanced imo. I managed to win most of my games in solo with only two characters.

Overall, I am really okay with the difficulty; it adds cosiderably to the replay value.

Out of the 5 quests in the campaign, I only won one (#2). This gave me a legendary fortune card, but I didn't draw it during the next quest. I later lost the 4th quest, losing myself the fortune card.

Wait so you don't get the fortune card straight away? You have to put it in the campaign pool? D'aww.

Heh. Yeah. And unfortunately I didn't draw it during the 3rd or 4th quests, despite using plenty of settlement actions at the end of each quest to "visit the blacksmith" and try to find it. Le sigh.

I have personally never drawn a single legendary fortune card in my plays when I had them in the pool. These legendary items are really legendary!

My group is wondering if we each start with one pieces of Legendary Gear, it will make this experience a little more casual. See, with this game and LotR, it feels like there is SO MUCH theme and flavor to think and feel, and ALMOST get into an RPG kind of mentality, but you are pulled out of it, ignore it, or just lose track of it, because you are so worn down and FRUSTRATED by the end of the game, that...it kind of sucks. A lot of people love that about it and LotR, and that's fine too. But we just wanna have fun and just eek out a win or lose maybe 1 or two....not every time you play...that's not so fun.