Hey everyone,

After playing a half dozen or so games with the HoT expansion I'd liek to know everyone's opinions on it?

So far no one in my gaming group has really made inroads with it, but I think that is in part to us not being properly prepared for the HoT.

What I've seen is low level characters go in and get bogged down, unable to level quickly and struggling to make the skill tests, failing said skill tests and suffering harsh penalties.

What I'm thinking now is that characters should avoid the HoT until they level a bit and when they would ordinarily go to the middle tier they go to the HoT instead, becoming the champions of certain factions and then using the teleport text box from The Golden Throne to get into the inner tier.

What are your experiences with Hot and what do you think are the best ways to utilise it?

We use it as starting points for our heroes.

All Terra-related missions are extracted from the deck and shuffled, every player starts with a Terra-based mission. The rest of the Terra-based missions are put back into the box. Also, every character starts on the Terra board. You can stay there as long as you want, but once you're off to the Antian sector, there's no coming back. So, when all characters have left the Terra board, it is removed from play.

Thematically this also makes a good story - you start your career on Terra, and if you are deemed worthy, you are sent off to the Antia Sector.

That's an interesting way of doing it.

Do you ever find that some characters struggle a bit more than others in this set up?

That's an interesting way of doing it.

Do you ever find that some characters struggle a bit more than others in this set up?

Not yet.

Hey everyone,

After playing a half dozen or so games with the HoT expansion I'd liek to know everyone's opinions on it?

So far no one in my gaming group has really made inroads with it, but I think that is in part to us not being properly prepared for the HoT.

What I've seen is low level characters go in and get bogged down, unable to level quickly and struggling to make the skill tests, failing said skill tests and suffering harsh penalties.

What I'm thinking now is that characters should avoid the HoT until they level a bit and when they would ordinarily go to the middle tier they go to the HoT instead, becoming the champions of certain factions and then using the teleport text box from The Golden Throne to get into the inner tier.

What are your experiences with Hot and what do you think are the best ways to utilise it?

Reply:

You centered the point my friend; I find your tought about the fact that low level characters suffer too much, from penalties in the HoT board, correct. In addiction, I find the way to the inner tier you suggest the unique way to properly play and wisely overcome and beat the HoT board itself and the characters / nemesis you are facing during HoT matches...

I also think that the FFG guys did a bad job with the Dark Crusade scenario: it is almost unplayable and in a dozen times I played it I saw the characters / nemesis win only twice... The 1st time the winner was the Eldar Nemesis (each player played cooperatively and with the precise aim to obtain a "25 infamy score" on the nemesis board itself)... The other time the winners were the characters as a whole (that was a game without nemesis in play) but they focused on drawing cards (in order to fulfill the scenario card's ruling which imposes players / characters to draw cards from the decks at the very start of each player's turn); but it was a sort of "cheated victory"... And with that I mean that I felt like we cheated the rules because we did not drew cards from one of the threat decks at random, but we focused on the "yellow threat cards deck" (we noticed it contains fewer "Traitors / Deamons / Heretics" cards, which means that there are fewer chances to being forced to place a Corruption card onto the HoT board spaces... Doing so also grants you a match lasting more than 12 turns since the HoT "corruptable spaces" are just 12 !!! It means that, if you are unlucky, you draw 12 corruption cards in 12 turns and the game is lost for each of the characters or nemesis in play !!! ). And this time the victory was also granted by a fortunate draw and we almost lost the match because during the game the tier was almost covered up by corruption cards (10 / 11 spaces out of 12 !!!).

So, in conclusion, I think that in order to win this Scenario Card (Dark Crusade) you must:

* choose the Eldar Nemesis (no matter what are the other choices) and play cooperatively in order to let him "win the day" by feeding his "track / ruler / counter of infamy" reaching 25 points (it causes an Automatic victory for this Nemesis)

* choose to draw cards (preferably and "scientifically") from the Yellow Threat Deck only (it has a minor number of cards that oblige you to set up corrupted spaces on the Halls of Terra board...

* pray the goddess of luck to be by your side while you play because no matter what you'll do if she doesn't smile at you today you will not have a single chance to win / beat Abaddon (the Scenario's final Boss) and this weird Scenario.

Undecided, two games, a total of 1 Orange Threat card has been drawn, Tech-Priest's second Mission made him visit the Sol Tier to complete it. Hell, don't even know what's in the deck beyond the lone card drawn ("Against the odds" which actually knocked out the Terminator and almost did the same for the Techie), having sleeved the cards from the backside, so it's full of wonders. At this point it feels more like City in Talisman, hit it when needed, stick to the Outer Tiers and pick cards from your best attribute(s) Threat deck.

I've entered the Sol system with lvl 0 characters and haven't had any problems.

Nine games with HoT, total of 8 Orange Threat cards have been drawn, 6 of those in one game, so 2/3 of the games, nobody's bothered to enter the new board at all.