I do not know if I have a special version of this game but the entrance to the Island is the same cardboard piece as the whirlpool. and often you need to have both at the same time! (Island Level number 1).

Hope this gets corrected before it comes out!

Why...why does this not surprise me?

Its already being shipped as we speak...I should have my copy on monday actually. So, it will probably not have any corrections until second print run. Until then, an FAQ will have to suffice.

I suppose those of us with RtL could always use the large water tile for the whirlpool in those cases.

I don't think I'll regret waiting to buy this game until it matures.

Anyone who is going to wait for a flawless FFG game to buy it is going to be waiting for a very long time.

Veinman said:

Sea of Blood is Road to Legend matured. There are some errors, but that's FFG: great games that need a little work to be perfect. Depending on your flexibility, Sea of Blood will be somewhere between completely unplayable and an absolute blast.

I can confirm this "bug" . Yeah was dissapointed about that too... The fact that it isn't that surprising is a bit disturbing. Come on FFG, such errors should not be allowed!

One wonders how they even made the level, not even for plays esting but just to design the level, and not notice that.

Most likely design and playtesting of the level was done with hand made components. Chances are they were two separate components with blank backs. They most likely did not know that the two would be produced back-to-back. Of course, that's really no excuse because it's not the first time Descent components have been printed back-to-back.

I am getting a little worried that FFG is rushing too many products out the door to fast. We had the Descent Quest book errors, now the Sea of Blood issues. There was the Chaos in the Old World misprint. I'm starting to worry about my preorder for Runewars.

Meh! I cannot wait to get my hands on Sea of Blood and most experienced hobbyists will find a way around this from creating their own token or using some other water template to represent this. I am sure FFG will release a printable version that you can mount on foam board or a thick card. The other option is if the whirlpool comes before the entrance then place that encounter and when the party gets passed it and ventures onto the island that you add the entrance since they couldn't see it due to the fog or it was too far away to see. There are ways around it.

It's not really surprising if the dungeons were being designed and tested (at least partially) before they finalized the exact component list, but someone should have been in charge of reconciling the component list and the dungeons so that players always have all the components they actually need. Especially when they've had this problem in multiple previous Descent products. Though the fact that this is the third (or so) time something like this has happened ought to tell us, as consumers, that FFG doesn't exercise caution in this area.

Agreed with the people saying "Meh". FFG has tons of pressure from people like us who want products produced faster. They have consistently excelled IMO when it comes to paying attention to small details. So I'll forgive them if the first printing of a game has the whirlpool and dungeon entrance on the same card.

I'm not saying we should go easy and not expect better but I think we can all realize that overall, they have made an awesome game with great expansions that are well worth the money.

...

No, I don't work for FFG. But if anybody from FFG is reading this, I accept bribes.

This is one error I don't expect to see corrected, at least for the counters. It would be very expensive (if it was even possible) to change the layout of the current countersheets to add another 3x3 tile. They would have to add another smaller tile sheet with just the Whirlpool tile. We'll have to see what (if anything) they do about it. I expect a simple FAQ entry and maybe a PDF of the tile for people to print out and use for this one instance.

I would hate a crappy printout to be honest. They should send a replacement part on demand. An extra tile would do fine. I don't care if it is expensive, I paid for this product, and I expect it to work like written in the rulebook, with the quality components I expect from FFG. We'll see what FFG's response to this problem will be.

edroz said:

I agree with this assessment. FFG has been growing rapidly the last few years (which is great!) but they also seem to be pushing a lot of new products onto the market and the quality control is starting to suffer as a result. I understand and appreciate that FFG tries to listen to its fans, and I also understand that the crowd can be fickle and impatient for new loot, but the company's reputation for producing high quality products (one of the reasons I originally fell in love with their stuff) is beginning to fray at the edges.

I don't think they should change their public relations image, but I think it would do them good to maybe slow down the number of new products they're pushing out each year. Hopefully that would give the QCs time to make sure everything is in line before the first print run hits shelves. Listening to the fans is good, but knowing when to tell them "no" is also good. Otherwise we'll just keep demanding more and more until we bleed them dry. =) =(.

There is more then just this one level, I have found another that uses both the cave entrance and the whirlpool. For those who have the quest book, Look at the last one of the islands. It also uses the Cave and whirlpool. Thankfully, in that quest, everything but the cave entrance blocks movement...so its easy to just put an encounter marker there and rubble markers around it.

In addition to these, the Counts LT. "The Void" also uses the whirlpool token as itself. There are at least 3 ocean maps that make use of this token as well. I would assume, that in these situations, we simply draw a new map card...but still, it would be nice to have an additional whirlpool/cave entrance token.

Something else I noticed was the one island level: Marooned. It uses two front pieces of the heroes ship. Now, you could use the overlords ship front but it does not have a forecastle. I'm not too sure what to do with this one....I think we will need an official statement.

Someone might want to start a thread of mistakes from SoB in terms of components and quests. I don't have my copy yet but once I get it I can contribute.

I think the way it was printed was part of cost efficiency and keeping like tokens together. I don't think this is that much of an issue and is easy to work around. If it becomes THAT big of a deal to my players then I will scan the token and print off a copy and mount it on a nice thick card and problem solved.

FFG will just omit the whirpool part and call it an error. Cheap and it solves the problem.

I'm not sure if this qualifies as a bug or just an example of poor playtesting, but here goes...

Take a look on the "Wild Vortex" location card. It is partially shown on page 28 of the rulebook. Unless you have upgraded to the fastest ship possible (three sails plus elven sails), this map has a 1/3rd chance of a TPK no matter what the players do.

A litte more detail: When the map is set up, you put the Revenge 's stern exactly over the four green squares. However, only the last row of the ship is four squares wide; the rest (except the bow) is six squares wide. Thus, the ship touches the rock on the left and has one space between itself and the rock on the right. At the end of the round, the current moves the ship <red die range> spaces to the left. Now, the smart thing to do is to move the ship one space to the right using the captain's wheel. Unfortunately, the red die has a 1/3rd chance of range 2, which would crash the ship into the rock on the left unless you moved forward at least four spaces, which requires the upgrades mentioned above. Crashing into one of these rocks immediately sinks the ship, killing all heroes.

Great, isn't it?

So it's not just a 1/3 chance of a TPK regardless of what the heroes do, it's a 1/3 chance of a TPK if they behave optimally and a 2/3 chance if they don't do exactly the right thing on the first round?

(I ask this without having looked at the location or even having read all of the SoB rules.)

I'm a little hazy on the way ships work, and there isn't much detail shown in the pic on page 28, but it looks like there's nothing stopping you from dropping the anchor. I can't see enough of the map to tell if there's anything else that'll help, or if it's a red encounter and so should be really hard.

Actually...

Lowering the anchor has a 1/3 chance of success ("catching") in deep water and 2/3 chance of success in shallow water. Plus, each "ship station" may only be "manned" once per turn according to the rulebook. So the smart move is 1: captain's wheel, 2: anchor. That drops the tpk chance to about 2/9 (assuming the vortex is deep water).

Antistone, I believe Darastin meant that the heroes had at least a 1/3 chance of dying regardless of their actions. He was highlighting the minimum chance as being ridiculous.

Whoa, completely forgot about the anchor.

Regardless, this only helps if you actually win the encounter. If the enemy ship manages to get out of range or if a single monster from a no-ship encounter remains (I have the strange feeling that this will always be the case...), the heroes will have to catch the remaining baddies somehow. Without moving the ship and risking Death By Current, that requires a swimming hero, a flying hero or Runemaster Thorn. Not having one of those... well... have fun with the red die

Oh, and using the captain's wheel also isn't guaranteed to work; slightly increasing the probability of Death By Current. And yes, I find a minimum chance of ca. 1/3rd for a TPK regardless of player actions and results quite ridiculous. The mere existence of this location (it's not an encounter, so no color-coded dificulty) more or less forces the players to always upgrade their ship to maximum size and buy the Elven Sails before travelling along a sea trail. Which actually isn't such a bad idea anyway. But somehow I wouldn't be surprised if there is another location or encounter that has such an auto-kill chance only for the largest ship...

Just my two €-cents;

Darastin