I don't have the new expansions yet, so I won't be ranking them:

1. Elder Mok

2. Lord Hawthorne

3. Lyssa

4. Master Thorn

5. Laurel

6. Corbin

Evidence of the sheer balance in this game is that even Laurel is quite playable, and can easily win. I know people say Lyssa is amazing, but haven't seen her in action ever since Julia told me that. For some reason she just never gets picked (we do random heroes at my table)

I'm quite surprised by your ranking. I don't rank Lyssa as high as everyone else seems to but I'd go with an order more like this:

1) Corbin

2) Red Scorpion

3) Elder Mok

4) Lyssa

5) Jonas

6) Master Thorn

7) Lord Hawthorne

8) Laurel

The reasoning for my order is that for many of the characters there's a very definite build. Corbin works best stacking loads of surges, Red Scorpion needs lots of tactics, Jonas needs loads of skill cards, Mok wants Spirit and so on. Thorn, Hawthorne and Laurel all suffer from the same problem in that they don't have a special ability which can be improved. So you're sort of lost when building them and sometimes they crash and burn.

Laurel is especially bad because her surge ability isn't good and a lot of items give you useless surges unless you can also find an item that has a good surge ability.

None of them are awful and you can win with any of them but Corbin is the one I've been most successful with. Because combat is so good in this game - and is how you win - Corbin rates so high for me because he's got the best starting tokens. And Hawthorne's blank token really hurts him when you've only got three.

On the original six characters, after some 15 games our group believes

1. Lyssa [ so OP banned from play]

2. Lord Hawthorne

3. Corbin

4. Elder Mok

5. Master Thorn

6. Laurel [so awful banned from play]

Why you have Mok at four? And Laurel has good potential, you just need to work with her ability. Heroic blade is an excellent option.

Instead of banning Lyssa, why not modify her? I haven't tried this yet, but I was thinking of making her starting gold zero and taking away her set-up bonus - some easy changes that don't require too much tinkering.

It seems baffling that Lyssa being able to potentially get 5 damage out of her explore power is somehow stronger than Corbin spending 5 surges and smacking you for loads. Or Red Scorpion exerting and removing and enemy surge token! (and doing a damage)