I really shouldn't be posting this topic because I've done nothing more than open the box at this point ... but I am so PUMPED right now! This game looks great!

Initial impressions: it's quite a bit more ... puzzley than I thought it would be. I think I'm going to like that aspect, but I really wasn't expecting it. I played the tutorial and then played the first quest with the non-tutorial heroes. I won the tutorial handily, but lost the first quest. My heroes made it as far as the second-to-last location.

The hero I was most excited to play was the Bright Wizard. I love the self-inflicted damage of the Uthuk Y'llan in the Runebound setting and love using Electronic Baffle in X-Wing, so this playstyle suits me well. I'm glad she wasn't a let-down. I'm not really a fan of the Warrior, Priest, though.

As usual for a new game, I missed some triggers and had a few questions to look up, but overall, I'm really looking forward to playing this again.

It's a nice game of actions optimization that sometimes feels a bit abstract (huge enemy coming but one of your heroes has the combat card exhausted so he is forced to do something else). There's a nice pressure curve built in the scenarios that usually follows a non-linear progression, so, if you mess up with the timing the end could be quite a spectacular visit to the slaughterhouse. The character progression is nice, and another good point is that the game isn't too long, nor it occupies to much table space so that it's easy to play in many occasions where another bigger game would not be an option.

I'm happy you're enjoying it

Excluding the tutorial, I've played 4 solo games with 2 heroes and 1 solo game with 4 heroes. I've lost every single one. From the previews, this game seemed really awesome, but now that I'm actually playing it, it's ... well, like Julia said, it's quite abstract. I don't feel like a bunch of dungeon-delving heroes going on a quest. All I see are the numbers. At this point, I still favor Rune Age over WQ:TACG.

Still, I don't think I'm quite ready to give up. I want to keep on trying and see if eventually something 'clicks' and the strategy and tactics all start to make sense. I still feel like I'm just choosing actions for immediate effect and don't have the long-term sight necessary to put together a cohesive plan. I want to believe that I'll actually get better with practice and that this game isn't just pure chance with a veneer of player choice.

Also, it's worth noting that 3 of my losses were when I was trying to play the Bright Wizard and Waywatcher in a two-hero game. Now that I've read some more stuff, I understand that the Bright Wizard doesn't shine so bright in 2-player games. I can see how her Rest action is much better in a four-player game because you're more likely to get to 4 or less health, granting you extra successes, and those two extra successes make up a greater proportion of your total health, making the benefit much more worthwhile. I mean, that's a full 20% of her health she gets as a bonus. So maybe things will get better as I play more 4-player games, since the consensus seems to be that 4-players is the recommended beginner mode.

I concur that the Wizard is better played with higher player counts. One important thing to remember is that the game is full of mental traps: it's very important to keep focused on the main goals of the quests and in some cases take damage but keep on focusing on that "big, fat SuperStarDestroyer".

In general, I'm however rather disappointed by the game, in the sense that it's seriously too abstract. It's a good game, don't get me wrong, but over the long distance you lose contact with the theme, and instead of immersion, you end up with metagaming to trigger the right combos at the proper time. It's a game of wit, and it's challenging, but it'd have been so much better if some elements had received more thought.

I would try the dwarf and the elf archer. I play with them and they compliment each other well in a solo game.