10 days till our first campaign starts (I have played through the sample mission several times...most basic rules in terms of playing I have down).

1- Campaign dialogue....at the start of the book there are like 6 pages of text...are the players all expected to read that or just a bit of fluff for those who fancy it? Do most people just read that missions dialogue?

2- Who chooses the next mission? It just says choose X or X after the first one?

3- Open groups. If we choose to play Rellegars Rest as the 2nd mission, it has '1 open group'. I THINK I can pick any monster group that has a matching symbol at the top. So i looks like I can pick Shadow Dragon (Moon)> Is that right, the shadow dragon can be brought in so soon? I realise its the act 1 dragon, but im surprised it so early if im right?

1) Whatever gives most enjoyment. In my group, we do not do that because it is too time-consuming and everybody is eager to get going.

2) In Heirs of Blood instructions on which quest is played next and who may choose it (if there is a choice) are given in the Rewards section of the last encounter of a quest.

3) In Descent there is no progression when it comes to monster types. So yes, the OL may chose whatever monsters he likes for his open groups, as long as at least one monster trait symbol on the Monster card corresponds to the trait symbols displayed at the top of the quest description.

1 hour ago, Sadgit said:

1) Whatever gives most enjoyment. In my group, we do not do that because it is too time-consuming and everybody is eager to get going.

2) In Heirs of Blood instructions on which quest is played next and who may choose it (if there is a choice) are given in the Rewards section of the last encounter of a quest.

3) In Descent there is no progression when it comes to monster types. So yes, the OL may chose whatever monsters he likes for his open groups, as long as at least one monster trait symbol on the Monster card corresponds to the trait symbols displayed at the top of the quest description.

Thanks for the help as always.

find it a little unusual that the mighty shadow dragon can turn up in the second battle...thought it might be something that you build towards as a bit of an epic encounter.

Evil overlord rule number 80. ( http://www2.fiu.edu/~roleplay/download/files/152Rules.htm )

80. If my weakest troops fail to eliminate a hero, I will send out my best troops instead of wasting time with progressively stronger ones as he gets closer and closer to my fortress.

Always lead with your shadow dragons!

Just feels like once you bring those out, theres little 'fear' left after that, I kinda expected them to be the thing they worked towards killing and when it finally showed up it was a case of....oh crap now what do we do.

The building 'oh crap' fear comes from your increasing power as the overlord. More cards, more plot card abilities, more threat tokens. If you put your faith in your monsters, you are going to be severely disappointed.

I know those dragons look impressive, but a hard hitting melee hero can make very very very short work of them with the right rolls, and the odds of them lasting an entire round against the full party is basically 0. Nothing feels more useless than plopping down your big scary shadow dragons as your open group and having them ripped apart before you even take a turn (which, by the way, is the norm for many missions with an open group... so get used to it).

In the campaign I've played so far, the heroes fear the shadow dragon the most. Its almost a running joke - might we be seeing anything shadowy or dragony tonight?

The quests seem to balance monster difficulty via those monster symbols, for example in the first encounter of the finale of Heir of Blood, the overlord has 4 open groups (yay) however shadow dragons aren't allowed. So the monsters aren't as powerful as you might expect.

If you have the ability to play a shadow dragon its because the game designers feel that its a reasonable choice.

Some of the lieutenants are pretty powerful and they don't turn up in every quest.

On 3. 4. 2017 at 10:56 AM, VAYASAN said:

1- Campaign dialogue....at the start of the book there are like 6 pages of text...are the players all expected to read that or just a bit of fluff for those who fancy it? Do most people just read that missions dialogue?

I think there is an elegant way to do this. One(I guess the owner of the game) reads this before, at home, sitting on the toilet in peace, and then he reproduces it in 1 or 2 minutes.

You can white down some points so you don't skip anything.

I think in the case of Heirs of Blood, it's interesting to know at least how powerful the main antagonists are, what Eliza, Alric and Merick can do, relationship between them and what is their actual goal.