I have yet to try it? anyone had a go with it yet?

How long does it take? what are your opinions?

2 hours ago, Spidey NZ said:

I have yet to try it? anyone had a go with it yet?

How long does it take? what are your opinions?

I played through the mission today solo and tried to stream it but my software crapped out on me so unfortunately I lost the video, but I'm going to record again tomorrow without the stress of live streaming. Setup to packing away took a little less than 3 hours but I was also fidgeting with my recording equipment and streaming software, I think it could easily be done in 90 minutes including setup and packup.

First impressions are positive. It's actually quite a different experience from the normal app campaign, similar to how the app campaign is a distinct experience from the paper campaign. Instead of there being checkpoints you have to reach behind which are hidden objectives that is the norm for the campaigns, this is much more straightforward (and thus there are no spoilers). You are trying to maximize your fame score at the end of the mission, and you earn fame by defeating groups of enemies and interacting with the 12 objectives scattered around the completely open map (there are no doors at all). Each hero gets to grab a 1xp and 2xp upgrade and also gets to shop from tier 1 and 2 items with 450 credits total for each hero in the group, and the heroes spawn right in the middle of the map. There's currently only one map for this but FFG has hinted there will be more. I think 3 would be the magic number.

Enemies spawn in waves of 4 groups every other turn for the first 4 turns and then every turn for the last 2 I believe. They're always regular groups, even in Hard mode, but you'll also encounter 2 villains during the mission (one at the start and one near the end of the mission). The mission lasts a total of 6 rounds, and at the end, or when all of your heroes become wounded, you get an itemized score for the team that shows how much fame you earned from enemy kills, objectives scored and attribute tests succeeded. When you interact with an objective, you get 3 fame no matter what, but you also get to perform an attribute test depending on the color of the objective and for each success you get an extra 2 fame. Unfortunately this can make things pretty luck heavy, because you might do all objectives with the right type of attribute and get 0-1 successes on your tests (like I did in my playthrough) or possibly get 3-5 successes and earn a ton of fame. But this does incentivize abilities that help with attribute tests, and in fact the armory will always include the 3 core set items that let you reroll a die for each of the 3 attribute tests for 100 credits each, which is nice. Oh I should also mention that each time a hero gets wounded you lose 5 fame, so it's important to try and keep your heroes healthy, and the game uses the same medpac and healing system as the normal app campaign, so no healing if you don't have any medpacs left.

The last thing to know is that there are crates on the map, and they are worth interacting with during lulls in the action because you can actually find equipment in them in addition to the normal supply cards and extra medpacs. Each time I've played I've pulled a Laminate Armor out of the first crate I opened, which was pretty **** useful.

Anyway, that's the 411, I plan to post a video playthrough tomorrow and then an in-depth review of the game mode after that. It's a pretty neat way to play the game that has a lot of replay value, but I've always really like things like Horde mode and Firefight in video games and this feels a lot like that. I think it would be a lot of fun to play through with a group of people especially as a one-off game for people that don't have the time or committed group to do a full campaign. Also I think this could be easily converted into a competitive experience where players individually record their scores, with my idea being to allow a player to score partial points on a figure for assists (just like in video games).

thanks im playing with three other friends on saturday. should be a blast

The required attribute tests are not secret or anything, you just may not have a suitable hero nearby (or any hero with good dice) to perform the test. Gaining Fame from the successes of the attribute tests means you have an additional variable to optimize your hero selection for.

1 hour ago, a1bert said:

The required attribute tests are not secret or anything, you just may not have a suitable hero nearby (or any hero with good dice) to perform the test. Gaining Fame from the successes of the attribute tests means you have an additional variable to optimize your hero selection for.

can you click on the terminals to find out the attribute test?

5 hours ago, Spidey NZ said:

can you click on the terminals to find out the attribute test?

It seems I may need to refresh myself about the raids... Maybe a few things have changed since I played.

7 hours ago, a1bert said:

The required attribute tests are not secret or anything, you just may not have a suitable hero nearby (or any hero with good dice) to perform the test. Gaining Fame from the successes of the attribute tests means you have an additional variable to optimize your hero selection for.

Yes the attribute tests are public knowledge based on their color, but the number of successes rolled on an attribute test can vary wildly especially for heroes with 3 dice. During one playthrough I had 3 dice heroes doing attribute tests and getting 0 and mostly 1 successes each time, and then on another playthrough they were getting 3+ successes each time, that's what I meant by luck, because in the normal campaign it's just pass/fail, so whether you roll 1 surge or 4 doesn't really matter so long as you get at least 1.