Agreed, Xandria - I just don't get why FFG isn't making better use of their community when it would be done for free, it would help improve their product, and it would invite more enthusiasm for the game.

As for some of the issues above, why was CB unbalanced? Here was our scenario: it was late in the game, early in the Gold phase, and because all my four cities were seiged my Lieutenants were chasing the heroes. We got to a point where two Lts were AT Tamalir, waiting for the heroes, with the other two able to get there in a turn. So this meant that I, as the OL, could choose to battle them four times in a row (assuming they lost). So if I want to "win" (i.e. following the rules strictly, and not asking if something is broken) we reasoned that I could easily do the following: fight heroes with first Lt, immediately I get to use treachery and pull my CBs. They can take one out of my hand with Earth Pact, but I still get one. I use this immediately to hurt a hero. Because all my monsters are upgraded, and becasue the Lts are beefy at this point, I have a good chance at winning. If I do, their turn ends immediately. Next turn, I do the same thing - take another item away. At this point, I can virtually neuter one hero, making him useless. That's a huge detriment. Turn ends. Next turn, again. And again. Basically I could have taken four items out of their party, essentially totally neutering two players or harming them SEVERELY, and there is nothing they could have done about it. This is why we house-ruled that Lts no longer get treachery - there's no point, it's overkill. We also house-ruled that CB can only work on equipped items, so at least there is a way for them to protect themselves.

As for dungeons, obviously this comes down to how you play as the OL and what your heroes are like. I would consider myself and my heroes to be very advanced board gamers (having been very into Descent, Arkham, Twilight Imperium, and lots of others). In the Copper campaign I would get through my deck at least once each dungeon level (so three times per whole dungeon, sometimes more). The Sorceror King favours Eldritch, and I constantly had skeletons with Sniper out to kill them and force them to inch through the dungeon slowly. In Silver, usually 2-3 times, and in Gold, unfortunately, once max. However, that still leaves A LOT of room for CB.

As others stated above, if the heroes are chasing down the Lts they have no time to upgrade and/or do anything else, and if they're spending all their money on maybe re-purchasing what I CB'd, they don't have money for anything else.

It's unbalanced. And unfair. The latter is okay - it's alright for something to be "not fair" if the other party DESERVES to suffer the consequences. But if something is unbalanced, they are being punished for something out of their control.

Which brings me back to my original question - and again, I don't mean to be insulting or hostile, but I'd love some sort of official response from FFG: was this game play-tested? If so, would you be willing to offer a bit of insight as to the process? If not, what can we do to help you fix this problem FOR FREE?

My main concern here is identifying what I feel to be a serious problem, but one with a very easy and obvious solution, in the interest of fixing it in the future.

Corbon said:

That is very weird. We've played almost every dungeon several time, and at copper and silver, it usually takes 90%-95% of the whole deck for the heroes to finish the 3 dungeon levels. And it is certainly not due to the OL being a genius, as we swtich overlord every campaign (it is our 5th). How do you deploy your monsters? We all use to place them as far away from the heroes starting position as possible.

It is probably true that we have an easier time than most houseruling the game, as we take turns playing OL, and we have no problem trying to make things fair for both sides as long as we are not in the middle of a game session.

Galdred said:

Well, in early Silver here is the party I am up against currently...

Jaes, with Armour 5 (Chainmail and Ring of Protection), Ghost Armour, Move 5 and Fatigue 7 Usually runs, often using some Fatigue and a Power pot. He alternates between a (bronze)sword and shield (for extra protection) and the bronze knockback hammer. He can usually get far enough forward to make any spawning very limited in most dungeons. If there is a critical character in the dungeon that is not large, then he will often advance and knock it back into range of the others (usually on turn two). with Av5, 12 wounds, Ghost Armour and 7 fatigue, Earth Pact for recovery and often support from Leadership (Rests or Dodges) Jaes is almost unkillable, despite frequently being left isolated.

Landrec often runs first turn as well, or moves forward with a Guard and some fatigue, to a position where he covers rear spawning and is ready to move forward and make best use of Spiritwalker on turn 2 (or for the guard).

Vyrah does the same as Landrec, just a bit faster. However he hits really hard with +2 Range, Pierce 3 and 3-4 shots from Rapid Fire.

Mordrog often just runs at the start, or advances and feeds out Orders (initially Guards and Dodges, later Rests). He has AV 4, 18 Wounds and the Cursed Shield and Cursed Sword from Bronze. The shield gives him +5 Armour vs Blast, Breath or Bolt and prevents 2 wounds, even those unpreventable by armour. I don't think I've killed him yet, even though he is worth 6 CT.

My monsters are almost always set as far back and out of sight as possible. However this just means that they die turn 2 instead of turn 1. I am usually lucky if I can average a single attack per monster.

I currently have Gold Beasts and bronze everything else, 3 Event and 1 Trap Treachery (Dragon Avatar). At the end of Bronze the heroes cleaned out most of my Lts in a group seige of Tamalir that gave me a chance to win unless he beat all three family Lts. He did (largely through the knockback and the grapple, killing two through my blunders - I forgot Jaes had the Knockback weapon in his backpack when I set up and minor mistakes get punished severaly in our games), although Alric escaped alive. Only Riverwatch has been successfully Razed.

This is a freakily good party (substitute Talia for Mordrog to make it perfect), all done by the book (ie no free choices etc).

I am ahead by 148 to 120 CT. Kept ahead by Dragon CT from chests basically. Descent is an awesome, awesome tactical skirmish boardgame!

My best tactic for getting CT is using Poltergeist to move everything around, shut some doors and then spawn some beasts (preferably Bloodapes) right behind the doors up close to the heroes. If I get a good dungeon I can almost stay level with the heroes by picking on Vyrah and Landrec in the 3-4 turns I get. If I get a bad dungeon I get smashed and only get 1 or 2 turns max. In I get a great dungeon, I might get 5-6 turns. Unless I can get the 3cards/turn power out in the first or early second dungeon I rarely get more than half way through the deck (which is about 45-48 cards including focused and treachery, so requires 11+ turns for half way through). The party is fast, including an almost invulnerable speedster in Jaes. They are also now 1 shotting even gold beasts most of the time, as they all have 4 trait dice and they already have excellent silver treasures, except Mordrog, who almost never hits anything anyway, just bosses everyone else (leads, he would say)

Speed wise, Jaes is the demon. He can get virtually anywhere and is almost impossible to kill. He is even an expert blank roller for traps (he evaded a Monkey charm, stunning door and crushing block in one single critical action in the last dungeon we played).

Landrec with Spiritwalker and Quickcasting can clear monsters like nobodies business, even while moving forward. Vyrah is a machine gun. Mordrog just supports with Leadership and Grapple, but is also nigh unkillable. The party can move forward fast enough, far enough and still dish out ridiculous amounts of damage that I can basically discount anything that is not a Named Master Beast (gold) on the starting map. Only Razorwings are useful as they can stay hidden waaay back and still usually get in an attack or two on Landrec or Vyrah.

They are also smart enough to run when they encounter something risky. They gave up the twins rumour when they encounter the nasty dragon that breaks armour/shield (#40) on the second level. The probably could have gotten through but it would have been costly (especially since, unknown, I'd used the Sundered Glyph on this level) and they'd had a tough first level after a first turn Danger/Poltergeist/Bloodapes move on my part saw 3 of the party trapped in a corner by a Named Giant (with one corner on a Throne so counting uphill) and the Bloodapes for quite a long time (because the Giants Sweeping Stun meant they could not Battle or Ready, so, low on Fatigue they were unable to use Leadership, Rapid Fire or Quickcasting (did I say minor mistakes in our games tend to come with severe punishments?).

Oddly enough I find comments about people going through the deck close to once/level and heroes being slow and cautious almost incomprehensible (especially if the heroes are considered 'veterans' (not entirely, I know it depends on the hero mix and skills how they will play, but still, speed is your friend as a hero).

The last few posts all seem to be specifc cases of good characer builds. Of course there are good character builds that will defeat the OL. That's probably why they put Crushing Blow in to begin with, they foresaw broken item combos and needed to give the OL something to do about them. If taking the item away from the player is considered broken you could also say Dark Relics are broken for taking the item away until they next die.

Houserules are a part of any game, they just come out more in deep games like Descent because they are more specific and more rules to tweak. Who here has played Monopoly with the Free Parking money rule (with taxes and such going in the middle?)

This specifc case, the sorceror king's keep has some pretty obvious holes and I think its easily fixable. It could be your players just happened to try a tactic which the playtesters just didn't try or were built for. Perhaps their party wizard had a low range weapon treasure and didn't think of attacking from the door.

Again, I recommend just adding this to the avatar's appearence, right at the end.

"The door begins to close. At the beginning of the Overlord's second turn the door to the room closes and cannot be reopened. Any player that aren't in the room with the mirrors is considered massacred by any other monstrosities in the Overlord's keep"

It does seem weird that the FFG people haven't been reading the forums and commenting or sharing ideas. It sounds like Kevin used to pop in periodically but this has been here for awhile with no word from him. Maybe they're busy with a new expansion or inter-office planning for another one.

Neostrider said:

Or an office party.

Anyway - would it be possible for a group of us to form, and together write an insigtful letter to FFG?

Sure. Isn't that what pretty much got the last FAQ written?

Yeah....about that. The list of questions sent was not completely answered and, ever since then, they promoted the PR person in charge of Descent and stopped talking to us for the most part. I actually didn't know about the new guy (JR) until I contacted Critical Miss (our mod during the RtL release) to find out what was up with the ToI release, so....

I'm hesitant about this. Correlation is not causation, but it does seem that our incessant rules quibbling annoys the Descent team at FFG (whoever that might be right now). I'd say drawing up a list of questions is good, but let's assign some editors/vetoers so the resultant questions are all "good" ones.

I have also had my most recent emails to the "rules questions" ignored, not even got an aknowledgement.

FFG should be answering more official questions on the forums. It only takes me 15-30 minutes per day to read them so surely one of their staff who get paid for supporting their games should be doing the same.

I'm happy to be involved in any "petition" which is sent off to FFG. I have a few direct emails for people there which might be useful.

It isnt just Descent though - same problem with Android. New game, lots of rules questions as things are very unclear. KevinW popped on once and answered *some* questions, but it has now gone quiet and nobody from FFG has posted anything to the dozens of people that have spent good money on FFG's new shiny game and are not getting much help with it.

Yeah, I've noticed the lack of support lately. Hence why in the Leadership thread I suggested everyone flooding the place.

Sorry folks, I've been busy for awhile. You can look forward to an FAQ update soon that should address a number of current issues. Notably, I'm going to give Avatars the ability to take a Ready action to place a Guard, Aim, or Dodge order. Road to Legend was extensively tested, but with the complexity and time commitment of the expansion, you have to understand that some problems are going to crop up. I'll do my best to handle them as they do, but I have a lot of things I'm responsible for, and only so many hours in the day.

Woohoo for Kevin!

Seriously though, should we be making a combined effort of producing a list of other unanswered questions? Otherwise, poor Kevin will have to trawl through pages of forum posts about all the questions we have.

Good idea for Avatars though. That should fix the Sorcerers Keep problem (I think)

KevinW said:

That's why we volunteer to help Feel free to bounce any thoughts off us here in the boards.

Also, thanks for caring. Looking forward to the new FAQ (you might consider giving avatars >something< to use surges on, too. Not necessarily damage.)

So: shall we draw up a list of questions?

Xandria said:

I'll start a new thread...

KevinW said:

Righteous move on the Avatar change. That's going to do wonders.

Great stuff on all counts. Thanks Kevin.

Thank you Kevin, for taking time to assuage our fears.

Nice one Kevin.

Now all we need is for someone to photoshop a set of evil Order markers.

I envision them in red & brass, rather than blue and silver, and square/hexagonal/octagonal, so we can actually cut them out easily.

This is beyond my photoshop skill level. Any takers?

Thanks for the response, Kevin . Also, thank you for confirming that RtL got the play-testing that it required. Yes, I understand and can certainly forgive problems that slip through. My main concern was whether it had been play tested at all.

Corbon , thanks for that detailed breakdown - it sounds like you've got quite a killer party on your hands. I suppose it comes down to your group's playstyle, but my group never found it advantageous to rush into a room, as it would certainly mean at least one dead hero (recall that the Sorceror King makes Skeletons very deadly). Nevertheless, perhaps we should try the "rush into the room to prevent spawning" in the future? Note, we have not been playing with AoD, so maybe that makes a difference?

Lastly, Paul Grogan , thanks for starting up the new questions thread - hopefully this will help streamline the process for Kevin, and make it so that the largest issues are addressed.

Thanks all!

Quick, someone contact Acolyte Rivan!

The other thing that might help with the Sorcerer King's Keep would be to either limit or prevent the heroes' ability to hide and/or leave the room similar to the titan, beastman, or wyrm lairs. This would give the Sorcerer King a much better time of it. The other alternative would be to have the Sorcerer King as a model on the board, and he can move and attack as normal, but cannot be harmed while the mirrors are intact.

There are solutions, and instead of throwing accusations at the staff (who, since I've been on a QA team in the past, I know how hard they work and how little grattitude they get) we should be helping them come up with solutions that help balance the gameplay and work with the existing rules and fluff.

Thanks for the info, Kevin. Will the monster upgrades be revamped? In Tomb of Ice, they get much more constant damage increase with level, which I think is much better than the way they pre ToI monster get upgraded.

Corbon, I think you suffer from a too well rounded party (quick casting + spiritwalker+grapple...), and from the overal uselessness of the beasts: unlike beastmen, skeletons or sorcerers, spiders have no extra damage abilities: on top of their dice upgrades, skeletons, sorcerers and beastmen get extra damage/pierce that make them stay much better than spiders, which are hard to spawn on top of that, because of their size). However, crushing blow would be a good way to kill Jaes: Using it on his armor would make him much easier to kill. Sometimes, it's better to use CB on a shopkeeper item and get a hero killed. But a 5 armor hero should not be that hard to kill for gold beasts (at least, it would not be a real problem for gold beastmen or gold skeletons). Crushing blocks would make spawning much easier too (or you can toss a hero in a pit once he doesn't have enough fatigue anymore to block his LoS).

But the campaign might be unwinnable without lieutenants anyway

@osaka: Allowing the sorcerer to have be on board and invulnerable would probably be the best short term fix indeed, although I hope they let the OL have these guard tokens too

Galdred said:

I'm not complaining, just explaining why I hold some of the views I hold (namely that it should be rare to go through the whole deck in a dungeon). Our games are really interesting, tense tactical battles and I am still marginally ahead in CT.

As for your advice, thanks, but you missed some important stuff it seems. That 5 armour hero also has Ghost armour and 7 fatigue. He also frequently has a Shield (I didn't mention it was Crystal, preventing 2 wounds). And if he isn't killed he heals back to full health for free once out of the dungeon (Earth Pact - not specified but since it heals faster than the guys who do full heal for free, it surely must do so as well, merely not mentioned due to the stupid FFG 'ignore other expansions' system) and 2/turn if he stands still (usually that would be one attack and a guard or dodge). We've houseruled it (thats three houserules now, I'd forgotten this one). Effectively I have to do around 21 wounds through Armour 5 on one turn, or I lose the lot (very few monsters can survive a hero turn with the number of attacks and high damage this party deals out). It's just not worth it. Incidentally, thats only a point or two short of max damage from an entire (gold) beastman war party and vastly in excess of what a spawn of (gold) skeletons or sorcerers will do. He also frequently has a dodge from Leadership.

I tried using CB on his armour, I still only got him down to just less than half before the encounter ended, despite hitting him with everything I had. Zip, back up to full health... Its just easier to stomp on the lesser party members.

I almost never use spiders (rarely get the opportunity). Beast strengths are razorwings (decent damage on 'light' party members due to very high speed and flying), bloodapes (the Leap attack scares the party and even the potential when the bloodapaes are not on the board keep my opponent thinking, and they are soooo tough, tougher than many named monsters - excellent for blocking, pinning and slowing a party), Manticores and Nagas (unfortunately all too rare, but reasonable pierced or sorceried damage) and Hellhounds (breath, high pierce). Timed right the shooty Beasts are easily the equal of a Skeleton or Sorceror spawn due to the combination of damage and number of hits possible (assume breath hits 2 party members or you are doing it wrong). I'm not knocking Eldritch, if eldritch is your Avatar's thing, but beasts have definite strengths and few weaknesses (mostly size, but that rarely makes much difference in our games- when I was the Beastman Lord I rarely got to spawn anything either).

On NYE I spawned a Master Troll using "Lone Troll". The party where concerned, but with Speed three it couldn't reach them.

Then I played "Charge". They started to sweat.

Then I played "Rage" before attacking with five power dice.

The first attack missed, the second did 36 damage with Pierce 10.

It is possible to kill tanks like this, just unusual. I generally ignore them unless I have an attack with nowhere else to go. Chip away at them, especially with attacks that place effect tokens. Web, Stun and Daze are awesome on this kind of character. Frost can work nicely too, ridding you of those pesky combo-items.

Corbon said:

There is no way beasts can be the equal of the eldritchs: For once, all the eldritch spawns are useful: they can kite (that is, hit from far away, and force the heroes to come to them), making them more survivable(they can force the heroes to get where you want them, instead of having to get to the heroes), and on top of that, all of them have damage upgrades: skels get higher pierce, sorcerers get higher sorcery, and even dark priests get about +1.5 damage/upgrade level (and you have to spawn these dark priests anyway, as they give 1 CT). Among the beast spawns, only the hellhound gets a faster damage upgrade, but they are much rarer, you get 2 instead of 2 skeletons and 1 master. Blood apes are tough indeed, but their damage output is too low .

@slev: it is forbidden to use 2 cards for the same trigger, so the troll should not have been allowed to charge and rage at the same turn (but you could aim and charge or aim and rage), you'd need the enrage treachery card for this.

I've had a closer look at the monster damages: eldritch only shine at silver (compared to other), as skeletons damage do not increase from silver to gold, however, a single skeleton deals more damage than a blood ape at silver, and the dark priests remain the best thing you can spawn.

The main weakness of the eldritch is their poor performance in outdoor encounters, with all these shadowcloacking trees, and as lieutenants are the only way to win for the OL, it may make them a subpar choice (but it is even worse for the beastman lord, whose specific lieutenants do not even benefit from humanoid upgrade at all).