I have Descent + all expansions and will be playing my first game at the end of February. My friend is going to OL, and I am planning on letting him pick any Quest from all of the books (excepting RtL, of course!) I want to use Feat cards, as I believe it'll really help sell my fellow hero players on the game.

I had read that using the Reinforcement Marker really brought some balance into the game, but I am wondering if we need to bother with that if we are using Feat cards. Any and all advice appreciated...

*Bump* for input...

I'd love to give you some input, but I have no experience with ToI or with using the reinforcement marker in vanilla Descent. Sorry bud.

The reinforcement marker is really intended for the campaign... I'd leave it out for your first couple games and see how it goes. I think you'll find it works out fairly well without it :-)

It purely depends on the quest you choose. No matter what else you read on these threads about the balance of the game, some quests are much much harder than others.

I think the Reinforcement marker will make your game faster which can only be a good thing when you're starting out but using it and feats in the JitD quests would be overkill against the Overlord although it's quite satidfying to have the heroes win the first game or two while you figure out the tactics.