2nd Edition Overlord too weak?

By bitterboy, in Descent: Journeys in the Dark

Posted at

IronRavenstorm said:

Here are a couple of things for the OL to learn:

1.) Know your monsters- Our OL had no clue how powerful some of his monsters can be if used properly. He stuck with the monsters that he felt comfortable with instead of picking ones more suited for the level. He was all focused on hurting us that he forgot that his flesh molders could heal his units instead of attacking. The monsters have to play their parts just like the heroes playing theirs.

2.) Know thy enemy- As OL you should know at all times what you are up against. If you keep grouping your monsters together against someone with blast you deserve to lose. You should also have the appropriate monster to fight certain heroes. Never fight a ranged hero with ranged units if you can't help it. The Ettin's should throw the melee heroes out of their way to make a move against the scout/caster classes since they are weaker in the health department.

3.) Follow the plan- Listen to the winning conditions, and follow them the best you can. Take your time and don't make any hasty moves. Otherwise you are going to eat some humble pie. Especially, don't waste the movement of your more important monsters. Our OL had his shadow dragons opening doors to have goblin archers come at us… The dragons were a much greater threat, so they should be the ones attacking. When I'm going to play as OL I know that I will follow the plan, but I will make sure to at least KO one hero instead of letting them all limp around causing me pain. If you can finish someone off you should always do it.

I don't want to give anymore away. Otherwise you other hero players might hate me, but I thought I should give the OL players a little help. I love a challenge.

My 8 year old son knows better than to play overlord like that. Not hyperbole,

Anyway, to contribute: I'm Overlording for our first run through of the game and we're about halfway through Act II. I've managed a single win. It's not like I'm playing incorrectly either, or don't understand tactics. This same group won't play tactical games with me any more because I've been munching on them for years in Advanced Squad Leader and other wargames. They're playing pretty casually and just blasting through the game while I'm sweating to get a marginal loss. Hope FFG puts out the V2 equivalent of Well of Darkness, or some kind of Errata or optional rules to beef up encounter difficulty or this is not going to be a keeper.

Posted at

hairballs said:

Anyway, to contribute: I'm Overlording for our first run through of the game and we're about halfway through Act II. I've managed a single win. It's not like I'm playing incorrectly either, or don't understand tactics. This same group won't play tactical games with me any more because I've been munching on them for years in Advanced Squad Leader and other wargames. They're playing pretty casually and just blasting through the game while I'm sweating to get a marginal loss. Hope FFG puts out the V2 equivalent of Well of Darkness, or some kind of Errata or optional rules to beef up encounter difficulty or this is not going to be a keeper.

I find it very interesting the differences OLs are reporting here.

I did neglect to mention, but in all of those games that I've played (not counting First Blood), I've only seen player victory three times. Twice on Fat Goblin with me as OL (each against 4 players), and once on Masqurade Ball with me as sole player.

Perhaps the balance of the game, rather that being with the OL or the Players, sides with a certain style of play. And, of course, there's always the luck factor. I'm sure the players would have had a better chance during The Cardinal's Plight if the Cardinal's defense rolls hadn't let me kill him in two and a half turns (and that includes two successful activations of the altar).

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Steve-O said:

But to me, the whole vibe of the old forum screamed AC, both before and after RtL.

But I think that's the point; you can't really get a sense of what players of the game as a whole think by reading forums; there are huge biases in opinions expressed in forums (not least, as Antistone points out, that no one complains when they're happy).

I for one have no interest in campaign play and vastly prefer the one-shot adventure style. Certainly there were (are) a lot of people who wanted campaign play, but I don't think anyone really knows whether it was a majority.

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After having played twice First Blood, the first half of The Cardinal's Plight, and A Fat Goblin, I would argue thus far the game favors the Overlord for my group. Having read about how its near impossible to win First Blood, I was surprised to have won it on my first try on the second round. One heroes missed attack, a cut off using my Ettins to block the path and my goblin archers cutting right across conquered my first game. I then selected Cardinal's Plight and I managed also to get all four zombies off the map. Albeit, my Lieutenant only had 1hp left when the last guy walked.

Afterward when the rest of the friends had to go home, my friend hosting at his place and I restarted with our own separate campaign. The second try at First Blood felt like I was rowing up-river. Clearly my opponent learned what had happened from last time. He chose A Fat Goblin as his victory quest, which the first encounter resolved as a tie of me gaining 2 crops while he protected 2. While he was doing this, I concentrated greatly on killing his weakest guys so I could continue to draw cards, which paid off big next encounter. With great loathing from my opponent about my luck, I found the unique prisoner on my first try. I then dashed Splig and his archer crew fast as the adventurers lay dying from a master spider and two dragons.

I believe why many groups have such divergent success rates is because the possibility that the game rewards the victors and handicaps the losers one quest at a time. If the Overlord wins his first major quest, he gains bonuses that help him build his deck and the campaign for later; on top of this, he then chooses his next item of conquest and prepares himself for that victory. If he continues to dominate, he earns more rewards while the gap of xp between the losing heroes and the victorious overlord enlarges. My friend and I were debating whether it really matters or not that the heroes or overlord continuously win to reap more benefits while the other side becomes more and more hopeless.

Does anyone else feel the distance of a few experience and a relic or two on one side's favor over the other will seal the fate of the game?

One other question: when a search is committed and the hero finds gold along with his item, is the gold shared by the party or does it need to be multiplied to account for how many heroes are playing?

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ive not played game yet but if overlord is a bit weaker, could that impact 2 player options? for e/g could both players play as a hero and share overlord? or one player as a hero plus overlord then the other player as a single hero?

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One thing that I think players consistently missed in D1e (and based on this thread, several people seem to be missing in 2e as well) is that Descent is a competitive game . What I mean by that is that both OL and heroes have a fair shot at winning, mechanically speaking, so who ends up ACTUALLY winning a given quest will often boil down to who tries harder and/or makes fewer mistakes.

If the hero players are coasting through the game with the expectation that they will win (because they mistakenly think Descent is an RPG), then a serious OL player who is actually trying to beat them will make it look like the game is weighted towards the OL. It isn't, it's just that the hero players are behaving as though the OL shouldn't be able to put up a fight.

Likewise, if the OL player is inexperienced or perhaps more interested in the story and "having a good time," then he might not be trying as hard as he could to defeat the heroes, and this will end up making the game look like it's weighted toward the heroes. It should be noted that people who are used to playing OL in 1e might also fall into this category, as several of the reviews I've read make it sound like the OL needs to try much harder in 2e, where he could generally just coast by and burn cards to stay competitive in 1e. It will probably take 1e OLs a few games of 2e to figure out the new playing style, and that might make the first few games look skewed toward the heroes.

I have little doubt that the "First Blood" introductory scenario is weighted towards the heroes, at least a little, but many of the reviews I've read mention other quests being down to the wire until the last turn (which is good news, to me.) If both sides accept that this is a down-and-out brawl where either side could come out on top, and assuming all players are equally skilled, I think the game will be relatively evenly matched. That was my general experience in 1e, despite all the crazy rulings and poorly defined mechanical interactions, so I should hope that will also be the case in 2e, with all it's streamlined goodness.

Tromdial said:

One other question: when a search is committed and the hero finds gold along with his item, is the gold shared by the party or does it need to be multiplied to account for how many heroes are playing?

Perhaps I'm forgetting something, but I thought all gold was tracked on the campaign sheet as a single pool. Are there any references at all in 2e to "multiplying rewards by the number of heroes?" Frankly, I was glad nothing like that jumped out at me when I was reading the rulebook, but perhaps I missed a passage somewhere.

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Steve-O said:

Tromdial said:

One other question: when a search is committed and the hero finds gold along with his item, is the gold shared by the party or does it need to be multiplied to account for how many heroes are playing?

Perhaps I'm forgetting something, but I thought all gold was tracked on the campaign sheet as a single pool. Are there any references at all in 2e to "multiplying rewards by the number of heroes?" Frankly, I was glad nothing like that jumped out at me when I was reading the rulebook, but perhaps I missed a passage somewhere.

After searching in the pdf for "gold", it seems intended that the gold found by a player goes to the hero pool, which is what I had believed. Some quests and advanced levels of play say, "For each hero," and made me wonder if I was rewarding my players correctly after a search. Perhaps also a subconscious ruling of Descent 1e was inking into our minds, as I believe I remember when a select amount of gold was found, all players received that select gold for each character, multiplying the reward.

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Yeah, gold received from search cards isn't multiplied. Instead, you get that there are MORE search tokens with more players.

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Steve-O said:

Tromdial said:

One other question: when a search is committed and the hero finds gold along with his item, is the gold shared by the party or does it need to be multiplied to account for how many heroes are playing?

Perhaps I'm forgetting something, but I thought all gold was tracked on the campaign sheet as a single pool. Are there any references at all in 2e to "multiplying rewards by the number of heroes?" Frankly, I was glad nothing like that jumped out at me when I was reading the rulebook, but perhaps I missed a passage somewhere.

From what I've played the fact that there are more search tokens when there are more heroes accounts for the multiplication factor. And other than that it is shared by the party. If heroes decide not to search they simply lose out on the search items and gold that would give them.

Posted at

Funkychick said:

From what I've played the fact that there are more search tokens when there are more heroes accounts for the multiplication factor. And other than that it is shared by the party. If heroes decide not to search they simply lose out on the search items and gold that would give them.

Yeah, that's how i thought it worked. (wiew.)

So nothing is multiplied, unless perhaps the quest-specific instructions explicitly say so (as Trom hinted some of them do.) I think that's a much more straightforward way of handling loot distribution.

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Steve-O said:

Funkychick said:

From what I've played the fact that there are more search tokens when there are more heroes accounts for the multiplication factor. And other than that it is shared by the party. If heroes decide not to search they simply lose out on the search items and gold that would give them.

Yeah, that's how i thought it worked. (wiew.)

So nothing is multiplied, unless perhaps the quest-specific instructions explicitly say so (as Trom hinted some of them do.) I think that's a much more straightforward way of handling loot distribution.

In some cases, the reward for Hero victory will be something like "an additional 25gp per hero." That's the closest thing to Quest related "gold multiplication" I can think of.

Posted at

My group and I got to play the game for the first time last night, and I was one goblin/fatigue away from winning "First Blood" as OL. It's worth mentioning that there were 3 or more "miss" results on the heroes part. Particularly painful for the heroes, as it was the dwarf whiffing twice. This helped the Ettin a lot, & allowed him to pick on the healer (who almost got whacked by the second turn). Had the healer been dropped, things probably would have gone my way. It should be interesting to see what happens when we play through the campaign, and then we switch out OL players (I'm not the best strategist in the group). It would take crazy luck for the OL to win the first game, though.

I found "A Fat Goblin" too be way harder. I had one goblin manage to grab some crops. The others got mowed down fast!

I do hope that the OL has a little more going for him/her in later encounters, but I found this edition to be an absolute BLAST. It runs faster, and for some reason it feels more dramatic. To be fair, Descent 1 always felt clunky to me. I was a big fan of HeroQuest back in the day, so loosing as the OL (or whatever it was called in HQ) is nothing new to me. I still loved the game, and I feel a lot the same way about this one. I don't feel like the OL is never going to win in this edition, but I sure intend to play it enough to find out.

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The more apt question after a night of playing…Is the Overlord utterly boring to play? Answer, yes.

Is his deck of cards streamilned for efficiency? Yes. Does that translate into fun play? No

After a few hours of playing the Overlord, I got to add 2 cards to my deck. Let me assure you for those who have not played, those 2 cards were not enough for me to go "Wow, my whole experience just got better".

As a fan of the "epic feeling" first edition, second edition falls absolutely flat. Nothing about our session had me truly excited. The game has become all about how to limit the Overlord and shorten gameplay. As that is what FFG has set out to do, they have accomplished it nicely.

It staggers me to think that they could take a gem (albeit a flawed one) like Descent V1 and alienate so many people who enjoyed the first game for it's scope and depth and think that Descent V2 can fill the same shoes.

Descent V2 is just another game sitting on my shelf that we can pull out and play for a short romp,which is fine. Unfortunately everyone in my group including myself feels that it would be such a waste of time to play such a watered down version of a greater game.

I'm not trying to sound bitter or show my fanboyism for V1 but the reality is I wanted to like this and I just couldn't.

Maybe if I play as a hero I might feel differently but woe be to the OL and his mighty deck of 15. :)

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Royaldoy said:

The more apt question after a night of playing…Is the Overlord utterly boring to play? Answer, yes.

Is his deck of cards streamilned for efficiency? Yes. Does that translate into fun play? No

After a few hours of playing the Overlord, I got to add 2 cards to my deck. Let me assure you for those who have not played, those 2 cards were not enough for me to go "Wow, my whole experience just got better".

As a fan of the "epic feeling" first edition, second edition falls absolutely flat. Nothing about our session had me truly excited. The game has become all about how to limit the Overlord and shorten gameplay. As that is what FFG has set out to do, they have accomplished it nicely.

It staggers me to think that they could take a gem (albeit a flawed one) like Descent V1 and alienate so many people who enjoyed the first game for it's scope and depth and think that Descent V2 can fill the same shoes.

Descent V2 is just another game sitting on my shelf that we can pull out and play for a short romp,which is fine. Unfortunately everyone in my group including myself feels that it would be such a waste of time to play such a watered down version of a greater game.

I'm not trying to sound bitter or show my fanboyism for V1 but the reality is I wanted to like this and I just couldn't.

Maybe if I play as a hero I might feel differently but woe be to the OL and his mighty deck of 15. :)

No offence intended sir, but I can't help but disagree with..well, just about every single thing you just said (the lone exception being our shared love for Descent 1e). I have had an absolute blast playing OL in 2e, and being forced to actually use my tactical mind aids in that. In 1e, I could usually easily win (and piss off my players) by saving up threat and just laying down entire hands of cards at a time. Conversely, as soon as heroes got gold equipment (in non-campaign play), it was over for me in seconds. There is NOTHING even remotely "epic" about that in the slightest, on either side of the coin. Oftentimes, it just left one or more people not wanting to play the game anymore (not a good thing, I think you would agree). Don't delude yourself with rose-tinted glasses. 1e was fun as hell (most of the time), but horribly balanced.

In no way have I ever felt limited as an OL in 2e. On the contrary, with the smaller deck size I find I can pull off what I want to do far more often than I could in 1e. That's a huge plus when I need just the right card for my scheme to work.

In summary: Do I find the 2e OL too weak? Not at all. Limited or boring? Nope. Harder to win with? Absolutely not, I just have to actually think to win. In just about every game I've played thus far (ignoring First Blood), the quest has come down to the wire as to who would win, with all players huddled over the table, some practically nail-biting, in anticipation of how the last few turns will play out. That, sir, is what EPIC really feels like, and 2e does it marvelously.

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Cyan_of_Doma said:

Royaldoy said:

The more apt question after a night of playing…Is the Overlord utterly boring to play? Answer, yes.

Is his deck of cards streamilned for efficiency? Yes. Does that translate into fun play? No

After a few hours of playing the Overlord, I got to add 2 cards to my deck. Let me assure you for those who have not played, those 2 cards were not enough for me to go "Wow, my whole experience just got better".

As a fan of the "epic feeling" first edition, second edition falls absolutely flat. Nothing about our session had me truly excited. The game has become all about how to limit the Overlord and shorten gameplay. As that is what FFG has set out to do, they have accomplished it nicely.

It staggers me to think that they could take a gem (albeit a flawed one) like Descent V1 and alienate so many people who enjoyed the first game for it's scope and depth and think that Descent V2 can fill the same shoes.

Descent V2 is just another game sitting on my shelf that we can pull out and play for a short romp,which is fine. Unfortunately everyone in my group including myself feels that it would be such a waste of time to play such a watered down version of a greater game.

I'm not trying to sound bitter or show my fanboyism for V1 but the reality is I wanted to like this and I just couldn't.

Maybe if I play as a hero I might feel differently but woe be to the OL and his mighty deck of 15. :)

No offence intended sir, but I can't help but disagree with..well, just about every single thing you just said (the lone exception being our shared love for Descent 1e). I have had an absolute blast playing OL in 2e, and being forced to actually use my tactical mind aids in that. In 1e, I could usually easily win (and piss off my players) by saving up threat and just laying down entire hands of cards at a time. Conversely, as soon as heroes got gold equipment (in non-campaign play), it was over for me in seconds. There is NOTHING even remotely "epic" about that in the slightest, on either side of the coin. Oftentimes, it just left one or more people not wanting to play the game anymore (not a good thing, I think you would agree). Don't delude yourself with rose-tinted glasses. 1e was fun as hell (most of the time), but horribly balanced.

In no way have I ever felt limited as an OL in 2e. On the contrary, with the smaller deck size I find I can pull off what I want to do far more often than I could in 1e. That's a huge plus when I need just the right card for my scheme to work.

In summary: Do I find the 2e OL too weak? Not at all. Limited or boring? Nope. Harder to win with? Absolutely not, I just have to actually think to win. In just about every game I've played thus far (ignoring First Blood), the quest has come down to the wire as to who would win, with all players huddled over the table, some practically nail-biting, in anticipation of how the last few turns will play out. That, sir, is what EPIC really feels like, and 2e does it marvelously.

Your idea of epic is not based on scope but your enjoyability of the game. V1 has more breadth however unbalanced it may be. I didn't have to think very much during my short stint as an Ol in V2. My session consisted of First Blood, Death on the Wing and the Cardinal's Plight. I managed to win both encounters (not First Blood) and I did not have to think at all. 2 reasons for that.

First, like I said, a hand of 15 cards with duplicates narrows down what you can actually do (refined yes, boring yes). Less strategy is required with such a simple deck and a few base creatures at your disposal. Juggling a bigger deck, more available creatures and "fiddliness" from V1 took much more strategy especially when the magic using, blasting hero of doom enters a room or coridoor. The previous points I just listed is why you like V2 over V1 and I get that. Your opinion and I hear you loud and clear. I just whole heartedly disagree.

Second reason is, I play with very seasoned players, they love their board games and are not casual players. We play these games as a hobby and for fun of course. In V1 it is very competitive and we go all out to win. Playing V2, it was not a struggle to come up with a sound plan to use against the heroes. Just draw your cards, deal with the objectives (which I do like) and play it as it comes.

No strategy required. I am of course over simplifying things. Both games and in both roles require strategy, it's just that V2 OL didn't tax my brain at all.

Your statement that you felt that the deck was the right size to pull off your scheme to work kind of states what I am trying to say, you require very little strategy to pull your scheme off because the deck is too small to do otherwise. lol

I will never change anyone's opinion of the game and I am not trying to, I just wanted to state my thoughts and dissapoinments on it.

The things I did like from it were:

Healers, great idea for the game and I wish that V1 had the same.

2 actions per turn is a great way to go about a heroes turn.

Objectives within a "dungeon" are awesome instead of the old hack and slash.

So while I still prefer V1 over V2, V2 had a couple of nice additions.

No rose tinted glasses here either, I have played every quest from every expansion and I have played through 4 complete campaigns of V1. So don't delude yourself on how I should feel about a game I enjoy more than another. If you like V2 better, and I would think that most people on these boards do, more power to you. :)

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Royaldoy, I came to these forms wanting to say something but not being sure how to say it.

You've said it for me - thanks. I agree with you the OL was boring. It went from a full time job with overtime to a part time night shift job.

My group is likewise very seasoned and we play to challenge our minds against each other so knowing the rules and using them to their fullest was a blast in 1st edition. In 2nd edition there is zero incentive to even roll an attack against a hero. When I get kill I get… a new card. Talk about lackluster. Remember when the players would cringe when you'd play a trap in 1st edition? The new pit trap makes ME cringe.

Halfway through the second dungeon the players realized there wasn't a way to stop me from winning, so we had to houserule it. We've made it where the monsters cannot use more than 1 move action on their turn, except for Dash of course. That made the game at least fun for me because I had to attack and get some kills. Even so, I felt like a tiger than had its teeth removed, just gumming the heroes to death. And I still haven't lost except for First Blood.

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Ummm, if you were allowing monsters to take two attacks then you didn't read the rules very well. Monsters may only attack once. They DO get two actions, but only one of them can be an attack.

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My group played this on Saturday for the first time. It was very enjoyable and we felt it was (so far) a more enjoyable experience than v1. We like that it has less fiddlyness, less time for set up and seems to move along at a faster pace. V1 dungeons could take all night to do 2-3 levels, but we were able to play the intro, Masqurade Ball and Deaths Wing to completion in less time. Do I miss the depth of V1? A bit, but its not an issue yet, maybe at a later time I will when we have more play time in.

The one thing We have seemed to notice with this edition is that the difficulty seems to swing from OL having the upper hand to heroes having it depending on the number of players. In our game we had 3 players, I was OL. I won every encounter except the intro. After we discussed it and came to the conclusion that from the forum posts so far we suspect that 4 players is the sweet spot. 2 heroes just does not seem to be enough and the heroes had a difficult time and some bad luck. They could have done a bit better I think and its not impossible to win, but having that extra hero or 2 really would have made a big difference despite the OL getting more monsters. 4 heroes seems to be (from the reports) swayed in the heroes favor and makes it really hard for the OL to win. Our next play session should include 4 player so we will be able to try the 3 heroes scenario and prove that this will most likely be the most balanced way to play. Just having a tank, a dps and a healer, I think will make a world of difference.

Other than that though, we really do enjoy the game. I disagree with all the OL is boring posts. I find the OL and heroes to be on par as far as strategy and that just makes the game more balanced.

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hairballs said:

Ummm, if you were allowing monsters to take two attacks then you didn't read the rules very well. Monsters may only attack once. They DO get two actions, but only one of them can be an attack.

If you were responding to me you weren't reading my post very well.

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MasterBeastman said:

My group is likewise very seasoned and we play to challenge our minds against each other so knowing the rules and using them to their fullest was a blast in 1st edition. In 2nd edition there is zero incentive to even roll an attack against a hero. When I get kill I get… a new card. Talk about lackluster. Remember when the players would cringe when you'd play a trap in 1st edition? The new pit trap makes ME cringe.

The card is not the only reward, there is also the fact that the heroes also lose at least one action next turn, sometimes two. Usually it will then only take one or two more attacks to get them back down again, until they are healed some more. If the heroes are split up, or the OL can keep them separated somehow, you can sometimes force the knocked out hero to stand up and thus lose two actions. Due to the focus on objectives, every action the heroes lose slows them down and gives the OL more time to go after his objectives.

I also think the cards as reward for a kill is worth more than you say, even the ones that don't do any damage like the Web Trap can still be extremely useful if you can stop a hero's movement (or that of multiple heroes) when he's going for an objective.

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Royaldoy said:

The more apt question after a night of playing…Is the Overlord utterly boring to play? Answer, yes.

Is his deck of cards streamilned for efficiency? Yes. Does that translate into fun play? No

After a few hours of playing the Overlord, I got to add 2 cards to my deck. Let me assure you for those who have not played, those 2 cards were not enough for me to go "Wow, my whole experience just got better".

As a fan of the "epic feeling" first edition, second edition falls absolutely flat. Nothing about our session had me truly excited. The game has become all about how to limit the Overlord and shorten gameplay. As that is what FFG has set out to do, they have accomplished it nicely.

It staggers me to think that they could take a gem (albeit a flawed one) like Descent V1 and alienate so many people who enjoyed the first game for it's scope and depth and think that Descent V2 can fill the same shoes.

Descent V2 is just another game sitting on my shelf that we can pull out and play for a short romp,which is fine. Unfortunately everyone in my group including myself feels that it would be such a waste of time to play such a watered down version of a greater game.

I'm not trying to sound bitter or show my fanboyism for V1 but the reality is I wanted to like this and I just couldn't.

Maybe if I play as a hero I might feel differently but woe be to the OL and his mighty deck of 15. :)

This is EXACTLY what I made an account and came here to say. I've been playing Descent V1 since release and with mostly the same group of people. We are all very seasoned players, having burned through all the quests, made our own campaigns and held little competitions with each other on who could make the most brutal map using all of the map pieces. Descent V2 though is stale. Stale, boring and a side of dry.

I will admit that V1 had it's flaws, but to call this a second edition is like offering someone an elaborate meal for dinner and a .99 value item from McDonalds for dessert.