I had this game quite recently in the "Desecrated Tomb" where we (4 heroes) would spam immobolize the lieutenant in the first room and maintain the fight in such a way that it never reached the dragon chamber. However, the overlord had in the first encounter managed to draw almost all cards in his stack of 16 cards, which rendered him able to play a certain card with some other cards, reshuffle the deck, and almost instantly pick the same card again almost every other round. The card in question that felt overpowered this time was the one that grants a specific monster 2 red dies in health back. He used like every 3rd turn, and we could almost never get the boss monster down.

Is this intetional? I mean, what the hell happens with reinforce ????

plolock said:

Wow, that seems quite legit, and painful for the heroes. In fact, this makes me consider a combo to get it every time. Thankfully I am pushing someone to Overlord from now on.

Is that Quest the one where the heroes need to take down the Lieut with the Relic Blade? If so, why didn't the heroes kill the Lieut between the uses of the healing card? You say he used it every three turn or so, but even two turns of heroes double-attacking (16 attacks with 4 heroes), Lieut should be down before the OL gets the card again. They only need to get him down once, grab the Relic token and run for it. Recovering 2-6 Health every three turns, heroes should be doing that much damage with one hero's double attack.

Dam said:

Do you mean 8 attacks, not 16?

Perhaps it depends with the luck of both the hero rolls versus the overlord's. I also have seen a player choose nothing but weak attack heroes, and he felt definitely the absence of a red-die attacker.

Well, 8 in a turn, but I said two turns, so 16. Since the OL, even if he plays the Healing card every other turn should have to heal 16 attacks worth of damage.

Turn 1: 8 attacks

Turn 2: 8 attacks, OL Healing card

or

Turn 1: 8 attacks, OL Healing

Turn 2: 8 attacks

Turn 3: 8 attacks, OL Healing

So unless he plays it every turn (which could be doable, but would mean he isn't using a lot of his other cards, which I would say benefits the heroes), 16 attacks to survive for each attempt at Healing card.

And this Quest is in Act 2, heroes have had five Quests time to gather gold and buy equipment, including a free grab at any and all Act 1 Items after Interlude, so if they haven't bothered to upgrade to red die items, their fault.

plolock said:

Intentional? Probably not, in the sense that I don't think FFG thought of people doing this when they wrote the rulebook. Of course, I have an itchy feeling that they also didn't think about the OL strategy of hoarding cards in the first encounter to fill your hand in the second. At least as far as Descent is concerned, they seem to have this funny habit of assuming people will just play through the quest without resorting to this sort of chicanery.

Is it allowed? Absolutely, per the rules as written anyway.

If you want a house rule to fix it, I'd say giving the OL a hand limit would do the trick. Say, 8 cards. That's half of his starting deck, I imagine it won't hinder any serious, non-twinky gameplay.

plolock said:

I'm not sure I understand this question. The Reinforce card still requires the OL to respect group limits. Worst case scenario, he can keep his monsters topped up throughout the encounter. I'm sure that would be a pain for the heroes, but they shouldn't be wasting time killing respawnable monsters if that's not one of the quest objectives.

(pro-tip: killing all the respawnable monsters is never one of the quest objectives.)

Thanks for the answers, it clears up a lot of things.

Concerning what quest it was: Yes, it was when the heroes need to kill and take the relic blade and get out. However, in ACT2 the lieutenant is VERY strong and our heroes in centered around crowd control, with 1 healer 1 damage dealer and 2 crowd controllers / hybrid damage dealers.

Either way, that lieutenant has regeneration and it is VERY hard to kill him every round, especially since he had giants and dragons, meaning that he could kill our squishy heroes almost every other round. (we are playing WITH the conversion kit, thus, only 1 of the heroes in our party is from the original box)

Add in that not all heroes have strong attacks, misses occur and it is VERY rare that all heroes can use ALL attacks on ALL rounds. Especially when you have a giant with Sweap that crushes all your heroes in one blow.