So far playing through the campaign for the first time with one opponent (controlling two heroes) I'm left with the impression that the game is horribly imbalanced for 2 heroes. I'm watching my opponent struggling to even come close to a win every time, I'm not feeling challenged in beating the heroes, and I can't see anything that they're consistently doing wrong (one or two little things I disagree with, but I don't think two players will always agree on the right tactical decision anyway so I don't think that's it).

The rate of reinforcement is the same for 2 heroes as it is with 4 heroes (obviously not an issue on no reinforcement stages). So if the heroes are trying to battle through a group of monsters and are knocking off (for example) 1 monster per hero per turn, with one reinforcement the 4 heroes are getting a net rate of 3 less monsters on the battlefield a turn while 2 heroes are getting a net rate of 1 less monster on the battlefield a turn.

Secondly monster groups are only slightly reduced for less heroes. A goblin group for 4 heroes is 4 white + 1 red, while for 2 heroes it's 2 white + 1 red. The red monsters are significantly tougher than white monsters, let's conservatively call them worth 1.5 goblins. So 4 heroes fight 5.5 goblins, 2 heroes fight 3.5 goblins, they only have 50% as many actions between them compared to 4 heroes to deal with the goblins but there are 64% of the number of goblins 4 heroes have to deal with. In other words 2 heroes have to do 28% more work than 4 heroes but get nothing to make up for that.

Thirdly though the enemy player starts with more cards for more heroes they still get one extra card per turn regardless of the number of heroes. It's not possible to quantify the impact that has as clearly as the first two points, but it's undeniable that getting the same amount of cards but less heroes to absorb the hits will disadvantage the heroes even more.

Has anyone else found this problem and discovered what 2 heroes need to be doing to make up for the disadvantage? Is there some balance adjustment for 2 heroes I've missed?

My current thoughts regarding house ruling this is to give the lesser numbered heroes a "motivation boost". That is, because there are less of them they are pished to do more because the odds are more dire. This manifests in them each getting an extra action (possibly just an extra move action rather than any type of action) per turn. With 3 heroes, which presumably has the same issue but perhaps not as extreme, the entire party gets one extra action which one hero may take per turn.

There has been discussion about this on BoardGameGeek . Current thinking is that 2 heroes are at a disadvantage because of the ratio of hero actions (4) to monsters, 4 heroes (8 actions) is the most balanced, and 3 heroes (6 actions) have a slight advantage because the number of monsters doesn't increase proportionally. The suggestion has been to run 3 (or 4) heroes in a 2 player game. If there are 3 players have each play 2 heroes vs. the Overlord (4 heroes total). This has the advantage in a campaign that visitors can take over 1 or 2 heroes during encounters.

We've recently tried this idea of 4 heroes for 3 players and it has worked great, plus the players like the ability to play through the campaign as different characters.

I haven't really played too many games yet, and certainly not two-hero games. I'm sad to hear that the scaling still isn't perfect, though I do think it works better than the scaling in 1E.

In any case, the best fix is still the classic - always play with 4 heroes, just divide them up among the hero players as needed.

Consider two heroes as "hard mode", or when you want to take it easy on a rookie overlord.

To get better balance would probably require larger numbers of weaker monsters, or adding a third tier between master & minion. Either would likely affect playability (and cost?), but would allow more fine tuning.

I haven't played with fewer heroes..My friend and I play with one person controlling 4 heroes. However I have to ask why amyone thinks the number of actions received a turn is the only factor in determining balance? I can't speak for two players being underpowered but three being overpowered because of fewer monster actions seems a tad presumptious. You should consider the increase in options available to the overlord through extra starting OL cards among other things. I also have come to the conclusion that the makeup of the hero party can make a huge difference. I have seen some amazing wins pulled off by my friend having just the right heroe with just the right class in just the right place…..I think there are way too many variables to make a blanket statemenbt based on actions available. just a thought.

For those of you who play with one person controlling 3 or 4 heroes, I was wondering how the game flowed. Does it get confusing keeping track of so many heroes?

Thanks

BRuce

Rophan said:

Hey!

I started a 2-player campaign with me controlling 3 Heroes. First I must say this game is not as fun with only 2 players as it is with 3+. Between each session I bag each Hero separetely with it's figure, cards and tokens. So on the next session I quickly setup my Heroes with their respective skills and items they gathered.

That's the quickest way I found and it's working great since you don't have to take notes, simply bag the stuff and be done with it!

We'll probably restart a campaign soon and i'm gonna play with 4 Heroes instead of 3.

Rophan said:

Just use the turn reference cards as suggested, when a hero is done with his turn, flip the card over, easy to tell which heroes have done their turn. As to coming up with the best plans for each of the heroes, well, that's just down to processor power .