Been playing a 3 player campaign recently and kicking the overlords ass on all but 1 expansion quest (playing the base game campaign with Trollfens + Lair of the wyrm expansions). Currently halfway through the interlude and its looking like its gonna be another win for the heroes. I put a lot of fatigue regeneration into the group so we look a little something like this:

Avric Albright - Disciple: Concentrates on getting all cards related to making the prayer of healing more powerful. Saved up to buy the 3xp card 'Holy Power' to heal 2 characters at once first, followed by buying cleaning touch. Armed with Iron Battleaxe.

Syndarael - Champion: Purchased 'A living legend' and Glory of the battle' to obtain as many champion tokens as possible. Next bought 'Stonic Resolve' for extra fatigue generations. If Syndareal does not move he also recovers 2 fatigue at the end of his turn. His hero ability allows him and one other hero in 3 spaces to perform a free move action each.

High Mage Quellen - Rune Master: Purchased Exploding rune after the first encounter, followed by Runic Sorcery. This guy dishes out a lot of damage ! Between his hero ability of recovering if a hero within 3 spaces has fatigue on his sheet, or 2 if he has fatigue tokens equal to his stamina it feels like he has a virtually endless supply of fatigue. His heroic ability is also very useful if somehow he is separated from the group and needs a blast of fatigue or more often needs a burst speed. He is armed with the starting rune Arcane Bolt sadly, however with runic knowledge, mana weave and the champion tokens even sucky rolls seem to turn into something half way decent. Sadly no runes have popped up to buy !

Pros:

1) Between Syndareal's heroic and Quellens heroic, Quellen can move a maximum of 20 spaces and at the end of his turn he gets his fatigue back. This can be incredibly useful for some quest that require speed. It also leaves the mage waaay in front of the entire group so use with extreme caution

2) Fatigue regeneration in this group is insane, it feels like my rune caster never runs out of fatigue to spend.

3) The champions tokens rock, they do not feel like much to begin with but it certainly adds up. Especially when doing blast attacks, the blast gets an extra 1 damage per monster affected by the attack.

Cons:

1) This group lacks awareness which can be a bit sucky, so try to avoid quests where this is necessary.

2) Quellens strength sucks, expect him to fail virtually all rolls made on his strength...

3) No one has 5 movement which can be a bit painful at times when heroic abilities have been blown.

4) In order to get 2 fatigue per turn, Quellen needs to be in range of someone with the appropriate fatigue level. He also needs to stand adjacent to the champion if he is to get stamina returned from the champions' stonic resolve' card.

Its been a lot of fun playing with this group after getting some xp together, would definitely recommend trying it.

Interesting strategies, thanks for the post

Yeah Avric as a Disciple is so awesome, it's one of my favorite Hero to play with and against.

He can get very powerful in relatively no time.

Champion is really cool too, love the Valor tokens and what they provide. My last campaign played as a Hero was with Reynhart as a Champion and he was **** fun to play.

And what to say about the Runemaster, he's just great. Blast and applying the "Rune" keyword to many weapons can get nasty.

Looks like you had a blast and it is what this game is all about. Gathering some good friends, a couple of beers and playing a great game.

What I really appreciate is that the OL (you I presume) did not just stare at the heroes heroic feats and other capacites, shaking your head in dismay and/or grumbling about the game not being well designed.

You also devised countertactics and noted the weakenesses of some of the seemingly overpowered capacities of the heroes.

That is, I believe, the type of thought developement a tactical game like Descent is meant to generate.

Thank you for your post.

Champion is really cool too, love the Valor tokens and what they provide. My last campaign played as a Hero was with Reynhart as a Champion and he was **** fun to play.

Ditto on The Runemaster & Avric the Disciple, but I never could get my mojo with Reynhart as the Champion. I used his charge ability when I could though - really effective.

Even though I was crap with him, he was fun to use.

A really interesting phenomena happened when playing out the rest of the interlude which the heroes won.

Quellens heroic ability adds 4 to his stamina for the rest of his turn, provided he has not used any fatigue this gives him 8 stamina... Now here is where the interesting thing comes in... during his turn he can use stamina potion after expelling his 8 fatigue, to give him another 8 fatigue during his turn. Effectively allowing him to move 24 spaces, or 28 when used in conjunction with Syndarael's heroic feat.

It did not exactly play out like that during the game, instead he used 1 of the move actions to instead grab a search token and run back to the group all in a single turn. So he moved less spaces, but it shows that his burst movement is very good.

Jain Fairwood still has Quellen beat, being able to move 25 spaces (heroic + 2 move actions + blow all stamina), or 30 if she uses a stamina potion mid movement AND still be able to do a single attack. - However the competition is close. Also Note worthy is Quellen will get all his fatigue back at the end of his turn which is another big advantage.

My point here is to not forget about mage Quellen if you need burst speed in your group but do not want to use a scout character.

Blast and applying the "Rune" keyword to many weapons can get nasty.

Very true ! He would have picked this up earlier but the draws on the shop cards have not come up with anything too great.

A really interesting phenomena happened when playing out the rest of the interlude which the heroes won.

Quellens heroic ability adds 4 to his stamina for the rest of his turn, provided he has not used any fatigue this gives him 8 stamina... Now here is where the interesting thing comes in... during his turn he can use stamina potion after expelling his 8 fatigue, to give him another 8 fatigue during his turn. Effectively allowing him to move 24 spaces, or 28 when used in conjunction with Syndarael's heroic feat.

It did not exactly play out like that during the game, instead he used 1 of the move actions to instead grab a search token and run back to the group all in a single turn. So he moved less spaces, but it shows that his burst movement is very good.

Jain Fairwood still has Quellen beat, being able to move 25 spaces (heroic + 2 move actions + blow all stamina), or 30 if she uses a stamina potion mid movement AND still be able to do a single attack. - However the competition is close. Also Note worthy is Quellen will get all his fatigue back at the end of his turn which is another big advantage.

My point here is to not forget about mage Quellen if you need burst speed in your group but do not want to use a scout character.

Blast and applying the "Rune" keyword to many weapons can get nasty.

Very true ! He would have picked this up earlier but the draws on the shop cards have not come up with anything too great.

They also want to do a dwarf theme game too. I will be getting LoR scout for this from the plot decks (can't remember his name well enough to spell it right).

Quellen is one of my favourite mages. I allways doubt between choosing a Runemaster or a Hexer when choosing classes. The combo you have looks really well. Another thing to consider is buying the Ghost Armor if Quellen goes far away from the group since it lets you add X shields in exchange for X fatigue.

Another combo I'm working with now is playing with:

-Syndrael as a Knight with Defend, Defensive Training and Inspiration

-Avric as a Prophet with Forewarning, All-Seeing and Focused Insights

-Leoric as a Rune master with Exploding Rune, Rune mastery (or Iron Will) and Quick Casting

With this group you cannot divide the heroes much but it gives you a lot of defense. Syndrael defends heroes or other miniatures considered as heroes (many quests have villagers or other people who need to be saved) more effectively with Defense Training. The Insight token recovers 1 fatigue to all allies and 1 health and can be used to add 2 shields to defend even more and can be given to another hero with 0 fatigue if adjacent thanks to Focused Insights. Also Leoric's ability makes close attacks from monsters less powerful and is able to destroy blocks of monsters if equipped with a nice Rune.

If you need a little move boost you can use Syndrael's heroic feat and choose Leoric to run along since the prophet does not need to be close to Syndrael to give her the Insight Token. Also, whenever heroes are a bit low health you can use Avric's heroic to recover them quickly.

Attributes for these Heroes are quite balanced since all of them are good in something and really good in knowledge (3-5) but lack a bit of awareness (2-3). But, since there are items that add attribute values to heroes (like the Thief's Vest) and other that help you with attribute tests like the Sage's Tome, you can mitigate this problem.