I can definitely relate to most these points. I've played the entire campaign as the OL with my partner who was playing 3 heroes. The "one mind vs. four" claim is therefore not something I can complain about, but I can definitely see how this makes things harder. The OL won 2 out of 3 of the Act I quests, plus the Interlude, and the heroes won 2 out of 3 of the Act II quests, plus the Finale. The change in who was winning was very abrupt. As the OL, it was always quite hard, but I could still see I had the upper hand, and then after the first quest of Act II, the heroes multiplied their power in such a way that everything was substantially too easy for them, while before it was very very hard. There was really nothing I could do, and that was just against one mind. I was extremely frustrated, that I managed to get 2 relics, but hardly ever use any of them. Maybe it was a bad choice of quests, but only the Interlude and the Finale were a time I could wield the relic. In the other Act II quests, there were no lieutenants, and/or it said they could not wield a relic (the wyrm turns). Finally in the Finale, the only place where I have the Shadow Rune and Baron Zacareth together - and I needed to sacrifice it to get an extra turn for the dragon. So, I had new toys, and never got a chance to use them. while the heroes can use them every turn. On the other side, my partner was frustrated too. He felt the quests were very hard for him during Act I, even though he was not making so many mistakes (I was soft at some points and even let him change his mind although it was "too late"). but then when he became immediately stronger, everything was so easy for him, he didn't really enjoy the victory either. During the Finale setup, we noticed that it didn't really matter I won prior games, I had my lieutenants kicked out of Encounter I, because the rules relating to them were actually considering the only 2 quests that he won. This was mostly frustrating cause I didn't get to play lieutenants much, and was itching to see what they feel like. To be honest, I'm not sure it made such a big difference in the end, cause my open groups increased the number of opponents on board (even if weaker opponents), and enabled the usage of my OL "Warlord 3 - Reinforcement" card - which actually won me the one single objective token I got in this encounter. Anyway, I'm digressing. The technique that the heroes used to make the last three quests extremely easy for them, to which I had no answer as the OL, is a combined technique of a few store items and some class abilities that did the following: Generate a surge for the attack, use it to immobilize. Then, another hero had the ability to attack and push the target to an adjacent square (so he was out of reach if he was an only melee-monster). The third hero could also attack, and inflict a poison or disease condition, which all monsters automatically fail, so that's 1-2 more damage per round, without doing anything. This resulted in crippling the OL in all situations where he had to get stuff out of the dungeon, but it also completely crippled Gryvorn, the dragon in the Finale, who could just stand there with his mighty 32 hitpoints and do nothing! Just as a bonus, if the immobilizing hero failed, there was another hero who could try that if a monster got too close to him (caltrops - where the roll is an attribute test, no defense from the monster possible). I therefore think that some store items (some of which appeared in Act I, but it took my partner a while to notice he had them), are extremely powerful, and the fact they can be used every round to immobilize / generate surge / etc, is extremely strong. As OL, my ability to have that same effect on the heroes is limited and depends on a card that I need to discard. I will most probably not get a similar card very soon, while the heroes "get it" every turn. Maybe one thing that can improve the OL chances against something like this, is an ability to remove one condition from a monster. It could be in another deck, or some more cards the the current deck. I'm not sure how this should work in order to keep things balanced. It would also be nice to have some toys that upgrade the monsters (like shop items), that the OL can win somehow. Maybe through keeping all search items and money stored in the search tokens the heroes didn't pick up? (although from my experience, they almost picked up everything). So, these are just my thoughts on the matter. Maybe they go more towards balancing issues, but I think that it also relates to the Loss of options claim you made. There were definitely less and less strategies to use with each leveling up. Furthermore, the effect of terrain on the game is quite disappointing. As some people mentioned, there's LOS to practically everywhere on the map. The blocked squares do very little. The type of the terrain in many of the quests hardly affects any strategy. The graphics is nice of course, but I would want it to mean more in the frame of the game, after all, it's not an RPG, it's hack-n-slash..