Sounds like massive hero pwnage here I have never played that quest but pit spaces and Plague Worms is a nasty combination to be facing as the heroes. But to be honest though it looks like the heroes failed at clearing the way in an efficient manner and the OL seemed to have had the perfect hand all the time so that adds up to the note. I am a bit surprised 4 heroes combined could not kill an Ettin and also couldn't the Worms be shot at longer range? Weren't the heroes getting ultra unlucky here? HoB is notoriously quite balanced campaign but maybe there are a couple of exceptions, will have a look at it in details when I get home.

But Zaltyre, if there is no such "window" during One Fist's turn to spend these 2 movement points earnt from the surge, how is it different then than the Q/A ruling you posted later? E.g. if you cannot spend these move points outside the current action (including the feat executing while it's not his turn) because it's either not his turn anyway, or you are not allowed to do any other action (you´re KO following the current action) then why wouldn't you be able to spend these points immediately in either case? I´m not sure I´m grasping the difference here, nor do I feel able to explain such difference to my hero players. I know the Overlord gets new monster types for every pack being released, some of them being really cool, but my complaint is mainly about the cards. I really find the choices extremely restricted to a very few good cards which you HAVE to get to be able to cope with the heroes. Like Charmy said earlier, your choices come down to a very few subset of the Overlord "arsenal", and not sticking to these choices, although not automatically making you lose the campaign, means you are taking a huge risk, expeciallt when you compete with some of the high tier hero parties played by experienced players. Some of the constants of my Overlord career: - Zachareth plot deck, or Tristayne's to a lower degree. I´m on Ariad currently and I´m strongly underwhelmed by it, but then it was my choice. To be completely honest, one of the reasons for doing this is because I want to play Zachy's all the time but cannot quite do it (heroes get grumpy) so I´m giving them something else to justify coming back to Zachy next time. How awful is that? - Web traps. Who plays without them really? So here you go with your two first XPs. - Imploding Rift (depending on Willpower). - Raven Flock. - Wristlet of Wind. - Pick small ranged monsters in every single quest regardless of goal. That's the worst restriction really. Regarding Bilehall in particular, I don't see what's stunning about the new monsters. They´re very cool and all, but still from the perspective of sticking to optimal monster choices for quest Lambda in campaign Espilon, none of these monsters will even remotely reshuffle my normal preferences. When I say a monster type is "unplayable" I mean that I would never pick them for a quest, not necessarly because they´re bad or anything, but because there are still significantly better choices to make. The Bone Horror is no exception. They remind me a lot of the Wraiths for example. Now if Bone Horrors would have been a better choice than another monster type for a given quest that I just lost, maybe so, but who can predict? My point however is that you know based on experience that a few monstes tend to have better odds at faring well, because they´re flexible, relatively tough etc. A specialized monster will always be better in its area of expertise, but you need to evaluate if you can easily trigger that situation. When you start a new quest you often don't know exactly how these things will play out and therefore there is more incentive in fielding more generic monsters that you know won't fail you as other monsters would. It has occured to me a lot in the past, that I fielded an ultra-specialized monster and couldn't even get to make them do anything. Heroes can also ruin your plans, but so is the intent, obviously, whereas fielding say Bandits will make them wonder if you´re here to snipe them from distance, run to some place, or just inflict Doom to make the other monster group deal more damage? Whereas if you field Broodwalkers there is no shadow of doubt what the overlord's intent is. I don't want to be getting top-notch monsters all the time either, but I wish more utility monsters were released with lesser focus on combat. A neat idea would be to release a very tough monster very hard to kill with basically no attack or very weak. This little monster could spend time altering the terrain, or grabbing a move point from heroes if they start their turn close to a wall etc. I don't know, these are just ideas. I like the Broodwalker for that reason also, but their speed means... yeah. Speaking of combat, all missions ARE focused on combat and even the race ones. All missions focus on clearing the way for letting the heroes go to point A before turn B starts. Point A can also be where a monster is, waiting to be slained. All monsters have an unprinted number of actions required to defeat it, and that means attacks are the main way for heroes to get to their objectives. Then sure, all possibilities to attack must be balanced to other actions like for instance searching or healing, to name a couple, but searching basically gives you more gear for attacking (or getting more resilient to attacks) and healing just means the hero in question gets to survive longer to perform more attacks, alternatively heroes can spend one more action to attack instead of reviving a hero. It comes back to attacking. I don't know about other playgroups, but mine would be perfectly fine sitting in the middle of the map spending 8 attacks per turn and calling it fun if they could. Moving is a pain because of traps anyway. Searching is cool too but that's something you do while on your way to your objective. You do it because you start adjacent to it, or there are no more monsters to hinder a lone adventurer from getting off the path to grab one. These decisions are trivial really. But you know what? It's FINE. It's that kind of game. I like swords and attacks too, it's all cool etc. My only problem is the escalation. We get to see very cool abilities from heroes that make them really powerful. See, the big difference is that the heroes have all freedom required to field the perfect hero party. Classes and heroes. gear comes afterwards but you can get a very solid party ready from start. The Overlord has restricted choices given by the quest. Like I said, it's fair enough, the game is assymetrical anyway. But by providing a hero like One Fist, you are basically saying that all parties with a warrior should include him because he's the best warrior by far. Heck some people have said earlier they would even ditch the shield-part of the Knight class just because he would be so good at this class despite this. Isn't that insane? Then cool of course if you pick somebody else, but you´ll have to be aware you missed an opportunity. I´m always thinking "optimal choice" here.

I hope so, as always time will tell. About Hero Quest, since you mentioned it, the license belongs to Hasbro, not GW, so plans for a revival for HQ are probably dead. Some fans even launched the 25th anniversary edition and got sued for it

Or defeat the Broodwalker

So another 150$ box with Reikland Reavers and the Orcs team in limited print? God I hate when they do that. To me that hurts the community for the type of game that is Blood Bowl. Cause fine for Space Hulk, nobody played that game anyway so the real addicts will find value in a deluxe version and you don't need to print a ton of boxes. But for Blood Bowl, seriously? Cause I´m not kidding, the amount of players at least here in Europe is tremendous for a game of that age. It's tied in popularity with Warhammer, Magic and War Machine when you look at the store game events in many cities. Granted it must be a certain privileged part of the population playing them because of the price tag (old teams cost you a lever and the KS projects releasing teams aren't cheap either). But still, a limited print for a game like this will not only find admiration from the community, I´ll bet. But sure, if they ever let this get released, it will renew some interest in the franchise so maybe that's how BB:TM could potentially get another expansion.

Nah, I respectfully disagree that giving up a one handed piece of equipment is a huge deal when you gain an extra attack dice to a weapon, and you don't need a uber-powerful weapon to capitalize on that bonus either. Regular warrior class with Blue+Red becomes BRY, and even if the surges don't give you much yet it's still impressive. Giving up a shield giving you one extra shield symbol when you tap it is nothing compared to getting more damage on an attack that will remove one monster figure from the map. Plus that extra dice gives you more chances to get a surge, into more damage, into conditions etc. I would ditch the shield straight away, or give it to somebody else. About the Feat, a hero player will send this guy into the grand melee so he´ll be exposed to attacks. Now I never prioritize the fighter in hero groups because they´re usually tanky and not necessarly more dangerous than other classes, but Marshall's Retribution (or whatever the name) for instance causing damage if you attack another hero @2 spaces of him illustrates how you can make attacks converge to this guy. Then comboing out when he dies. Heck you could even intentionally apply indirect damage like Blast to this guy to make him die and unleash extra attack actions. Is it situational? Probably, yes, but free extra actions tend to be nasty, as they accelerate the game towards the heroes end. I agree with your comment about Logan and Ispher.

What's funky is why people think the LoS rules in Descent would change.

Yeah exactly, not to be a killjoy or anything, but having three of these H&M packs still due to stores makes me wonder if FFG feels any sort of rush for pushing these out to the market. I love getting new monsters but seeing heroes like this One Fist makes me wonder if these actually have been thoroughfully playtested or not. Same for monsters, of course. Because having played this game a lot (relatively, I know some of you are litterally spending a good chunk of your life on it ) you can sometimes see stuff that might look like it's going to bring imbalance or even obsolete some other parts of the game. Because with three of these packs in a so short time frame, how do you realistically allocate people to play test the new heroes/monsters? I suppose you can't just mix everything plus Bilehall (and possibly even Chains) and see what comes out of it, I would guess each individual item must be tested independently of the rest to some extend to see its potential influence on the current game? So how would a testing phase schedule look like considering all of these packs/expansions for a product line that is not prioritized at the first place? Something doesn't quite add up when considering the minimal effort thrown into things (more important in my opnion) like the FAQ. I´m therefore wondering if these are just the conversion kits versions with some amendments, like an errata:ed version of the heroes/monsters with no actual test phase? Or One Fist was tested as the first hero to throw 3 attack dices with awesome stats/feat by a hundred testers and all of these guys said it was fine, that hero parties actually NEEDED a 3-attack dices hero at the beginning of the campaign, and that the Overlord was clearly able to get around that. That's insane, man, I can't get my head around that. Or maybe they tested it like this: put One Fist against two Minotaurs, One Fist kills the first beast with two BRY attacks then dies to the charge of the second beast, only to feat out and take down the last beast in one single attack. So it's balanced since everybody died! Plan for release date now! Or maybe this is just normal or the way it is intended to be? Like I said I´m all over new Descent releases, but I would have prioritized consolidating the game before expanding it, which I don't see as a major task to do nor would it be plain incompatible with the release of new packs. Or maybe I/we are too picky? There's been some negativism lately over FFGs behaviour regarding the game so maybe we see everything Descent with a pinch of salt? How to regain that trust (not that we´ve been "betrayed" but there are feelings of the same kind as being expressed by many here)? Or maybe the H&M packs is following its own plan so the late discussions about the FAQ had zero impact on FFG's policy for releasing new products? But yeah, in other words, have these been rushed out? There are just too many symptoms and facts that indicate this possibility, even if I´d like to be proven wrong. Just throwing the question, I´m not accusing anything or anybody but this still makes me a bit curious/confused? EDIT: And yes I´m annoyed. I´m annoyed that the Overlord never gets anything at all to withstand the new classes/heroes while hero players masturbate at the sight of new "kewl" abilities and start very strong in a campaign while the dude in front of them has to try to catch up even before the campaign even begins. In some cases that have become the reality of every campaign I play, my hand (my only "abilities") gets stripped by Marshall and Elder Mok. I also want a card that says that I can turn face down a skill card for a whole turn. Why the heck not? Then I´m a bit irritated by the fact people think 3-attack dices would be even remotely okay in a 8-attacks per round party. I love the game but I hate the combat escalation. I kill you! I die! Oh, I kill you when I die!, lulzzz ! Maybe that's interesting to other people but not to me. Descent is not a game of ping-pong and the cross on the blue dice shouldn't be that critical to winning a quest. It is more often than not. Therefore I´m not even that glad about how the Minotaurs look like, because it's another war machine and I already have a dozen of those. People are amazed by that extra dice on it, but come on. An Act II monster with 2 attack dices is very weak at the first place. Then can you technically kill a geared up Act II hero with RRB? Sure you can, but how likely is it and how much gain does it give you during Act II? Yeah, that's right. And the extra dice in Act I is probably a Yellow one, we can take bets on that. Then why is the FAQ version number still 1.5 on the file? How much effort does it take to change it? Why not talking to us? Then people say "you sad whiner! Bilehall gives nothing to the heroes, see what goodies the Overlord got from it!!" What goodies? Low-tier monster types (some of which are stone unplayable), only one gives the new terror condition and unfortunately that's the one that is not playable, Tainted mechanism is tied to the campaign then we have items for the heroes (good for them) and three relics (one for each side) which again you only get to use if you play that campaign. It's not a bad expansion for these reasons but I can hear the hero player train chanting how Chains that Rust should be all for heroes out of fairness. Oh yeah. Or do you guys see the opposite of this? Please enlighten me! Basic III, where are thou? '(

Not sure the legacy Blood Bowl game needs reprinting, it's still one of the most played game in many game communities, plus the actual amount of extra stuff around BB is the craziest thing I´ve seen in any game, making it difficult probably to make a new core game compatible with everything. Also there is still a market for the original Blood Bowl, the figures in particular. Note sure GW would allow FFG to take over the market.

I´m also wondering if a hero dies on a Sludge space, would you automatically revive on the same space if unoccupied, or if you are allowed to place your hero figure in an adjacent non-sludge space? I don't have the rules in front of me to check what would happen if you died of Lava or Hazard, for instance. EDIT: Apparently you don't. Lava and Hazard have special rules which makes you ressucitate at the closest empty space outside Lava/Hazard zone. But for any other terrain you must come back to where your hero token is assuming nobody else occupies the same space.

They are still selling Descent 2Ed products. Which is fine and all. However supporting Descent, while technically true (FFG can always be inquired for rules question) is a different beast, and a controversial topic currently in this community.

First off, these models look AWESOME. One Fist's ability is ridiculously powerful. One additional Yellow dice, seriously? So one hero starts the game with BRY attacks and that hero has 4 fatigue to spend and 4 move? That looks overpowered to me. Oh and he has 2-digits life total, good stats (and 2 in knowledge? why couldn't it be 1 if the rest is at 3?), and should the Overlord manage to take him down he could execute an insane feat? I´m waiting for the community to prove me how this is not overpowered. Some existing heroes look on the edge of OP but this one takes the cake by a huge shot. About the Dark Minotaurs, do you think they can be 2x2 models? Because they have the standard resilience of large monsters, and I don't know, the mini looks quite big on the picture. Anyway, nice war machine they are. The question is if the Act I version still grants a Red dice or can be a Yellow dice instead. I particularly like the unconditional Diseased condition @3 spaces, that's nice. The question is what other monster type these two compete with. I was thinking Volucrix Reavers first, but the Minotaur's toughness seem to indicate they belong to the Trolls/Giant/Ettin category, except they cannot sweep or throw, assuming there large monsters. Edit: Note the Minotaurs have no bonus on damage, that's interesting. Edit 2: These minotaurs actually only have 2 dices during Act II so they´re not that powerful. It's a conditional RRB attack if they´re not adjacent. Pierce is nice, but no damage bonus on surge, come on. Ynfernael Hulks seem way better than these, a +3 damage on surge is way better than a 1-3 damage extra dice. Hulks roll BRY base as well.

Why not playing with the Descent rules for LoS and movement? Why not playing the game as originally designed for all intents and purposes to get an idea before you enforce house rules with (arguably) large impact on the game? How would you know you need said house rules to be implemented into your game sessions before even trying these rules? It's not like we have this huge banner on top of the D2E forums stating how LoS and movement are broken in that game and strongly advising people to play with IA rules and whatnot? What is inherently wrong with the LoS rules of Descent? They do feel intuitive to me, and I´m obviously not the only one playing with them, then fine of course if some people prefer the IA rules over this, but suggesting to new players to use the IA rules before they even get to play their first game sounds a bit exagerated to me? Also bending the rules might affect balance in the game, as Zaltyre pointed out. You cannot evaluate that risk until you have played the game. Some abilities are strictly worse with the IA rules, some are probably strictly better. Even if I was in the IA-rules camp for the LoS rules, this reason alone would have certainly refrained me from actually playing with said IA rules because it would make other parts of the game unbalanced. And even if it looks "fine" at first, you never know which situations would actually depend on that very change, and how critical these situations can become. Obviously people do as they want with their game and their playgroups. If you want to play with the IA LoS rules, if you want to port the Chewbacca hero to Descent or replace Zachareth with Palpatine then by all means if you think that'd be fun. I´m not even joking, it'd be actually awesome if I could witness such freedom taken by players while having the game still function despite all that. So yeah I´m not trying to judge people for that, but as a player in a group where the rules master plainly stated we would play with house rules for our very first game, I would seriously roll my eyes over a few times wondering what utterly broken game would warrant such thing. Have you thought of the opposite, e.g. IA players really enjoyed the "new" D2E LoS rules? My opinion is that you should try them in any case.

I think you can play as many Rumor quests as you want (the Overlord gets to decide, though), so you´re not limited to the one you´ve just played. As a matter of fact some Rumor cards state potential incompatibilities between two rumor quests from the same campaign, so that also implies that you can play several of them. Note that you are not bound to play the Act II version if the Overlord doesn't want to. They don't give XP, no. It would put the campaign off balance greatly if they did. Playing rumors does increase the length of a campaign, but it allows your group to explore uncharted territories with new tiles and possibly new terrain, new monsters/lieutenants and new relics as a reward. The Overlord can get new overlord cards that he/she wouldn't be able to get otherwise. So yeah, there is incentive for playing them just because it's fun to take a side quest or two during the main campaign. Now that's the only positive I can think of them. Balance-wise, they´re really bad.Here's the deal: you are the overlord, and only you can decide whether to play a rumor quest or not. If you choose to play one, you reaaaaally need to evaluate your chances of winning it beforehand and think you have a fair shot at doing so, so that you can get the reward, AND on top of that consider your gain against the additional shopping phase the heroes will be getting. If all stars are aligned and you can bribe your opposition with alcohol (most likely) then you *might* be able to get something out of playing a Rumor quest. And if you lose, you make zero advancement and your heroes come back to the main campaign with more gear, more gold and a powerful relic. Following that logic the inevitable occurs - if you can only play a rumor quest that you are almost sure to win (due to hero composition, e.g. wincon is strongly geared towards the overlord) then it means said quest probably won't be very fun for the heroes. So why would you take that risk? is my question. My approach is that I prefer to keep the campaign to the point, which shortens the campaign and allows us to play mini-campaigns afterwards, including these quests you would have played as rumor quests.

How do you guys deal with skin, especially facial skin, on humans? I tend to go white + brown ink to fetch the details, then highlight in lighter skin tone, but the result is always a very bright/pale face and very dark mouth/eye globes. which looks weird. I also painted my Giants with washes and wasn't happy at all with the result. I wash the skin areas, which makes the mini looks awesome but way too dark, then highlighting the exposed skin areas with elf/dwarf skin tone which basically negates my wash. I don't know how to describe it but maybe my problem is that I can't for the life of me reconcile wash with highlights, it either has to be all-wash (perfect for fleshing out the details but always too dark) or all-highlights (not as good for getting the details out of the mini, and doesn't work well with fine detailed areas like faces etc) I use Vallejo paint.

3- Have patience. Your hero players will get better as they accumulate experience from playing the game. Once they know how to use their strength to their maximal potential. they will make better choices overall and therefore be able to compete a lot more with an experienced overlord. I started like you and now my players have caught up with me, making it truly challenging for me.

I saw FFG NathanH logged on to these forums for a few mins today and was reading this topic (according to the "currently" entry on his profile), so there is a good chance these concerns made it through to FFG. It would be interesting to see if there is any reaction from their part.

They´re from the Mists of Bilehall expansion, which just got released.

Which one of these would you pick for your vanilla Swarm strategy? Kobolds are well-established for obstructing parts of the map as well as providing a high damage rate once they become numerous. Reanimates propose an interesting alternative to Kobolds, with basically much better durability at the price (although only slightly) of mobility. The number of figures cannot really be compared, Kobolds starting with three but growing as time goes by (if allowed by the heroes), Reanimates starting with their full group. Obviously both monster types have different traits so not every quest would allow both. Ignoring Blast effects for the sake of the discussion

Yeah but the only monster dealing Terrify condition from this expansion is the Broodwalker, which is really stone unplayable with a movement of 2, a brown defense die, blue+yellow melee attack. It's ability affecting the terrain around it is interesting but I strongly doubt heroes will find it highly problematic in any significant manner.

I´m also very grateful this game exists and I´m not implying in any way that the persons dedicating time on this product (whether they´re FFGs or external) are bad persons or anything. Descent needs a quality FAQ/errata document. The present FAQ is vastly incomplete and very hard to use. I want a complete document indexed in a clever way and I don't care if it's 50 pages long as long as it's the only document I need to refer to. We have seen examples of FAQs for other games from FFG that look concise, extensive, and have a great look & feel. It's a pleasure for both eye and mind having to refer to such document. I think Descent deserves the same treatment. On top of that I would like to get reprinted cards/booklets with errata:ed information. Stating the new text on the FAQ is a mistake in my opinion. Now we´ll clearly agree that FFG does have the assets to make such thing come true. We´ve seen it before. But if they cannot commit to that level of quality due to various marketing reasons then they cannot expect the community to be satisfied with a bad product being released, which -mind you- had been expected for many many months now. If FFG cares about the D2E community (which I assume they do) then they should communicate their vision regarding this game and let us know when major improvements have been made to the franchise. If FFG think this 1.6 FAQ is extensive then they clearly have no idea about the demand. The people behind the game are without any doubt clever people, so somebody explain to me why these people let things like these go to the customer base. Bearing in mind the general concern about the franchise, the known lack of rules information for a very long time, etc. So no, there is no excuse. My message to FFG is that I would like this game to get the FAQ it deserves, and for that I would like to suggest a joint initiative from FFG and the community to put up the ultimate FAQ for this game. From there FFG can carry on release new products on solid grounds. The Runebound releases will still instill fuel into Descent so I don't think the game is dead at all even in that Star Wars golden age. Also please consider selling the updated quest guides and cards so we can get hold of the most recent information. I would be very grateful if FFG showed some interest into that initiative.

That's correct as per this "golden rule", as long as you treat these extra Cursed tokens as Poison tokens for the game's intent. These tokens are only indicators, you can use your own indicators if need be.

I like your "We have received your query, please be patient as the team investigates your query. Our support will come back to you as soon as possible..." approach

I´m pretty sure you can inflict a condition to a figure even in the very rare occasion when the tokens have run out from the supply. The tokens are only indicators of which figures have received the condition, their actual number is not a restriction to the condition mechanism itself. By the way I don't even use the tokens, but I admit that we have never been in a situation like yours even remotely, I get that you need the tokens if you have a large number of figures being affected, otherwise I just put the condition card on the hero/monster sheet/card for best visibility (at least we think). This being said bear in mind Class tokens like Traps, Valors, or even Infector are stated as "limited by the supply", but that's probably because having access to more of these tokens could potentially make the class abilities linked to them overly powerful, especially since they carry to the next encounter. Then if Ispher cannot be poisonned then he cannot receive the poison condition. It means heroes cannot assign him to become poisoned for the simple reason that he cannot receive the token due to his hero ability. This to me sounds like the easiest way to interprete his ability in that particular situation. Doing otherwise would be kind of against the spirit of the rules for the cauldron, which I think would be a shame.

As a matter of fact, he probably should The runemaster is a glass cannon and should probably be used as such for best effect. E.g. without thinking too much of dying, unless of course dying has a critical effect on the quest being played. But even so you still have armors, relics and other trinkets, coupled with a good party for healing and protection to make sure the runemaster doesn't die at the first shot. But even if he/she does, have somebody spend one action to revive him and it's party time again for the heroes, so no big deal. Rune master is always my first target of choice if I cannot manage to kill the healer first. That's because it's the highest DPS in the team. If the person playing him is overly cautious, as for not exposing himself too much, then the OL can definitely find ways to control his DPS by making the player worry about the rune master's survival, which would in turn decrease his damage output, so more actions can be virtually spent for doing other things than focusing on his death.