While I can agree this quest can be over very quickly and therefore look very easy to the OL, the odds for this to happen in the way you described are too low to see any "major unbalance" in this quest, I think that's way over the top. Because it's pure luck at this point. So, bearing this in mind, the heroes should split up and use the map to their advantage so they can both access the caskets and tail the troll in case he manages to find the talisman first. The map is very dense and allows for quick access to virtually any tile within the next 1-2 turns, and that's not considering range attacks with Immobilize condition. Then of course, play a party of dwarves with no ranged attacks and you're turning this enterprise into hard mode. I have played this quest twice as the OL and won but it was very tight in both cases. In one case the talisman was in the last casket and a hero found it first, I killed the hero and Bol Goreth was able to throw it away. The second time I played it, the troll found the talisman on turn 1. It made all heroes go for him and I had a hell of a work to do to make him leave the room alive. So even in that situation the win was not automatically going my way. Dash would have forced the heroes to kill the troll in one round or immobilize him. While I can agree that it makes the quest very short and a bit too streamlined to my taste, it's not an impossible thing to do, plus the heroes may like a quest when they must fight against the clock with so short timeframe, It allows for crazy turn sequences.

Both cards in your deck, period. Blood Rage still requires a target you're willing to sacrifice. If your heroes know you play this card they will have more incentive to take out monsters completely instead of keeping something with low life since that's a free ticket for Blood Rage pwnage. I agree that Blood Rage is great to get rid of injured monsters you can respawn afterwards, especially master monsters or even Zachareth in the interlude missions. Trap cards are great. Anyting that can waste the heroes' actions. I just purchased Reinforce for the first time in one of our campaigns and have zero experience of the card, so I'll take your word on this one. About the last sentence in your post, most quests are race quests or "take position" quests. I don't see a quest where you wouldn't be able to use Dash to great effect. At worst, keep it for the next encounter. I cannot remember how many encounters I have won thanks to Dash. Feels like cheap wins to my heroes for sure. Then yeah card is "less cool", "basic", "straight forward" (as opposed to convoluted effects that seem uber powerful although they´re not). Frenzy, I don't know, what do you do with your monsters aside from running if you're not attacking? You really want to make sure you connect an attack with condition on top of it? Frenzy! I mean, I don't know in which quests these two cards would lose a % of their relevance. Other OLs are welcome to comment. You disagree, fine, but do you actually side them out or do you keep the original set in your deck?

I guess it's just possible that you don't know what it does. Secrets of Flesh doesn't heal 1 monster with 1-3 health. It heals all of your monsters 1-3 health. That could add up to 15 health. And crucially, it could be the difference in keeping a key lieutenant or monster alive. Between defense dice, monster abilities, and other tricks, it's extremely unlikely that I'll let heroes do that much damage a turn to a key figure. So healing them up 3 health could be half a turn's output if not more. Hmm I edited my post prior to seeing yours, feel free to check if you like. No, I know what the card does, I know it's a gain for all monsters. I agree 3 life on a lieutenant is more solid than 3 life on a zombie, I can give you that. Then whether this +3 life will require more actions from the heroes to defeat your lieutenant or not, I mean there are so many factors involved that we cannot say that Secrets of Flesh always lives up to whatever expectations you may have of this card. If you have played it and think high of it, by any means. I'm not here to say people's favorite toys are crap and how wrong you are, to each his own metagame and experience. From MY perspective though based on different situations when I look at some monsters being severely injured, I don't think I would have wanted to draw this card ever. I would have wanted to draw and play Blood Rage instead. Like I said, every monster to me has an unprinted "number of actions required to defeat this monster" value on the card. If your +3 (again, taking the highest possible result) means a great deal with regards to this value then sure, but then it needs to be put into perspective of the damage output of your heroes. Maybe it is more useful if your heroes are not completely geared up. Mine are and +3 is a nothing. About the first part, I mean sure there will be situations where this card will be more effective. But you need a specific reason to keep these monsters alive and heroes need a specific reason to want to kill these monsters (rather than say meet the quest objectives). Dash is useful even outside of the race quests - which are a vast majority of the quests mind you - as you can use it to put a monster into range. Even better, move a monster into range, attack, perform action ability. About the second point, well yeah you need 11 other cards in your deck and maybe you will put SoF in there if you think the card deserves it, I'm fine with it.

Yeah I have difficulties keeping my rant short so please bear with me, lol. Anyway, I'm not going to re-expose again why I think relics and plot cards are overhyped, but it has never been a question about what's printed on the card and how good it looks, my point has always been about how you practically use these things in a game of Descent to increase your odds at winning. Because I am not questioning Taskmaster's Ring is a good relic, it's just that it would be very hard for me to actually use it at all. I'm okay with the whole idea of collecting nice gear "for the future to come" but more often than not you sit with a quest and only a % of all investment/rewards available to you. Heroes have 100% of that in front of them. That's why I'm ranting. If you played this quest, got this relic, got to use it in a quest and it did great deeds then good for you. I'm just trying to say that your situation is not that common from what I've experienced so far. And even if you disagree with that, you can still see the assymetry between the OL mechanisms and the heroes mechanisms. Now if it was made like this to prevent the OL from becoming too powerful, fair enough. My only reality is that the present state of these rules makes it very hard for the OL to run a campaign with decent odds of winning quests. About the OL card, are you serious? Far from me to say the card is worse than any others, but are you actually saying it's a better card than Dash? If your heroes leave monsters alive whether it is at 8 or 1 life - it doesn't matter - you still get two actions per mini during your turn. (okay, barring eventual conditions on them but also barring OL cards you could play to remedy that) and that's the only thing that should matter. Monsters are your tools and you need these tools alive as much as possible for them to perform actions. But +3 life? When you have one hero dealing 15 damage a turn how can a +3 life be relevant at all? I mean sure, it has some utility, at best buys you some time, but when you look at Dash and see what it can do for you there is no comparison. Dash wins you games, Secrets of Flesh just messes around with the heroes. Yeah, nice to hear that some OLs actually are using this re-spec, that's quite a nice and cool little reward but as always it might pay off sometimes and sometimes not.

Yeah you're right, I think I'm confused with the name of said ability, I am referring to the ability writing off two fatigues and two damage to all heroes within 3 spaces if I am not mistaken again.

I agree with all of your points. About the OL XP points, I also believe the re-spec OL reward you can get in some quests is probably under-hyped, as it allows you to get rid of some cards that either have been acting poorly or have lost their relevance through a change of context (heroes upgrading themselves mostly). I think it looks like a powerful tool (I haven't used it yet), but maybe some other OLs here will say that it's more of a desperate thing to do, given the fact you would define your skills roadmap beforehand and keep focus on it so technically speaking a re-spec would attest a failure in either planning or capacity to adapt. I don't know. Also, I believe the same re-spec reward is available to the heroes, and it feels far more useful since they can suddenly afford a more expensive card at the price of unused skills without having to deal with a class 1/2/3 system like the OL. And about the Finale, it's true that Relics may be more viable for just these particular quests than I would have thought, however this is still assuming the lieutenants haven't been killed (which is far from given) and assuming that you are not playing Gryvorn Unleashed since its second encounter has Zachy alone.

Yeah but I mean, come on... Nobody is saying that there won't be any situation where the OL might still have an edge in a quest, or a situation where it might be worth the gamble because of factor X, Y and Z. There might still be good reasons to travel to North Korea for instance, although I'll probably have to work hard to think of one. In terms of Relics, even a good one, it's still a piece of equipment you can't rely on, so it makes no relevance that said relic makes you roll a million dice when attacking or give your Lieutenant a hug every turn. People seem to miss the point that getting a OL relic does stone nothing unless a million conditions are fulfilled, one of them being that your Heroes are foolish enough to let you use it. As a comparison, how many conditions need to be met for heroes to play their cards? Frankly, there is no way the Heroes would engage Alric with the Duskblade in melee for instance. If your heroes do so, then good for you I guess. Bad decisions will always affect your win/lose ratio so that's not even remotely a point. Then of course there will be this one quest where the OL reward is not "plain nothing" and could be worth considering depending on context. Of course to each its own metagame, if you can consistently crush your heroes then it gives you free hands to pick whatever quests you want and have a decent shot at the reward. Me, I can't, my heroes are clever persons, they decide carefully their course of actions as long as one of them is not completely drunk. I mean no offense to the good people in the world playing Descent where the OL is the undefeated mastermind, but if your heroes are experienced there is no reason why they wouldn't be able to put up a decent challenge. The game virtually hands over the keys to them! Then sure, bar all marginal situations you want like playing the game in a strip bar with the OL wearing a headset and turning his back to the scene. or let your girlfriend win the game as a OL so you can get laid tonight. Of course if you have an angel besides you to grant you awesome rolls and draws every turn, alternatively your heroes are truly cursed, then you can virtually win any quest in any situation. But in a vacuum: - XP for the Overlord, while necessary are largely overestimated. 1 OL XP is not 1 Hero XP. These are purchases you may never be able to use, plus you are forced to purchase lower tier cards first, which is okay in such but do your heroes suffer the same limitation? The answer is no. But you know what folks, guess what, ANY OL card you purchase, and I really think every single of them without exception, is not going to be better than Dash or Frenzy anyway. These are the 4 cards you need to use in this game to do anything. I don't keep track of every detail on every quests but I'm fairly sure these have been the groundbreaking cards, the rest of the OL cards being more of a support or enablers to weaken the heroes and basically grant you time to draw these. So pushing the reasoning forward, there is almost no point in buying anything else than say Plan Ahead and the likes to just maximize your chance to draw these 4 cards in every encounter. The rest of the cards can be cool, but in general they will be very situational in comparison, or at least not as crucial. - The heroes have nothing to lose in this game and everything to gain. Gold my friends IS a big deal and I am totally shocked to hear that people might be thinking otherwise. So in your games, shopping has no relevance? Drawing 1-2 great piece of equipment out of 5 cards every turn that the heroes can afford to buy is not game changing? Drawing the freaking search card allowing you to draw a random item in the shop deck is no big deal? Sounds liike you're playing in magical Christmas land and Santa is the OL. Again if you heroes deliberately dumb down their strategy and choices then it tells a lot about why you would think the game is more balanced than I do. OL cards should all be placed face up similarly to class cards. You exhaust, you refresh, and so on. A separate deck with smaller/random upgrades should be what you draw each turn. Ultimately (inspired by a thread I saw on Blood Bowl TM for making it a LCG instead - for those who know the game), each monster group should have its own little deck where you draw one random effect each turn. Applying for FFG design team as we speak, lol. This is a great game and also the most unbalanced I've ever played. EVERYTHING is made to satisfy the heroes. But this is also a very classic way to design a RPG-like fantasy game. I still believe this game does a fantastic job at making the OL role interesting, but I think there is still some work to do to make the challenge more even. At the moment, the tools the OL has at disposal seem great on paper but impossible to use in practice.

Time of Need from Augur (Disciple) secures the stamina required to afford Death Rage every turn. But yeah, kill the support first then go for a one-shot to finish him off. Will let you know how it went (we play on thursday night).

I really do respect the work you have put down to allow the comparison in terms of earnt gold, and I think your analysis proves that the addition of the Nothing card seems to help to mitigate the issue with the gold. You could extrapolate your maths to 3-heroes and see if the conclusion remains the same. This said, with the exception of your comment about the +1XP for the LoW quests, you have only considered the heroes' perspective. It doesn't invalidate your analysis at all, but I think something is still missing from your rules to make up for the original issue with rumor quests. To me the issue is not just the gold. It's an overall balance issue that does not have much to do with Rumor quests in such, but are highly exposed by them. As the OL in all our campaigns (I have never played as a hero in this game), I feel like the incentive to play an extra quest [that is the Rumor quest] is close to nothing. Okay, bar theme, bar having-fun-tonight, bar give the heroes some air at the price of competitivity. There might be divergent opinions about what I'm going to say but hey please comment if you would. Feeling like I need to explain where I'm coming from first. Bluntly put, there are a few quests in this game which are auto-wins for heroes. Fewer are auto-wins for the OL. Then my experience with my playgroups and campaigns is that quests are far from 50/50 sided. I really need to play well in order to pull out a win. I misroll this attack that keeps me in the game and I lose on the spot. There are too many of these moments in the game. Heroes can miss an attack or two, it doesn't matter as much, far from it. They groan a bit when it happens because their standard is to deal 10 damage per attack, then somebody else attacks instead and does 12. I for my part cry when it happens to me because I suddenly cannot pull out enough damage regardless of other monsters I am yet to activate, they will just be able to recover it all. Then of course you have the Immobilize issue. I have Merriods too, but the difference is that every hero can shoot. I read some comments saying that some OLs have a high win ratio but I don't understand how. I win some quests, but might still lose the ones where I have good defense rolls because there are too many actions against me. This plus I am virtually instructed by the game NOT to play my plot deck because doing so gives away even more actions to my heroes and rerolls for these precious missed attacks from these heroes. Turn 1 mission accomplished and so on. So yeah, that's my situation and therefore adding a quest to the campaign has to be a HELL of a lot more interesting for me to even consider. I simply cannot afford it. Plot cards are largely overestimated and almost entirely situational. That makes earning threat tokens much less of an incentive to play a quest. Yes, I do get the threat token 95% of the time whenever a hero falls but that's just to keep my heroes on their toes knowing that I have access to these plot cards lined up all shiny next to the map. They're shiny because I virtually never use them. Cannot afford to play them. Their presence is more political than anything else really. And if I go nuts and start playing them, then I get more pressure from getting back these threats and the game turns into Hardcore Mode because of the broken Fortune tokens mechanism. Let's take OL relic cards now: they are so situational, as opposed to Hero relics which can be wielded all the time. I like some of them, but there is no point if nobody can wield it/can only wield one at a time/the lieutenant gets one-shotted before you can activate him/her. My conclusion for rumor quests in particular: it always feels like you're not going for the reward at all, you're going for the heroes not getting their reward. My heroes often pull out this Travel card forcing me to play a Rumor quest. I hate this card. My point is that this game is very challenging for the OL if your heroes know what they are doing. Therefore, you cannot afford to miss any opportunity to upgrade, and you cannot afford to play quests that will allow your heroes to kick your butt even harder. I am not playing games competitively normally, but I have to with this one. This aside, I am having a blast and wouldn't be here if I hadn't, but this game can be frustrating at times. How many times did I lose because of a dice roll? This is my take: the Act I rumor relics do a great deal helping the heroes smooth up the transition to Act II. I found that my heroes had good enough equipment to cope with the first Act II monsters and I did have a hell of a work to do during the interlude. As the OL considering Rumor quests, I would make sure: - the Heroes do not get out of control with the extra gold (you addressed that point) - the Heroes do not get a shopping phase for this quest - Everybody gets 1XP even if you lose - I get more XP or a useful OL card reward if I win. Or "take a class II card of your choice and add it to your deck". THAT would be nice. I have been toying with the idea of designing upgrade cards to monsters. Since people complain that only having act I and act II versions doesn't scale well enough with the heroes' constant upgrade process. Like, having a deck with cards with one-shot effects saying things like this: - This monsters gets 1 extra move point this turn. - This monster starts the encounter with an additional +2 Health. - This monsters gets 2 extra damage for the next attack. - Name a condition and select a monster at the beginning of an encounter. Target monster is immune to this condition for the rest of the encounter. - This monster heals up to 3 damage this turn. - Select a monster adjacent to a hero. This monster steals 50 gold from the Heroes and is allowed to escape through the Entrance/Exit. If defeated, return the gold. - Same as above with an unequipped item from the hero the monster steals from. - Same as above with a search item/potion. - This monster can attack with one additional green dice this turn. - This monster gains an additional brown dice for defense during this encounter. Etc. Following this logic, I would be happy to get hold of some of these upgrades as part of rumor quests. Like XP, I get to draw one upgrade card regardless of who won, then maybe +1/+2 if I win. Plot cards are messier to fix. They don't integrate well to the game and probably need to be addressed within their own mechanism. But maybe an emblem as a reward saying: "during an encounter, play any plot card for 0 threat cost and discard this emblem". That would be interesting. But of course, we are looking at some much bigger changes compared to the ones you described. I just fear that only fixing the gold issue would give an excuse for the Heroes to force the playgroup to assimilate these quests, although the Overlord still has no good reason to play them even with your change taken into account.

I would like to ask the community for input regarding the Death Rage card from the Berserker class deck. Basically it allows you +1 damage for each 2 damage on the Hero sheet if you spend a surge for it. Combined with the other Berserker class card giving you a free surge, and a hero with high health, that can turn into a **** load of damage. Here is the thing. I am going to play Gryvorn Unleashed (Finale of the Shadow Rune campaign) but I need a strategy as for keeping Death Rage in check somehow. What I don't want is to fight a severely injured Grisban who will then insta-kill Gryvorn or Zachareth with sick +5/+6 damage with an already deadly weapon (Rage Blade). I was thinking like this: Encounter 1: - Try to make Splig run away with his ritual component (the only one I wish to save) - Make Belthir and Sir Alric destroy as many search tokens as possible. I want no health/stamina potion in encounter 2! - Keep all OL cards for encounter 2 - Damage the heroes as much as possible? - No plot cards. Encounter 2: - Crushing Exhaustion the heroes while in range (Mirklace deck, willpower test - they fail then they suck up their whole stamina, plus it stays on them until they rest, so they have to waste an attack action) - Alpha-strike (well, in my turn) Augur with all or most OL cards. - Don't hurt Grisban much and Dominion him with Zachareth if in contact to force him to waste fatigue or move actions to get close again. - Dark Charm Logan to shoot himself and finish him off. - Kill Grisban. How? Death Rage will kill Gryvorn if I miss my opportunity. Any condition is particular I could use from Zachareth (Subdue)? Curse and Weakened seem best for close range, but Immobilized (obv. not for Logan) can be handy. thoughts? Logan wields Ice Storm too, which is a real pain. Maybe I should kill him first so I can move :-/

Speaking of Mirklace, they just spoiled the Lava Beetles in the news section, and I must admit they look more than decent if you´re looking for monsters with the Hot trait. Did they spoil Skarn's plot deck yet? I would be curious to look at it.

You can probably add Alric to that list. To be honest, I haven't been impressed with Mirklace at all. Finishing a campaign currently (just the Shadow Rune Finale to play) with 8 of his plot cards including his Majesty himself and a ton of threat available. Hot monsters are not a great selection in general and you can't enkindle a group every encounter for what it gives you. The card that forces the heroes to pass a test and upon failure suck up their whole stamina is the only true game changer in the deck, and basically the only one I'm looking for using in the Finale. The Agent is good in the quests where you need to block that corridor with a large monster. He is a rock. Apart from that nothing to be excited about. There is one card that makes you deal more damage and heals the monster if it has the hot trait, another costing nothing offering a demised hero to regain more health and fatigue to give you back some threat (useless and completely insane). The earth splitting one is an okay card that allows you to point at any spot on the map and move the heroes 2 or 3 spaces away of your choice if they fail a test. Just costs a million threat tokens overall. I mean, there is some utility in that deck, but 1- not enough good hot monsters available, even Hulks are a bit average to say the least 2- too expensive to pull out. Definitely tier 1 on the coolness factor though, just a bit of a wasted opportunity if you ask me from a pure application perspective. Bol Goreth is fine but I don't see the point of playing this deck aside from pairing it with Infector OL deck. Diseased and Poison are not completely inefficient but they are surely sub-tier conditions out of the lot. I think Ariad would do better if I was to make the decision in a vacuum. The one I find intriguing is Tristayne, he is my next pick for the next campaign.

Well, the Finale of the Shadow Rune campaign resolves the presence of Lieutenants based on the ones you've previously met (and killed). So in that regard the solution doesn't work well in that aspect, or at least gives an instant edge to the OL for the Finale (depending on which quest of the two obviously).

He can use Ariad as an agent in any quest when she's not there as a lieutenant. I would give Ariad a try if I were to choose between the three you mentioned (excluding Queen Ariad). The Serena deck feels completely pointless (healing that is) and Raythen seems very unfun for the heroes. Ariad is interesting without being stellar. Queen Ariad seems the best out of the 4 hands down (especially combined with Saboteur class), but you auto-excluded her by choosing the LoR campaign. I would pick Ariad. Mini looks cool. This said, with little restrospective from my own campaigns as the OL, I am seriously beginning to think that plot cards aren't worth the investment by a good mile. It surely spices up your experience and gives it some more theme from your own OL perspective, which I agree is a reason alone for trying it out especially if you intend to get the minis anyways. But at the end of the day what you have to give up for enabling meh OL-effects is a big deal for the heroes. These fortune tokens will kill you unless you time your plot card activation like a king, which you simply can't do most of the time. It results in the fact that you cannot consistently use your plot cards, and to me the very fact that you cannot play cards you have purchased is a severe limitation that shouldn't even be in the game. It punishes you too much for playing these cards and I don't like that. This is where I really wonder how other OLs are playing these cards from a pure practical experience. I think I play "some" plot cards something like once every 2-3 quests. Which is not very often at all. I just can't use them more often if I'm not sure I'm going to win the quest thanks to them. Which you cannot predict well because many cards need to be activated at the start of an encounter. That severely restricts the effectiveness of the plot cards. The only playable cards I've found are the ones that cost you nothing to play, or the ones that give you an instant edge for the threat investment (which is only a handful of cards in the huge plot card compendium full of enablers but lacking powerful one-shot effects). Even though you can still activate one single plot card during an encounter and limit your expense, many plot decks build on many cards activated at the same time. The agent card is one of the most useless of all, or at least highly overrated. Anyhow, have a feel about one of these plot decks and let us know what you think. EDIT: Merick is fine.

My worst painting experience with this game was the Goblin Archers. Yes, the nasty little gobos. Couldn't get anything to look okay on them due to their size. No problem with the Witchers, but the Archers... ****. Flesh Moulders were a pain too. As for the lieutenants I thought Merick was more difficult than all other Shadow Rune lieutenants combined (aside from Zachy's sword maybe since I wanted a lightning bolt on it).

The quests were designed in a "open information to all" mindset, so from a technical perspective there are no secrets the OL needs to keep, but that's assuming you share the quest info to your heroes (which you should be doing anyway). It's not only about the quest objectives, but also all special mechanisms and abilities the heroes need to understand in order to plan accordingly. Just like yourself as the OL. Otherwise if you follow the campaign story then yes you do have some unexpected events occuring, and these should better be kept under silence if you haven't played the related quests, but these have no direct effect on the quests aside from explaining the purpose of said quests and why certain characters are present or absent, I recommend that you keep your heroes informed about the story and not just play quests without knowing the purpose of it. It adds some value to your gaming experience. Moreover bear in mind if you run a campaign then you won't be playing all quests, therefore you won't know about every branches of the storyline. Nothing prevents you from reading it all, it has zero impact on the game itself, but I find it thrilling to leave them uncharted so we get the motivation to start the campaign again and play these branches at some point. As for solo play, I don't think it would be very satisfying at all. If you have spare time between your normal game sessions then I suggest you dedicate this time to paint the minis

I hear you. I now own everything 2E and probably have 60% unpainted. The Monsters and Heroes collections look too tempting to pass up, so I will soon add to the work. I picked up 4 expansions within a 30 day period, so I won't ever have an influx of this nature in the future. Sure is fun to play with them after they are painted and if you are patient the painting is pretty fun too. Yeah that's exactly how I see it. I'm lucky enough to work from home most of the time, so that's where my lunch breaks go basically unless I have something else to attend. But that's speed painting really, because it just takes too much time otherwise. I have most monsters painted now (I only did the Ironbounds from SoN) and the heroes we use currently (that's the scary part, because there's so many of them), and maybe half the lieutenants for the campaigns we run currently plus my plot agents. Mirklace is the one I have on my desk at the moment. But like you said, it is so relaxing/fun to paint. I have been a bit grumpy with some of the minis but otherwise it is something really cool to combine with work whenever you get the chance. Storage has been a concern lately, especially since I need to carry all of that stuff to our sessions

That's funny because I've never thought about that. I mixed up everything, but again the rulesbook states what can be mixed up or added, or maybe there is no mention about the challenge tokens? We've had maybe 6-7 secret rooms since we started playing the game, and we never considered the monsters could be coming from multiple expansions. Honestly, that just adds variation to the secret room thingy, I don't really see why I would keep both piles separate. The extra secret passage search card though I keep in the box, so we only run one of them in the deck.

Still haven't painted mine (Queen Ariad that is), but I appreciate that you posted a picture of yours so I can have a reference once that time has come. This game is KILLING me and my free time (which is basically none on the paper, lol), Oath of the Outcast is getting released soon and I am struggling getting every lieutenant ready for the next campaign!

To give you a short answer, as the OL just make sure you prepare your quests carefully (what the objectives are, so you can get the right focus) and select your open groups in consequence. Once your players have decided which heroes/classes they will be taking, have a peak at their overall strengths and weaknesses so you can pick your OL/plot cards accordingly. Most of this will come with time, after a couple of quests you will have a clear view of which heroes are taking which role, what they are good at or weak against etc. Start with Basis I OL deck first and just spare your first XP until you know where you want to spend them. But on a general note, as long as you have a feel about the quest and you don't just mess up with everything, you don't have to spend tons of time brainstorming. If the dices fail you you're toast anyway, lol. Just try to make informed decisions with the knowledge and experience you've got and you'll be fine (eg you'll have fun). Experience comes rather fast as an OL, you see which monsters are the better ones, you see which OL cards have done the most job etc. As a reference, I am running a 3-heroes campaign and a 4-heroes campaign in parallel, and up to now the 3-heroes campaign has been the most balanced by far. I'm not saying 4-heroes games are not as balanced in general (because that's the consensus), but I wouldn't automatically dismiss the idea that you can win some quests just because you only have three heroes to face you.

Not too sure how a playmat for this game would look like, considering the fact you can commit multiple players to a matchup (and probably want all cards to be visible) supporting two orientations (standing and knocked down). And that gets even worse with tournaments. Ball is on a card, cheating tokens are on the cards, upgrades can also be exhausted so again, two directions. Playmats tend to be suitable to games where cards stick to their dedicated spot. Sounds like the only playmat you could possibly get is for putting the matchup cards and the different star players/upgrades decks, e.g. not where the action is actually taking place.

Even with the confirmation that it would work, the use of that reinforcement rule alongside big agent dudes and its possible benefits/abuses seem marginal at best. In my opinion, there's nothing to be excited about really. They still seem very situational, precisely like any other agent. It doesn't make them any much better in my mind; from a pure theoritical perspective I agree that it would work wonders, but when I finally sit down and look for which quests would make sense with a big dude like them played as an agent, it doesn't strike me as an obvious thing to consider - like, at all - as much as I would have liked it to be. Many quests, if not most of them, either have special reinforcement rules or put reinforcements miles away from the action for big monsters like dragons and ettins to be worth an agent swap. It turns out in most situations that you simply evaluate whether you can replace a full open group with your Agent without even thinking about the slight possibility of an eventual reinforcement to matter in the end. Because it won't, things don't play out as planned in this game as the OL unless you're lucky like hell, and this "plan" about throwing a big body and landing a Shadow Dragon on top of the heroes after the agent died just seems just playing this game in magical Christmas land. I don't know about the other campaigns, but I have been running the Burning Ambition deck during the whole act I of the Shadow Rune campaign [and it was okay but not stellar], and looked at the possibility to purchase the Agent card, because, let's admit it, Mirklace 2.0 does kick some ass. Problem is, none of the three act II missions we're about to play allow me to exploit the reinforcement rule you guys are talking about. Would have been the same with Bol Goreth and the others. In addition, looking at the quest objectives, there is not really any sense for me to replace an open group by him except maybe as a blocker in the Lord Merick ritual quest if I wanted to put him in the first room of Encounter 2, which already seems like a stretch when considering the huge threat investment for a guy that will get slaughtered in a couple of rounds or simply passed by. Better take the Dragons and block the passage. In my opinion, Bol'Goreth, Mirklace and Queen Ariad agent cards are not worth the purchase. Like I wouldn't even touch them with a 5 feet pole. I don't know about Valyndra, guess she's in the same category. Note that I'm talking about the agents cards, not the plot decks. They all have good plot decks. I appreciate the power of these agents, but these cards are stone unplayable because of what you have to sacrifice for them to be worth playing, and even then you are not even close to a decent reward for doing so. Even Mirklace can die in one turn against the heroes I'm facing at the moment. Be happy to play them as Lieutenants instead. I think Agents are overestimated in general because of the stupid rule to discard the card upon their death. Most plot decks require threat being spent every quest (if not every encounter) to enable the plot effects and some more. I don't have 5 threats to spend every quest to buy back Mirklace, and he WILL die if I play him. If he wins me the quest would I still play him? No, because it means I get short on Threat for the finale and the quests I absolutely need to win (because of relics). I would play my whole plot deck before I would cast its Agent.

I use Gesso white from Liquitex. A much more environmental-friendly solution than spray primers. Doesn't intoxicate me or my kids sleeping next door, Don't need the gloves, don't need all the pricy setup etc. Above all is not dangerous and dries very fast. I don't know if the result is in pair with spray primers but I have found it to be satisfactory enough for my own painting skills. From what I read though it looks like more and more painting pros say it's more than decent. It also costs nothing.

Play the campaign twice instead with different heroes. Let the players pick the quests you haven't played yet whenever they have the possibility. Progressively you will be able to cover them all. I have played certain quests 3 times and some none at all, this way I can look forward playing the same campaign again and hope for somebody to pick up these ones we haven't done yet. But if we don't, no big deal. I guess the replayability of this game (which is huge anyway for plenty of other reasons) does suffer a bit if you go through every single quest in one go. You would prefer to keep alive that element of freshness you can feel whever when start a new quest. I don't mean the campaign is garbage once you've played all of the quests in it, every campaign has its unique setup and experience, but you sort of kill a % of the fun if you don't follow the story the way the quest book tells you to. Both my playgroups for instance have only met four out of the six lieutenants in the Shadow Rune campaign and they are genuinely intrigued by the two others they haven't met yet. They see the mini and have huge respect for it, I'm not in their heads but I think they would enjoy going back to the start of the campaign and choose a different path so that they can get to meet these two dudes.

If you take the picture at the top of this thread you can see two of the three stadiums block one specific skill each. The third one forces a limit of 2 players per team at the matchup (which is even worse), I mean we don't know exactly how this will play out and what other stadiums there are, but if this is not a huge limitation then I don't know how to call it. About the rewards, again we barely know anything in present state, but blocking the whole passing skill for the "reward" of getting one extra fan doesn't seem very balanced to me as a coach deciding to commit players to a matchup. If you want to put up for the challenge to negate your base strategy and not reward the coach afterwards, that doesn't sound like there is any consideration to make at all. That's just the general feeling I have about these stadiums with the information I have currently. Personally I want a game of BBTM to provide me with choices, as opposed to forcing me to either make bad decisions by commiting players to a matchup with no possibility to use my key strategy and close to nothing to reward me for doing so, or forcing me to avoid such matchups and narrow down the number of matchups I can consider throwing players to. Moreover it adds a huge layer of randomness to the game that is not necessarly needed. What if you play Wood Elves or Skavens and you draw the three stadiums in the above picture plus the random one? Doesn't sound appealing to me at all at the moment. But then players could decide in the last expansion which rules they were going to add and I guess nothing forces players to use Stadiums at all.