Speculation time, woohoo!
I don't think there is a Descent 3.0 coming anytime soon, because I don't see any reason for doing one, and if I say that then it must be true. Anyway, sales are good for this game, there are apps on the market, gameplay is established regardless if there are grey areas or not, and there seems to be a dedicated fan-base despite concurrent products hitting the market constantly with arguably better gameplay and (not so arguably) miniatures. Releasing D3E would necessarly mean releasing new gameplay, as you don't just release a new game to put new templates on your cards and I think the miniatures are still okay for quite some time (we'll see if they still meet the standards in 1-2 years time, though... some games are currently releasing miniatures that completely puts the FFG ones to shame).
Which is good for the wallet. I'm starting a Gloomhaven campaign next time and for once I don't have to worry about having to interrupt the campaign to come back to Descent because an expansion just got released by FFG, which happened to us all the time.
There is also this general trend nowadays to streamline games to death when releasing new iterations. I like streamlining as a process, as I am not the kind of person enjoying games taking ages to finish, but there's still a danger that something working properly gets dumbed down to oblivion just to be able to advertise the game to a broader public. I´ll pass on the artistic direction going anime instead of oldschool role play art to attract the masses (videogamers in particular).
Sometimes it is good to wait for feedback before releasing more products. We´'ve been spoiled with tons of material. I feel like the latest campaigns were on the edge of exploring new directions for the game, although they did not go all the way and were made a bit too conservatively to my taste. Maybe (this is speculation) FFG is coming to a crossroad where they could either release more "stuff" to enrich the game without touching the core gameplay (in which case there is no rush), or design new types of campaigns introducing more interesting mechanisms, therefore extending the product's life. The latter being a bit risky.
There must be a roadmap for this game, and I think the most plausible reason for the lack of recent news is that the game is not prioritized at the moment, possibly because the game has already a lot of content and sells well anyway, so focus is put on other product lines trying to grow to that level of establishment.

There is nothing in this topic that presents any concrete information about anything, nothing that we didn't know about. There is no informative analysis of why the dude thinks so or anything that can even remotely justify starting a thread/post about it. Let's be clear, people are having a bad feeling about this, start up a thread about it and then go prophetic about it. Meanwhile we get constant stream of new people saying how cool Descent is that read this crap about speculations that are not even true or interesting to discuss (for lack of info or facts). If I was bored I would go over to BGG and systematically respond to these guys. It's doing a ton of harm to the Descent fan base currently and I´m really upset about it.
 

Oh, so you didn't see any "news" posted for a few weeks for this game, and therefore it must be dead. After all Manor of Ravens got just released, the H&M collections are stil going, there is a need for a 3rd big box right know because, frankly, content-wise, Descent is piss-poor. Oh and we want balance as well, and enough playtesting. Just wow. That's bad of you FFG, really bad. Especially since you don't have 10 years of replayability with this game and expansions already, FFG has to slow down on the mental release schedule for this game. Better off selling it on eBay before the game goes down. It's a shame to be such a bad owner.
For the record, I also exlusively play games based on hotness factor. No hot anymore? We dump it in the garbage. Doesn't matter if the game is good, if manufacturer doesn't have the ability to supply us with expansions at the pace we want then it surely loses some steam. Heck, people are deserting this game.
 

Based on the position of the stars, in conjunction with the current information from some BGG fellows talking like they knew anything, you are absolutelty right. Anyway. That's a TON of assumptions and I fail to see the point to even write them in a post. Making conclusions out of stone nowhere.
 

I realized something similar when I saw Arcane Wonders were releasing another game than Mage Wars. It has to be that Mage Wars is a dead game. Also, last time I checked, www.mylittlepony.D3E.com was not taken, so I guess we can all assume some strong theming in the next edition of Descent.
Now I´ll be nice and tell you that you don't have to worry. Seriously, I mean it. Descent is a fine game, will probably get a 3E at some point but not right now, you will get your new boxes at a somehow slower pace but we will get there, you will see.

I share your situation as well.
Edited my previous post to explain my view a bit better.
And yes, I thought "how boring" when they released information about the co-op expansion. Now don't get me wrong, I'm sure I would enjoy playing a co-op game of Descent, I'm sure it is interesting and well-made, I have no doubts about that. I am happy FFG released it when I see how many people were asking for something of that kind. I just felt this way because I thought ah well, back to traditional dungeon crawl. I also like random maps and full co-op but I feel like there are a lot of other good games at it, and would rather keep Descent 2E as my little niche game with these awesome twists no other games have. Plus the minis can always be ported to any other game system I suppose.

Well, it clearly points to the past, that's for sure A vast majority of adventure games sees a party of heroes fighting against a semi-automated monster control system. So yeah, they're all co-op, apart from the Wizwar ones where you also get to bash at each other, but they probably belong to another category.Is co-op better because there is no Overlord? Or do you mean the map should be random? Feel free to think any of this, but Descent 2E is not that game you wish it was. This said, I'm really glad the co-op expansion allows for meeting players' demands, like yours, but again, please respect the people who like D2E as it is and do not make these players believe Descent is done as a game, as if there would only be one possible direction for the game: the co-op direction. It's not. There IS a future for normal Descent 2E and assuming a vast majority of people would want the co-op direction to take over the game is a gross exageration. I'm really happy Forgotten Souls is having so much success and I hope it will promote D2E as a whole and not only the co-op elements of the game.
Gameplay-wise, D2E i far, far more modern than any Hero Quest, Warhammer Quest, even Myth or Arcadia Quest (which are in fact more recent) and the likes. The co-op expansion brings something more traditional to Descent. It doesn't mean the mechanisms are archaic or something, I'm sure it has its own modernity, but it's just a purely traditional way to play dungeon-crawls at its core. Therefore I strongly encourage people I know to try out D2E, because it's nothing like I´ve played before. It would be a shame if this game had to fall into darkness because people assume the only way to play dungeon crawls is to do it the traditional way.
I have no problems with people who think D2E is unsatisfying and wait for D3E or the co-op releases to take off, but I have a big problem with people who want to force their overly negative feeling about D2E upon the people who enjoy it. That's lame. It's great we can discuss and criticize, but the "D2E is dead/should be IA" people should keep their rant constructive and bear in mind the fact people come to these forums because the game is ALIVE. We're not here to convince players that they should stop having faith in D2E because "IA is soooo much better" or "co-op: the ONLY possible future for that wreck of a game". Seriously guys, shut up. At least here on the D2E forums.
If they announce something drastic like the 3rd edition or a 100% co-op direction for Descent then sure, let's talk about it. But for now people just assume things and I haven't got any indication that FFG would bury "classic D2E" for one or another reason.
I understand that you mean that co-op expansions should be promoted in the future, and I agree with that, but I strongly disagree that it should be done at the expense of the regular product line for Descent.
Likewise, I'm happy if Imperial Assault is doing well if it can promote Descent in form of getting positive influence out of other good mechanisms out there. This said I like the fact D2E is unique in its genra so blending it with other products or borrowing some gameplay elements might imply that the game loses a bit of her soul. I am no purist, in fact I would like this game to evolve as much as possible, but I would want it to keep its spirit. So yeah, you got it, what I cannot stand is the automatical dismissal/denial of D2E just because somebody think some other things might be cooler. It's fine to prefer other games over Descent, but you don't have to spit in other people's soup.

Thanks for explaining your view.
I also think some of the gameplay would have been much better (especially less prone to inbalance) had it been done a different way. I too have ideas about how this game could have been made better, and I would be really happy if some of these ideas were put to trial and represented in the next edition, but as for now I am globally happy with the game. It is currently keeping 9 persons (from different groups) on their toes, and they are asking for more.
I agree about the fairness issue of winning the campaign off the Finale alone. My view though is that even though it puts a bad taste in the mouth of both winner and loser, if you look retrospectively at the campaign as a whole and look for the epic moments you've had, I think there is still some satifaction to get out of the game. I like to win obviously, but I sleep better after a fierce fight I lost than a cheap win I got off Dash or a mistake from my opponents.

I'm confused. What bugs are you talking about?
Will FFG plan for a 3rd edition at some point? Eventually, yes. Is this the answer you wanted to get? Not sure what your point is.
I really wonder why people think D2E is done. Right now the people demanding D3E are the people who openly criticize D2E's design (LoS, overlord, fixed map, which are all strong design choices, not bugs..), which are legion on these forums. But to me this point is applicable to any game you don't like whether it's had a short life or a long one. I don't understand why people feel the urge to press FFG for a third edition for a game that is completely fine. Like I said, if you don't like D2E then it's in your right to gather your points and put them forth to the community, but what I really dislike is the way it is put which forces the D2E players who like the game to rally to the idea that a 3rd edition is on its way while it's not. Don't force these people to think D2E is done. It might not be your intention but that´s how it looks like, combined with the rest of these other IA threads.
A non-debate in my opinion, at least until you can explain what you think are the inherent flaws of D2E or bugs that "require" a new edition so we can get rid of them (yeah, as if a new edition would magically sort everything out anyways...). I don't think everybody shares that idea of the game.

Ok, let me clarify this.
I know there are a lot of things that need clarification, many interactions that are not obvious from the rules, unintuitive situations occur from time to time etc. I'm not blind to the fact FFG should at some point release a big errata/corrected cards for these situations to facilitate our future games, or at least centralize the information somewhere in a big handy document you can print out. This being said, these "issues" have never put me in a situation where I sat and considered stopping playing this game because it was too much for me to handle. I don't know, there is a lot of support to be found on the internet. Once you find the information, you're set.
I get that some of these situations can be annoying, like these one-sided quests for instance, but when you do the research, you almost always find that these quests can be done by both sides assuming the correct combination of abilities/heroes/monster choices is met. I know it's not comforting, but every quest cannot be made 50/50 sided I guess, but that's a good thing because it forces one side to go all-in. Since each game has its own setting, there will inevitably be quests of that kind, I guess. I mean, I don't think the game can be perfect considering all of these factors.
I guess there are also different levels of "bugs", but most of them I consider to be the result of the amazing number of abilities, equipments, quest settings and other combinations of things that is currently occupying 6 boxes on my shelf. I'm not saying some of these flaws are not obvious sometimes and shouldn't have been caught during the quality assurance process, but people need to realize that playing a game with many powers and infinite combinations of them is always going to lead to situations where players need to sit down and make a decision for lack of better guidance.
My point being that if you bar the very very few number of crazy situations (which you can house rule away if they're that bad), it comes down to your attitude towards the game. You can nit pick everything and demand a 3rd edition, or you can enjoy the game as it is and be prepared to make decisions during these tough calls. So yeah, I'm all ears to these "issues" but I don't need to bury my head into the sand if I am just prepared to meet these situations. Don´'t know if this clarified my view
Still, I really would like to know what's that "unbearable" with D2E for the people who think so.

I have a few "dead games" at home that I keep coming back to. Not sure why the fact they´'re dead (as in no more expansions will be released) would make me play them less.
I think you can have fun with Descent even if the game is discontinued. I´'d almost say grab it before it runs out if you´re that interested.
But if you´'re fine with waiting for a 3rd edition or whatever is coming next, you have other games on the market that are really cool too. I guess my point is that Descent, despite its uniqueness, is not the only game out there.

I can't speak for Indalecio of course, but personally I think if you're going down the servant route, you shouldn't go any farther than Call of the Ravens in the Unkindness deck. The cards are pretty unimpressive, with maybe the exception of Sudden Flurry.
The Soulbinder deck has far, far  better cards. Dark Silhouette, Possessive and Unblinking are excellent, and the deck caps off with the absolutely devastating "Danse Macabre". Plus, all the cards that work on Servants also work on the Ravens, so in a way you are also leveling up them as well.

Hi guys,
I´m finally done writing my guide to OL cards, which you can find at the following link:
Guide to Overlord Cards
Hope you find it useful. Don't hesitate to comment on the list directly, so we can centralize eventual discussions at one place.

Even more significantly, all the Unkindness cards that affect a "servant" also affect the Scourge.
Similarly, Soulbinder cards can be used on the Ravens. This opens up many new possibilities.
Honestly the two base servant cards are the two best cards you can purchase every campaign, in my view.
Generally the amount of value you can get out of servants far exceeds what you'd get from upgrading one of the 15 cards in your Overlord deck.

I don't play solo board games: for me the primary goal is socializing, and if nobody wanna play a game, well, too bad for a game.

I truly do understand your frustration, as "rule lawyers" are never much fun to play with.  If this is his general approach, be prepared for some very un-fun times, as there are many, many situations in FFG's writing style of rules, cards, etc. for this game that are not 100% clear, or "explicitly stated" as you reference.
It often takes a flexible mind, much patience, and REASONABLE people/discussions to get the most out of the game.  Quite frankly, this is specifically why Sadgit's CRRG is such a big help; we knew we could not rely on FFG, so we created a fan made extensive rules guide.

Even after all the expansion content released thus far, the Runemaster is still the most powerful Mage in the game and the Mana Weave is one of the best items in the game.
Knight is also arguably the strongest Warrior, and the Disciple is best healing option within the base game.
They are making best-in-slot skill and item choices so far it sounds like too.
With just the base game the Overlord doesn't have as many tools. I'd say the Warlord deck would help you score kills - with excellent cards like Blood Rage and Expert Blow. Without Labyrinth of Ruin you don't have to worry about the Rune Plate making your life even more difficult than it is right now.
For monster picks within the base game, your options are limited. Shadow Dragons are a great large monster, but with a 3 hero team you only get 1, making it significantly worse. Goblin Archers are usually a safe and effective choice if you keep the Master safe. Cave Spiders aren't too bad either in Act II as they have solid damage output. Blast can be countered with proper monster positioning.
From your description sounds like you're playing within the rules correctly. Keep in mind that one of the best ways  to defeat the heroes is to separate them from one another so they can't support each other as effectively. Dark Charm should almost always be used to perform the move action to go away from the objective and other heroes, rather than the attack. Immobilizing the Runemaster with Web Trap is quite effective as well. They can't put out their top-tier damage output if they can't reach their targets.
Its generally believed that 3 hero games also favor the heroes due to the monster group limits. If you want an optimally balanced game, see if you can't get 4 heroes next time. One easy way to do this if you can't get more players is to suggest one of the players control an additional hero, or have a 'communal' hero whose actions are decided in a rotation.
Even though expansion content can't legally be added to a game that is already in progress, I'd say the greatest power boost to the Overlord you can get in any single expansion is Manor of Ravens. The Unkindness deck's Call of the Ravens card is nearly broken in power - providing the Overlord with a 1XP card that creates reusable companion monster that will provide ongoing pressure to the heroes in the form of additional damage, as well as an assistant to perform objectives/open doors/block corridors/soak up hero actions/etc. Its especially silly on quests where reinforcements occur at start of turn, as the Ravens can be summoned just prior to the reinforcement to make the summon 'free', or 'better than free', by finishing off a weakened or condition-afflicted monster so that a fresh one can be spawned in its place. The heroes are punished whenever they leave any monster less than completely eliminated. For example, heroes will often like to leave a monster poisoned and with 1 health remaining, or Immobilized away from the team rather than eliminate it. It can save actions and may even deny a reinforcement.. The Ravens often negate this strategy. They also scale their damage into Act II by getting an additional yellow die.
Manor of Ravens also gives you access to the Bandit monster group, which is one of the most powerful and over-statted monster groups in the game and is an optimal monster pick in most situations where Wildneress/Civ open group is available.
Its borderline unfair, but they're using a min-max hero composition against you - so I wouldn't feel too bad
Finally, if you're still on the ropes even after all that - pick a top tier Plot Deck like Baron Zachareth or Tristayne Olliven and really make the heroes cry! See Indalecio's great guide to plot decks on BGG.

Ultimately I think Gloomhaven needs to stay Gloomhaven and Descent needs to stay Descent. I like both for different reasons and I don't feel like a game being a mix of these two would make a better game necessarly. I think both have strong cases and rely on different pros, and they also have their own flaws as well.
In terms of things that "could be" ported into Descent without altering the very essence of the game:
- I like the hexes too. AoE attacks are more targeted, moving feels more natural (Descent feels like Hero Quest-y in that), diagonal movement is removed, better way to handle pull and push effects. Only downsides are that the map layout can look a bit weird sometimes, and doors don't work very well.
- Remove terrain from Descent maps and use the tokens instead. Art takes a hit, but it makes tiles way more replayable. For custom quests that must be a huge benefit. Also that also means you can have abilities to remove terrain (like the Cragheart who throws enemies on obstacles to destroy them), which is an interesting option.
- Keep the dices in Descent, but make more variation, as in dice customization. Dice Forge allows for a total customization of your dice and I´d like to see this in a game like Descent.
- Gloomhaven dumbed down silly LoS rules to oblivion... and I think it works a lot better this way for my personal needs. Sure, it becomes less tactical in terms of positioning but the game flows way better and gone are the discussions on whether any given figure gets LoS or not.
- I like traps on the map that go away when you walk on them.
- It feels like some Descent abilities could use a cooldown so they don't get spammed turn after turn. In Gloomhaven they are one-offs (to some extent), which means they FEEL powerful, unlike in Descent when casting your lvl 3 card feels like the all day long every day thing to do.
- The element system is very nice and encourages co-operation. It's a nice touch which gives a little variation, namely (for those who aren't familiar with Gloomhaven) that you get added effects if you use an element, or you can wake elements by doing some of your actions. If player A creates Wind then player B can be enticed to using an ability that uses Wind for better throughput.
 
There isn't much more, some stuff is a way more tricky to introduce:
- Conditions in Gloomhaven are very similar to Descent's but they are tied to the card-driven game engine. A few could see some use in Descent, like Disarm (weaker Stun to remove attack action) or Muddle (disadvantage on attacks, could be implemented in Descent). Invisible condition sounds insane for a game like Descent, though.
- Descent doesn't scale very well to power creep, the act-driven campaign system, XP system and OL card purchase systems would need to be revisited to accomodate an open world type of campaign system like in Gloomhaven. Not sure Descent would be Descent after that, though.

New physical content needed badly!

Speculation time, woohoo!
I don't think there is a Descent 3.0 coming anytime soon, because I don't see any reason for doing one, and if I say that then it must be true. Anyway, sales are good for this game, there are apps on the market, gameplay is established regardless if there are grey areas or not, and there seems to be a dedicated fan-base despite concurrent products hitting the market constantly with arguably better gameplay and (not so arguably) miniatures. Releasing D3E would necessarly mean releasing new gameplay, as you don't just release a new game to put new templates on your cards and I think the miniatures are still okay for quite some time (we'll see if they still meet the standards in 1-2 years time, though... some games are currently releasing miniatures that completely puts the FFG ones to shame).
Which is good for the wallet. I'm starting a Gloomhaven campaign next time and for once I don't have to worry about having to interrupt the campaign to come back to Descent because an expansion just got released by FFG, which happened to us all the time.
There is also this general trend nowadays to streamline games to death when releasing new iterations. I like streamlining as a process, as I am not the kind of person enjoying games taking ages to finish, but there's still a danger that something working properly gets dumbed down to oblivion just to be able to advertise the game to a broader public. I´ll pass on the artistic direction going anime instead of oldschool role play art to attract the masses (videogamers in particular).
Sometimes it is good to wait for feedback before releasing more products. We´'ve been spoiled with tons of material. I feel like the latest campaigns were on the edge of exploring new directions for the game, although they did not go all the way and were made a bit too conservatively to my taste. Maybe (this is speculation) FFG is coming to a crossroad where they could either release more "stuff" to enrich the game without touching the core gameplay (in which case there is no rush), or design new types of campaigns introducing more interesting mechanisms, therefore extending the product's life. The latter being a bit risky.
There must be a roadmap for this game, and I think the most plausible reason for the lack of recent news is that the game is not prioritized at the moment, possibly because the game has already a lot of content and sells well anyway, so focus is put on other product lines trying to grow to that level of establishment.

It saddens me to realize that misconception that Evil [in game] always has to lose in the end exists in some circles. Playing Descent as a way to entertain the hero players as opposed to the clash of two factions, is completely missing the point of the game in my opinion. It's completely childish of the hero players to force the overlord player to play dumb otherwise they wouldn't have fun. If the gap between the OL player skills and the hero players skills is huge, then the Overlord player should be trying to close that gap by sharing key information and making the hero players make informed decisions. If human beings cannot communicate between them in an attempt to make everybody happy, then playing a game like Descent might be a very bad idea at the first place...

Me too.I´m having a hard time thinking that somebody who really disliked HoB for balance reasons would like any of the other campaigns, tbh.
I hope to be wrong, and I really don't want to judge anybody on anything, but it's very likely that somebody has had a bad experience of the campaign, or at least some of the quests in it, and therefore the campaign sucks overall, following that logic. I will preface my future response to this explanation by warning that some players have expressed or left the impression that people should have the core expectation that the game should be just balanced at all levels, quest, campaign included. Now we can pretty much agree that people really don't want to start a new quest thinking they have no chance of winning it, obviously. Truth is, you can win ANY quest, but the variance in difficulty will always vary between the two extremes. Why? Because the heroes have one configuration, itself being the combination of many factors, and the overlord also has his/her own configuration. Access to a monster monster type can make a quest much easier. Access to a specific shop item can also make some quests a lot easier. The array of possibilities is what is balanced in this game. You lack AoE effects? Buy Blast effects. You are vulnerable to a particular ability? Go around it or buy an item that makes you stronger against it. The list goes on.
It's an asymetrical game, so you can never really quantify balance or fairness between the sides at instant T of a given campaign. The tools for the job for each side are radically different. You can of course quantify the number of wins and losses, but you cannot ev en compare Hero XP with Overlord XP. It really has no equivalence.
So yeah, the game is NOT balanced in that regards. It is a game of affecting the scales, at all times, really. It's a game of ping-pong, I buy an OL card to be better at something, then the heroes buy cards to be better at defending themselves against it. Heroes buy crazy weapons, then I use a specific monster type against it due to immunity to some of this power creep.
More often than not quests look balanced once you´ve gone through the quest objectives and the players (including the overlord) are positioning themselves. Some few quests feel unbalanced, because an earlier decision or purchase made the quest lean towards one side rather than the other. That's part of the game.
Then you can lose badly on a dice roll. Or a card draw. That sucks. But that's luck. Just be prepared for these situations where you think you can pull off something and fail miserably at it based on sheer bad luck.
EDIT: updated my text to get rid of the ridiculous "variance will invariably vary"

Porting D&D heroes into D2E sounds like a good idea. But using Ashardalon as a monster also sounds like a ton of fun. Or these elementals from the most recent expansion. Even the tiles were good in that expansion (for a WotC product). They´re way better than Gloomhaven's anyway
You know they´'re releasing Tomb of Annihilation soon for even more D&D joy you could throw into Descent?
 

I am not sure that Atom4geVampire, who created and maintained d2etracker, is still into Descent. A couple of months ago, he had to drop out of a number of play-by-forum games over at BGG due to personal stuff and has not returned yet. I hope he is well.

Some time ago a friend of mine mentioned that it should be possible to write off a burn condition by stepping into a water space.
 
 

Some time ago a friend of mine mentioned that it should be possible to write off a burn condition by stepping into a water space.
 
 

When you draw a treasure chest card, it is custom to prepare your cell phone, then slowly reveal the card to your overlord, and catch his dismay on picture. 
Then up here in the North, we generally celebrate with mead and moose slices on the side. Except the overlord, who must get out naked, dive in the near frozen lake, and warm up in the sauna next to the gaming room. Don't tell me a sauna is not a cool thing you'd always want in your board gaming cave. Many a quests have been played in places like these, at least in this area of the globe.

The Bilehall/Chains combination is still a big question-mark to me. They're both good expansions in terms of components, art, mechanisms, story, etc. but I'm still not sure FFG thought these out well enough in terms of game balance.
I have to play more of these campaigns in even more different settings to get a clear picture, but from what I could experience myself, the "Descent hardcore-mode" these two boxes seem to imply sort of invalidate more than half the cards in the game, as players are effectively pushed to play cutthroat to even stand a chance. I like playing competitively, but in that case it was more like planning for the best possible action otherwise you're screwed (ie no room for testing the waters, or for recovering from bad luck). That includes the tainted cards mechanism, which I like very much on paper (plus they're funny to read) but that we (all sides) found as causing the game become swingy as hell. The heroes have zero reason not to spec or buy items toincrease their health to unseen levels or to boost their defense, which means the OL has to chew through 100+ shared health with various levels of defense (making Knight awesome for instance) and can do nothing else in the meantime (like denying treasure chest). That means you HAVE to pick the same monsters over and over as your open groups because there are so few monsters that can achieve that required level of attacking potential. Similarly, the OL has zero reason not to hoard every card and then go for an alpha strike; the heroes then get swamped in a area of the map as they lose their revival tactics (a key feature of the game btw) and waste tons of actions trying to heal few points of damage all game instead of evaluating the risk of getting killed when taking a different action.
Strategy has taken a hit in these campaigns, and so has variance in the game, because I think the classes (both heroes and OL) that were barely playable before became stone unplayable in these. Yeah, I´ll add an Infection token on your hero so I can get +1 damage on your 16 health 3 defense dice rolling hero with the cloak that makes damage go to stamina. A bit pointless?
I thought earlier that other campaigns did that too to some extent, but Bilehall/Chains seem to take the cake here. Bluntly put, you can say goodbye to a lot of subpar cards just because you cannot afford making subpar choices in these campaigns, which is a shame. I´'ve painfully experienced a few attempts to test some OL cards and monsters in a couple of campaigns where I was already way ahead of my opposition just to witness how it could swing back to me and put me in a difficult position later in the campaign. It's not forgiving in any way, and I would argue that it wasn't that fun either. In another campaign, Bilehall (famous for being OL favored) was so hard for the heroes that Chains (advertised as being more heroes-favored to compensate for the Bilehall nonsense) became a joke. We were finishing encounters in 30 minutes time, and I think I ended the campaign with 5 unspent XP. The first encounter of the Finale (Profane Nexus I think) was arguably on the same level of balance as Death on the Wing enc 2 with a win turn 2 or 3. For the Finale it was quite a poor experience in our opinion. I played this one three times with the same hero opposition and they tried different tactics that I could easily anticipate.
As standalone campaign maybe it's fine, but with Bilehall involved I don't see how you can recover from the Bilehall heroes-ownage later in Chains.