I largely prefer the drafting mechanism in this game. BBTM is based on your ability as a manager to obtain upgrades and star players so to me the need to customize the team upon setting up the game feels over the top. I like the game as it is.

I largely prefer the drafting mechanism in this game. BBTM is based on your ability as a manager to obtain upgrades and star players so to me the need to customize the team upon setting up the game feels over the top. I like the game as it is.

I'll go get it as soon as it gets released. For the teams mainly.
 
It all looks cool, but I'm not so sure at all about the stadiums thingy. I don't think this game needs any more restrictions for how you can play your cards, and that's exactly what stadiums seem to be doing. So I play Humans but I cannot use the pass skill (or use enchanted ball with pass skill) in that stadium,? Great... What a nerf to my team. Stadiums to me need to be neutral. I'm not opposed to introducing cards (abilities or upgrades) that would negate/blank out a particular ability for a round, but just plain forbidding said ability for a whole matchup, no thank you. So you play Wood Elves and the tournament is in this stadium blanking out your Sprint ability? Think twice before you commit players there buddy.
 
Then I just hope the rules around the referree system won't be too random.

It's you against them basically, so tensions will naturally arise.
 
The typical situation that has been occuring a lot in my playgroups is when you get to use a rule or ability that your heroes had not seen coming. They can get really frustrated. Like, if your heroes do not know what your monsters have for abilities, then you activate Knockback on a Hulk and throw a hero into the lava. You may say that your heroes could have asked about it earlier, but you are also responsible somehow for going through every component supposed to be visible to all players. I go through monsters prior to starting the encounter but I also go through Plot cards so we can avoid BS discussions afterwards where heroes basically accuse me to pull off cheap/cheaty wins out of abilities they did not know I possessed. Basically heroes have troubles with the OL hiding OL cards since they all have everything visible on the table so it is easy for them to blame me for deliberately missing out some rules or pointers over the course of the game. 
 
Of course if you have an equally knowledgeable partner across the table then it helps a great deal.
 
The most recent situation of that kind was interesting. They basically wanted to grant a downed hero a Valor token for the reason that I could get an Infection token off the atttack killing off that hero. "If you can can do it, we can do it, period". That was tense.

I respectfully disagree with you and Kunzite on this particular point.  You may have a different experience of the game and I respect that, but as far as my playgroups are concerned, OL rewards have never been at the centre of discussion as a critical object to either allow or deny for securing a win in a quest or even in the long term. OL relics have very marginal use, and heroes can often control them quite easily whenever the OL gets the chance to field them. Extra XP for the OL changes nothing as the OL cannot control his draws anyway. You can buy all the OL cards in the world and still lose terribly. The only way you can remedy that is giving up on encounter 1 and gather your whole deck in your hand upon starting encounter 2, which is arguably a cheaty way to put the odds in your favor. If that is what is required then it tells as much about balance in this game in general. In comparison, heroes can buy one good bow off the item shop deck and win every single encounter thanks to it thereafter. Extra XP means you can buy a card earlier than expected but I don't think it affects anything in the grand scheme of things. On the other hand, hero rewards, or whether getting them or giving up on them (for grabbing money instead) is the great question and the only one that has any real relevance.
 
Talking about skill level of the OL is just an easy way to say that if you can't manage your heroes and be in control in a campaign then it's probably because you lack experience. The only part of that I would agree with is that if your OL does not have the balls nor the wits to put up a decent challenge then he/she's pretty much screwed, raw luck aside. Apart from that, this game is random enough to make a OL with any skill level lose, and I will claim that equally skilled heroes will be in better position for defeating an overlord and his minions given the arsenal of possibilities they have access to thorough the campaign. 
 
In the best of the worlds I would wish that the game wasn't that hard on the Overlord so we could allow more players to play this role. I'm happy being the Overlord because I'm a total masochist in that game and get huge satisfaction destroying my opposition with a swipe or complex sequence of awesome plays that stupefy my audience. Yeah, it's a big show and even if they mock the actor most of the times they sometimes stop and look at you like you're Jesus fraking Christ. I love that. But right now nobody else would remotely like to replace me on a future campaign. Not a question of how clever my players are, just the fact that the Overlord is clearly not a role for everyone. I don't like the elitist part of that design, that's all. So speaking about the skill level of the OL only seems to emphasize on that accessibility issue.
 
Extra gold for the heroes is always better than any OL reward. I am adamant on that point. The sheer power of the items in the shop decks is the primary source of upgrade for the heroes, with class cards as a distant second. With good gear you can go all the way in a campaign. I will go even further and say that any weapon in the shop deck is better than any of the OL relics you can get (Staff of Dominion being an exception maybe). This is where you would typically disagree because what's actually printed on the card may prove me wrong for some of the better OL relics, but my point is that it doesn't matter what's printed on the card. It can say that you automatically defeat a hero on a surge or anything you like. You simply cannot use relics the way heroes use gear, you don't have access to them a huge % of the time, and when you do your Lieutenant can be managed by the heroes just as easily anyway. No need to have experienced hero players to do that as long as they have a rough idea of what the OL is toying with in terms of monsters and abilities.
 
I'm not saying you won't get a good mileage out of a relic on occasion, but I don't think that situation is very common to say the least.

I largely prefer the drafting mechanism in this game. BBTM is based on your ability as a manager to obtain upgrades and star players so to me the need to customize the team upon setting up the game feels over the top. I like the game as it is.

That is a pretty hard line to take. Especially for RPG players, who may want something lighter than a full blown RPG campaign which does not take so much prep. Yes Descent is designed as a competitive game, but it can also be fun as a kind of light RPG with only slight adjustments to mindset and play style. And even that does not mean the Overlord has to let the heroes win. PC's die all the time in my RPG games. Saying "play it hard, or play something else" seems excessive, and limits the appeal of Descent to only hardcore competitive gamers, which is unfair in my opinion.
 
Also, knowing that there is the possibility of losing, is different from knowing that there is no possibility of winning, which is how I felt a time or two playing Descent 1E with a particularly ruthless Overlord player, and is what one of my players expressed after this particular finale.

As always, the sceptical have the biggest mouth, so it can lead to some spicy situations. In that case I was so tired of the bs that I didn't even get the balls to check for a FAQ entry and granted them the **** token since it was such a particular situation. But yeah, at this precise time, there was a me versus them situation for a rule they tried to exploit to their advantage. And yes, I am really looking forward to experiencing the same again with me in the role of the person taking advantage of said rule. Feels like I can wait for a long time, lol.
 
Same thing with the closed door on a dragon, which I couldn't find an explanation for at the time, they actually said we would vote for the outcome No way the dragon would be killed I said, no way the dragon would be pushed forward said the heroes, so I had to revert 3 actions just to get the clarification later on, that the monster could have well remained in place. What's frustrating is not that somebody is disputing my interpretation of the rules or that I end up in a difficult situation because of my own misunderstanding, the big problem in my mind is that NOBODY is actually taking my side or even remotely considering that I could be right. That just won't happen, lol. Then yes, it's 4 vs 1. 
 
Oh I almost forgot but by players absolutely DESPISE the rule making lieutenants raising up after death have one additional action. Unfairness, they say! Yeah..
 
The LoS rule is also a classic example. They would always push for getting LoS in ridiculous angles because it looks like they could draw a line although clear passage would clearly be arguable. On the other hand my monsters apparently cannot shoot from corners or "exploiting" the same rule as it makes no sense in comparison. A hero archer may lean towards a side and throw an arrow due to sheer agility (heck, the mini itself looks like the hero can shoot from every angle), but a goblin is so stiff and stupid that he has to shoot from the middle of its square. Nobody is arguing about these things really as it would get ridiculous all the time, but people still make comments of that kind as the game progresses.
 
Also, I play Frenzy on a monster. They have Grisban and his third attack action, but playing Frenzy is cheaty in comparison, I don't know why. Actually I do, it's because I know they can activate Cosby's third action as the hero sheet appears visible in front of me whereas they have no idea I hold this OL card. But yeah..
 
"And we don't know if you're not changing the campaign track sheet and re-spec yourself for free since you have full control of everything". I mean, I think they trust me but still these comments arise from time to time, making the game psychologically tough! Tough to be the OL. 

You are being played by your heroes, mate.
 
I can accept that your metagame is different than mine, and that you think plot cards are more valuable than I do, but that's a hell of a house rule you got. No way I would have accepted such deal, even with booze involved in the bargain.
 
Firstly, unlimited currency supply makes no sense, otherwise like the above poster said you may just purchase your whole deck with no notion of saving said currency for it. Your crazy +12 threat per quest completely tears this rule apart, tramples it with iron boots and throws the remains into the fires of Mount Doom. But even more importantly, what do you do with this billion threat tokens? Play enablers and weak versions of OL cards in exchange of extra actions and rerolls to the heroes? No wonder why your heroes are okay with that. It's Vegas, baby [for them].
 
I realize that you have only played a few quests with this rule, and maybe you are putting a lot of faith into these plot cards. I don't think you'll find what you seek but maybe you'll have tons of fun doing it your way.

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.

While i agree that 1 extra xp for the OL is not nearly as useful for a hero, id just want to say that the addition of extra XP for the OL can be a good thing. There are a certain few very powerful combinations of cards that can be played with one another that require ALOT of xp which dulls their utility, the addition of XP makes these combinations much more viable play options and thus gives the OL more of a bite.
 
The extra shopping steps in combination with the extra gold however far outweigh any return from some extra XP even if it does make these OL card combinations more viable. In 2 rumor quests an extra 10 act 2 shopping cards are made available to the heroes before the finale - a 66% increase of act 2 shop item cards in combination with a 36% increase in gold is HUGE. Sure the heroes will not get all the extra gold in every quest, but if you make 36% more available search tokens in a campaign you are still going to get a roughly 36% increase in the amount of gold available for the heroes.
 
Its the state that the heroes and OL are in going into the finale which is the most important thing here. Its also worth mentioning that the utility of relics is increased in the finale because there is an increased amount of lieutenants on the board - that utility is not as great as it is for the heroes but it is important to factor into any house rule that could be made.

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.

You say that it should be a risk for the OL to play it, yet a risk with little return is never going to be worth it. Then we get stuck back at the point where an OL is still not playing OL cards because the injection of gold into the game makes the heroes uber powerful - giving the heroes a 37% more gold is not a risk, its virtually handing them the game.
 
Sorry but i do not feel that just adding a 1xp to the quest rewards  for the OL alone fixes the problem, it might be part of a solution but i do not believe its the entire solution.
 
I am not trying to make things perfectly balanced, however the current rules are so skewed to the heroes that the OL would be insane to ever play a rumor quest if he wants to win a campaign.

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.

I'll go get it as soon as it gets released. For the teams mainly.
 
It all looks cool, but I'm not so sure at all about the stadiums thingy. I don't think this game needs any more restrictions for how you can play your cards, and that's exactly what stadiums seem to be doing. So I play Humans but I cannot use the pass skill (or use enchanted ball with pass skill) in that stadium,? Great... What a nerf to my team. Stadiums to me need to be neutral. I'm not opposed to introducing cards (abilities or upgrades) that would negate/blank out a particular ability for a round, but just plain forbidding said ability for a whole matchup, no thank you. So you play Wood Elves and the tournament is in this stadium blanking out your Sprint ability? Think twice before you commit players there buddy.
 
Then I just hope the rules around the referree system won't be too random.

Honestly, I started to read this whole analysis with the idea that it would be a pile of very subjective ratings with no true meaning, but I can tell you that I was wrong in my assumption and I think you did a pretty decent job in the end. This theory does make sense, even if I can't quite comment on every single rating you assigned to each skill/upgrade etc. This analysis is purely theoritical and should not reflect the practical way teams are played considering the randomness in the game (tackling and card draw mostly) and also players' behaviours (as for playing the teams' inner strengths and exploiting them the right way, the number of players also does matter, how much risk players are willing to take, and what are the rewards people tend to go for depending on teams etc). All of this can well make any of these bad teams shine because it's basically an open game. It would be quite boring otherwise, lol.
But what you did beatifully came down to this final conclusion and I can confirm that your rankings do make a lot of sense and my personal meta (up to 7 players) is confirming your assumptions. The top of the ladder is the simplest, we rank Humans, Wood Elves, Skavens, Dark Elves and Undead in the top 5 quite a bit ahead of the 6th team on the ladder. I would have ranked them as follows:
#1 Skavens (they completely dominate our meta, they have everything and can't be easily offset once they go off)
#2 Humans (for all pros you highlighted, every single puzzle piece making this a team makes sense) 
#3 Dark Elves (based on slightly less play due to the expansion, but it strikes us how flexible this team is, I know some people were sceptical in the thread asking for strategy advice but we personally don't see what the problem is).
#4 Undead (same as above, we haven't played them tons of times), this team is a bit special to play and involves more skills from the player to pilot them. Tied with the Dark Elves, at least we believe, but more play is required.
#5 Wood Elves (only seem slightly weaker on the star power side), but still a great team overall.
Then we differ slightly on the Orcs versus Chaos discussion. Piling up on cheating tokens can make Chaos win games but that's too random to call this a strategy, therefore we tend to think they´re more of a "party crasher" team (litteraly, lol) with small chance of achieving any sort of win. You can agree or not, it's fine, but based on our own experience Orcs are a much more reliable team and Chaos just doesn't sprint at all, which is really lacking. So:
#6 Orcs
#7 Chaos
Finally the two last spots to Vampires for the reasons I explained several times on these forums (I´m glad you could confirm some of these views despite your different experience as you see more success coming out of this team, as said earlier they completely SUCK in our meta, still waiting for them to achieve anything). Relies too much on the Vampires and even then they´re not great if ever good. Still, some potential but again, relies too much on your opponents since they basically need to let you build up in order for you to get the most needed rewards. That's not a strategy to me. Still, some potential and definitely a big plus for the flavor. Vampire theme is always great.
Dwarves as last, not because they are bad but because I fail to see anything they´re good at. They´e boring to play and the few strengths they have (higher down star power is one of the most "exciting") is just not worth the hype. Plus their art is not great.
 
#8 Vampires
#9 Dwarves
So great job and thanks for your time on this!

This man (Chav) summed it up very well. At the end of the day, players need to accept that they're going to lose a certain % of the quests they're going to play. Look, this game is built around this very concept, and still you get your XP even if you lose plus another shopping round, You lost the last quest? Too bad, now buy this Whirlwind and this Halberd and go slice some Goblins in the next quest. Look at me in the eyes when you say it isn't something to look forward doing. You get my point.
 
You still get to develop your character, and I would push this even further and say that the only quest that truly "matters" is the Finale. But hey, lose the Finale, so what? Look at the past 30 hours of gaming and tell me you didn't have any fun at all. If your playgroup has severe objections to this then this game might not be suited to them. I don't know what kind of games they would enjoy playing though. 
 
I hope for you they will come to the realization that this game is about something else. It is a fierce battle, yet you can still get tons of fun out of it and being able to put up a decent challenge every quest you play regardless who won the previous ones.
 
I would NOT recommend that you dumb down your strategy/choices as the OL to let them win more quests. The only thing you could do imho is making them play rumor quests if you want to give them a little push.
 
Good luck

This man (Chav) summed it up very well. At the end of the day, players need to accept that they're going to lose a certain % of the quests they're going to play. Look, this game is built around this very concept, and still you get your XP even if you lose plus another shopping round, You lost the last quest? Too bad, now buy this Whirlwind and this Halberd and go slice some Goblins in the next quest. Look at me in the eyes when you say it isn't something to look forward doing. You get my point.
 
You still get to develop your character, and I would push this even further and say that the only quest that truly "matters" is the Finale. But hey, lose the Finale, so what? Look at the past 30 hours of gaming and tell me you didn't have any fun at all. If your playgroup has severe objections to this then this game might not be suited to them. I don't know what kind of games they would enjoy playing though. 
 
I hope for you they will come to the realization that this game is about something else. It is a fierce battle, yet you can still get tons of fun out of it and being able to put up a decent challenge every quest you play regardless who won the previous ones.
 
I would NOT recommend that you dumb down your strategy/choices as the OL to let them win more quests. The only thing you could do imho is making them play rumor quests if you want to give them a little push.
 
Good luck

This man (Chav) summed it up very well. At the end of the day, players need to accept that they're going to lose a certain % of the quests they're going to play. Look, this game is built around this very concept, and still you get your XP even if you lose plus another shopping round, You lost the last quest? Too bad, now buy this Whirlwind and this Halberd and go slice some Goblins in the next quest. Look at me in the eyes when you say it isn't something to look forward doing. You get my point.
 
You still get to develop your character, and I would push this even further and say that the only quest that truly "matters" is the Finale. But hey, lose the Finale, so what? Look at the past 30 hours of gaming and tell me you didn't have any fun at all. If your playgroup has severe objections to this then this game might not be suited to them. I don't know what kind of games they would enjoy playing though. 
 
I hope for you they will come to the realization that this game is about something else. It is a fierce battle, yet you can still get tons of fun out of it and being able to put up a decent challenge every quest you play regardless who won the previous ones.
 
I would NOT recommend that you dumb down your strategy/choices as the OL to let them win more quests. The only thing you could do imho is making them play rumor quests if you want to give them a little push.
 
Good luck

A full length campaign certainly means a certain time investment, in terms of keeping every gaming session dedicated to just Descent for the next X weeks/months. It requires dedication, and also that players attend on a regular basis.
 
I've found that one-offs are not even close to be as enjoyable as campaign play. Feels like a total waste of time because there is so little focus. Good to test some of the heroes/classes though if you run Epic Play on top of it, otherwise quite pointless. I was recently asked to run a custom quest totally on-the-fly after we were done with two campaign encounters (after 3.5 hours play mind you, and we had 30mins left), since I only had the material required for said encounters and could not start another campaign encounter. Some players said I could just build my own map and throw whatever monsters I had available, and their heroes (from campaign) would go delve in there and take whatever treasure there is. I said no way.
 
To me there is no "quickie" with this game, even First Blood takes more than a hour with my playgroups.

Drybrush from dark red all the way to light yellow. Took me no time! I wanted some contrast between the flames and the imps so I did them in the opposite color. I did the non-master imps in the base color with a wash. Not sure it was a good idea to zoom in that much though, lol:
 

Yep, I posted the game designer's answer in my previous post so I guess there is nothing else to discuss in regards to that particular point.