by badgermaniac
I preface my comment by saying that I have only played one campaign and that was as a solo player, so I am very much limited by my own biases/experience/strategies/etc.That being said, I have discovered one issue that I am hoping I can learn to get around in time. One of my favorite parts of the new edition is the variety in types of quests beyond your stereotypical hack and slash. However, a number of the quests (or at least, of the ones I have played) are essentially "hero needs to do something quickly or stop something quickly before the OL wins/escapes" quests.
Now, most are set up in such a way that the heroes have to get through other monsters before getting to their destination/goal, which is fine. However, playing as the OL, I have found that a viable strategy is to simply pack your monsters to block access and then basically wait for the de facto timer to run out. This can especially be done with larger monsters.
I had one quest where I basically had monsters stacked about three deep, with little to no movement. The heroes eventually hacked they way through, but it simply took too much time, especially with a bad die roll.
As an example, during the "Ritual of Shadows" quest, the OL won the first encounter so Lord Farrow already had a head start towards the exit. With relatively easy skill roll to open the doors, his freedom to run, not to mention the occasional dash card, all I had to do in the first room (library) is having all my flesh moulders and wendingos run to the start of the corridor and basically pile up. They didn't even need to attack, just stay alive for a couple rounds (easy with the flesh moulders) while Farrow had an easy jaunt to the exit.
Bottom line...it wasn't very fun, even as the winning OL and it seemed very unrealistic (yes, even in a fantasy game).
On the other hand, I very much prefer the quests where each side has an objective that is more balanced/difficult to achieve so BOTH SIDES have to figure out what is most important, how to allocate your resources, whether to be passive or aggressive, etc.
Has anyone else had this issue? Will it get better the more I play or is this a flaw in a few of the quests? Maybe I just needed to do a better job with the heroes earlier in the game, making them more powerful and allowing them more ease in cutting through the blocking tactics?