So here is my review of the first scenario of the Castle faction:
To bring you up to date on what it was about and what the goal was, a few preliminary details: I won't say anything about the story or the plot twists during the scenario so as not to spoil anything, but anyone who wants to can read the story for themselves in the campaign book.
The victory condition was to advance to the enemy castle within 8 turns and defeat the opponent's "main hero" there. In comparison to normal scenarios, I was not allowed to recruit gold units for the entire game, but I was allowed to buy bronze and silver units from the start and upgrade them. Each round was a resource round, but I didn't have any income from the start, I had to earn income through mines and settlements, which I then would received each round. I started with all 3 bronze units on the Few side, as well as 15 gold and 1 crystal. Since I have been playing the PC game on 200% for 20 years and play tons of board games and strategy games, I played directly on the difficulty "impossible".
The game started with me thinking about the most effective way to create money income, as I had no income at all and if I had wasted my starting units and 15 starting money on unnecessary battles, I would have lost immediately as I wouldn't have been able to buy any more. So I had to risk everything, upgrade all my bronze units with all the money and go into a neutral level 3 battle guarding a gold mine (against 3 silver units).
The battle was also pretty close and lasted 2 turns. My 3 pack cards turned into a few griffins and a few archers, but I was able to win because I still had hand cards that helped me during this battle.
So I got 5 money and since a new turn began and I got another 5 gold, and this now before every turn. With a level increase, offensive as an ability, money that improved all my bronze units again to pack side, an artifact, I went into exactly the same battle against 3 other silver units in round 3 to conquer the second gold mine. This time with significantly fewer losses. By exploring the map and earning 10 gold every day now, I quickly improved my army including Crusanders and Zealots.
Warning mini spoiler: By entering a special space, I was teleported to the opponent's map tile in round 5 and couldn't go back.
So I had no choice than building the magic guild in round 6 to increase my hand cards from 5 to 7 for the final battle and to fight with the maximum possible army (against 1 gold, 2 silver and minotaurs on the few side ). Despite the fact that the opponent played his power and magic stack (at maximum power because of the difficulty) before each turn, I only lost a few Zealots and Halberdiers. And so I won the scenario
The bottom line is that the game was basically a lot of fun and went very quickly compared to 1vs1 scenarios. However, I really didn't do anything out of the ordinary and still won the first time on the "impossible" difficulty level. The biggest threat was really just the first fight. If I had been very unlucky with the attack dice there, I could have lost straight away in the first round. But even that wouldn't have been a bad thing as I could have restarted the scenario straight away since it was the first round after all. Otherwise there was no situation where I was unsure whether I would win.
Of course, if I had thrown myself into a fight first that wouldn't give me any gold and thus weakened my army, I wouldn't have been able to win the second fight against 3 silver units under any circumstances. But I don't think anyone would just march out and look for random confrontations for an artifact or something similar if you have no income, right? I actually would have liked the last fight to be a little harder like the first one.
In addition, after a scenario you can take your 5 best hand cards with you into the next scenario. If I had had this information beforehand that I would be brought to the opponent by a sudden event, or if I were to play this scenario again now, I would not have gone there until the 8th round and would still have had over 20 gold and 6 moves more, to look for more artifacts and powerful spells that I could take into the next scenario. So I could have won even more clearly if I would play again now, but I don't want to make it any easier for myself and will also play the second scenario with the cards I left off with here. As I said, it was more of a "normal" level of difficulty; if you don't make terribly wrong decisions, you won't lose on impossible. It's not the level of difficulty you get when you play the PC game against 7 AIs at 200% on a small map, if you know what I mean
However, that was only the first scenario, so I'm sure that the difficulty will increase at least a little and I'll get my taste in the next ones.
If you have already played Heroes or any board game other than Monopoly, I really recommend to start at least on Hard difficulty and if it is too difficult for you, you can always lower the difficulty. If you first get bored on normal and know the whole story, the second run on a higher difficulty won't save much if you already know what to do.
All in all, I'm very excited to see what the other solo scenarios will offer.
Osservatore
Like a Ninja
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