Figured I should jump back in to this thread as it's one that comes up on Google searches and at least update my progress. My buddy and I have been painting like crazy over the last three months and playing through random quests using the 2.0 rules and soon to be released modified cards (that have been print and play for months).
I think I understand the game well enough to explain it to others and while I know it's not everyone's bag, I also like it much more than any other co-op dungeon crawl game we've tried. I think it walks the line between a board and miniature game and I can see how that makes people uneasy. Add in the randomness, choice of how you want tiles set up and the lite RPG elements and there are lots of different things potentially going on all at once. I don't really know of any other game that has the same mechanics (deckbuilding + dice rolling), but the characters so far all feel very unique in execution - way more than the dozen times we've played through Descent with various load outs.
This was a setup from a game we played last night after randomly pulling "Drums of the World" from the quest deck:
After setting up the larger captain figure to the right with all the minions, a grubber lair was randomly selected and then 6 grubbers spawned around it. The quest setup required that we also roll a bunch of Fate Dice to add random effects (as a result of the the captain playing war drums), which in this case inspired the minions during combat (making them more likely to hit us) and gave them extra movement. A single bug was also spawned as a result, which didn't really bother us.
We figured out that the darkness meter was going to increase rather quickly (based on all the creatures we would need to kill), so we decided to prioritize the lair to stop the game from being able to spawn more minions. It worked great, but it sent my threat through the roof which then had the monster AI try and surround me:
Unfortunately for them, my character is designed to deal with these types of situations as quite a few of my cards deal damage to multiple opponents at the same time. We did get lucky with the die rolls, but the Acolyte also generates a ton of threat after healing me - which makes sense. The game AI is smart enough to then prioritize the Acolyte over me (if I don't play the right cards) because he's clearly keeping me standing as I tank through wave after wave of monsters.
Anyway, there is a ton of strategy involved in both movement on the board and the timing of when you play your cards. That's what makes it very interesting and potentially slower than some people might care for. Since I started the thread, I at least figured I should come back and indicate it's absolutely playable and we're enjoying it quite a bit. We haven't even fully tested out all the various character classes and have only touched (I think) four separate unrelated quest cards. The actual system did take some understanding, but now it all clicks and I actually think it's less complicated than many other games we play once you're up and running.
I don't really have an interest to set it up as a free-form killing simulator (Slaughterfield) but with all the Kickstarter content it's a ridiculous amount of game play (and painting). If your box is sitting around all dusty and you haven't read through the 2.0 rules, you might want to give it another look as the updated cards will be officially available in a few months. To be clear, the rules aren't new, they're just reorganized and edited a bit for clarity.