Jim, Lee, Richard and Steve played the game over various evenings.. It was fun before 1942, then it became the Germans lose on every thing and there is nothing that can be done. Becomes just an administrative decline that is immensely boring.
Army of the Night (Richard) versus The Oathborne (Lee). The Witch Queen army starts fine. But, the Oathborne has more income and much larger armies. Once the Oathborne installed their two largest unit in two of their loyal cities by the 4th season, it was game over for the Witch Queen. Her large units were 3X bigger than any in the Witch Queens and immune to being enslaved. It seems all the scenarios were so unbalanced toward the bad guys that it a given in each game. So packed up in the box and shelved.
Lee and Richard tried the Orcs versus Goblins campaign. The Goblins have numerous weak but inexpensive troops while the better Orc troops are more expensive and have better magic users. The Orcs (Lee) lost the first game by running out of gold to pay for their settlements (4) quite early in the game while the the Goblins (Richard) razed his conquests and only kept one settlement. Just to keep playing, the Goblins let the Orcs raze of one of their settlements. The game continued with the extra stuff the Orcs got with their inflated settlements that giving the Orcs the final win since they won on ties. It didn’t help that the Goblins couldn’t take any settlements via die tools for most of the game.
Lee and Richard played the third scenario with the Forjland (Vikings – Lee) against the Empire (Richard). It was a learning game to use magic. This was another unbalanced campaign with Forjland not having much of a chance again the Empire. But, it was good for learning the spell, treasure, and blessing cards, as well as, the heroes.
Lee and Richard player the learning scenario twice. Vikings against Dwarves. Both times we played, the Vikings (Lee) won exactly the same way. Massive troops and gold against gold strapped and troop poor Dwarves. Neither of us could figure out how the Dwarves could win. But, it did serve the purpose of learning the basic rules (no magic).