This is my first ever BGG game review . It covers the newest Descent expansion - Tomb of Ice, and how it plays in 'normal' mode (not RTL campaign), just the old school questing stuff. Me and my fiancee played first 3 quests and I feel ready to share my opinions and observations with the BGG community.
I won't be covering all the rules for the new expansion, because that's what FFG's PDF manual is for.


WHAT DO WE GET?

From the bottom of the box:

1 Rulebook with Quest Guide

6 Hero Sheets

6 Plastic Heroes

21 Plastic Monsters
- 3 Ice Wyrms
- 3 Medusae
- 3 Wendigos
- 6 Shades
- 6 Lava Beetles

110 Cards
- 10 Monster Refercence Cards
- 12 Overlord Cards
- 17 Fighting Feat Cards
- 17 Subterfuge Feat Cards
- 17 Wizardry Feat Cards
- 2 Town Store Cards
- 4 Copper Treasure Cards
- 4 Silver Treasure Cards
- 4 Gold Treasure Cards
- 1 Relic Card
- 10 RTL Monster Reference Cards
- 5 RTL Incident Cards
- 2 RTL Location Cards
- 4 RTL Dungeon Cards
- 1 RTL Rumor Card

43 Double-sided Map Pieces
- 9 Room Pieces
- 20 Corridor Pieces
- 4 Intersection Pieces
- 8 Dead End Pieces
- 2 Inside/Outside Transition Pieces

26 Prop Markers
- 1 Sarcophagus Marker
- 19 Ice Obstacle Markers
- 6 Monster Egg Markers

1 Stomach Tile

1 Transparent Stealth Die

10 Treasure Markers
- 9 Invisibility Potions
- 1 Relic Marker

Well, looks like lots of stuff. Not all of it is useful though - I don't own RTL (and I'll probably skip this one for I never cared about long campaigns) so I have no use for RTL monster/rumor/incident/etc cards. FFG was kind enough to use 2 sided terrain - one side represents grassy, outdoor areas, the other is old school dungeon floors. So both types of play can use those and there are no useless terrain pieces for oldschool quest players (except for inside/outside transition pieces of course).


ARE ALL THOSE NEW THINGS ANY GOOD?

Let's start with the rulebook. It's not the old square size one anymore! I was suprised to see something in better proportions, TOI rulebook looks like normal A4 format. Thumbs up for this one, I never liked those oversized rulebooks that had the tendency to bend and fold.
It has 32 pages, but the rules for the expansion are only 6 pages long. The next 5 pages contain updated FAQs and new rulings for the people that missed both previous expansions. Then we have the quests - all 6 of them. The three final pages contain RTL material that I don't really care about.
It's a typical FFG manual, some like their layout, some not. I never had real problems with those rulebooks, and since we have less than 7 pages of rules here, nobody should have any problems.
There are some typos though - the famous one about the 'lone wendigo' card that didn't really make it into expansion. Nothing really problematic.
The quests... well, they look different. They all use the new terrain tiles (more about that later), they have snow everywhere. They are packed with new monsters and you'll find ice obstacles in almost every single quest. They look shorter and more managable than the quests from other expansions.
Quest 1: Cauldron of Tears - very short and fun dungeon, you'll have to deal with Master Naga that petrifies local villagers. New monsters, ice, and that's all.
Quest 2: Cousin Dunrog - even shorter than the first one. The giant tribe gets their revenge for killing Brothers Dunrog in vanilla quest. You're chased by a Master Giant with 40 wounds and 10 armor. Your only hope is to find and smash 2 frozen pillars that contain the hearts of the heroes (he 'steals' your hearts as you sleep). When both pillars are shattered, the giant dies, poor bastard. We have new monsters, ice, new potion and fun and quick gameplay.
Quest 3: The Hive - you're purging the lair of lava beetles, figting the Queen in the final huge room filled with eggs. The quest looks long and has a big map, but most of the monsters are weak (beetles & spiders) so it plays fast and the final boss is not really hard to beat. That's the only quest that doesn't use ice obstacles - it has the relic though!
Quest 4: The Castle of Dragons - very simple layout, reminds me of 'The Aerie of Death' bonus FFG quest. You'll penetrate long straight hallways and fight 3 ice wyrms in the end.
Quest 5: The Manticore Maze - not really a maze, the layout is pretty simple. Pretty uninspired quest, lots of rubble obstacles, the map is medium sized.
Quest 6: The Tomb of Ice - the only quest that uses (or not!) the frozen sarcophagus prop marker. 3 levels reachable by staircases, you'll have to travel back&forth to get runekeys.

Now, the heroes! When you look at those 6 new hero sheets you should notice one thing: the old Order/Symmetry stuff is gone. Heroes no longer have 3 power dice for their attacks. One hero has only 2. The other has... 5! The skill distribution changed too - remember, heroes used to have 3 skills? We have one that has only 2. And another one that has 4!
Health/Armour/Conquest Value ratios are not so boring too. How about 16 health 0 armor 6 move guy? For 3CV? Or even better - frail 1CV character with Fly?
The heroes look very fresh and far less boring than the others. The pictures are great, the skills are interesting. I found myself using new strategies and equipment layouts when playing with the new guys. Say: if you're using a hero that cannot be attacked in melee... why not use those mage robes that protect vs missiles and magic? Or: when you're facing a big beastmen pack, why not put Shiver (the guy with Aura 4) in front and watch them die just by standing next to him?
The plastic figures look cool too - the Yeti guy is damn huge and scary, and the pixie 1CV girl looks nimble and very frail.

About the monsters... I heard many negative comments about the sculpts and I don't really understand them. Monsters look good and fresh. They bring some interesting decisions to the game too.
Shades are very reliable magic plinkers. They don't deal massive damage, but have good pierce and are hard to hit, what makes them pretty damn reliable monsters. They are spawned with normal 'spawn 2' card so you don't have to waste treachery to see them in action.
I didn't find Lava Beetles very useful. They are slow and not very durable. Their attacks lack range and power, the blast ability is nice but in our 2 hero games it didn't really matter. Master beetles are more durable and have the BURN ability, which is much more useful. You can spawn 2 of them, just like Shades.
The medusa is a great monster - it's small, shoots from a distance and it stuns when it hits. It dies quickly and you can only spawn 1 figure, but it's usually worth it. Medusae roll good range values so you can use them like snipers to stun heroes. Master medusae are really awesome - they have the quick shot ability, doubling your stuns.
Wendigo is a kickass monster, but sadly, you won't be seeing them much in games. You have to spend treachery to spawn them, and you can spawn only 1 figure. They are fast, hard to kill and have reach ability - very, very useful.
I have not yet seen the ice wyrm in action but the swallow ability and the toughness (plus stealth) looks scary. You cannot spawn them, and they only appear in 1 quest (!). What a waste.
The new quests are full of those new monsters and you'll find that the old tactics may not work so well - melee fighters will find themselves useless when facing monsters with GHOST ability, and because some of the monsters use STEALTH ability, you'll have to actually USE aiming tokens.

The cards are interesting, because there is a whole new category of cards and a new mechanic - THE FEATS. And boy, they make a difference for the heroes! There's nothing better than spoiling Overlord's masterplan by playing some hidden trump cards. Feats add a whole new dimension to the game - because Overlord does not know what suprises are heroes holding. As Overlord, I've seen my precious traps disarmed, my sniping monsters killed with town crossbow at 9 range, heroes instantly regaining their fatigue or interrupting my turn with sneaky backstabbing attacks. Not to mention that the heroes will drain your threat pool and discard cards from your hand! Feats add lots of fun and unpredictability to the game, but more important - they make heroes survive. At last.
The overlord gains 3 new spawns to his normal deck (shades, beetles, medusa) plus some treachery cards to buy, but nothing really interesting - the highlights are: mass stunning spell, master medusa/wendigo spawns and ice trap.
2 new store items are great and add new loadout options. Morning star is the ultimate offhand weapon, and it's really useful - +1 damage and 1 free surge is a great thing to a hero who has only 1 black die in melee combat and uses a sword as a primary weapon. The other one - the hammer - is a 2 handed weapon with knockback... and knockback is a great ability to have and to play with, adds lots of teamplay.
The new treasures are pretty dull. 7 new weapons (3 of them rolls the stealth die), 3 treasure caches (stealth potion), 1 gold armor (I hate gold items) and 1 silver OTHER item - the beastmen fetish, that lets you reroll 1 die per turn. It's the most interesting treasure. There other cool is the lifedrinker - a weapon that heals you as you deal killing blows to monsters. There are 2 ranged weapons that have no use for surges - interesting choice for weak 1-die shooters. They let you reroll 1 die instead - good thing to have when fighting stealthy monsters.
The new relic is used in Quest 3: The Hive. I was suprised to see it's not so uberpowerful and gamebreaking. It's a ring that gives its wearer the stealth ability and +1 damage. It helps your weak casters survive instead of annihilating everything with one attack, which is a pleasant surprise.

Map Pieces were definitively the biggest surprise for me. See, I could read about the new heroes, feats, etc, but noone really explained the new map pieces, so I guess I'll be first.
Remember the Order/Symmetry thing? It's not here! The new corridors and intersections have different sizes than the ones from the master set. We have corridors that are 3 squares long... and even 1 square long! We have shorter L, X and T type intersections. We have BIG 10x10 room, that is used in 3 quests. We have smaller 4x4 rooms, but with a twist - they are no longer symmetric rooms with 4 exits placed in the middle of each wall:

This is old school 4x4 room with 3 dead ends and 1 corridor

--XX
-XXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXX
-XXXX
--XX

This is the example of a new 4x4 room with 3 dead ends and 1 corridor!

-XX
-XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
-XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXX
XXXXX
-XX

All the new assymetric rooms and corridors provide TONS of new dungeon layouts and make them much more interesting. It quickly becomes obvious when playing new quests, that you'll have to change your LOS tracing habits, because the spaces in the new dungeons are not so obvious anymore.

Let's move on to new props and obstacles. The sarcophagus is the most useless one - the rulebook tells you that the quest will tell you how to play sarcophagus. And the single quest that actually uses it (Quest 6: Tomb of Ice) tells you that... it behaves like a normal sarcophagus. So you don't get to know what it does, which I found pretty hilarious. It's more useless than the altars from AoD. It's even more useless than the crushing walls too.
The new ice obstacle is fun and it's used in 5 quests. You can place it with a treachery trap card too. It adds uncertainty, because heroes can fumble when crossing ice and it will make their turn over instantly. You have the option to jump over the ice (just like pits) and after falling on my face twice when escaping monsters, I started to spend more movement and jump, just to be sure. The ice patches come in different sizes and shapes from a single square to 3x2 pieces. Some monsters (and the yeti hero) are immune to ice and can cross it without taking the risk. I really liked how ice works, reminds me of Jagged Alliance: Deadly Games computer game.
The last prop is the monster eggs - it blocks the movement, but doesn't block the LOS. It's a quest specific prop but you'll only see it in 2 quests, which is sad.

The Stomach Tile is used when your hero is swallowed by an Ice Wyrm, I never saw those guys in action, so I have no use for the tile.
The sad thing is that ice wyrms are present in only 1 quest and you cannot spawn them at all, so this tile will spend its life just taking space in the box.

The Stealth Die & The Stealth Potion are the second big thing after the feats. Some monster have stealth, heroes can get stealth too. To attack the figure with stealth, you'll have to roll the stealth die too, and it has 4 empty sides and 2 X sides. So you'll be missing 50% of attacks vs stealth stuff. This has a significant impact on the game.
- the monsters are more durable - and that's a good thing. Monsters in Descent quests are usually killed with 1 attack. Undying monsters often got their second and third chances and now stealth monsters march in - a wendigo can laugh in your face when your fourth attack with the silver superbow just missed. Add dodge to this and you can survive to fight back.
- the heroes can buy the stealth potion for 50gp (dirt cheap). They can drink it anytime to gain stealth. You'll have stealth for 1 turn (that's for sure), In the following turns you'll have to roll a black power die at the start of affected hero's turn. On a surge, the potion's power ends. On anything else, you continue to be stealty.
I've seen hero having 5 turns of stealth using just 1 potion. And I've seen 10 monster attack producing 2 hits to that hero. That potion is a MAJOR HELP for the heroes. In conjunction with dodge, they can avoid almost everything, if they're lucky.
There's one thing about the stealth die I don't like. It's... transparent! It's not really that easy to see what you rolled, because even when you rolled a blank, you can see the X on the bottom side of the die and it confuses me all the time.They could make it 'milky' instead of crystal clear.

HOW DOES IT IMPACT GAMEPLAY?

The Heroes Are Back! With feats and the new potion, the heroes were able to win the first 3 quests - and I'll remind that we're only playing using 2 heroes! We used RTL monster spawn marker (15 threat or reveal new area to flip). but no other modifications. They beat the first quest with 9CT in the end, the second with 6 and the third with 3CT (boss reward CT not included). The feats really help - heroes get more attacks in those critical moments, more movement points, and they annoy Overlord by stealing his threat and discarding his cards. Hell, they can CANCEL overlord cards too! The new potion helps a lot here, because most monsters wont be using aimed attacks.
The new quests are easier, shorter and more fair. If you remember WoD quests for example (so big that wont fit on your table and so hard that you'll never see anything except for Area 1). Dungeon layouts are much more interesting and less repeatable because of the new terrain tiles.
Ranged and Magic heroes tend to be more useful, because they can kill ghost monsters and your melee tanks cannot - forget about all melee parties (or at least get them weapons with REACH ability).
The Overlord is not boosted here. The spawns he gets are pretty basic ones and treachery cards are not so hot (remember 'Sloth', 'Poisoned Spike Pit' or 'Greed' cards from previous expansions?).
New town items are both really interesting and they make starting loadouts less obvious.


WAS IT WORTH IT?

Previous 2 expansions made the game almost unplayable for the heroes. With all the new treachery cards, dark relics, dark glyphs, powerful monsters and unbeatable quests - we had to use lots of houserules/mods and in the end heroes usually died anyway. So I wasn't so eager to get Tomb of Ice. I did and I'm not disappointed at all. Jason Stainhurst made a good job with the balance shift.
We only played 3 first quests, and first two were finished within 2,5 hours (!) and the third in 3 hours.
The first quest was a disaster for me as an Overlord - my miss ratio was like 5:1 and heroes beat me pretty easy (to my frustration). I managed to score 4 kills, 3 of them was Zyla - the 1CV guy.
In the second quest I was the heroes and I blitzed through the hallways, the giant had only 1 swing at my hero (which missed because of Stealth). Overlord made a mistake by not blocking my way - I was able to avoid monsters and concentrate on smashing the heart pillars to win the quest. I only died once.
The third quest I was OL again and I managed to put Evil Genius to play. Hordes of beetles had very little success versus 2 3-armor heroes, but I managed to deploy some traps (2 of them disarmed, 2 of them avoided by rolling a blank!) and I scored 3 frags and 2 more in the final room. The spider queen wasn't so tough so they managed to launch a suicidal mission with only 3CT left... and killed her before I could kill the last hero and zero their conquest pool. It was a tense but fun game.

What I really like about TOI:
- interesting new heroes
- new varied corridors and rooms
- managable and quick playing quests
- 2 interesting town items
- feats
- stealth
- ice
- shades

Not impressed:
- treasure
- overlord cards
- lava beetles
- only 6 quests

Disappointments:
- underused stuff: ice wyrms & stomach tile, frozen sarcophagus, monster eggs
- the price... here in Poland I could buy 2 new games instead of this expansion


I'm really looking forward to play quests from WoD and AoD and see if I can beat some of them with 2 heroes and RTL spawn marker!