I didn’t read your spoiler text, @FinnegansFather , as I’m a newb and I don’t want spoilers. :) But I hope it was a one-off, whatever it was.
The side quest I just did, involving a doll, was about as close as it could be. I won with 1 remaining character with 1 hit point left, at the exit tile, with maybe 3 cards left – enough for one last small rest.
I wish I’d paid attention to how many rounds it went. This stamina calculator implies that my game may have gone more than 20 rounds, but I thought it was more like 17? I didn’t burn any cards at all, and my Brute took maybe 5 short rests and one long rest.
Anyway, I thought it was a really well-designed scenario. Tense and fun. I’m stll amazed I won.
Then again, maybe I could have won it on a higher difficulty than the default difficulty assigned by the game. (I think by default the game put me on the digital game’s second-easiest setting? What difficulty would that be in the boardgame?) The monsters did have somewhat low HP counts, and in many cases I overkilled them, and I assume higher difficulties add monster HPs. Still, the down-to-the-wire outcome suggests I’m not ready to increase the difficulty level yet, if ever.