My First Essentials Character

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I'm playing a level 6 human knight in our group's weekly game. The other PCs are an elf thief (also an Essentials character), goblin assassin (pre-Essentials version), goblin bard, wilden seeker, and gnome wizard (pre-Essentials version). We are hunting down a tiefling necromancer seeking some strange artifact (the DM is adapting a Dungeon Delve adventure for this, I think).

We had one combat with a bunch of undead. The room was originally pitch black, but the wizard cast Light and illuminated pretty much the whole area (I never really realized how useful light was until then ...). We rolled crap for initiative and were bottle-necked in the entryway, which sucked when the undead unleashed blasts and burst powers. I actually took over 100 hp of damage (max is 65) in that battle - I'm glad I opted for an Endurance based knight!

In any case, the combat went without a hitch rules-wise. I really liked not having any dailies - in the previous campaign, I played a warlock from level 1 to 3 and hardly used my daily (Flames of Phlegethos). I liked having enhanced basic attacks, as I could do cool things on OAs - I took Hammer Hands for the pushing, and Hold (Defend?) the Line for the slow effect. I know some people are concerned about the fighter being too simplistic, but I had to make important choices about which stance to adopt during my turn and when my turn ended.

I really liked Defender's Aura (although I wish it had a more evocative name, like Defender's Vigilance or something like that). Fluff-wise it felt more "realistic," and mechanics-wise I felt pretty effective at locking down a group of enemies. Ironically, although we were bottle-necked at the opening, my close proximity to a large number of enemies was a big help! I also had the opportunity to see how the knight worked with a traditional mark, because the bard has the Misdirected Mark spell. It also went fine, and I liked not having to worry about the goblin overwriting my mark.

When my first turn came up (I was dead last in the initiative order!), the undead had the entryway pretty much covered. Only one square was open to allow PCs through, which meant a lot of OAs. When I finally went, I adopted Hammer Hands stance, moved forward and attacked. I rolled a 16 total, which the DM said wasn't enough to hit. So I mock-heroically shouted "Heroic Effort!" and asked if a 20 hit. He said yes! I pushed the skeleton back, then moved into a space adjacent to it where I covered 3 undead. That freed up some moving space and felt awesome.

I think the rogue's player had a good time, too - he mostly used Ambush Trick and got CA most of the time. While it was cool that the rogue could use Sneak Attack once per turn, he wasn't often in position to do an OA so it didn't matter much. He also liked being able to use a shortbow.

In sum I think both the rogue's player and me were quite happy with our characters. We could do lots of interesting things, but I don't think we overshadowed the traditional PCs. Our group is pretty much a hack and slash group, so I should be able to get a better idea about how things work out on the combat end as we continue to play.