Hi everyone,

I have recently begun playing LotW with the mini-campaign rules, with me as the OL (going down the Punisher path) and 4 heroes.

Heroes as follows:

Avric Albright - Disciple

Jain Fairwood - Wildlander

Reynhart the Worthy - Berserker

Leoric of the Book - Necromancer

I used the Belthir "Hybrid Loyalty" deck, however it hasnt really done anything so far.

First Quest: Gold Digger

I chose Elementals and Fire Imps as monster groups.

Basically, I started out bad, using Valyndras Shadow to harass the heroes for 2 rounds, while putting the Elementals on the first crossing. I was able to quickly take down Jain Fairwood by turn 2, but Avric resurrected her instantly and, through lucky rolls, healed her back to full.

Now, at this point I had been able to hold the heroes for 3 turns on the first 3 tiles, but it became obvious that the combo of Leorics passive ability and Avrics overall power would make it highly improbable to take down heroes, much less tie them up for the winning condition.

Thus, I decided to abandon that idea and go for the secondary win condition, being that one monster has to leave the map carrying the treasure item.

I rerouted Valyndras shadow to the Digger NPCs, and the heroes decided to take the rightmost path, the longest but safest way, and they didnt not try to crack the rocks in the middle, leaving me with no short path (but not for them, either).

At this point, I basically threw fire imps at them to slow them down, using Valyndra to try and kill the NPCs. I didnt roll a lot of surges thus couldnt use fire breath often enough, and they were already around the top-right corner of the map (the water holding them up pretty well), whereas the respawning elementals had trouble catching up, and kept being harassed by the necromancers pet.

The burn condition was all but worthless in the face of Avric just cleansing it off with his heal, and Leoric made sure that the Imps were struggling to actually put damage(and thus, burn) on any heroes. I also realized that elementals lack the punch to really threaten that kind of group, but so be it. Jain ran ahead, spawning Valyndra, which turned out to be a major mistake: I got the item to drop, picked it up with a Fire Imp, and had Valyndra run away down the leftmost route towards the entrance.

As the heroes had not cracked the stones beforehand, and I had a "Dash" card for the item carrier, they mathematically couldnt win anymore, and just proceeded to pick up 2 search markers before I won.

Lessons learned: Leoric + Avric are really a MASSIVE problem when combined, if your goal is to take down heroes. You really need heavy hitters in that case, and even then its difficult. Also, most turns of the heroes took 30+ minutes of planning, leading to very good, intricate plans and executions. I feel that if given limitless time to plan, the hero side is VERY hard to beat, since even if you are far ahead as overlord ,there can almost always be some "Hail Mary" tactic which wins them the game on the very last leg.

But so far so good, I was able to secure an utterly useless relic!

If Avric was using "Cleansing Touch" on Gold Digger, it sounds like you started the mini-campaign with the heroes already having skills- are you doing an Epic Play mini-campaign?

That being said, I'm OL in a Shadow Rune campaign right now, 4 heroes being:

Durik - Beastmaster

Leoric - Necromancer

Avric - Disciple

Jaes the Exile - Runemaster

and I'm also going Basic II and Punisher. I agree that Leoric + Avric is a doozy, but that's partly why I went Punisher- there has very rarely been a heroic feat of Avric's that hasn't seen a "Trading Pains" to hamper it.

Tactical Analysis, or rather, random thoughts about "Gold Digger".

Choice of monsters: I strongly believe that having a group of large elite monsters for the open group (the one that starts close to the entrance) is critical for overlord success here. Also, try and get monsters that can cover a lot of space in one round, and/or have ranged attacks, since you ll have to chase the heroes very soon.

Also, do not use Valyndras shadow as harassment unless you go for the kill tactic. It takes quite a few rounds to move here back to the Diggers, and if the heroes get lucky and break through the stones early, you are running out of time.

I strongly suggest trying to steer the heroes away from the rocks. While it may sound like a good idea to have a shorter route between your reinforcement spawns and the eventual action, this provides a shortcut for them to intercept your runner with the relic item, if you are forced (or chose to) go for the second win condition.

As this map has a pressing timer and no doors, I suggest trimming down the OL deck, and removing poison darts and possibly other traps, in order to get "Dash" and "Frenzy" quicker. Use rerolls and auto-surge OL cards for Valyndras attempts at killing the diggers, since it allows her to use her fire breath, hurting two at th same time.

I also think the easiest route for the heroes is, in fact, going slow but steady through the middle. It is pretty hard to move the relic item through the sideroutes, and if they control the center route, they can swiftly intercept. Also, by going more careful and not rushing, its unlikely you will be able to kill/capture all of them, making this a good precaution against both OL win conditions. As OL, the best idea to beat such a strategy is either a concerted effort of Valyndra and the hopefully dangerous respawns, trying to burn down the heroes through fire breath and OL cards, when they are more or less gathered up in the area of the rocks.

All in all, I think this is a very balanced scenario, with possibly a slight advantage for the OL if he has access to the right monster group for the starting area.

If Avric was using "Cleansing Touch" on Gold Digger, it sounds like you started the mini-campaign with the heroes already having skills- are you doing an Epic Play mini-campaign?

That being said, I'm OL in a Shadow Rune campaign right now, 4 heroes being:

Durik - Beastmaster

Leoric - Necromancer

Avric - Disciple

Jaes the Exile - Runemaster

and I'm also going Basic II and Punisher. I agree that Leoric + Avric is a doozy, but that's partly why I went Punisher- there has very rarely been a heroic feat of Avric's that hasn't seen a "Trading Pains" to hamper it.

The rules of the Mini-campaign, as can be downloaded from the FFG support site for Descent 2nd, state that each player starts with 4 exp, and each hero with 100 gold, though that can only be spent AFTER the first adventure.

If Avric was using "Cleansing Touch" on Gold Digger, it sounds like you started the mini-campaign with the heroes already having skills- are you doing an Epic Play mini-campaign?

That being said, I'm OL in a Shadow Rune campaign right now, 4 heroes being:

Durik - Beastmaster

Leoric - Necromancer

Avric - Disciple

Jaes the Exile - Runemaster

and I'm also going Basic II and Punisher. I agree that Leoric + Avric is a doozy, but that's partly why I went Punisher- there has very rarely been a heroic feat of Avric's that hasn't seen a "Trading Pains" to hamper it.

The rules of the Mini-campaign, as can be downloaded from the FFG support site for Descent 2nd, state that each player starts with 4 exp, and each hero with 100 gold, though that can only be spent AFTER the first adventure.

Sorry, lapse in memory on mini-campaign rules. I've mostly played full campaigns and standalones.

That's good strategy for Gold Digger (which is an available Rumor for my heroes right now.) Killing the heroes has been a chore, and not many of my monsters can stand up to 6+ attacks (4 heroes + wolf + reanimate,) so I'll probably be forced to consider objective 2.

We have finished "Rude Awakening" with the above-mentioned campaign and hero combination, with a close win for the OL (myself) once again. But boy, was this one a nailbiter.

I choose Barghests as the Open Group, seeing how I could entirely surround the Innkeep NPC with them from the start, and their howl would allow them to quickly become a pain in the rear, not to mention put some serious damage on the Innkeep if needed as well.

The Hybrid Sentinels and Fire Imps are mandatory, so no surprises here. I had enough threat to purchase, but not trigger, Summon Belthir, so plot deck / threat mechanics turned out to be a nonissue this time around.

As the game started, I managed to block in the heroes in the first room by a mixture of too-careful advancement on their part, a MAJOR mistake in terms of line-of-sight, and only average rolls. I picked up Frenzy early, and was able to double-firebreath the entire party with the elite hybrid sentinel, thus getting 2 members down, and the other two heavily wounded.

However, Avric Albright used his Feat and basically annulled this success aside from 2 threat tokens, , and the heroes proceeded to enter the burning Inn.

Now, as with last time, at this point my ability to hurt them was severely diminished. Reynhardt had picked up the +4 health upgrade with increased health after being resurrected, and with Leoric and Avric backing him up, I basically had 2 members being virtually unkillable. Plus, every round I had one fire imp do nothing but run+blow up (it works out just barely to have them spawn and immediately detonate in the burning Inn).

At which point the heroes realized that losing 2 turns, almost a third, without helping the hostages was a bad idea, and time was running out.

And boy, did I realize how little the OL can do in this scenario when the heroes just refuse to open the door, and use Leorics necromancer AOE to wipe out basically the entire room with little to do against it.

Admittedly, the group had 3 characters easily able to heal the hostages, and Reynhard just carried one, but in the end I was lucky to draw 2 "Dash" cards, thus block the exit with 2 hybrid sentinels, and barely scrape out a victory by 1 turn.

The well+water mechanic never came into play, neither did the monster group that was inactive.

I believe I played a virtually flawless game, with the given dice rolls (that were neither good nor bad for either side, very balanced) and the heroes made 2 MAJOR mistakes early (going too slow, and once messing up the necromancer AOE, thus not killing 4 monsters but just 1), but just by never missing a heal roll on a hostage, this scenario is taking slightly too long for the OL to have a good chance. If not by sheer luck of the draw on OL cards, I would have lost, simply because so very little can be done to effectively hinder the hostages, who just need 2-3 turns to get to safety, and you cannot prevent them from moving very well.

Also, inability to effectively kill heroes plus the fact that Avric cleanses the Burning condition makes it very hard to drain enough actions each turn to hinder them doing a lot of stuff quickly. It may be a case of letting the heroes plot out every turn to perfect detail for 25 minutes that causes issues here, since I seem to have noticed that in past games too (Basically, if the heroes play close to perfect turns, the OL can only luck out to beat them in most scenarios), but it really should not have been that close.

Tactical thoughts on "Rude Awakening":

Basically, as the OL this comes down to forcing as many rolls and checks as possible. You will not have the firepower, once your hybrid sentinels are dead, to reliably kill heroes AND keep them from advancing their agenda. In a campaign, at this point they have 5 xp each, about 500 gold total, and possibly a relic armor. You on the other hand have to not just kill heroes, but the 4 hostages as well, so this is not a combat-oriented scenario, but rather about draining actions and movements. Stack your deck with movement-modifiers, and keep the destruction counters rolling in.

I believe there is a surefire win tactic in this scenario for the heroes, which my group didnt not discover.

Basically, pick 2 tanky characters, rush to the burning inn, then block the path of reinforcements so they cannot move and blow up in the same turn. This buys you more than enough time to handle the villagers, and if you keep the door locked, the OL can do nothing but try to throw Fire Imps at your tanks, hoping to get through. In the meantime, you really only need to deal with the hybrid sentinels, who are rather slow and lack ranged attack options, meaning they cannot very effectively keep the hostages down.

All in all, I believe this scenario would either need a more difficult way for the hostages, or a quicker timer really forcing the Water mechanic to come into play.