Hey all, I've been reading the forums for a bit and found some great tips for playing the Overlord, but we're about to start a RtL campaign, and I'm wondering about the most efficient Overlord tactics specific to RtL.

Considering the limited amount of xp available throughout the game (3-400?), how do you guys spend yours? What gives you the most bang for your buck between monster upgrades, avatar upgrades, additional lieutenants, treachery and plot cards? I know this will vary depending on the plot and Avatar chosen, as well as with your play style and the tier of play. Maybe we could create some sort of database, listing common progressions through each tier for specific avatars and/or for each plot.

Also, how do you use your lieutenants? How easy are they to kill for the heroes, how much can you ''herd'' or scare off heroes with them? Do you have specific strategies for some lieutenants? For example, do you use Lord Farrow to reinforce dungeons or to destroy cities early on? Do you attack the heroes directly? If you use Gata the White Death, do you flee when the encounter is not an ambush?

For example, I'm planning on using the Beastman Lord for our first playthrough and the Obsidian Shackles plot. Assuming 100 xp per tier :

• Copper Tier
• Starting xp - Bloodthirst
• Besiege Riverwatch with Lord Farrow
• First 25 xp - Humanoid upgrade
• Next 20 xp - Greed and Hatred
• 30 xp left for treachery or avatar/lieutenants
• Keep 25 to upgrade humanoids to silver as soon as you change tiers
• Silver Tier
• ...

Now obviously this is a very basic draft since I've never actually played the advanced campaign, but you could easily go into more details, saying such and such lieutenant or avatar upgrade is crucial to your plan. Do you upgrade all monsters to gold, do you buy all the Farrows or your avatar specific ones? Do you wait to buy upgrades that will only affect the final battle until Gold (or until the players get the rumor that allows them to discard two avatar upgrades)?

Any input is greatly appreciated for lieutenant, avatar or plot specific strategies as well as generic RtL advice.

Never buy avatar upgrades. Ever.

First off- if you are buying them that early, they do you no good, which is bad. ALL your resources need to go into things that focus on keeping control of the game NOW, rather than later. Second, if you are buying them at all, it means you are basically giving up, as the the heroes have a ridiculously stacked chance in the final battle. Most, if not all of the Avatars have NO CHANCE, unless your heroes are absolutely terrible and have put no thought into the battle.

So here's my advice- use your starting 15 on focus and a warp gem or siege engines(preferred), then buy your monster upgrade ASAP. After that, get at least a point of your cheapest treachery (necessary to help your LT battles), and an extra LT or two. Then pour on the treachery, as it is key (ABSOLUTELY VITAL) to winning LT battles.

Always go for a map/plot kill - I got caught up in thinking if I played well enough early I could get the heroes with a beefy avatar - but even with nearly full upgrades (beating the heroes 2:1 through almost the entire game) and an extra 70 some odd wounds from the last dungeon (which was reinforced by EVERY SINGLE LT I WAS ALLOWED (4 as the titan)) - the heroes managed to destroy me in two and a half turns - and I caused 4 wounds to each of them once (with that fire armor thing), and that was it. Not through misplays, just through the heinous imbalance of the final battle.

If you do not like the idea of a map kill, you'll need to rewrite the game. It's pretty much the only way you can win as the OL.

EDIT:The other thing about buying upgrades that help you now is that they help garner more XP for you. You want to limit the heroes to as little XP as possible, so you have as much as possible the entire game (which, lets face it, shouldn't last beyond Silver if you want to win).

Thanks for the advice, I'll definitely keep it in mind. I just played my first session and made the mistake of putting my first Lieutenant within reach of the heroes, but one of them is very tactical and read guides, so he knows Lieutenants are mostly a psychological threat in copper and will most likely convince the other players to attack him to break up my siege and possibly get rid of him. It really sucks to hear that the Avatar battle is so stacked against me though, as the plot I chose, Obsidian Shackles, gives me no way to win except by razing Tamalir. I'm somewhat dissapointed to see that the balance of RtL forces you to make very specific choices/moves if you want to have any chance at all to win, leaving the Ovewrlord with almost no room to play differently.

I had a simaler story.

In my first campaign I played overlord. (The Dragon)

I was an experierenced overlord and the heroes sometimes chanced. (We set it up ever weekend at a open gaming event for a few hours. two of the heroes were reguleers, but the other two rotated to however showed up, the experienced players helped the drop ins, and so that didn't hurt them too much.)

I STOMPED the heroes through the campaign. I was playing obsiden shakels as well. I had close to double the conquest of the heroes, and all the avatar upgrades, and I got killed in 4 rounds on combat.

My tactic was to dodge and attack one guy, the didge helped alot, cause with max fear, I made them re-roll there surges, so heroes not aiming would often miss. So I think I did well to last 4 rounds. My plan was to hope the heroes failed a roll and I controlled them for a turn, but they didn't.

With the OS plot, here is my suggestion, you will likey loose final battle if you have not won before then, but your best shot is this.

1) Put a dark relic trap in your deck, with 5 levels of dungeon you should have time to draw it, even with gold heroes, save till a late chest, but not too late, it they fail to roll a treasure on the last chest you are screwed. Give the hero that gets the treasure the relic that makes them drop everything, or the one that makes them just melee with one lone red dice. Hope and pray that said hero is NOT the cursed one.

2) at any time past bronze, keep a crushing blow in your deck, your number one target, (Some will dissagree, and say go after best weapon or armour, but I stand by this) make sure you kill that bag that allows a hero to keep lots of stuff.

The reason for this is that if the heroes have that bag of carreying, then they will likey have back up weapons galore, and although the subed weapon may not be as good, it will be good enough, if the heroes are all down to carreying only two extra iteams each, its harder for them to juggle weapons when players loose stuff.

So bottom line is. Kill the bag of carreying, at any time after bronze (So they have no chance of getting it again) Give a dark relic to a hero just before they meet you.

If you are lucky, the dark relic is on a different guy then obsedian shakels, not you have oh.. about a 30% chance fo winning. Fail to do this, you have a 1% chance fo winning.

If you dark relic their equipment, won't they just go back to Tamalir, buy a Remove Curse and that's it?

Even if you remove all of 1 character's equipment, I don't honestly see that making a big difference on the final showdown.

Clamatius said:

That would work if tamalir had any shops open, but it doesn't in the final dungeon. All shops are closed. The only way to get rid of it is by killing the hero, which is fine, but they've still lost equipment that they can't get back (potentially). It's definitely one of the stronger OL moves.

On a side note - is this site having trouble saving logon info for anyone else? Might just be my browser, but it just started failing today.

Same here. I keep getting directed to the FFG home page, and then if I hit my bookmark again I get the Descent forum page but I'm not logged in.