I received what seems to be a ridiculous question from a friend of mine, however this might be possible by the rules: Suppose that for whatever reason the Heroes wish to reach the final battle ASAP. The Heroes could remain on the first level of a dungeon, continuously killing each other until the Overlord gets close to cycling his deck twice. Then they move to the next level and repeat this for the second and third level, thus earning the Overlord a ridiculous amount of XP and likely forcing the final battle before the Overlord can upgrade his Avatar significantly. Besides being absolutely anti-climatic and boring, is this possible ? Am I missing something ? One could argue that while the Heroes are hurting each other, the Overlord could be massively spawning to stop the heroes from reaching the portal to the next level. Any other suggestions ?

Patmox said:

Technically, it's possible. Realistically, it's not only boring but completely ruins the challenge, fun and spirit of the game. Sure, we all know how much easier the final battle is compared to many other situations, but the point is to play the game, not take a cheap approach to forcing what is supposed to be an advantageous situations for the heroes.

That being said, if the heroes do this from the getgo, they won't gain any power or items, they will blow through the early levels of the campaign while giving the OL ridiculous amounts of conquest, the OL will be able to send upgraded Lts. to tamalir with a transport gem by week two and raze the tamalir likely before the heroes for the final battle.

Even if they heroes move fast enough to force the final battle, they will likely have starting dice, skills, maybe a couple of better treasures, and they will get crushed by gold or diamond level monsters on their way to fighting a diamond level avatar. If you know they will do this, start the sorcerer king off with soul ward (cancels surges), phylactery (+100 wounds), and maybe focused or a transport gem for your lts. and see how well they do with basically starting equipment against an avatar who has all those abilities and 6 armor and all that sorcery, etc.

They will either give the OL too many turns buy too many upgrades with limitless XP, or they will force a battle they have no business winning before they are strong enough to win it.

Actually the question was assuming the Heroes reached Gold with a fair amount of equipment and decided they had nothing more to gain from continuing by playing "normally" from that point. However this situation has not occured yet, and the question was for the sake of identifying a possible loophole. Apart from that, I am totally in agreement with the fact that this would totally ruin the spirit of the game. One other thing though concerning your answer, it seems to me that if the heroes stall in the dungeon with this method, the Overlord wouldn't really get any chance of upgrading anything further (apart form the last upgrade allowed before the heroes enter the Overlord's keep).

I think it is designer intent that the heroes not do this. The whole deck cycling limit was added so that the heroes couldn't just stay in talimar and cycle the deck 200 times to go to the final battle early.

My group has a house rule that the OL is not required to gain conquest when he doesn't want to (with the exception of the start of turn conquest).

Patmox said:

The Heroes should get ejected long before that happens. Even in the Gold level of campaign, the OL should be able to get Evil Genius out easily which will speed up the rate that he goes through the deck. Even if all the Heroes were 4 CT, assuming a start at 400CT total, that's going to take the Heroes dying 50 times in a dungeon to get that much. I don't think they will be able to do that before they get ejected. Thats one of the reasons I liked the old ruling of three times through the deck in an entire dungeon better than the new ruling.

Talking about cycling through the Overlord's deck; are we sure that the "two cycles per level" rule overrides the "three cycles per dungeon" rule ?

Yes, it was a change.

A poor one in my opinion, but a change.

If the heroes are explicitly dancing on the edge of the ejection by deck line, there should be some kind of rule that ejects them anyways. It's one thing to play recklessly so that the OL gains more conquest, but it's another one altogether to kill your fellow heroes. Just establish a house rule:

if the heroes want to go about killing themselves to force the final battle, stop the game, award the overlord the remaining conquest points required to get to the Final Battle, to be spent on as many upgrades as desired. Then, award the heroes 1 treasure card and 500 gold for every 50 CT the Overlord received, compensating them for the dungeon levels they would have faced. Finally, continue the game at the start of a new game week (with the conquest total at 600).

This would skip the period of time where the heroes were going against the spirit of the game and get back to the playing. Plus, it's a penalty for engaging in such behavior.

If I was the OL and the players wanted to do that, I'd just tell them that they will have to concede and they can get out of my basement.

Thundercles said:

The change is actually not as bad as you seem to think. In a 3 level dungeon they will deck at most 4 times using the new method, as opposed to 3 before, or 4 before for rumor dungeons. Remember that if they start the next level with only 1 card in the OL deck, the OL will deck on his first turn in the next level, making it decking 1 of 2 for that level. They can only let the OL deck once on each level but the final one.

Badend said:

Honestly, though I mention it as the first thing in my post, the new FAQ change isn't what bothers me. Under the old rules, the heroes could still kill each other until they got kicked out, so it's not like the new decking rules change that at all. It's the intentional suicide nonsense that really gets me.

This has been a known loophole for some time. My comprehensive house-rule patch I posted on BGG addresses, but the solution I use has already been covered here: the Overlord is allowed to refuse any conquest except his start-of-turn pension. While this is definitely a problem, I am totally against solutions of the nature of "oh, this is against the spirit of the game, so just don't do it." The rules need to be hard, fast and clear.

My comment... It a GAME ! Play to have fun. I can't see this being fun for all involved.

Geez... <shakes head in disbelief>

Veinman said:

Hear, hear! I'd tell them to leave and never come back. I'd be looking for a new group to game with.

Well quite a few gut reactions here, which I actually totally understand . I would like to reasure a few people; the question asked was not in order to actually exploit the loophole but to find a way by which this would not be allowed to happen. My gaming group never intended to go forward with the idea (actually the guy who asked the question in the first place got bashed on the head by Nanok of the Blade for coming up with such a stupid thought), but I also believe that the rules should cover this issue.

Patmox said:

I think this exploit is allowed by the rules, and I would let the heroes try it if they wanted to. I would also insist that they play it out and not skip time saying "we do this a lot." The reason being that I strongly suspect the heroes will underestimate how quickly I can cycle the deck. I'd focus on using cards that help me cycle faster and then save cards that will slow down the heroes so that when they make a run for the next level, they will find it much further away than they thought >=). It's not exactly fair play, but at least we're still playing the game this way. If the heroes want to bash their own skulls in I won't exactly stop them.

With all these exploits that hero players keep trying to find to get to the final battle and deny the OL his upgrades, is there really any imbalance in letting the OL buy upgrades in the dungeon? Just say he can buy one at the start of each turn if he wants. He still has to pay for it the same way. All of these exploits are based on the fact that the OL can only buy one upgrade per turn and only while the heroes are on the overland map. So take that away and suddenly the heroes have no reason to hide out in a dungeon anymore.

Alternatively, we could do away with Avatar upgrades all together and make the Avatars themselves correspondingly cooler. That way the heroes have nothing to gain by forfieting the opportunity to improve themselves. Just make sure the new Avatars are balanced against a party who has shown reasonably average performance throughout the game up to this point.

I'm a little confused as to why the heroes would do that. The heroes only get *stronger* as the games proceeds and the overlord gets weaker. What incentive do they have to hurry the game up? The heroes should *want* to have as many turns as possible to get upgrades and skills and buy treasure.

SkittlesAreYum said:

I think the idea is that they are in danger of losing on the world map. Whether it's eternal night about to complete, comets starting to stack close to the OL's keep (ascension), a possible tamalir raze, or just getting in there while the Avatar is still little more than a diamond level whatever he is, it's about taking upgrades away from the OL and getting to the final battle. Let's be honest, gold LT. fights given minions, cards, and the ability to spend threat on movement/extra dice are WAY tougher than an avatar battle. The main reason, from what I can tell is that the heroes have way more options than an avatar...and there are four of them. Sure, avatars can dodge and guard, now. But the heroes can stay away, rest up, and then come back with hard hits. The main advantage the avatar has is a lot more hp, but that's easily overcome with gold treasures and the fact that it's a 4 on 1.

Heroes get stronger, yes. Avatar is generally weak and the main chance the Avatar has is winning it on the world map. Heroes killing each other would be a b.s. ploy to take that ability away from him.

A few interesting ideas there. I wonder how much the idea of allowing the OL to buy upgrades every turn would imbalance the game ? It might also ruin a part of the general strategic planning for the OL as, by the way the rules have been originally designed, he has to carefully decide which route to follow with a limited amount of occasions to purchase his upgrades. Thanks for all your reactions anyway. This is really a great gaming community