Here is a link:

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=5284

I think the Crypt Dragon's combination of Horrifying and Cause Fear is interesting, especially given the ability of large square monsters to essentially move more than their "speed". Of course, this can be countered by appropriate spacing of your heroes, but still ... interesting.

Yes, indeed. Also, being "cursed" monsters, it makes them a likely pairing with Changelings, for a potential -2 to willpower. Lord Hawthorne seems to be unchanged, which is just fine. I wonder how he would play as a Skirmisher (who excels with 1-handed weapons) but getting automatic "Reach"?

Crypt dragon are just better, with 1 more health for minor and horrifying for the whole groupe.

Horrifying is better on them than on dark priest, more easy to use, but still strange because thoses groupes are ranged creatures (?!)

still good monster to use with the shadowmancer deck

Horrifying is a (forgive the pun) scare tactic to keep enemies from moving into melee with the dragons. They seem very tanky and it seems like using them for ranged damage and then to move in when you have an important willpower card to play can be potent. Their damage is mediocre, mainly because you only get 2 of them.

Lord Hawthorne looks interesting but I think Trenloe still has him beat.

dont forget, that u can use ur Cause Fear to get the heroes adjacent to each other, and can then maby blast 3 whit the other crypt dragon

I don't want read about Guardians of Deephall any more, I want it in my collection, at last.

yup I cant wait to paint them, the artwork for crypt dragon card is way awesome.

Yes, indeed. Also, being "cursed" monsters, it makes them a likely pairing with Changelings, for a potential -2 to willpower. Lord Hawthorne seems to be unchanged, which is just fine. I wonder how he would play as a Skirmisher (who excels with 1-handed weapons) but getting automatic "Reach"?

Answer: epic. He's a Tower of Death as a skirmisher.

This is good stuff. Ranged attacks + Blast + these Willpower shenaningans including Immobilize condition... absolutely fantastic. I currently see plenty of ways to power this with OL cards and get some nasty combos going.

It's a bit early to say, but I can plainly see picking these over Shadow Dragons in many - if not most - situations.

I received the box yesterday and... just wow.

The monsters all look great. I also love the dynamism in the Dark Priest mini.

The Act I versions lack the Horrifying traits though, which counts for both the Dark Priest and the Crypt Dragon. But 6 life and a brown dice on a Master Priest is better than what I had expected. Same with Act I dragons, two grey defense dices seems solid to compensate the low HP. Act I Wendigo hits as strong as its Act II version (the master gets one more yellow dice) except it has lower HP.

As said earlier, I´m looking forward using Crypt Dragons alongside Dark Priest and willpower-heavy OL effects.

The rumor quest looked very interesting. In particular, I noticed that interacting with a tunnel [objective] token in encounter 1 did not require an action as it normally does in many quests, but required the monster to stay still this turn.

The OL reward card "Powers in Numbers" is quite nice: Choose a map tile, if there are more monsters on that tile than heroes, then each hero suffers 1 life and 2 fatigue, and all monsters regain 2 life. The 2 fatigue is really nice. Some sort of mini-radiant light. I wonder if familiars are considered heroes in that case, though.

The OL reward card "Powers in Numbers" is quite nice: Choose a map tile, if there are more monsters on that tile than heroes, then each hero suffers 1 life and 2 fatigue, and all monsters regain 2 life. The 2 fatigue is really nice. Some sort of mini-radiant light. I wonder if familiars are considered heroes in that case, though.

Is it an OL card that targets "heroes"? If so, you can consider things treated like "hero figures/ heroes" to be heroes for that purpose.

Just curious ... how/where did you get your hands on this expansion already? I have been keeping a constant lookout at on-line sites, local gaming stores, etc. and no one has it.

The OL card says "each hero", but if you include familiars then it would mean they lose 3 life each, since they cannot lose fatigue.

But yeah, if you face a party with 2-3 familiars like mine currently, maybe this card loses some relevance. Otherwise, quite cool. heck, it's cool in any case, I can think of many situations when this would be useful.

On the down side, many OL reward cards are just.. rewards. Yeah I know, it's just that you can never test them unless you´ve won the specific quest. I wish I could invest in them somehow. For instance, winning the My house my rules quest in SoN gave me the card that allows me to draw 4 if my OL deck has 20+ cards in it. That's quite cool but m not sure I´ll see it again anytime soon :-/

About gettingthe pack, well... That must be another overlord reward Seriously though, maybe it is so that the online store I ordered it from are a tad quicker than others. m in Sweden so there is no reason why we would get this sooner than anybody else in the US in particular.

Still, feels reaaaaaly good to be first on that. I wish I had a session yesterday just to be the first to test it out, lol.

The OL card says "each hero", but if you include familiars then it would mean they lose 3 life each, since they cannot lose fatigue.

But yeah, if you face a party with 2-3 familiars like mine currently, maybe this card loses some relevance. Otherwise, quite cool. heck, it's cool in any case, I can think of many situations when this would be useful.

On the down side, many OL reward cards are just.. rewards. Yeah I know, it's just that you can never test them unless you´ve won the specific quest. I wish I could invest in them somehow. For instance, winning the My house my rules quest in SoN gave me the card that allows me to draw 4 if my OL deck has 20+ cards in it. That's quite cool but m not sure I´ll see it again anytime soon :-/

About gettingthe pack, well... That must be another overlord reward Seriously though, maybe it is so that the online store I ordered it from are a tad quicker than others. m in Sweden so there is no reason why we would get this sooner than anybody else in the US in particular.

Still, feels reaaaaaly good to be first on that. I wish I had a session yesterday just to be the first to test it out, lol.

Psh, run Baron Zachareth, and draw 2 extra overlord cards each turn =p.

Psh, run Baron Zachareth, and draw 2 extra overlord cards each turn =p.

You often mention about Zachareth's plot deck, so I take you are using it a lot in your campaigns. How often do you Rush of Power? I mean, there are tons of good cards in the deck but you kind of need the threat to fuel things like RoP?

Whenever I drop a hero for the first time, I take a threat token rather than an overlord card. If I need the overlord card to win the quest, I can rush of power to get 2 of them. If I don't, I can hold onto it for later. Winning a quest gives 2 threat, and playing rumors gives threat. I rarely run out of threat.

Whenever I drop a hero for the first time, I take a threat token rather than an overlord card. If I need the overlord card to win the quest, I can rush of power to get 2 of them. If I don't, I can hold onto it for later. Winning a quest gives 2 threat, and playing rumors gives threat. I rarely run out of threat.

Me neither, but on the other hand since I play Basic II more often than not, I tend to be very careful with my plot card activations so I stand a decent chance of making my OL cards through (attribute tests).

I exclusively run Basic 2, I much prefer it to the original deck. If you pick the right targets for your cards, it's exceedingly difficult for them to pass, even with re-rolls. Using befuddle when they pass just makes it a nightmare for them. For example, someone with a stat of 1 in an attribute has an exceedingly slim chance of passing an attribute test after befuddle is thrown on them (1 in 36). With a 2 in the attribute, their odds improve to 1 in 18, which is still extremely bad.

I´m with you. The first thing I do when we start a campaign is to print out a small table with everybody's attribute stats on it with a color code (green/yellow/red) so I have an instant visualization of my potential targets. Well, that's just the best way I´ve found for me instead of having to read 4 hero sheets in reverse side every time the situation presents itself, but you don't need to go as far, lol.

I find challenging to keep the two Befuddle copies in the deck after a couple of purchases, though. They are key to the whole Basic II idea, but they don't do anything on their own, so once you´ve put the couple of underwhelming cards aside, the list of potential outers comes to these two. I´ve never gone as far as ditching both, but I´ve sometimes played with only 1 in the deck. Although I guess you could just play with a 17-cards deck and still be fine.

Just since we talk about deck size, do you stick to 15 cards? -- EDIT: yeah, Zachy's 13 are king.. ok bar that -- I do (with the exception of the Call of the Ravens since it's outside of your 15), but I recently came across the OL reward card granting you 4 cards if your deck has 20+ cards in it. I normally want my deck to run smoothly and only keep the relevant stuff instead of drawing dead, but I haven't really been able to qualify the loss of "card flow" against the ability to broaden your scope with abilities. Any view?

I keep my deck size to a minimum, there are always some cards I don't need anymore. If I've built up a ton of threat and have Rush of Power, I'll sometimes let the deck size go up a lot for an important quest with 2 parts, so I can spam rush of power to have the entire deck in my hand for encounter 2. Having 20 cards in your hand is obviously better than 13.

In general though, smaller deck sizes are better.

I guess that's even more true with Basic I, since access to Dash and possibly Dark Charm is pretty vital to many quests. I have never had to purchase deck utility cards since I moved to Basic II. I´m almost sure the few cards remaining in the deck pile are going to give me a little something, as opposed to the sight of two Dash cards in the discard pile and knowing any of the cards left on top of your OL card pile are thrash in comparison.

I´m not saying the whole game comes down to how often you use Dash in a quest, but there is certainly incentive to dig for it in the vast majority in the situations, which is a problem you don't have with Basic II. You can still want one Basic II card badly, but maybe not in every encounter.

I guess that's even more true with Basic I, since access to Dash and possibly Dark Charm is pretty vital to many quests. I have never had to purchase deck utility cards since I moved to Basic II. I´m almost sure the few cards remaining in the deck pile are going to give me a little something, as opposed to the sight of two Dash cards in the discard pile and knowing any of the cards left on top of your OL card pile are thrash in comparison.

I´m not saying the whole game comes down to how often you use Dash in a quest, but there is certainly incentive to dig for it in the vast majority in the situations, which is a problem you don't have with Basic II. You can still want one Basic II card badly, but maybe not in every encounter.

"Uncontrolled Power" became the card that the heroes learned to breathe a sigh of relief when the second one hit the discard pile. They had a party with a Runemaster, a Necromancer, and a Beastmaster, who all had a willpower of 2 (they also had a disciple with a willpower of 4, but oh well.) In any case, I ruined several of their "good rolls" by turning them into weak, painful, fatigue causing rolls. That being said, I'm more likely to invest in "Refresh" when I've got Basic rather than Basic II.

Hey guys, not meaning to interrupt the convo, but as a noobie, could you explain a couple things you have talked about--like:

* What is threat (since I don't see it in the base game)?

* Is basic II the OL card set that comes in LoR? Am I right that you can use that in other campaigns (Shadow Rune)?

* Where do plot decks come from--from Lieutenant packs? Are they usable only for that Lt?

Thanks for curing my ignorance and sorry for jumping in on your conversation.

plot decks and threat come from lieutenant packs only. yes on basic ii.

So, the basic mechanic is, you choose a plot deck at the start of a campaign, and get one card for free. As you play the game, you have chances to gain threat. You spend threat to purchase new cards from your plot deck to use against the heroes, and you also spend threat to activate those cards. When you activate a card, the threat becomes fortune to use for the heroes to counter balance it.

The lieutenant chosen doesn't actually matter. Each plot deck contains a card for the lieutenant in question in order to summon it to certain battles as an agent (a modified version of itself) in place of open group monsters, but that card can't be used whenever the overlord can appear (and sometimes in entire campaigns). That card isn't all that useful however, generally speaking. I find that I pretty much never use it.

Each plot deck has a theme that goes with the lieutenant associated with it. For example, Bel'Thir's is about raw fighting power while abandoning traps.