Sorry for newbie question, but where I can find description of each card in each plot deck? Im not sure I can afford every single leiutenant pack in one jump, so I want to choose somwthing that will fit me most to start with.

If this is closed information due to security and license stuff, than what in your opinion will be the best plot deck to play LoR using Basic II? I am fond of traps usually, but in next play I really want to test some new for me Shadowmancer and Punisher decks. Is there any synergise between plot decks and overlord cards?

Thanks

If you want an all purpose deck that will always work well, go with Baron Zachareth's. It's a little bland compared to the others (as it's more general), but it's the strongest plot deck there is and works well with everything.

If you absolutely want basic 2, do not use Bel'thir's plot deck, it only works with Basic 1.

Baron Zachareth's deck is the strongest. O.o

I tried Alric Farrows deck in a campagne. After a few quests i decided to leave the lieutenant deck out of play because i thought it was bad for game balance. I mean cabal and goblins - the master goblins can get up to +4 dmg and this for only 1 fate. Also the cards seemed to be rather cheap to buy and activate.

Are others more experienced with the lieutenant decks? Do they bring more or less fun for both sides or are my heroes just really that bad. As i said a master goblin with +4 dmg wiped them out nearly completly. Without the "cabal master goblin" i think they would have won.

Plot decks, I think, are needed for game balance. Without them, the heroes tend to run rampant all over the overlord when they play properly. The plot deck cards aren't a surprise like the overlord cards are, but they provide for measured responses when used correctly.

Thank you for the answers

here one can find some cards description: http://descent2e.wikia.com/wiki/Lieutenant_Pack

Thought not all of them are there. I think I will go with all base game agents + LoR agents to make our first LoR walktrought more immersive and engaging

Plot decks, I think, are needed for game balance. Without them, the heroes tend to run rampant all over the overlord when they play properly. The plot deck cards aren't a surprise like the overlord cards are, but they provide for measured responses when used correctly.

My experience of the game so far tells me that the heroes/OL assymetry tends to favor heroes in general, in terms of providing way more tools to do well in virtually any quest if they play correctly. The OL has very little space of manoever and any mistake is paid cash. Heroes normally have better capability for coming back in a quest even with an OL being lucky on the dice rolls. With two attacks a turn, they can also negate your monsters' ability to get you closer to your objective. Above all, once they have geared up a bit, the synergies with the class abilities can make them very hard to kill in normal combat unless you give up on everything else, and once you´ve done that all you get in return is one hero "wasting" a revive action to put the party on track again.

With this in mind, I would agree that plot decks sort of expand the set of tools the OL has to counteract the heroes. More abilities, even visible (as opposed to OL cards - well... normally), can only enhance the OL capability to do well in a quest.

But in practice: that is soooo not how it works out.

Aside from a handful of really useful plot cards spread over something like 12 plot decks total (sorry, I haven't made the count so I can be off here), every card is either:

- Stone unplayable

- Christmasland-situationally good (read: if you play the game everyday over a year's time with the same plot deck, maybe one day or two you´ll have actual NEED to play the plot card)

- Too expensive. Effect is good, but you pay more than you get.

In practice, it leaves you with something like 3-4 decks:

- Zachy's deck. It's not a fun deck in my mind, but it's functional.

- 0-threat decks like Tristayne's. That's a real plot deck.

- Raythen for your Treasure Hunter counteract convenience

- Bol Goreth for Infector class, and even then some people think Zachareth is better at the job. Otherwise thrash.

- Plot decks where you MAYBE want to spend the threat on a very useful card and let the rest dormant over the campaign. Mirklace's Crushing Exhaustion etc. See, I wouldn't mind picking Gargan's deck and just leave it there untouched (e.g. not use it) until I can finally play Crushing Exhaustion during the Finale.

Plus in a quest, drawing a OL card instead of claiming a threat token is going to be the best course of action. You only claim the threat if you already know the quest is won and there is no encounter 2 after that.

Giving away Fortune token gives more edge to the heroes than the actual card ability you paid for in the vast majority of the cases. I would typically only spend threat if the card put me in such a position that the heroes would have a hell of a difficulty to take back. Yeah it's nice to make your goblin deal +4 damage, but it's worthless (even if it manages to kill a hero) if your board position doesn't change. Whereas the fortune token can be used to re-roll a crucial attribute test or that cross on the blue dice that makes your monster live another turn, granting you two more actions.

With all that in mind, I disagree on the fact plot decks are necessary for balance in the game. I think the overall balance is +/- 0 after choosing a plot deck, bar the few decks named above. It even favors the heroes if all you do is paying threat for subpar effects.

very interesting. we are finishing our first base game campaign playthrough and while our overlord gave us great challenge during Act I, and even crushed us during Interlude and managed to get duskblade in Act II, he really fell back in power.

Berserker Grisban with Grinding Axe, Mana Weave, Lucky Dice and 'black dice' armor is coming for OL's monsters like terminator, onslaughting everything on his way. Jein Fairwood the Thief can loot the map and go for objectives in an eye blink, ignoring almost everything he can thow at us (for some reason OL didn't get Web Trap). Syndrael the knight with Dark God's shield adds for Grisban's lack of mobility and defends whole party when needed and Ashrian the Spiritspeaker makes it tougther for OL to kill anyone at all

so, yeah, I feel like act II heroes a little bit overpowered. Thought maybe we just played heroes-favored quests (Heroes blood and Wyrm turns encounter 1, encounter 2 will be played soon, but I feel it will be easy walk without Belthir on OL's side). And due to this Im worried a little, because I'll be playing as OL our next campaign.

Anyway I'm very excited about this game. glad we have discovered it for us

Wow, I just looked throught Queen's Ariad plot deck, while some cards are not very usefull, Web of Deception, Entangling Weave and Unsafe Passage sound sweet

http://descent2e.wikia.com/wiki/Tangled_Web

Natural Camouflage is not bad either. Does this plot deck allowed to be played in LoR?

Wow, I just looked throught Queen's Ariad plot deck, while some cards are not very usefull, Web of Deception, Entangling Weave and Unsafe Passage sound sweet

http://descent2e.wikia.com/wiki/Tangled_Web

Natural Camouflage is not bad either. Does this plot deck allowed to be played in LoR?

The deck is allowed, but you're not allowed to summon the agent.

Indalecio- Crushing exhaustion is very cool, but the card in the Mirklace deck that absolutely blows my mind is "Shifting Earth." ( Exhaust this card at the start of your turn and choose a space on the map. Each hero within 3 spaces of the chosen space tests might or awareness, your choice. Move each hero that fails 2 spaces.) ( Note, that's you pick which attribute for each hero- so some can test might and some can test awareness.) It's so devastating in so many situations, and it only costs 1 threat to use. I was a hero against an OL in the LoR campaign who bought only that card from the whole deck (he tried to use his ridiculous amount of XP to buy/fuel the mirklace agent in the finale until we reminded him he couldn't.) It was a thorn in our side in almost every quest- strategic positioning of the heroes became pointless.

Yeah you´re right, Shifting Earth is a really nice card too. I have similar memories to yours in that regard. Mirklace as an agent is really nice too, probably one of the most powerful monsters in the game all things considered.

Most decks have a few good cards and a lot of not so good ones: comes with the territory. I don't think plot decks are equally fair to the overlord and the heroes: they absolutely swing the balance more towards the overlord than it is without them. The fact is that the overlord has total 100% control over when to use plot cards, which means he can use them only when the benefits outweigh the downsides of the fortune tokens.

Maybe Im wrong, but it looks like the abilities to reroll die or make additional action are strong enough, to keep OL from using plot cards to often. The problem for OL here is to 'catch the moment', it must be quite challenging

Yeah, the idea as overlord is to play them only when they're worth playing: not constantly. However, since the overlord is the only one who decides when to use them, the heroes can't force him to, it's never going to go against you unless you screw up.

it's never going to go against you unless you screw up.

This is what scares me most =D

That's for the one-off abilities, but then you have a huge set of cards that you can only activate at the beginning of an encounter/quest. Stuff giving an ability to a monster group comes to mind, but there are others. It's a strategic decision that doesn't give you anything at the time you activate it, but gives immediate fortune to the heroes.

Otherwise, I agree on the fact that heroes not being able to interact with the OL ability to play plot cards is a plus, but I still stand by the opinion that a re-roll (or a free action) is more powerful and relevant than the majority of the effects you are able to cast using plot cards. That's just in general, obviously plot cards that give you card advantage are always going to be powerful in that kind of game, and there are very good cards as well that justify the spent threat. 0-threat cards are also awesome.

If a re-roll is more powerful, don't use the card. I frequently don't buy all the cards in a deck because they won't be useful against a given hero composition.

But I find it's rare that a single re-roll is more useful than a card being used when I find it most optimal, and needing 2 of the tokens (means you must have used a minimum of 5 in the quest so far) means you've gotten plenty of mileage out of them.

The fact is that plot cards are best used sparingly, but remember that it doesn't give them fortune to buy them, so getting a variety of potentially useful ones and using them when it really matters makes a huge deal. Unless it's Rush of Power, in which case spam that bad boy all day long.

I've experimented with a variety of decks, and while some are awful, others are very useful against the right hero compositions and others are always useful in general.

I agree with everything you´ve said, that is that the re-roll should never have greater relevance than a card effect being played if it is the optimal choice for the situation. My comment on that though is that is can be very difficult to evaluate that play, and that plot cards of that type should be used carefully. People come here asking generic questions about plot cards and I get the impression that people want cards to "use", in the sense of something they can fire off just because it's "cool". My experience of plot cards is that you use when it makes you win. I mean, generally speaking. You can spam Rush of Power cards obviously, but you can't really spam a +4 damage effect or something that doesn't have a global effect on the game. If the +4 damage kills the guy running for the objective then it has a powerful effect on the quest. If the guy it kills is revived next turn and didn't change your board position as the OL, then that's one of the situations where said effect should have been spared maybe.

Which leads me to the point that balance is +/- unchanged because what we call the "correct use" of plot decks is to spare them for these one-time situations. Again, bar Zachareth and the "special" plot decks. Even permanent effects can rarely be played quest after quest for the threat investment they demand. Playing a plot card automatically grants something to the OL, so from that perspective yes balance is geared towards the OL at that particular moment in time, but during the normal course of the game plot cards are just dormant. As Zaltyre pointed out, you certainly have psychological warfare in terms of being aware of the presence of a plot card effect that would devastate your heroes party, but you can also learn to play by that and mimimize its effect.

2-fortunes on a hero I´ve seen while using Bol' Goreth's plot deck, I wouldn't call it a marginal situation since you carry fortune tokens across encounters, but it's not that uncommon either. But yeah, re-rolls may be even more dangerous because it can be a cross on a special attack from heroic feat etc. A third action doesn't change the fact the one-time attack with added effects failed.

Well, when discussing balance and strategy, obviously you shouldn't just use things because they seem cool if you care about winning.

Plot cards are obviously bad if you use them poorly. They are a strategic option, just like everything else. But it's your choice to use them, so if it goes badly for you, you only have yourself to thank for the screw up.

I've just started a campaign with Splig deck, and just with an overview to the cards, and with the few threat I've spent so far, I think it shouldn't be so rare to use threat and being rewarded. A good combination of Meat Shield, Emergency Rations, and Dive into Cover (and Feral Instincts if needed), could easily be worth the cost and the free rerolls, if there is some monster that you want to be alive.

And if you have the opponrtunity to use adequately Raided Armory with the Cave Spiders and an Expert Blow in your hand, that could be devastating, and be worth the 2 fortune cost.

I must say that I usually play to have fun more than than winning at all cost, but even of you strategize that much, I think there can be a good movement of threat/fortune, and still being rewarded as OL.

Well I have a Splig plot deck too and the best part for me is his actul lieutanant in act 2/ Ability to give all other minions in your group to attack second time is SO great. I don't have kobolds but it looks like it would be great (op?) combo/

As for me, I'm planning to buy all of packs so I just randomly choose next one for next campaign and buy it. For now we're playing with Lord Meric and he is quite good. His combo for 2 tokens can give +4/5 damage and sometimes is devastating in quest when OL need to kill some NPC. And it gives me more reason to use Mage class, which is a bit weak in compare to other OL classses IMO/

And if you have the opponrtunity to use adequately Raided Armory with the Cave Spiders and an Expert Blow in your hand, that could be devastating, and be worth the 2 fortune cost.

Well I have a Splig plot deck too and the best part for me is his actul lieutanant in act 2/ Ability to give all other minions in your group to attack second time is SO great.

Combine them both, and I can't see any hero surviving.

Sorry for necroposting, but...

I just grabed lieutenants from the base game and looked throught. Now I see why people talk about power of Baron Zacharet's plot deck.

In fact I don't see how it is even acceptible to play with this card:

Meticulous Planning 4 Threat to Purchase

Exhaust this card after a hero draws (and chooses to keep) a Search card to force that hero to place that Search card on the bottom of the deck and draw a new one.

Seeds of Betrayal 1 Threat

it takes away excitment of ever getting treasure card. Maybe it is not imblanced, but it feels soo frustrating like... like it is OL's version of Treasurehunter or Marshall... even I feel bad for heroes.

If anyone played with it please, share your impressions: was it in fact frustrating or not as bad as I imagine?

The only counteraction to this card I see is to play Thief and rush through the loot deck to touch the bottom

The only counteraction to this card I see is to play Thief and rush through the loot deck to touch the bottom

With 8 search tokens in a quest, you're never going to fully deplete the 12 card deck, even if you draw them all. This card can effectively prevent the heroes from ever getting the treasure chest. However, if a party is searching every token, it cannot prevent them from getting less than 250 gold per quest (6x25 health and stamina potions + 2x50 for the other 2 cards,) and while the heroes may dislike not getting the treasure chest, this is still plenty of gold to keep them buying regular shop cards.

However, when you combine this with the card that decreases the number of available shop cards, it just gets ridiculous. I'm not sure whether I've mentioned it here or not, but we just don't play with plot cards or threat tokens. Fortunately, we also don't really care about figures as opposed to tokens, so that makes the lieutenant packs less than necessary.

With 8 search tokens in a quest, you're never going to fully deplete the 12 card deck, even if you draw them all.

My heroes did it once. With the travel card that makes them draw Search Cards by attribute test (they drew 3) and a lucky Secret Room, they finished the deck, and they didn't even searched the last token on the 2nd encounter. They felt wealthy, and I felt doomed...