The situation. Playing 2nd encounter of "Fury of the tempest" heroes get 1 piece and overlord get another one.

Heroes stand their ground at the bottom of the map, and overlord do the same with goblins, splig and elementals (and hand full of cards) at the top of the map.

No one is willing to concede the quest, so no one wants to go after the other piece.... grrr

How will you solve this??

The game can't proceed until the encounter does, and there are no mechanics to resolve a tie. If your entire deck of cards is insufficient to force your way to a victory, the only thing you can do is to turtle. The same goes for the heroes: if you can't be aggro and still claim victory, you have to turtle. This is an unfortunate situation, but someone has to make a move.

Adding in a houserule mid campaign on map time limits is the only way to fix this really, but there's no way to make that fair.

The overlord SHOULD be able to slowly push his way across the map to the heroes and take them out though.

Whitewing is correct on the rules, in that there are none- one victory condition or the other must be met. I also agree that the OL should be able to push his way into the hero lines, since he reinforces monsters at full health, and heroes do not stand up at full health. If he is so outmatched in terms of attack/defense that he can't do that, the heroes really have no business being turtles, as they can clearly mop the floor with the monsters. If both sides are just afraid of getting hit, they might want to re-evaluate how they approach the game (strategically speaking.)

Haven't played this quest yet.

Unfortunately, I now have a vision in my head of my game board setup exactly like this, and months going by, with multiple game days as we stare each other down.

Okay, not really. As the OL, I would probably just mass for a massive blitzkrieg attack against the heroes.

If the OL has his full complement of monsters and the heroes are turtling it, then maybe Descent is not the game for this group?

Descent is about action economy and sacrifcing getting the treasure to get at the goals. The only way to break the tie is for someone to make a move.

Haven't played this quest yet.

Unfortunately, I now have a vision in my head of my game board setup exactly like this, and months going by, with multiple game days as we stare each other down.

Okay, not really. As the OL, I would probably just mass for a massive blitzkrieg attack against the heroes.

For the record, in this situation I would attack slowly. Move all your monsters up slowly until they're beginning to get in range, being careful not to carelessly lose any. Then you can rush in using your overlord cards. If you can get a knockdown or two in the first turn, you should be okay.

Hi All,

Actually I was one of the heroes in this exact game with ekator (the creator of the post) as our OL and I am not sure you see exactly why both sides tend to wait for the other:

The OL almost had already all the cards (I think he was missing 4) so it was better for us to cure totally ourselves (I was disciple) and let him have all the cards and wait for him.
His reinforcement was 2 goblins (if they were dead) at the exit miles away from where we were (21 spaces: I have counted them) and 1 elemental (if it was dead) in one of the corner. As you know the elemental are good attacking but does not resist much.

In our group we have beastmaster and necromancer so we could block the way of the elemental if we want and even if he could manage to kill any of us only with one elemental he would not get the piece of the relic since only one goblin or Splig itself could get it. Another option was to get to the east were no elemental is reinforced and goblins still are very far.

So in summary even with all his deck it was really difficult for him to get the piece without involving Splig what would mean that we could get his piece. We ended the quest (4am and we all were quite tired) accepting the offer of the OL what was he getting the 4 thread tokens (he is playing Ariad thread deck) and we the gauntlet. I agree this deal favor the heroes but since we lost the first quest we are now 1-1 in Act I so I think is good for the balance of the campaign. Also he and I agree that to the infinite is more likely the heroes win the quest than the OL (60/40 we say).

Otherwise we would have kept one hero with the piece far away from the monsters (basically very far from the exit) and the other 3 + familiars fighting for the other piece what I admit it would have been tough but more likely than he getting goblins pass us, reaching and killing the 4th hero, getting the piece and getting back pass us again. And as said if he uses Splig to attack easier for us to get the 2nd piece. Also we could rotate this 4th hero so have always one fresh of health far from the monsters.

And of course we all agree that someone has to do a move, the problem is that both side want the other to be that one

Even given your description, I still think it was in your best interest to attack. Sure, maybe some healing before going in was advisable- but the fact that you had 2 familiars who could perform attacks absolutely encourages you to push the other side- that's almost as good as reinforcing monsters- that is, they could attack without any risk to your party. I don't know what skills you had as the disciple, but if you had "Blessed Strike," you could even outfit one of them with an extra yellow die, making a wonderful glass cannon. Even if you wanted to leave 2 heroes back, send the others and the familiars up- it would be very unlikely that the goblins could escape with the other piece before you killed Splig.

The OL, of course, seeing this, should have attacked with he still had the most monsters. Elementals (which don't defend too well in act 1) can still immobilize, and can attack all adjacent figures- quite handy. Also, if he brought Splig in, he could have used knockback to separate one hero from the others.

It's impressive that you had a standoff that long.

Even given your description, I still think it was in your best interest to attack. Sure, maybe some healing before going in was advisable- but the fact that you had 2 familiars who could perform attacks absolutely encourages you to push the other side- that's almost as good as reinforcing monsters- that is, they could attack without any risk to your party. I don't know what skills you had as the disciple, but if you had "Blessed Strike," you could even outfit one of them with an extra yellow die, making a wonderful glass cannon. Even if you wanted to leave 2 heroes back, send the others and the familiars up- it would be very unlikely that the goblins could escape with the other piece before you killed Splig.

The OL, of course, seeing this, should have attacked with he still had the most monsters. Elementals (which don't defend too well in act 1) can still immobilize, and can attack all adjacent figures- quite handy. Also, if he brought Splig in, he could have used knockback to separate one hero from the others.

It's impressive that you had a standoff that long.

Zaltyre, actually I saved my first 2px to get Holy Power in the 3rd quest so I had only the basic Prayer of Healing of my disciple.

Also dividing the group in 2 and 2 heroes I don't think is wise as we could get separated between elementals and goblins and he could manage to knock-out the closest 2 having both to stand up by themselves and entering in an undesired loop.

And about having 2 familiars to attack they were the wolf and the reanimate what can only move 4 and 3 spaces respectively per turn (they cannot run) and melee attack, against the goblins and elemental who move 5 (more if they run) and attack range. Also as you know they don't resist normally more than 1 attack (reanimate no defence dice, wolf 1-gray but health 3) so need to be invoked every turn. In summary attacking with these familiars against monster with range attack without involving the heroes is impossible. It would have been very different with a geomancer (thousand times better than the negromancer).

About Splig, the last thing the OL should want in this quest is getting Splig with the 2nd piece close to the heroes, unless they are knock-out.

We weren't so long standoff actually, here we are explaining the encounter as we see it but what happened that night is that the OL saw the encounter impossible and made the offer of 4 thread tokens vs gauntlet quite soon, then considering that gained we attacked with everything even without curing ourselves, and although we didn't continue much the OL managed to knock-out 3 of us (not the one with the piece) and we leave it there accepting the offer.

But with no offer in the table I really see this encounter as a really really long one. Of course is much faster when one side get the 2 pieces from the search tokens directly (normally the heroes as they have better access to 4 against 2 the OL) but that night we were very unlucky in all senses.