Hello,

We played the first session of a campaign on friday and on the very first dungeon level we got dungeon 6, The Gauntlet. At first I was very confused about the rune locked doors as nothing is said about them anywhere, so I looked up a few blogs and did a search here and found that the named can open them.

What I am confused about is the way it was played as compared to what I have read from other blogs. Seems most people sit the named back and wait for the heroes to arrive through the corrider to play as many traps on them as possible, or have the named open the doors and let swarms of mobs through. My question is once the named opens the door, it must remain so correct? It can be shut again but the heroes must be able to open it after? I assume this because otherwise the heroes would have to trek all the way around to the named then the named could open the door jump through to the other side and close it again. The heroes would never be bale to get at the named otherwise.

At any rate here is what happend to me. We played that once opened it remains unlocked, so the OL sat back with the named and placed all starting mobs in the hall blocking any progress to the named. Being the first level of the first dungeon in the campaign the heroes had no money, and no real power. It was taking 3-4 hits to kill any one mob (even the weakest ones). Therefore each kill others would move up and the OL would spawn more in back in the hall, making a blitz impossible. We could not move forward at all as swarms of mobs blocked the way and we could not kill them fast enough to make any progress. Plus the OL was rolling Huge dmg with each mob after armor, effectively taking tons of life each round that I would have to send one or 2 heroes back to town for healing each turn. I guess I should have retreated, but I had a hard time deciding to do so because it was the very first level and we had nothing and really needed at least some money.

Did we play this right? And what could I or the OL have done better?

To the best of my knowledge, if the leader opens that door, let's the monsters out, and then closes it the next turn the Heroes can't open it because they don't have the rune key.

Bravo McWilley said:

There is no reason the named door must remain open. The Boss can still close the door. The heroes cannot reopen it until they have the runekey (have killed the boss).
The heroes have two ways to prevent the boss escaping them by just swapping sides. First, once they can use the glyphs to arrive on other side of the door (once they have got around to activate the second glyph - the one misprinted as active). Second, they can split up and have heroes on both sides. In addition, the Boss does not have enough movement (without a charge) to both open and close the door in the same turn, so the door will always be open the turn he moves through (or the turn before, alerting the heroes).

As for what you might have doen wrong, two things come immediately to mind.
First, the reinforcement marker. It costs 15threat to flip the marker and spawn again on the same level (+ the spawn cost). So the OL can rarely afford to spawn on multiple consecutive turns.
Secondly, even basic heroes should be able to kill the majority of bronze level monsters in one or at most two hits. An axe or even a sword with 2-3 trait dice will kill almost any tier 1 monster in one hit, anything not exceptionally tough in 2 hits. You need to start at least two heroes with melee weapons (Axes, Hammer) and either the Ranger or the Mage should have some sort of damage bonus skill or ability so that they can also kill tier one monsters.
What you really need to do in that sort of situation is use three heroes to break a route through the mob for the fourthe hero to run through and get to the glyph. The Hammer (shop weapon with Knockback) is a real handy weapon...

Funny, I had both the axe and the hammer on my melee heroes.

The OL was spawning correctly, using the spawn marker. He was just able to discard high threat cards every turn to be able to spawn more every other turn in most cases. I did not get more than 1-2 mobs killed each turn, so while I was making progress against numbers of mobs, I was not getting any forward momentum. That being said, he only played one trap the whoole time as he only seemed to draw spawn cards and High cost event/power cards that he discarded for threat to keep spawning and keep the corridor blocked.

Another thing, that might have played into it was that there was a naga or two in the hall also with 2 master beastmen behind them giving all the other mobs in front all those bonuses. I was not able to knockback a naga as the size was too big.

Either way, I thank you for clarifying the rune door issue. I knew we had to be playing it wrong but it seemed so impossible to get at the boss this way. I think I was just outplayed this level and probably should have fled right away as there was no way my weak heroes could take out the wall of mobs before them. Any possiblity of getting a line through the hall would have meant instant death to my runner after he finished his move, most likely not even being able to reach the glyph in one turn.

You were using the copper side for the monsers, right? They aren't that hard to beat, even nagas should go down to 1 good ax swing. Beastman should be 4 health and 2 armor, for reference.

Also remember that you can battle and spend fatigue for movement, or to drink fatigue potions for move fatigue to spend on movement. Sounds like you were going slow.

A spawn every 2 turns is entirely possible if the OL gets a little lucky on draws / surges, but you should be able to kill a copper monster spawn in 1 turn easy.

Bravo McWilley said:

Sounds like more than anything you had a slow start, some bad luck, some OL good luck and it all compounded. Sometimes **** happens...