Overlords: Closest You've Come To Inducing A Rage Quit From A Hero

By Extortion, in Descent: Journeys in the Dark

Here's mine from last night:

The quest is Gold Diggers from LotW in a LoR campaign so I equip Sun's Fury on Valyndra. My open groups are fire imps and arachyura. I'm using Tristayne's plot deck and have Wild Energy and Pariah. For the first couple rounds, the fire imps take pot shots at the heroes and move back, inflicting a few burn conditions and infection tokens. (I drew Contaminated in my starting hand) The heroes handle the fire imps and move up, healing as needed (they have an apothecary). Valyndra works on the miners, but rolls misses on 2 consecutive turns (I rolled an unusually high number of X's throughout the quest). When the first hero lands on the stream, there are two miners left. At this point, I'm not liking my chances. The heroes have been in complete control for the entirety of the quest, not a single hero has been knocked down so far and the 2 miners are at full health.

Then everything changed.

I start my turn by having Valyndra attack a miner. I get a great roll. 6 hearts and a surge. I use fire breath to hit both miners. The heroes rolled only 1 shield for each miner so they both go down and drop Jorem's Discovery. I have a master fire imp close by so he moves in a few spaces, picks it up and moves away a few more spaces. I then use Pariah to skip the activation of the arachyura to give the master fire imp carrying Jorem's Discovery another activation. He double moves for 10 MP. He is now 6 spaces away from the exit, Valyndra has almost full health, and 2 of the 4 heroes are a full turn away from getting into striking range of Valyndra. The quest is over, I have won. The heroes are not happy. Normally I offer up some constructive criticism at this point like "Your downfall was splitting up to explore the secret room" or "You should have blocked that hallway instead of chasing that monster" or something like that. I'm not really sure what to say so I say nothing. We'll probably wait a few extra days before attempting the next quest. They had that quest in the bag and everyone at the table knew it and then, in 1 overlord turn, the whole thing fell apart for them and they didn't even get a chance to react. Epic.

That's not how Pariah works, I understand. I think the way the card works is just changing the moment you active that monster. Instead of activating it during its own group activation, you activate it durig other group activation. So you use the card with the Imps, and activate all the monsters but the master. Then, when you are activating other group, like the Arachyuras, you activate them, as usual, and then use the master who didn't activate before, befor or after the activation of any of the Arachyuras.

PS. Don't know if I am explaining adecuately. Might seem not powerful, but for a free trigger card, I think the strategical thing is enough.

Edited by AndrewMM

Hmm, the card doesn't explicitly state which interpretation is correct. Our group chose the version I described. Even though it has no cost to trigger, you sacrifice an entire group's activation to give 1 monster an extra turn which fits with Tristayne's theme of sacrificing monster effectiveness for a boost elsewhere.

Pariah is working just as AndrewMM described. It lets you sneak in the the activation of a monster into the activation of a different group. It does not provide any additional actions to a monster. Your turn was therefore illegal ^^ and you should replay the mission.

On topic: one of my best friends hates losing more than anything, which makes my win so much sweeter. It was the final of LoR campaign, I won web of power which means Ariad was a big fat nasty spider and has the perks of big monster movement. On upper right on the map was a single room only reachable via a small staircase. There were only three figures left on the map, Ariad and to range fighter healer archetypes. They tried to kite Ariad und kill her using hit and run tactics. "Sadly" they forgot that large monster can climb abusing its own expansion rules. Caught them totally of guard. It allowed me to immobilize one of them and kill him the following turn which signed their fate. Lots of curse words flew. Great evening :-)

Haha, well that's unfortunate. We will not replay the quest, I will just give them the win. I win the majority of quests typically so a win for the heroes will do them good. When I read the card to the group and explained my interpretation, no one argued or raised any questions about it. Maybe it needs a clarification in the errata? Or maybe our group was just an edge case. Anyhow, thanks for the correction!

I have two instances- neither resulted in the heroes putting up too much of a fuss, because both of these quests were won in the context of a campaign in which I was getting my evil behind served to me on a shiny, rune-plated platter.

The Monster's Hoard- our first Act 2 quest (to this day, I don't know why they chose it. They did not have a scout, and the only hero who could have possibly used "Trueshot" well was the Beastmaster, who I know for a fact was planning to stick to melee weapons.) Anyway, I lost encounter 1, so they could use the glyphs. By their third turn, the Beastmaster had found Trueshot (way in the back) and was ready to make his way out. Given the fact that he was Durik and could walk through my monsters, and all 3 of the other heroes were at the exit clearing away my shadow dragons, I didn't see how I could hope to stall them for 5 more turns (I win by delaying them for 8.) Suddenly, a stroke of luck. My master shadow dragon rolls a brilliant, magnificent 11 damage (8 and a surge,) and wouldn't you know it, I attacked the healer, so I play "Dirty Fighting" to add a surge and a Pierce 1, making it 11, pierce 1, fire breath. In one attack the disciple, the runemaster, and the necromancer fall to the ground- and the reanimate is off on another side of the map trying to kill fire imps. I use my fire imps and archers to knock down Durik, who realizes that by the rules, he cannot trade trueshot with another hero- he has to carry it off unless someone else picks it up. With all 4 heroes at minimal health (and entirely losing turn 4, I was able to keep Durik bottled up with my small monsters (and block all of the glyphs so the other heroes couldn't get to him,) while pestering the other 3 with my dragons. If they had a 9th turn, they would have won- they couldn't believe the result, and neither could I.

2nd instance was the Nerekhall quest "Overdue Demise"- also the first of Act 2. The pesky heroes did a good job hunting down Tristayne, and were getting very good shots on him (annoying shadow soul)- Tristayne is making his way to the exit, but his health is low. The Bard misses once, and then strikes with his serpent's dagger, leaving Tristayne with 1 health, and poisoned- this is bad, because Tristayne's might is only 2. To make matters worse, the bard puts a token on "dissonance," so that Tristayne will suffer a damage when he activates.

Well, the next turn starts, and I am able to position one of my monsters adjacent to Tristayne- it takes the poison and the dissonance damage for him- they forgot about "Soul Siphon!" Tristayne double moves, and gets within a few spaces of the exit- I position a master hulk next to him, but blocking the hallway. The heroes hadn't moved up far enough on the last turn to get more than a couple attacks on the hulk, and they couldn't kill him. He took the poison for Tristayne, and he walked off the map, grinning like a maniac, the heroes' dumbfounded faces in their hands.

Edited by Zaltyre

Given the people I play with, I'd say about half of all missions we play. I can be a pretty brutal overlord =p.

I actually have another one from the quest right after Gold Digger. We did Honor Among Thieves and for the second encounter, I took arachyura as the open group. The first 3 tokens the heroes uncovered were blue so they had the required gold for a 4 hero group to win almost right away however, feeling cocky, the heroes decided to stick around a try to get a few more before exiting. They sent Avric and Trenloe into one of the reinforcement rooms and made the mistake of ending their turns in spaces adjacent to the 4 reinforcement squares. I happened to have a master arachyura waiting in the wings so when my turn came around, I dropped him in the middle of the room and used a pincer attack to hit both heroes, both heroes take damage and are immobilized and the arachyura moves out of melee range. With 3 attack dice and a possible pierce 2, the arachyura can reliably immobilize both heroes every round. I use the volucrix reavers to clog the hallway to keep the other heroes out and whittle them down, the alarm sounds shortly after and Merick arrives to help out as well. The heroes begin dropping like flies every round and the fatigue tokens stack up for me until I hit 12 and the quest ends. They had it won but greed cost them the quest. They were not pleased.