I seem to have misunderstood some of the rules regarding the sacrifice of Fire Imps on the inn.

"Burning down the inn: Once per turn, when activating his fire Imps, the overlord may perform a special action with a fire Imp that is on the Inn. That fire Imp is immediately defeated and the overlord places 1 fatigue token in his play area."

This allows the overlord to sacrifice a fire Imp during its activation as long as it is one the Inn? So it is indeed possible to reach the inn with a Imp and sacrifice the same imp in same turn?

It takes an action to sacrifice an imp, but if you can get an imp to the inn (I don't have a map in front of me) and it has an action left after the required movement, then you can sacrifice it.

Yep, if the imp arrives on the inn and has an action to use it may immediately explode.

The imps spawn sufficiently far away that there is no way for you to spawn a new imp, move it on to the inn, and then immediately sacrifice it without movement enhancing effects like Dash.

However, you can move them within a single move action's distance from the Inn and explode them on the next turn after they spawn.

That means lots of pressure on the heroes. Stopping fire imps while at the same fighting off hybrid sentinels before they can annihilate the whole party. Advice how to achieve that would be truly welcome.

Is this allowed to sacrifice several imps in one round, or you can sacrifice only one each round?

Cause in russian version, if I recall correctly, explicitly stated "once per round". So you can't get more than one fatigue token each turn. If so, than this quest is not that hard for heroes after all

I won this quest fairly easily as Overlord.

As always, Bandits make a great open group here, and you want them in play fast! My strategy was to place the Hybrid Sentinels close to the back of the Kitchen. After the initial hero turn, where they are unlikely to destroy all your Sentinels, I Dash-ed a Sentinel to the cottage door and opened it myself, allowing my Bandits to become an active monster group on OL turn 1! This then allowed them to wail on the poor Innkeeper, defeating him within two turns before he had a chance to douse any flames. Without the Innkeeper, the heroes have a much harder time keeping the inn from going up in smoke.

Meanwhile, every turn I moved my fire imps towards the Inn via the southern passage from the Fire Pit. They would 'stage' themselves in the little hallway outside the inn in a staggered formation to protect themselves from a Blast-happy hero. Then on the following turn one imp would blow up in the inn, and the rest would harry the heroes.

Also, do not forget that the Heroes (and some of your monsters) will suffer Burning if they start their turn on the Inn tile! This is a very useful effect, as Burning makes things all the more miserable for the heroes. They will likely feel so pressured that they won't stop to end the Condition, weakening them every turn and encouraging them to spread out.

Another thing to remember is that all the Survivors start off incapacitated. The heroes have to reach them and treat them before they can move a single space. I've seen OLs forget this, making it much harder for them than it should be!

Furthermore, the hero group I was playing with had far more Strength-capable heroes than they did Lore ones, so they made the unfortunate mistake of trying to carry the survivors off the map.

This was far too inefficient, as my hybrid sentinels were able to reinforce in pairs of two thanks to Bel'thir's plot deck. This was devastating to the party and did so much damage to the burning heroes trying to walk to and from the Exit that they were only able to bring two survivors out of there before the Inn succumbed to the flames. I think the heroes really need to go for the Healing on the survivors so they can walk themselves out. That should be your biggest concern, so be sure to snipe those pesky survivors if they try such things and keep the Lore heroes out of commission if you can.

So long as you defeat the Innkeeper quickly, keep the imp sacrifices flowing into the inn turn after turn and constantly pressure with your sentinels, you should be fine. Good luck

Is this allowed to sacrifice several imps in one round, or you can sacrifice only one each round?

Cause in russian version, if I recall correctly, explicitly stated "once per round".

You can only sacrifice an imp once per round. This makes the quest require at least 7 turns typically to complete.

As Funkfried posted

"Burning down the inn: Once per turn, when activating his fire Imps, the overlord may perform a special action with a fire Imp that is on the Inn. That fire Imp is immediately defeated and the overlord places 1 fatigue token in his play area."

'Once per turn'... 'with a'

So once per turn one imp can pop.

In regards to stopping imps heroes can blitz to block the route to the inn from the imps (who aren't the worlds greatest damage dealers) and then have 2 party members to drag civvies away while being harassed by the sentinels.

If one hero has sufficient skills (guard on a knight , heroic feats for some characters etc) then they can send a sole hero to butcher any passing imps leaving 3 to carry civvies and deal with sentinels.

Personally i prefer to deal with the sentinels first, the imps will take a turn to arrive at the inn and without sufficient sentinel support will find it hard to break through heroes to actually explode.

Whoops! Just realized that Funkfried asked for Hero advice, not OL advice...

so uh.. disregard everything I said! This strategy is of no use to you! The heroes have no chance!

You should give up now... the heroes are doomed I tell you.. DOOMED! *sends Master Bandit to inflict Doom*

Usually I'm playing the overlord, so I will keep your advice in my memory. Sadly for this campaign I'm in the shoes of a pesky hero. I never played this quest, so I have no previous experience how it could play out. I agree that killing the Sentinels before they can reach the door seems to be the top priority for the heroes. Also, to save as much actions as possible for killing monsters, the heroes should try to pass the wisdom check, which allows the survivors to move on their own. Any other things to watch out for?

Thanks for answers and strategy, Charmy.

As OL Im planning to:

1) spread imps all over the inn and harass heroes from different angles. I already stated in different topic that imps are great in my opinioin because there is no harm in splitting them widly. They are easy to kill, but if the are widly spreaded heroes would be forced either to split by themselves (and I will try to capitalize on this) or spent huge amount of time wich they dont have. My biggest concern here is to ensure that heroes won't be able to shoot imps from safeground, wich will be hard to achieve considering dat pesky geomancer . So if you as a hero have someone who can shoot 2 imps per turn without walking on fire, feast on this possibility.

2) Block western passage with hybrids. Maybe this is not what I really need, but if range dps heroes (geomancer, ashrian with good rune) will run there I wont be able to controll that passage, it will be to hard for new hybryd-sentinels to assault that part of the map (to far from spawn and they need 2 turn in order to get there). I really want to keep heroes in the kitchen as long as I possibly can to haras with reinforcing hybrids. Eastern part of the map have 2 imp spawn, heroes wont be safe there at all. And western passage is the best position to have controll over. If I controll it, heroes wont be able to move villagers from the map. If the controll it, then it will be hard for me to stop them from doing so. So, as a hero you should put your range/healer heroes there asap.

EDIT: Thought I just realized that the north room is even more important because heroes will be able to use well and put fire down. So, I will adjust my strategy according to the heroes moves and keep them in kitchen if i can (the best way is to knock out someone in kitchen)

3) Kill innkepeer asap with shaman/imp combination and after that haras with shamans from the safeground on the north. Open group have no reinforcment, so killing them and keeping inkepeer alive will be a huge sucsess for the heroes. As heroes, try to achieve this as number one priority task. While i, as OL, will be trying to kill inkeeper on the 2ed-3d turn. This is just a race usuall to descent . To achieve this the most basic thing I can imagine is to stun or immobilaize hybrids, and then rush to the north. As OL I'll do everything I can to prevent it from happening.

Also you have to keep in mind that all monsters other than imps will get burning condition too if they start their turn in the inn.

Hope, this will help you

P.S: what hero composition do you have, Funkfried? Mine opposing heroes are Ashrian the spiritspeaker, High Mage Que..bla-bla...len as geomancer, Durik the Beastmaster, and Logan Lashly as treasure hunter. We are playing mini-campaign so they all have 5exp points and eqipment costing 500 gold (they sold 2 starting items and in previous quest they looted only one 50 gold woth item, I punished Logan Lashly badly for running out for treasures ). I dont remember good enough what items do they have.

P.S.S: uhh, the longest post in english in my life

Our hero group consists out of Trenloe as a champion, Mok as bard, Astarra as a hexer and Laurel as a thief, so Prey on the Weak will hurt as hell. We are playing shadow run campaign and Rude Awakening was played as a Rumor Quest. Our overlord uses the Tristayne Olliven Plot deck and purchased Call of the Ravens, so Burning shouldn't be be much a hassle to him.

My group of heroes won this quest. The overlord had bad luck as we drew the travel event to test willpower on every hero and as long as every hero passes, we got to draw a search card for each hero. So we started the quest stacked with recovery items, which allowed us to play very aggressive. We kept him from opening the door to the Innkeeper and therefore from activating his open group. The remaining monster could not generate enough pressure by themselves. We only allowed for two Imps to reach the Inn. It was also unfortunate for the overlord that all but one wisdom test succeeded. By stacking stamina potions on the thief, we managed to grab every search token on the map, which means 8 search cards and Valyndras Bane in the hand of the hero party.

My group of heroes won this quest. The overlord had bad luck as we drew the travel event to test willpower on every hero and as long as every hero passes, we got to draw a search card for each hero. So we started the quest stacked with recovery items, which allowed us to play very aggressive. We kept him from opening the door to the Innkeeper and therefore from activating his open group. The remaining monster could not generate enough pressure by themselves. We only allowed for two Imps to reach the Inn. It was also unfortunate for the overlord that all but one wisdom test succeeded. By stacking stamina potions on the thief, we managed to grab every search token on the map, which means 8 search cards and Valyndras Bane in the hand of the hero party.

Planning is critical in Descent, but you must also be able to improvise when the situation changes. The OL got very unlucky here, but it also looks like the heroes did a good job maximizing the good fortune that came their way (stamina potions to the scout to search, for example.) I just played a quest against a group of heroes that I thought had a fair shot at winning the quest. However, the travel step resulted in 3 of the heroes bleeding, and during the first round, 2 of their 4 attacks missed. They lost the encounter, and got 0 treasure. They were able to search well in encounter 2, but the loss in encounter 1 meant I was probably winning the quest. A lot in Descent definitely comes down to luck, but a flexible strategy can go a long way in narrowing (or widening) the gap between victory and defeat.

As a Hero I do really hate the travel steps as its usually results in a bad outcome and harsh starting conditions for the hero party. This time we just lucked out. Wasn't much the overlord could have done. I totally agree with you that coping with the unexpected is major part of playing descent but sometimes luck just isn't in your favor. For example two weeks ago our champion managed to throw 7 X on 12 throws. It's hard to survive like that while being surrounded by monsters.

As a Hero I do really hate the travel steps as its usually results in a bad outcome and harsh starting conditions for the hero party. This time we just lucked out. Wasn't much the overlord could have done. I totally agree with you that coping with the unexpected is major part of playing descent but sometimes luck just isn't in your favor. For example two weeks ago our champion managed to throw 7 X on 12 throws. It's hard to survive like that while being surrounded by monsters.

True- however, there are many quests (with definite exceptions) where even spending actions to attack monsters is a waste of time. This becomes even more true if you're not playing with a plot deck, as in those cases, as long as you can complete the objective, even getting knocked down is not really a big deal.

Absolutely, though, sometimes a monster must die so that a hero can move through, and in those cases it's incredibly frustrating to miss with a much larger than statistically expected frequency- occasionally, if the dice seem to be behaving exceptionally poorly, we'll use a descent dice rolling app, instead (at least 3 free ones exist for android.)

As a Hero I do really hate the travel steps as its usually results in a bad outcome and harsh starting conditions for the hero party. This time we just lucked out. Wasn't much the overlord could have done. I totally agree with you that coping with the unexpected is major part of playing descent but sometimes luck just isn't in your favor. For example two weeks ago our champion managed to throw 7 X on 12 throws. It's hard to survive like that while being surrounded by monsters.

In our last campaign, Shadows of Nerekhall, we counted our "best" travel phase as one were we did not get any conditions, damage, or fatigue.

"You got items? Bah! In our day, we walked through a city and got hurt, tired, bleeding and poisoned before we even got to the riots we were to stop!"

As a Hero I do really hate the travel steps as its usually results in a bad outcome and harsh starting conditions for the hero party. This time we just lucked out. Wasn't much the overlord could have done. I totally agree with you that coping with the unexpected is major part of playing descent but sometimes luck just isn't in your favor. For example two weeks ago our champion managed to throw 7 X on 12 throws. It's hard to survive like that while being surrounded by monsters.

In our last campaign, Shadows of Nerekhall, we counted our "best" travel phase as one were we did not get any conditions, damage, or fatigue.

"You got items? Bah! In our day, we walked through a city and got hurt, tired, bleeding and poisoned before we even got to the riots we were to stop!"

And you had to walk through 3 feet of snow, up hill, both ways !!!

As a Hero I do really hate the travel steps as its usually results in a bad outcome and harsh starting conditions for the hero party. This time we just lucked out. Wasn't much the overlord could have done. I totally agree with you that coping with the unexpected is major part of playing descent but sometimes luck just isn't in your favor. For example two weeks ago our champion managed to throw 7 X on 12 throws. It's hard to survive like that while being surrounded by monsters.

In our last campaign, Shadows of Nerekhall, we counted our "best" travel phase as one were we did not get any conditions, damage, or fatigue.

"You got items? Bah! In our day, we walked through a city and got hurt, tired, bleeding and poisoned before we even got to the riots we were to stop!"

Right, but sometimes the travel phase is a godsend for the heroes. I fondly remember my first "Shadow Rune" campaign. As we approached the finale, "Gryvorn Unleashed," we were a little worried that the giant dragon was going to stomp us into heroic pulp. However, we drew the travel card where you "see something shiny" and reach down to grab something from the current shop deck. I drew Ice Storm, and promptly traded it to our Runemaster. With a little help from "Divine Fury," Gryvorn never got to attack that entire encounter, because he was too busy being immobilized by blue/yellow x3 attacks, and couldn't get in range.

Right, but sometimes the travel phase is a godsend for the heroes. I fondly remember my first "Shadow Rune" campaign. As we approached the finale, "Gryvorn Unleashed," we were a little worried that the giant dragon was going to stomp us into heroic pulp. However, we drew the travel card where you "see something shiny" and reach down to grab something from the current shop deck. I drew Ice Storm, and promptly traded it to our Runemaster. With a little help from "Divine Fury," Gryvorn never got to attack that entire encounter, because he was too busy being immobilized by blue/yellow x3 attacks, and couldn't get in range.

Gotta have those condition immunity cards =p.

I lost this quest horribly too. The travel step was neutral for both heroes and me, but Ashrian took Shared Pain.

On the first turn they killed all but one hybrid, I used survived one to get to the door on the north. On the second turn, despite long range Ashrian managed to shoot master imp twice with shared pain, thus killing him and all minions. Geomancer finished the last master imp with one shot. They put scout on the entrance, and managed to kill my reinforcing master-hybrid each turn with 2 actions, for the straight 3 turns. Meanwhile I opened the door and managed to did some nice damage, but they just wiped out every single shaman in 2 turns, while Ashrian was blocking eastern passage, shared pain was huge there.

Reinforcments at the end of the turn was ridiculously useless in this mission, I really had no chance. I understand that I could stop Ashrian with some good card play and positioning, I could cripple her with curse condition etc. but my starting hand had no traps or anything really usefull and they wiped out all my imps on second turn, and all my hybrids on the third. And scout was killing my new hybrids each turn, not a single miss for heroes. Easy win for them, and my imps couldnt even approach the tavern. At the time my hybrids managed to kill scout and imps reached the tavern entrance last villager was already near the exit

Sometimes this game makes me cry

I lost this quest horribly too. The travel step was neutral for both heroes and me, but Ashrian took Shared Pain.

On the first turn they killed all but one hybrid, I used survived one to get to the door on the north. On the second turn, despite long range Ashrian managed to shoot master imp twice with shared pain, thus killing him and all minions. Geomancer finished the last master imp with one shot. They put scout on the entrance, and managed to kill my reinforcing master-hybrid each turn with 2 actions, for the straight 3 turns. Meanwhile I opened the door and managed to did some nice damage, but they just wiped out every single shaman in 2 turns, while Ashrian was blocking eastern passage, shared pain was huge there.

Reinforcments at the end of the turn was ridiculously useless in this mission, I really had no chance. I understand that I could stop Ashrian with some good card play and positioning, I could cripple her with curse condition etc. but my starting hand had no traps or anything really usefull and they wiped out all my imps on second turn, and all my hybrids on the third. And scout was killing my new hybrids each turn, not a single miss for heroes. Easy win for them, and my imps couldnt even approach the tavern. At the time my hybrids managed to kill scout and imps reached the tavern entrance last villager was already near the exit

Sometimes this game makes me cry

Many quests become easier or harder depending on hero composition and the abilities they choose. Your goal as overlord is to ensure that you avoid the quests that are hard for you to win, based on the team composition and abilities. If the heroes manage to force you to play it against your will, then that's very well done by them and they deserve the quest win.

Shared pain while having monsters with only two HP sucks. Good hero play. How did you position your hybrid sentinels at the start?

Whitewing, we played mini-campaign, so, sadly, there is no way I could avoid that mission.

Regarding hybrid positioining - master on the top of the loot token, one minion near the exit (to open door asap, he is the only one who survived), and last one in the top left corner. I spreaded them, and put master in the most secured area, but he was 2 shooted easily, heroes got nice rolls =)

The worst thing in this is that they got Valyndra's bane and next quest looks like it's not that hard for them to acomplish, considering how much damage they can dish out. Maybe I'm to pessimistic about this, but it feels very depressing to lose like this

PS: Thought, im not going to giveup easily, next quest wont be such an easy walk for them MUAHAHAHA (classical evil laughter)