I'm playing the OL. We're using just the base set. The heroes are Tarha/Runemaster, Grisban/Berserker, and Avric/Disciple.

I am getting annihilated. Granted, it's my first campaign through the game, and the players. We're 2 act 1 quests in and the players seem unstoppable. Grisban took out Mauler extremely fast, Avric and Tarha are starting to gear up pretty quickly, they've been good about using search tokens and have gotten extremely fortunate with some gear.

So far I've gotten saboteur cards and they work extremely well on this lot, except when I don't draw them. I'm hoping Uthuk Demon Trap changes things a bit once I get it.

I worry that by the time we reach Act II that the players will be unstoppable, with too much momentum. How do I slow them down or stop them? I've gotten close on a couple of quests but my luck's been kind of rotten on the blue die.

Heeeelp.

Current status:

Intro: Heros

Death on the Wing: Heroes

Fat Goblin: Heroes

Hello and welcome,

First thing first, those are pretty easy hero quests to win in my experience so dont get to down on that, if you have had a couple of close calls undone by some iffy luck you are probably doing reasonably well.

First piece of advice, Grisban is the nominal weak link in the team, he is both slow and as a Berserker has no useful function other then to hit things with increasing levels of violence which is actually not of much use in descent. He is however hard to bring down (high hp with brute) so dont try to stick damage on him as a rule of thumb. in fact, ignore him completely most of the time and focus on dragging down Avric and Tarah (in that order usually) and he will have to waddle around not being very useful

Secondly are you thinning your overlord deck down to 15 cards? If not this will seriously help you drawn useful cards far more often.

Monster selection is less of a problem for you give its just the base game but a few tings to keep in mind, with just base game monsters Shadow dragons are usually very solid, i like meroids (flailing immobilize with reach is exceptionally useful against avric and tarah as it means he cant prayer of healing just one person) although a rune-master will probably pummel them to death very quickly if given half a chance, and Goblins and Barghasts are just always useful.

This group should be very stamina intensive (grisban needs it for movement, tarah and avric need it to fuel abileties) so anything that can hit stamina will be a bonus.

Unfortunately a 3 hero game is widely considered the hardest mode of play for the overlord so you need to to suck up a few early losses, good news is if they are spending all the money in act then they are less likely to have the money for big purchases in act2 (which is what they will want mostly).

Stick with it though, its certainly not impossible.

Unfortunately, a 3 hero game favors the heroes pretty heavily. Unless you're making near optimal moves on a regular basis with very few mistakes and the heroes are playing sloppy, you're probably going to lose.

Consider starting over and adding a fourth hero in, it makes for a much more balanced game. Either let someone play 2 heroes or let them take turns controlling the extra hero or something.

You aren't doing so bad. Everything Underworld40k said is quite true. Concentrate on their weaknesses: Don't try to kill Grisban first, but try to move your monsters out of his range, so he has to spend an action/fatigue to do something. The heroes have no scout which means they will lack movability as well as easy ways to pick up search tokens. Block off some paths and always try to create situations were searching is acompanied with some drawbacks.

The berserker is dependent on getting hit, to utilise his extra action every turn. Ignoring him in the beginning is imo the best way of coping with him.

The runemaster is extremely dependent on fatigue. Seeing how they chose Tarha, just try to kill her first. Once you kill her, she will have full fatigue most of the time, making her only a little bit stronger than a single goblin archer. There is nothing that actually makes her more tough as far as I know, so even a few hits will bring her down pretty easily.

Avric also has a shield and 2 HP more, which makes him much tougher to kill in the beginning, so I wouldn't waste your attacks on him as a first target.

All in all keep in mind that wounds and conditions are NOT healed between encounters, so inflicting conditions (especially poison on Alvric and Tarha), as well as ~4 damage after the first encounter is a good strategy as long as Alvric can't heal conditions.

Also keep your frenzy and dash cards for ideal situations. Especially Dash is extremely good under certain circumstances and very meh in others.. Try to imagine if there will be a time in one encounter where Dash really shines and try to keep it until then

Thanks for the advice folks! I did have some very close calls during Death on the Wing encounter 1, but last night we finished that and did all of Fat Goblin, and it was a bit of a rout.

I'm at a 15 card deck, and last night was a total lesson in never bothering to hit Grisban. He has leather armor and counterattack. Heck no. Came reasonably close to getting away with Splig, and encounter 1 was, well, a total rout (they found a flaming flask and used it, 2 dead goblins). Word of misery, movement traps, searching traps, and basically anything to punish them for picking the worst awareness characters will be my plan of attack.

Tarha's got blast and uses it a lot, so I'm thinking I'll steer clear of having many runts (which is what I tried for Fat Goblin 2) and go with tougher ones like Ettin/Shadow/Merriod. Goblins + Spiders + Zombies stalled them decently but when it came time for Splig to make his escape (Frederick was the 3rd token, I lost a LOT of time despite getting the prisoners there in 2 turns) all of my zombies and spiders were dead.

Once the players figured out they could start using fatigue to move, they've gone berserk with it. This may harm them down the line, we'll see. But now at least I'm learning how to make the most of it.

One thing my party seems to hate is Flesh Moulders, the healing thing really bugs them, it's great.

Avric's actually kind of beefy with the Shield of the Dark God and that broadsword they found in a chest. I came very close to killing them and then had an extremely bad run of misses. The players were whooping and high fiving everyone.They even high fived me.

All in all we're having a blast, even if I'm getting my butt kicked, and that's what matters. Although I'm really looking forward to those act 2 upgrades... I'm going to need them if I can't get my hands on the Shadow Rune.

In the long run you will find that blast can be mitigated with good tactical placing (and stamina draining), with only 1 large monster in a group (meroid, elemetal, shadow dragon and ettin) you will find that they die far to easily (shadow dragons only get durability against melee attacks, tarah will, with decent gear be looking at 2 shoting one, possibly 1 shoting if she has decent damage and pierce bonuses. reliably as well with her heroic ability being bonkers good)

You will also find that your damage output drops way way down (4 goblins make 4 attacks per round, 1 ettin makes 1 - yeah it might have higher average and spike damage then any 1 goblin but over the course of a turn you will find it quite a bit inferior.

That is not to say that they dont have a place or use, but as the overlord you really need to make sure that the toolbox units you pick are doing 1 job really really well, that unfortunately comes with time and a lot of whooping for most of us.

The interlude may not actually be a bad quest for you, the party lacks excellent mobility (grisbane really dosent help them here at all except as a pack mule you dont want to hit) if you are able to isolate avric or tarah then you can drag them down and force them into difficult choices.
Although you will need to look at clonking grisbane at least once as his only true use in this quest is to carry the casket withhigh hp and armor, preferably with arrows, from some distance away.

Im sure others can and will chime in but i would hazard that as the game goes on you will find avric is the most colossal pain, he can be reasonably tanky, hits well enough and his abilities to heal damage will only get better and better with additional party buffs (extra atack dice, extra armor, remove conditions - as im sure you have been finding out) and as prayer of healing dosent require an action, just stamina you cant even stun him to burn an action. if your player decides to go the route of getting holy power he can and will hand out hearts and buffs like candy.

I'm actually not a good tactician. I don't really like strategy and am not that good at it. I make mistakes, and I've seen the results and learned from them. So with 3 players, it's going to be very tricky.

But yeah, I'm scared of Avric already, they're now adding attack dice to people with Divine Fury. That's ridiculous, but also great.

I've been avoiding the big monsters though, because I only get one red. And one red is good and all, and they can usually reinforce well, but Grisban and Tarha are already taking them down kind of badly.

So I have some new strategies for the Shadow Rune campaign. But so far the players are really enjoying this, I'm wondering if moving forward, if we stick with the game, should we re-do the Shadow Rune while going for different quests? Should we maybe pick up one of the small-box quest packs? Or should I go for one of the big box campaigns after this?

Given that we're going to wind up with 3 heroes, what's the hardest campaign with 3 heros?

Few of us start out as tactical geniuses, long amounts of gameplay give us varying experience and theory crafting skills which let us make reasonable comments on what likey works. This being your first run through i would wager heavily that there are a few mechanics and rule interactions you will have stumbled with, if not like most of us - gotten completley wrong , so dont sweat the mistakes with tactical play to much.

With descent there are so many variables, even in the base game, that after a while its a 'feel' thing, when i started i was all for big dragons all the time, now i find them mono useful Overall as my heroes started figuring out how to handle them.

The topic of what to buy next crops up at least once a week. Have a look here For some thouhts

http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/134745-first-campaign-impressions/?view=findpost&p=1446342