Hey guys

So, we are about to start a new campaign (Shadow rune, 3 heroes, All 2nd edtion stuff is availibly but we play without rumor cards) and i am the overlord. So i am looking to prepare myself, and was wondering, is there anywhere a place where you can get a roundup of what the different plot decks does? I mean, it will take forever to read through all of them (okay a 3-4 of them i know what does) but its against some seasoned players so i have to optimize my choices or i will get raped

ATM, not knowing what they are picking i am leaning towards playing enchanter (still havent tried it, but it looks both fun and good) or infector (tried it once without great succes, but i think i can really catch them off guard with tome of the stuff it can puil of). But i have tons of evil overlord plans prepared, depending on what they do. shadowmancer also is a consideration, but that requires them to pick heroes with a low "star" stat.

Regards

I mean this in the nicest way possible:

If you're not willing to take the time to read through the cards yourself, you're going to get stomped as an OL anyway.

First off, you do not need to pick a plot deck before knowing who your opponents are. If you've decided what basic deck you're using, you can rule out a couple (for example, don't try to use Belthir with Basic 2.) Zachareth is regarded as an rather powerful deck, but you really need to decide for yourself what you want to use.

No offense taken. I have no intention on picking anything before i know what they pick. Its not that i don’t want to read them, but most of the decks (to my knowledge) have a theme to them. Valyndra is about buffing massive creatures, Zacherath is about deck manipulation. Splig is about wilderness creatures (as far as i remember). Bol'gorath is about dieses and poison. So say i get the keyword that valyndra is about massive creatures and i know i wont be using these much, there is no reason to read up on her. So i intend to pick what i think will work against them. Its more just to get an overview of my choices, cause 20+ plot decks (or something like that) with 10 cars is 150-200 cards i have to read. Its just to hit stuff like the one you wrote with belthir, he is about basic 1, so no reason to read his stuff if i go basic 2.

Oh well, the time this have taking i could properly have read the most. I think it is also just to have an overview of what they do, i know it would never get any details.

Yup. If you think you want to go infector, look at Bol;Goreth- there is an infector card that lets you infect heroes when they would be diseased or poisoned.

Alric is mostly about making your monsters hard to kill. It's not a very powerful deck, but I've enjoyed using it with Enchanter. Queen Ariad's deck is quite interesting with certain monster types.

Zachareth could be very interesting with Enchanter or Infector, as both classes keep cards on the table in play. Zachareth can shrink your deck to 13 cards, so if you then are removing more to leave on the table, you'll be cycling through your deck very quickly.

So, I don't mean to derail this thread, but I think this would add to this discussion ... hopefully ...

As most regulars know, I have been playing this game since its inception ... mostly as OL, sometimes as heroes.

I am curious for those of you who do play OL most often, and who do actually make use of plot decks, how would you match up plot decks to base OL decks? In other words, if you had to pick what you feel is the strongest combination/synergistic feel, how would you match them up?

I don't play with plot decks often enough to really make a list (I only own a couple anyway) but I've most recently been using Alric with the Infector deck. The combination of "Airborne" with "Fight in Formation" (and when necessary, "Armor of Darkness") is a really cheap (threatwise) way to make your monsters more difficult to kill. I happen to be doing this during a Nerekhall campaign, where I also have the benefit of "corrupt citizen" cards. Master changelings with those cards are huge targets because the heroes want me to lose the card- but with Alric and "Airborne," I can make them waste more actions.

The way I play, plot decks are never really central to my strategy- they're just a perk.

Your first sentence is why I asked ... I have all of the Lieutenant packs, but have not actually ever used a single one. Don't get me wrong, I have read through all of them multiple times, and have devised what I think would be appropriate strategies and combinations for the time that I do introduce them, but theory and reality are often two very different things.

For that reason, I posited the question above. I want to know what OL's have used, and what really does work.

Zaltyre ... I appreciate the feedback you have provided. Hopefully, others will as well.

Firstly, Baron Zachareth, in my opinion, is flat out the best plot deck, period.

Secondly, I've tried every single deck at one point or another, and find I return to a few favorites most of all. I'll try to answer your question any2cards in detail soon, but I'm dead tired at the moment.

In general, unless I'm playing infector, I hate picking a class and trying to go down the tree. I find I typically much prefer to buy a bunch of 1 xp cost cards from different trees and universal cards.

Well, i now did it myself, feel free to at or comment if you think something is off. It is meant to be a quick overview of the decks. I dont think it breaks any copyrigtht, if it does, i will take it down asap. The first few wards is the overall idea of the deck, followed with some spcifications to understand the first part fully.

Base

Sir Alric Farrow: Combat, Master monsters and small group

Belthir: Buffs basic 1 cards when used

Lady Eliza Farrow: Healing, Combat, ekstra buffs for dark

Lord Merrick Farrow: Utility Combat, bonus when using magic cards

Splig: Healing, Wilderness buffs

Baron Zacherath: Utility, Deck manipulation

Labyrinth of ruin

Ariad: Utility, increased effect when using cursed

Queen Ariad: Utility requiring wilderness. Traps and condition manipulation

Raythen: Search manipulation

Serena: Utility, Reacting to enemies attacks, bonus for civilized

Shadow of Nerekhall

Gargan Mirklace: Combat, bonus for hot

Tristayne Olliven: Utility for master monsters

Rylan Olliven: Utility requiring attribute test, Shop/search manipulation

Verminous: Utlity for monster on 4 or less health

“Small box”

Bol’Goreth: Disease and poison

Valyndra: Combat, require massive/huge monsters

Skarn: Combat, monsters in general and buffing summon skarn.

Thanks for this input Chav. I really need to spend more time reviewing this stuff, as I think it is time to get this mechanic into our games.

I own quite a few of the plot decks, but my personal favorite is Bel'thir for the following reasons:

- I usually play Basic I, and Bel'thir makes Basic I better. Way better. Dual Training Frenzy on a bandit group right from the 2nd quest is awesome. I also don't like my effectiveness being hampered by hero stat distribution (e.g. Observant warriors, high-willed mages) and random chance that Basic II suffers from. I'll take the sledgehammer over the stiletto

- I adore the ability to play additional reinforcements with Hazard Pay. This is especially true when using powerhouse small monsters like Hybrid Sentinels or Ironbound. More monsters means more actions consumed by the heroes whether the blue die favors you today or not. More actions consumed helps you win.

- I love being able to set a die face to anything I want with Make My Own Luck. No more will my perfect Shadow Dragon Expert Blow fire breath be foiled by the cursed blue X! I'll take the 2 hearts + surge thank you very much!

-The ability to play plot cards without paying threat for them with Fight with Honor is great. No threat paid means no fortune gained, means no rerolls for heroes! No other plot deck has this advantage! Often times that useless Poison Dart in my hand has transformed into an extra Hybrid Sentinel!

- Dragon hybrids are cool. If only he was a better agent...

Zachareth's deck is still the best as Whitewing said, but not nearly as fun. Summon Agent aside, Bel'thir is truly an awesome deck and I highly recommend it.

Other decks I especially enjoy are Tristayne (I've gotta try his cards with the rat swarms since they can't miss!), Mirklace (one of the few truly good agents, and some amazing cards like Crushing Exhaustion) and Verminous (I love hordes of small monsters, and protecting them from all forms of multi-target attacks is huge. He's a good agent too).

I wouldn't play OL without the plot decks.. Against skilled hero opponents every edge you can get counts!

Charmy ... thanks for the above analysis, and for your other efforts on my behalf.

This is exactly the kind of thought processes for which I was looking. To be clear, I actually already own all of the Lieutenant packs, and have since they came out with each set. I just have never used them.

As an "active" OL, I have read and re-read all of the cards for each of them, and have devised what I feel, in theory, would be good uses and combinations with base OL decks and specific monsters. But often, theories developed in a vacuum, don't actually turn out well in practice.

This is why I like the feedback that I have received so far. I am leveraging real world use of those plot decks. Thanks again.

EDIT: Oh, and by the way, I am soooooooo looking forward to springing these on my pesky heroes. They know I have them, and have been waiting in trepidation for their eventual use. As we begin each campaign, the tension grows.

I haven't tried them all, mostly because there´s a bunch of them that I wouln't touch with a 8 foot pole, secondly because my heroes play competitively and force me to do the same, so I tend to go back to the ones I enjoy the most or find most effective.

Baron Zachareth is probably the most powerful deck by a fair mile. It's also the least fun of them, in my opinion. You have cards like Rush of Power which allow a constant flow of OL cards and is therefore a nice protection against OL card discard from Wildlander and Elder Mok to name a few. There is a big problem with this though, which is that you get the cards at end of turn. For instance, you manage to kill a hero, you can choose between a OL card or a threat token (assuming you haven't done that earlier). The threat can give you two cards, but you can only use the cards next turn, as opposed to the OL card which you can use straight away. I only have two campaigns experience with this plot deck but with the perspective I think drawing the OL card revealed itself to be more useful than getting two cards a turn later and give away a fortune.

I´m not much into Agents, but the Baron is a decent one if you´re into that, for the Subdue ability mainly (gives the condition of your choice), Then I've personally come to appreciate Meticulous Planning to force a hero to discard the treasure chest card, and Scrying and plotting is really a big deal for those few quests where you can get an instant edge by starting with the correct hand. Only dowside is if you´re against Mok or Wildlander then you´re basically screwed because they see what you´re doing and force you to discard what you just searched for.

My favorite deck has to be Tristayne's. Wild Energy and Power and Sacrifice always have a use and cost zero threat. You risk to lose the monster, but I largely prefer that over the fortune mechanism. I also enjoy Explosive Fall, where the monster dying deals damage to all surrounding figures. I like AoE damage a lot. Onslaught can be pretty devastating too as your opening in a quest, forcing heroes to stay carefully behind instead of storming in. Tristayne himself is a bad boy as an agent. I tend to come back to that deck more often than not.

I like Gargan too. I don't play anything else than Crushing Exhaustion and Shifting Earth, though. The agent is a rock too, I´ve used him to block a corridor and disrupt heroes movement. It's a solid set of cards.

Raythen is interesting and the one I´m playing at the moment. I´m not fond of it, though. I think of it as a search disruption tool but I figured out it required quite a lot of setup to make it work up to its full capability. What I mean is, that I would always want to deny search tokens to my heroes in theory, but then you need to dedicate monsters to do the job, so in essence you pay both fortune and monster actions to move a stamina potion to the edge of a map. Whether that's worth it or not is up to you to decide, but I find that in most circunstances I would just try to intervene when the treasure chest card shows up. That's the only card that matters basically. Heroes gain gold whether you want it or not, I don't think trying to deny every single search token is a realistic goal as the resources to do this could be used to achieve the goals of the quest instead. I don't know. It falls a bit flat for me, for the current campaign I´m playing and the current heroes composition.

Everything tied to specific monster traits I tend to avoid, bar Gargan (I don't care about the Hot cards anyway). They're thematic for sure, fun to play etc. but when you play with all monsters in campaigns that are not focused primarly on such trait I just don't see myself paying threat every quest to make a monster group a "possible" target for a spell that is going to cost me even more fortune. I mean this from a very general perspective, I appreciate how good some of these cards can be in certain situations.

Merrick and Alric are solid choices too and allow you to spend your XP elsewhere than raw combat buff cards.

Verrminous' "scry every turn" card is priceless. I think the name is Always watching. It allows you to basically draw two and keep one. Initiation (defeated minion becomes master) and Ignoble Sacrifice (some other monster takes the hit) seem interesting but they´re really situational too.

I have played Belthir some time before, but have nothing to add to what the other posters said, it's a fine deck if you use Basic I, but then I moved on to Basic II and never looked back so it's not an option for me anymore.

As a newbie (and OL who likes to make the game more interesting) could you guys tell me what these "Basic I" and "Basic II" are?

I get that the other names, are the names of the Add-Ons/Expansions, but I don't get the Basic ones.

Sorry and thank you for your patience!

Basic 1 is the overlord starting deck provided in the base game, basic 2 is an alternate overlord deck from labyrinth of ruin.

... and hopefully Basic III will become reality as part of a future expansion, making my dream of designing a basic deck entirely based on monster traits come true.

Or so I suggested to FFG Nathan 1 month ago

I just got LoR and, as I understand it, with either campaign you can use either basic I or II, but SoN has it's own deck and can only be used (and must be used) for that campaign, right?

Not quite- Nerekhall has some unique cards- a travel deck exclusively for the Nerekhall campaign, and the Corrupt Citizen cards- but not OL basic cards.

There are currently a total of 2 OL starting decks: Basic, and Basic II. One of those decks must be chosen by the OL at the start of each campaign (or quest if you're playing epic style single quests only.)

Thanks for clarifying, Z. You are a credit to this community.