In the current campaign we encountered a serios problem for the group. I play the titan, located only three trails from Tamalir. I have all four liuetenants in play and razed four cities now, with a fifth about to fall, so all the lts can do is to attack Tamalir. Since I always flee the encounters, Tamalir is constantly under siege, hardly allowing the heroes to go anywhere but to hit the lts which they can't defeat but only thrive away. Is there a tactic for the heroes to counter this?

They could have better first turns in which they kill your lieutenants. That would put a stop to it. I suggest they hoard some fatigue potions and go for it. Otherwise they should go to nearby dungeons and when Tamalir is about to fall warp back and chase away the lieutenants until end game. The Titan is a push over in the final battle.

Just for some advice for you, I wouldn't let the game go to the final dungeon. Even if you can sit all four Lts on your Keep, Melee Avatars are awful in the one-on-ones. God forbid a heavily armored character has grapple or any one of them has upgradeable knock back. From your perspective, you might want to stop fleeing if they start to push near to the final battle. Or accomplish your plot, if it's not the traitor one.

pinkymadigan said:

No Bear Tattoo anymore so no grapple.

A similar scenario prematurely ended my campaign this weekend. During the end of a dungeon, the campaign amassed enough XP to go into silver the following week. I immediately upgraded humanoids to silver, having previously upgraded eldritch. The heroes took a training action in Tamalir.

The following week I upgraded eldritch to gold, and marched Kar-Amog-Atoth into Tamalir.

It was a pretty foregone conclusion that even if I didn't siege Tamalir, I had caught the heroes in an endless loop of total party kills that could only lead to the showdown at the keep, in which I'd probably crush the very un-equipped heroes. They had no chance against me; I had used crushing blow to remove their best two weapons in the prior dungeon. (It was a bit of amazing luck; after cycling and shuffling the deck, Crushing Blow was the first card.)

I haven't given it a lot of thought, but I wonder if having two home towns wouldn't make the game much more enjoyable, lessening the problems listed above.

Veinman said:

Remember that even if you attack the heroes on the OL turn and TPK them, the heroes still get their turn as normal (can't end a turn before it has begun). So the heroes should have several weeks to do silver dungeons and get silver items before talimar falls. Also, since they can move 2 spaces(they'd better have the staff by this point), they should be able to get out of reach of your lieutenant without much trouble.

Stefan said:

As a hero player, I love it when the OL does a tactic like this. It means lots of easy gold. 4 lieutenant's at copper is 1,200 gold on average. The best counter is to get the talimar walls up to 7 strength with the 2 wall upgrades. That way even with seige engines and Thadd it will take 5 turns to move to talimar and get the walls to 0. Just enough time for the heroes to get to the farther away dungeons, secret masters, etc and still be back in time to save the city.

This was the first campaign for us, so no, the heroes were in no shape to stop me. They had no party upgrades, no town upgrades. They had upgraded their characters of course, but as mentioned, were fairly ill-equipped. They made the right choice to concede.

I'm sure if we start another campaign soon (they want to, although I'd like to take a break and try Arkham Horror) they will fare much better. They want to be able to pick their heroes, and I'm considering the following offer- they can pick heroes up to a total of 13 points, or 14 if they are willing to not use feats.

Big Remy said:

Right, good catch, been a bit since we finished our last RtL.

If a lt. flees, do the characters still get loot and 4XP?

Stefan said:

It ends in a party victory so you get the loot but you didn't kill the Lt so you don't get the CT.