How does the OL not win on turn 4 every time? 1) Position one changeling diagonal from each magistrate. 2) move open group monsters toward the adjoining hallway to river, being careful to shield as many as possible from lucky ranged shots. 3) at end of OL turn 1 move magistrates 2 squares toward river. 4) next turn advance changelings 2 squares and repeat.

I count 17 squares to the key in the library and one action to discover the key before someone waiting at the portcillus rushes in, by then magistrates are most probably drowned and on the OL sheet.

What am I missing??? BTW I am a new player....

Magistrates are 9 spaces away from water, so it would be 5 turns for each magistrate. OL can only move one magistrate at a time, so it would take 10 turns to OL to make this. And heroes would have even 1 turn more, as OL moves magistrates at the end of his turn, and his victory condition is checked at the beginning.

The wording implied to me that each magistrate could only be moved once by one monster, that is a big difference from only one magistrate could be moved 2 squares per turn. Huge difference in fact

"At the end of each overlord turn, if there is a monster adjacent to a magistrate, the OL may move that magistrate 2 spaces."

My group read and played that any magistrate with an adjacent monster could be moved 2 spaces each turn. That is, without interference, the OL wins at the start of his 6th turn (magistrates move into the water at the end of turn 5, but he doesn't win until the start of his turn 6.) There are heroes/classes/gear that can teleport through the portcullis so that a hero can try and block the magistrates directly or kill monsters. With the reinforcement, the OL can always have at least one monster adjacent to a magistrate if he wants. Depending on the influence effect, the OL may only need to move one to the water and summon/escape the master changeling for the other token.

We also understood it in the same way Zaltyre did : each magistrate with a monster adjacent can move 2 space. There is nothing spelling "only one" or "one" magistrate.

That being said, we played it with a shadow walker in our team and got the key on our 2nd turn thanks to : Soul Bound on a shadow dragon + Dark Servant.

This was one of the easiest quest we did in all our campaigns, and really annoying for our OL since he didn't have a chance to win at all.

But I suppose that without this combo, it would have been really hard...

Yes, distance searching also makes this much easier. It is a party dependent map. Some will find it difficult because their party lacks the necessary tools, and others will ace it.

Classes that allow you to summon familiars/helpers at a distance also help with this quest.

We had a conjurer who summoned his image token on the other side of the portcullis, allowing him to make ranged attacks from that new vantage point. It helps to thin out the herd of OL monsters.

So it seems I played this right after all (moving as many masgitrates as are adjacent to monsters).

Apart from the fact that the OL disagreed with me that images block movement of the magistrates, which in the end decided who won (because we both invested alot in doing so or in planning with considering this an illegal move).

However I think it's pretty easy to get a garuanteed move on both magistrates with only one monster as long as they stay adjacent.

One thing that I still wonder today is if the key (mechanically a search token) can be searched by the shadow-walkers ability that lets his shadow soul "gather" search tokens.

So it seems I played this right after all (moving as many masgitrates as are adjacent to monsters).

Apart from the fact that the OL disagreed with me that images block movement of the magistrates, which in the end decided who won (because we both invested alot in doing so or in planning with considering this an illegal move).

However I think it's pretty easy to get a garuanteed move on both magistrates with only one monster as long as they stay adjacent.

One thing that I still wonder today is if the key (mechanically a search token) can be searched by the shadow-walkers ability that lets his shadow soul "gather" search tokens.

What can I say? It's a pretty strong soul...

That's what my group did as well: sent me, the shadow walker, ahead to scout out the treasures and grab them from afar.

The key is a search token- just because it is unique does not change that- Dark Servant should definitely allow remote searching of the key (it's no weirder than picking up a potion from 3 spaces away.)

The magistrates cannot move through other figures- monsters, image tokens, etc included. They block movement and line of sight, but (unless I'm misremembering the rules) are not treated as monsters. Since they are not friendly to any other figures, they cannot move through them.

Sorry for the confusion, but I must say that this time it was not my completely bad, but the spanish translation. The spanish wording is:

"Al final de cada uno de sus turnos, el SS puede mover un magistrado 2 casillas si hay un monstruo adyacente al magistrado"

Which direct translation would be, if I'm not wrong:

"At the end of each of his turns, OL can move one magistrate 2 spaces if there is a monster adjacent to the magistrate"

You can change "one magistrate" with "a magistrate", and maybe this makes the difference. For me, this wording (the first) implies what I said before, only one magistrate at a time.

As the English (original/official) text clearly implies other thing, I'll try to inform to Edge (the spanish company) about the possible error, and the players in the spanish forum, too.

The translation definitely implies that only a single magistrate can move- I understand the confusion.

In spanish there is usually this problem. Both "one" and "a" translate as "un", so if the translator doesn't make it clear, we players have no clue of the actual meaning.

In this case, my bad was not thinking of the double interprtation. Thanks for making me know about the English text.

In spanish there is usually this problem. Both "one" and "a" translate as "un", so if the translator doesn't make it clear, we players have no clue of the actual meaning.

In this case, my bad was not thinking of the double interprtation. Thanks for making me know about the English text.

We have the same issue in French. This is typical for all Latin based languages.

This is why I try buying/listening everything in its original language. Of course, with Descent, you need all your friends to be fluent in English.