While I like the Advanced Campaign, there is some things about it that can be quite "Beardy" so to speak. Here is the list of my beefs and recomended fixes.

1. Outdoor Encounters and Soaring Creatures: These encounters become VERY nasty to copper level PC's. Often times you don't have the kind of range to hit these kinds of creatures and in encounters with an All-Soaring combat force, your melee characters become useless as its easy for the Overlord to run around the melee people twaking the ranged characters and then swarming the melee guys.

Suggested Fix: Soar only applies until the creature makes an attack. As soon as the creature makes an attack, it is assumed to move to ground level. There it remains until the start of the next Overlord's turn. In addition Obsticles are ignored when targeting Soaring Creatures with ranged/magical attacks and you may move under a soaring creature but may not end your move under such a creatures. This makes sence because the creature is high in the air and thus can't claim cover from things below them.

2. Trees and Shadowcloak: Ok, I understand why having tree cover can make you harder to hit. But it dosen't make sence when you're caught in a burst or breath weapon that saturates the tree with a massive area effect. Shadowcloak can be heavely annoying for many combats.

Suggested Fix: The shadowcloak granted by trees does not apply against Breath or Blast attacks that include them in the radius.

3. The Ship encounters are interesting but it dosen't quite give the feel of sea combat. Ships only move in a straight line (unless pulled by the current) and makes it hard to dodge obsticles. One touch on some sandbar and you lose your ship and a whole crudload of VP. And since stearing only moves you sideways, its hard to keep your ship from floating off the edge of the board or crashing. Also makes it hard to aim your cannons.

Suggested Fix: Ships may make a single 90 degree turn a round. To perfom this you must spend two power enhancements on a captianing roll. When turning a ship, rotate it 90 degrees from the center of the ship to line up with the squares on the map. You may not turn if your final position would end your move on a solid obsticle (like an opponet's ship). Any creatures in the water are moved out of the way of the turning ship.

4. Lieutenant "Board Edge Hugging" to avoid being killed.

Suggested Fix: Either require the Overlord to place their Lieutenet in some central area of the board or have some requirement for fleeing (Such as being reduced to half wounds)

Darkfire14 said:

My thoughts on your thoughts...

1) Soar: Soar is just a horribly written rule to begin with that any attempts to fix it creates their own problems. Soaring creatures do move to ground level when making an attack, they just don't stay there. There is no actual game mechanics reason I can think off beyond not wanting to deal with rules for two figures in one space for making Soaring creatures block LOS and movement. I have no problem with them swooping down for attack, that's why smart heroes put on Guard orders. IMO Soar just needs to be made so that it doesn't block LOS and movement, as long as its clear that a figure can not end its movement in a space "occupied" by a Soaring figure.

2) Trees and Shadowcloak: I'm fine with it the way it is actually. Don't really have a problem with it as it is.

3) Ships: Haven't played it yet but looked at the rules. I really don't have a big problem with it as written with not being able to turn 90 degrees. Granted I am not a naval combat expert, but everything I've seen on the History Channel using this era type ships typically showed combat exactly how they have it. Yes they only move in a straight line, but we're also using a map that isn't even remotely the full size of what a naval battle would actually have. Ships this size rarely are capable of making a sharp 90 turn, and its even harder if they are wind powered. You want to come alongside your opponent broadside to fire your cannons at him. Going nose into him won't do any good since all the cannons are on the sides of The Revenge anyways. All you would do is give the NPC ship a few turns to shoot at the bow of your vessel. So, in terms of reality I disagree and think they actually did a pretty decent job at least rules wise.

4) Lts: So you want to give every advantage to the heroes for being able to kill a Lt then? If the heroes have no requirement on fleeing, why should Lts have one? Having your Lt get killed is a serious blow to the OL, especially in SoB where you have to raze five cities to win. Losing one Lt is going to be a major blow, worse than RtL.

Big Remy said:

+1

1) Apart from LOS issues, Soar works rather well. It is a significant advantage for Dragons, Demons or Manticores, but these are fairly rare. It is quite playable, though a nice advantage for Razorwings.
The OL needs some advantages. Outdoor encounters generally favour the heroes greatly.

2) Shadowcloak works very well the way it is. Thematically, there are good explanations even for blast and breath. Making a change for thematic reasons is very dangerous - firstly because there is always an alternate thematic explanation that is just as good or better, and secondly because thematic reasons are rarely in synch with balance reasons.
In particular, your fix of allowing blast and breath weapons to ignore tree-shadowcloak is very bad from a balance pov. Blast and breath are already overpowerful, to an extent where having them or not having them can make or break a campaign (and note they both ignore Soar). Currently practically their only weakness is trees in encounters (their limited damage is often well compensated by additional dice and additional 'other' item bonuses etc).

3/4) I'll avoid comment on these until I've actually played SoB.

1. Outdoor Encounters and Soaring Creatures: These encounters become VERY nasty to copper level PC's. Often times you don't have the kind of range to hit these kinds of creatures and in encounters with an All-Soaring combat force, your melee characters become useless as its easy for the Overlord to run around the melee people twaking the ranged characters and then swarming the melee guys.

Suggested Fix: Soar only applies until the creature makes an attack. As soon as the creature makes an attack, it is assumed to move to ground level. There it remains until the start of the next Overlord's turn. In addition Obsticles are ignored when targeting Soaring Creatures with ranged/magical attacks and you may move under a soaring creature but may not end your move under such a creatures. This makes sence because the creature is high in the air and thus can't claim cover from things below them.

We've discussed soaring quite a bit, especially after it guaranteed the death of both melee heroes in two separate lieutenant fights last night. Just making it so that you can walk through them (but not end inside them) would be plenty. It would stop the overlord from using them as nigh-impassable and indestructible walls, and give all-melee heroes a chance to flee.

Other than that I don't think they need a change (and even that's not really necessary). Soaring makes carrying a backup weapon a much more valuable thing, and gives a small benefit to those characters who have 2 points in melee and their third in another trait. If the character has any ranged or magic dice whatsoever he could do alright to carry a bow or AOE attack. If he doesn't, he can carry a knockback hammer to ensure that he can get past the "wall" and then flee the encounter once all non-fliers are dealt with.

2. Trees and Shadowcloak: Ok, I understand why having tree cover can make you harder to hit. But it dosen't make sence when you're caught in a burst or breath weapon that saturates the tree with a massive area effect. Shadowcloak can be heavely annoying for many combats.

Suggested Fix: The shadowcloak granted by trees does not apply against Breath or Blast attacks that include them in the radius.

I think just having fewer trees on the maps would work fine. As it is, it's too easy to keep yourself constantly inside a tree so that even the most wide-open seeming maps break down into several one-on-one fights.

3. The Ship encounters are interesting but it dosen't quite give the feel of sea combat. Ships only move in a straight line (unless pulled by the current) and makes it hard to dodge obsticles. One touch on some sandbar and you lose your ship and a whole crudload of VP. And since stearing only moves you sideways, its hard to keep your ship from floating off the edge of the board or crashing. Also makes it hard to aim your cannons.

Suggested Fix: Ships may make a single 90 degree turn a round. To perfom this you must spend two power enhancements on a captianing roll. When turning a ship, rotate it 90 degrees from the center of the ship to line up with the squares on the map. You may not turn if your final position would end your move on a solid obsticle (like an opponet's ship). Any creatures in the water are moved out of the way of the turning ship.

I haven't played the ship combats or even seen the incident cards for them, but on the surface they seem fine. You know the currents when you set up your ship, so it seems like you should be able to buy yourself plenty of time before getting pushed off the edge. Not being able to turn 90 degrees might be a bit of a simplification, but it seems like a good one to me. Large creatures are a big enough pain to maneuver in my mind, if the ships had to move around like that I'd seriously consider just not playing SoB.

4. Lieutenant "Board Edge Hugging" to avoid being killed.

Suggested Fix: Either require the Overlord to place their Lieutenet in some central area of the board or have some requirement for fleeing (Such as being reduced to half wounds)

Putting any sort of requirement for liuetenants fleeing would pretty much guarantee their deaths in every lieutenant encounter. The heroes would just make sure that they don't cross that threshold until they know it'll be the final blow. Or at the least it would result in many game reports along the lines of "the overlord spent his first turn using all of his minions to attack the lieutenant, and then fled." Neither of those is a desirable option in my mind.

Since losing a lieutenant makes it vastly more difficult for the overlord to win, takes away a turn's worth of upgrades, and can mean he wasted several turns worth of orders (if that lieutenant's loss breaks a siege), there should be a defense against it.

Something silly I did notice when looking at the rules again...

The rules for starting at either Silver of Gold level of the campaign weren't changed, which is shame because they are ( IMO ) horrible the way they are. Yes both sides get equal XP, but then the heroes gets to actually spend it on something while the Overlord is denied this chance. So if you start at Gold, the heroes get to buy and bunch of items from the Copper and Silver deck, then train at 3 cities or secret training areas. The OL...gets to wait and start the first dungeon with at best one Monster class upgraded to Silver.

Hardly an even start.

Yeah, that's the first thing we house ruled when playing the campaign. We just assumed thta you were supposed to and that it was an error and moved on from there. doing otherwise makes a setup that's already weighted in favor of the heroes (compared to a standard game that works its way to that tier) even moreso.

so mata and kata can carry runekeys, chests and gold.. but they are not allowed to move to a figure while carrying stuff. but a ogre can still move over them right? sooo then they squish beneath him when their next turn starts?

Turric4n said:

Correct.

They're ferrets for god's sake. I've seen a ferret squeeze under a closed door before.

Big Remy said:

While helping another ferret carry a treasure chest?

thats my point^^

James McMurray said:

Yes

Well, #4 is really a problem (no-ship Lts are unkillable now), but putting more restrictions on placement or fleeing might make fleeing impossible. So it's an auto-win either for the Overlord or the heroes...

A possible solution might be to have fleeing Lts retreat to their starting position. Thus, having a Lt flee from a battle would actually hurt the Overlord without robbing him of his only means to win the game.

Just my two €-cents;

Darastin