Been playing some more SoB, and have found some major bugs / issues with it.

1. Many lieutenants are impossible to kill if the overlord plays defensively. For instance, the Master of the Hunt has one with 7 move, fly (and therefor soar), and 40 HP and 5 armor at copper. The map is so big that he can just hover in one corner, and then when the Revenge gets close he can fly past, burning threat for movement, and then get far behind the ship after taking at most 1 round of attacks. Once he is behind the ship there is nothing the heroes can do, since the Revenge cannot turn and swimming long distances in deep water is tantamount to suicide. And the Overlord wins stalemates, since over time he will get infinite threat and can burn it to move in, attack, and move out. We have made the houserule that if the revenge moves off the far edge of the map, it is a party victory /lieutenant flees the battle result.

2. Lieutenant sieges are much harder to stop. Since they are only moved 1 space away when they retreat, you gain very little time when beating them, as well as them still being in reinforce range if you explore the island they were on. In RtL, since they go back to the keep, you gain more time when pushing them back. This matters in the ascension (seige 4 cities) plot, since it means that each city the OL razes will be farther away, and thus give the heroes more breathing room when they push back the lieutenants. In the equivalent plot in SoB, Leviathan, it is the opposite. It creates 5 wards (strength 3 cities) all 1 trail away from each other. So even if I drive a lieutenant away, he can flee to another ward and start seiging it on his very next turn. If he has 3 lieutenants on a ward, it means that I will have to drive back the lieutenants EVERY turn if I don't want him to roll to sack it, until there only one left, when I will "only" have to attack every other turn.

3. Ship upgrades have an XP cost symbol in the corner, but the meaning of them is not explained in the SoB rules. Does it only cost the hero buying the upgrade them, or is it similar to the Talimar upgrades of RtL?

4. In the "Wild Vortex" outdoor encounter, the hero ship starts next to a rubble, with another rubble on the other side 1 space away and current of 1 red die towards the rubble they start next to. So you can safely move at most 1 space away with the captains wheel, at which point a role of 2 range on the red die will move the Revenge onto the rubble and sink it, resulting in a total party kill. the deadly rubble is in a spot that will take at least 2 turns to get safely past, which means that this encounter has a 56% chance of killing all the heroes without the OL having to do anything. I realize that this is the box canyon equivalent to RtL, but it seems a bit excessive. The heroes have a chance in Box canyon, especially if it is a weak encounter. And if they die, at least it is at the hands of the OL. Not random chance like Wild Vortex.

Badend said:

We don't have SoB this side of the pond, but issue 2 seems like an oversight. By sending Lts in different directions, the players could only ever keep one Lt at bay whilst your other Lts take off in the opposite direction and burn down every other town. When we get SoB, I think we're going for the Go Back to Keep option.

Ranged attacks and Guard orders might help a little in situation 1. Also, unless they specifically need to stop the Lt, can't the Heroes just raise the sails, steer as far from the Lt as possible and just leg it, without any penalty?

I suspect 3 requires all Heroes to spend the XP.

4 has been raised before. There's no FAQ yet, but I'd advise that you move the rocks back so no-one can die on the first time.

Sieges are harder to end, but they're pretty easy to delay. For instance, if you wait until the city is a couple of weeks from falling to give yourself a cushion:

Week 1) end the siege, OL flees
Week 2) Lieutenant moves back to city, party explores nearby dungeon
Week 3-n) Lieutenant sieges, party explores next dungeon
Week n) Lieutenant sieges, party explores dungeon and flees at the end rather than going back to the overland map
Week n+1) end the siege

n = the number of siege tokens you feel safe letting the OL accumulate on that city.

If the city's defense rating is high, you may even be able to get a treasure map completed in that time, though it'll probably take two return trips to end the siege.

Two lieutenants can almost guarantee cities fall, especially if there's no way to travel quickly like there is in RtL but if reports are correct, it's harder to get tons of lieutenants on the board than it is in RtL, since they're usually bought later than copper.

The OP brings up a valid concern.

With the rule of losing the campaign when 5 cities are razed, it's surprising to read that the LT only moves one space, but I'm still willing to try this in our new campaign.

However, adding the Leviathan plot where the bind points have just 3 defense each is a bit alarming. Two LT's on one space have a 33% chance to take a bind point down in two turns. Each bind point not only moves the OL closer to victory, but they also add campaign altering affects. The heroes would not get to move very far at all and have no way of returning from a dungeon directly to a bind point as they would a home port after a dungeon.

I'm all for the OL pulling the heroes away from their goals on the map with a dangerous siege, but not moving the LT back to the OL's keep combined with the Leviathan plot just does not sound like a fun strategic game.

We'll give it a try and see if there is some balance mechanic built into the system, but based on my RTL experience, I feel a house rule coming to help keep the fun in the big game picture. It's hard to do a dry run of multiple months on a campaign to test big concerns about the game.

Then again, what are you going to do? Make the Ghost Ship flee back to a landlocked OL Keep when it flees? Then what?

Tom / Doc4

My group has implemented a house rule where LTs go back to their starting locations upon retreat, in order to avoid exactly the issues described. Not sure how well it will work, as many of the LTs only start one space away from cities or binding tokens.

Doc4 said:

I think that two LT's would only have a 33% chance to raise it in 3 turns, not two. That's because the first turn they place 2 siege tokens, then the next turn they can only place one (since resolving sieges takes place before LT orders when they'd be able to put on more tokens), and so the extra LT is wasted. Then the next turn (3rd) they'd get to roll. Also bear in mind that the plot with the bindings does not gain the OL much unless he completes it all the way through. Raising a 3 defense city would gain him a conquest a week from then on and deny the heroes some skills, raising the bindings only furthers his end goals (or allows him to play the plot cards, but none of them seemed to have effects too overwhelming to me).

Still, I can see the validity of points raised by this post. I guess time will tell if these problems are addressed in a FAQ, some of them do seem rather quirky.

James Murray please tell me how could cooper heroes possibly defeat lets say The Siren Liutenant, (or any other) in order to make the so called "delay" as u described in the case of making the liutenat flee from sieging a city. Or even at latter in silver or gold... The Liutenant is simply placed on the other side of the map behind some obstacle(in most cases there are obstacles), if there arent any, just the further away the better... and the Ol just waits for the heroes to get blown off the map, if they anchor he just has to wait a couple turns to get some treat, then move several monsters (where lets say 3 get guarded and 1 gets close enough, the OL hits a hero boosts 2 gold dice or sth)..then he can reinforce and so on and the heroes need to flee.

He can't reinforce the Siren, right?

And there's always the Shark Tatoo. Guess that's a must-have upgrade for at least one melee hero.

What do you mean.. "he cant reinforce the siren right?"

Doh, I should stop posting without double-checking Yeah, she has Skeletons as minions, I thought she had none.

well she even has the hordes of things power card...

I don't have SoB, so don't know the stats of any of the lieutenants. If they're all unbeatable regardless of encounter location, then it's definitely a problem. It's not a problem with how they flee though, it's a problem with them being too powerful.

svarun said:

I'm not James , but my suggestion would be this. One melee hero will need to have Shark Tattoo and the store bought hammer, you heroes will also need at least 1 Hawkeye cannon. They'll have to steer as close as possible to the rock the Siren is hiding behind, then have the melee hero beat her out from behind it. Once she's in front of it, the ranger hero(s) can use the hawkeye cannon(s) with their incredible range to knock her even closer to the boat. That should then let the magic heroes have a crack at her. Remember that she isn't all that strong, her HP and armor are both rather low. And yes I agree she can be a pain at early copper, but I think if your heroes develop a bit more she'll have a harder time dealing with her. At least that's what I'm expecting in my campaign right now.

Also don't forget that some of the maps are very favorable to the heroes for lieutenant fights. If you draw the one where sharks are controlled by the heroes for instance, the Siren is pretty much screwed. There are also some maps that are totally open with no obstacles whatsoever, or the one that damages shipsfigures for 1 wound per turn. If they can wound her just a couple times she'll run out of health before their ship will, since she can't damage it. Some locations favor the heroes, others not so much. And I agree that the Siren can be a huge pain, but I don't think she's totally unbeatable. Just my 2 cents though, I could be very, very wrong.

Badend said:

My gaming group Loves descent.. We have had a lot of issues with random encounters in the new version sadly.

1.) i agree completely lieutents are hard to kill.

The siren with some maps early on is impossible to kill. She can swim around very far away. If the map has a decent amount of rocks, the ship cannot be moved very well.. and they players would die trying to swim to her. Deep water ruless are very hard for having to deal with her early.

Not to mention the ship movement in general is "clunky" at best.

4.) we had wild vortex map WITH Siren enouncter.. It was a terrible encounter and not balanaced at all.

there really needs to be a good FAQ or a lot of House rules to make a lot of the encoutners work.

Some simple math: Siren + Cap'n Bones + Death Head = Total Party Wipe in four turns.

I tend to agree that the ship's lack of maneuverability is a problem in Lt. encounters. All the OL has to do is stay outside the cannon arc, stay at least a half-dozen or so spaces away from a (non-swimming) hero, and send in the minions. Either the Revenge will end up sailing off the boardmeaning OL victoryor the minions will wipe out the partyalso meaning OL victory.

Of course, this also means that ending sieges is next to impossible, since it's also next to impossible to kill/drive off a Lt.

I haven't seen the encounters, so I don't know how likely it is, but it seems like "wait until they float off the map" would be impossible in some (if not all) enoucnters because the ship can move against the current or just anchor.

I do agree that the LT encounters are very rough for the heroes, especially early on. But I don't think its any coincidence that all four types of cannons in the game have knock back. Plus, one of the heroes in my campaign has Precision allowing him to shoot through rocks even if I try to hide the LTs behind them. Even if they don't have precision, with two of the cannon types having area of effect attacks, it's possible to shoot "around" the rocks and knock the LTs toward the ship. Which means that upgrading their ship with plenty of cannons is essential if the heroes want to stand a chance against the LTs. I also believe that the encounters with them work similar to RTL in that they are very hard in the early parts of the tiers of the campaign, less so in the later tiers once the heroes have built up treasures. The map location makes a huge difference to in terms of how hard it is for the heroes to fight various LTs, some are pretty easy, others border on being impossible.

All in all I would agree that there are some tough issues involving the LT encounters, but whether they simply require new tactics to be developed which will take time for hero players to learn, or whether they are in need of some serious erratahouse rules remains to be seen. At least that has been my group's experience with SoB thus far, which is admittedly very limited, we are only part way through our first ever campaign using SoB. That's my two cents anyhow.