I don't see that it is possible for the heroes to win this map, without either fly or acrobat. The shade can just, fly to the other side of a row of trees every time. Unless the OL isn't playing it right, the leader is pretty much invincible, much like dust to dust.

Dashakan said:

Bollocks!

Sorry, that was just too, too unimaginative.
Heroes can cover both sides of tree rows with different heroes, finish in a tree row and be given a Guard by Leadership (or have a guard first and prevent the two points of damage with Ghost Armour or similar, use Spiritwalker to attack from a hero on the other side of trees and many other possibilities. Shades are not particularly fast either so the boss can't evade forever.

The leader is very very far from invincible. Just not 'easy'.

We beat it the first time with neither acrobat nor fly. It was expensive, but that was largely due to the green corrupted glyph forcing the heroes to take three turns returning to the action whenever they died and being unable to duck into town for healing mid-combat.
The other two times we played (and beat a lot more easily) this level, Acrobat and Fly were crucial in getting to the glyph easily, but not crucial in getting at the leader (both times the acrobat/flyer was a melee hero).

Corbon said:

And why was the OL letting lhe leader be in LoS of any of the heroes... pretty much ever? He could at the very least (if the heroes were well placed) stand near a melee hero (who can't hit him) inside a tree where the others not only need LoS but need to be adjacent.

This map ruined my players fun. all the special rules of having a turn end in the trees was brutal. not to mention I could move at will (as the OL)

I slaugthered them again and again until they retreated. This is by far the most unbalanced map in favor of the OL in the RTL of tomb of ice expansion.

I believe a few small tweaks could make it better, but as is, a mean OL that just moves his troops around a lot and takes advantage of the map will easily win.

Again, what's wrong with there being a hard map? Some of them have to favor the overlord, don't they? Several of the dungeon levels can be cakewalks for the heroes. So, the Secret Garden is hard. Tough. Live with it.

The heroes always have the option of fleeing. Not the end of the world. Well, most of the time anyway

As overlord I saw The Secret Garden as paypack for levels like Garden of Grazius, which gave the heroes a nice supply of practically free potions (since Grazius is a horrible guardian for it due to the enraged conditions, and Mogdir starts so far away he's dead before his knockback gets a chance to make the giant mad).

Why is everyone having such a hard time on this map? My heroes only had to enter trees once, to shortcut through one passage on one side. Other than that, I think I only got 2 kills on the map, about average for RtL...

-shnar

Did you have the shades fly through the trees after attacking, end their movement inside the trees to double up Ghost & Shadowcloak, and place any spawned monsters in the clear areas so the heroes couldn't just run around and at least one of them would have to stop and fight?

shnar said:

You played poorly then. If you had followed the advice of the post above this one, you could have gotten a lot more kills. The heroes can't even come close to covering LoS on this map, so you have carte blanche to spawn where you will.

As for the "why can't ther be a hard map" routine, there can be. This one is perhaps too hard, since you need Fly or Acrobat to complete it without getting wrecked. If you are using the "you can always flee" argument, that of course is true. But do you really want there to be adungeon where 90% of the time the heroes have to flee?

Well, imagine this level as the second level before a rumor, and if too much time is spent trying to win the map then the heroes will be forced to flee anyways because the OL has cycled the deck once already.

Its not impossible, just 99% difficult.

Dashakan said:

Considering that there are dungeon levels where the Overlord doesn't stand much of a chance, yes

A lot of this goes back to the OL's outlook on gameplay. I think we all know the OL can't win the final battle, so the heroes are going to win if it makes it that far. Therefore as an OL you can:

1. Go for a Tamalir rush/try and ruthlessly accomplish your plot with no regard for if the players have any fun.

or

2. You can try and make it a fun, interesting, balanced game up until the end, where you inevitably lose, or on occasion win via your plot towards the end.

I don't think there should be a map that the heroes can't win on (most of the time) because it impacts the heros a lot more then an "easy" floor impacts the OL. What if its the floor before the OL in the keep? Or the floor before a legendary area? Or the floor before a rumor level? Then you have to flee, and lose that bonus. And that isn't fun for anyone.

When we played this particular map, we were lucky. It was the third floor of a random dungeon, when we were planning on going to Tamalir anyways afterward. I also had carried by air. So one highly armored hero ran in, activated the glyph and got the chest (took 2 turns) and one hero used Carried By Air to grab the gold piles. The OL killed 3 of us, and we fled considering ourselves lucky. But this could have been very frustrating had it been a different scenario.

Ultimately the game is about having fun, and this map makes it less fun for the majority playing, do to it's VERY high likely failure rate.

you are never forced to flee, even from The Secret Garden. Spreading out to cover the retreat angles, carrying a knockback weapon, and dodging so they can't easily kill you are tactics that are available to every hero party. Sure, you'll take a beating, and might rather flee if there's nothing at stake (like Legendary areas or rumors), but there's nothing forcing you, and the map is not unwinnable in any situation. It's just incredibly hard if you're not prepared for it.

James McMurray said:

I would have to disagree. I think without certain combinations of things, the leader on this map is unkillable. For the most part, guard orders do nothing. Melee heroes do nothing. He can pass through the trees, heros cannot. He essentially can run around, away from the ranged heros constantly, and avoid being attacked.

He can only avoid being attacked if the heroes insist on hanging around each other. If they spread apart he can be attacked by whoever he is forced to flee towards.

Melee heroes aren't useless, they're just going to be unable to attack the leader or any other shades the OL starts with, assuming the OL is smart and always finishes their movement inside a tree and they don't have some sort of ranged attack.

- They can still be there to use knockback weapons to resituate heroes to allow attacking (even if it means staying a turn in town to buy one). With two spread out ranged attackers and one of them having a guy with knockback nearby, its possible to ensure that your strongest attacker gets a shot at the
- They can also be necessary in keeping back the hordes of spawns the overlord can generate because of how protracted the battle will be.
- They could even run back to town and buy a ranged or magic weapon, using it without power dice. Sure, it's not much damage, but it's more than 0. Immolation and Sunburst need only a slightly higher than average roll to penetrate a diamond shade's armor, and fatigue can let you penetrate the master's if he's diaomnd. If Eldritch monsters aren't fully upgraded, you're even better off. At gold every hit has a good chance of hurting, and at silver or lower every hit is almost guaranteed to do some damage. Ranged weapons are slightly weaker due to the blue die, but unless the shades are Gold or higher, they're also going to help nickel and dime the things to death.

James McMurray said:

You immediately invalidate your first statement with your follow up. Of course he can avoid being attacked, by moving towards a melee hero. It isn't as if the Heroes can have LoS to the entire area anyways, so he can pretty constantly hide. The OL has the oppurtunity to start with (I think) 5 extra shades? Or is it 4. Either way, if they hide in trees, and don't sit around to get hit by blast, they can hit and run and kill casters with ease, since they cannot guard. I mean, of course with very specific situations, with very specific items/heroes/feats anything is possible. I am just stating that 90% at least, this is an auto-flee for the heroes. Which can really blow if it is before a critical portion of gameplay.

Not to mention the fun it takes out of the game, as I talked about in my post above.

I guess you didn't read the rest of my post, where I outlined the things that make melee heroes usable, including allowing them to attack and hurt the shades or go even further and allow the party's wizard to attack the shades.

If you're willing to flee on the map 90% of the time, that's cool. I'm not disagreing with anyone's choice when they're presented with the situation. What I disagree with is the idea that it's an unwinnable map. Granted, I can imagine scenarios where it's unwinnable, but they involve things like "no money and no items you're willing to sell" or "it's the last level of a non-rumor dungeon and the overlord has a massive pile of threat and traps to use on you." Just "we're not decked out with the perfect skill set" is not enough to make the map unwinnable.

What combinations of things do you think the party must have beyond "cash to buy shop items so they can do damage"?

I just looked at the map .* All you need is two non-melee characters and one melee guy with the hammer. Once they're all three in the center there's no tree the leader can run to that the hammer guy can't knock both ranged characters over to so they can battle against it. If he doesn't end in a tree, then even the melee guys get to beat on him with their ranged weapons. Sometimes they'll have to take damage from the trees and/or use a fatigue or two for movement.

* That's the base map piece only. The dungeon level has a couple of added rubble markers to make it more of a spiral, but unless I'm misremembering their placement they don't change any knockback tactics. But it also has a well-placed glyph available towards the center to make regrouping in the center after death easier.

My guys had *no* problems with this map, probably because the melee did have Reach weapon. Their runner (Silhouette) sprinted through the lower edge and ran through the tree (i.e. ended their move taking damage but continued next turn) while the Mage and Melee wacked the creatures. I can't remember but maybe I either didn't pick the shades to start with, or I started them in the other room and they died quick. Probably bad on my part, but the main leader was no problem for them to kill (it was early in the campaign, no creatures upgraded yet)...

I have a hard time thinking a map is "broken". IMHO, that means it's broken to how one is used to playing. Usually applying a different perspective can show you how to overcome these challenges.

-shnar

Even if it would be "Broken" a bit, I wouldn't mind. There sould be a few really hard dungeons around. See it as a bit of luck for the overlord player if it appears in a rumour or legendary dungeon. And outside of that heroes can always flee. And regarding fun Dashakan, it sure is fun for the overlord player (usually that's me) to have a dungeon like that once in a while.

I've never played that dungeon, but at this point I'm really curious to see how my playgroup would handle this one

how can you knockback a ghost?

Hawthorne can do it with a Knockback weapon...

-shnar

so the current theorie is "if you encounter this scenario, just go to the city and buy a hammer.. and while you are at it bring hawthorne with you"?

besides that point the shade is 90% of the time NOT landing not in a tree, which screws your reach anyway.

That's what your mages and ranged heroes are for.

-shnar