I wish I had taken a picture, but last night my wife and I encountered a very odd map when doing a Delve.

The map used mostly Nerekhall tiles, and separated one hero from the group during setup. The separated hero was placed in a medium sized room with a locked door, with a platform in the bottom corner surrounded by elevation lines. From the platform there was a hallway with several long pits, ending in a portcullis, which contained the switch to open the locked door. On the other side of the portcullis, there was another hallway that linked back to the tile with a long elevation line and the stairs, which were blocked by another portcullis. The remaining heroes spawned on the other side of that portcullis, along with the portal.

Now, as far as I can tell, there was no way for the heroes to raise the portcullis, no way for the separated hero to reach the switch to open the door, and no path the other heroes could use to reach the switch. Fortunately (or maybe by design) we had Astarra as an Illusionist, so she could create illusions on the far side of the portcullis, then use her hero ability to move adjacent to it. But if we had had any other hero, it seems this map would have been impossible.

Has anyone else encountered this? Or was this map chosen specifically due to our hero choices?

I have not played this specific Delve quest, but (and assuming no Delve quest rules to the contrary), you do know that Portcullis can be opened just like a door?

That is to say, a hero can perform an open door action on a Portcullis.

Normally, you can click on the gray bar representing the Portcullis, and it provides two buttons ... one to cancel, and one to perform an Open Door action.

Hi Any2Cards,

Yup, you are absolutely right. After about an hour of starting new games, I finally got the same map back again.

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and yes, you can simply remove the portcullis as an action.

I guess for some reason, I thought portcullis were always locked (as they usually are in any encounter they are used in), and the wording on the box confused me (I was tired...).

So yes, this map is easily resolved without any special 'remove character from map' and space counting shenanigans.

One good habit that my group has gotten into when playing RTL, The Delve, etc. (basically any app), is once a new map is set, we click on every object on the screen, and find out what they have to say. Often, it provides reminders as to what is needed to be done, etc. Since they all have a "Cancel" button, it provides you a chance to review any specific object, including quest objectives, doors, portcullis, etc.

There is a quest in Seeds of Corruption that DOES have an impossible switch, but it's not a mistake. Until I saw the picture you posted, I thought you were referring to that.