So the forth or fifth week into Sob..

Well we played our first encounter, the party against The siren liutenant, and I as the Ol noticed something that suprised me... The encounters are set up that way, that eventually the party on their ship get pushed of the map(flee), or they sink cause they cant resist he currents and hit a reef (that was what actually happened in our case-the heros really had bad luck with the steering dice). Well you can prevent that with anchoring, but the next problem occurs... if the Ol only hides his monsters behind reefs(if there are any, usually there are) or whatever it is not possible for the heroes to kill them because they dont have the swin ability and suffer great penalties if they enter the water (not to mention the sharks) and reinforce , so hid my Siren on the other side of the map and then waited and waited until i got enough treat to move several skeletons, a couple got guarded but 1 was enough to come close enough, to 1 shot their sorcerer (i spent 8 or 10 treat to boost).. The next problem was the sirens ability (well does not matter for now). So i really think its is almost impossible for the party to win an encounter involving a liutenant. And one more thing they attacked me cause i am about to raze one of cities (actually the plot thing with 3 defense )...

Please prove me being wrong!

The heroes can also attempt to sink the enemy ship, winning the encounter with that, and hiding the entire ship behind reefs is rarely possible. Ropes help the player party swinging out into the sea, too, to get a first distance boost.

The outdoor encounters are quite varied. There are a few with currents going towards rocks, many have rocks or sand banks on both sides to keep the heroes from easily fleeing, while a few are very open and leave all options available.

Upgrade your melee hero's dice a bit, you can do that with Fatigue during the encounter as well - maybe stock up with fatigue potions a bit. Most currents are not really that strong, only a few are 3 or more.

as far is i know siren does not have a ship and its is almost not posible to get to her if i put her on the other end of the map, they did use fatigue to move the ship... I am not saying the heroes are unable to flee, but are unable to beat the siren for example.

Oh, sorry. I guess it's true that they can't beat the Siren early on then.

Admittedly, I'm still gathering my gaming group for a SoB campaign of my own I'd imagine that with the fewer Lieutenants the OL gets than in RtL, it's more important that he keeps the ones he has, too. I have yet to see how encounters with soaring and swimming enemies work out, I guess it's possible to hide them pretty efficiently indeed.

As the Ol i really have no problems with The Siren being imba

Svarun... what exactly did you mean by "couple got guarded but 1 was enough to come close enough, to 1 shot their sorcerer (i spent 8 or 10 treat to boost).. "

What boosting are you referring to?

Never mind... I forget they actually spell this out in the SoB rules

one of the players needs shark tatoo it gives that character the swim ability and +2 health,which helps a lot in swimming incounters

wblackthorn

If it's only the 4th or 5th week into SoB your heroes may in fact be a bit too weak to handle the Siren at this point. Shark tattoo on a melee hero along with the store hammer will allow him to go into the water and knock the Siren toward the ship. A hawkeye cannon or 2 would also be a great help to your heroes since they could then target the Siren after the melee hero hits her from a very long ways away and using the cannons knockback bring her even closer. Your heroes are probably in real need of some ship's cannons and that Tattoo.

Also don't forget that there are a lot of very different outdoor encounters, some very favorable to the Siren, some very not. There are at least 2 I can remember that are totally wide open with nothing for her to hide behind, and I think both of them have 0 sharks to. There's also the map that let's the heroes control the sharks instead of the OL which would prove extremely deadly for the low armorhealth Siren. Or the map that damages all figuresships in the water for 1 wound a turn, assuming the heroes ship was in good repair they'd only need to score 1 or 2 hits on the Siren to win.

I am OL'ing with Captain Bones, and have Death Head on my skeletons. My heroes attempted to attack the Siren very quickly (a plan to which I warned them, repeatedly, that it was a very, very, very bad idea, and that they should seriously reconsider). and drew the "everything in the water takes a wound" encounter map.

I responded in the best way possible, Raw, Suicidal Aggression: tons of skeletons (Her minions, + Hordes of Things) placed on the same map edge as the ship (the heroes only had one cannon, and had placed it in the front of the ship instead of the back, giving me the perfect blind spot on one side with which to taunt them), with the majority of the skeletons on the side with no cannon. I was able to over take the entire ship, and kill everything on it with swimming, shooting exploding skeletons within 2 or 3 turns.

Right now, my heroes are screaming "Death Head is broken! How can skeletons move, shoot, and then blow up?", and now they fear them like no other monster in the game. Of course, now that I upgraded them to silver, they blow up less, but they still fear them.

Yikes! That sounds nasty Fizz. My group has now played 2 sessions of our SoB campaign and we are just about 25 CQ shy of Silver. The heroes tried to fight the Siren once on the map Clear Sailing. I had just upgraded skeltons to silver though, and they still had mostly store items. This combined with the fact that 2 of them were at below half health and they had zero ship upgrades meant things got pretty ugly, and only 1 of them managed to sail the ship off the edge avoiding a TPK.

When we quit last though, the heroes were headed for the Siren who was besieging Orris. It looks like she'll have 1 chance to raze it before they attack her. They are all at full health and have bought a hawkeye cannon plus the reaper figurehead. One of them is also playing as Kirga and has both Precision and Eagle Eye. All this means he'll be able to target the Siren with a Hawkeye cannon, even if she's behind a rock, and he'll have Pierce 2, 2 Bonus Damage, and automatic +10 range (7 from Hawkeye, 2 from Reaper, 1 from Eagle Eye). I am curious to see how this fight turns out.

I think that the LT battles in SoB are very doable for the heroes, just not early on. They need lots of ship upgrades (I still think my heroes ship may not have enough to take her on), and a melee hero with Shark Tattoo (and possibly the store hammer) may be nearly required. This is probably to offset the fact that there aren't very many LTs in Sea of Blood, so they're a bit harder to kill. The Siren is actually quite wimpy though, I'm really going to need to avoid letting the heroes get anywhere near her or they'll kill her sure and certain. This may also be complicated by the blinking Runemaster Thorn another hero is playing......who needs swim when you can just blink next to the Siren and roast her and her skeletons with the Screaming Eagle Staff or some such? Even if its a suicide run, it'd be worth it if it made the Siren dieflee.

As I said I'm really looking forward to our next session to see how this fight turns out.

I think as a general rule of thumb, no party should ever attack a LT unless they have at least 2 cannons, *AND* some serious ranged takedown power. Also, players need to make sure both cannons are placed on the mounting on each side of the ship closest to the stern (rear) as possible. Why? Because the designers were sneaky with the deployment rules and The Revenge has two blind spots with it's cannon mounts of exactly 5 squares (on each side of the ship). not to mention the fact that since ships can't turn, and I haven't seen a way for the heroes to mount a cannon on the bow (front) or stern, any swimming/soaring models moving head-on with The Revenge can ignore all the cannons. It also means that in any encounter where the OL is allowed to choose which board edge he can deploy on (which is almost all of them) with swimming/soaring models, a smart OL will be able to exploit the blind spot on the stern of the ship on turn one, by deploying units on the same board edge as The Revenge , minimizing death by cannons, and allowing swift death to take it's course.

Of course, if the party is equipped with plenty of ranged punch, they can cover their blind spots, since most likely they have their best melee character manning the helm.