OK. I have been trodden upon by the heroes for most of Act 1. Alot of that has to do with the the fact that I picked a plot deck meant for someone smarter than I and I have zero strategy with picking monsters. It looks like the players have picked Saradyn in Flames. My bane of late has been the Runemaster equipped with the Soul Stone. She destroys groups of monsters and then gains more and more pierce because of it. I would just keep damaging her to force the heals but she has 2 black armor dice (1 from hero, 1 from rune plate) so its kind of futile.

Running tonight with 4 heroes. I have access to ALL currently released monsters including conversions from Descent 1. I get Alric Farrow, Eliza Farrow, Cave Spiders, Zombies, and two open groups. Which monsters would you pick for this quest?

Quest Rules

Quest Map

The way I read this, you basically have only one good round once the heroes are in the depths. Stack the depths with heavy hitting swarmers... Harpies and Reanimates are probably good choices. Always spend your surges on revealing tokens with the LTs, you only need one good guess on a surge and the mission is over.

Position your open group minions surrounding the 4 XX tiles, and place 2 open group units on the 2 diagonal X tiles. This will force the maximum number of units next to the first 2 heroes when they land.

The first part of map (before heroes go into the depths) you want to be following the heroes and with Alric and attacking whomever you think has the white token as often as possible while spending the surges to reveal tokens on their card.

If you can, sprint Alric passed the heroes early, before they have more than 1-2 tokens on their cards, since once they land in the depths you should be able to easily take them down and fully remove all tokens from them with the open groups (knock out required first, but you should have plenty of actions available). If they heroes stack everything on one figure, then you may still want move off the tile to force that hero to fall (as you then have a single target). If they have spread out the tokens, then keep attacking with Alric and spend those surges to remove them.

If pierce is the enemy, golem are usually the counter. You could place the master at the top of the depths between the blocked spaces and block the door and two of the possible key locations.

Then if you want to beat on Ravaela and her might of 1, Ettins with the master throw could cause some chaos.

But truly, kobolds might serve you better. Tuck the three masters in the north behind the master golem and spawn minions until they kill the master golem first.

Chances are good that you'll get a few turns before the heroes drop down so you could get all 9 minion kobolds out as a nice welcoming party.

Good luck and have fun!

Very good stuff. Thanks.

I recently won this quest as an OL in a play-by-forum game at bgg.

Open groups: Kobolds and Reanimates

Decks: Basic I with additional Blood Rages and WebTrap, Mirklace Plot Deck with Shifting Earth bought

Heroes: Logan (Stalker), Ravaella (Hexer), Reynhart (Champion), Serena (Bard)

Relic: Staff of Shadows

Key is to drop heroes early into the basement before they can pick up too many tokens. Lots of small monsters in the basement helped me as the heroes had not good AOE at that time and you have many actions the search defeated heroes for tokens.

In the beginning of the encounter, I think in round 2, I used Web Trap to slow heroes down and followed up with Dash on Alric using his Overpower ability to move heroes. I got one hero but then 2 more heroes decided it would be a good idea to fall with the first hero to clear out the basement. The 4th hero (Logan) with the token was still upstairs, running around. Heroes in the basement managed to significantly decimate my troops down there. However, in the next OL turn I used Shifting Earth to reposition the heroes and moved them as far apart from each other as possible. I killed 2 heroes and used the Kobolds to block the third hero reviving the other two. Heroes never recovered from that ...

And Silidus is right, you need to use all your force as soon as the heroes enter the basement.

so? how did it go?