Hello, i am in the middle of The Shadow Rune campaign, and i want to tell you my experience and maybe you will give me (Overlord) some tips against heroes i am playing.

So we are playing Overlord vs 2 Heroes (Syndrael - Knight and Leoric of the Book - Necromancer). The situation we are now is like this, we just finished interlude and now we will play Act II. We played these quests:

1) Introduction - Heroes won

2) Castle Daerion - OL won

3) The Masquerade Ball - OL Won

4) Death on the Wing - Heroes Won

5) Interlude The Overlord Revealed - Heroes Won

So OL has Bones of Woe, heroes has Shadow Rune (Leoric) and Shield of the Dark God (Syndrael). So they synergy is that they move a lot, because of the Syndrael special ability. Also Syndrael who is Knight also have Advance skill so after killing a monster it moves again and attacks, the other skills are Deffend and Defence Training, also as i mentioned Syndrael has Shield of the Dark God, so for me to kill this hero is mostly impossible i just ignore it. Leoric of the Book - Necromancer is weak in his defense so he is my target, but he can relocate damage to his Reanimate and vice versa so it's also not so easy to kill it, Reanimate at this moment is like a hero, because of Necromancers skills, now it rolls 3 dices (blue, red and yellow) and it slays my monsters mostly in one hit.

The best working tactics for me is to stop them by playing cards which stops they're movement, Web Trap is the diamond in my deck. Allso they are weak in Willpower so everything which tests they Willpower are effective, and poison on Leoric is also a perfect thing, because he only has 1 strength.

So the most problems that i have, are that they move a lot, and if i don't get movement stopping cards in time it's just impossible to win for me, so i mostly try to not play cards in Encounter 1 at all, to maximize my chance of winning the quest in Encounter 2. The second thing is that my open group which is put in the nearest room of where the heroes start is slayed in the first turn and i just don't get to act with them, but i think nothing u can do about that.

As i think, my main thing should be to separate heroes from each other, that they would lost they're ability to both get additional move action because of Syndrael ability.

I know that my monster in Act II will be stronger, but when i saw Shadow Rune that heroes got, it looks that it will auto kill my monster.

What tips and advices you would give for Overlord? It's our first campaign so we are not using any expansions at the moment. Thank you for you opinions.

I read " Poor Overlord (heroes OP?)" topic, so i am interested for tips against exactly these heroes and they abilities. Maybe u will have to tell me something from your own experience against them.

Having Leoric with Shadow Rune is kinda tough.

Couple things to check first. Syndreals additional move action is only ONCE per encounter, from your description it made it sound like it was being used more often than that.

Ok, so the Knights advance skill is highly dependent on landing the killing blow on the monster. This makes it far less useful against large heavy monsters with high defense. Similarly, the shadow rune (although also potentially hitting very hard) is excellent if it can kill a monster with every attack due to the added fatigue regain. I would recommend using larger monsters, such as the ettin or shadow dragon, whenever possible. Keep small monsters as far away as possible, and always try to get more than one monster group together before engaging.

Also, remember that the goal (and use) of monsters is not to kill heroes, but to delay them. Knocking heroes out is great, but it is far better to force the heroes to slow down by putting monsters 'just' out of their attack range (always account for fatigue as well), (note, this is harder to do in a 2 hero game since hero can double move, fully fatigue move, and still attack). This forces them to think more about what you are going to do on your turn, and causes them to move LESS than their full movement, or risk a large counter attack from an entire group.

Also you should look at monster groups that add conditions. Spiders to poison Leoric, or Elemental to cause immobilize. It can be far more beneficial to apply a condition than do damage.

Yeah... Heroes used they're Heroic Feats every turn, not once per encounter, that changes a lot...

Wait, how?

I have one more question, about The Ritual of Shadows quest, the thing is about Staff of Shadows relic, we didn't played The Cardinals Plight quest so Overlord doesn't have this relic, but by the rules Overlord won this quest, buy how i understand he doesn't get any rewards from that quest it's just rules that other quests could be available in ACT II. So Lord Merick Farrow is equiped with Staff of Shadows relic in The Ritual of Shadows quest, but if Overlord wins that quest what happens then? Will he keeps the relic? I searched few topics, and some people says that it does some that it doesn't, is there clarification from FFG?

https://boardgamegeek.com/article/11470512#11470512