On Page 33 of the Sea of Blood rulebook under Skill Availability by Location, it indicates that for fighting, a person cantrain 'Able Warrior' and 'Riposte' at Dagger's Isle.

But there is no Riposte skill card that I know of. There is the Riposte FEAT card though, so obviously this is just a misprint? What other skill is supposed to be able to be trained at Dagger's Isle instead?

Also, we did our first sea battle with a lieutenant last night. Background is I put the Siren into play and moved her to Cerridor Sea (which is where the heroes placed one of the keys (am doing the lighthouse secret weapon scenario thingy)). So she picks up the key. Heroes are one square away and decide to attack her to get the key. fair enough.

So we set up the battle with my swimming skeletons and her. The location drawn was the Gaping Maw I think. (whirlpool that attracts all non-swimming chars within 9 squares). Heroes manage to figure out the ship enough to avoid the rocks, only losing one hero (did a running jump off the side of the ship as he found the Siren very seductive and wanted to get closer to her... much to the enjoyment of the circling sharks.)

But after that, the heroes were on the left side of the rocks/whirpool, and my Siren was on the other side, as there is no way I'm about to engage the 3 remaining heroes in close combat, as the Siren is very very wimpy. How do the heroes ever win? Without being able to turn the ship, or go backwards, there's really no way for them to get close enough to the Siren to kill her. They didn't want to flee the map, as they wanted the artifact. I wasn't about to flee, as I wanted the artifact. So essentially it became a stalemate. All the skeletons were killed by this time. Since I had about 20 threat stored up, I summoned 5 skeletons (3 threat each) and had them start moving towards the back of the ship.

The skeletons are only copper and on the best roll I can do, I do maybe 1 or 2 damage to a hero. (the remaining 3 heroes have good armor). So they would defeat them quite handily, maybe having 1 or 2 heroes suffer light grazing wounds.

Heroes were pissed off by this, as I could just waste my turns, build up a large amount of threat, and just summon 5 skeletons every 4 turns. And there is nothing they can do but just sit there. Eventually they decided to just concede the key and flee the map, or else we would have been there for days before I killed them all.. if I even could.

Just seems very flawed... Has anybody come up with any house rules for lieutenant battles? I can't see any instance where the Siren would even remotely want to get close enough to the heroes to attack. She rolls a yellow, white, and black which is VERY crappy damage. She wants to stay far away from the heroes and try to seduce them into the water.. which doesn't work against 2 of the heroes in my party as they have ways to gain fatigue every turn.

The heroes don't like it, as if they had one of the keys, and I got the Siren close enough to attack them, we'd end up with the same sort of situation where it would be a stalemate until one of us fled the map... but in something that important to the quest, neither would...

What's the solution?

My guess (since I'm just starting my SoB campaign and haven't done a Lt battle yet) is that the location was basically the problem here. On another map, it might have gone very different. So I'd hold off on throwing any house rules in there until you have at least one more Lt encounter with The Siren to see what happens.

They can always have their ranged heroes stock up on fatigue potions, then jump into the water and swim towards the Siren, trying to cover all lines of sight and placing guard orders when getting somewhat near. The whirlpool's range is only 3 spaces (unless the map rules say something different), so it should be possible to eventually corner her.

But it does seem to me that the prime benefit the Siren has is her mobility. SoB is different from RtL in that the Overlord has less lieutenants, so can't do as many rush-style sieges on the other side of the map than the heroes, but the lieutenants themselves appear to be a bit harder to catch.

Not having played SoB myself yet because my heroes suck at filling out Doodles, I say all this merely from a theorycraft point of view.

Frankly, I believe your heroes need to have a better shipskills and abilities in order to fight this effectively. So if they return a bit more powerful they would stand a better chance. Also that map is particularly bad for the Siren being able to hide and the whirlpool is a real witch their too, if you got a different one it would certainly make things much easier. Clear Sailing, Doldrums, Sandbar, even Gale or Cliffs of Insanity would all be much, much nicer places for them to try to Fight her. In fact, Wild Vortex may be one of the very hardest to fight her on.

My suggestion for your heroes would be for them to get a Hawkeye cannon and the Shark Tattoo on a melee hero. Then buy that melee hero the hammer, and some vitality potions. If in the next battle the Siren attempts to hide behind the rock again, you can just send the melee hero out to bat her back toward the ship (with a potion he may even be able to battle and use large amounts of fatigue to hit her twice). With the hawkeye cannons incredible range, a ranged hero could then stand a good chance of scooting hero even closer once they had LOS after the melee batted her (don't ask me how hitting something with a cannonball let's you move them toward you, but hey it works ). I would agree that you play a bit more before making house rules. Lieutenant battles are hard, but not impossible and experience is definitely the best teacher.

The "Riposte" skill is actually the "Counterattack" skill. I cannot confirm this but as "Counterattack" is a new skill yet not trainable, this seems to be the logical conclusion.

As for the Siren, my group has found her to not be the most enjoyable Lt for both the overlord and heroes. In my game, the Siren was laying siege and the heroes tried to stop her. Our first map had a lot of terrain in it and the overlord just set up the Siren across the board and the heroes saw no realistic way to win and just retreated. The next time we fought her (Siren rolled poorly for siege), we drew the map where sharks helped the heroes, and the overlord just retreated on the first turn.

After that the overlord generally send the Siren to work on the opposite side of the board and let Darkwind and the Kraken actually be near the heroes so that we can avoid playing with her as often as possible.

As for what the heroes can do about the Siren, we did not find any strategy all that fun or effective. We got Corbin (the tough dwarf, not the movement ability dwarf) Shark Tattoo later and if we did fight her again, he can try to solo her but that's neither fun for the other heroes or practical for a group without a extremely strong tank.