Hey, new to the forum here! HI! Straight to the point then...

We have so far finished 2 quests of the (acolyte of saradyn-intro quest- and relegars rest) which (as overlord) lost the intro and won both encounters of relegars rest resulting in:
a) a total hero gold of 275 and 2 exp from the rewards
b) 2 relics for the overlord (staff of shadows and shield of zorek's favor)
c) Total 3 exp for the epic overlord which i still spent none in order to see how their builds items and situations evolve.

After purchases ( gold 275 -> 25 ) and exp points spent, ill present fully below what the heroes currently have...
I need help regarding my overlord tactics vs the heroes, which are :

1) Mordrog (Marshal) = 1 exp left (starting equipment)
a) Retribution (exhaust-1 fatigue, for dealing 2 damage to a monster within 2 spaces of you that targets another hero)
b) Shockwave (exhaust-1 fatigue, use when performing an two handed weapon attack. If that attack deals 1 or more damage, deal 1 damage to each adjacent monster)

2) Logan Lashley (Treasure Hunter) = 1 exp left (starting equipment plus bow Trinket that lets him do a free additional attack action -cant remember name- plus chainmail +1 gray defence die)
a) Delver (Deal 1 extra damage if you are not adjacent to another hero plus draw 2 search cards instead of 1 and place the other one top or bottom deck)
b) Dungeoneer (action-exhaust-1 fatigue, to search and then attack while this card is exhausted, as a free action)

3) Avric Albright (Disciple) = 1 exp left (starting equipment)
a) Prayer Of Healing (no action exchaust-1 fatigue, for self or adjacent hero healing using 1 red power die)
b) Armor Of Faith (For each Prayer of Healing usage on a hero or self, that hero or self adds 1 brown defence die until the start of your next turn)

4) Widow Tarha (Runemaster) = 0 exp left (starting equipment plus a Jinn's Lamp-1 action to draw a shop card, equip it if you want, and discard this card-)
a) Rubic Knowledge (if you have a magic or rune weapon equipped each of your attack gains: surge: suffer 1 fatigue for +2 damage)
b) Exploding Rune (action-1 fatigue, to perform 1 attack with a rune weapon that gains blast)
c) Inscribe rune ( Any weapon you equip gains the rune trait)

Stats are: (in order) (Willpower-Might-Knowledge-Awareness)
1) 3-5-1-2
2) 2-3-2-4
3) 4-2-3-2
4) 3-2-4-2

A) One thing they have in common, low awareness aside from Lashley and kinda low might aside from Mordrog as well as knowledge aside from Widow.
B) I noticed that i dont manage to do much damage especially to Mordrog and Avric and now even to Logan.... because of a- Avric's heals, b- Mordrogs Marshal Skill Tree and c- Logan's 2 Gray Dice, so i thought about minimizing Warlord Plot deck to at least buying the extra shields or even not buying anything.

I dont have access to shadow of nerekhall content and some monsters as well as i dont intent or want to use any lieutenant plot decks.
We are now on encounter 1 of "Baron Returns" and things are looking pretty confusing... any little bit of help helps! If you decide to take your time and somehow strategize a little bit for me, id be grateful! Logan looks so op btw

Logan (esp as a treasure hunter) is a beast. The sooner you accept that, the happier you'll be.

Remember the OL's motto, "Just because it's fun to kill them doesn't mean it's the best thing to do."

USUALLY, you can get what you want (victory) without killing the heroes, much less killing all of them. Death is merely one of many tools at your disposal to slow them down. (Unfortunately, Logan the TH is hard to slow down. See point 1.)

Divide and conquer. Do your best to make them split their attention (actions) between their objective and you. Monsters don't have feelings- they are cannon fodder, treat them as such. If you can get them to "waste time" killing monsters, do it.

As Zaltyre said, the game is all about the action economy. Most everything you do should be with the intent of reducing the number of productive hero actions, whilst simultaneously using your own to build towards your objective. Sometimes that does mean killing the heroes, but often it doesn't.

Their team has Logan Lashley Treasure Hunter, which is the one of the strongest combinations in the game and will guarantee bucket-loads of money and loot for the team. However, thank the stars that at least you aren't dealing with even more overpowered combinations such as Runemaster Astarra or Bard Mok.

Mordrog is actually a pretty sub-optimal choice as a Marshall due to his abysmal Knowledge stat. Be glad you don't have to worry about skills such as By the Book that deny your ability to use cards like Dash to complete objectives.

Disciple is a strong healer but requires adjacency to heal. Web Trap should be highly effective against everyone except Logan, so I'd recommend picking up multiple copies to separate the party from one another and deny actions.

Its also important to attack Logan's weak willpower stat - he is a prime target for cards such as Dark Charm - turning his high pierce against the party, or (more often) using it to send him running off by himself away from the monsters and search tokens that he needs to utilize his impressive skillset.

Finally, it might be too late for this now, but if the heroes choose to utilize the awesome power of the Treasure Hunter, I often counter with Baron Zachareth's plot deck. The deck is kinda anti-fun due to super powerful cards like Meticulous Planning, but it helps immensely in keeping the Treasure Hunter in line.

You want to ensure you get all the 50gp cards in the search deck on every quest? Fine, but then you're never seeing a Treasure Chest in your lifetimes heroes!

And as a final remark: read the quests in advance and try to plan a little bit before starting the quests.

As yourself these questions:

1) Am I allowed to choose the quest or the heroes? If the heroes are already quite a challenge, don't have mercy and don't choose an easy quest. I'd even say: NEVER by merciful, but that depends on the skill of your heroes. Take also a look at the rewards for the heroes. Sometimes they have a chance to get a relic. Good thing they didn't get the staff of light. You would have hated that.

2) Is the quest next to impossible to win for me? If you think so, try to deny them additional loot, treasure, relics etc. If you have a good chance to win: go for it! More XP for you AND you can (often) choose the next quest.

3) Which monster group is gonna cost them the most actions? Monsters with stun or immobilize may be extremely useful.

Finally:

If you own the Manor of Ravens expansion, get the first card of the unkindness deck (call of the ravens). This is an awesome card. You can sacrifice a weak monster quite a descent raven.

Do you play with rumour cards? If so: do not play additional quests if you struggle already. More gold and a shopping step for the heroes.

The Descent Tracker gives you a nice overview of the campaign stats. http://d2etracker.com/stats_quests.php

Might be useful to choose a new quest but beware! These stats might not reflect the stats one would get with your set of expansions (outcome is of course monster group dependent etc).

4 hours ago, Zaltyre said:

Monsters don't have feelings- they are cannon fodder, treat them as such. If you can get them to "waste time" killing monsters, do it.

I actually kinda like this Lelouch Code geass way of thinking. I think ill be less "sensitive" towards my monsters' lives from now on... cheers

4 hours ago, Charmy said:

As Zaltyre said, the game is all about the action economy. Most everything you do should be with the intent of reducing the number of productive hero actions, whilst simultaneously using your own to build towards your objective. Sometimes that does mean killing the heroes, but often it doesn't.

I realise that, but its kinda annoying to have that little rich red bandana guy use 4 or 5 actions per turn. OL is kinda OP okay, but that s** is broken. Especially if his user has quite some experience in the game, which fortunately for me he's somewhat new... I guess i have little choice but to accept that, even tho the heroes still continuously complain the OL is OP.

4 hours ago, Charmy said:

Disciple is a strong healer but requires adjacency to heal. Web Trap should be highly effective against everyone except Logan, so I'd recommend picking up multiple copies to separate the party from one another and deny actions.

Its also important to attack Logan's weak willpower stat - he is a prime target for cards such as Dark Charm - turning his high pierce against the party, or (more often) using it to send him running off by himself away from the monsters and search tokens that he needs to utilize his impressive skillset.

Thanks about the web trap tip, ill look into it as soon as my party meets again. Sounds good for me atm. do you recommend using any other separation or even fatigue related cards since avric and logan or even widow utilize fatigue usually?

Using Dark charm on Logan to search a nearby search token ? Its like giving a free action in benefit of the heroes imo as they'll take the treasure. Is it rly a good idea? And pretty situational too because he has to be near a search token that he hasn't still searched, and end his turn.

2 hours ago, Chaoticus said:

If you own the Manor of Ravens expansion, get the first card of the unkindness deck (call of the ravens). This is an awesome card. You can sacrifice a weak monster quite a descent raven.

The Descent Tracker gives you a nice overview of the campaign stats. http://d2etracker.com/stats_quests.php

Might be useful to choose a new quest but beware! These stats might not reflect the stats one would get with your set of expansions (outcome is of course monster group dependent etc).

Wow, nice card, call of ravens. It also lowers the deck size ^.^ Also thanks for the tracker! Quite useful!!

Hats off guys!

3 minutes ago, Usernamed said:

Using Dark charm on Logan to search a nearby search token ? Its like giving a free action in benefit of the heroes imo as they'll take the treasure. Is it rly a good idea? And pretty situational too because he has to be near a search token that he hasn't still searched, and end his turn.

Use Dark Charm to move Logan away from search tokens, monsters and mission objectives. This makes him waste actions. You can't use Dark Charm to make him search a search token, and even if you could you'd never want to.

ok charmy i miss-read that last search token sentence and thanks for all the help m8!

A little advice:

Use ranged monsters and you won't have to worry about Marshal. Heroes have picked a hero with low knowledge for Marshal and therefore will not take By the Book skill which I find one of the most devastating in whole game. I would say that Leoric/Quellen as Steelcaster Marshal would have been much more annoying.

And yes, you can just ignore Marshal himself - he is melee so he have to spend a lot of movement points to reach monsters. And his base hammer does not allow to recover fatigue from surges which also give you some help.

On 7/31/2017 at 8:06 PM, Usernamed said:

Sounds good for me atm

Hi.

13 hours ago, Vitezslav said:

I would say that Leoric/Quellen as Steelcaster Marshal would have been much more annoying.

Do you mean Battlemage Marshal? Steelcaster is a warrior class

9 hours ago, Usernamed said:

Do you mean Battlemage Marshal? Steelcaster is a warrior class

Sure I mean Battlemage. Thx for correction