So according to the rulebook any figure not on a ship may move off of the map and flee the encounter. Does this mean that heroes can simply place their figures on the edge of their ship, jump into the water, and flee off of the board on the first turn of the encounter? I can find nothing in the rules to contradict this, but it seems a little silly. Anytime the heroes don't want to face an encounter, they don't have to, so the only ones they choose to fight are ones they are sure to win.

I know in RtL encounters had "exit" spaces which were usually located on the opposite side of the encounter away from the heroes, so they at least had to get through the monsters to flee. I guess you could simply house-rule heroes can only flee off the opposite side of the map from which they start, but I hate to house rule things. I was wondering if anyone could come up with some reason I'm not reading this rule correctly?

It's not that they are just off of a ship, it's that they are at the edge of the map. Look at the bottom of pg 17 in the rulebook:

"A figure not on a ship may flee the map by simply moving off
any edge of the map , whereupon it is removed. A hero or
monster that flees an encounter may not return to it later
(although replacement monsters may still be reinforced by the
overlord)."

So yes, a hero can flee, but they have to swim all the way to the edge of the map, which is typically some distance. Using up a lot of fatigue and health, that's quite the effort to get out there, I think...

-shnar

A party member can just run off the edge of the map that the Revenge starts on, but that doesn't help. The party only flees successfully if the Revenge leaves the map, per the rule:

If at any point during the encounter any part of the Revenge
moves off the map, then the party escapes. The heroes receive
no loot, but continue their game week action.

If the Revenge is sunk, the party is killed. So the quickest that they can flee is to use the captain's wheel to move the Revenge off one of the sides of the map. This will still give the OL a couple of turns to harass the heroes though.

Note that the encounter doesn't end when all the heros leave the map. So it could end up with only OL minions and an unmanned revenge, if at least one hero has fled and the rest are dead or have fled.

shnar said:

I was more refferring to the fact that they could just swim off of the edge of the map that the Revenge starts on, which is no distance at all and is quite simple to do.

Badend said:

Ah, good point Badend, just because all the heroes flee the map, it doesn't mean that the encounter ends in a "party flight" that only happens if the revenge leaves, which means that the OL could potentially sink the Revenge or sail it into some rocks or something, if the Revenge sinks it causes the "Total Party Kill" result to occur. Oddly nowhere does it state that all the heroes die and the OL scores conquest for each of them, but I would assume that is the case, similar to how if the Revenge leaves a non swimmingflying figure on an island they are immediately killed.

What about encounter against a party that "abandon's ship" and the overlord has no ship (and hence, no cannons to sink the revenge)?

i suppose if the monsters were humanoid they could man the ship and attempt to crash it before it sails off the board....

Yeah I was wondering about that to Fizz. Even if there are humanoid monsters that could take control of the Revenge and try to crash it, there are some maps that don't have anything to crash the Revenge into in the first place, meaning that if the OL doesn't have a ship, his chances of being able to kill the party are pretty slim. This whole "swimming off of the edge of the map the Revenge starts on" thing still seems pretty strange to me.

Hm, not sure whether the rules cover this indeed. But if not, I believe that a house rule making it a total party kill would be in order - after all, they abandoned their ship and are then stuck without ship in the middle of the ocean.