We are starting up a campaign this week, and I wonder if anybody has some tips for a fresh Overlord as to what avatar to choose, and what to upgrade first. Tactical tips would be appreciated too

Choose your overlord and plot completely randomly. That way, you can always fall back on the "it's not my fault, I picked randomly!" excuse when you're beating the heroes into submission.

What avatar you want generally depends on the plot you are doing, although like Fizz said choosing both randomly isn't a bad idea since you will have the excuse . Generally speaking, upgrading one of your monster categories to silver should be your first priority in nearly every circumstance, adding additional LTs after that is what I usually go for.

I consider Eternal Night to be somewhat weaker than the other two plots, but it is still doable. It works best with the Titan OL due to the location of his keep or the Beastman Lord because of his LT that moves two trails per week even when carrying a quest item (I think that's his anyway). If you go with Ascension just try to pick an Avatar with good LTs for raising cities and a keep that is close to several.

Great advice... keep it comming... the guys that are going to play the heroes are quite good at power gaming, so I am going for every advantage I can get.

In RtL

1) Be an unmerciful son of a ***** as OL. Find the guys who are easiest to kill and pound them into the ground. Ignore the 4CT, heavily armored melee guys and go for the ranged and magic users who tend to be squishy.

2) Trap cards are your best friends versus melee heroes

3) Regardless of which Avatar you are playing...buy the Eldritch upgrade ASAP. Silver Eldritch, especially Skeletons and Dark Priests, will absolutely decimate heroes in Copper.

4) Your OL deck: Everytime you pull those two cards, if you don't see yourself playing the cards in the next 3 turns OR you know when you can use it...discard it for threat immediately. Holding useless cards (like Bane Spider spawn card in RtL is nearly useless in most dungeons just due to space restrictions) does nothing for you. The discard for X threat number on those cards does.

5) The Spawn marker: It takes 15 to flip. Don't flip it unless you have a spawn card you know will immediately be useful. It autoflips at the start of each dungeon level, so if the heroes are going to be gone in 2 turns from a level, save the threat to be able to chain spawn in the next level.

Krede said:

Krede said:

If your players are truly power gamers, read the forums, and are aware of blitzing techniques, the importances of fatigue, etc., then I would provide the following recommendations from a "how to keep these heroes from getting out of control" perspective.

Note that against new players, you may drive people from the hobby.

• Pick on the softest target. Based on armor + HP, there should be 1 or 2 heroes in the party that are easier to kill than the others. Even if they are only 2 conquest, go for them.
• Early monster upgrades are worth it. The first dungeon after you upgrade, the heroes are going to take some punishment.
• Becareful with your lieutenants. They aren't as invincible as they look. You can flee too. Do it.
• Crushing blow.
• To maximize use of above crushing blow, burn down whatever town has the hero skill that lets them cut down a card out of hero's hand (Gust of wind or something similar sounding). The heroes won't want to mess with your LTs when they know you will have that card in your hand and it will cost them 1 piece of equipment every time they start a fight with you.
• Generally, only play your cards if you are going to kill a player. This means, don't spawn if your guys can't kill your squishy target, or at least put on a significant hurting. The heroes are going to wipe out your things anyway.
• Other circumstances in which it makes sense to play cards include if you can make the heroes burn an extra turn (say... trapping the last hero to leave a dungeon, or messing up their plans to open a door)
• Don't get attached to your monsters. For the most part, assume they are cruise missiles.
• If you want to be a real [THIRD LEG], go early lieutants and raze Tamalir with multiple LTs.
• Sorcerer King + Snipers + Early Silver Skeletons = very unhappy heroes.
• If your heroes have figured out whats up with rushing dungeons, make sure you place your reinforcements in dungeons on top of key elements (so they can't sprint + fatigue potion + fatigue movement picking up the treasures / glyphs and leaving.
• Make heroes use their fatigue... this means don't give them easy opportunities to battle.
• Tempt slower heroes to melee monsters in the wrong direction... (can you make their 3/4 movement hero waste a turn chasing a skeleton in a direction away from the stairs down?

Big Remy said:

This I have to disagree with completely. You should definitely discard for threat when there are things you can do for it, but useless cards in your hand are worth mor than unspent threat on the table. Cards in your hand are unknowns that the heroes have to think about when planning. You know that you there are no more chests for you to use that trap on, but they have to decide whether its worth fully extending their fatigue and movement when the card could be a pit trap that will ruin their day. Likewise, while bane spiders are usually worthless, that web token could mean another turn or two the triumphant heroes have to stay in the dungeon giving you conquest.

My advice: never discard anything unless you'll be spending the threat immediately or you have to because your hand is too big. You can't tell the future, so you can rarely be sure that there will be no reason to play the cards. And even if you can, making the other players guess at what you can do is one of the few ways you can counteract the 4-vs-1 brainpower deficiency you have to face when overlording RtL.

To each his own. It makes my group nervous when they see me doing that because when they do see me hold onto cards, they know its bad.

James McMurray said:

+1

+1000 once they hit gold level and can pick up staff of knowledge...

Corbon said:

+2, not to mention the We Are Not Afraid feat card.

100% agree with crushing blow! I will be able to snag that this next game session - one of my heroes is SUPER exited to start using a weapon he just got at the end of last week - I can't wait to make him weaponless.

Also - threat carries over from dungeon level to the next - do you take your hand at the end of the level and shuffle it into the deck (NOT including the discard pile of course) and pull a new 3 at the start of the next level? So every level of the dungeon - you only start with 3 cards that are randomly drawn? OR can you carry over cards from dungeon level 1 into level 2? That make sense?

Your cards and threat both carry over from level to level.

Thanks... some very good advice in there...

"Sorcerer King + Snipers + Early Silver Skeletons = very unhappy heroes."

That is my plan at the moment... however I could be tempted to go with the Great wyrm instead...

Ps: And YES... I do plan to be as cruel as I can find it in my black heart to be!... we are after all grown men all of us.... and nothing fills the heart of an Overloard like seeing grown men cry! (or mangled by beastmen)