I come close to killing players, but they always manage to hit a glyph and go back to town and buy health potions and just keep chugging them everytime

They can carry six potions right? 3 equipped and 3 in the pack?

Not sure why I stink as the overlord but I have a tough time even killing one hero.

They typically waste my spawns in one or two hits, then if I do damage them ( I DO get them low) they glyph back to town, buy 3 or 4 potions, and use the rest of their movement to chug them down. Or next turn they run and drink like 6 of them (run is double move so like they drink 4 potions then have some movement left over etc etc)

Any advice? They are melee heavy and one has plate armor that basically causes most attacks to bounce off, at least in the INTRO quest

I did my best with beastmen and that command ability and pierce and ganging up on one

But man they drink a lot of potions.

You're not a terrible overlord, you just haven't read the rules well enough.

1) you can't go to town and back in the same turn, and it costs 3MP to do any shopping.

2) you can only drink one potion per turn.

WarRealm said:

Typically, you want to ignore these characters. It's better to kill a 12 health, low armor, 3-point character twice than it is to use the same damage to kill a 16-health, high armor, 4-point character once. Usually the high armor characters are pretty slow, so pit traps and crushing blocks can keep them out of the fight (assuming you don't need them to finish off someone for conquest).

Some tips that helped me as Overlord, (i won the last 4 Quests mwahaha):

1. Know the Rules. They protect you from impossible hero actions described above.

2. Never hold back. I made the mistake thinking i shouldn't be so mean to an already weakened hero. You HAVE TO reduce the Questmarker whenever you have the chance to, otherwise you won't win. (even if that means that your own attack damages your own monsters. You can spawn new ones but the hero will likely run away if you dont finish him off.)

3. Discard your Cards only when its necessary, if you discard them to soon to gather threat just because you can't use them in this turn may result in regret.

4. Spawn monsters if you can, especially around corners. A well placed "Beastman War Party" may be the end of a careless mage.

5. Gang up on the weakest. it doesn't make sense to waste all your attacks against an almost invincible tank, use armor ignoring damage like traps for high armored melees.

6. Waste their time, e.g. spawn a Master Banespider and web a melee fighter, it may cost him 3-4 rounds til he can get away. The Banespider likely won't survive the heroes round, but it served its purpose. The more rounds they waste the more threat you can gather and the Overlord deck shrinks.

7. Make them insecure, bluff with your cards etc. question their decisions and they are going to make fatal mistakes sometimes.

If you follow these tips and still feel weak as OL, consider buying the expansions (WoD and AoD).

In case you feel overpowered now, boost your heroes with ToI.

Chernobyl said:

3MP? (3 Mana Points? )

What's 3MP?

yewsef said:

I guess he meant M ovement P oints.

Several points:

• As noted, you may only drink one potion per turn, at least if you're using the errata on the website. To be fair, this rule wasn't in the base game rules in its first printing (I don't know whether this has been fixed in subsequent printings). I strongly advise using this rule even if you ignore any other errata.
• If all your heroes are melee heavy, and you're letting them all pick whichever hero they want, I suggest stopping: use the random selection method (which is the default in the rules anyway)- it makes for a much better game.
• If you're just playing the first quest, as you say, move onto some other ones: it is known as being extremely easy for the heroes. Quest 4 is the first reasonably challenging one.
• You're correct: a hero may carry 6 potions at once. However, do note that they can't access potions in their pack without re-equipping, even if you're not playing one-potion-per-turn. Also, carrying 3 potions in the pack prevents them from carrying anything else in their pack, of course, which might be tricky when chests are opened.
• I have a hard job understanding how a hero could be drinking 6 healing potions per turn: that's 18 wounds, and no hero starts with more than 16 in total. Granted, there's the Tough skill, but it stills seems a little unlikely. Note that it costs 8 movement to do it: 1 per potion, plus 2 to re-equip (you can't drink a potion in your pack).
• Do remember all of the following: potions cost 50gp each, shopping costs 3 movement points, you can't use a glyph more than once per turn (not just any single glyph: glyph use in general is once-per-turn-per-hero).
• Killing your spawns in 1-2 hits is entirely normal: monsters in Descent are glass-cannons: they can't stand up to punishment.
• Look out some general strategy advice here or on BGG if you're still having problems.

yewsef said:

Maybe it isn't used in the rulebooks, but "MP" is a common abbreviation for Movement Points on these forums.

I agree with what everyone else has said. I highly recommend re-reading the rulebook and FAQ after every game session for your first four or five games. I guarantee that you'll find several things you missed every time you do it. Some other tips:

1. Reserve trap cards for when they will kill or severely hinder heroes. Don't throw out a pit trap just because. Should your beastman happen to knock the plate-armored warrior down to two wounds, a pit trap is almost certainly going to kill him, provided he doesn't have a health potion. It's worth playing a trap card that won't kill a hero if it will severely disrupt his tactics, however, i.e. prevent him from getting to the boss monster who he can probably kill with one hit.
2. You can close un-runed doors! This is extremely useful both for spawning and for allowing you to play an exploding door trap card over and over on the same door.
3. Take advantage of corners, rubble, and closed doors to spawn monsters within striking distance.
4. Always spawn your monsters within attack range of the heroes. Assume they will die on your next turn. Don't spawn monsters that can't do anything.
5. Don't waste enemy movement. If your beastman only has to move one space to attack a warrior, use the remaining three to hide behind a corner or simply get some separation. Make him either advance or battle and blow fatigue to reach you. Don't give him an easy battle if you can help it.
6. Give your heroes genuine, real-deal, good advice. It makes them nervous.
7. Do your best to separate the group. If the melee guy with low movement is trailing behind, spawn skeletons behind him, which will force him to either stall the action by going back and killing them, or ignore them and get pinged in the back.
8. Time is on your side. It feeds you curse tokens and, eventually, costs the heroes points when you recycle your desk. Use that to your advantage.
9. Get Evil Genius out there as soon as you can. It murders.
10. Dark Charm is your absolute best friend late-game. Early on, it's not so hot. Wait until they have at least silver weapons to play it.
11. Master beastmen are your most valuable cannon fodder-quality monsters, and it's because of that Command ability. Use it, and them, wisely. A couple master beastmen in one area + several friends = full team kill.
12. Situations in which one or two heroes are guarding require finesse. Getting hit breaks their guard, so throw the enemies that you don't care too much about losing at them first. If you have two skeletons and a master beastman near a guarding warrior, and you know the master beastman will likely kill the warrior in one shot, bring the skeletons out to pluck away at him and cancel his guard so that you'll actually get to his him with the beastman.
13. Note that the beastman-esque monster spawned by Mimic gets to take his turn immediately, which means that you can use it to thwack the hero who opened the chest and then run as far away as possible, hopefully depriving the heroes of the treasure for several turns.
14. Move on to other quests. The first one favors the heroes.

Just found out my problem

Was using NO FAQ, just the original rules from 2005 or so.

Also had the wrong stats on the Beastmen etc etc

I think I would have killed one hero at least twice if he hadnt been chugging all those potions

As for tactics, I stalled them, spawned around corners, even blocked things but I think it was the potions that really turned it for them. Heck at one point i had SEVEN poison markers on ONE guy and he simply went to town and bought 6 potions then next turn stayed in town and used 4 movement points and removed 4 tokens etc etc

The FAQ would have HELPED A TON ARRGHH

Few more from a friendly Overlord :

-There is a proverb: "with 7 cooks there is nothing to eat" - take your time, and plan during your players turn, familiarize with your cards, devise backup plans, thinks about the order of your resources movement.

-Being Overlord is doing resource management more than anything else - all bits are expendable as long as it furthers your needs. Don't be afraid to sacrifice those master monsters.

-Plan more than current turn, think were the heroes can turn up, what are their plans.

-Confuse them - smile evil, say things like "good, good" or "bad, bad" when they kill your monster - psychological combat is as important as the things that happen on the board. You are one, so you need all the help you can get.

-Help them in trouble. Especially when they argue what to do next . Remember to side with the player that is right often, so that they don't know whether to trust you or not.

-Be the one that knows the rules, and be helpful to players before they make mistakes. Just forget to be helpful in the crucial moments, e.g. when they use breath on shadowcloaked boss.

-Listen to your players, they are four and need to communicate, don't allow them to communicate outside your hearing range .

-Undying best works when you don't rely on it. Remeber to roll it but never count that it will succeed.

D.

Great advice. On the psychological warfare front, one of my favorites lines is, "Are you sure you wanna do that? Really?"

LOL i did that a lot

My favorite mental warfare thing to do is when they go to open a door, I pick up my hand of cards and grin evily even thought I really have nothing to play. They always hesitate and it is a good laugh.

I used to DM for Dungeons and Dragons so I have great fun as the Overlord

I enjoy taking random cards from my hand, placing them face down on the table with random amounts of threat stacked on top of them.

What could it be? Is it a trap? A spawn card?

NO....ITS GUST OF WIND AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!