I posted this over on BGG as well, but I thought I'd put it up here and see if I could get some more opinions.

My group is currently playing a Road to Legend campaign (heroes in the lead 45 to 18, thank you blitzing! ) , but we may go on to play a Sea of Blood campaign after we finish with our current one. I may actually be playing a hero again in the next advanced campaign and I was wondering if anyone has come up with some starting strategies for the heroes, or has any tips for parties starting out.

For instance, since the OL has no LTs to start with, is spending the first week in Gafford to buy starting equipment a good idea? (to get 12 priced potions and draw Copper market items that might be good, possibly buy a rumor etc.)

Is "blitzing" still the best tactic for a starting hero party to use? The island levels seem like they would make it very difficult to blitz, plus with the implementation of Divine Favor and the Treasure map pieces I was wondering if completing dungeons would now actually be a good idea.

Should we change our Home Port ASAP? If yes, where to? The 12 priced potions and very nice alchemist in Gafford are certainly very, very nice, but the Temple is abysmal. Is it good to be close to Dagger Isle for training? (though you do need the compass)

And then since the campaign is always won or lost in the LT battles, I was wondering if people had any tips on dealing with the Siren (or any other LT for that matter) that they'd like to share. I OLed the only Sea of Blood campaign I've played and these are the thoughts I had about dealing with the Siren at the very least, though they could apply to some other LTs as well. If anyone has any to add or comment to tell me if I'm wrong or right please do so.

"Must Take" heroes if you draw them : Runemaster Thorn, Zyla

"Very Nice" heroes if you draw them : Laurel of Bloodwood (her ability with cannons & Shooting for Distance could kill the Siren quite easily), Landrec the Wise (his ability combined with a nice weapon and the "Mark" skill that adds 4 surges to attacks could kill the Siren in 1 or 2 hits),

In general probably only want 1 melee hero for the Sea of Blood right? (due to all the wide open spaces and sea battles)

Important skills : Shark Tattoo, Saj's Mark, Koll's Mark, Nimble, Quick Casting, Gunner

Feat cards to save for the Siren fight : Carried by Air, Shooting for Distance, and Hurry are all very important.

Upgrade the heck out of your ship before going into the fight

Basically, if you have a hero with Shark Tattoo, give them the Hammer and send them out to the Siren (with a Hurry feat card) to whack her back to you or at least in range of your cannons (which could then knock her even closer). Or even if you don't, whacking your own Magic user out to her may be an option. A magic user with Carried by Air, a decent weapon, and a Quick CastingSaj's Mark or Koll's Mark combo could very potentially kill the Siren in a single turn, all you need to do is get the ship close enough and have a decent weapon equipped (the cursed staff in the Copper Deck would be ideal if facing her in late copper).

Also Laurel's ability with a Shooting for Distance card and a cannon could spell doom for the Siren. Use the cannon's knockback in conjunction with your melee hero with Shark Tattoo if possible to blow the Siren even closer to you.

If anyone has any other tipsadvice houghts they'd like to share I'd love to hear them. Thanks in advance.

Kartigan said:

1. Maybe. I don't tend to bother - that extra 1 CT is (well, could be, you can't tell yet) more important at the start than the difference gained with a little shopping. Basically you might gain one decent copper treasure, but can barely afford it anyway. You might get an extra 3-4 potions, but that may well not be worth the extra CT. Because basic Ranged weapons (well, crossbow) and magic weapons are quite expensive anyway and you are likely to need three of them, there simply won't be that much spare cash. You will also be able to stock up on potions etc in the first 2-3 campaign weeks.

2. Not as much. Or rather, it's different. There are still several critical early XP values that you absolutely need to deny the OL (silver eldritch and the double weapons/no potions from one of the plots). You also need to decide right in the first dungeon one of two strategies for the first 10 weeks. Either sea fight avoidance or powering up the ship.
With sea fight avoidance you only need to go 2 levels deep into the first dungeon, though depending on CT scores you might do all 3 levels (or at least loot the third). Your requirements out of he first dungeon are; 5XP and 500?1000? cash for the triton figurehead (-1 dice on encounters), visit the alchemist and shop this week, enough cash to visit the alchemist next week. If you get enough cash and XP to get the Elven Sails upgrade as well that is very helpful, but unlikely. More likely is enough cash to visit the market next week as well. You must avoid allowing either of the OL upgrades mentioned above, though the OL may purchase the Siren (ideally you tempt him wih getting close enough to eldritch upgrade to 'save' instead). Then you make a run for the mainland at full speed, never stopping on any island unless the OL is about to purchase a silver upgrade next turn - and then doing the island complete. Once you hit land you do the dungeons fully (mostly) and train at the Secret Master there (probably twice, very late bronze and very early silver) and at either of the southern cities before upgarding the boat and heading back to sea.
With powering up the ship you need to gather maximum cash and get at least 2 good cannons and a figurehead. Possibly also the precision skill of you can afford it, more potions if not.

3. Yes. Anywhere else.

4. Agreed.

5. Laurel is still a CT sink. I'd avoid her still. You definitely want at least 1 3-melee trait hero if possible. Apart from Landrec and Astarra (and Nanok, who is now rubbish) most of the rest of the heroes have evened up in value a little - speed, wounds and fatigue are slightly more valuable and armour slightly less. Trait dice are slightly more important - for one melee hero (ships wheel) and for ranged and magic users (cannons). The 'foreign' heroes (Tobin etc) are broken and generally should not be used.

6. Yes. I only wanted one melee hero for RtL anyway mostly. A dedicated runner is important! The Runner skill in SoB makes a dedicated runner even more important!

7. Add Precision, Runner and Mage Cloak. Subtract Gunner - dead weight unless on the ship. Keen sight and Dead Eye are both awesome skills. Blessing is more important than it was by far (1 blessed character on a ship will give +1/+1 to everybody , and lots of them will be using those pluses each turn). Basically the cannons do fairly piddling damage in general, so any skill that adds pure damage to ranged or magic attacks is very useful - normally in dungeons and at sea. Precision is possibly the single most crucial skill if you are going to go after the siren.
As an example, my opponent has one hero with blessing and another with Keen Sight (and the +2+2 soldier special ability). The ranged guy gets +4 range and +4 damage (and ignores shadowcloak) when standing adjacent to the mage. That is a starting hero, with a crossbow. He is the 'hunter-killer' in the group who goes after the tough monsters! ( a bit of a role reversal for a starting ranged guy...).
Mage Cloak basically eliminates the 'beat up on the weak hero' tactic, making it tough for the OL to gain CT from killing heroes. Your mage gets Ghost Armour ASAP and always carries a Rune weapon. Thats +2 armour for your weakest hero (from normal) half way through the first dungeon level. Add in Mana Weave once you find it, natural armour (for some) and a normal light mage-armour (Leather, Tunic, Mage Robes etc) and you will often have the entire party at 4+shield/5+ armour! And Jaes just becomes... worse than Nanok was! 2+2(chain)+1(Ghost Armour)+1(rune weapon) = 6 armour (+fatigue cancels wounds) from shop equipment while a different hero is wearing RoP!

8. Note that the siren fight is only actually particularly dangerous once the siren has silver (and/or exploding) skeletons. Before that she seems very easy to simply ignore (more or less), unless you are actively attacking her. We have one coming up but with two heroes all-but immune to copper skeletons (a Jaes equivalent with Mage Cloak and a Dwarf, while the third hero has 4 armour and a shield)) we can't see the siren and her minions stopping us from simply sailing through the encounter as fast as possible, probably losing just Astarra and maybe 3 fatigue pots at worst. The ship should exit the map in 4-6 turns I think, between full sails and the current, and this is one of the worst maps where the ship can only sail forward between two rows of rocks.
Having noted that, I think the Carried by Air feats are better saved for even more important things . There are a lot of tricky dungeons levels in SoB (the dungeon design is much better than in RtL). Our last dungeon was an attempt by the heroes to steal one of the keys from an island dungeon (meaning they had to go all the way through). They passed the island level in two turns (only 1 OL turn) because they didn't need to kill any of the three bosses. One hero ran ashore to a glyph, then to the exit cave in turn two. The rest never got off the boat. As OL I got one turn, could play no cards and could only get one attack from a boss dragon. However, the second level stopped them cold. They started in a cage and had to roll a surge to get out each turn. Then the way to the next glyph (and the exit) was blocked by a silver Golem (tough!) with a boss Naga (Command 2, Fear 2) backing it up. They simply couldn't get through. Even once they killed the golem the Naga blocked the route effectively and with me spawning silver eldritch (silver Shades rock!) regularly they kept losing heroes who had to come back inside the cage (and roll every turn to try and get out again). They lost 30 odd CT on that level without earning a single CT or chest and the only cash they got was from 1 barrel and some dead masters, before they fled, thoroughly whipped. This is a good player, who simply got a bad level (after a very nice first level) and could not do anything about it. A single Carried by Air feat would have cleaned this level out in no time as dying heroes could have returned behind the blockage from the forward activated glyph, rather than stuck inside the cage. That would have been worth a lot more than the saving 2CT he got when he used the last Carried by Air he had had in flying a mage off board against the Siren

9. We haven't done much sea fighting, but what we have noticed is that the ship upgrades are not particularly useful in a fight. Cannons suck unless you have well upgraded heroes and/or are shooting broadside on at another ship . While all three campaigns I am involved in are still at various stages of copper level, we have noted that even with fancy (expensive) cannons most of the time the heroes would rather use their 'normal' weapons.

As indicated in my example in 8. SoB dungeon levels are very different beasts to RtL dungeon levels. There are a lot more spawn opportunities and it seems more 'tricks' or 'unique weird stuff' (or what there is is often more powerful). This means that the levels can often cost the heroes a lot more CT than they expected, depending more on the OL's draws than on the heroes tactics. Basically, in RtL the heroes had a lot more 'control' I feel. In SoB 'control' is more difficult, so the heroes need to stay a little more flexible with their planning than in RtL.
That could just be me, and 'new' dungeon levels, but there were very few levels in RtL that I ever felt like things were out of control for the heroes. Even the really tough ones were still 'manipulatable' in some way or other by the heroes, nearly always. I don't get that feeling quite as much in SoB.

For instance, since the OL has no LTs to start with, is spending the first week in Gafford to buy starting equipment a good idea? (to get 12 priced potions and draw Copper market items that might be good, possibly buy a rumor etc.)

Not in my opinion. You'll be getting lots of potions from chests, and you can shop while you're in the dungeons. However, it's a stronger option if the OL chose the default plot and you suspect they'll play A New Law soon.

Is "blitzing" still the best tactic for a starting hero party to use? The island levels seem like they would make it very difficult to blitz, plus with the implementation of Divine Favor and the Treasure map pieces I was wondering if completing dungeons would now actually be a good idea.

Blitzing seems to be a bad idea in SoB. Sea encounters actually have a chance of sinking your ship at times, especially if you get a couple of unlucky draws in a row. So jumping from dungeon to dungeon isn't as good as it used to be. Couple it with there being no Staff of the Wild to speed your land journeys and it gets even worse. Eventually the OL will be so far ahead anyway that the only people worth any XP are those with curse tokens.

Should we change our Home Port ASAP? If yes, where to? The 12 priced potions and very nice alchemist in Gafford are certainly very, very nice, but the Temple is abysmal. Is it good to be close to Dagger Isle for training? (though you do need the compass)

Gafford is a good place to be. You can train all of the traits there, and it has decent skills. I wouldn't trade it just to trade it. We've always ignored the temple completely. Especially in SoB, where you'll eventually be worth little or no XP, spending an entire turn to heal is almost always a bad idea, even if the temple rating is 8.

And then since the campaign is always won or lost in the LT battles, I was wondering if people had any tips on dealing with the Siren (or any other LT for that matter) that they'd like to share. I OLed the only Sea of Blood campaign I've played and these are the thoughts I had about dealing with the Siren at the very least, though they could apply to some other LTs as well. If anyone has any to add or comment to tell me if I'm wrong or right please do so.

Unfortunately I can't help you there. We haven't had any lieutenant encounters yet.

"Must Take" heroes if you draw them: Runemaster Thorn, Zyla

I'm playing Zyla right now, and agree completely about her. Flight is just crazy. On top of it I pulled Tiger Tattoo as my starting skill, so there's rarely a space on the map I can't get to on the first turn if I need to.

In general probably only want 1 melee hero for the Sea of Blood right? (due to all the wide open spaces and sea battles)

You'll still be in the dungeons a lot, so two melee heroes is not a waste. We've got Nanok and One-Fist right now, and they definitely do the lion's share of killing anywhere but aboard ship (though on islands their first turn is usually spent waiting in town while I flip a glyp or swinging on ropes to try to get to land).

Important skills: Shark Tattoo, Saj's Mark, Koll's Mark, Nimble, Quick Casting, Gunner

I would remove Gunner from the list. You can get range and damage bonuses from other skills, and though they won't be permanentyl aimed, they'll apply to every attack you make in the campaign, not just the few you make outdoors.

I'd add Alchemist to the list, especially if your Overlord chose the default plot with A New Law in it. Having all of the alchemist shops closed really sucks, but my Zyla + Alchemist combination has made it matter much less.

Feat cards to save for the Siren fight: Carried by Air, Shooting for Distance, and Hurry are all very important.

It seems like Killing Blow would practically guarantee a win if you've got the silver knockback hammer by then.

If anyone has any other tipsadvice houghts they'd like to share I'd love to hear them. Thanks in advance.

1) Don't dawdle, and don't think that you can ignore lieutenants and deal with them later. We're on the verge of losing right now (and would have lost without some really bad rolls on the OL's part). We were forced to flee a dungeon because of a silver demon level leader with 50 health and Fear 3 or 4. Instead of just walking away from the X and its buried treasure we spent 6 more weeks going to our 4th dungeon and then to the X. In that time the overlord bought 2 more lieutenants and lit the world on fire.

2) Don't be afraid to die. In RtL, dying meant giving the OL lots of XP he could use to make you die even faster the next time. In SoB dying eventually stops mattering for XP, or at least drops it to a trickle. In fact, if you've got a cursed item or two, you may find yourself contemplating what we're contemplating: having a character spend a few turns equipping and un-equipping the cursed gear so when he does die (perhaps by your hands), the XP totals will jump a lot. With XP at a crawl, the OL has what feels like an eternity to roam the world and burn down cities. If we don't get lucky and kill them off, I'm convinced we'll be having to resort to that strategy just to try to force a faster final fight. Granted, the OL will be bloated on XP (and therefore health), but a final fight that's near impossible is better than watching 5 cities burn.

3) Decide in advance whether you'll be using the "errata that wasn't": Kevin once posted that Divine Favor would be errataed to have a minimum of 1 instead of a minimum of 0 for lowering Heroes' conquest values. This didn't actually make it into the errata though. It's got its plusses and minuses for both sides, so I recommend talking it over with the group before the campaign starts.

edit: man, I hate the quote functionality of this board!

Wow, there are some great posts/ideas here - got me wanting to play a SoB campaign!

But since we're playing RtL and will be for at least the next 2 campaigns (before we move onto SoB), is there a similar thread/post for RtL hero tactics?

Even overlord tactics would be interesting to read!

Thanks a lot for the tipsadvice guys! Sounds like you guys had some good thoughts for the heroes. The only thing I think I miss communicated was when Corbon was talking about the Feat cards I said the heroes might want to save for the Siren fight.

It seems to me (and again I could definitely be wrong, so please correct me) that the heroes must deal with the LTs at some point to stop the overlord from winning (as it was in RtL). If they can't defeat the LTs they cannot win the campaign. But unlike in RtL, simply forcing a LT to "flee" is not as powerful as it used to be since they only move 1 trail away rather than clear back to the overlord's keep. They could be especially annoying if the OL is doing the Leviathon plot that requires him to raze 5 bindings that have only 3 defense each and are all in a chain 1 trail apart from each other. Unless the heroes actually kill the LT, they will have to keep returning every 3 weeks.

So the feat cards I was suggesting saving, were so that the heroes could manage to actually kill the Siren in one sudden blow (get the ship close, Carried by Air out to her, several attacks in the same turn from Quick Casting or Mark and hopefully she's dead). That being said, I hadn't really considered the value of Precision in the Siren fight, but I can see how it could be very powerful.

Also having heard the discussion, I believe I have changed my mind about Gunner, though making all cannons aimed is nice, as you guys said, other skills that boost range or damage for all Ranged or Magic attacks is much better. Also I completely forgot about Runner, I fell in love with that skill the moment I saw it, though I've yet to see it used.

Thanks again for the response, I really appreciate it.

twak2 said:

You might want to check over on Board Game Geek www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/29298/descent-the-road-to-legend . There are a lot of good strategy threads over there for both the Overlord and the Hero players. I'd especially recomend that the heroes read the excellent article on blitzing www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/325622/rtl-the-art-of-blitz .

James McMurray said:

Lol, wow I hadn't even thought about that.

Kartigan said:

Yeah, fair enough.

IMO there are two Siren fights.

In early bronze there are going to be one or more more or less unavoidable fights with the siren as she harrasses the heroes. But the heroes need to be extremely lucky with their draws for heroes, skills and early treasures to have any chance of killing the siren. Scaring her off is more doable but still requires planning and a few things to come together nicely. So at this stage the fight is all about but cruising straight through the encounter without getting too badly hurt, not about killing the siren (realistically).
This is not the fight you want to be saving feats for.

But from late copper onwards, after a few upgrades and some good equipment, the heroes have a real chance at killing the siren if they plan it well and go after her hard.
This is the fight you want to be saving the right feats for.

And if you get some webb-weapons (silver or up), use them on the Siren. My heroes just killed the Siren by teleporting right to her (Thorn), flaming away the monsters close to her and then and placing four webb-tokens on her. Some abysmal rolls to get loose later the boat got close to her and they blasted her to pieces.

In silver the Siren cannot take more than a few shots before she goes down. Most other LT will be harder to kill as they are larger and not as easy to webb.

James McMurray said:

All the rest makes sense, but reading these two advice I'm scratching my head.

We are currently playing our first SoB campaign, and the score is 48-45 in favor of the heroes (and we are playing without ToI, so no feats for us). I can't imagine our OL taking such a huge lead that we'll be worth little or no XP anytime soon.

We are doing everything we can so the OL does not kill us easily. When someone is heavily wounded, he retreats, dodges if needed, and takes the time to guzzle 2 potions (we also have Alchemist, which is indeed a huge skill to have with a useless temple). Whenever we don't attack or guard, we switch our 2-handed weapons for a Shield (found a Crystal Shield); we also are using the Ghost Armor, and our melee character (Varikas), who is most often in contact with monsters, has 6 armor (Plate Armor + Ring of Protection); in general, we max out our defenses. We also have no 8 health hero.

We are very afraid to die.

Still, the OL manages to kill us, but we are making it as hard as possible for him. I think that's the one advice you want to follow, for if you ever get into the situation where you are worth almost nothing, winning seems to become near hopeless for the reasons James listed.

Not caring about dying seems like a silly idea. That would just give the OL more conquest to upgrade with. Yes, if you do it enough you will all be worth only 1 CT each, but that hardly matters since the OL will then have all possible LT for the campaign level along with good upgrades and monsters for them. You on the other hand will not have had much time to get upgrades and secret trainings, so good luck trying to stop him from razing your cities.

It sounded silly to me at first as well, but it's working out very well. Perhaps even too well.* Right now we're all woth 0 xp except for the Hero with two cursed items (Bottle Imp and the sword). Every so often our two 4-value heroes go to 1. This means that we can spend as much time as we want making sure we get every last bit of treasure from every dungeon. Because of that, we're all decked out in Silver gear despite A New Law doubling the cost of weapons. We all have dice upgrades and most of us have bought skills. Gold eldritch and Silver beasts are annoying, but it doesn't matter if they kill us, so they're not really frightening.

Also, while the OL had a glut of experience early on, he's now gaining it at a trickle, so he went from getting tons of upgrades to getting very few (especially now that we're close enough he has to think about saving for Diamond eldritch). Since we're worth so little xp, and since most upgrades are designed to slow or kill heroes, the only ones he's bought that have actually mattered are Dark Relic and Crushing Blow.

If we lose it'll be because of one of three things:

- We wasted time getting a map piece. After fleeing a dungeon we spent the next six weeks getting the 4th map piece and traveling to the X. We shouldn't have done that, as it gave the OL lots of time to siege and send the lieutenants around. We're now in a very tough spot where we would have lost already but for some unlucky rolls on the OL's part. We have to successfully drive off 2 or kill 1 lieutenant in the next couple of weeks or we'll lose anyway. The decision had nothing to do with being at 0xp though, so it's not a downside of the "let him slaughter you" approach.

- We can't defeat the lieutenants. This remains to be seen, as we haven't had a lieutenant fight yet. We're up against the Siren, Kraken, and Soriss. We've got almost the best possible gear and personal setup right now, so if we can't beat them now we certainly wouldn't have been able to beat them before.

- We lose the avatar fight. This is definitely a possibility, as we figure the final fight will happen with the OL at 400 and us at 200. That might be a bad guesstimate though, as I think Gold heroes might die a lot less and us to be able to gain some ground (they certainly did in RtL).

* By too well I mean that XP trickles in for the OL and we earn only ~15-20 per dungeon. Because of that, Silver has slowed to a crawl. Dungeons are downright painful to play at times because the OL doesn't want to just let us waltz through, but all the battles and traps don't change a thing except how long the evening took. Plus it means he'll have a lot of time to run lieutenants around, which will eventually force us to stop traveling anywhere and just start fighting lieutenants. If (as many have indicated) we can't kill them, we'll have spent week after week trudging through dungeons just to reach a foregone conclusion. We've seriously considered having One-Fist continually re-equip the Bottle Imp and Cursed Sword until he's got all 14 curse tokens, then killing him ourselves. We haven't yet, as it seems cheesy and will put him back in a spot where XP is flowing in freely, but we may have to.

Honn said:

We're worth 0 CT each, not 1. We used the pseudo-errata that put the minimum of 1 on Divine Favor until it turned out that it didn't happen after all. Whether a change of heart of boss's oversight, something happened between Kevin making that statement and the FAQ hitting the website to prevent it from going in. If it goes back in, we'll incorporate it into our games again (and may do so earlier on a vote if it turns out that the rule makes the game nigh-unwinnable for the heroes).

James McMurray said:

It seems to me that you pointed out the biggest problem with the 0-point value: when you don't care about dying anymore, dungeon battles stop making sense, and the game becomes uninteresting and unfun. There are no more placement tactics, since you can just advance and hit and not care about retaliation, and there is no more adrenalin or hope for an X-roll when the OL throws his monsters' dice. No more Ooohs and Aaahs. The heroes just become janitors cleaning dungeon floors.

Bleh.

James McMurray said:

If you do so, at least give your team a window of time to find gold weapons. Without those, the final fight might be too hard.

Sure, if you play with that rule I can see how it would make sense not to care about dying. Personally I think going down to 0 CT is just silly as it makes playing the dungeons totally redundant, not to mention extremly boring. My group would go down with two mages (the rest doing nothing in town) and just kamikaze through the entire game. I could just look at the map, tell them how much gold and chests they get and be done with it.

So even if it didn't make it to the official FaQ (which imo probably is more of an oversight than anything else) I still play with the 1CT minimum.

Ispher said:

I wouldn't say "no more." As I said, they were certainly drawn out "at times." But there were definitely points of triumph and tragedy. For example, we were exactly two turn away from being booted out of the dungeon when we completed a rumor that gave us 4 map pieces (we only had one at the time).

Honn said:

Cool. I'm not telling anyone how they should play, just how we do.

We've joked about having one person do almost every map (probably me, since Zyla + Tiger Tattoo is really hard to stop). But that would be boring as hell, and we're playing to have fun.