More fuel to the "SoB is broken" fire.
And to the "Islands are especially hard" fire...
On this island there are two leaders, Named Master Bane Spiders with +18 wounds and +2 armour per campaign level. Significantly, they also have Shadowcloak. And Web, and their webs do 2 un-armourable damage if you fail to get rid of them.
Thankfully, we took it on in copper without upgraded beasts, because there were also a Master Naga, a normal Naga, and 2-3 normal spiders. Everything sitting in trees of course...
Ok, the big, big, big issue.
Spiders have swim. And these ones have
shadowcloak
. Which means you can't possibly hurt them unless you are adjacent. Spiders are fast. And Spiders have
swim
.
So all they have to do is get out to sea and the heroes are stuck. You can't even shoot them due to the shadowcloak!
And there are two of them!
Thankfully for us the OL didn't realise this initially. We worked our way ashore very quickly, absorbed a Beastman War Party while dealing with the Naga's and Spiders, while the bosses harrassed and retreated, staying split either side of the map.
With two slow heavily armoured (5+) heroes, one operating either side, a medium speed ranger (armour 3 and crystal shield) dealing with the vessel and chasing up to the left from deep, and a fast mage (Astarra) sprinting to get the chest and left coins (dying twice on the level, almost a third time), we managed to get three heroes close to one boss and one hero close to the other. Each turn the spiders then webbed a hero (or two if Raged, twice) and then moved out to sea. We were fairly fortunate with the webs (and have 3 mixed trait heroes rolling extra dice) and each turn would advance, spend some fatigue to get adjacent and get in one attack per hero for 2-4 wounds per attack. (Heroes have no upgrades and no bonus damage starting skills so still don't deal much damage per attack). The three on one side (mostly 2 on one because Astarra retreated to heal by the pool) just magaed to whittle their boss down before it reached the water, over about 4 turns of chasing it. The one on one hero fortunately has Shark Tattoo and chased the boss right into the deepwater corner before killing it. Without Shark Tatto we've have been screwed.
In the end the level only cost us 4 CT (Astarra twice dead) but we spent about 8 potions and the OL has 8 cards and 38 threat for the second level of the dungeon.
But if the OL had've raced to deep water immediately, using the other monsters and spawns to occupy the heroes, we'd've been seriously screwed, and totally screwed without Shark Tattoo (which until now has been practically useless.
Incidentally, to open the cavern (continue in the dungeon) you need to kill the leader. So a separate question (addressed in another thread) is do you have to kill both leaders? It isn't actually clear once you examine the rules.