Copper level, week 5. Overlord has used 30 conquest (xp) to upgrade beasts to silver.

We ran into the following in an RTL dungeon. On the overlord's turn, he plays the crushing blow on hero Zyla and destroys her weapon. It is now the hero's turn. One of the heros runs, opens the rune door, and escapes into the portal. Two other heros follow suit (3 are off the board via the portal and cannot come back).

The fourth hero (who is Zyla with the fly ability and only worth 1 conquest token if killed, and with no weapon), decides to remain in the dungeon for 1 extra turn to gather up 2 Coin tokens (worth 800 coins to the heros). The heros felt that the trade off of 800 coins for 1 conquest token if Zyla as killed was acceptable. She has enough speed to run and gather both coins, but cannot get out the portal on that same turn.

On the overlord's turn, he spawns a silver naga in such a position, that allows him to get next to Zyla. Zyla is grappled, with no weapon. She can only roll a red dice for a fist attack (max damage 4). Since the naga is a 4 armor, 14 health beast, Zyla can do no damage to him.

The overlord makes no attempt to kill Zyla, and ends up burning through his deck, resulting in 3 additional conquest. The overlord eventually does this a second time, earning 3 additional conquest. At this point, the heroes are forced to flee, and thus return to Tamalir.

As one can imagine, this resulted in some heated debate. It was the hero's choice to run the risk to get the additional coins. The overlord did nothing against the general rules. Several of us, who participate on this forum, believe we had read somewhere a general ruling that the overlord can not create unsolvable situations in a dungeon (such as creating an impassable cooridor, or something similar).

The question we have is as follows: Are the actions of the overlord, while following the strict letter of the rules, actually permitted? Or does the overlord need to make a good faith effort to kill the remaining hero?

Sounds like he made a smart play to me. You took a risk, misread the possible outcomes, and got bit by it. I'm guessing next time you either won't do it or will at least make sure the spawn areas near you are covered.

Zyla should have been spending fatigue to boost her attacks when she rolled that 4 on the red die and would eventually have killed it..

Alternatively is she allowed to attack herself? Or is she the char with ghost so she's immune to her own attacks?!?! lol!

James McMurray said:

+1
its not unsolveable - it eventually solves itself as you found. It is also not the OL's fault that you left only 1 hero in the party alone.

You can only attack yourself when forced to by a card like Dark Charm, and ghost won't protect you from that.

How did the OL spawn a Naga? There is no card in the base deck and the OL definitely shouldn´t have had enough CT to purchase red treachery along with his Beast upgrade by week 5 (I know it´s possible but this would mean a huge lead for the OL). And the only spawn card I know (Lone Naga) spawns a Master Naga, which would be a 15 / 5 beast at silver, not 14 / 4...

And Zyla already has one Melee die, so the max. damage of her unarmed attack would be 5, boostable with her fatigue to 10. And if the Naga refuses to attack she can Rest and attack every turn until one of them dies...

any2cards said:

The question of what constitutes "impassable" in the advanced campaign is up for debate, actually. That rule was implemented early on, long before RtL came out, so it doesn't specifically address ACs itself. There are those in the community who feel that making a single dungeon level in the AC impassable is fine because the heroes can choose to flee and continue with the campaign at large. Others interpret it as the OL must always leave an avenue open to the heroes to proceed in each dungeon. I'm not honestly sure which side I fall on, but I'm also not sure this situation qualifies at all. Others have pointed out ways in which Zyla could have fought back, and it sounds like she had the time to do it, too.

I admit what the OL did was sneaky, but he did enforce the whole "cycle twice, heroes flee" rule, so I think it was fair play. Had the OL "conveniently forgotten" to force the party to flee after cycling twice (to try and milk Zyla for more and/or infinite CTs, or to just be a **** in general), then that would definitely reek of foul play. He didn't, though, so I think it's fair. As someone else said, the party knew they were taking a risk. The OL just found a better exploit than they had predicted.

Did he actually sit there and draw through his deck twice even after Zyla's player had said "I can't hurt him at all"? Personally I would have just claimed the 6CT and moved on with the game after it was established that Zyla wasn't going to do anything. That's not really the issue here, but it's probably the only thing I'd have done differently.

I agree with everyone that he played inside the rules on this one. Sounds like a lucky series of draws for him to set this up.

Unless this was a rumor or legendary dungeon then I wouldn't have actually ejected them. Instead I think it would probably have been to my benifit to wait untill the deck was almost cycled through and killed Zyla then. Yes I am giving up 2 conquest in the short term, but I now have it set up so that the hero's have only 1 cycle of the deck to get through the next level of the dungeon. In addition I should have a huge amount of threat and the choice cards from the deck in hand. In addition I will have 2 power cards of my choice out by this point also. Chances are with that sort of an advantage I can manage to kill several of the hero's before they get through the dungeon. Obviously if this is some sort of specail dungeon then it is better to just eject the hero's without them getting to finish the special quest on the bottom level.

Brian

It also depends on the overland map situation. Ejecting them will send them back to Tamalir, which can buy you several weeks if they were on their way to a secret training ground or trying to stop a siege.

bneumann said:

Nah, you should always deck twice. If you start the next level with your choice of any 8 cards + infinite threat, any sane group of heroes will just all go to town and withdraw at the start of the next level.

bneumann said:

I admit it has been a while since I actually checked the wording of the "two deck cycles" rule, since we have never been in a position to enforce it ourselves, but as I recall it was two cycles per dungeon level. In other words, once you kill/release Zyla and the next level starts, you're back to needing two cycles to force a flee.

Remember, the sole purpose of this rule was to close the loophole where the heroes declare they will sit around in the dungeon and wait for the end of the world. It isn't really a balancing factor for general play, just a response to retarded rules lawyers who would rather manipulate the game than play it.

The OL in the OP's game showed restraint and fair-mindedness by invoking the rule and limiting his own CT gain instead of trying to jimmy it the other way, but in our games we don't even pay attention to how many times the OL has cycled the deck as long as everyone is playing in good faith.

That said, I also agree with Badend; no matter how many times you need to cycle to "force" us heroes out in that scenario, I would strongly recommend bailing out if only to avoid the unusually good position the OL is in anyway.

Badend said:

+1

Edit: Where did the quote signs go?

Cut a deal with the Heroes. +3CP, they go down to the next level.