Right, after a few stop starts and testing of various situations We've got a 3 player (soon to be four player) game of Sea of Blood rolling.

I'm on the hero side, tactically and strategically I probably have the most experience and one of the other guys wanted to be Overlord so I was happy to pass.

First up here's the party:

Silhouette with Evasion AV2 plus Shield

Battlemage Jaes with Prodigy AV4 or 5 depending on who has the RoP

Vaikas the Dead with Tiger Tattoo (seriously that's the best choice we had on him) - he now also has the Defender skill, which we picked up early because we don't intend on returning to Gafford all game, the Lighthouse is too near to it. AV4 or 5

Tethrys with Master Archer AV3

We're up against Captain Bones who has Lawlessness and some other stuff I can't quite remember, he's saving for Elridch Skeletons. I'm hoping to squeeze in two more dungeons before they turn up and make things wretched. The plot is the lighthouse one. The lighthouse is located between the 3 and 4 green trails I forget the name of the place, but it's the only way to sail north without using the compass.

Honestly it's a pretty great group of heroes. But I would be very happy if people had some advice on developing them.

We're on our third dungeon and leading with around 20 something points against mid teens, the first dungeon went better than we could have hoped, we went through all three levels and only suffered one death (Tethrys) on the final level. But the second session was just awful, we started with a sea encounter that was in essence a giant waste of time. It was about an hour of us just sailing towards the side of the map (with awful rolls) while beastmen battered The Revenge. We escaped and made it to Orris, but it was a complete waste of our time. Unfortunately the Overlord didn't see it that way, he enjoyed pounding the ship (for a whole 100 coins worth of damage. Oooo, that was really worth an hour of play).

We're now crawling the dungeons near Orris, because neither of us hero players want to go back to sea for a while as the encounters seem exceptionally boring.

First Orris land dungeon was a nightmare. It went OK until the undying webbing razorwing passed his undying roll (after the master sorceror passed three) and then got a flukey position on Sil to web her while she was waiting to glyph back to town. What followed was forty five minutes of being unable to roll a surge while the Overlord's deck gradually dwindled. The damage being landed on Sil was pathetic, she's almost completely immune to stuff like Bane Spiders at the moment (all the Overlord had to spawn), but the lousy undying boss was whittling her one point at a time. We could have kept her alive indefinitely if I'd wanted to, we had the tools for it (Guarding double shield Varikas). But the deck was getting close to being exhausted and I was concerned that someone else might get webbed. So we let her die (was going to kill her directly in the following turn to avoid the deck CPs) and abandoned the dungeon. 3 to 6 - OL's favour.

Anyhow, that's the background. We're now at the point where we have 3 land dungeons (thus no encounters) to roll with, and I think we can hit two of them before Silver Skeletons turn up and start making things miserable.

I'm thinking what we should do is blitz these dungeons and then upgrade the boat for mobility. A size upgrade plus elven sails means we can dodge the lamer sea encounters and get back to the more profitable exercise of dungeon delving (and getting maps, so we can hope for the Revenge bonus treasure).

Considering that we're going up against Captain Bones, how would you upgrade the heroes and The Revenge? What priorities would you assign to various things. Our plotted course is to head out from Orris across to Garrott, then across land and finally up into the more dangerous part of the map. The classic counter clockwise sweep of the SoB map really, so that might be relevant when picking the order of the skills.

Thanks in advance, any more details required and I can supply them.

Styfen said:

The thing we are learning/figuring out with Captain Bones is that he is a very different prospect from every other OL.

1. The only way the heroes win the campaign is to win the final battle.
2. Captain Bones' final battle is a sea fight
3. Wounds/armour etc are unlikely to be very important in the sea fight. With the OL having 2x total number of CT as a bonus, even a very poor effort chould see him with over 400 wounds, probably over 600. The Danse Macabre has 113. Sink it and you win. It will almost certainly be easier to sink the Danse Macabre than to kill Captain Bones, especially if he has several upgrades like the sea mist thing (his ship moves to the other side of the map, dumping any hero on it in the sea...) or his Regen25 (which should have time to help, especially if he has more like 600+ wounds). So really, it is a batte of ships, with the first to sink the other ship winning. And the Danse Macabre goes first, can choose any cannons (with an upgrade) and can use all 4 each turn with 2 Gold and 2 Silver dice each, so will average around 24 wounds per turn, including misses (more like 40 if he counts aimed, which I have a vague feeling he does).
4. Also note that for the heroes to not-lose through plot or raze conditions, they have to be able to beat, or drive off, Lts, which are all sea battles as well.

Therefore, the only things which really count, if the Avatar is Captain Bones, Is Upgrading the Revenge to the max, and hero upgrades which count for shooting cannons. EVerything else might be amazingly nice is dungeons, but will not win you the game or stop you from losing the game.

For the Revenge, Maximum wounds (so the biggest ship you can get) is a requirement. So is a full load of cannons (8 good ones), for both sides of the ship, since the Danse Macabre can swop sides of the map. You need a full load of cannons as then you can risk firing the overheated ones and still have spares if they blow up. A figurehead which improves wounds or cannon combat (I don't remember what they all do) is best.

For heroes, priority goes to dice (for ranged and magic heroes) and to skills that boost damage on Ranged or Magic Heroes. Gunner, for example, is utterly crap, generally, but might be the difference between winning and losing the whole campaign. The surge-bonus skills (prodigy, master archer, usually awesome) are a total waste of space since cannons don't use surges. The Marks for healing/surges are relatively pointless, but the one for orders might be great, and the one for extra attacks could also be great if you are willing to risk blowing up cannons (or have a non-heating cannon or two). Runner is an awesome skill normally, but almost entirely useless.
Basically your melee guy is a dead weight in the final battle, even if he can swim, so he should mostly be upgrading the ship rather than himself during training weeks. Yes, it will make your earlier dungeoneering harder, but frankly that seems to be mostly irrelevant!

Important Skills: Gunner, Deadeye, Keen Sight, Wild Talent, Brin's Mark, possibly Koll's Mark and Quick Casting, Inner Fire, Blessing, Alex the Wise.
Skills that help in Lt battles (prevent you from losing before you get to the final battle): Shark Tattoo and most of the normal good skills
Ox tattoo will also prevent a hero from being knocked off the ship into the water, so could prevent some clever OL options.

Cheers Corbon, that's what I was worried about. We drew our characters and skills - then (as per the rules) the OL player picked his character. I'm rather thankful we didn't end up with two melee guys because he picked Bones in part because we had two characters with extra surge skills and surges don't work on cannon fire (lame!).

I'm considering making our Melee guy useful by giving him a couple of magic dice near the end. Vaikas has 1 magic dice anyway, so if we get him some more of those then he can assist by firing the odd cannon when we don't need the ship to manuver. It isn't ideal but every dice and potential wound helps. Especially as he gains fatigue each turn and could spend that as well.

I'm not sure if wounds are irrelevant, with armour not counting in the final conflict it feels like having a good wound score is important. The OL player already targets the spaces characters are positioned in when shelling the ship, even if they have a dodge on them.

Along those lines, could we get away with turning Vaikas into a magic user? I'm thinking probably not due to the fact that all magic items are two handed. But maybe it's an option, tuning him into a hybrid magic tank (alongside Jaes) might work, but we're going to need a lot of money to manage it.

Needless to say I'm not looking forward to this campaign, it feels like an uphill battle towards an OL fight that is stacked against the heroes heavily. I really wish the OL was any of the other ones in SoB, I just can't stand the idea of this final battle - testing it seems to result in victory for Bones the majority of the time.

Edit: One other thought struck me, is it worth us pushing flat out towards getting the Revenge kitted out fully and then "throwing" the plot to force a final confrontation against a Captain Bones who might not have all of his relevant upgrades yet?