I have been reading the forum with interest, and most of the times i am reading that Heroes and Overlord have a acceptable level of experience among them and i don't understand how..

The case is this we are 3 who play the RTL and we have extensive tactic discussions to figure out what was done wrong etc. each time we have played and we allways conclude that the Overlord, played monster and cards flawlessly, exploiting every weakness whenever posible.

However within 3-5 rounds the heroes are simply to powerfull and more or less walk through the dungeons without incident and at that point the overlord can count himself lucky if he manages to get 1 kill and if he gets through the deck it is usually only because the heroes are taking a "vacation" in tamalir. At that point it becomes virtually impossible for the overlord to buy any upgrades, he simply does not earn enough conquest.

And how can the heroes do that?

1. They allways visit the market in Tamalir when in the dungeons, making it a quick walkthrough the copper treasure pile, giving them the best equipment quickly, rendering most non-master monsters unable to hurt them.
2. When in the dungeon the heroes almost exclusively spend fatique on movement, allowing the heroes to move in quickly and dispatch at lot of monsters quickly, and anti spawn the dungeon. Effectively preventing the Overlord from making use of his monsters.
3. In round 5+ heroes begin hunting down the Lieutenants, there is simply no need to fear them anymore, how good is Regeneration 5 if the heroesare able to move in so many heroes and deal so much damage in 1 round that it kills the Lieutenant.

So any comments? Is fatique and use for movement exclusively flawed

Cyberon said:

You're aware that in RtL you only get a number of treasure cards equal to the city's market rating per week, yes? When in a dungeon, the glyphs always transport you back to Tamalir, which has a market rating of 2 at the start of the game. These cards are not replaced after being purchased in the course of a single dungeon. If coin pile cards are drawn, they are discarded without replacement .

There are 22 Copper treasures in the base game and none in RtL. Assuming RtL is the only expansion you own, it should still take a minimum of 11 Game Weeks to cycle the entire deck at market. Of course, in practice you will get more treasures out of chests, but that's only 1 treasure card per blank rolled ( NOT 1 card per hero per blank rolled , mind you.) I suspect you're handing out too much treasure either in chests or by replacing purchases in town right away.

Even setting that aside, I've never known copper treasure to be so problematic to my monsters. The heroes need to get silver gear (good silver gear) before they start getting that cool, so I find the statement that the OL is playing every card to optimum effect to be somewhat suspect. Perhaps you should review the FAQ and GLoAQ, if you haven't already, to see if you're maybe misinterpreting something.

Yes we got a handle on the treasure stuff, only two treasures pr. week, but it really doesn't take the players long to bulk up. Each dungeon the visit is a new game week, and they travel quickly to another city, which means that they very quickly have some good equipment.

When rolling for treasure the get 1 card pr blank. So we are following the rules about treasure, no replacements, no excessive treasure, they are really cleaning up. We are into 70 Xp total now and ibelieve we are around the 11-12 game week, and now they are truly untouchable, but they where that long before that due to movement tactics by using fatique.

I am really wringing my brain here i cannot find any fault in the following of rules. You are not the only one who have talked about silver armor i simply don't get it they are really cleaning house with just copper equipment. I cannot bring them down because they leave me no monsters to do it with.

Maybe you should follow the reshuffling rules of the treasure deck. Basically after ever game week, the deck is shuffled. This will keep the heroes from going directly through the deck and cherry picking their favorite weapons.

Otherwise, here's some general OL advice:

- Upgrade one of your monsters to Silver. Eldritch seem the most powerful, Humanoid the most common, and Monster the most leaders (which can seriously dent the heroes abilities to get CTs). Monster is also extremely useful in Alric's Lt Encounters, since Silver RazorWings are quite difficult in outdoor encounters with Soar. Once the heroes get Copper Treasures, all the Copper Monsters don't pose much of a threat.
- Use Traps as much as possible, especially if your heroes are "fatigue moving". Wait for a hero to declare Battle and when they spend that fatigue to move one step, a Crushing Block on them to push them back where they were. This will greatly affect their plans.
- Once you're used to playing traps, get Trapmaster out for damage boosting.
- CRUSHING BLOW is your friend, get it ASAP and use it all the time.
- Silver Dark Priests are *vicious* and my heroes (even Corbon with 8 armor fears them).
- Dark Glyphs might be useful, depends on your style.

Otherwise, in my group, with pretty maxed out Copper treasures, they feared Alric, a lot. Might have been because I had those silver Razorwings though. If you're worried they will do bad things to him, start him at the exit and flee as soon as the heroes get close. IMHO, they won't do much damage to him until they get gold weapons.

-shnar

I've got to agree with Mr. O here. I've played an awful lot of RtL and I've never once gotten to a point where a I've felt like I've achieved a "walkthough the copper treasure pile." Moreover, Copper treasures really aren't much of an improvement over shop items; Heavy Leather is usually the only Armor in the whole stack worth considering, ranged weapons are generally not much better than the crossbow, melee weapons are basically a +2 damage across the board (but overkill on a beastman or skeleton doesn't help much). The magic items are significantly better, but a party of squishy magi shouldn't be too challenging. Either way, no matter who you are, every hero party that plays RtL will generally draw about the same number of treasure cards in the first 5-6 weeks, and I've never heard this being an issue.

Are you playing with Altar of Despair, Tomb of Ice, or Well of Darkness? If you're not– this will contribute to the problem. Curse FFG if you want, but RtL really doesn't work that well without Altar of Despair, and the others are almost as important. This wouldn't totally explain your problem, but it might play a factor.

In my experience most of the time the Black Order spawn card can get the Overlord a hero kill every time it's played, as can Dark Charm. Unless the heroes are playing exceedingly cautiously (which will mess them up in other areas) you can very often also get reliable kills with Blood Ape Tribe, Beastman War Party, Curse of the Monkey God, and Sorcerer's Circle. Save the Aims for these.

How the choices for Heroes were made can also make or break a campaign. If the heroes were able to choose their party from the whole stack, then the Overlord will probably have issues. For example, an entire party of high-armor characters (if the party was Nanok, Corbin, Tobin and Jaes) will usually give the Overlord a much harder time. Most people play that the party is decided fairly randomly, which means there's probably going to be one weak link that you can beat up on. A lucky choice of skills can also hurt the Overlord– if the Heroes drew Leadership, Unmovable, Blessing, and Cautious for their opening party, then that would be a (rare, but significant) problem.

This bottom line here is that something is amiss in your description– they can't all have 5 fatigue. And if they do, then they can't all be hard to kill. The game just isn't built that way. If they're only using fatigue to move around, then they must be drinking many many potions, which means they can't be spending too much money on treasures. (Don't ever let them rest, literally.) And if they've somehow been able to buy lots of treasures and lots of potions, then they can't have much money left over for training or for party upgrades (which will leave them high and dry later on), so I don't see how they would be able to visit 5 dungeons in 5 weeks and clean house in all of them. It's also possible that you're just a terrible Overlord. More likely, however, is that you're misplaying a rule of some sort (popular choices include using glyphs, not flipping the reinforcement marker, messing up the treasure, etc). There a some exceptions, but very few dungeon levels are truly easy for the heroes.

-pw

shnar said:

Ahh, that would be Corb i n.

I, on the other hand fear nothing.
Except the dice...

Just few very quick questions.

First: Were the heroes hand-picked by players or were they randomly chosen (or each hero chosen from a subgroup of 2-3 randomly generated heroes)?

Second: Who are the heroes you're facing?

Third: Which avatar are you playing?

I can't believe you can't get kills on Landrek or Lyssa, even with the best Copper Equipment. On another hand killing Tahlia (especially with Leadership) is almost impossible if the player moves her well and Nanok may easily become invulnerable during Copper Campaign Level. If you're facing a party made up entirely of powerhouses I'm not amazed they're having the upper-hand (I was in a party like that...the Overlord wasn't very expert actually, but even if he were, I admit he couldn't do much more than he did).

Another hint. DARK CHARM. It's the best trap in the game, since it improves alongside heroes. Use it and if you have an Avatar that pays low for Trap Treachery, go for another Dark Charm in your deck and (when you can) an Animate Weapons. Yes, 20 points might seem high a price for a trap, but it's still almost like playing 4 Dark Charms together. Animate Weapon + 2 Dark Charm in your deck should ensure AT THE VERY LEAST a couple deaths to the party per dungeon (or more if you draw them again when you shuffle).

Elite kobolds also help you a lot at playing traps...spawn them. Use normal kobolds for distracting the opponent (well...you can also manage some good kills if you swarm the right way) and place elites somewhere in the distance to be sure you have your discount for the whole dungeon level.

As others already said, Dark Priests are very good for damage dealing, also Beastmen actually (especially once they get to silver level). Skeletons may also put some nice finishing touches thanks to their Pierce ability. Lava Beatles and Hellhounds get better only once promoted to Silver. If you promote bestials try to remember now they become useful.

Always concentrate attacks/traps on 1 or 2 characters at a time starting from the least resilient...I know they earn less CT, but you can kill them easily, so they're still much better targets.

As for Leutenants...treachery and powered monsters help a lot. With a single Trap treachery you can bring to the table a Dark Charm and a plan-fowling (as already stated) crushing blow. You can use a Dark Charm during your second turn to almost kill-out an hero (since they're so strong), then finish him off with your monsters. Since the opponent can't call for reinforcements (while YOU can), you should take an immediate advantage as soon as you kill a single hero...if you manage to kill 2, the other two will have probably to flee, since they shouldn't be able to face Alric. With the other Farrows the story is little different...I suppose we should make an appropriate topic for "using your leutenant at the best" somewhere else.

Addons - Alter of despair and well of darkness.

Heroes, random draw at the same time 4 piles of 3 random heroes where made, they then choose one 1 hero from each pile.

Overlord and plot also drawn as random currently Titan

I dark charmed and trapped like no tomorrow, whenever i got the chance to spawn i did, but usually i get 1 spawn, 2 if i am lucky in a 3 level dungeon.

They move around like lightning, spent fatique, then rest, they basicly rarely run out of fatique, they cleverly put the most armour on the hero with least health and the other way around less armor on the high health. But since that hero is used for mop-up action after the others i rarely get a chance to target that hero.

They move fast through the level, i only went throgh the deck once at that was the very first dungeon, which actually ended 15-15 each, after that it was downhill.

I will be back very soon with the setup of heroes.

You may have been playing wrong, but just in case, have you upgraded your favored monster catergory to the next level? Upgraded humanoids are lethal when used/spawned effectively.Don't forget that all your monsters are basically using the advance action of the heroes, so they can move either before or after attacking.

Also, when distributing loot in the dungeon, a blank only gives one treasure item per chest, not four(in case you've been playing this wrong). I can't believe that all the heroes are so well equipped that you can't get a single kill. I actually found that the advanced campaign favors the overlord by far, especialy with Altar of Despair and Well of Darkness stuff. Provide us with additional details about the party and your avatar's upgrades and we'll help you out some more.

Current XP 47 for the heroes and 27 for the overlord, the heroes recently used their XP to upgrade their dice, but it has not impact, all my troubles started before that.

Here is the team the overlord Titan is up against.

I won't bore you with the stats, because you should now them , here is what they have, due to their movement galore they are cleaning house all the time.

Kirga

Skill: Born to the bow

Other: Ring of quickness

Other: Archer's Charm

Armor: Heavy leather armor +2 armor

Weapon: Backbiter

Battlemage Jaes

Skill: Wild Talent

Other - Rune: Ghost Armor

Other - Rune: Mana Weave

Other: Gauntlets of power

Armor: Elven Robe

Weapon - Rune: Pacify

Weapon: Staff of the Grave

Brother Glyr

Skill: Weapon Mastery

Other: Pack of holding

Other: Crystal of Tival (recent addition currently in pack)

Armor: Plate Mail

Shield: Skull Shield

Weapon: Shadowblade

Lord Hawthorne

Skill: Able warrior

Other: Ring of protection

Other: Belt of strength

Armor: Chain Mail

Shield: Crystal Shield

Weapon: Dragontooth hammer

zealot12 said:

Actually they have only gotten a total of 2 copper treasures through chests. However i don't know how to explain the problem. They got all the right equipment, they wipeout the monsters before the monster get a chance to act. They move up the heroes who can easely withstand a full onslaught, and then on second turn they move up the ranged heroes to mob up the rest of the monsters. I can't get them down because my monster usually only get 1 chance.

Kirga, Battlemage Jaes, Glyr and Hawthorne are a pretty good team. Kirga's ability to prevent spawns goes a long way toward explaining why you're having so much trouble spawning mobs. Jaes's ability to equip heavy armor and still function as a mage is nothing to shake a stick at either.

I still suspect there are a few thing you could do better if copper treasures are giving you so much grief, but this is a very strong hero party, so it will be an uphill battle for you. Maybe next time consider using "draw one" instead of "draw three pick one" and see if that helps you as OL. If the heroes' gear continues to be a problem for you, buy some treachery and get Crushing Blow in there. You have the expansions for it, so use it.

Edit: Also, if memory serves the OL is not required to pick his avatar and plot randomly, so don't. The OL gets to choose things, the heroes have to make due with randomness. This is part of the game balance and forcing the OL to go random too will only make things harder for him.

You are aware that Lord Hawthorne CAN'T equip both Dragontooth Hammer AND Crystal Shield, aren't you?

Anyway, the party is way above average. Not only its a balanced party (2 melee tanks, 1 mage, 1 shooter), they have possibly the most powerful shooter around, one of the best mages (and the most enduring by the way), and two very nice melee fighters. This party both starts with very nice movement (none has less than 4, considering Glyr's ability) and endurance (2 characters with 16 hps, the most enduring mage with 12HP and 2Armor and the only character in the game sporting an Armor Value of 3!). That's what a frustrating party looks like.

Besides, to my personal amazement they got ALL THE CURSED ITEMS?! How could they get those many cursed items together in so few time (47XPs for the party mean a couple dungeons, on my experience). And they also have practically all the cool Other Items the copper campaign has to offer...I can't see how they really got all that stuff in so little time. I suppose they were overgodly lucky, that's all.

The Titan's Avatar special bonus is the least powerful I can think of (+1Power Dice to Master Monsters, if I'm correct) and this avatar isn't exactly a trapmaster as far as I remember. I think he's a summoner...facing Kirga...Yeah, you're in a mess...

Try this technique for summoning. Heroes will be moving so that they cover each side of the dungeon with LOS. When the last one of them moves, play a pit trap against him AT THE END OF HIS MOVEMENT. That should ensure he can't get out (of course there is fatigue, but fatigue can't last forever. At that point, you'll have a LOS corridor for summoning. I used this technique and was very satisfied with it.

Also...buy summon treachery and summon that Master Deep Elf. He can break heroes weapons if he gets a clean strike (and almost negates armor, so he'll do some damage, expecially considering your special ability that adds a Power die. Heroes tend to be far less offensive when their amazing weapons are reduced to dust...and they have to search through a whole deck to get them back. Upgrade humanoids as soon as you can and use Master beastmen in combo with Dark Priests, you can pile-up pretty decent damage on everything by doing this. Target either Kirga or Jaes with attacks (target 1, possibly). The only way to get rid of that stupid Skull Shield would be having Event Treachery for a Crushing Blow...think about it, can't your specific leutenant also break equipped items? Am I remembering something completely wrong?

By the way, what is your plot? The Titan sucks in dungeons (no offense meant), but he should rock on the Map! Try to win there if you can. There's nothing more satisfying than a group of overpowered heroes that face the shame of losing against a Dark Avatar without having even encountered him!

Also, this is an illegal suggestion, but still I suggest you and your friends play RtL campaigns applying the "balancing" rule of SoB. To be brief, for each 25 full XP points of difference between Overlord and Heroes, the CT of Heroes is modified 1 point. Of course if the overlord has the upperhand the heroe's CT goes down, otherwise it's the opposite. It helps balancing ongoing campaigns. A great invention of SoB, one of the few (I also like most the SoB rules for the final showdown...but it's all about taste).

I hope some of my suggestions help you. Keep us informed.

FOR FUTURE GAMES: Choose the Avatar and Plot...or at least choose your plot based on the Avatar, if you like picking Avatar randomly. That's what the rulebook says, by the way!

Elric of Melniboné said:

Yes i know about the Crystal Shield, they got it in their last city visit, i believe they decided to keep it for later. It has not been equiped.

We decided to randomize the Avatar draw to try something new.

Elric of Melniboné said:

I Chose the obsidian shackels plot for the Titan.

Elric of Melniboné said:

That is 1 rumor dungeon and 1 dungeon, and 1 encounter and 1 lieutenant encounter. As for the treasure, i believe there is was a lot of luck involved in their treasure draw.

I count 17 copper treasures in your heroes' equipment. Of those, you wrote that they found only 2 in chests.

6 dungeon levels in 2 dungeons means that the heroes got to look at 4 treasures. In encounters and Lieutenant battles, they get none.

Did the heroes shop multiple weeks in Riverwatch? Otherwise, it doesn't add up.

Maybe you should watch for new equipment near the hero cards every time you come back after having left the room...

Cyberon said:

Don't forget that the "eyes" flip back face up at the start of every dungeon level for free, so you should be getting at least 1 spawn per dungeon level, if not 2 or 3 (though yes, Kirga complicates things. God forbig they go get Boggs The Rat).

And I agree with Ispher, that's too many treasures for what we've been told has happened. Either they're spending many game-weeks shopping, or they are playing something wrong with the treasure selection.

To review, off the top of my head, you get the following treasures:
- The city's market rating, only *once* per game week (not per dungeon level nor market visit)
- Every blank on a Treasure Chest roll gives *one* treasure to the party (not to each hero)
- Skeleton Piles may give a treasure

I think that's it for RtL (SoB can give treasures in the Barrels) but don't have the rules with me atm...

-shnar

1. It is a strong party - not an unbeatable 1, but a very strong one (especially with the items they drew, though their skills are middling at best IMO).

2. They have been extremely lucky with treasure draws, particularly getting the Skull Shield for Glyr - his weakness is traps and the Skull Sheld makes it hard to Trap him successfully.

There is nothing you can do about these things unfortunately.

The Titan is pretty weak in the dungeons unfortunately. His strength is his starting position and his special Lt, combined with the normal three Lts, however he needs some build up for these to be effective (upgraded monsters and 50+ points worth of treachery).

You haven't mention what upgrades you started with, nor if you have bought any.

I would go with a plan of a Tamalir Raze, but not yet. A skulking, hit-them-all-at-once sort of plan.
Step 1, Upgrade a monster class. Obviously Humanoids are the 'natural' way to go, especially with Thaad's ogres. However I would be tempted to look at Beasts instead, for three reasons.
First, humanoids are almost impossible to use well against a competent hero party including Kirga. They are simply too slow )and virtually all melee) and if the party has decent spawn prevention it will be very rare to actually spawn and hit anything. So although humanoids hit the hardest, they are almost useless in many situations. Be aware though, that beasts aren't always very easy to spawn either, because a lot of them are large and awkward.
Secondy, Thaad aside (and he may tip the balance back to humanoids), there are more beasts in the Lt parties (Alric and Eliza are both quite formidable with upgraded beasts)
Thirdly, beasts have more useful abilities outdoors - they are faster (and many have ranged or AoE attacks), include excellent flyers (these heroes have a noticeable weakness against tough soarers as they have 2 melee heroes and neither their mage nor their ranger is particularly adept at doing a lot of damage at long range) and many also have considerable Pierce values. Check out a silver Master Hellhound breathing on a bunched hero party - a max damage hit is 9 pierce 4, from a tier 2 monster, with Breath!

Ok, so first upgrade is monsters (25-30). Then I would buy the Farrows (3x5). They should spread out in different directions (not Tamalir) and try to seige cities but alsways flee if the heroes attack them. The should always be able to flee if you place them in the extreme rear and defend them with well placed monsters. Be on the lookout for web or knockback though (yes, Alric is immune)... Then I would get 1 Event treachery (15) for Crushing Blow. Probably also a monster treachery although you may not be able to afford that. You need to save enough to immediately upgrade your best monsters when the campaign switches. You also want to buy Thaad just before the campaign switches, and arrange your other Lts to have retreated. Then as the campaign switches, all four Lts descend on Tamalir with their newly upgraded monsters. Unless the heroes have upgraded the walls (and they are unlikely to at this stage unless they read this plan), you will be rolling to win the game on the next week. The heroes must chase you away immediately. Surprise sack! If it works, they will be extremely pissed off, but the signs are there for them to read and prepare.

One other thing, I guess you probably are doing it right already but potions are very limited. Only 2/week from Tamalir, + surges rolled from chests.

Corbon said:

They didn't get lucky, they somehow managed to cycle the entire copper deck in approximately 5 game weeks and took their pick of the best treasures for their strategy. We're still trying to figure out how this happened, but the OP insists they've been playing treasure draws legally.

That said, I have to congratulate you for the strategy you suggest. It's a heck of a lot more solid than anything I would have come up with in this situation.

Steve-O said:

Well, I have to admit having some advantage there.
I faced the Titan in a Silver-start campaign. The OL was allowed to spend 100 CT before the game started (house rule, since the heroes can spend theirs, the normal silver/gold-start rules are broken) but not save any (so no gold monsters turn 1, giving a similar 'slow building' start to copper. He bought Seige engines (free), upgraded humanoids (25), 2 Farrows (10), Thaad (15) 2 event treachery (30) 1 monster treachery (10) and something else minor. The Lts seiged three cities in 4-5 weeks (100% raze success), by which time the OL had earned enough to upgrade humanoids to Gold and bought more treachery (his plot gave him +5CT for razes). He then descended on Tamalir. I had to fight very hard to narrowly defeat it - I chased away or killed Thaad the first week, which raised Tamalir's wall rating by 1 and prevented a raze roll. The next week the rest of the Lts only add one seige marker and I trained and added more walls - still no raze roll. The same the following week, though I fought off another Lt and raised the walls again. Eventually I was able to narowly drive off Alric and clear the seige entirely, but it was a very close thing!

In summary, I know full well how quickly and nastily the Titan can 'descend' on Tamalir and gut it's defenses. I held it off because I saw it coming and planned for it, but it was a very close thing.

Ispher said:

Yes to the story is that they spend a lot of time in the town, they spent their hard earned gold quickly, the rumor they played was Derafin the mighty i forgot that in that one they got lucky in 2 of the boneheaps. Dungeons levels they have been through: 2 Alchemists Lab, 4 The bridge of Death, 12 The throne room, 16 What lies Beneath, 38 Throwing stones and off.c Derafin the mighty rumor level. We send the dungeons to the graveyard to makes sure there are no repeats.

They see master monsters not as threats, but as pots of gold.

shnar said:

Aha.. you have actually found a flaw in our game.... i can't believe we/i missed that, we are all rulemongers, it is there clearly on page 17, 1 free reinforcement.

And for the treasure, they cleverly spent a lot of time in towns, they went from Tamalir to riverwath, and on to the rumor dungeon they had placed nearby, i belive they spent 2 game weeks in riverwatch, then went to the rumor dungeons and opted for the flee option after completing to return to Tamalir.

Yes asked and answered i took control of the treasure pile, they only got 2 cards to trade in total while in the dungeons. I can't remember how many game weeks they spent in Tamalir, but i believe at least 3, and yes they got extremely lucky in the market draws. The first dungeon we played 15-15, the rumor dungeon i got 1 kill in, but otherwise they cleaned house. I believe 7 or 8 game weeks have passed.

I know this sounds very little to come "crying", but this have been the situation of every game we have played, and now i just wanted to take it before it got out of hand, because the same pattern emerged again.

I believe i understand, forget avatar upgrades, and leuitenants, focus on upgrading a monster group to silver, then treachery to get some of the "fun" cards and spruce up leuitenant encounters.

Yes, upgrading monsters is abnsolutely mandatory; treachery is a close second.