One of our campaigns finished last night.

A very powerful hero party, but a total thrashing by the OL, and an enormously anticlimactic ending - far, far worse than any RtL ending.

Heroes have worked as fast and hard as they reasonably could throughout the campaign, rarely (only once that I recall) not finishing a dungeon completely (they did exceptionally well in the critical first week and completed the Whispering Woods with the OL only getting 12-13 CT). They bought Elven sails the second week, so were fast around the map.
Nonetheless, with Captain Bones as the OL and the Exploding Skeletons upgrade as his starting upgrade, they were unable to defeat the SIren at any stage and she comfortably completed the Lighthouse Weapon plot by mid-Silver campaign level.

The heroes had two chances to stop it.
They reached one of the keys first but the last level of the dungeon on that island was level 60, The Hideout, where they start in the cage. This level is crippling, and they lost 30CT without gaining any before they fled (going from slightly ahead in CT to just over Divine Favour, which trigger on the last kill or two. That was in mid-copper.
In mid silver, very well prepared, they attacked the siren carrying the last key towards the lighthouse. They drew a favourable map (Becalmed - slow current so they don't have too much time pressure, no sharks IIRC, and a blank map so the siren could not hide and their manoeuvering was as unlimited as possible. They had full potion stocks, good weapons, full wounds and full feat hands (though apparently these were not much use as they never played any).

They made some small tactical errors (focusing on shooting the Master Skeletons before the normals) and one set of attacks fail badly (a breath weapon hitting 3 skeletons on a Battle action rolled very low damage and then missed) and they got savaged. The exploding skeletons brutalised them, particularly as the three ranged/magic heroes were in a tight group (a Soldier, a Blesser and a Defender with twin shields). That was possibly a mistake, though they had it mostly covered except for the bad roll.

They managed to web the Siren, dodging in the corner, but when their fatigue eventually ran out the most important killer hero failed his sirens call and ran out towards the siren. The water didn't kill him, but not being able to attack (and again the following turn) probably saved the Siren's life (or came very close to it). The coup-de-grace was 4 new skeletons reinforcing within explosion reach of the heroes, and only guard orders could stop them (and each order, only stops 1, if any). The heroes were not TPKed as the explosions were ridiculously weak (the first 7 red dice through the encounter did 8 damage in total (though each, to 2-3 heroes)). In the end the melee hero abandoned ship and fled off the side to avoid the CT loss while the last, badly wounded mage limped off the side as well, leaving the Siren still with nearly half her wounds, but finally free of the web tokens and running across to the other side of the board as fast as possible.
Net Result, heroes couldn't stop the Siren from completing the quest, even though they prepared as best they could. They didn't rate their potionless chances in a repeat duel on a probably worse board and had little cash (having just done a training session before attacking the Siren) so with one week to go before the siren reached the lighthouse and placed the Key they tried to sail to a new island and run a undeon there to get cash for a final training (mostly boat upgrades) session teh same weak the Siren fitted the key. They would then sail to the OL's Keep while the OL burned the Cities or Torres Albues and assault him just before he killed the 5th city.
However the OL played Big Trouble on them and the were Becalmed, failing to reach the Island they needed to.

With the Revenge being only a Galley (50W IIRC, though it did have 6 cannons, all but one good ones) the hero player wasn't interested in playing out the final battle vs Captain Bones and the Danse Macabre (113 wounds and 4 cannons per turn firing with 2Au2Ag if Ranged, 4Ag if magic, +2R+1D for both + the special Mists), so there the campaign ended.

It was a most unsatisfactory conclusion!

It is difficult at this stage to see what the heroes could have done differently. They never wasted time blitzing, they were a strong party (mostly ahead of the OL in CT all the way except for one major dungeon level), they never even wasted time getting a treasure map (which they would have had twice over). The OL only had 1 Lt (the Siren) until very late - the only thing the Kraken ever did was hang around the OL's Keep readying Doom for the assault!
They had a relatively strong ship for mid-silver - one size increase, maximum cannons, all but the starting one good cannons, Elven Sails and the figurehead that improves cannon damage IIRC.
They had good personal training as well - at least 4 dice, one or more of which were silver, for everyone except Fealdor. Th Royal Archer had added Precision, Fealdor Defender, and I think the other two also had an extra decent skill.|
They had excellent equipment - they rolled an average of more than 1 treasure per chest, and also scored quite a few treasures from barrels.

They only had 1 melee hero. They did have a runner type who was a slightly weak ranged hero, but he was the main reason they were ahead in CT most of the time. They had one very, very, strong Ranged hero and a Mage that is not a great hero, but not all that bad in the prevailing conditions.

Hero Party:
Custom Hero Durin Dwarflord: 12W 4F 3A 3M, 4CT, 3Me, 1/1/1 skills (starting skill Mighty) Special ability Deadeye (can use a fatigue to reroll a dice with an X during his attacks) made with the FFG make-hero pdf and a bit overpowered (385BP in Antistone's generator) - would lose one trait dice if remaking dropping him to 358.
Custom Hero Royal Archer: 12W 5F 1A 4M, 3CT, 2Ra1Me, 2/1/0 skills (starting skill Keen Sight) Special Ability Soldier (+2R+2D if adjacent to a friend) between Keen Sight , Soldier ability and Blessing from Sahla, he usually had +4R and +4D on ranged attacks and ignored Shadowcloak - nasty! Estimate 362 in A's HeroGen, assuming +20 cost between Soldier 1 and Soldier 2)
Custom Hero Fealor Brightsmith: 8W 4F 2A 4M, 3CT, 3Ra, 1/2/0 skills (starting skill Spry) Special Ability Defender (-1R-1D to all enemies within 3 spaces) with 5F and 5M and the -1R-1D , between Heavy Leather, Skull Shield and Ghost armour this guy was an incredibly tough runner. Once he got +4W and a +3 silver shield and Defender skill he was insane as a defender of the weaker heroes as well! Exactly 360 BP in A's HeroGen.
Sahla: starting skill Blessing short a single black die on the middling mages and without a combat bonus special ability like the really good mages he was a slightly weak starter. OTOH Blessing is a very good skill for an early mage and he never had to suffer the curses associated with the Staff of the Grave, so he was still a fairly reasonable mage very quickly! Just 319 in A's Hero Gen!

But for all their strengths and abilities, they couldn't stop the Siren (with exploding skeletons). Game over.

Our other campaign is floundering a bit. Basically I am playing with 3 relative noobs as hero partners, and they have made a number of significantly bad choices with their heroes (turned down Thorn ) and upgrades (chose Prodigy and Master Archer over cheap dice upgrades - which can't be used on cannons and in particular can't be used on the powerful Ripper - even though they had to sell precious backup magic weapons to pay the extra costs). Combine that with a weak hero draw (well, once you discard Thorn) and the hero party is really struggling. The map pressure is not disastrous yet, as we have kept up our 'speed' fairly well, but the party really struggles to kill tough monsters and with the campaign due to turn into silver after the next dungeon (with attendant double upgrade of monsters) very shortly they will simply be overpowered massively in the dungeons.
Until now 3 heroes have been carried bodily by Astarra with Koll's Mark. She collects all the loot and still kills more monsters than the rest of the party put together, although she does count for 90+% of the OL's kills. However this party is totally inept at finding treasures in chests (last two dungeons came out with the same number as we went in for example - finding just one in three levels and losing 1 to CB) and crippled in the markets by the plot card that doubles weapon costs and closes all alchemists entirely - not to mention drawing just 1 non-ranged treasure in the last 20 market draws (including at least 8-9 shortages). With Astarra now having had her copper Breath rune CBed, it is doubtful whether even she will be able to keep the party going...

I am going to have to grind this campaign forward slowly, in the interests of seeing if there are viable hero strategies in SoB (this party has gone the anti-ship strategy and have no ship upgrades bar the Triton figurehead - and don't intend to get any either! But it is going to be a real grind for a while (and take longer, as we play other things sometimes because this stage of SoB is not fun every week), with even the OL feally disatisfaction due to Divine Favour - the last level we played he killed Astarra 6 times for 7CT (cursed once)!

Has anyone won a SoB campaign as heroes yet?

The heroes in my (I'm the overlord) SOB campaign are doing pretty well. It's the Count doing the Dark Queen plot (the one with A New Law). Avatar and Plot chosen randomly really since I hadn't truly taken the time to look at the differences between avatars and plots at the time, though I don't think another combination would have changed things much.

Hero group is currently:

Landrec the Wise with Marksman (starting skill), +1 Magic die, +4 Wounds, Cone of Fire, Elven Robe, Ring of Quickness, Ghost Armor, some other stuff in backpack (shop items)

Andira Runehand with Inner Fire (starting skill), Prodigy, +4 Wounds, Immolate (equipped), Heavy Leather, Mana Weave, Staff of the Grave in backpack (recently acquired in chest at end of level, will probably equip at start of next level)

Vyrah the Falconer with Master Archer (starting skill), +2 Ranged dice, +1 Fatigue, Crossbow, Leather Armor, Skull Shield, Ring of Protection, something in backpack (Iron or Crystal Shield I think)

Nara the Fang with Ox Tattoo (starting skill), +1 Melee die, 1 silver Melee, +4 Wounds, Dragontooth Hammer, Sword, Crystal Shield, Iron Shield, Chainmail

I don't know what other skills the heroes had to choose from at the start, but I do know they failed to get any of the new ones in SOB. If they would have gotten any, they would have picked them automatically. That's just how my group is. Try the new stuff even if it would obviously be a detriment. I also know that Nara was the only Melee hero they could choose. I guess she was fated to be part of the group.

Ship Upgrades: Elven Sails, Hawkeye cannon, Runeblast cannon, Dragonbreath cannon,

Avatar Upgrades: Upgraded Razorwings (Leech and Ironskin, starting xp), Siren, Beasts upgraded, A New Law (purchased after Beast upgrade since heroes already bought a bunch of cannons before I could play it), Plot card that makes visiting any city cost 100 coins (the visit circumstance only, not restock or train actions), Plot card version of Lawlessness (costs 5 xp instead of 10, Lawlessness is also an option to buy), 1 Event Treachery (for Crushing Blow honestly, I've only ever felt I had to use it once before, I feel I need to now as well)

Heroes ended up killing the Siren because I made a tactical blunder. I forgot about the current (which doesn't affect the Siren since she has Swim). Heroes also rolled exactly what they needed to in order to kill her (they needed 6 perfect rolls to do it). Chances were astronomical. If it hadn't worked, she would have gotten onto the other side of the ship where the heroes couldn't really get at her anymore. This happened about half-way through copper. No cities razed, but I got to roll 4 times on one city and failed each time...

Current CT count is about 90-80, heroes leading. The only thing that hasn't gone the heroes' way was when they encountered a bunch of Silver Razorwings at sea. It was a TPK. The extra wounds they purchased have made a huge difference too. I've failed to kill heroes a couple times because of it and they were able to get back to town to heal.

They got 4 treasure map pieces and pulled one treasure, choose any 2 items from the current level item deck. Would have been better at silver or gold, but they took Mana Weave and Ring of Quickness, they had all the other stuff already.

Other stuff of note: I think I have a 1 in 3 chance of missing, not a 1 in 6. One of the heroes started keeping track the last time we got together and I missed about 50% of the time that night. It really sucks when a silver Dragon misses 4 times (Rage with 2 Aims). A New Law only seems to affect purchase price of weapons and cannons, the heroes roll enough surges on chests the alchemists closing doesn't matter. All but one or two barrels the heroes open has given them 200 coins (they did an island level that had 5 barrels on it and several dungeon levels with barrels).

Things will probably change once things hit silver. Maybe I'll figure out a way to use the Kraken effectively, probably not though. Maybe luck will actually swing the other way too, but for some reason I think that is unlikely. I predict only one more full dungeon till silver anyway. Though that'll be a while since we're playing other things now.

Brutal.

Looking for positives, (which I should point out I am desparately trying to do for SoB because I want it to work) It sounds like a fair bit of their failure was down to bad luck. Had they not pulled that crippling Dungeon level, they would have had one of the keys. Had they not lost their killer-hero, they could have taken out the Siren, or at least forced her to flee and been in possession of two keys.

Having all but beaten the Plot and demonstrated that they can dispatch a Lieutenant... albeit with near perfect conditions, I'd say they would have been in the running to winning the whole Campaign.

Of course, the flip side of this is that so much of a mammoth campaign can be decided on a few turns and a couple of bad draws. Let's just hope that the long silence from FFG on Sea of Blood's flaws is because KW is being allowed to spend some serious time working on this now that Civilization (sic) is finished.

as i said before, the main flaw is that lieutenants can flee without penalty, and there is no way of stopping them from destroying 5 cities...period

that happened to us in 5 campaigns that we played sob, even if the heroes were leading in exp by far ...

we even restricted the amount of lieutenants the ol can summon, and the same effect ...

I too have said it in the past - we don't need data. Simple analysis proves that SoB is completely broken - and that's ASSUMING that Lieutenant fights are completely trivial for the Heroes and the Lieutenant will always flee on the first round, which is of course blatantly untrue. This is especially true when you can bring out 2 lieutenants at copper level (both Mistress and Master can), but is still true for all the others, the Heroes might simply be TRICKED into thinking they have a chance up until Silver level.

But if you want data, I have that too. Played one game with full rules against Master of Hunt. Lost so badly so quickly it wasn't funny.

Played a second game with the following house rules:

1) Both Master and Mistress have their special LTs bumped back to Silver level

2) If Heroes can sail the Revenge off the far side of the map against LTs, this counts as a Hero victory with the lieutenant fleeing.

I had Thorn. I had a pretty decent party. Laurel could one-shot most enemy ships with a Hawk-Eye cannon. My overlord was a relative novice, I played all the Heroes myself, so no rookie mistakes. I had ONE chance to assassinate the Siren at the very tail end of Copper level, but failed due to poor rolling. After that, with her doubled health and Gold-level skeletons, it became clear I would not be able to kill her before she could run away (I tried a couple more times and failed miserably). 2 cities were already gone, she and the Kraken would easily burn 2 more cities in no time (the 5th is easily killed by the Shadow Queen's plot). I quickly conceded.

Without Thorn, I would have had no chance whatsoever from the very beginning.

For now, we have gone back to original RtL. I have some ideas on what might fix SoB, but it's pretty hopeless as things stand.

inle_badger said:

They wouldn't have beaten the plot, just delayed it. There is backup to retrieve the lost key and more Lts available thereafter. If they had gotten the first (second) actually) key they wouldn't have been in position to stop the siren the second time around on the last key.

Corbon said:

This one is rapidly going down the tubes too.
The first two levels of the final copper dungeon completed last night. Neither had a chest! Both had twin Shades (silver, one set masters!) available to completely block forward progress! The first also had massed skeletons who were *all* undying! (And the OL got both skeleton spawns out in the first 1/4 of his deck as well!) The only weapon available in the 5 space market was Leviathon (not bought at double the price and melee weapons being the only thing we actually have enough of).
The last Magic Treasure weapon was CBed, and so was the Ripper, leaving our two mages and one Ranger with just the Dwarven Firebombs between them. At the end of this dungeon the party will retreat to Dallak ready to train and the OL has just subtly reminded us on the plot he is doing. Silver Plot upgrade, raze Dallak. So no training their, another week lost and the best market lost... (well, maybe that is a good thing? Its drawn 0 decent weapons in 25 draws).

So at the start of silver (before the heroes get a turn) there will be 3 cities razed and still only one Lt used.

This might be the end of SoB for us. this campaign has been so painful, and the other one so pre-determined...
I'm still a glutton for punishment, but my partner is not so much... Even butchering my heroes as they relentless grind forward a few paces (actually, the one thing they are is tough, with a 5Me/7RaMa Ar and a 7Ar+2 Shield hero, so he doesn't exactly butcher them) isn't much fun as Divine favour means he hardly gets any CT for his efforts and since I have no incentive to withdraw, there isn't much point, or fun, in actually playing the dungeons. There are no decision points, no risk balances, just painful grind with over two hours per dungeon level, despite experienced players and many turns having no real decisions.

The Exploding skeletons upgrade is incredibly brutal for Captain Bones, and so is the Double-cost-weapon-and-no-potions upgrade. So too is the Leech+Ironskin Razorwing upgrade for the Count.
I always thought nearly all the similar upgrades in RtL were pathetic and overpriced, but things sure switched in SoB

Pretty close to total disillusionment after a series of really grinding sessions, and just when the end is in sight, we will get screwed by a plot card razing our base...

Are there any ideas you would suggest to change it for the OL? No Plots? When a Lt. flees, they go back to their starting location, or an adjacent area that the heroes choose?

A houserule my group is playing with is this:

When a Lt. flees, the heroes gain 4 conquest and 250 coins in addition to rolling for loot after winning an outdoor encounter. The heroes have the right to refuse this extra money and conquest (not the rolling part, the rest). They are allowed to refuse the conquest because they could be screwed over on training or doing an extra dungeon before the campaign changes to the next level (copper to silver, silver to gold, gold to final battle).

We used this in our last RtL campaign and it seemed a decent enough deterent to help prevent Lts. fleeing all the time. The overlord is giving the heroes resources if he just flees all the time. I'll admit that the Lts still fled most of the time, but the overlord took more of a chance and left them on the board for more than just their first turn.

I still contend that the close Dallak plot card should not count toward the raze 5 cities victory condition for the overlord. People are already saying it is too easy for the overlord to win that way and having a card that moves that along for just some xp is kinda overpowered. Especially considering that the rest of the plot is geared toward screwing the heroes over as much as possible thereby making it easier to raze 5 cities anyway.

I can't say anything about exploding skeletons, but the Leeching + Ironskin Razorwings aren't that brutally overpowered. They are pretty rare monsters usually and there is only 1 spawn card in the entire deck, 2 if you add the treachery one. Yeah, they count for kills when they appear, but is that any different than usual for spawning? The only time my group has had a real problem with it is when they encountered the Razorwing outdoor encounter. TPKs are never fun, but that's what happened. Without leech, they may have actually fled the encounter instead, though at least 2 of them would have died anyway. The encounter is one of many cards though (and the only one with Razorwings I think), so even that is rare.

Not sure if any of this helps, but I will still hold out hope that there is at least one legitimate strategy in SOB for the heroes. Didn't RtL have a lot of problems like this before people figured out what to do too?

The_Immortal said:

Care to share them? I've just added a thread to the homebrew section for any suggestions.

I already posted in the Home Brews forums a couple of ideas^^

You trounced them because they only had 3 heroes!

When you play Descent, always use 4 heroes!