Hi everyone! Been a while since I posted on these boards, but I thought I'd stop by since I recently got back into Descent. A friend of mine who comes by regularly for board games was interested, so we started up a Sea of Blood campaign with him as the four heroes and myself as the Overlord.
Short story, we're now on the second campaign and have a number of questions. The first campaign was his first time playing Descent, and with Sea of Blood it was understandable that it ended badly for him. He had a number of good heroes, but up against Captain Bones, the Leviathan plot, and not being able to stop the Siren from destroying chains meant that the campaign ended just before Silver could hit.
Now, my friend isn't cautious, he's been frequenting the BGG forums and these ones, trying to get all the strategy advice and suggestions he could. So I don't feel like there is a problem in terms of one of us being just plain better then the other in strategy. The first game was his first, so it's kind of a fluke.
He jumped right into a second game and drew a pretty awesome team. His main tank is Lord Hawthorne, armed with Able Warrior. His ranged character is Ronan of the Wild, armed with a new silver Reaping Scythe and two skills, Dead Eye (I think that's the one that gives +2 DMG) and Cautious. Cautious was what he started the game with and has made my traps not as worthwhile, especially considering I now only get 3 threat per turn.
His main mage is probably the most annoying of the bunch, Shiver. He started the game with Mage Armor and now has 3 runes (a really awesome new silver rune weapon and two 'other' runes) giving him 3 armor. That, plus the base magic robe, means he has 5 armor vs. ranged/magic and 3 armor vs. melee. Of course, getting into melee with him hurts like hell since he has that 4 aura. If he stands in a corridor and I'm trying to move copper creatures past him, well, it's virtually impossible.
Lastly, we have his runner and secondary tank, Otaluk (sp?) and... well, whatever, the halfling on the wolf. He started the game with Tough (giving him a total of 20 life), which, coupled with his Stealth ability, means he is very hard for me to kill. He runs around with a cursed copper sword (1H, +3 dmg on 2 surges) and an off-hand weapon that gives him a bonus surge, meaning he usually does pretty good damage. He only *had* 2 armor (the past tense being important), but has reduced that to 1 since he just acquired the... Agile? (not sure if that's right) skill. It's the one that lets you move into any square for only 1 MP. This means that he could move through deep water at normal speed, and with only 1 armor now, it costs him no fatigue.
My lieutenants are a bit worried.
I'll get more into the world detail some other time, first we did have a few questions that have come up over the course of these games. I've seen a number of threads about some of these, and don't wish to start any giant discussions on them, I'm more just curious how people play them in their own games.
1. With the Shadow Queen plot, the Overlord can purchase an upgrade in Silver that seals off the Queen's city (I forget the name) and treats it as razed for getting more conquest per week. Would this also count as razed towards the victory of needing 5 cities razed?
2. This is kind of a big one, and we've tried it both ways. Apologies in advance if it's confusing to explain. When using the dungeon tiles, you'll notice that the walls extend out a bit into each square. When corners hit and you have two creatures on each side of the corner (diagonally adjacent) it would *seem* like LOS cannot be drawn between them as it hits that wall. Is the wall purely a decoration thing and you should be able to move/draw LOS between those diagonal squares, or is it definitely a block? We're currently playing it the former way, though we did play it the latter to begin with.
3. When the Overlord has sealed the Alchemist from cities, does this also prevent players from using the Merchant Boat encounter to buy potions? It says to treat as a city with an Alchemist of 3, so my initial inclination is yes, there would be no potions there since it says to treat like a city and alchemists in the city are closed.
4. I saw a giant thread about this and have read it, but still am a bit unsure on what most people go with. Large creatures and rubble tokens. We've been playing it that a large creature could move over rubble (and water) so long as they never ended their turn on it, and so long as it never took up all of their mini spaces. How do others play this?
5. If the party arrives at an island dungeon and decides to flee via the boat, what happens? In an encounter, they would continue their game week. In a normal dungeon, they would return to their home port. It makes most sense for them to continue their game week since they still have the boat, but doesn't seem to specify in the book.
There are other questions I can't think of yet, but I'll be back when I can remember them.
Oh, as for the world detail. If anyone is curious, I've been pretty judicious about tracking everything (more so in the second campaign especially). I might post a larger thread about it later, since I've been taking pictures of every dungeon/encounter and have been tracking everything in the Descent Campaign Tracker.
In Copper, he had his heroes go south to Orrik and declare it as their Home Port, working on some dungeons there. He stayed pretty close to me in conquest for the most part, his blocking with Shiver and reach with Hawthorne and other annoyances made it hard to get too many kills. He completed a rumor (for 2,000 gold) and got secret training (wounds for Shiver and Ronan, fatigue for Hawthorne and wolf/hobbit). During this time my Siren had destroyed Garnett, headed north to destroy the floating city (where you can upgrade ship for 1 CP less) and headed towards the free rumor city. He used his new Elven Sails and Compass to travel secret trails and make his way quickly up to the same free rumor city. There was a brief encounter between him and my Lt outside the city, but he escaped. Once in the city he went and did one more full dungeon to get a third map piece and the campaign progressed to silver.
He then returned to town. I didn't destroy it on the first week so he had a chance to train. He got some cool new silver weapons for his heroes (thankfully costing double because of plot), a new rumor (that got him his fourth treasure map piece right away, lucky bastard) and trained his hobbit/wolf with Agile (grrr!). He then went to the nearby treasure site and got the 2,500 GP treasure. During this time it took another couple weeks, but Siren destroyed the town and started to move to the other one nearby (with cheaper cannons). The Kraken was also summoned and headed south towards the bottom-right city.
We ended there, with him about to go into another nearby dungeon for the first Silver dungeon. At this point, I have all the Plot I could buy put into play (except the new Silver one). I have the Siren and Kraken out. I have the Mesmerism upgrade (to make sure his Orders don't get placed as often), Siege Engines, and the card that lets me remove 4 cards from my deck. I also have Gold Beasts, but Eldritch and Humanoids are still Copper.
Well that's a long enough post. Thanks for any help with the questions!