We have recently began and advanced RTL camaign (WOD,AOD,TOI).

Heroes Team:

Spiritspeaker Mok with Quick Casting

Tahlia with Kinght

Vyrah the Falconer with Rapid Fire

Zyla with Leadership

It's start of Week 5, 23/17 (hero favor) they been in 3 dungeons already, passed 1 level from each and fleed

Here is our campaign in more details

http://www.descentcampaigntracker.com/campaigns/view/938

I am playing The Sorcered King with Obsidian Shackles. Got Snipers as starting upgrade and saving now for Silver Eldritch

Any strategic suggestion for overlord? Am i right to assume that i do not need Dodge cards at all in this campaign and can safely throw them away with 'Focused' as Vyrah's falcon always negate them on any target they worth playing on? Should i save for monster treachery to get acces to Legion of the Dead or buy trap treachery/event treachery first?

Your advices will be much appreciated.

Buy Lieutenants as fast as you can and swarm Tamalir. that hero lineup is only going to get scarier as the campaign progresses.

Well, being on the otherside of that right now. Our OL is playing the Sorcerer King with Ascension. We have not let him get anywhere near Talimar at this point. But that is pretty much your only viable option. If the don't think to upgrade Talimar, you have a shot

That lineup could only have been produced by picking heroes and skills. Either that or you have allowed unlimited redraws for character. I find it unlikely that someone could have drawn these skills. If it was random then i can only say WHOA. Zyla is kinda broken by herself giving her leadership and all the others having the best skills is quite amazing and highly unlikely.

If your OL is playing SK with ascension then you should be having a great time destroying him as the SK is the weakest avatar to pull of that plot with a bad LT and the worst placement in the map from all the avatars.

Well that WAS a TOTAL RANDOM. 1 out of 3 for heroes for each, and 1 out of 4 for skills as the rules suggest.

I know that Tamalir my only chanse, that's why Obsidian Shackles - for double dice raze.

But any strantegy while i'm wating for my chance? I was thikning begining of silver would give a good opportunity.

No matter what the heroes are they are always at a disadvantage all the way to the end of the gold level. Even with these uber skills an experienced OL will get the upper hand easy. Upgrade your beasts bring out more LT and just watch them get beat down again and again against hordes of razorwings against alric and get slaughtered by the minions of eliza. When silver hits the deck if you have enough for gold beasts and your LT's are close to tamalir is bye bye party unless they manage to equip themselves REALLY REALLY fast and have plenty of train already (even though it is quite impossible for them to get copper secret training as they need 4 full weeks to reach it and train while you are burning cities and/or sieging tamalir) The biggest weakness of the heroes party is not money as most guys think but time since you never seem to have enough running around defending cities and battling LT's.

Drglord said:

Have you ever played RtL before? That assessment sounds like the exact opposite of everyone else's (including our group's).

Xavyer said:

Once you get the Eldritch upgrade you will notice a big swing in the dungeons, especially with the sniper upgrade.

I would start by purchasing Event treachery after your upgrade in order to add some punch to your Lt encounters.

I recently won a campaign using Shackles (only got the benefit of the starting card, never played the potions/market one and the heroes gave up before Silver) and never missed a raze roll as a result. It was pretty sweet.

If you manage to raze Dawnsmoor that is awesome, will increase you CT on a weekly basis which I found useful for other Avatar Upgrades. Do they have the boat yet or are you safe there for the time being?

If you can get them to chase your Lts around it wastes time for them and adds to your CT count. The Transport Gem and moving your Lt up to Frostgate can accomplish that. Won't work if the heroes are going to ignore the siege, but talk up the skills you are going to make infinitely harder to get and watch as they struggle with the decisions. Frostgate has Divine Retribution for example, if Zyla were to get it she would be the worst target ever, 1 CT and lose all the nearby creatures if you aren't careful.

Hope that helps you out a little.

dragon76 said:

They already have a boat, just bought it. i have 2 siege tokens on dawnsmoor not sure if they are going to chase Alric. Thanks for the idea with the transport gem to frostgate. Not that i am very afraid of Zyla with retrebution - she can only be killed from a distance and with snipers it's not a problem to be far far away from her when i kill her. But sieging frostmoore is nice as the heroes needs a lot of turns to get to it.

No i haven't played before just 5 full campaigns of 120 hours each one so plz teach me about RTL. If your OL is bad then yes the heroes will roll over him. No matter which player plays the OL if he is not a bad player will have the advantage. If that is not in your case it means you are lacking in OL skills and tactics.

Guess we'll just have to agree to disagree then.

It's a personal opinion but if you haven't cycled players as an OL then you clearly can't tell if it on the one side or the other. Anyway simple tactics as upgrading the beasts and having all LT close to tamalir when the campaign switches are pretty failsafe ways. Anyways i guess you can have a whole list of options available to the OL to win the game so it is no point in arguing about it. There is a single exception ofcourse the eternal darkness plot which if ANYONE has ever managed to win that specific plot (not tamalir raze) should really let me meet his gaming group that managed to lose to an impossible plot. Anyway good luck against that team their skills sound nasty but the characters not so much if you don't count the best runner of the game zyla.

Drglord said:

Just remember, your group is not the only group around. You make a lot of calls that go against conventional wisdom. Sometimes playing in a closed group means that your games have a slightly different dynamic, and your 'truth' isn't the only 'truth' around.

The same thing applies to all of us of course, myself included. I'm just reminding you, because you make so many extravagant statements that really don't match with other peoples' experiences.

Xavyer said:

Doesn't matter what you REALLY think of the skill, it is putting the perception and plans out there for the heroes to stew over, the more they have to think about and plan around the easier it is to make them waste time. And time more than any other resource is the OL's friend whether you play vanilla or the AC. In our recent campaign it was the heroes stubborness about getting their Secret Master upgrade that led to their downfall. They insisted on getting it at the copper level while we were 30some CT from Silver and wasted 7 turns running around. That translated to 14 CT for me and brought us that much closer to Silver. They lost track of the big picture and later that same day conceded the game.

I tottaly agree with dragon that time is the biggest ally of the OL and that is why the secret training is really not that powerfull as it seems since in order to do it even with the staff of wind you need 4 full weeks and 4 weeks is plenty of time for the OL to lay siege or anyway make his way into where he wants. But conceding the game really sounds weak. We have a player in our group that whenever things look tough he wants to quit and also said the same thing this time as we were about to switch from copper to silver (we also missed our copper ST) and things turned out really good and even though we are still 35 CT back in the gold level (and probably stay that way behind or even more as we run around training - the avatar is the great wyrm) we have high hopes even though we are facing the best AVATAR of the game by far. (no one comes even near to the diamond dragon - ironskin armor 9 and fear 5 is insane)

Drglord said:

I don't think they should have conceded but I know the reason why they did. I was sieging tamalir with both Alric and Merrick while having siege engines in play. Had one siege token (Alric was there one turn before Merrick) already when the heroes showed up. They defeated Alric (some very smart maneuvering) and got their collective butts handed to them by Merrick. At this point we were at 213 conquest but still in Copper (week started at 197 conquest).

Next game week would've rolled to Silver, Merrick would have been twice as tough and I had enough XP sitting around to upgrade my monsters, most likely Eldritch up to Gold which would have made the Merrick encounter suicide with their current crop of treasures.

Three weeks to a siege roll on Tamalir with the heroes scrambling and hoping to get enough treasure to face Merrick wasn't a winning proposition for them so they conceded. Our first campaign and they were somewhat demoralized.