My group has just started the SoB campaign and the 2 that is playing the hero's, myself and a friend (who was the OL in our RtL game) are at odds about what to do starting off and where to go. After being utterly destroyed in the RtL game and not even getting a chance to fight the avatar, getting slaughtered in every dungeon while being dogged by 4 Lt's I have become extremely gun shy. I am worried to death that we are going to get crushed on every ocean encounter if we dont upgrade the ship as fast as we can. And head straight for the training grounds asap. But my friend says "no" on both the boat and the training grounds, but wants to focus on trait dice and gear. Please help us....no, no, please help with advice on what might make things less traumatic for me.

honKYkat73 said:

Be the OL.

Sorry, but if you couldn't handle hero-ing in RtL, you have no chance in SoB. The heroes have to do more with less, even aside from the broken balances in SoB.
I'd wait until the next FAQ comes out (probably in March) anyway, as it will hopefully fix a major bunch of basic SoB rules problems, whether it touches the balance issues or not.

The 'good' news is that the heroes can escape most ocean encounters with relatively little difficulty with no upgrades at all.

I second the idea of playing as the OL sometime. Even just in a one-off vanilla dungeon game. The more you learn about the OL's abilities, the more you'll come torealise he isn't invincible or omnipotent.

So there is no real advice on what would be best to do, other than flee for your lives. Well thats very.....sad. Good news is that once this SoB campaign is over I get to be OL for RtL. Then I can get my sweet revenge on my friend and brother.

honKYkat73 said:

Actually, I'm pretty sure our advice was "stop being a sissy baby and go save the world."

Once you've had experience playing as the OL you'll understand that he's not half as scary as he looks from the other side. SoB has some pretty serious balance issues from what I've read, but that's not something that any particular strategy can avoid. That's something FFG will need to address in the errata.

Steve-O said:

LOL that just made my day!! Thanks for the pick me up there.

But what I was wanting to know is what are the things people do in the game. Just about all games have a set thing in what you do, move this here, move that there, build up this, use that card now so on and so forth. So what is it for SoB? Is it based on what heroes we have (One Fist, Ronan the Wild, Jaes the Battle Mage, and Arvel Worldwalker) or the OL Avatar (Master of the Hunt) and his goal (Leviathan)? what skills are helpful in SoB and what ones are useless and we shouldn't pick up? Are runeblast cannons the best choice or are hawkeye? Most advice can be helpful. Playing as OL sounds like it would be a learning experience, but right now is not an option because things are set and I have to play heroes till next time.

So with that being said, what are some of the things that everyone has learned in the game that will help my group and the heroes we have?

honKYkat73 said:

Ok.

1. Heroes can't win unless the OL goes easy - FFG screwed up the balance here and until the rules change, it just isn't possible for the heroes to win. There has not been a single reported incident of heroes winning. I believe Sh'nar's group are in gold (just making it that far is normally near impossible) but I understand his OL is deliberately playing to get them to a final battle, not to win the campaign as best he can. So, the point is if you play as heroes, be accepting that you will lose and have as much fun as possible trying to do the impossible.

2. In copper (so basically your starting choices) you need damage dealing skills and abilities as much as possible.

3. You need 1 melee hero, 1 range hero and 1 mage, minimum. Your fourth hero is best as a runner, preferably with a magic/range capability. Having two melee heroes is simply to much of a risk on islands and in encounters. Your hero group arguably fits that model, but frankly it is a bit weak as One Fist can't use most melee weapons, Jaes underperforms in raw damage dealing and Arvel wastes a skill (she normally has 1 more than most heroes, which covers for her rubbish trait dice, but she misses out on this in Advanced Campaigns) and isn;t really a runner. Frankly, your group is very weak (though a great skill selection could still compensate somewhat).

4. Speed speed speed. Speed in dungeons, on islands and around the map. The slower you go the more resources the OL earns. This means that Elven Sails is the most important ship upgrade you can get.

5. Great Skills: Saj's/Koll's Marks, Keen Sight, Weapon Mastery, Runner (for a runner), Precision, Dead Eye, Tiger Tattoo.
Good Skills: Inner Fire, Cleaving, Shark Tattoo, Blessing, Spry/Nimble, Mighty.
Bad Skills: Evasion, Battle Cry, Relentless, Hand of Death, Piercing Shot, Fire Pact, Appraiser, Pickpocket, Beserker, Lucky, Brawler, Holy Aura, maybe Lightfinger and Alex the Wise.
Other skills are very situational - Prodigy and Master Archer can't be used for cannons (prodigy should still qualify as a good skill unless fighting Captain Bones, but Master Archer also can't be used with the good ranged weapons from ToI, so I really don't like it). Weapon Mastery is weaker than Mighty for One Fist.

6. You need to get out of the starting bottleneck before the OL can buy the Siren, which means basically do the Hollow Woods first and ensure you can afford the Elven Sails upgrade the next week, all without allowing the OL to get to 23+ CT (to get his monster upgrade before you train then hit another dungeon.

7. In general, unless fighting Captain Bones you need minimal ship upgrades. One good long ranged cannon (knockback) to threaten most island glyphs (threaten to knock monsters off the glyph if the OL places one there so your runner can run straight onto the glyph - but you don't really have a runner so might struggle there), Elven Sails, and not much else. If you are seriously trying to stop the Lts from winning the game (virtually impossible) then you might lengthen the Revenge (to get a hero closer to the lts on turn 1) and maybe a forecastle for elevated bonuses. You more or less never need the cannons in actual battle, just use heroes normal weapons.

8. Apart from elven sails, highest priority early upgrades are dice and/or combat skills. Killing silver monsters, including bosses, with as few attacks as possible is the highest priority initially - that is what will get you through battles the fastest, assume a good party mix.

9. Understand blitzing. Use it only while the OL has no Lts on the board and then throw it out the window. The game is won through Lt actions, and blitzing while there are Lts in play just gives the OL more Lt actions. This means that, quite contrary to RtL, through most of the campaign you actually want to burn through dungeons all the way (do lots of rumours if possible) even though this tends to put you behind the OL in the CT count, usually by quite a lot. That means the overall campaign is progressing faster, which means the OL has fewer cumulative Lt actions with which to win. But it also means you will in general be weaker than the OL through most of the game.

10. Get everything perfectly right, and you will still get hammered if your OL makes an effort. So really, you are better off throwing most of this advice out the window and just having fun doing whatever semi-random think you think looks great, which will get you hammered.

And that is what I was looking for, thanks a bunch Corbin, sorry you had to go through all of that. So pretty much screw winning and just have fun.

Corbon- Surprisingly, I find myself agreeing wit most of what you say, but do you really think Evasion is weak? I've used it once in a campaign (and once in a vanilla dungeon) and found it to be one of the most powerful skills in the game. I know that (y)our game experiences tend to be unique, but I'm sure we both agree that Copper skeletons, sorcerers, spiders, shades, lava beetles often fail attacks because of lack of range. Evasion usually makes the required range so high as to deter that hero from ever being the target of such an attack, effectively making that hero immune to many, many adversaries. What experiences have you had that make you think this is so weak?

-pw

I can't speak for Corbon, but I've never seen a skeleton or sorcerer miss from range. Skeletons have built in range buffs and sorcerers get sorcery to increase range if they need it. All Evasion will do is make them fire from a little closer. Also, lava beetles are immune to Evasion , as they have blast.

I've never seen Evasion in play, but I've seen Ironskin on an 8 armor hero, which seems like it would be a lot stronger. In the end it didn't really matter, as the OL gets conquest no matter which hero dies. If a character with Evasion is too hard to target, they'll just get ignored and the OL will go elsewhere for his kills. Even if there were a skill that made one character immune to monsters' attacks it'd still be weaker than a skill that lets the heroes move forward (like Acrobat or any of the attack granting ones) or restores finite resources (like Alchemist if the shops are all closed). It might not be completely useless, but there are better places to spend you money.

James McMurray said:

In this case, you did, pretty much word for word.

Corbon, will you ask to FFG for an update of the sob rules due to the unbalanced difficulty? Should we expect a revision of the rules in the next faq?

gran_orco said:

If there is time.
Note that someone else is welcome to prepare something. Having done most of the work preparing the existing 40+ threads I'm very low on energy for writing more, not helped by temporary personal circumstances.

Note that I have a thread on BGG asking for campaign results, or status if campaigns are unfinished, but have a meagre 6 replies aside from my own. Apparently interest simply isn't high enough...

I didn't know that post. Anyway, I can't help you because I have the game in spanish (obviously) and I do not know the name of the plots in your language. I will try to do my best to help you because I think that SOB needs a little change.

EDIT: I have posted my answer.

SoB as it was delivered is unplayable as a competitive game. It´s completely unbalanced, and I dont think that with small changes you can restablish some sort of balance in the game. Anyway I would like to play according to official rules, so I hope FFG solve the balance and rules issues of SoB, and so restablish the trust of the fans in Descent expansions.

Our campaign is not quite to gold, we only play once a month, so it's been going a little over a year now (I think we started Dec 2009) and our combined total is 375 or so, pretty much tied in CPs. The biggest advantage I can see that the heroes have done is make Dallak their home port (I think that's the city's name). Also, the first rumor they drew gave a bonus of +1 to every market in the game. So Dallak has a market rating of 6. As soon as we got into Silver, the heroes spent I think 3 weeks just going through the Treasure Deck and stocking up, ready for this stage of the campaign. Even with my upgraded monsters (Silver Eldritch, Gold Humanoid) and exploding skeletons, they pretty much walk through the dungeons. Probably their biggest advantage is Runemaster Thorn with his AOE Runes (he'll figure out a great position to teleport to, and then use his ~:Blast weapon and get Blast4 or 5 and wipe out almost the entire dungeon).

My biggest mistake was actually using my Lt's. I've lost both the Siren and Sweetheart because I didn't want to be a pansy and float around the edges of the map. The Siren I lost on a lucky death strike, Sweatheart I lost trying to flee and Runemaster Thorn just ported out there and finished her off. I have potentially 2 Lt's in Gold, but at this point I'm not even sure I want to bring them out, instead spending my XP on things that will help my final battle.

The group has hardly gone to the sea, hitting maybe 3 island maps so far. After killing the Siren, they had little need to go out to sea. That has helped immensely. Having Runemaster Thorn has probably been their biggest advantage. It's nearly impossible for me to do well on the Island maps since he just ports out, kills everything with a blast then next turn ports away. They bought the Elven Sails and the, um, Compass? the one that lets them roll one less die on encounters, so when they travel at sea, and so they can now pick the lowest of the two paths with 1 less die, often times they aren't even rolling dice during encounters. I think we've had one sea encounter the whole campaign.

Anyways, the group is having fun so we keep playing. No one feels it's a lost cause, but both sides are feeling like they are making progress and have a fighting chance at the end. Had I not lost the Siren then the story would be completely different, as I can see how tough she is to beat, especially with exploding skeletons. Also, if Runemaster Thorn wasn't in the group, it would be VERY different. But as it is, it's fairly well matched.

-shnar

shnar said:

The two key points, though really the second is related to the first.

1. OL screwed up because he didn't play objectively hard, and admits it.
1a. Almost every other campaign is won directly due to the activities of the Siren and any other copper Lt.
2. Thorn is the key because he can actually get to any Lt anywhere in an encounter on the first turn (ie before the Lt can have a turn), often with multiple attacks. No other hero can do this reliably. But a game that only gives a slim chance to one side if they have 1 particular hero is not acceptable.

In my solo trial campaign (on hold for several months) I actually managed to kill the Siren by sacrificing Zyla to get the Siren Webbed (Z was fortunate to survive the OL turn 1 and get in a crucial second round of attacks) and then the Siren failed a large number of unwebbing tests (6 of 7 IIRC) until the other heroes on the Revenge managed to catch up.
But it is really virtually impossible to kill the Siren before she can flee. I just managed to have a bunch of freak results (includin drawing the web treasure exactly between the last dungeon I did (where it could be Crushing Blowed) and the Siren encounter pile on top of each other.

Its kind of sad. I had no real idea that SoB was considered this terribly imbalanced. Is it a certain thing that an errata is going to be updated? I am just curious, as the game looks/ssems so spectacular.

simpatikool said:

You could always try GMing the game instead of OLing it. Play for story, not for victory.

Corbon said:

In that case, it was not because of being objectively easy. The Siren was sieging a town, I didn't want to give it up without a fight and just flee. I kept the Siren well protected by rocks, and 3 of the 4 heroes were dead. A lucky roll of drift brought the last hero withing swinging distance using the ship's boats. A lucky swing roll got him adjacent to the Siren. A lucky attack killed the girl. So losing the Siren was not due to not playing hard (Sweetheart, probably so, was thinking I should have fled on the first turn).

-shnar