Hello, We have invested a few months into this campaign (this is our first run) so far and I would like to share some statistics and see what people think about starting a new campaign vs continuing this one.

First of all, the conquest totals are 74 heroes and 128 overlord. We are roughly in game week 10. EDIT: Actually heroes have somewhere around 90, I foolishly messed up the totals this session and had to retrace to count them.

The heroes have 17, 3, 7, and 35 exp, they have upgraded mainly dice as well as wounds/fatigue 1 time. I believe they have also purchased 1 tamalir upgrade as well as the staff of the wild and the raft.

The overlord (Spider Queen) has 7 xp of the 128 total, and has purchased the three merricks, all of which have never been encountered, which is apparantly a big mistake for the heroes, I will get to that shortly. She has 'into my parlour', all three mob classes are at silver level, 2 trap treachery and that is about it, save the 3 upgrades I originally bought, one for avatar, one for extra dice for encounters, and one to ditch 4 cards from my deck.

Now it seems to me (overlord) and the heroes that they are very likely to lose this campaign, possibly in just a few turns if I decide to siege Tamalir. I believe the main reasons the heroes lost are these:

1. They have not encountered a lieutenant yet and have not attempted to.

2. Now that I have 2 lieutenants sieging and one on the way to siege and the campaign JUST recently turned to silver, the heroes (having only 1 silver treasure so far) can barely do enough damage to my lieutenants, especially Alrick with his 7 armor and ironskin. I have already razed one city, this will be a second and third if they don't kill them very soon, and then about 2 game weeks later I will begin a siege on Tamalir if I want to show no mercy.

3. In the beginning their strategy was unclear as it is our first playthrough. So they moved southwest immediately to a dungeon, but then they moved back to Tamalir and they continued to move without a destination for quite a few game weeks, which to me seems highly unwise as you should be picking a secret area or boss dungeon or city to head to. Or even hunting down a lieutenant so they can't cause so much damage and leave you in such a dire situation as they are in now with 3 active lieutenants silver class while they have no silver treasures.

4. They have only visited the tavern 1 time and got 1 rumor, though they completed it, it was not the best reward. The one to discard and put a hero to 4 wounds instead of dying, probably one of the worst really. If they had tried to do rumors more often it seems they would have had a chance for at least one of the better rumor rewards and improved their odds.

Here are a few reasons I could think of why the overlord is ahead:

1. My first upgrade was Eldritch, followed by I believe Merrick and trap treachery.

2. The heroes have drawn many of the higher numbered dungeons, including 2 or 3 of the tomb of ice expansion ones. From what I've seen the higher the dungeon the more difficult it is, though this may not always hold true, it certainly does in many cases. Now on top of the dungeon levels being higher they have involved, more then not, eldritch monsters. Meaning the heroes have been pitted against silver mobs for a large portion of the copper campaign, and in some cases (at least 2 or 3) nothing but eldritch.

3. I certainly do not use poor strategies in most situations. But at the same time the heroes make few mistakes as well.

In summation I believe that reason 1 and 2 for the overlord have been huge factors as well as the fact that the heroes never engaged or even chased down a lieutenant in the first 10 weeks or so.

I would greatly appreciate any input on this situation as both the heroes and I are beginning to agree this campaign looks hopeless for them. Even if I weren't to siege Tamalir (which I wouldn't cuz I'm nice) they feel they cannot kill Alrick even with a proper supply of silver treasures. I don't know what to tell them, because I almost agree, it seems you would need perfect rolls and plenty of power potions to stand a chance against alrick at silver campaign level. Please tell me how these fights go as you have surely been through them and similar situations. The final thing that kicked the heroes down making them want to give up, was them hearing the silver stats of Alrick because when they finally wanted to encounter him it was 1 game week after the campaign upgraded to silver.

You did only buy one monster upgrade through the entire copper level right? Just the total score is only 202 and you must have had at least two extra monster upgrades since silver level started, which means the heroes have done nothing for two weeks and the campaign level ended more or less exactly on 200XP at the end of a week, and you didn't have a city razed then yet either.

Regardless, I'd run a couple of Lt encounters - one with the Lt at the current situation (silver level, all monsters upgraded) and one 'just before' silver level - with the Lt still at copper and only one monster class upgraded. Then let them start again with the score 1-0 to OL.
But they should definitely fight some encounters before restarting, even if just 'made up' for the sake of it. They need the understanding that experience can give them of what goes down in these critical fights. It sounds like they've been afraid of them before, or just not bothered. Both are generally wrong, but can be right if only at certain times.

The heroes generally have to have their wits about them strategically and be able to focus and plan right from the start or they get screwed. First time parties are rarely capable of this - people just do not intuitively respect the whole Advanced thing.The OL can afford to be a bit more casual, although getting anything before a monster upgrade is usually a bad mistake.

EDIT: Oh, and they haven't actually lost yet, though they very well might. It only takes a handful of the right silver items and they will still mop the floor with silver monsters and be competitive against silver Lts. Its very possible to get half a dozen silver items from a single dungeon, between chests and market.

I have messed up the conquest totals during our last session and posted the wrong info, because it definitely went silver then there were 3 more weeks. In fact while writing this I realized I didn't add the heroes tokens from this session on to that total. So the campaign went silver and then I spent the next 2 turns upgrading my monsters while the heroes moved and upgraded at the secret area which I let them do 1 week out of copper anyways. So they have certainly made some horrible strategic decisions which is what our conclusion was. I am very grateful to hear your opinion.

At the end of the night I strongly urged them to have the fight with the Lt. on our next session just to see what happens and to know how it will go as you have advised as well, so I'm just going to make them do that. They won't mind.

I also agree that if they had a handful of good silvers they could potentially kill at least the two of my farrows even if I have the upper hand with upgrades. However Alrick does seem very difficult with his 7 armor 60 wounds and ironskin, on top of the regen. We played out some practice rolls with some of the better silver weapons and it would seem they would need quite a few very good rolls in order to kill him. (maybe 10-15+ nearly max damage rolls)

Is Alrick the kind of Lt. that should be picked off early? It seems if he is allowed to become silver and gold he just becomes that much harder to kill?

Another thing I failed to mention is that the heroes still only have 1 skill card each. So another bad decision is perhaps that they haven't been seeking out valuable skills. Again, thanks for your input.

Alric is tough, but fatigue and/or power potions plus dual wielding a morning star in the off hand can chew him up pretty quickly.

Heh, I am sitting in exactly the opposite boat. I've been 100 CT behind the heroes since before silver level switched, they took a healthy lead early on. Like yourself this is our first run of the Advanced campaign of RtL. Since I was the most familiar with the Rules and FaQ I decided to allow the hero group to choose their first four heroes rather than random draw. Not an overwhelming group but defineatly a pretty good one, armed and skilled right, they are devastating. Taking an early lead in CT and getting lucky in levels for gold and high rolls on their chest draws, it didn't take them long to be able to purchase the skills and upgrades they wanted, and the store draws provided the rest.

As OL I chose to buy the extra die for all beastmen upgrade as my starter. Since it was my first time, I was riding abit of a learning curve too, looking back I doubt I would have chosen it, most of the first dungeons I pulled didn't pull Beastmen or only a few, even with the Spawn and Hordes cards they rarely came into play and after one round with command stacking, made sure reds were dead. Made that choice for upgrade useless.

All three of my Lieutenants have come to their end, and being that at the end of this current dungeon we'll be at 45-50 points into the gold level if not more, I don't see a point in summoning another, instead pushing for upgrades to creatures, treachery and avatar upgrades.

Currently I have upgraded Humanoids to Gold, Eldritch to Silver, bought three Lts, ShadowClones for my Avatar, One Spawn and one Event treachery, and that's it. I havn't even looked at my Plot cards, only managed to raze two cities (was very close to three more). My last Lt died simply because of a one space miscalculation on my part that exposed him to a full round of hero attacks, with one of the heroes dead this still wasn't survivable, took four hits and died well. I had them down low but they still won. Even if they face a Lt, if he can't fly, he may find the encounter map drawn to be as hindering as the heroes do. My first two Lts died due to strategic mistakes also on my part (in one case it was my first battle with a Lt, lost Alric, and in the other it was just the map and Lady Farrow couldn't make use of range and was cut off before I could flee.) Skills which enhance amount of attacks the heroes can throw out will be their greatest advancement in this game. Going from a simple round of 3-4 attacks with every hero player having the chance for 3-4 attack individually turned this game heavily in their favor, the fact that they got those skills early on didn't help. I can't harry the heroes, but this may work to my advantage as well, no Lt means the heroes will be taking their time, giving me weeks to train and upgrade between dungeons (another reason not to pull a Lt, though I still have eneogh CT for Gata or Krattz)

However even with their offer to restart the game when we were nearly to flipping gold, I turned them down. Even if it isn't in my favor and I'm guaranteed a lose I want them to see it thru to the end and get their win in. I want them to face their first Avatar oppenent. Sadly the way this played out, the next time we play they will be way to confident. I chose to play a few ways, one, not siege Tamalir (cheap way to win no matter how you look at it), two, I allowed the heroes to choose their first character rather than random draw, three, almost all through copper I had to "educate" them in how to play the Advanced game right (partially because of its subtle differences from Vanilla, and partially from lack of understanding of why certain things were the way they were). This meant for awhile I had to sorta be on their side to make sure they were playing right, when I was sure I had explained everything eneogh and that they had a handle on it, I stopped, and now they face an opponent (unlike earlier on in the game where I was playing a little neutral).

They may be behind, but that doesn't mean much, my heroes saved alot of their die upgrades for later, they targeted skills (usually at towns where the risk of a siege might remove them forever, this after losing a round of favored skills early on when the first city fell), and fatigue upgrades (damnablely dangerous for the OL). In an average game session as a group they usually do far more attacks in a game then I manage to get off. For every time I roll the die, as a group they roll twice. But with upgrades monsters got harder, and they don't go down in easy hits, upgrades in treachery made them even more wary. I play as strategically as I can but I know I already have lost this war. They bought Rumors early and the dungeon cards pulled lucky for them making the early levels before the rumor level veritable cakewalks.

They are not so far behind as they think, in fact, without current totals of XP in your campaign I can't say for sure, but mine stands at heroes 260 overlord 145, though till about two dungeons ago when the heroes encountered an insta kill death drop rumor dungeon, I was even further behind, by almost another 25 points. Mostly up to this point my players have felt like this was a cakewalk. Occasionally they did have some pretty near misses or a tight time of it, but mostly the die always came up a few points short, or that dreaded X came along and turned the tide of a battle in one turn. Now that monsters are harder they are learning that keeping CT out of the overlords hands is the best possible strategy.

Simply, you as overlord are supposed to have a chance to win this game too, like it or lump it for the players who chose to be the heroes. If they concede the game to you rather than struggle thru and see where things really go then they have admitted a win for you. However this game can swing wildly in the favor of one side or the other very easily (it is still a game of strategy but it is also still a game of chance). Meaning sometimes the hero group will struggle, other times the overlord will, and sometimes the game will probably have some semblence of being even. Giving up just because they are on the struggling side sounds a little too easy. Since this is your first campaign though, as a group you can decide it was a test run and start over fresh and see how it goes. Lol the point of being a hero is adversity, tell them to struggle on thru, real heroes would XD, though you could overrun Tamalir and put them out of their misery.

Thanks for you replies James and Veritech.

I really like your standpoint, and I agree that they shouldn't just give up. I tried to explain to them over and over again that when I have a silver upgrade right away, then they draw a lot of my silver mobs in dungeons they are going to have a really tough time. On top of them being slitghtly behind the entire campaign, during our last session they finished a dungeon then spent turns training and the turn after they finished that dungeon the campaign went silver and I upgraded the other two of my mobs with my remaining exp. On top of all that, I had 2 cities that were going to be rolled for siege before they could even get there, and then they saw the stats of my lieutenants and just wanted to give up.

I really like how you describe the heroes plight and I agree they should at least try. I urged them to push on and at least fight a lieutenant and see how it goes. But now they are opposite of your heroes as well, they are starting to think the game is horribly unbalanced, which it obviously isn't.

But if they do get beat badly by my Lt. then I will certainly agree to restart, because they could have done so many things different that it's a fair demand.

Good info all, thanks.

Well there is also the Legendary dungeon level for Silver, "The Fools Rapids" since they are behind you in the campaign in CT. It's primary purpose is to upgrade the hero groups knowledge in some form (skill, die, wound or fatigue upgrades), course they'll have needed to get the boat to get there.

BenBenitrio said:

One of the cool things about the Advanced Campaign is that it creates a much longer, continuous adventure experience for Descent - something fans were adamantly demanding from the game prior to their creation and this is probably the main reason the AC expansions exist.

One of the poor things about the Advanced Campaign is that it creates a much longer, more drawn out game experience for Descent that can get tedious for one side or the other if it becomes apparent that early mistakes have lost them the game. Comebacks are not impossible, but they can be daunting tasks for a hero party (or overlord) who have just realized they're currently on the losing end of a game that will still take 40+ hours to finish.

I'm not sure how much vanilla Descent you and your group played before jumping into Road to Legend, but if it wasn't a lot (ie: didn't play each of the base quests at least once) then you might want to go back and play vanilla for a bit before pulling out the AC again. In order to succeed at the Advanced Campaign, particularly for the heroes, it really helps if you already know the dungeon game backwards and forwards and can thus focus on the larger picture of the overworld game.

If your heroes are still trying to figure out when it's better to play Guard versus Aim (*) while stumbling through the first few dungeons of an Advanced Camapign, odds are they won't make it to Silver Level without giving the OL enough CT to win hands down. And, of course, it's not very satisfying as an Overlord to put all this effort into seriously trying to win only to have the heroes give up half-way through the game because they "obviously won't win." The heroes should be planning their moves on the overworld map and banging out dungeons (or fleeing if it's too hard) as a matter of course along the way.

(*) trick question, you never use Aim. =P

Steve-O said:

Lmao, yah Aim and Dodge both are never used in any of my games, the hero players quickly recognized the high usefulness of Rest and Guard, I think I've seen an Aim order played twice, Dodge never. They are about as useful to hero players as they are to the OL. My hero players prefer the silver and gold items that let them reroll dice or give them the permanent Aim option. Probably the least used addition to the game on both sides of the fence.

"Never use Aim" is a myopic viewpoint that can only hinder someone's play, not help it. "Rarely use Aim" is ok.

James McMurray said:

QFT, also don't underestimate the usefulness of Dodge, particularly when combined with a Stealth potion.

Aye, as has been noted, originally they aren't useful much, when you get ToI they will climb in use during certain battles and situations. That is something to keep in mind later on when you expand the collection you currently have. Their use will vary depending on which expansions you add to your overall collection.

Thanks for the input everyone.

Steve-O: we have played a fair amount of the originals, we even kept playing quite a few more dungeons after we got road to legend before even opening it up. I would say we have played approximately 12 to 15 of the quests from Journeys in the Dark, Altar of Despair, and Tomb of Ice, we do not own Well of Darkness yet. And we have played at least 2 from each if not more. So we are all fairly well versed, since I have mainly always played overlord and they have always played heroes, we know our sides pretty well.

No, the heroes do not make aim and dodge orders, though I like the strategy of dodge with a stealth die. In fact we very severely noticed the imbalance of the Journeys of the Dark because it was obvious to everybody that the heroes had a big upper hand. And we all thoroughly noticed the new balance of treachery cards and new mobs, etc...

A typical battle with us starts with the heroes moving forward and guarding as I typically spawn my mobs out of their reach. They will continue to move forward and guard until they can either make multiple attacks or until they realize I have hidden in some trees or behind some ice or whatever there is. Generally I retreat until I see an opportune moment to strike, or until they have exausted their moves and are no longer guarding. While the heroes are advancing in this fashion I typically will have spawned an extra group of mobs, so the 'waiting for the right moment' strategy seems to work even better most times. I don't see anything the heroes could really do different to do better. They usually don't have any problems with a dungeon full of copper mobs. For instance, before all the giving up happened, they had an encounter with bane spiders. I managed to do all of 5 wounds to them.

I really don't think the heroes have played poorly in combat, just poorly everywhere else. Like you said, making bad decisions on the world map is what made their campaign die.

From what I understand as heroes, you need to make a destination right off the bat, say a city with certain skills, or a secret trainer, or even to go chase a lieutenant. Unfortunately for the heroes, they wasted turns going any direction just to explore dungeons. They bought a couple skills but only because they happened to be at the city they were training in. Spent most xp on dice upgrades (not too horrible) but when it came time to upgrade at the secret area they were running low on xp, though they were all able to upgrade. But now, they have no favorable skills except for spirit walker which they drew in the beginning, but Xyla, the heroe who has spiritwalker, is pretty weak and has never had a good enough weapon to really 1 shot much. Even though she has breath, so perhaps their distribution of weapons could have been better too, because I had been scared of the first spiritwalker attacks but they actually didn't kill much, though with breath she can weaken a lot of mobs. We have been playing it with 5 spaces too, not 10

In the long run it seems they have just made understandable mistakes. Though I would be very curious to hear how other people's combats usually go. Thanks all.

I'm in a group that may be facing a similar situation soon; I'm one of the players in that group, not the OL, but after just three game sessions, we're already more than 30 points behind the OL and I see almost no way of catching up. This is our first time playing Descent and may well be my last, which may also make it the last for most of the group, since I was the one who organized the campaign and I'm one of the more dedicated gamers in the group, particularly when it comes to longer games. We might go for a campaign reboot, but I think we're more likely to just shelve Descent and find other games.

I'd be really interested in knowing how the group that managed to get 100 CP ahead of the OL ever did it. I don't think we've made too many tactical mistakes, or even that many strategic mistakes. Nevertheless, we're all just cannon fodder for the OL at this point. The OL is the Sorcerer King with the Eldritch upgrade and Snipers, and it seems like half the dungeons have skeletons and sorcerers, with a few dark priests thrown in for good measure (and the Sorcerer King can spawn them almost at will and almost never runs out of Threat). With the exception of Trenloe with Plate Mail and a Crystal Shield, the armor-piercing of the skeletons and the sorcery of the sorcerers just shreds our armor, and there don't seem to be that many ways of upgrading that armor to increase survivability, at least not before silver level, and by that time, we'll be even farther behind. Obviously, I'm dealing with a sample size of one campaign, but the game seems absurdly unbalanced in favor of the OL and I am rapidly losing interest. I do not consider it a social obligation to continue another 30 hours of gaming just to honor the OL with a preordained win. Gaming should not be a chore.

screwed up post............................................................................

Gramarye said:

In fairness, Sorcerer King with silver eldritch monsters is a fairly powerful combo for the OL in Copper.

Let me ask you this: how many of these dungeons full of skeletons and sorcerers have you fled to avoid handing the OL CT? You might want to research the so-called "blitz" tactic and see if that could help you out.

You also said this is your first time playing Descent, so I think your biggest mistake (as a group) was sitting down to play the advance d campaign on your first spin. No offense intended, but the AC is designed to build on lessons and tactics you should have learned while playing the basic game, where you can win or lose in a single session and not have to stare down 30+ hours when you already know the OL is on top.

For some reason, people say to themselves "we've played board games before, and RPGs, so we don't need to learn the basic principles of this game before jumping into the 40+ hour multi-session advanced version. How hard could it be?" Descent has a number of counter-intuitive tactics, particularly for the heroes. The overlord has an easier learning curve, so it's no surprise he's catching on faster. Play the basic game first. It's not called "basic" because it's easy, it's called "basic" because it's not advanced.

Edit: Let's not forget the possibility that you're doing something incorrectly and giving the OL an advantage he shouldn't have. The thing about the AC rulebook is that it says near the start "everything from the basic rulebook still applies unless it is explicitly contradicted here." This means two things: 1) not all of the rules are written in the AC game rulebook. 2) even if you did read both rulebooks, some rules will be changed for the AC, and you might be using wrong version.

Even for those of us who knew the basic game inside out before the AC expansions were released, this caused a bit of confusion. For someone just learning the rules, I shudder to think of the possibilities.

First, if you as a group, including the OL feel that the game is done, discuss it as a group and maybe tip your hat to the OL conceding him a win, if you didn't like the game then nothing can convince you to keep playing it. On the other hand, if you do think it might be enjoyable or fun. Start again, with new heroes and maybe a new OL. Take the stuff you've learned and put it to use once more. If you still think after a second round of play you dislike the game still, then play something else, there's lots to do, as to your question, I've answered it the best I can.

Gramarye said:

There were several factors that put the hero players that far ahead of me. Early on at the start of the game I failed to recognize the importance of Lieutenants and didn't see much point in razing cities till I got up a few more and could risk it, bad mistake on my part, other than supporting dungeons with the power card, Sir Alric was pretty much unused for several weeks, around 5-7. I was moving him up to a farther city to start my first siege (targeting skills), I should have sieged nearer to my OL keep.

I was playing Humanoid, which didn't come up often in dungeon level draws (not nearly as much as Eldritch does and did)I was playing under the Beastman Lord. Several times, I watched helpless as a hero with one or two wounds left managed to escape the dungeon or get to a point where they were completely out of harm, not that they knew I had no cards to play on them, just that I really didn't. This meant alot of them would escape to spend time at the temple healing while the others collected treasure and made their way towards the next level knowing that at near full health and blocking any LoS near them they had an easy escape and anything I tried would be an annoyance or a waste.

The hero players visited areas that gave them skills that brought them extra attacks. They also all had 4-5 movement each, nooone was slow. Runemaster Thorn and his teleport became devastating and unpredictable. When the mage wasn't teleporting close to groups of monsters and unleashing flame attacks enhanced with Power Pots or fatigued dice upgrades. Since I wasn't playing Eldritch, this meant alot of Skeletons and Sorcerers died fast. He was doing something similiar to get close to dungeon leaders and hit them hard and fast. With no Guard abilities he'd strike at the largest targets, not worrying about dying since he was only worth 2 CT to me.

Their tank, Nanok, currently has Ironskin, 28 wounds, he upgraded all his black die as soon as he was able, and now wears the Knights Ring (originally this was the +1 armor belt from the store), so 6 armor and with the skill Parry, 9 vs. Melee, and likes to walk around wearing Curse tokens for fun. I have injured him with a full turn of attacks, but rarely come close to killing him. I did get all his Curse tokens when a Rumor level gave me an instakill pit and several critters and a trap with knockback. This is not to say he is unkillable, just that it would take a very large hit and some cockyness on his part to stay in the line of fire rather than flee. He is pretty much immune to all attacks from Skeletons, Sorcerers, and quite a few other monsters who can't roll the damage to hurt him (stacked command occasionally helps this). Why would this be a problem? He has Taunt... I have to play very strategically against him to outmaneuver stuff like this.

Add to that two of the better Range hero characters and give one of them Rapid Fire, and the other Precision.

I have had a hell of a time making the game a challenge for them. My Lts pulled some of the worst encounter maps and at least two died by miscalculations on my part. Once I did upgrade Humanoids in Silver and managed to get some Treachery into play things evened out. Now they face Gold Humanoids and Silver Eldritch. Even at Silver I can rarely do more than nibble at them with Skeletons and Sorcerers.

Below you can see the four hero player sheets, all of them have highish movement points, and above average fatigue. In any situation where they are full they all had the following for movement max Thorn: 14, Nanok 14, Grey 13, Silhouette 15. This is of course in prime condition and if all fatigue is used for movement. So in certain circumstances all of them were runners, and even not running, none of them were slow. Having a fast tank can make alot of difference.

Trade that off for just attacks instead of movement and it goes something like this with MP being what they could move with leftover fatigue. Thorn: 3 (2 MP), Nanok: 2 (4 MP), Grey: 2 (5 MP), Silhouette: 2 - 7 attacks, 12 if she uses one fatigue to drink a potion, and has continuous LoS to targets, this of course means her MP varies. Any of them can increase thier MP with a Stamina potion if they have one for more movement.

Finally I'm not certain which expansions you might be using, but I have AoD, WoD, and ToI which considerably alters both the Basic and Advanced versions of the game. Feats give hero players boosts in power, speed and various other things to use against the OL adding some power to them.

It might just simply be the hero sheets you ended up with that made this game even harder. Eldritch Avatars are hard, especially the Skeleton King. The Blitz tactic would work brilliantly early on if the OL seems to have the upper hand in a dungeon draw. Grabbing as much loot and treasure as possible and fleeing back to town allows you to better arm yourself early on. It also prevents the OL from getting jumps in CT above the hero players.

Sometimes it will be luck, sometimes it will be skill, sometimes it will be sheer overkill, but a good draw of hero sheets, a balanced party (never more than one tank), the right mix of weapons and items, skills and upgrades, will make all the difference. Plan ahead as a hero player before you even start, know what skills you want first and which ones you want overall (obviously planning with any hero that has similiar skill choices).

I oversized the picture, here.

All right, I've had time to do a little self-reflection and felt like sharing it with the forum to see if it sounds to your more experienced ears like I'm being fair (to myself and to my group).

Party Selection

We made at least one serious error in party selection, possibly two. The first was playing Red Scorpion at all, which I knew was a mistake from the beginning (based on it being fairly obvious that having concentrated traits was much better than having dispersed ones; there's not much room in the game for a generalist). The second may have been my own character selection, Karnon, when we already had a primary tank, giving us two melee characters, one of which isn't as heavily armored as a tank should be.

Rather than doing 4 sets of 3, we picked our characters from one combined set of 12:

• Trenloe
• Sir Valadir
• Bogran
• Mordrog
• Tetherys
• Andira
• Laurel
• Mad Carthos
• Sahla
• Red Scorpion
• Karnon
• Zyla

We ended up picking Trenloe, Karnon, Andira, and Red Scorpion. (I suggested to the player that took Red Scorpion that she take Laurel of Bloodwood. She declined based on the picture. She's not necessarily the most committed gamer in the group--and after the setup session, she's never actually played with us, due to other real-world events.)

I thought Karnon would be a good choice because his 5 power dice stayed with him, and the fact that in vanilla Descent he has only 2 skills to compensate for that increased power would hurt him less in AC mode because everyone starts with only one skill anyway.

That said, that left our group with 2 melee attackers, no real ranged attacker, and no real runner. Based on what seems to be the conventional wisdom on these forums, I should probably have gone with someone other than Karnon notwithstanding the above (or we should have had the Trenloe player pick someone else and have a somewhat lighter tank, but I think having at least one heavily-armored character is basically a must).

I think our skill selection based on that group was OK:

• Trenloe: Knight
• Karnon: Cleaving
• Red Scorpion: Born to the Bow
• Andira: Spiritwalker

Equipment and Training Selection

I think I may have compounded the error of picking Red Scorpion by suggesting that she take Backbiter when the option arose. In practice, it didn't increase her lethality all that much and has allowed the OL to harvest her for even more CP with just as much abandon as before. The most coldly practical thing to do with her character might have been to simply have her return to town at the start of each level and bake cookies. That wouldn't have been the most fun for her, however, and I wanted to give her at least a shot of participating meaningfully in the action.

The others' equipment seems fine enough. We have the Ring of Protection, which we've experimented with giving to both Andira and Karnon, though it hasn't increased their survivability all that much.

I'm playing Karnon as the offensive tank: chainmail, Dragontooth Hammer.

Trenloe is the heavy tank: plate mail, sword, Crystal Shield.

Andira is the group's best hitter: wizard's cloak and Staff of the Grave. She still gets killed by those blasted silver skeleton Snipers all the time, though.

Thus far, the only training we've done is a +1 die upgrade to their primary attack trait each for Trenloe (melee), Andira (magic), and Red Scorpion (ranged). We might have been better saving that gold and getting skills rather than dice, but I'm not sure about that.

The only Tamalir upgrade we've purchased is the temple upgrade. It's been useful, but not so useful that I couldn't be persuaded that there are better things we could have done with 5 xp each.

Dungeon Strategy

We have not been blitzing. Reading the links that others have posted on the player strategy hints from BGG, that was clearly a strategic mistake. The lure of the higher gold and CP rewards from the dungeon level 3 leaders should not have been so strong. We were ahead in the CP total 8-2 at the end of the first dungeon level; by the end of the dungeon, we were significantly behind, enough so that that OL was upgrading his eldritch monsters to silver at week 3. It's been downhill from there.

We're currently exploring a rumor dungeon as our second dungeon. That may also have been a mistake, though it's the ToI one that ends with getting a character Ironskin at the end, which I thought was a good idea because of the survivability factor. That said, it doesn't do that much good if we're so far behind in the CP count by the time we get it that the OL can simply increase her lethality across the board, while only one character gets the Ironskin ability.

Factors Beyond Player Control

The OL is playing the Sorcerer King and took Snipers with his initial 15 pre-game points. Based on what people on both this forum and others have said, that is simply a powerful combination, especially with the early upgrade to silver eldritch (though we might have been able to stave that off longer had we simply left the first dungeon after level 1). In particular, it has made it hard for our tanks to actually be tanks. Karnon is vulnerable in his own right, and neither he nor Trenloe can do much to block the skeleton snipers from shooting at Andira and RS behind us, and it's hard to have them stay in corners all the time (even with Andira's Spiritwalker) without leaving too many spaces not in LoS and therefore vulnerable to the OL spawning behind us.

I'm going to raise the issue of a relaunch at our next session. We'll see how it goes. This would only be our fourth session, and we're only halfway through Copper level, so it's not too much backtracking, I hope.

I'd like to point out to those groups whose heroes are way behind on conquest - that's okay. I think a lot of people new to the advanced campaign don't realize that it's entirely possible for the heroes to be behind by 150-200 conquest at the end and still win. The goal of the heroes is to survive until the Avatar's keep - the actual end fight in RtL is a pushover; 2, maybe 3 rounds, tops. As long as the heroes can prevent the overlord from completing his plot/razing Tamalir, they're golden.

Short version: Gold equipment makes even the wimpiest hero into a Hellenic demigod. Get to gold level, then go forth and make the overlord wish he'd won sooner.

That seems like a stretch ... the OL in my game in playing Obsidian Shackles, anyway, so we're basically guaranteed to reach the end fight eventually .

Gramarye said:

He also has the option of razing Tamalir.