www.descentcampaigntracker.com/campaigns/view/1280

That campaign tracker is REALLY cool. We're going to try out the two main suggestions I see from Corbon to fix SoB:

• Win by razing 5 cities is removed (there's penalties already)
• Only the Siren can advance plots (unbinding, carrying, etc.)
• Possibly? getting rid of Divine Favor--but no Raze win condition I don't know if it's necessary or not.

Are there any others we should consider?

The heroes:

• Battlemaster Jaes (Ran's Mark)
• Mordrog (Defender)
• Ronan of the Wild (Spry)
• Silhouette (Trickster)

The avatar:

• The Count (Bloodsuckers)
• Leviathan

Anyway, they have a nice party composition I think, strong tank, solid magic, the primary runner has Trickster and the primary ranged can be the runner in a pinch. I drew my Avatar and Plot randomly and got the Count + Leviathan, and took Bloodsuckers. That Trickster is a very frustrating ability, and the tank has Defender, plus usually Guards. He fatigues enough to attack, then Guards, and if I attack him he'll get fatigue back. Anyway, had a fun first session but obviously the real problems with Lieutenants aren't going to show up yet. We thought it was 18-15 heroes today, but forgot Time Passes and Exploring so it was really 19-16.

I landed 3 kills (3+3+4) and cycled my deck twice; they grabbed every glyph, got a treasure from 3 of 4 chests, and all the barrels were full of suck. They had to Temple heal quite a few times (Trapmaster was the first card I played and I was dropping traps on them almost every turn--ended the last level with Trapmaster, Evil Genius, and the one that upgrades a master creature) especially after I dropped a master naga + 3 sorcerers, a beastman, and spawned 2 razorwings (leech+ironskin), in addition to the master sorcerer leader. They ended the first week with 2450 gold.

Next week we'll start week 2 (they'll probably train and I'll get the Siren), then I imagine they'll head for another dungeon, but they might try a rumor out--I hope so, they look pretty mean!

Anyway, rules questions that came up today:

1. Mordrog recovers 1 fatigue when wounded. Leech removes a fatigue for each wound inflicted, then extra wounds if out of fatigue. We felt the leech effect happens when damage is being dealt, and the recovery takes place after that. Pretty sure we did that correctly.
2. I hit the runner (Silouhette + Trickster) with Curse of the Monkey God successfully. As far as we could tell, he can still use Trickster, as it's a skill that doesn't require any action or attack. Think we got that one right, too.
3. The question came up as to whether or not you could Rest while restocking in town. My initial instinct was no you can't, because it reads that when you start in town you can either Restock again (same building or a different one), or declare an action and return to the glyph for 1 MP. After considering this more though, I think you could declare an action, but choose NOT to spend any MP, and just sit there, choosing to Rest. You would not be able to Restock, either. (If that is allowed, then in the future we may just add a Restock option to Tavern to get your Fatigue back, no cost.) Making a run for booze is just too epic.

Anyway, hope folks look at the campaign tracker, I didn't realize I should just be updating it as we play till it was over, but that was a pretty faithful recollection. The conquest and ending gold is correct, as are the items. Next week I'll bring my laptop and update the tracker as we go, which will be awesome!

Eugee said:

You can't do that. You can only have 2 max in copper.

Eugee said:

2. Your question can be taken a couple of ways, but I will try to answer both, just in case. The OL card Curse of the Monkey God is played by the OL, so Trickster won't work on it. If your question though is, if your hero is a monkey, can they use the Trickster ability on enemy figures that attack you, then yes, you may.

3. Restocking is a bit different in RtL than in vanilla Descent. In RtL, you cannot rest in any buildings. When you are adjacent or on top of an activated glyph, you basically forfeit your whole turn to go to town and restock at any building to use it there. On your next turn, you can choose to stay, go to a different building, or declare an action (battle/run/advanced/ready).

Okay, then I screwed up with the powers (not that it really changed anything, I got one master naga out of the last power, but the guy I tried to bring down was fine). The monkey was the latter interpretation, that while a monkey you can still use Trickster on later attacks. Finally, I did not let them rest while in town, but when I was thinking about it I had considered being able to. Only because you choose to either Restock again, or declare an action, then spend 1 MP to go back. Seemed logical that you could just neglect to spend that MP. It doesn't say you declare and action and you're back in the dungeon, just that you have to declare an action so you can spend MP to return.

It does, in the FAQ.

Pg15
A hero who begins his turn in town has two options:
Restock again (at the same or a different building) or return to the dungeon. If he returns to the dungeon, he declares a normal action (Battle, Ready, Advance, Run) and then must spend a movement point to move from town to the dungeon, just like normal. If he somehow can't do so (i.e. he Battled and had no fatigue left) then the entire action is canceled and the hero Restocks instead.

Awesome. Thanks for the reply!

By the way, the two things we're altering (no Raze win, and only Siren can advance Plot) I've seen you mention a few times, but what about Divine Favor? I saw your breakdown of how there's no thought in the decision to keep going with Divine Favor, but I didn't quite follow the finer points of that. Is there any chance you could re-explain that? We really want to try this campaign with the ideas you've mentioned to balance SoB.

Eugee said:

Ok then...

First point. The game in dungeons (and on islands) is essentially a resource gathering exercise. The heroes are trying to accumulate CT, cash and treasure and the OL is trying to accumulate CT (and occasionally reduce hero treasures with Crushing Blow). Other than this resource gathering, what happens in a dungeon is actually irrelevant to the campaign in general except for map position and occasionally quest items.

So, what it is really about, is who gets more resources faster, and enough resources for specific uses. This essentially is entirely up to the heroes - they can flee at almost any time (even if it takes a turn or two, and even some cost in killed hero, to complete). So at all times, the heroes are essentially deciding "is now the right time to flee or not" (mostly they are deciding not). This decision is based on the expected return of resources if they stay. Sometimes they need a certain level of resources in order to achieve a specific goal (train, upgrade vessel, buy stuff etc) but most of the time it is pretty much a case of "is what we get worth more to us than what he gets is to him". Even when they have a specific resource goal in mind, that doesn't change the base question, just the parameters of the decision - that 1 extra CT to get enough to be able to train next week is worth giving up more than just any old 'bonus' CT, so the heroes will push harder, stay longer, and risk more in order to get it. But it still isn't worth an unlimited price. Better usually) to delay training another week or two than allow the OL to upgrade another monster set before you can train for example.

The real game is actually on the map - that is where you win and lose, and the fun dungeon part is just about making the map part work better for you than the other guy.

Now, theoretically the game is roughly balanced so that the heroes are making this call, continue or flee, balancing resources earned and resources conceded, through most of the game. And it is fairly well balanced between equal players even though there are shifts in power balance through the game. All those shifts do is change the parameters slightly. How much gained is worth how much lost.

Divine Favour only has effect if one side or the other gets significantly ahead. Usually at this point the balance has altered already. If the heroes are ahead then they are generally paying less than they would if even, so they are as much focused on keeping the OL down, preventing him from buffing, as anything else. So they still have this 'how much will we concede in order to get our own resources choice but because their price is low, their resources are generally slightly higher they immediately need and thus they concentrate on strangling the OL's resources.
Basically, when times are plentiful for one side and weak for the other it is good strategy to strangle at the weakness, keep the weak down. If a team is weak you grind that weakness to beat them.

If the OL is ahead, the heroes desperately need more resources but have to pay a higher price to get them. But that higher price just leaves them further behind, so they have to watch every concession they make and their decision making needs to be tighter and more controlled and calculating then ever.
Basically when you are weak, its a tight balance in your decision making to not fall further behind - sports would call it playing 'catch up' football, which means high risks are taken but usually not just fail, but backfire. A really good team gets tighter and more disciplined when they are behind and forces their way back into the game that way - by simply playing better than they were. That works much more often.

However, if Divine favour is in operation, then what it does is change the cost structures. The resource cost ratio is tilted in favour of whoever is down - if the heroes are down they pay less to the OL to get their resources. If the OL is down the heroes pay more.
If the heroes are up, this means that it is much more difficult for them to 'strangle' the OL's weakness, since the price they pay is higher. Thus, they focus instead on staying ahead through their own resource gathering - they can only win at the end of the campaign, so pushing things along faster works for them even if the slightly worse cost ratio allows the OL to possibly catch back up. The net effect is that their decision of continue or flee is shifted greatly toward stay.
If the OL is up then the heroes pay a much reduce price for the resources they earn, so they might as well get as much resources as they can while the price is low. The net effect is to push their choice to ward stay again.

So to summarise, the normal game is all about the decision of when to flee and when not. That is the real decision making point (continually) in dungeons, the rest are just local mechanics. Adding Divine favour bascially pushes that decision in one direction all the time, which effectively removes it as a decision.
Thus there is no tension, no interest, just mechanical resource gathering.

Which is fun in its own right for a while, but really removes most of the point of the campaign - which is to add some outside stimulus and influence on decision making inside a dungeon so that it is not just a mechanical exercise.
You might as well just play a bunch of quests, where you always go to the end or until defeat because that is the nature of those games.

Okay, that makes sense to me--once Divine Favor kicks in, you either never flee a dungeon because you're so far ahead you're just racing to the Final Battle, or you never flee a dungeon because you're so far behind that you're not really risking anything to stay, compared to what you gain. It seems like Divine Favor might work fine for novices playing their first campaign, to keep the game from becoming a blowout, but for veterans of advanced play, it's really just putting the game on autopilot if one side gets a significant lead on the other, starting at a 25 point lead, which is hardly a blowout. If the OL gets 100 ahead of the heroes he essentially gets nothing for killing heroes, only cycling his deck and razing cities, right? If the heroes get 100 ahead of the OL, he's getting up to 8 CP for dropping a hero.

It seems like getting more than 100 CP apart is very unlikely with Divine Favor in play. From everything I've read about the Final Battle, a 200 point difference still isn't enough to automatically doom one side or the other; so would Divine Favor work better if the break points were just larger (say 50 points?).

If you wouldn't mind, I'd like to understand the Razing/Plot changes better, as well. My understanding of the problem is that once you have multiple lieutenants, the heroes can only stop one of them at a time. Because defeating a lieutenant only drives them one turn of movement away, they'll just come right back unless you stay there, not gathering resources. Because the penalty for fleeing the party is so small for the OL, there's almost no incentive to actually fight them. You're already denying them resources just by forcing them rush to stop sieges/plots; once you have the second lieutenant in play, you just siege two spots on the map and they heroes can only stop one of them.

I guess in RtL the reason this wasn't as big an issue is the penalty for fleeing was much greater, because at best it took 2 turns to return to a city you wish to siege. But in SoB they'll be back the moment you leave the city. In RtL the sieges are essentially going to happen near the OL Keep, and expand outward, while in SoB they can start anywhere, because breaking a siege on the south side of the map doesn't mean they have to travel back down again, they stay down south.

So I understand how eliminating the Raze win condition, and only allowing one Lt to advance plot cards (the Siren makes sense) is the simplest, least-invasive method to fix the problem. Would sending the Lts as close to the OL Keep as possible work instead? The landlocked keeps mean you can't send them back there, but you could send them 1 move away, right?

I'm curious to hear more of your thoughts on these fixes to the balance. I absolutely see why at Silver as long as you have 2 Lts the game should just unravel into an OL win, but having not played RtL I'm not sure how different it was in that AC.

Week 2:

I bought The Siren and laid siege to the bindings in Narrows of Gracor. The heroes sailed to Torrents of Dreadpeace, rolling an encounter! Dead Men's Tales at Sea King's Crown. They only had the base Sloop and Coldsteel Cannon, and it didn't take long looking at the map that they either needed to kill the other boat or sail of the bottom of the map quickly, lest they crash into the rocks. Mordrog grabbed the wheel and started steering the ship to the right, as the skeletons manning the Relentless failed to move any closer. I dropped the sails on the Relentless and tried to drop anchor several turns, while the Revenge continued to hurtle towards the rocks, inching slowly to the right as Mordrog would man the wheel and then Rest each turn, pumping his steering with fatigue each turn.

No damage inflicted to the heroes, but by they time they fled the encounter, the Revenge took 13 damage!

They arrived at the Torrents of Dreadpeace and quickly jumped ship, running onto the top right of the isle. I spawned in a beastman pack, and dogpiled onto Silhouette after she killed a master beastman, and killed her. Ronan activated the glyph and opened a chest, before I manage to dogpile onto Mordrog, killing him as well with a wildly successful Charge/Rage/Aim combo. Jaes finished off The General while Mordrog visited the Market and bought a Dragontooth Hammer. Some temple healing was purchased by Ronan then they entered Big Bertha's Brewery.

Mordrog was just a wrecking ball with his new weapon, dropping the master beastman I spawned and then Big Bertha shortly after, despite managing to drink one of the barrels mid-fight. After letting me cycle my deck, Jaes and Mordrog temple-healed before entering The Mortician's Parlor (again).

Silhouette led the dungeon scooping up a treasure (coins and potions only) before using Trickster to make a Razorwing (with Leech) attack another Razorwing. Since it has no fatigue, we decided it just did extra wounds to the other one. Silhouette made a crazy dash past all the monsters to activate the next glyph and refresh Trickster, catching me without enough threat to drop a trap on her.

After dumping 8 attacks from sorcers and skeletons on Mordrog, he's still got 2 wounds left, and then Silhouette opened another chest, getting Jaes the Minor Healing rune and making him a full-on cleric now. I kept putting the pressure on Mordrog but couldn't quite kill him again (he was below 5 health several turns in a row). But then he bounced back and chopped Doc into bits twice because of Undying. That Dragontooth Hammer is nasty! The heroes move out of the dungeon, leaving one lone sorcerer who miraculously survived a full round of attacks from 3 heroes, thanks to a bad rolls followed by a miraculous Dodge I played because it was the only card I had left. (I had Trapmaster & Evil Genius by the end of the first level.)

Needing to train and planning to buy Elven Sails, they return to Garnott.

Week 3:

I get another conquest and siege the Narrows bindings again (2 tokens).

Jaes trained Inner Fire, Ronan trained Marksman, Silhouette purchased Elven Sails (and repaired the ship), while Mordrog bought a Hawkeye Cannon for the ship.

Looking forward to Week 4!

Questions this session:

• The Shipyard says that a hero can go there and buy one upgrade or cannon. Can multiple heroes go there in the same week? Alchemist specifically states a TOTAL limit of X potions per week, same with the Market. The Shipyard just says a hero can buy one upgrade--but there's no stated limit of how many heroes can go there in a week. It seemed to me that each hero could get one upgrade/cannon per week.

So next week, if the heroes decide to attack the Siren (they have Elven Sails and can reach her) I don't know if I should try and fight with her. None of them have swim or particularly good range, so it seems like I could just stay back and try to lure them off the ship, but at the same time, Mordrog could mess her up VERY quickly if he actually did get close. I really don't want to lose my Lieutenant right off the bat, so I'm thinking about fleeing at the first sign of danger.

Comments, advice? (Not just about The Siren!)

Remember there's a link to the campaign tracker in the first post!

Eugee said:

Eugee said:

FAQ pg18
Q: If a monster is hit by an attack with the Leech ability, does it automatically take double damage since it doesn't have fatigue to lose or does it ignore the fatigue loss similar to how monsters ignore deep water fatigue costs?
A: Ignore the fatigue loss.

As a side issue (I believe you were in a dungeon not outdoors) not that two razorwings cannot attack each other if both are soaring (ie, they can if one is 'landed' and the other 'swoops'.

Eugee said:

You should have removed all the healing runes from the treasure decks.
SoB pg12
8. Search through the treasure decks and r emove the following cards :
Copper Deck: “ Minor Healing ,” and all “Treasure Cache” cards containing invulnerability potions (found in The Altar of Despair).
• Silver Deck: “Greater Healing,” and all “Treasure Cache” cards containing invulnerability potions (found in The Altar of Despair).
• Gold Deck: “Superior Healing,” and all “Treasure Cache” cards containing invulnerability potions (found in The Altar of Despair).

Eugee said:

Yes, multiple heroes can spend the week at a shipyard, just the same as multiple heroes can be at any other building.

Eugee said:

If you stay away from the Revenge, it is a very difficulty task to actually get to you - check out how painful moving through deep water will be for Mordrog. It is a big map...

You'll need to beware of heroes who have Magic Feats, as they can get the Fly with +2 Speed feat, and any very long range web capabilities, but otherwise you should be able to sit safely on the map for quite a long time. It is up to you to judge when safety ends though.

Eugee said:

Sorry, missed this one out...
Most people remove dungeon levels they have already played for balance and variability reasons.

Doh! Well Jaes is the one that removed those items so I'm going to blame him! We'll have him pull a new treasure then next week, that might have been the difference in getting a kill or not! We'll take your advice and remove the dungeons they've already explored as well; will there be enough dungeons to last the whole campaign then? If not I guess we'll just shuffle the deck again THEN.

Eugee said:

Effects that require fatigue, or cause fatigue loss do no affect monsters.

faq pg18

Q: If a monster is hit by an attack with the Leech ability,
does it automatically take double damage since it doesn't
have fatigue to lose or does it ignore the fatigue loss
similar to how monsters ignore deep water fatigue costs?
A: Ignore the fatigue loss.

ignore that, didn't see that response above already

We only added in Week 4 this session, but it was a busy week!

First we made Battlemaster Jaes draw a new treasure (since we didn't take Minor Healing out) and he got Cloak of Deception, which was promptly handed to the runner (Silhouette). I let them Temple Heal the orc twice from last game as they were planning to heal him with Minor Healing before I took it away.

Time passes for Week 4, then I place my third siege token on the bindings at Narrows of Gracor.

The heroes set sail for the Narrows (with their new Elven Sails) and attack The Siren. We drew The Sandbar, and after some debating and reading the rules, figured out that I just place the Siren and her skeletons on any map edge. I put them on the far end from the ship, with the sand bar and rocks in the way. On this Location, the heroes control the sharks, so that was kind of weird.

The encounter was fairly boring. The Siren sat on the sandbar behind the rocks out of LOS while the skeleton tried to assault the boat while being devoured by sharks. I respawned all 6 skeletons and rushed the boat from behind, losing 4 of them to Guard actions and doing little else. I respawned all 6 again a few turns later, to the same futile effect. They had dropped both sails and were floating on a green die current to clear the rocks before steering the ship over. The short version which took way too long is that they put up the sails and steered to the edge of the map, then sailed all the way down to the corner, dropping the sails and throwing anchor. They spent fatigue to resist the siren the entire encounter and got one volley of attacks off, inflicting 10 wounds total. I balled all my remaining threat up into a big multi-silver attack which fell short on range, then fled the board.

After the encounter, we discussed how silly the whole thing was. The only reason I fled is because they were controlling the sharks, so the water wasn't really safe. If not for that, it was a complete stalemate--I could have just swam up to the far corner and they would be unable to do anything to me, nor would they have to leave the map. Eventually my skeletons would have chipped away at them enough (spawning in 6 at a time every few turns) to get me some conquest. We decided to re-examine our house-rules to fix the game at this point. The only result would eventually be Party Flight, even though they were completely willing (and able) to kick The Siren's ass in.

So we're changing our rulings up; instead of only The Siren can Raze/Plot, if the boat reaches the opposite edge, the Lieutenant's "blockade" has been broken and the siege stopped--Lieutenant Flees. Because this makes it much easier to break a siege, we are restoring "Raze Five Cities" as a win condition. But we still need to deal with it being extremely easy for Lieutenants to just re-siege the next turn. Not wanting to change the rules anymore than we already have, we went with a 1 turn "timeout" when the Lieutenant flees, but otherwise no change--we're hoping this makes it more like RtL. So I sent The Siren to the Torrents of Dreadpeace (which they have already explored/cleared).

We're not dead-set on this house-fix, and this week I would have fled anyway because of the sharks, but we need a solution to that nonsense eventually.

The heroes then explored/entered Narrows of Gracor.

Everyone but the runner took the portal back to town while he ran up to activate the glyph on the island. Then everyone came back in through the new glyph and proceeded to just wreck face. An interesting tactic that Silhouette has developed is to Ready, advance up and do whatever, and then Ddoge. Any attacks that aren't really dangerous to him, he'll have me re-roll the good dice, and then when I'm counting up how much +damage/sorcery/command I get from a Master creature, he flips over that Trickster card and negates it. Annoying. At the end of my turn, he burns 2 fatigue and switches to Guard (hero ability) and takes a potshot at something.

So two of them temple heal and one buys a Bone Blade, which is given to Mordrog to pair with his Crystal shield. Shortly after returning to the isle I catch Ronan out of fatigue (Ghost Armor) and dogpile him with all the sorcerers and naga, dropping him. Then Mordrog does all the heavy lifting, taking the leader down to 2 remaining health before Battlemaster Jaes finished him off. I throw a spawn of spiders at Ronan again, ineffectively, and get Brilliant Commander into play before they move to the next level. They get no treasures from the chest and pick up over a thousand gold on this level. They've already temple healed 6-8 times by this point though.

The next level is King of the Rotten, and to preface--I got blue-balls on this level. On a single level I spawned Master Beastment (started with a Master Beastman too), a Razorwing Flock, another Master Beastman, and a Skeleton Patrol! I just plugged the first bottleneck of the dungeon, feeding more and more monsters into it. I kept getting up to 15 threat plus enough for a spawn, and would flip the Reinforcement marker over then flip it right back as the next wave came in. After severely beating down three of the heroes they managed to finish off the main horde of monsters and retreated back to temple heal, while I stockpiled up again. Eventually they managed to kill off Ham the Cage, as I failed to hit Silhouette with 2 health left on a Rage with one Aimed attack! (Three misses in a row!) I was really getting stomped at this point, as they had 2 glyphs and 2 leaders to my one Ronan kill.

The last level was The Inquisition. I actually really dorked up my initial strategy, but it worked out anyway. I pushed 3 sorcerers, a master naga, and master razorwing into the little room with Maroon the master sorcer (and Command 2) in the cage. It didn't occur to me that I could just turn the statues MYSELF to let him out, but it worked out okay in the end, keeping him from being attacked. The two chests here BOTH yielded 2 treasures, which they really needed, getting Pacify (Jaes) and Plate Mail (Mordrog) and then later Crystal of Tival (Ronan) and Crystalize (Jaes). I spawned in a Skeleton Patrol early, followed by a Hellhound Pack, and finally Beastman War Party. I was layering Command and using the hell hound breath weapons (which aren't great at Copper) boosted by command to make them worth hitting with. Then I pounced with the master razorwing to finish off Silhouette.

Shortly after that I dogpiled Jaes with the piercing hellhounds and master beastmen, picking up Command 3 between the leader and the master beastman, dropping him as well! My bloodlust still not sated, as Ronan pushed into Maroon's chamber to start turning statues, I caught him low on fatigue again, and turned the last statue one turn with the Skeleton before chucking a piercing shot with Command 2 at him, then the master razorwing turned the statue the rest of the way, and swooped down to finish Ronan a second time for this dungeon! Mordrog advanced and spent some fatigue to drop 10 of Maroon's 14 health before Battlemaster Jaes again swooped in to the steal the credit with Crystalize.

The other heroes finished off the master razorwing and Silhouette (down to 2 health) fled into the portal. I spawned a pair of sorcerers and threw them in front of the portal exit but failed to do any damage before they were killed off and the heroes left (grabbing the last glyph and barrel before leaving). The opted to stay in Narrows instead of returning to Garnott.

During the last level there was a part where Jaes wanted to use Ran's Mark (during your turn, sacrifice 2 life to heal allies within 3 squares by 2 life) then go to town. I said your turn starts after declaring an action, and you choose to go to town instead of declaring an action, so he couldn't do it. He stayed and went to town the next turn, but couldn't find an FAQ ruling on it. Thoughts?

So having fun, really seeing the huge flaws with the encounters, especially with The Siren, and wondering if the new house rule we're going to use will have an impact we're not considering. Obviously it makes me need to attack the heroes to keep my siege, but at the same time if I'm winning they could just throw up full sails and run for the map edge and still win! I obviously don't like that--but really the Siren is kind of a wuss anyway, so I don't know that it matters yet.

EDIT:

Oh! We kind of started week 5, I did Time Passes, and The Siren is recovering from her loss this turn, while I bought Silver Beasts--I field more beasts than anything else right now, especially with as much spawning as I do, plus I really like Razorwings with Leech and need them to be tougher! The heroes set sail for Orris (they want Gafford now but dont' have the compass yet), and rolled an encounter. We packed up the boxes at that point, so that's where we'll be picking up again. Seeing as Silhouette is almost dead, I expect them to sail off the map as fast as they can! I imagine they'll spend Week 6 in Orris as well to Train.

Heh. They temple healed 11 times today!

Week 5:

I upgraded my beasts to silver, while the Siren spent a week recovering from her blockade breaking.

The heroes started off with an Encounter en route to Orris, Plague Ship at the Wild Vortex!

Despite the heroes steering the ship successfully, I rolled a 2 on the current, which should dash them against the rocks (can't do anything about it!) so rather than take that ******-XP I just moved the rock out 1 square more. Wasn't able to kill any heroes, put 9 damage on the ship and they got the leader pretty quickly, down a few wounds.

They arrived in Orris and temple healed a bit, bought some potions, sold some items and bought a Crystal Shield, then the week ended.

Week 6:

The Siren recovers and heads back to Narrows of Gracor, while the heroes stay in Orris and train. Jaes headed to the shipyard to buy Dead Man's Compass and repaired The Revenge. Silhouette & Ronan both went to the Training Yard to upgrade a power die to silver, and Mordrog trained Tough (up to 20 health now).

Week 7:

The Siren sieges the bindings at Narrows again (1 token), then the heroes head inland to the Queldan Flood and enter the dungeon:

First Level: The Gallows

Silouhette immediately headed back to the temple (with only 2 health after the encounter), and shortly into the dungeon I drop Ronan with 12 damage from a silver naga! Jaes finishes off the leader (Giant), then Silhouette & Ronan scoop up the chests/glyphs/coins and move onto the next level (Ronan snags the Great Bow and gives his Crystal Shield to Silhouette). I get DOOM! in play before the level ends.

Second Level: House of the Unholy

This level started me off with a bunch of undying skeletons, plus I spawned in spiders (silver), followed by razorwings (silver), and shortly after beastmen (copper), before the razorwings have been killed off. In rapid order I kill off Ronan, then Silhouette, then Jaes, and finally after hurling everything I had at him for almost 4 whole turns, and Leader + Rage, Mordrog! (I really had no other good option to attack, as the others were across the dungeon trying to re-enter. The silver beasts were piling up on them faster than they could clear them, and they kept debating leaving. But there was a chest they wanted to open (looking for Dwarven Fire Bombs) and as they had almost killed all the beasts now, decided to stick it out as I wasn't up on overall XP totals yet, either. They killed off the leader shortly after then moved to collect the remaining gold and barrels, when Mordrog turns around and buries his Bone Blade into Ronan (Trapmaster + Dark Charm) and then a skeleton pierces in the killing blow! (5 kills in one level!)

Third Level: Mirabelle's Fall

They start off solidly, groaning about the three razorwings I started with, but do a good job of keeping me from spawning anything, including landing Silhouette in the pit after scooping the chest, coins, and key (and getting his Fire Bombs finally). Catching him without any fatigue remaining, I sent all the razorwings chasing after Jaes, and leeched him to death. I continued moving away from Mordrog, and just making it very hard for him to battle (out of fatigue and I wouldn't attack him). Finally they kill off the razorwings and Silhouette moves up to the blue rune-door, eating a spike pit (trapmaster), followed by an exploding door (trapmaster again), and then decided the glyph wasn't worth it and ran all the way back to the entrance with 1 health left (his cloak saved him from the 8 trap damage!) The hell hound pair spawned on the other side moved up, the first barely getting its breath weapon up to Silhouette, curling around the corner (crystal shield stopped it), and the second using Charge to run past the first one, and finishing off Silhouette again! I really though I was done at this point, all finished, no more killing to do.

The Mordrog pulled out his Dragontooth Hammer and did a Run to base up with the Master Silver Naga (Mirabelle) when he was suddenly overcome with Dark Charm, and one-shotted Battlemaster Jaes. To quote Jay (playing Mordrog), "Okay, I actually feel bad about that one."

I did manage to put Silhouette all the way down to 2 health again (used the leader to force him to Trickster, then pounced on him with spawned razorwings while he had no fatigue) but the crystal shield saved him. Finally they scoop up the remaining coins and got out, choosing to remain at Queldan Flood, as they have a full treasure map and want to go retrieve it.

Final Results:

Total Conquest: 160

Heroes: 75 / Overlord: 84

41 till Silver

Gold: 4350

Kills: Ronan x3, Jaes x3, Silhouette x2, Mordrog x1

Dungeon Final Score: 17-34 (+17)

Eugee said:

1. I am pretty sure you can't upgrade and heal during the same week, but I could be wrong.

2. You don't get the bonus damage from Trapmaster when you play Dark Charm.

3. The OL cannot play Dark Charm during the hero's turn, especially once he is already running?

4. I don't understand how you can for Silhouette to use leadership to force him to "Trickster"? Seeing as Trickster is a monster ability.

Eugee said:

Not that it probably mattered, but Trapmaster and Dark Charm do not combine.

Dark Charm is still your best chance of a kill when the heroes power up though.

Eugee said:

For other newish players, note the difference once silver monsters put in an appearance (though I have to say, Leaching razorwings are particularly unholy).

1. I am pretty sure you can't upgrade and heal during the same week, but I could be wrong.

A hero who visits a Shipyard while his party is training in a city may purchase one Ship Upgrade or cannon. In addition, the Revenge may be repaired at a rate of 100 coins per 10 wounds (or fraction thereof). It is possible to repair any number of wounds in a single week, up to the Revenge’s maximum. The
Revenge may be both upgraded and repaired during the same week.
It reads to me like the Revenge can be healed any time a hero is at the shipyard, not just by a concentrated hero action.

duhtch said:

1. Corbon covered that part--you can.

2. I didn't add the bonus damage. I added the note "Trapmaster + Dark Charm" to remind me I only got Dark Charm out because the threat cost was 7, forgot to put it in the write-up though. I had to discard my entire hand to get the 7 threat for Dark Charm, but wow it was worth it.

3. I played it on my turn; the last player to act was Mordrog, who elected to Run all the way over next to Jaes. On my turn I played Dark Charm and he turned around an one-shotted him. I think my conversational description is too confusing there.

4. Trickster is a Subterfuge skill. Silhouette was out of fatigue, but had Trickster available. So I attacked with a Master Silver Naga Leader w/ Stun (White-Green-Green-Silver-Black) and asked if he wanted to Trickster--he couldn't risk taking that hit, so he did. There were no monsters in LOS to redirect to, so the attack just failed. Then a pair of silver razorwings flew over and pounced on him, doing double damage since he has no fatigue. I "forced" him to use Trickster on the master naga so that the attack would just miss instead of hitting one of my other monsters.

re: Silver monsters

Corbon is right; getting a dungeon that favors your upgrades beasts was just brutal. When they lost the second hero in level two, they said, okay--is that chest over there even worth this? They decided it was because there was still a glyph and leader's worth conquest to grab, and pushed on. When they lost the fourth on the same level, they were really debating every turn whether or not they should just flee. The main issue is they were still going to have to survive another turn of razorwings zipping around the dungeon sucking their souls out before they could even glyph, so they kept doing a fighting retreat, and by the time they were READY to flee, they'd actually pulled off a victory and didn't need to. Since our campaign totals were still close they decided to push on.

Which is when Mordrog one-shotted Jaes, and we laughed for a few minutes at Jay, "actually feeling bad for that one".

nice i completely forgot about trickster as a skill in SoB