I'm playing the Titan avatar in the Ascension plot and it seems to me that it would make sense to buy lieutenants and then have them all move and siege together.

They would all combine siege tokens to start rolling for city razing in no time and if the heroes come to stop you (if they have time before you combine raze a city) they have to go through the entire gang of lieutenants. You could fight and flee with the first couple lieutenants until they were worn down to the point that the remaining one or two could destroy the party.

Is this how OL's play the lieutenants most often? Or do you scatter them about, taking on different cities simultaneously?

I guess it may depend on the plot since there's that one (name escapes me) requires you to bring back scrolls from around the map.

SnakeEyes said:

I suspect the lack of answers tells it's own story. There is probably no general 'better' way to run your Lts - it wil vary from situation to situation.

I do like to have my Lts suddenly converge on Tamalir for a fast seige when trying a Tamalir Raze kill (though only when at least into Silver).

Thanks for the reply. I've been lurking for a few weeks and haven't seen lieutenant strategy discussed. This helps me to know that there's not some weakness to this tactic that I'm missing and that it's actually general practice. My only concern is stacking four lts. on top of each other and the party looking at me and saying "What the heck are we supposed to do about that?" We haven't played much so I don't know power levels well but it does seem intimidating. I don't necessarily want to cheese out the campaign and do something unfair to my new players.

So this is how you accomplish the "Tamalir Rush" that I've seen mentioned. Aaahhh...

Im still confused as to how many lt.'s cand the party attack in one week ?!

The wording of the rules, even according to the FAQ, are still a little ambiguous but I'm assuming, as was mentioned in the other recent thread, that the party can fight each lieutenant one at a time in the same turn. Just as different encounters.

But I just don't see how a party can overcome four lts. sitting on a city, like Tamalir. They have to get through 4 lieutenant fights consecutively. It sounds like pre-Gold that's a huge task for the heroes.

If one lieutenant gets in a bad situation, they can, hopefully, flee and just let the next lieutenant continue the wear down. But I guess it's balanced out by fleeing lts. going back to the Overlord keep whereas heroes can flee/die and they "resurrect" right in Tamalir, ready to battle again next turn, against a now less than four lieutenant gang.

I have found LT die quickly to power potions and battle's from the heros (not both at the same time mind you) The Lt look great on paper but if a few heros can get some battles in they really lose life fast.

Of course keeping the LT out of harms way for the first part of the encounter could help.

SnakeEyes said:

I may be wrong in this, but I thought you do NOT place multiple siege tokens on a city, even if there are 2 LT's there? Dont have the book in front of me, but I thought it read something like... place 1 siege token on any city which has a lieutenant there. (not one per lieutenant) and same thing with rolling for surges, roll one die for each city that is under siege, and has a lieutenant there, not additive. Can any confirm or correct this?

Personally I believe scattering them is better, since you want to be able to reinforce dungeons, and the Heroes move faster than you once they get the staff. So you have to be distributed to cover the dungeon spots with at least one LT.

Then, a question:

If there are indeed 2 LT's in a town, and the Heroes go there... A) they can first resupply, right? They get one free "visit" to the town buildings cuz they end their game week in a city. Then, who decides which LT to fight, first? If the Heroes want to attack Alric, but the OL wants to fight with Merrick first, who decides?

Can the OL declare a LT-Hero battle, BEFORE the Heroes get to use their Visit?

-mike

If there are 4 Lts on a city, you still only place 1 seige token. If you were allowed to have all the Lts place a seige token, it would be nigh impossible to stop a Lt stack from razing most of the cities after 1 turn.

I personally prefer scattering, unless I have a target city I want to reduce to rubble very quickly. In my current campaign, I'm the Sorcerer King so I ended up hitting Dawnsmoor first, which I'll try to raze when this dungeon is over that they are currently in. I plan on targeting cities that either:

A) Have good skills options, so Vyenvale and Frostgate (?) are going to be under attack

B) Have the best dice training: so Vyenvale and Dawnsmoor. Forge I can get with the plot card since I'm doing Obsidian Shackles. I want to force the Heroes to always have to go to Tamilir to train melee and range. Not a big deal, but still an inconvience.

Big Remy said:

Sounds reasonable and not "broken" but where is that stated in the rules? The FAQ doesn't make any mention of it and the RtL rules read "If the lieutenant begins his turn in a city, he can besiege it. If he does, the overlord places a siege token on that city's space, as long as it currently has few siege tokens than the city's Defense rating."

That means it's one siege token per lieutenant as that rule takes place per Lieutenant Order.

The roll of siege dice is once per game week, regardless of the # of lieutenants because that comes before the Lieutenant Orders and is independent of each particular lieutenant.

I'm just curious if there's an official errata or clarification on this or if I need to house rule it.

SnakeEyes said:

I agree with you and am pretty positive that each Lt adds a seige token. Each Lt. gets a turn, in which they can add a token if they want.

Sorry I was wrong (which is turning into a habit around here it seems lately, out of practice).

You can place multiple tokens with multiple Lts, but you only rolls once per week for the seige.

I think I am going to now stop answering any questions until I reread the rulebooks 3 or 4 times and I get my head out of my ass

But you're right about it, seemingly, being nigh impossible to stop a city raze with a lieutenant stack. So what are people's play experience with this - do you use it or do you purposely avoid it? It's either not broken and I can use it (as long as I tell my newb players how it's counterable) or I avoid it as being overpowered.

As the Titan with my keep just a few skips away from Tamalir, it seems like a no-brainer to buy all lts. then camp the stack a space away from Tamalir. That would essentially tie the heroes to Tamalir for threat of it being razed in 2-3 turns.

What I like about Descent is that everyone, including the OL, is "going for the throat" without limitations. But this may be one of those tactics in the game where it's a conscious decision to "play nice". Please educate me, experienced players.

Buying LT instead of upgrading monsters at the begining of RTL can be a big gamble. The players have a easy time geting gold and equpiment and if they win a few LT battles you are in big trouble fast. If they do not win it wil be game over quickly. Big risk but a big reward.

The Lt. stack can be seen coming from a mile away. It's really only dangerous against the cities directly adjacent to OL keeps, or against hero parties who don't understand how useful the Staff of the Wild is. I can't envision a world where the stack is unfair, but it still appears very imposing.

EDIT: "Envision a world"....ok, so Avatars with maxed treachery would maybe constitute such a world. Maybe.

Okay, sounds like the lieutenant stack isn't that big of a deal, despite appearances to newbs like myself. I'll try it out then. I'm either going to win or possibly lose a lieutenant or two. Either way, we'll get a feel for lieutenant battles.

I'm figuring I'm going to have 30+ CP's by the end of the first dungeon, which seems about the normal amount. That's enough to get my Silver monster upgrade for 30 CP and achieve the max monster upgrades for Copper.

After that, it's only 25 CP (one more dungeon of CP's) plus three weeks to get a full stack of four lieutenants.

Is this what I've seen referrred to as the "Tamalir Rush" or something like that?

Yeah, the Tamilir Rush tactic is just buying an Lt every turn and sending them to Tamilir. It can be made faster by buying the Transport Gem and immediately sending one of them there.

All sort of depends on what OL you are and where their starting Keep is. I've seen it work quite well with the Beastman Lord.

SnakeEyes said:

I don't know how to put this gently but if your players have given you 30 ct in the first dungeon they have already lost.

granor said:

That's not true. Everyone on the boards is saying that it can be fairly normal for the OL to be out scoring the Heroes 2-1 in the early part of a campaign. In given dungeon that the heroes fully complete they will collect somewhere in the range of 11-20 conquest depending on the the levels drawn. So 30 for the OL in the first dungeon dosen't seem extremely lopsided.

Nah, I had 28 the first dungeon to their 12, the next dungeon though I ended with over 70 to their 20 (total), so just plan on them making a big turn for the better around 200. Also, try to distract them from getting to the secret training or the legendary areas during each age. A city close to razing is most effective early on. I think if you can keep ahead of the heroes through silver you might actually have a chance at gold. We'll see.

quartersmostly said:

It isn't strictly true, but its very close.

In most cases, heroes conceding more than 23 CT in their first dungeon indicates a lack of forethought that will see this party crushed sooner or later.

You don't have to go all the way through a dungeon (in fact in many cases you definitely shouldn't).

Heroes who take what loot and CT they can get and scoot from a dungeon without giving the OL too much CT will get more opportunities before the OL gets an upgrade. Once the OL upgrades his first set of monsters things get much harder for the heroes - this is when the 2-1 starts to kick in.

Heroes who are stubborn enough or who haven't done even a basic analysis and concede more than 23 CT in their first dungeon are playing so sub-optimally that they are all but guaranteed to lose. Heroes who concede more than 30 in their first dungeon either have a crap party, a really bad dungeon draw, completely inadequate tactics (ie too slow is quite common) or are just not very good at the game - or a combination of several of these.

Heroing is tough . Especially early on, heroes need to play it tight and skillfully or they will fall behind badly. The OL has a much easier learning curve at the start, and much easier choices. Contrary to FFG advice, your best player should be a hero, your second best player should be the OL.

Inexperienced hero parties can suffer 2-1 pretty easily. However experienced parties should mostly be able to stay fairly close. Bad luck or a single mistake can change this even for experienced heroes though. My last party suffered a Lost encounter after pulling out of a Dungeon with the OL on 23CT - the extra week lost due to the 'Lost' meant that I couldn;t get them into a fresh dungeon before the first upgrade. To make things worse, they had a slightly dodgy party to start with (my best Ranger drawn out of 12 was Corbin, with 1 ranged dice, and his only decent skill was Weapon Mastery, so I had no Ranged character) and had a ridiculously large number of treasure draws before they got any decent weapons (its amazing how many ranged weapons you can pull when no one wants one). This party suffered badly at the start, and with the OL getting a lot of early advances in Upgrade and Treachery to hurt them more (Spider Queen), they were running at about 2-3 for quite a while, then blew out to 1-2 (120-208 or something like that) once Slaggoroth started smacking them over badly.

OTOH, the party before that maintained parity until late bronze when the campaign broke up through people moving away.

Corbon said:

Yeah, the party suffered from all these factors. This is all their second game of Descent ever. So inexperienced. But they figured out how to abuse Telekinesis near the end of level 2 so I've got that to look forward to now.

They've got two ranged heroes with bows. Didn't even realize this until after the session and I was reviewing the heroes. So they've got some sub-optimal equipped heroes. But they do have the skill Blessing and Skye so that's an effective -2 armor combo, which helped a lot.

And I think they got some ridiculously tough dungeon draws. Their first ever RtL encounter and they get faced by a master dragon and his crew (including an ogre) in a narrow hallway (Shreds of Light). The players were kind of in disbelief that the first thing they ever have to fight is a dragon. They get through that pretty well (to all our mutual surprise) but then they get the Cursed Fountain with three frackin' master beastmen (Commander +3 = yech) to contend with (including the dungeon leader) and the leader is unkillable until they drink from the fountain at the end of the level (meaning they've fought or ran through the gauntlet of a bunch of monsters). That's the level they just got mauled. Plus, I had worked up Doom and Brilliant Commander in level one, too.

I don't know. It might be wise to restart and just mark it as a learning session. But if I do, what's a good rule of thumb for the heroes to give up on a dungeon? After they've lost 20 CP? Right now, it feels like the American economy of a few years ago. They're going into CP debt and there's no short term repercussions. We're not going to realize the effects of all that wasterful CP "spending" until we put more sessons and weeks into the campaign. BTW, in my defense I did keep reminding them that they could flee the dungeon at any time. But in their defense, they had no reason to. They were there to game for the day and have fun and who's to know what "too much" CP loss is?

Guess we'll just keep playing through and if I dominate then I dominate and we all learn. I'm hoping to get a nice lieutenant stack going so that should be interesting and educational. And the party will also get some good experience under their belt for anybody who wants to play a second campaign some day.

SnakeEyes said:

My best advice would be to play through a few more weeks (with the knowledge that this is 'practice' only). Feel the pain of upgraded monsters. Run some encounters. Hit them with a Lt or two, just for the experience (for both sides) of a Lt fight. You might want to let them vary their party through this - just keep a tally of cash/upgrades and total treasure draws say, and each session draw a new party, give it the same number of upgrades and the same number of treasure draws, then play through another dungeon. All just to give experience and practice with different options etc.

After a set time, or set total CT, or set number of 'practice' sessions, restart your campaign properly with a completely new party. The practice run is over and all the knives are out...

Another alternative is to play a couple of sessions with 'Silver Start' and 'Gold Start' heroes (but let the OL spend his starting CT as well, its completely broken otherwise). This will let them see the tougher monsters (Gold and Diamond), how much better heroes can improve too, and the effects of nice equipment. Its worth noting though, that early in a level is the hardest for heroes (except extremely early in Bronze, when the OL is also starting up), so all of the upgrade options should still not be 'easy' for the heroes (eg Gold start heroes will see heroes with 5-6 upgrades and Silver equipment possibly go up against some Diamond Monsters!)

As for a rule of thumb on giving up inside a Dungeon, there isn't really one. But it is a case of understanding what are the rewards (in CT, cash and treasure) and what are the risks of going forward (mostly in CT conceded). Map positioning also comes into it (is the party happy to be back in Tamalir or are the a long way away and need to keep their map location for some reason).

In general, the only particularly fixed 'flee point' is stopping the OL having enough CT to upgrade next turn (remembering he will get 1 or more at the start of his turn as well). If you pull out before he has enough to upgrade then you will have another whole dungeon to explore without the upgrade hurting you. It is possible to do 3-4 dungeons (if you don;t get an unfortunate draw), each at 1.5* levels before the OL can get his first silver upgrade. That means more opportunities to buy Treasures and Potions as well as a higher proportion of cash and treasure chests will be available. OTOH, you will 'play out' most ofteh Dungeons close to Tamalir and consequently have more difficulties later - like everything else in RtL there are payoffs and risks.

*1.5 levels - the first level is the easiest as the OL is starting with no threat, no power cards in play and few cards in hand. If the heroes do this level at speed, the OL will often not be able to do much in this level - 1-2 kills for 4-5 CT max if the heroes are competent, possibly less if they are lucky. The heroes should get 5CT (2 from leader, 3 from gyph) and around 800cash and a treasure or CT from this level. If the heroes then do a cash grab rush and get out at the start of the nex level they may be able to get another coin stash, maybe another chest and maybe another glyph before they escape. So they have given up around 4-8CT, gotten 5-8 CT, 800-1200 cash and maybe a treasure (as well as an opportunity to buy a treasure or two at the market). If they are fortunate they can do this 2-3 times and still not have let the OL get to 24CT for an upgrade. Of course, a single bad level draw can ruin this...

If the heroes were to fight a gang of lieutenants in one week, what would happen if a hero were to die in one of the first lieutenant encounters?

Would they return to the party, healed of health and fatigue, for the next encounter? Or would they be MIA for the rest of the encounters for that week?

Corbon said:

How presumptuous!! :-p How do you come up with 23, and how does more or less than 23 create an indication of a group of players' collective forethought? That is one of the funniest things I've seen here. (tho it doesnt beat the other thread about the quantum dice rolling)

My Heroes lost about 50 CT in their first dungeon. They got some bad rolls... it doesnt necessarily indicate a lack of forethought. They really got hosed on treasure draws and miss rolls.

23 + 1 for the OL start of turn = 24. Means not enough to get silver critters in the next dungeon.

Simply giving the OL conquest over and over again shows the heroes do not understand the game from the OL side of the table and do not understand how the conquest the OL is gaining will affect the game.