Hi,

A fresh report of the JitD quest 4 (Spoiled Brat) with following additions to core game : I used Treachery, as specifien in WoD, and used the treasures and town items plus potions from ToI+WoD. I removed the spawn etc cards that referred to monsters from the expansions, to keep the amount of different monsters limited.

There was OL(me) + 4 heroes, of the heros only one had played Descent previously. Three of the players were extremely experienced gamers of various war games (DBM & warhammer games, OCS hexawargames, and plethora of other games).

The character selection went so, that the heros chose from the characters that I had painted figures for (total 12), divided into three categories, at least one of each category. They chose the characters based on their appearance, without referring to their actual abilities. I have painted some of the better characters, so that biases the result a bit. Characters were : Andira Runehand, Brother Glyr, Nanok of the Blade and Vyrah the falconer.

Even though the players had a limited experience from Descent, they immediately had mostly the right moves, and gained fast really good equipment. In this scenario, the heros get two copper treasures from the start area, and they soon had two very powerful tanks, and quite good rangers and mages. There was very little I could do to oppose them, and prior to the final encounter with the Dragon Graaz I had failed to do anything else than slow them down.

The only error the heros did, was to spend too much time securing the dungeons, and gaining money and treasures even though they already had strong characters. By the time they got the question mark that contained the rune key, they were a bit worried of traps... (one was a monkey at the time being). So I had time to gain the powers for : drawing extra OL card, activating two monsters when an area is revelaed, adding monsters to a revealed area, plus some quickshots, aims, doges, traps for doors etc.

Once the heros got to meet the Dragon, they something like 20 Conguest Tokens (all that are possible by that phase), and I immediately killed three of the heros when the door was opened (10 CT for OL), and then some more... In the end the heros finished with a lead of one Conquest Token, which is not a bad result for anyone.

It tooks us from 10 to 18.00, with a lunch and coffee breaks, so a full days work !

The heros played a really solid game, and deserved the victory, and the Pricess has been returned to her father. Next time I'll grant the heros a bit more demanding quest, perhaps something from the ToI.

As an advice for people playing this scenario with four heros : some toning down of the heros is required to keep the middle part of the game challenging for the heros. Our group perhaps had a bit too good combination of players and characters, but in the end the game was really tight, so time well spent !

In all honesty I've done that quest 3 times, and barely made it to the first room let alone making it to the side with the Dragon.

You've got the treachery cards, and that is the great hammer on your side to just destroy their gear, and totally mess them over.

Hell the first room with the ambush just destroys players, and locks them in there for a couple turns without getting any gear.

So I don't really see how you aren't just crushing your heroes by the time they hit the rune key.

Interesting read. I have ToI, with WoD on the way. We played the first quest the other day, and it seemed like the Feats were going a long way to helping the heroes steamroll me. I look forward to WoD's treachery swinging things back my way.

exsulis said:

I guess I just tried to have enough of treachery to have a chance with the heros, no need to crush anybody, just have an almost equal opportunity for all to win (with intention to bias it just enough to have OL win of course...). I can't remember anymore what treachery I took, but in the end the game was well balanced and entertaining, so not a bad choise. When I invite people to my house to play, I want to offer them a challenge, but one they should win if they play well enough.

Plus I got to admit, I don't think I had too good a grip of how to play the Overlord really efficiently back in those long since gone days of the early 2009... I'm better now, I hope

We just finished RtL campaign, I have made some notes and written situations down after each session, I'll try to come up with a report of it one day. This time it was massive disaster for the heros, and I think I have gained a few insights on how to play the Campaign, both for OL and heros. The RtL campaign is such a HUGE board game that it is not surprising for the first time to be very educational, and far from being well played for anybody involved...

Anyway, to the original subject, as the game report tried to tell, playing a quest from the Core game with four heros took about 8 hours, so how on earth does anybody manage to play WoD quests on one day ?? I'm going over next Descent session ideas, and after the RtL Campaign I think it would be nice to play a one shot quest. WoD quest 3 looks really tempting, but if Spoiled Brat from JitD takes 8 hours, I hope our learning curve has made us faster players, so that the quest can be completed within two meals and a litre of coffee...

And, many thanks for the comments !