Warning: possible spoilers!!!!

Warning: possible spoilers!!!!

So after playing through 4 quests (first blood, masquerade, castle, and fat goblin) we found that except for 2nd half of Fat Goblin, the heroes were racing to try and catch the overlord before they won the game on the 2nd/3rd round. Has anyone else been experiencing this?

Here's how each encounter generally played out for us:
1) Set up map and heroes are stacked up in entrance

2) Overlord picks his open group of either dragon or ettin or other large option

3) Overlord plants large monsters in hallway and has them sit there, blocking any motion of heroes to gameplay space for victory conditions

4a) Heroes take several turns defeating the monsters - doing very little damage with weak act 1 wepaons

4b) Meanwhile, overlord has each of their minions needed for victory run (move + move) to cover the map quickly.

5) Large monsters are dead, overlord is halfway to victory usually, scramble to try and accomplish…. something…

Here's how some of the encounters played out for us. Sorry if some stuff is off, I don't have the game in front of me to be exact with costs/spaces.

On the Masquerade we lost on turn 2…

Setup: Goblins(?) and zombies placed all around the guests in the 2 rooms they can spawn in - as well as 4 across blocking entrance

Turn 1: Goblins activate - move 2 forward to open the door in the way (path is now clear to exit). with remaining goblins identify 3 partiers

Zombies activate - identify 3 other partiers (for a total of 6)

Note: any 'cultists' got to do stuff too

Turn 2: all of our 4 villiagers were already in the hands of mosnters - all monsters run (move 2x) and leave the map. Game over….

Second encounter - Ettins(?) just blocked the hall while the lieutant ran to the exit, 2 checks later was out… game over…

On Fat Goblin we managed to save 2 things… barely

Setup: Goblins go where they go, OL put 4 barghests in our way (turned sideways so we had to kill 2 to move by).

Turn 1: All goblins run (10 spaces) and are now in range to harvest next turn, players kill some barghests and get to move up a little, more barhests are span to block (they spawn in the start area)

Turn 2: All goblins move/harvest making it 2-4 steps back towards exit depending.

Turn 3: OL runs all goblins (move 2x) and wins… game over

We just got lucky because our thief had both tumble and could ignore monsters for movement, so was able to shoot 2 Goblins before they made the turn to head down the long hallway to the exit.

Same with First Blood

Turn X: move Ettin as far as possible (only 2 ranged heroes) to make heroes chase, activate all goblins and run (move 2x) to get to the exit in 2 turns from spawn (water makes you end just short of exit).

On the Castle we beat the first encounter (yay?!????)

Second encounter… big monster parked in the hall way again… by time we cut down the grunt and master of the large monster the guy we had to defend was dead….

OL turns: run all monsters to sir so-and-so, if already there attack.

He was dead in 3 rounds….

So again, has anyone else been noticing this is how it all plays out and, well, just isn't fun? or is our overlord just especially ruthless with how he plays?

Sorry - forgot one other option: do we heroes just not play correctly?

We were rushing as hard as we could - diving in to each fight as fast and hard as possible. We manged health and fatigue fine (we think) with only a few (4?) knockdowns through all 4 quests. We just couldn't put out damage fast enough to cut through the blockers….

The most easily overlooked rule is that you can cut corners while moving. It's pretty hard for the OL to completely block passage ways.

Always cut corners to maximize your movement. you can squeeze the entire party throu the smallest gaps. And use fatigue to gain extra move without costing actions to move. Also remember heroes can use both actions on attack. Have the range heroes double attack to clear the way, then rush melee thru the hole. You usually only need to kill on monster to do it.

Yea, we know all about the moving rules, but if the OL parks a large monster in a hallway it blocks it completely (only 2 spaces wide). Our OL is a master of blocking pathways…. Did it all the time in D1 too.

And it usually took us 2 full founds to cut down a master shadow dragon or ettin - 1 of our classes were lucky if they could do 1 damage on with their skills/items (thief) and the other 3 usually just nicked 2-3 (Needing 9 to kill the dragon) while dealing with moving and keeping LOS clear by not blocking other heroes out (2 heroes block LOS in hallway if right up against large monster in same hallway)..

We just got jammed up in hallways, playing the attack-attack-fatigue move to clear line of sight game while the OL safely moved all his stuff on the other side - doing 2x moves All the time to rush through to the victory condition.

We could tell from the first turn, every encounter, if we even had a chance…. Which 5 out of 7 encounters we did not…

ExcelsiorH, that was our experience exactly. Pretty stock strategy for the Overlord and frustrating for the players.

We houseruled that monsters could not make two move actions (except with a Dash card).

I (the Overlord) still won both quests played that way, but at least I had some fun rolling attacks and the dungeon lasted more than 4 turns.

This is alarming news. Cheap tactics from an overlord, or a valid strategy which should have been changed in playtesting?

Another house rule idea: When doing a move action, roll the Red Power Die and on a surge result you found a breach and make a break through the monster's legs.

It's a 1/6 chance to succeed so it wouldn't break the rules and would give a small chance to get through a monster.

I can't help but wonder what your heroes are doing throughout all this. Who is going first? Especially in your masquerade ball example, did the heroes not kill a single monster to lose on turn two? Something just seems really awful about your hero players strategies. Either that or your overlord is just extremely lucky and gifted.

Sounds mostly like a case of rule abusing play from the OL… Turning monsters sideways to block more and delay players… Says more about your OL then it does about the system it self.

I'm a tournament player in Warhammer Fantasy and 40K and really skilled at finding loopholes in the system, and fine doing that in a tornament or competition where everyone does it. Using it in a friendly boardgame feels just utterly wrong. We are playing the game to have fun. Dont we???

If my OL would use this cheesy tactic and the system would only give the players two turns to kill 2+ monsters with 9 wounds to even HAVE a chance to stop the OL's plans I'd stop playing with that OL at once and ofer him to find another bunch of players.

Abusing gamesystems is never right and from your story it seems that you OL is systematically abusing the system to gain advantages. I bet he's picking his monsters based on the players damage output too…

A game of Descent should give players a challenge not making it impossible. The rules are written with that type of play in mind. If the OL starts breaking the spirit of the game perhaps the players should to and the game escalating in a math vs probability event with players calculating the optimal player group, best gear and every move and attacks outcome for an hour or two during each and every turn. just to find a way to stop the OL from using his monsters as a unpenetratable meat wall just so he can win every scenario no mater what.

House rule: flank attacks?

Losman2001 said:

Our OL just games it - his goal isn't to kill us, so he just blocks us with the biggest amount of stuff he can.

In the Masquerade on turn 1 I know I had a double miss on my first 2 attacks (wasted turn for me), and everyone else spent their first turn either double attacking or attack + move. So we were still all jammed up in the entrance, and on the OL turn he revealed 6 guests and found all 4 villiages

Note: he started pretty much on top of 6 of the 8 guests, only 2 were in a room he didn't have monsters in - but they weren't villagers.

So we literally sat there after 1 round going, "we can't win this". We plucked away at the zombies in our room, but since this was our first quest choice after first blood we still all had start gear and did crap damage and couldn't kill anything with a villager that round. OL turn, he moved and won, game over!

To the comments about the OL being too nasty - we had this debate a lot on D1, what is the OL goal? is the goal to make the players have fun as a good host? or to win?

Well since his victory conditions are completely opposite to the players goals, it's a hard question to answer. Since his goal was always to do something before we could stop him, I think he was playing the game right by picking an open group with the biggest area and highest defense to just block us off.

But his victory = our complete lack of enjoyment.

We pulled the same tactic on him in fat goblin, by just letting him find the guy, then we blocked up the hallway and killed his LT who was trying to escape with the hostage. Our OL response, "****, that really isn't fun is it?"

From what it sounds like though, we're not missing any rules about spawning or monster movement - which is a shame.

wish i could find an edit button.

Correction on the Masquerade - party member corrected me.

We lost at the end of turn 3 (not 2)

Turn 1: got jammed up in entrance, my double miss caused line of sight issues for casters behind us so we barely got out of the entrance

Turn 2: all of the villagers (4/4) were found - 2 were in room with goblins(?), 1 was in hallway next to exit, our healer found 1 in our starting room

Turn 3: we move our villager to safety, OL moves other 3 out the exit

So not a total failure - but for our first act 1 encounter, it left us with a feeling of 'something seems broken' - so we scoured the rules about spawning, LOS, movement blocking, monster movment, etc… and couldn't find anything we did wrong. Just really bad luck and race condition that one side couldn't over come…

But as we played more encounters, we saw this same trend coming around again. Both sides are racing to different goals, if the heroes trip up anything (missed attack, poor damage, etc…) then the OL can surge ahead with his monsters moving twice, and the heroes are unable to keep up.

Other things our OL did - and I can't fault him for, as the are tools he was provided to try and win:
* Block hallways/entrance completely with big monsters

* Always pick the biggest monster with most defense dice for open group (he never cared about attacking us - since it was counter productive to his victory goals)

* Always used his OL card traps on our warrior to keep them from moving, because their awareness is 1 - so our warrior would declare a move, take one step, trapped, end movement.

* Re-enforce with the biggest monster possible, run (move + move) to blocking position as fast as possible



The encounters we played though all had the same 'race' setup, so the more we played the more demoralizing it got - we could totally predict exactly how the OL was going to play each map, "so you're going to block us and run again, huh?"

I think we definately played 1 quest too long - things got mean by the 4th quest. But when both sides have rewards for winning, it seems like the OL is just going to devolve in to what ours did - win by any means.

ExcelsiorH said:

I've done a lot of OLing for this game, and generally don't seem to have had it as good as yours.

Given that heroes get first turn, they often do quite a bit to get in my way right off the bat.

First Blood:

I'm kind of shocked, actually. Every time I've done this Quest, the Heroes have positioned themselves so that the Ettin(s) cannot get out of the tile they start on, except perhaps to get to the tile the Heroes come in to, which isn't helpful. They then proceed to largely cut down Goblins (2 or three of them on turn 1), with a ranged guy near or in the water to handle those who get by. A double move from the most forward position on their spawn tile doesn't even get them around the corner in the water.

I've never gotten more than two goblins off the map.

Masqurade:

I've only done this one as a Hero, in a 1-on-1 game (with two heroes controlled by me). Encounter 1 basically went the same that yours did (though two misses on the first round sure didn't help… there'd have been a lot less Goblins otherwise.. I managed to win Encounter 2 by virtue of ignoring monsters in favor of chasing down the Lady. My OL chose Barghests instead of Ettins, which I was able to slip by due to her not quite placing them the best (which I realize is an advantage you didn't have). I caught her at the last door with my Necromancer, she failed her first test to open the door, and then I killed her with 1 attack from the Reanimate, and 1 attack from the Necromancer.

Fat Goblin:

Yes, this is difficult for heroes. I tend to use Marriod for my Encounter 1 Open Group, who can Immobilize heroes.

That being said, concentrated attack power can put the Minion Marriod down in one round, and get a hero in the end space so it can't be blocked.

Having the Goblins do nothing but steal crops & bolt, I get 2-3 of them.

However, that doesn't really matter. All that does is give Splig more health in Encounter 2, and I've never been able to win that one. Heroes block the passage out, and with no reinforcements, it doesn't take them long to get down to just Splig, who really doesn't hit that hard. I've come close, as close as 1 round from victory, but no luck.

Castle Daerion:

Yeah, I don't even bother blocking the heroes with anything more than the zombies. The Ettin's can kill Sir Pala-whatever pretty fast on their own. I think he needs to be Eratta'd with better defense dice.

All in all, I can't help but wonder what you heroes are doing with your first turns. If there are four of you (which is what it sounds like), concentrated attack power should be able to clear out Monster blockages pretty quickly. You talk about weak Act 1 weapons, but both warriors (and the reanimate) start with blue+red weapons, which can deal out a large amount of damage, especially if the hero takes a couple fatigue to move so he can attack twice.

KristoffStark said:

So I'll have to look at the quest book more closely when my copy shows up - but in First Blood, from the spawn point our OL was able to run the goblins 10 squares at the end of first turn, which for him was enough to get them on the dry side of the water. So possibly he spawned them in the wrong place? We did win this quest though, with 4 goblins escaped.

As for our heroes - we didn't have the necromancer in the party, so that's 1 less round of attacks with no familiar. And I was a theif, which I was lucky to do 3 damage with (blue + yellow with no surge abilities). And our warrior could do damage, if the OL didn't keep trapping them and proventing them from getting in combat range - I think our warrior had the worst experience, just constantly getting trapped and dark charmed and always maxed on fatigue.

As I said, our first round was usually an all out on the stuff right in front of us - if it was small units we usually managed to make a hole but were still relatively jammed up in the doorway at the end of turn 1 while the OL had moved his units halfway across the map. If he blocked us with bigger monsters, we just kind of sat there plinked at it with our 3 heroes that could do relatively good damage - while watching the OL roll 2 grey defense and negating most of it.

Jonke75 said:

Turning sideways? That clever bastard!

I really don't think that counts as abusing rules. That seems pretty solidly in the realm of "obvious implications" to me.

Also, if you think that the existence of horribly abusable loopholes rules doesn't say anything about the system, I think you've got some pretty skewed standards.

Antistone said:

I'm of the same mindset - if the rules allow it, you can't hate on someone for using it.

ExcelsiorH said:

Keep in mind that a square of water takes 2 movement to enter .

And as for boxing in your warrior, that takes a LOT of work, considering that you can move diagonally between monsters. If a warrior is surrounded by minions, it's usually: kill one with 1 attack, escape box with second action.

he was using traps to box the warrior in - with an awareness of 1 the warrior was almost guaranteed to fail. Which ended their movement.

Couple that with the warrior (dwarf) only having 3 movement, and the warrior was always just too far behind to be useful.

And yes, water does take 2 to move - I'd have to look at the map again. but from the closest spawn point in the goblin room to the water was I believe 7 squares, 8+9 to step in water, 10 to be on far side.

I'm the OL that ExcelsiorH has been talking about, and I'd like to add my observations.

With these smaller maps it is EXTREMELY easy to block all player movement. Now, it's not that easy to have your monsters survive for more than 1 player turn, but thats a gripe I'll discuss later. All of the maps we played were essentialy races. I almost always got to put monsters directly in front of where the heros start. Those monsters are always write-offs. You will never get to do anything cool with them. However; you dont need to. If you can make the players unable to take a double run turn, you are 50% father along than them. If you can pause them for 2 turns, there is little to no chance they will win. What this means is that I will always pick dragons or ettins, if they are availible, because they are the only monsters with anything close to reasonable defense, so on average they will last 2 turns. Thats two turns where the heros are not moving forward while my sprinters (usually goblin archers) are moving 10 spaces. The heros were griping about this the whole time we played. At first I was cackling madly inside my head about it but towards the middle of the session and especially towards the end when they turned the tables and did the same thing to me in Fat Goblin, Ive realized a few things. (one of them being how frustrating this tactic is)

1.) Poor scenario/map design. I was all for the smaller maps, and I still like the game length compared to D1 - However, these maps have all been VERY small, so small that 2 turns can get you all the way across most of them, in some cases across and halfway BACK. When maps this small are used as RACES, but one side cant move…where is the fun there?

2.) Combat is still poor.

a.) Players have insanely too much defense almost immediately. Everyone starts with 1 grey dice. 0,1,1,2,3,4 shields respectively. That is an average of 1.83 shields per dice roll. Now, I do like the variance that rolls for defense add instead of the just raw number you had to overcome in D1, but here where it gets broken. Almost every piece of armor you add doubles your defense. Doubles. The warrior got Chain Mail in the first dungeon from a search. That ADDED a grey dice. Now she's up to 3.66 average per roll, plus her shield. Then the cleric could add ANOTHER grey dice which puts her at 5.5 shields + shield ON AVERAGE per roll. Nothing is going to hit that in act 1. I mean you may sneak 1 or 2 here any there but an entire pack of monsters , doing 1-3 damage to a tank with 14 hp, well..whats the point? I already have no incentive to attack players, because none of my objectives ever involve killing them, just beating them to the punch, and thats good, since…you cant kill them. Sure sure, random is random and any given roll wierd things can happen, and I did manage to murder her once, but only because she made the mistake of going to full fatigue. It still took a LT., Master Ettin, 3 Zombies, Normal Ettin and Normal Dragon to take her down 5 hp. I get that heros are stronger, and its a hack n slash feel, heros mow down monsters in vast waves etc. but … eh. I think players should start out with Brown Defense dice. I think that equipping armor should REPLACE the base defense not add to it. Yes I know everyone will say boo hoo it makes the players weaker, no no no. Yes it will. It will also make combat more attractive to the OL, since maybe, if my monster group lasts more than 1 player round (fat chance if they arent dragons or ettins) I can actually hit the tank…and yes I base this all on the tank since they are going to force me to attack them anyhow.

b.) The power curve of attacks for players is…lacking. You start out with 2 dice weapons. You upgrade them to …2 dice weapons. You never really DO more damage, all you get is trickery to push through damage despite the defense dice of your opponent. You get Surge generating, surge spending, combo bs that after 2 adventures, I didn't even bother to keep straight anymore, I just said "Whatever dude just tell me how many hearts I took" After 1 shopping trip by the heroes, I because disinterested in any combat rolls. It became this odd feeling. Instead of them rolling the dice and I rolled against to see if I blocked, it was, They rolled the dice, then did accounting BS for 30-45 seconds, then I rolled my dice, and then totally ignored the roll because it didn't MATTER. That's the problem. I have no solution to this one off the top of my head but all in all, this edition of Descent should have made combat between the Monsters and hte Heros more balanced. If a monster group of Goblin Archers, had the SAME BASE STATS as players but thier measly little 2 hp…theyd still die almost instantly, and do little to no damage to the players. But they dont even have that, they are substatially weaker than a naked wizard, and thus NEVER USED TO ATTACK WITH, they just get to run and steal crops.

Combining these 2 problems you come up with what we experienced. Heroes had no fun because I had no reason at all to engage with them in any sort of contest. I just blocked hallways and ran. Very scary all powerful evil being I am huh? I had no fun because that is the ONLY tactic availible to me. I WANT to smash the heroes flat under a tidal wave of evil minions. I have the tidal wave of evil minions, sadly they are a tidal wave of dandilion fluf and pixie dust, they have no force. If combat were a LITTLE more balanced, if the maps were not all races, and if they players power curce was a smooth increase instead of jerky doubling, I think we all would have had more fun.

I read in here someone knocking on me saying I'm at fault because I wasn't making it fun and fair for the players. Well…I'm a player too. This is a competitive game. My goal is to BEAT them, not to make them have fun. It's FFG's job to make them have fun by building a better platform to play on. If this were D&D, sure, its my job to make sure they have fun, but this isn't, its a board game with winners and losers, so why should I actively try to lose? Is that more fun for anyone?

I've been following this discussion an others with vivid interest, and it seems to me that most of the problems related to cheap rule exploiting are caused by an excess of metagaming.

lucaster said:

Could you clarify what that means?

I'm assuming you mean, the drive to win the campaign/quest and get the rewards is causing both sides to try and over game it? If so - I agree.

The OL having a seperate win condition from the heroes, along with their own rewards, puts both sides in to competition - over different things.

One of our hero players put it best. "I want to dungeon crawl to kill monsters and fight bosses, not to watch the OL game the system, have no interest in combat, while running away with my tomatoes that I couldn't get to in time".

It is a serious change in play/style from D1. Yes we made assumptions about the play that screwed us early on, while the OL caught on faster. But at the end of the day, it sounds like this is how D2 plays now and it will take a few campaigns to figure out how to counter the 'block the hall' strategy.

I wouldn't even consider it cheap rules exploit. I think the overlord played very well, while the heroes didn't. OP, if i were you I would try all the problem scenarios again, play with the same heroes and have the overlord use the same tactics, except this time, make judicial use of two attacks plus fatigue move to kill off any would be blockers and have your more nimble ranged characers run past the hole made by your battling heroes to catch the objective runners of the overlord. Also, make sure to use whatever heroic feats you can if it will give you the advantage. I honestly just think that the heroes were outplayed by the overlord, and not that this is an unbeatable situation. Use fatigue, make a hole, and RUN to catch the monsters threatening to win objectives. If you guys still fail, then maybe there is an inherent flaw in the game.

Losman2001 said:

We did make judicial use of two attacks and fatigue moves - the problem was damage output.

Class 1: Thief (hobbit) - very low damage with no tricks, lucky to damage/kill anything after 2 attacks. Ended up not doing combat at all and just running around for treasures

Class 2: Knight (dwarf) - slow movement, kept getting trip lined. Usually only effective using the triple attack feat for the first move to try and clear out the entrance. Most of the time, just couldn't be in range to damage.

Class 3: Runemaster - effective ranged unit, was our damage dealer

Class 4: Spirit Mender - melee range (with reach), powerful skills though and got really effective once given a ranged weapon (3rd quest).


So which of our 'nimble ranged' units would you suggest run through to catch the OL runners?

ExcelsiorH said:

If you've taken the thief package, then you've got the knives, which do blue+yellow at range (same as Runemaster, I believe), and if he happens to be melee, he does +1 heart to any enemy he's adjacent to. If he then picks up Sneaky with his first XP (which he has to have after First Blood), he'll do another +1 heart against any enemy who didn't have line of sight against him at the beginning of his turn.

Not to mention that if he get attacked while adjacent to another hero, he gets to add their defense pool to his own.

Frankly, he has the potential to be one of the more dangerous heroes.

Yes, the dwarf is very easy to hit with Tripwire. There are two of those in the entire Overlord deck. If he's getting hit with them first turn every Quest, that's just bad luck, not the fault of the game.