Hello all,

My gaming group is going to be trying our very first RTL campaign this weekend.

We have played 2 vanilla rounds of the base game, and just bought Road to Legend, Well of Darkness and Altar of despair.

As I have been piecing together how it all works, I think tho OL deck consists of the 36 OL cards from the base set and the spawn cards from the expansions. My question to other players is this, do having the extra cards hinder the balance of the game when it comes to cycling through the deck for the conquest points? Or, do the spawns slow down the heroes enough for it to balance out? We really want to add the new creatures. We are aware of the ebb and flow of the campaign slanting either way over time, but I want to make sure the mechanics of what we add do not tip the scales right from the start.

Another question I have is in regards to the Tomb of Ice. Can anyone that has it verify if there is a fifth loadout listed for the 40 RTL dungeons? I have read session reports of a few of the new dungeons, and though they sound fun, I am concerned with how much the TOI woll add to the campaign, as we will not be playing vanilla for a long time. From the pdf it is unclear as it only has the rules. I know there are a few new cards for rtl, but would the use of the new creatures be limited to these cards and spawns?

Finally, any good advice for us for Heroes and Overlord for our first campaign will be much appreciated. I do know that we are going to try the Spider Queen and the Darkness plot.

Thanks, and I hope everyone has a great day!

Abe said:

With all the those cards added, it adds like 3-4 turns I think to getting through the deck. In my experience, and I know this varies from group to group, it is rare if I cycle through the OL deck because the RtL levels are much smaller than vanilla Descent. In 4-5 dungeons, with me aggressively playing cards I will cycle through the deck in a dungeon once, maybe twice. Plus the Reinforcement marker controls your spawn rate so I would get those better expansion monster cards in there to help you out.

To the best of my knowledge is there currently no official Option E for starting minions for any of the RtL levels using the ToI monsters. I'm hoping this is being worked on and will be addressed as an insert that can be downloaded.

As for advice (and this is drawn from personal experience):

Heroes:

Move, move move. Don't spend any more time in a dungeon than you have to.

Give the OL the free 1CT and spend the first week in Tamilir at the Market to hopefully get 1 or 2 good Copper Treasures. It can make a world of difference.

Plan your travels to locations out like 5 game weeks in advance if you can, but be flexible. Don't forget about Secret Training and Legendary areas.

Boggs the Rat will make your life incredibly easy.

OL:

Be the most sadistic SOB you can, and never show mercy unless you are trying to fool the Heroes. I like to go light on the Heroes, often retreating my minions before even attacking, to draw them into the level away from the glyphs, and then spawn behind them and attack all out.

Crushing Blow is a great equalizer. Buy the Treachery for it, then use on the Staff of the Grave and the Guanlets of Power right before you go into Silver Level.

I love RtL and have these pointers.

1) Don't even try to play with feats at all. There sre lots of house rules out there to make them work, but none are well tested yet and none have proven to be fair yet... although there are some good feat limiting rules about.

2) Make sure all the players "get" the ideal that conquest points ARE NOT a way of keeping score.

I know of many groups that the heroes gave up cause they felt they were "loosing" too bad. But a group of heroes that stoticly takes its loses early and is patient to build up will be fine. That being said, there is a tendency for inexperienced heroes to give up too many points too early for the overlord helping him get his upgrades too quick. It will take a few plays for the heroes to find that balance between sacrific, caution, fight and flight, but they will never learn it if they keep quiting and wanting to restart after ever 2nd dungeon.

other then that, its most fun to learn as you go, the system is not balanced from start to finish, copper is hard for heroes, gets better in silver, by gold the overlord struggles to hurt heroes, but should be collecting conquest from burnt citiies. However I find the system to be fun and fair, and dosn't need any house rules to be injoyable.

There are a few traits and iteams that create some pretty crazy powers for the heroes, some feel these need to be houseruled, but the overlord has some pretty nasty cards of his own if he starts using his treachery.

(recently I as OL I was dealing with a RtL party containing a rapid firing, born to the bow (always aims ranged attacks) runner with loads of fatigue.He dropped opne of my Lt,s in one round of shooting, but I crushing blowed his good bow three times over and he is currently running arround in gold with a hammer desperatly trying to find a decent ranged weapon!)

In the same campaign I scored 60 conquest from one dungeon the heroes INSISTED on finishing cause it was a legendary area... I really think they should have bailed, I just upgarded monsters, it was beginning of silver, they were not ready. But now in gold, they went through 2 dungeon levels in 6 turns..... crazy see-saw of power can happen, but its lots of random fun.

PS. there are handfulls of discussions on balance issues in the game, (more basic decent they RtL) , and most of those have merits, but if you just realize the game is very random, there are good and bad dungeons for the heroes, there are good and bad overlord set-ups situations, if you have a spirit that allows to laugh and throw dice for fun with your friends, you will have more fun then if you get caught up in the board game compeditive aspect of the game and worrey less about balance issues. That being said, it is NOT role playing, the OL is NOT a GM, and both sides should be playing hard vs the others.

I strongly suggest playing vanilla Descent a little longer, really. Play twenty games, then go to RtL.

Thanks for the tips everyone!

We have decided to go the campaign route so we can get other games in, as Into the Dark took us 6 hours due to the length. We dont want to neglect our other games, so hope that we can fit a lot of RTL into 3-4 hour blocks.

Abe said:

Good luck with that. Ever since we started the campaign it's all I want to play.