How to trap heroes in "Death on the Wing"

By nuwanda2, in Descent: Journeys in the Dark

Heyhey

Yesterday I played the scenario "Death on the Wing" . If you win the first encounter you are allowed to take the first turn on the second, which is a huge advance! Therefore I wondered: Did anybody ever succeed in trapping a hero? How is this to be managed?

Nuwanda said:

Heyhey

Yesterday I played the scenario "Death on the Wing" . If you win the first encounter you are allowed to take the first turn on the second, which is a huge advance! Therefore I wondered: Did anybody ever succeed in trapping a hero? How is this to be managed?

When we have played, the OL has never won but has gotten close. He was able to stall the heroes in the fire pit area while he placed blocks in the hallway behind him. He then played dark charm, moved a character with low Might and Awareness (eyeball symbol?) into the hallway and blocked entrance with a large red Giant who was able to stun the hero. The heroes were able to beat the Giant on their turn but it was close.

Without the conversion kit? The Meriods might be able to do the same but… probably not. They simply don't have enough life.

Wow, I never thought about using "Dark Charm" for that purpose. You can force them to move in many bad positions…

Played a two player game of this scenario yesterday using 4 heroes and lost the first encounter. OL used ettins as his open group and kept throwing tomble, might 1, back toward the entrance,incidentally he has the best scramble ability, awareness 5. I eventually got caught in the canyon beginning and stalled tremendously on the fire pit due to two ettins. Avric and Leoric finally made it out. I kept Syndrael, might 4, the highest might I had at 4, smashing boulders to stall for Tomble to get clear.

OL gets to place enemies on the entrance, so without having the tumble skill for my thief, Tomble was trapped behind the master ettim who kept throwing him, eventually the OL had two boulders left to put on the map, Syndrael got knocked down. 1boulder left. Syndrael chose not to stand up, tomble got knocked down, chose not to stand up. OL won the first encounter.

I get a free stand up action during encounters, heal some. OL goes first, loved his ettins so chose them again. Missed some crucial hits. Avric heals everyone with his feat, we bust out and eventually won the second encounter.

So technically lost the first but won overall. It was a bad decision to use ettin the second time I think, a group with more minions would have clogged things a bit more, extending the second encounter.

BTW encounter 1 took about 2 hours, yeah we really put a lot of thought into it!

I won last night. It was essentially because the heroes got greedy and stuck around to search. I stopped the last hero from getting to the exit with a trap and then surrounded him and repeatedly pummeled him. The other heroes were either stuck behind boulders at the exit or unable to kill the guys. Lucky me.

I won this one last night by using ettins also.

Again primarily down to throw and lobbing em back each time and keeping them pegged in.

Tbh, it was quite close for a while and I know where they went wrong ( left a gap for me to get my ettin back in front of them on a respawn). Once I got the ettin back in front of them again, I had 2 pegged in near the start location.

I could have ended it in 2 ways, last boulder went down, but also I had blocked in a hero with 2 boulders at entrance (lolz), and some mobs , one move had me win it that way too :)

This was a 4 hero game btw.

The advantage it gave in the next phase was just immense imho, before they could move I had downed 1 guard and another half dead.

Ettins and dark charm were however very very very handy in this one.

Nieros said:

I could have ended it in 2 ways, last boulder went down, but also I had blocked in a hero with 2 boulders at entrance (lolz), and some mobs , one move had me win it that way too :)

I think I could win by cheating as well. You can only place boulders on the Canyon. I stupidly picked this as one of the quests in Act I as OL, tried hard in the first part, but lost, Belthir was dead before I got a go in Encounter 2.

A question about the first encounter.

When a hero scrambles over an boulder, he moves to an empty space adjacent to that boulder, ignoring figures and obstacles.

If there are a few boulders behind each others, is that treated as one boulder?

In the picture the hero wants to scrumble over boulder 2. If he passes the test, in what space does he end his movement?

dotw1.jpg

Honestly, I'd say he can only move to the open space to his left, so no point in doing the test. As per page 18, Obstacles have a red border around them, so boulders don't count as an obstacle, so wouldn't be ignored for the scramble action placement.

Interesting side note that the victory conditions say nothing about having a hero figure be surrounded by monster figures at the end of his turn, just "boulders, edge of the map or other figures" (p. 12), so other heroes adjacent would help the OL in accomplishing the goal.

Do monsters not count as figures?

Our group played this last night and we completely ballsd it up. We misinterpreted the victory conditions so that we thought all the OL had to do was surround us in his turn and he'd won. Alas, we only realised after the fact. We're deliberating whether or not to play it again.

The OL used Sentinels for his open group (playing with Lair of the Wyrm expansion set), and with 4 heroes, he had a lieutenant as well. With the fire breath of the sentinel lieutenant, combined with the web ability of the spider lieutenant, we were completely overwhelmed. OL picked up all his cards, and we are in a bad position for the next round.

I was playing with the High Mage Quellen, and I was wondering about something. Can spiders crawl over Quellen's Summoned Stone? Can the Sentinels fly over the same?

Withh Quellen's stones near-by, the OL should have a hard time surrounding the heros, if they can always keep them nearby (or do they count as "figures"?)

gaarge said:

Do monsters not count as figures?

Yes they do.
The rules use the word "figure" to describe heroes as well as monsters (including Lieutenants which are not represented by a plastic figure, see p. 17).
When only one sort of figure is spoken of, the rule gives the precision "hero figure" or "monster figure".

So a hero surrounded by boulders, heroes and (say) spiders makes the heroes loose the encounter.

Do Summoned Stones count as figures?

gaarge said:

Do Summoned Stones count as figures?


gaarge said:

I was playing with the High Mage Quellen, and I was wondering about something. Can spiders crawl over Quellen's Summoned Stone? Can the Sentinels fly over the same?

Spiders can only crawl over the boulders placed by the OL. There is no mention that they may crawl over obsticles (which is what your stones are considered). Flight, however, is able to ignore obsticles: "Fly: This monster may ignore enemy figures and the effects of terrain while moving. It must end its movement in an empty space following normal movement rules." Since an obsticle is defined as an effect of terrain (regardless of weather or not it's a red bounding box or your stone), figures with flight may move over - but may not land on - it's space.

The Hybrid Sentinels are tough buggers. The OL destroyed us using them in this quest.

I can't remember exactly, but I believe they are to be treated as familiars under the regular rules. I guess that means they're figures, huh?

summoned stones are treated as obstacles

it says so on the card