Have the "heros" ever won First Blood playing in standard format?

I just played my first ever game of Descent. Played in two player mode with Grisban and Jain and it was a total, utter and complete slaughter!! The Ettin would kill Grisban EVERY time he would stand up and then kill Jain at least 70% of the time.

Jain took 2 Goblins I think and apart from that, she was just trying to stand back up EVERY turn.

I am very glad I did this play through by myself before introducing it to my daughters so I can try to make them feel a little better about the game the first time they play, because this would NOT have been fun AT ALL for the hero players. As I stated above: They hardly even had a chance to do anything other than stand up, again and again and agian.

I am going to try another run through but was wondering if anyone has done a numbers crunch on hero win percentage in the above scenario?

Thanks,…

As the overlord I've only played it once and lost the engagement. Now I'm unsure to whether or not we were performing the encounter correctly (it was our first game afterall) but they slayed my master ettin with relative ease.

I must really be missing something here,.. After 5 play throughs the heros haven't even come close,

I even house ruled some things in the players favor like: when a goblin lands on a square of the exit tile with the stair graphic on it, on move #5 of it's 2nd action it can't leave the board. It has to wait till the next OL turn. ALSO: When a respawn is placed it must be placed in the two squares of the garden that are fartherst away from the exit. It was this secenario that the heros came the closest to winning. ---- Grisban took off for the garden and stayed there hacking up the respawns. Since the OL spawns at the end of turn Grisban had the first strike at them. ---- This still left Jain having to go toe to toe with the Ettin,.. yea, right,. THAT's gonna work,…. IT did stall the game for quite a while though, but in the end a master goblin took advantage of a few very poor rolls by Grisban, used the Dark Charm card on him to move him back 3 spaces and that was all it took. The OL had ALL of his deck in his hand due to killing Jain 4 out of every 5 turns.

This leads me to the conclusion that I must be doing something wrong,… After going through the rulebook twice, and litteraly checking EVERY step as I played the run throughs I can't figure out what it is though.

ANY ideas from some of the more experienced players out there ??

I will give it another 3 or 4 attempts before I go on to A Fat Goblin to see if it is just this particular quest. ..

Thanks,..

Only time I've won First Blood as OL (played it about 8-9 times) was with 2 heroes, but even then the heroes rolled Xs like nobody's business. Rest of the games have been all heroes, only real goal for the OL is the try and get Mauler killed before the heroes bag all the Search tokens.

As to your houserule, at least as I read it, it's not even that. To exit, you must reach the Exit space and spend 1 movement, so Goblin (Move 5) who reaches the Exit space with its last movement, doesn't have 1 movement to spend to exit (page 9).

Grisban as Berserker, using his Feat, should be able to almost kill Mauler by himself with three attacks on a turn using Rage.

First Blood is geared toward heroes winning. I've never seen the overlord win (have played the scenario maybe ten times). Dunno what to say. Are you spawning the correct amount of Goblins? You can only reinforce once one exits - gotta respect group limits. Are you playing with the minion Ettin? Other than that I guess I would ask if your monsters are only attacking once per turn? Are your heroes using their fatigue points efficiently? I could go on, but I have no idea how you are playing. My experience has heroes dropping Mauler in four turns, tops.

THAT could be a very good point Rico. Going to look up the rules on monster attacks. I have been attacking TWICE with the monsters. If they are only allowed to attack once,.. that would be my problem. I was under the impression that Heros could attack twice AND Monsters could attack twice.

Thanks for all the responses.

Just out of curiosity, what explaination is given for the monsters only being able to attack once per turn but the heros can attack twice, if attacking once is the correct rule?

YEP !!! That was it !! Boy do I feel dumb. Not sure how I missed that teeny tiny little rule. I guess that's what the forums are for . Thanks again,…

Yup, forums is good like that. And as far as what reasoning is behind why monsters attack only once, well, I think your recent experience sums it up nicely. By the way, the Frenzy overlord card does allow monsters a couple of opportunities to lay the smack down. Hope your gaming experience is better now.

Note too that reinforcing goblins are placed at the END of the OL's turn and thus are not activated on the turn they are placed on the map.

Heroes must also rush, using fatigue move, towards the goblins on their first turn, hitting them with two attack actions. The more you kill, the easiest the task, as goblins reinforce only one at atime.

Note too that reinforcing goblins are placed at the END of the OL's turn and thus are not activated on the turn they are placed on the map.

Heroes must also rush, using fatigue move, towards the goblins on their first turn, hitting them with two attack actions. The more you kill, the easiest the task, as goblins reinforce only one at a time.

Ok, now tell me what our heroes do wrong. Our Overlord knew that monsters attack only once. Moreover if you interrupt action sequence of a single monster - you loose the unspent actions.

We tried to pull it out in 3 heroes (Leoric Necro, Avric Disciple and Grisban Berserk) and failed. Maybe we do something wrong with the first move? For our first move we went with Avric and Grisban to stand 2 coridor cells before the water to hit the goblins who finished their move entering the water and Leoric went to loot the first explore point.

Some people say here that right tactics is to rush to the goblins for fatigue and kill them before they move. But movement like this is moving 1 cell for 1 fatigue point? And reaching goblins for only a distant attack requires 4 or 5 movement points. So at best you can hit goblins only with 1 range attack per hero.

And the OL acts the next way: he moves white and red ettin to block the "crossroad". First he moves with red ettin and throws Grisban into water. Then he goes with white ettin to the part of the crossroad where heroes start. And he's already able to reach Leoric with white ettins attack. By playing an additional attack and the critical strike cards Leoric ends up bashed just after the first turn! And no more saving -1 attack aura that could make other two heroes with shields more durable. Then he moves all 4 goblins and shoots a hail to Avric.

The second turn for heroes goes in reviving for Leoric, Avric came closer to the red Ettin and the berserk dwarf used hiss skill to blink to the monk and deal all his remaining blows to the red bad guy. But with 2 defence dices these were barely scratches.

The next turns are also went like:

OL move: Leoric dies from 1 blow from the white ettin, dwarf gets thrown away with red douchebags skill and goblins keep running trough. A bit after leoric also dies from 1 single hit from red ettin with attack dice reroll and 2 power surges.

And that's the way we lost few times. Even the strategy of taking 2 guys with shields and a guy who reduces attack damage doesnt help against double attack+critical strike of that red douchebag.

I am nowhere near a Quest Guide, but isn't 3 heroes just played with a single Red Ettin?

Rico said:

Yes it is.

Grisban for example has 4 stamina, so by burning off all four points, he can get into melee range of the Goblins (IIRC) and double-attack.

With 3 why not ignore the Goblin rush and just beat down the lone Ettin? The OL can only spawn one Goblin per turn which should be easy enough to manage. With the water penalty I'm pretty sure that's three turns of damage before worrying about Goblins. The Ettin will most likely be dead in three to four turns.

Primary goal of FB for heroes is to get as many Search tokens as possible. If blocked off from some, then kill Mauler and win, but first, grab all the Search tokens.

I would never try to use the Ettins Throw on Grisban with STR 4… ^^

But blocking the crossroad is the only chance for the Overlord to win. So as a hero group, you should avoid letting the OL block the x-road.

Oh… So there should be only one of those douchebags for 3 players? I guess this will result in some penalty for the OL.

Phantazm said:

Wedgies are always a good tool for teaching not to cheat !

I don't have the quest under my eyes, but I believe that the gobs are within 3-4 squares, if the heroes move diagonally, skirting the tiles' corners.