Hey! I've played a lot of Descent but my group has just started a new game and this is my first chance to play overlord. I was curious what cards and overlord archtypes people thought were pretty good or ones to be avoided. I spent my first XP on dark ritual since card draw is always good but I'm not sure where to go after that. The rest of magus feels a little weak so I was thinking of going into punisher or the melee deck.

It really depends on your play style. I went full Magus with a splash of Sabator and rolled the heroes. Do you have any of the expansions?

Yeah I have access to everything.

You are correct, card draw is awesome in this came. the ability to hold so many cards is invaluable. Personally, what I would do (and am doing currently) is read the quests you have done and will be doing. Try to see how you would play out each encounter. Then look at level three overlord cards that best suit that majority of the quests and your goals.

Also, do you know your heroes' play style? For instance, I know my heroes like to use allot of fatigue in their first movement to set them selves up, so I like to use "No Rest for the Wicked" which simply states that for that round if any hero uses a fatigue to move, I get to move a monster. I plays around that issue really well. Much of their movement for that turn has to then be spaced out between two turns less they give my monsters time to further their goal.

Something I was thinking about doing is not spending but one or two exp till the interlude. I could get a good feel on what is needed and how the heroes play so I would then know how to best to throt their plans. I also like making them feel full of them selves only to bring them down hard ^.~

Many cards are good, but few things beat an Act II master Shadow Dragon with Frenzy + Blood Rage = 4 attacks, 8-10 dmg each, quite possibly with Fire Breath to hit more than one hero . You're also rarely going up against all high-Might characters, which is why I love Web Trap, you can buy yourself a full turn with the right timing/bad movement by the heroes.

Regarding Unholy Ritual, do remember it has been FAQ'd so you only get to keep 2 cards regardless of how many you draw.

Like mentioned before, it depends on the playstyle and heroes the players chosen. I kinda like the punisher deck, it allows them to be punished for using fatigue it's like a boomerang to them. But that's a personal touch and depends on who you are playing against.

Many cards are good, but few things beat an Act II master Shadow Dragon with Frenzy + Blood Rage = 4 attacks, 8-10 dmg each, quite possibly with Fire Breath to hit more than one hero . You're also rarely going up against all high-Might characters, which is why I love Web Trap, you can buy yourself a full turn with the right timing/bad movement by the heroes.

Regarding Unholy Ritual, do remember it has been FAQ'd so you only get to keep 2 cards regardless of how many you draw.

That's a bummer, it makes that card a lot less good although at least you don't have to worry about the group being large.

Frankly looking over the magus ones and trickster cards, they really seem pretty meh with the exception of web trap. The monster damage deck seemed like it was honestly hands down the best since it doesn't require heroes to fail tests to be good and honestly once heroes start getting items or skills that let them reroll you can never count on that happening.

I only have 1 campaign as the OL but for now I really like the Punisher and Warlord classes.

Next time though I really want to try the Magus path, look interesting and change the gameplay compared to Warlord.

Frankly looking over the magus ones and trickster cards, they really seem pretty meh with the exception of web trap. The monster damage deck seemed like it was honestly hands down the best since it doesn't require heroes to fail tests to be good and honestly once heroes start getting items or skills that let them reroll you can never count on that happening.

Megus has Rise Again!! That card had my heroes on edge ALL of the time. It was beautiful. Words of Despair was also dangrous late in the encounter.

For me, I have been looking into Sabitour and Punisher. The "No Rest for the Wicked" will rack havoc on my heroes that like to expend Fatigue early in the game to gain a good start. Sabitour has "Curse of the Monkey God" which is just halirious. I want to see the big beefy guy of my heroes be turned into a monkey. I will laugh so hard. There is also Uthuk Demon trap. Either outcome is not good, it's just if they fail they are dead, draw another card. Play it on a hero with a high chance of success and low health, and they are dead anyhow. *shug* I like the sound of that.

While beat-face is great, but I really like the more thoughful take on it. I don't feel the OL needs more power. He is to be cunning as well as crule. Monsters are expendable, mear pawns in your vast game of chess. It makes me feel I play the role better. Maybe I have read too many fantasy books ^.^;;

Megus and Sabitour? New classes for the OL?

Sorry, my spelling is pretty bad sometimes...

Sorry, my spelling is pretty bad sometimes...

Hahahah no worries I was just teasing ya!

Have you ever met someone that gets excited and their whole accent changes? That is how I am with words ^.^;; They get all scrambled.

I've only ever played Warlord, but I'm thinking of branching out in the future. My group unanimously decided to ignore the FAQ'd "Reinforce" which can ONLY work in my favor

"Curse of the Monkey God" does seem hysterical, but I'm not very fond of traps, since I'm always forgetting to play them. (Three search tokens are cleared in a hero turn, and it isn't till three rounds later when I remember I could'be played half my hand on them ) Ah well, just shows I'd rather boost up my meat shield than be devious.

For OP, have you tried the Basic II deck yet? It has taken a bit of getting used to for me, but it definitely has some quirky character that I honestly think would benefit from Saboteur cards (something to look into for myself!). You don't have the general catch-alls of Ol' Reliables "Dash" and "Frenzy" and "Dark Charm" but having additional effects based on the hero archetypes is pretty neat.

Yeah I was deciding between the two initially and I eventually felt that dash was just too important in some movement based encounters to give up.

IMO, the cards are pretty well balanced.

I think the choice depends on what your heroes are doing, and what scenarious are you going to play.

You need to punish heroes if they don't have balanced team.

Saboteur:

Web Trap -> Usually you can immobilize 2 heroes with it. Only Warriors are immune to it, but they are not immune to pit trap and tripwire. Great for dealing with scouts. Important note: you can play this in situation where you couldn't play tripwire and/or pit trap. This allows you to stop Jain from doing her heroic, or stop Berserker from doing charge (although unlikely). There are times, where this wastes entire hero turn (and if hits 2 -> OMG!). In scenarios where you need time (almost any?) This is huge card. Counter: Disciple Cleansing Touch and many characters with high strength.

Explosive Runes -> This is great punishment for not having scouts in the party. You deal great big aoe damage to heroes. It can deal up to 5 damage to heroes with low awarness and bad luck, but usually it will hit for 2-3 damage. This amount of damage on hero turns may lead to their deaths on their turn, which is extremally evil due to them, loosing 2 turns instead of 1 to get up. (1 -> the hero turn immediately ends when he is defeated, 2-> entire turn to stand back.) Even if somebody rezzes hero, he doesn't get to act again this turn, and is exposed to your monsters for an additional easy kill. Also it is very good if you gather cards in your hand. If you have all of them, you can play 1 explosive runes every turn. This is easily achievable during fat goblin, where you gather cards during 1st encounter (by having 1 goblin with grain near the cave entrance and forcing heroes to split while you have 2 monsters at the start of your turn as reinforcements), then during 2nd encounter you have dragons behind doors. Heroes open the doors, get dmg, On your turn, you draw explosive runes, dragons attack and close the doors. You can also buff dragons if you see that they will kill something, because you will draw that card again for defeating a hero. Counters: Scouts and a lot of ranged professions, so that they don't need to stay close to the doors, while scout is opening a door.

Then it gets more exciting as you get:

Wicked Laughter - this will improve your chances of hero failing their tests at no cost, since you draw a card if hero succeedes. Pure win.

Note that you can also improve a saboteur if you have Staff of Shadows. So it is worth considering Saboteur path if you have that one, or you plan to get it.

Curse of the Monkey God - this will turn one of the damage dealers of the heroes party to the squishy and unable to attack monkey to the end of his next turn. The problem with this is that if heroes know about it, they will use somebody with high lore to search. But then, you will just replace this card with another one. And high lore characters have very good damage, this makes them not dealing damage but searching, while scouts are left for the damage. Tough choice for the heroes and I like when they have to be afraid of this card. Also later on, no defense rolls means A LOT. Heroes don't get much more HP, but they do get a better defense, while your monsters do get stronger and hit harder. Great if they have Thief. Thief wants to search. Also good if you have a lot of scenarios where heroes must search in order to proceed. And if heroes will not search because of this card -> they don't get useful items and gold.

Finally the saboteur ultimate:

Uthuk Demon Trap - Now this is the card that will always have an effect. Mages and Healers are in trouble when you play it.

(Note that if you kill somebody with this, and you will, you draw a card). Again this is kill during hero turn. Not only does it mean hero wastes 2 turns, but also it will put fatigue on the hero, which means he will not use his abilities. On scouts you play it when they are low on hp. This will make them die no matter what they choose to test. If scout test awarness, -> 4 damage, which is 1/2 of his health and that means a possible defeat. On warriors it is not so good since it is less likely they have lower hp, but if they do, it is also very effective. Try not to play it if it will not kill.

To sum up, the saboteur is about slowing down heroes. Granted, the attribute tests are random, but some of traps give you cards if heroes pass the attribute test, some of cards, will decrese the chances of heroes passing the test. What you do not like as a saboteur is a balanced party of heroes and Lucky Charms. You do like the Staff of Shadows and party where there is a general lack of some attribute. This means saboteur gets more interesting in < 4 heroes games, since there always will be a lack of an attribute.

So I hope I convinced you that saboteur is also a nice choice, but as with all Overlord cards, these depend on heroes composition and on scenario played. What saboteur is not helping you with are the scenarios where you need to kill with your monsters.

Maybe I'll also post something about Magus, but I think it is the most tricky of all.

So, here goes Magus:

Unholy Ritual -> I think even after the FAQ it is pretty amazing. There are times where you can't do anything meaningfull with monster group, or times where you desperately need some card for a given scenario in order to finish it and win. The Ritual has a power to search through your deck. With 2, you essentialy have a power to see your entire deck at the begining of the game given some luck. You start with 5, have 11 in the deck, you draw 1 on your turn, leaving 5 in your deck, Ritual and now, you have 2 out of five giving you 6 cards in hand, 4 in discard and 5 in the deck. 66% chance that you have another Ritual and can see the other 5 cards. But you don't need that, you usually have the entire encounter to get to the cards you want for the second part. You can take both if you want to progress, but you also have another option, which I think is underestimated card:

Word of Pain -> I think most of players do not realize that it works on all figures treated as heroes. This means that you can use it in castle daerion and death on the wings to automatically deal dmg to all NPCs. Also usefull if you really need to kill that hero and after your attacks with a monsters he has this 1 annoying hp left... But again, this depends on the scenario. [EDIT: Some scenarios exlicitly protect NPCs from overlord cards so be carefull. I might have been wrong on Death on the Wings]

Word of Despair -> Again this works on NPCs, meaning that if they activate, they loose 1 health for each action. Also getting rid of heroes stamina is good. Sometimes crucial if they are getting skills that make it impossible for you to win. (Like cripple to your boss that needs to escape!) Barghest synergize well with this.

And now it is time to mention the basic overlord card: Word of Misery. This will deal 1 damage to any NPC that suffers damage this turn (Word of Pain) essentialy doubling the damage given by this. This means that Word of Miser + Pain + Despair will leave the Guards in death on the wings on 2 hp. So you need each of your Flesh Moulders to hit 1 of guards for 2 to win. Use the first encounter to gather these cards :> Dealing damage to heroes is a nice bonus.

The beauty of this is that heroes don't really have a ways to counter this unlike traps and or stronger monster attacks.

Rise Again -> Now this is tricky. It depends on what monster you play it on and what abilities it has. Imagine interlude and your Master Ettin blocking path to the chamber with lava. Hereos must kill it, but if they do, you get a free teleport with throwing 2 players to the Lava if used right. Double Grab from a master zombie? Mass Immobilize + AoE damage with Fire Elemental? It also allows you to pass through heroes with your monster and maybe finish off the NPC they guard? But I think it is hard to use this card in a devastating way and it requires a lot of imagination.

Finally, the ultimate:

Diabolic Power - Now, surprise, this as well affects the NPCs. Remember Word of Misery? Yes 3 damage. And you know what? You can take Word of Pain with this for an additional 2. That's 5 damage to every NPC on the map with just 2 cards: Word of Misery and this one. (The word of pain may be anywhere, you just need to have it in your deck.) Another thing: this card is usefull also without NPC's on the map. The main thing it does is it searches for a card you need and that may already be gamebraking. But again, it requires that you recognize the right moment and the right card to maximize the effectiveness.

So, as a magus, a lot of cards you have will work, regardless of luck. The tests are usually failed by NPCs, while the card draw you get is granted. Also, even if heroes get to make some tests, there will always be some heroes failing those and getting bonus damage. The more you invest in magus, the more damage you will deal to all heroes, ignoring thier defense and protection. Your card draw will be amazing and the amount of times you will be able to repeat the aoe damage while not depending on having any creatures on the map is great. It is much easier to defeat 4 heroes at once with magus cards. And defeated heroes will give you even more cards. Bones of Woe are a great relic that you want to have in order to maximize the card draw and if you are able to have all 15 cards in your hand, you can deal up to 7 damage to all heroes, by playing 4 cards and having 4 cards draw per turn. When heroes start dying, this is when you are performing a death loop that can't be avoided by heroes and giving you a win in any encounter.

Hope this convinced you to try other options than Warlord and Punisher.

You know, I would love to see a counter card. My group will be using spirit speaker, I think, and I really don't want to lose cards all the time. Having a counter card that lets you negate one ability for that turn would be great. I would be all over that class!

Thanks for the card breakdown!

So question about Explosive Runes. A Necromancer opens a door and Explosive Runes is played. His Risen is one space away. The Risen is a familiar and a figure so it is affected by Overlord cards that target heroes. However as it automatically fails all tests it doesn't roll. So how much damage does it take if you take damage based on how much you failed a test roll by?.

So question about Explosive Runes. A Necromancer opens a door and Explosive Runes is played. His Risen is one space away. The Risen is a familiar and a figure so it is affected by Overlord cards that target heroes. However as it automatically fails all tests it doesn't roll. So how much damage does it take if you take damage based on how much you failed a test roll by?.

0 damage. (Reanimate auto fails, but since he does not roll, the amount of dmg suffered is 0).

Board Game Geek has an unofficial FAQ, but the questions there are answered by FFG, so it is worth looking there.