My group is about to start our second RtL campaign. Our first ended in a quick success for me. The Hero's decided to forfeit at something like 30-15(approx.) Conquest. They made a few early mistakes, mainly pressing deep into the 3rd level of their second dungeon. They gained relatively little and I stacked the conquest. From what I read, this is a common mistake. When they left that dungeon I was able to press an encounter with Alric, after upgrading to silver beastment. I was able to do some serious hurt with the silver beastment, and there was little they could do to stop Alric. We decided to call our first attempt a learning experience and start over next time.

My question is this: I've been considering playing the Demon Prince as my next avatar, provided the party is suitable, and I want to start with Siege Engines as my first initial avatar upgrade. However, by doing this it seems like I am at a fairly strong early advantage. The Demon Prince's keep is only 1 trail removed from Nerekhall(sp?) and with the reduced defense I don't see how the hero's could possibly defend it. Especially since it is only accessible by boat.

Any thoughts on this would be welcome, as well as any thoughts on the Demon Prince in general. I've only ever played the Beastman Lord, so my avatar experience is limited.

Do it.

And while it was up to you guys, bailing out when the score is 30-15 seems a little hasty to me. I've been in much worse situations than that before.

LostSailor said:

LostSailor said:

That sounds like a fairly good early strategy for you. Razing a town that the heroes have to drop 1000 g for a boat to get to, possibly not being able to defeat your lt(s). when they get there isn't a bad start to get that extra cp generating early every turn, plus the loss of skills. It would be fully within the rules and the only thing that would stop you from doing it would be yourself. There's certainly no rule about going after whatever town is closest to your keep. I played as Beastman Lord and razed vynelvale right away to keep leadership and a few others out of the party's hands...moving next to riverwatch. It seems a logical progression to me. Unless you have a certain hero/skill you want to attack, there's no reason I can see not to go after some early razes and limit the places heroes can upgrade/shop/buy skills. If you're starting with siege engines, this seems like that's what you want to do. I would then recommend either shackles or ascension since both have advantages for razing (extra dice/extra cp and necessary to forward your plot, respectively).

The Heroes have to decide if Nerekhall is worth saving or not. The campaign I'm currently in is the same, and we were at 19 to 16 when Nerekhall was destroyed. We went through 2 dungeons (just first level, blitzing) and a few weeks recovering, etc. Alric went immediately to destroy Nerekhall, and we said, eh, who cares for now. If we can get there, great, if not, eh. We almost got there, but it was destroyed. So instead, we waited a few weeks for the OL to have more Conquest than us (20 to 19) and then entered the Legendary Dungeon. Figured it would be a good idea to go through before the OL upgraded his Eldritch, and so far, we're right. We're 3 levels into Legendary and the score is 39 to 36. The extra gold at the bottom is *really* going to help our upgrades (Secret Trainer, here we come!)

-shnar

Big Remy said:

I do agree that it was hasty. I personally was of the mind that it was not insurmountable by any means and we should press on. But since it was our first run, and still fairly early on(less than a combined 50 CT) I didn't fight too hard on it. I made a few early mistakes myself, and a restart would only give me the chance to be even more devious.

I'm looking forward to that early 2XP a week. I also like the idea of Razing the city that trains Leadership early on. I find Leadership to be one of the more annoying traits.

A fun tactic that I don't know if you've ever tried and might work well for the Demon Lord is to buy the Transport Gem as soon as you can. As soon as the Heroes get within one trail of your Lt if he's still at Nerekhall, transport him to Vyenvale. By the time they get down there to try and save it, you will probably be rolling to raze it. In the meantime, if they hit a dungeon on the way and you can afford it, buy a second Lt and head right to Nerekhall and start the seige again.

Or if they can't get there in time to stop you rolling but try to get there anyways, and you get lucky and raze the city on the first roll you can then transport the Lt across the map in the same turn due to the way things are resolved. I don't have the Transport Gem in front of me, but I think the Lt would still be able to out a siege token onto the new city. That way the Heroes are stuck at the top of the map, and now have to move all the way down again to try and stop the Lt.

Big Remy said:

I like that idea. It seems like the best way to utilize the Demon's starting position on the map. If they do manage to get to either Nerekhall or Vyenvale, can I still roll for razes, correct? The only way to stop a siege is to force a flee or kill the lt?

LostSailor said:

Yep..if you still have lts. present in the city and siege tokens equal to its defense rating, you get to roll. That's how I razed tamalir (hooray!) with my group this weekend. I stacked Eliza, Merick, and Kratz (Alric finished up Dawnsmoor for my 4th temple before joining them as well) in Tamalir. Eliza had to flee but weakened the heroes, then Merick took them down. It took a couple of turns since they were still in Tamalir after their flight/defeats, but I just kept rolling.

The rulebook basically says discard siege tokens where there isn't an lt. present and roll if you have tokens equal to the defense. That pretty much sums up that lts. have to flee or die for you to lose your roll.

Feanor said:

Gratz on the victory. What level was your campaign at, if you don't mind my asking.

LostSailor said:

Don't mind at all. The campaign was just into gold. It worked where I had lts. (merick and alric) razing Dawnsmoor and Forge and the Party was trying to get through the legendary dungeon before Eliza could raze tamalir. Alric and Merick were already rolling so merick was only one space away when the entered the dungeon, meaning he was there by the time they could go after lts. We went to gold during the legendary dungeon (a well spent two treachery for a Wrath allowed the very annoying Giant (gold humanoids since I was BML) and some friends to get me something like 37 cp in the Legendary level, but the heroes didn't want to abandon because they wanted their free skill/dice/secret training, so my lts. upgraded to gold just in time for "The Battle for Tamalir."

I bought Kratz and moved him two from tamalir right away, and the party with two tanks knew they were in trouble, but still felt they needed gold treasure to do it. This allowed me to get another event treachery and have Kratz there in time. They got Eliza, but I got their wings off one of the tanks. Then they stopped for that turn and spent the rest of their gold on a few more treasures...yielding up a roll. I missed, but then they had to flee from merick and Kratz on their first go around, and by now Alric was joining the party. I grabbed the encounter where the lt. goes first next and by now had two dark charms...so...it was pretty much over at that point..which was too bad because we had just run out and found those Lt. minis on Friday at local stores and I never got to play with Alric or Gata (I was probably only going to purchase him to use the mini, but...why not?).

Anyway, it was a fun campaign and good first experience. We already started our next campaign (we had set aside Saturday for rtl, but finished up Friday night...) and I am a hero now. I have Ronan and Trenloe now and my gf has Sihlouette and Battlemage. My buddy is playing the Sorceror king and we haven't made it very far, but it's going pretty well. Our first dungeon was one with a giant that you don't need to kill and two glyphs/treasure piles. We managed to end week one up 7 to 1 and fled after that level and a little healing so that we were only down 1 health on two heroes with some treasures and such.