My group is about to start a new campaign, I'll be the overlord. The party the players drew is:

Karnon with Tiger Tattoo, Astera with Divine Retribution, Kirga with Precision, and Lord Hawthorne with Leadership.

It seems to me that Kirga is currently the easiest to kill hero, does that sound reasonable?

My avatar is the Great wurm, plot is brother v. brother (i believe it's called) should be interesting.

I'd really like to spend my starting XP upgrading a monster type, since I can't do that shoud I buy a green treachery? I'm also thinking about the other siege related upgrades...

Any advice is welcome

Buying treachery with the starting XP is not allowed. You better look at the Avatar upgrades only

We house ruled to allow treachery in the starting 15, but it's true that you are technically not allowed to do this. I suggest siege engines, or possibly focused and a couple of other cheap avatar upgrades just to get them out of the way. Stay away from lawlessness, as it will come back to bite you later on. If you want to get treachery, make sure you discuss with your players that it's technically not allowed and make sure they are cool with it. Remember also that you cannot buy lieutenants with your starting 15 either. And I wouldn't house rule that because starting with extra lts. right away would be really rough against obsidian shackles (that's your plot) since you get the extra roll on sieges.

You could house rule lawlessness like we have. Now it is useful again.

people.exeter.ac.uk/pg234/runestone/boardgames/descent/descent.htm

I would say Siege Engines would be your best purchase. On one hand it's kind of a waste since it's worthless for several weeks until you get on a city to siege, but it's the best of the options that can be purchased initially. You definitely want it before you do any sieges.

Actually, I just remembered I don't know what specific upgrades the Great Wyrm can buy. If he has something really good that will be helpful in the first dungeon then you could probably get it (don't buy avatar upgrades).

Several weeks? Most OL Keeps are at worst 2 dungeons away from a town, so you could start sieging at the third week. You probably won't have 15XP by the third week, if your heroes are good and blitzing, so Siege Engines is a good buy IMHO.

-shnar

I think the only skills I would take over siege engines are avatar specific ones such as Into my Parlour or the beastman one that gives all beastmen an extra black die. I don't think there is a Wyrm specific upgrade that is better than Siege Engines.

shnar said:

Well yeah, but then you probably won't need Siege Engines for another two weeks minimum because you don't really need it until your token count reaches one less than the defense. But still, it's doubtful you'll be able to purchase silver monsters AND siege engines as soon as optimal, unless you start with Siege Engines.

So, seems like we agree.

I contemplated playing Great Wyrm for my next campaign, and I came to the conclusion that lawlessness and focused x2 were the best investment for him, in terms of starting xp. After that try to rush beast silver, and harass players with starting lieutenants - try to gain a single monster treachery, pick lone manticore, another farrow, and you're good for copper, start saving up for silver eldritch at silver campaign level.

The theory is like this : Eldritch rush is such an overdone starter, and siege engines are trash the first ten weeks or so.

Since I'm the dragon and I can't upgrade any monstre dungeon besides what's available to everyone else (unstoppable dragons ? whoopedidoo), I'm going to change tactic, even if it means risking the heroes having an easier time in dungeons. Beast upgrade means stronger lieutenants, and treachery means even more dangerous lieutenants encounters. Blitzing heroes won't let you gain xp in the dungeons, that much is clear - so why not bring the pain to them with a beefed up Alric ? In middle copper, he could clober them severely if you play smart (even more so now that telekinesis is out of the way), and that's about 10-15 xp for you and none for them.

So, early beast upgrade. Saddly nothing you can buy with starting xp to aid that strategy, but you can complement it with increased chance of random encounters (you're better of decreasing them before your first monster upgrade though - conquest denial, play smart).

Focused x2 is an overlooked upgrade, mainly because it has no timing in your growing curve. There are always thing you'd rather be buying instead of this, and when you have the spare xp it's too late. So buying them as early as possible in the game grants this upgrade a chance to be usefull. If your dungeons are going to be short, you maximize the chances of picking a card that'd net you a kill. If your dungeons are long, you gain conquest earlier on, and your pool of card is always ideal. It's a win win, really.

Seriously, siege engines is simply not what the dragon does. Harass heroes with beefed up lieutenants and chances are you can keep them at bay from the good places long enough.

Aureliano said:

Is there 2 Focused upgrades? I don't think so...

Corbon said:

Only one that I'm aware of.

Was pretty sure there was just 1. Being able to remove 8 cards from your deck seems like too quick of a cycle-through.

I ended up going with seige engines.

We're still in the first game week, just finished the second floor of a dungeon. I don't remember the exact XP break down, but I believe I'm at 13, while they're at 10. The first dungeon floor was the 'pit fiend' one, with the pits that move based off the roll of a white dice. The pits didn't move much last night, 'X' on the white dice more often then not. I didn't draw many useful OL cards during that floor either; Gust of winds and charges and such. I did manage to play hordes of things though, which setup a few kills on floor 2. I only got 1 XP on this floor (party opened a chest). Was off to a sad/bad start.

Second floor was the fallen (or collapsed?) columns one. I remember this floor being much harder the first time we played it, sniper skeletons are nasty. I managed to snag 12 XP on this one with normal skelies. Killing karnon, hawkman (lord hawthorne) and the witch lady (equipped with the cursed undying-ignoring staff, I forget the name),and 1 from chest again.

I'm hoping to get 1 more XP on the third floor. That way, with the 1 i'll get at start of week 2, I can upgrade my beast category to silver. If I was on the hero side I would flee though, getting one more week with everything at copper. We'll see I suppose

I'm currently marching alric on the shortest path to the heroes/tamalir. I'm not currently planning on seiging Tamalir; Seems a cheap at the beginning of the game to me. I may change my mind if more calkwalk dungeons appear. I'm hoping to just keep him close enough to the hoeroes to fortify in the next weeks and then seige the cities with the more annoying skills (the one with acrobat for example.)

If people are interested I'll post similar summaries for future games. We only play once a week and for only 3 or 4 hours, so they won't be too frequent

You might consider buying "Big Trouble" with your initial points. It can force an encounter, and with any luck make it a fairly nasty one. I play-tested it about 20 times on a green encounter with the party's first move and it came out about 9 times as a total party kill. On eight other times I killed half of the party and left the rest somewhat beaten up. On 3 occasions they got lucky and I had no real choice to work with. Even then I was able to hurt all of the hero's enough that their first dungeon would have been significantly harder. There are 14 green encounters, 5 of them are non combat. Of those 5, one inflicts 2-4 wounds on all hero's and the other the party gets lost and goes back to where they came from. Between the 20 times, I was able to get about 8 ambushes total. This included ones like Silence where she automatically ambushed the hero's. The party I was using for the playtest was:

Battlemage Jaes with Spiritwalk and the stun shop rune and chainmail

Sir Valadir with Unstoppable and a shop axe and chainmail and throwing knives

Laurel of Bloodwood with Marksman a bow and leather armor

Ispher with Eagle Eye, crossbow, leather and a shield

I would call this a reasonably good group. They have all thier bases covered with only one low wound hero and a good speed (4 or 5) to work with.

Brian

snacknuts said:

Sounds like a good start. Question though, how are you able to upgrade your beasts at the start of week two? Beast upgrade for Wyrm is 25 and from what you have described you have only 13 XP. Seems you would need another 3 hero kills (or 2 kills and a deck cycle) on the 3rd level to get up to 25. Granted that isn't impossible, but 1 more at lvl 3 and 1 at start of week 2 = 15. Seems like you will be 10 short.

bneumann said:

I actually like this idea quite a bit. Those first encounters without any copper items can be fairly rough. especially if you draw a particularly nasty encounter.

I was thinking beasts was 15 to upgrade. I suspect I'm confusing that with the 15 xp for a green treachery (the other upgrade i'm contemplating.)