Hi everyone,

I'm my group's overlord and I'm having a tough time selecting cards/strategies for our next campaign. We'll be playing the Labyrinth of Ruin expansions with Lair of the Wyrm and the Trollfens on top.

My hero players give me a really tough time so I'm trying to sorta min/max my creature/card picks so it stays challenging for them and interesting for me.

The new basic Overlord deck seems to be really fun, but seems rather lackluster compared to the old one once you start removing the really crappy cards. It seems to lack reliable all-star cards like Frenzy and Dash (the extra attack on surge one doesn't seem as good), both of which I kept all the way through our first campaign. Am I missing something here? Has anyone actually played the deck and found something I might've missed?

What do you think about the new Overlord archetypes? Is Reinforce still the best card in the game? Are there any other good options/synergies?

When picking monsters in Descent 2.0, picking large creatures seemed like the way to go whenever possible, the reinforcement mechanic seemed really skewed towards them. Ettins and Shadow Dragons especially worked really well for me. I noticed in the quest guide that now you are often times forced into picking small creatures but can also reinforce multiple ones per round. Are large creatures still the way when you have an open group?

Hope this wall of text isn't too intimidating and stimulates an interesting discussion.

Thanks for your time!

A lot of questions which answers are quite situation dependent. Difficult to answer to them in a general way, IMO.

I would advise you to try things and get the "feel" of them.

The thing that sucks is, playing those quest cards to TF & Wyrm doesn't seem to do much to help the OL. They get shopping & XP etc, but what does the OL get? I understand it's all in fun but it can affect your chance of winning the Finale

Have you got the Conversion Kit monsters?

The thing that sucks is, playing those quest cards to TF & Wyrm doesn't seem to do much to help the OL. They get shopping & XP etc, but what does the OL get? I understand it's all in fun but it can affect your chance of winning the Finale

Have you got the Conversion Kit monsters?

I don't think that's a problem as long as the Overlord considers himself a sort of Dungeon Master. That's how I play (I'm generally the Overlord) I enjoy presenting the encounter and controlling the monsters but I expect to loose. Good triumphs over evil...

Then again just add more enemies and up the amount of cards in the overlords hand, that should give you an advantage.

I never cut cards from the game either add all the overlord cards to your deck.

What your strategy will be is going to depend a lot on what heroes and classes your players choose.

Focus on quests, overlord cards, monsters, and conditions that affect whichever attribute is their weak point. If they have lots of ranged characters, you'll lean more heavily towards things like Barghest, where if they have lots of melee, you'll lean more heavily towards things like Shadow Dragons.

Make sure you check out the Errata / FAQ. It's been updated to include all of the expansions. I know Reinforce was nerfed, but I haven't played specifically with that one very much, so it's hard for me to say what it's power level is.

Come back after the first play session with some details on your heroes and we might be able to help out a bit more with some specifics of our own.

I can do my best to answer generally:

BASIC II is good to play for compounding combos so it's good to be able to get a lot of cards into your hand. Dirty Fighting +/or Mental Error with Flurry hits hard with the ability to perform a second attack. A power monster can do some really serious damage unexpectedly with Blinding speed to move into range and attack with Surge bonus cards (Dirty Fighting &/or Mental Error) and Flurry.

Befuddle is extremely useful as is Mimic. Sign of weakness can hurt the Healer hard by cursing them so they cannot use their ability to heal. Befuddle can be used to ensure the ability checks fail

You want to play basic 2 with a set that allows you to pick up multiple cards so you can cycle quickly and get the big hitting cards again (like Bloodlust in the Warlord set for example)

As far as monster choice it is hard without knowing the hero structure, but I can remember the Arachyurya (?) and Reavers were pretty dangerous and get used throughout the campaign. Quest selection is important as well, as you really want to win the Web of Power quest as it will allow you to play 'Queen Ariad' instead of Ariad which is a HUGE advantage. Try to get the heroes to go down the Serena path rather than Raythen if you can - he is the more valuable of the two.

I really enjoyed playing this campaign, we had several to the wire games and the Overlord won the Campaign overall, but it was so close. Funnily enough, we played with Lair of the Worm and the OL getting Valyndra's Bane turned out to be a massive advantage. A good surge roll (maybe assisted with Dirty Fighting) + Flurry + Valyndra's Bane was devastating for the heroes.