nathan bivins
Charlotte
North Carolina
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Session 1: http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/559132/the-great-wyrm-awaken...
At the start of this session, the heros have:
Laughin Buldar. Skills: Tiger Tatoo. Equipment: Chain Mail, Axe, Morningstar
Kirga. Skills: Crack Shot. Equipment: Crossbow, Skull Shield, Chainmail
Spiritspeaker Mok. Skills: Boggs the Rat. Equipment: Ghost Armor, Tunic, Blinding Light
Zyla. Skills: Swift. Equipment: Elven Robe, Axe
Party Equipment: 1700 coins
Overlord Avatar : The Great Wyrm.
Plot: Obsidian Shackles
Cities Razed: None
Overlord Upgrades: Sir Alric Farrow, Siege Engines. XP: 7
Dungeons explored: Thelsvan Highway
Campaign Level: Copper. Conquest: Heroes (11), Overlord (7). Total = 18
8 cards in hand, 14 in deck, 0 power cards in play, 14 threat.
Week 2 - Continued
Dungeon Level 3 - 3: Bridge of Death
I choose the option with razorwings and two sorcerers. The sorcerer option is the only way I can harm Zyla in this dungeon, and with no ranged/magic spawns, I was concerned about her being invulnerable for a while.
This level features a scary bridge with pits on either side that if the heros fall into, they instantly die. Dunnix is the level leader and can gain knockback with a blank. I place the razorwings on the rune, chest, and piles of gold, and the sorcerers go near the rune and Dunnix.
Kirga and Mok advance onto the bridge with guard orders, Buldar, guards the rear, and Zyla races ahead running for the rune. I attack Zyla a few times doing some damage, but largely hold my ground and wait.
My strategy is to hide and wait til they cross the bridge and then hit them hard from all sides with razorwings, hopefully knock a hero off the bridge, and then retreat to where they cannot harm me.
Kirga, Mok, and Buldar advance again and fatigue to engage Dunnix and Zyla goes down to sorcerer attacks [+1]. My razorwings attack from all directions. Dunnix tries to knock Kirga off the bridge, but only does a few damage.
The heros hammer at the razorwing on the rune and clear it(+3), and Zyla comes through, but Mok goes down to combined razorwing attacks[+2].
I'm attacking with Dunnix and then retreating him out of range with his stun and excellent movement, even retreating him across the bridge of death. Buldar is chasing him around, knicking away at his health with that scary axe and morningstar combo, and Dunnix keeps missing his knockback roll. Mok and Kirga stay near the center of the map firing at things and Zyla runs towards the chest and starts hacking at the razorwing guarding it.
I spawn a skeleton patrol to deal with Zyla and use a combination of a block trap and combined attacks to take down Kirga [+4, cursed]. and Buldar goes down as he chases Dunnix the next round [+4].
At this point, every other roll seems to be a miss, and things are getting bogged down and cluttered. I still have most of my razorwings and things are not going well for the heros, but at least no one has been knocked off the bridge.
Buldar enters the level and leaps across the pit at the bridge to kill Dunnix!(+4) I plink at the other three heros, unable to kill Zyla as she tries to get through to the chest after 3 misses in a row. The heros decide to run for the portal/town and have Zyla stay behind and try to get the chest. The gamble pays off as Zyla finally kills the razorwing and opens the chest [+1]. The heros get a Magic bow and Ripper. As Zyla runs for the portal, I try to kill her and manage to cycle my deck [+3] and take down Zyla [+1].
The heros left the piles of gold, as the level still had several monsters, and I had plenty of threat left and they were tired of missing and dying. I don't blame them...this was a tough level for the heros and a good one for me.
Dungeon summary: OL - [+16] 23/23, Party - (+7) 18, Magic Bow, Ripper.
The heros choose to stay in Thelsvan Highway. Kirga trades Zyla the cursed shield.
Week 3
[+1] Sir Alric Farrow moves to Riverwatch.
The party moves to Riverwatch and have no encounters.
The party debated attacking Sir Alric, but with such poor weapons they thought they needed the market of Riverwatch first. They had over 2200 gold, and needed item upgrades badly. Unfortunately that meant I would be able to upgrade beasts, but they rolled the dice, so to speak.
OL - [+1] 24/24, Party - (+0) 18
Week 4
[+1] Sir Alric Farrow sieges Riverwatch.
The party trains in Riverwatch, getting potions (2 power potions for the upcoming fight), heals Mok, Buldar trains (buying one black dice, for a total of 4 melee dice), and Zyla shops.
The party pulls a treasure cache, Falcon's Claw, Knuckle Dagger, Pack of Holding, and Great Bow but only decide to buy the Falcon's claw. They also buy 2 curse dolls to remove curses from Zyla and Kirga. They also buy Zyla a hammer so she can knock creatures off chests and runes rather than having to kill them first. I don't like this plan.
OL - [+1] 25/25, Party - (+0) 18
Week 5
[+1] I upgrade Beasts to Silver. Sir Alric Farrow sieges Riverwatch.
The party attacks Sir Alric Farrow.
The location is the Peaceful Glade, , which limits all figures to 3 power dice. Yes!
I start with Alric on the upper right side of the map with a sorcerer beside him and razorwings in front, creating a wall of soaring, silver razorwings. The hellhounds and beastmen I position on the other two prongs to threaten from those sides.
Zyla charges forward, as usual and starts plinking away at the silver razorwings with ripper as the other two run towards the intersection. I use beastmen and silver hellhounds to pummel the center, but roll 5 misses or so and do little damage. I also reinforced with a razorwing behind Alric, in case a blocking one falls.
Buldar makes it to the razorwing wall and guards, while Mok and Kirga try to defend the center from the rest of the monsters. Mok has a comical plan of using his newly acquired blast rune (Sunburst) to blast everything is the small hallway. This will include two razorwings, Zyla (who is immune basically), Buldar, and Mok! Luckily for everyone, the damage is small and nothing happens!
Basically, the party is having a lot of trouble harming the razorwings and are surrounded. I had planned to hold Alric back, determined not to lose him this early, but I saw a chance to maybe kill Buldar with a battle action from him, and left him vulnerable.
My attack on Buldar is interrupted by Buldar's guard and I mismanage my threat and my mistake and the attack(1 miss, 1 hit!) leaves Alric right beside both he and Zyla, and after their battle actions, Alric is sitting at 11 health. Zyla makes way for Kirga's battle, which hits for 7 damage. Kirga gets one last shot at Alric, and can potentially kill him and end the encounter, but misses!
I'm sweating bullets, but all the heros except for Zyla are badly wounded, and I plan to send them to their grave before exiting. I easily take down Mok [+2] and Kirga [+3] with a combination of beastment and hellhounds from behind, while the razorwings hit Buldar. Finally, Alric declares a battle, kills Buldar with both attacks [+4], and then retreats two spaces off the map using threat to end the encounter.
The encounter was a near miss for me, and the heros were so very close to killing Alric. In a day of missed attacks, I had about 10 missed attacks in the encounter, but Kirga's miss on Alric will effect the whole campaign. I couldn't harm Zyla with my current minions and rather than risk Alric further and make the encounter last a very long time, I decided to retreat.
Alric is forced to retreat back to the lair of the Great Wyrm and the siege of Riverwatch is lifted.
OL - [+10] 11/36, Party - (+0) 18
At the end of this session, the heros have:
Laughin Buldar. Skills: Tiger Tatoo, +1 melee trait. Equipment: Chain Mail, Axe, Morningstar. XP
Kirga. Skills: Crack Shot. Equipment: Magic Bow, Chainmail
Spiritspeaker Mok. Skills: Boggs the Rat. Equipment: Ghost Armor, Tunic, Blinding Light, Sunburst
Zyla. Skills: Swift. Equipment: Elven Robe, Axe, Ripper, Falcon's Claw
Party Equipment: 900 coins
Overlord Avatar : The Great Wyrm
Plot: Obsidian Shackles
Cities Razed: None
Overlord Upgrades: Sir Alric Farrow, Siege Engines, Silver Beasts. XP: 11
Dungeons explored: Thelsvan Highway
Campaign Level: Copper. Conquest: Heroes (18), Overlord (36). Total = 54
A great session, at least for me. I got to kill everyone at least twice I think, I think everyone had fun, and the ending was very tense. A few mistakes were made: "I" forgot to give them feats for activating the glyph in the dungeon for a few rounds, Mok forgot a stun marker in the dungeon, and both sides made some mistakes in the Lt. encounter. I exposed Alric and nearly got him killed, and the heros needed just a little better positioning possibly. I'm also not 100% we played the Riverwatch stuff right...I think the heros could have "visited" Riverwatch in Week 3, but I may just be misremembering it.
The day was also marked by tons of misses on each side. I don't usually complain about misses, but it made the session go slowly and came in waves it seemed. Zyla missed 3 in a row for a chest, I missed 5 in a row in the Lt. encounter, and the big miss at the end.
Zyla really is becoming a pain now, as she has 3 armor against ranged attacks, and 8 armor against breath, blast and can exhaust for -2 damage. She's got a hammer now, and is decently deadly with the Axe or Ripper. If not for her, I could have outright won the LT encounter instead of retreating.
Kirga got rid of the Skull shield, so she's now more vulnerable, but worth less. The upgrade to the Magic Bow makes her effective once again, especially at long range.
Buldar is easily the biggest damage dealer of the group, and with a power potion and fatigue he is downright scary. And that's with shop weapons.
Mok is in dire need of a treasure upgrade, but he's pesky (Boggs and his +1 threat ability have made a big difference) and not worth much conquest wise.
Overall, a great session and I think everyone is having a great time with it.
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John Hugo
United States
Matthews
North Carolina
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Good session report. I think it was another bow that we pulled from the treasure cache [doesn't really make a difference since we didn't keep it].
Maybe next session we won't roll as many misses. But at least no one was knocked off of the bridge of death! I'd say that's a victory in-itself for us.
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nathan bivins
Charlotte
North Carolina
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Updated with the correct treasure pull and added some links to www.descentinthedark.com, copied from another session report that I liked.
They don't call Dunnix "Dunnix of the Stone" for nothing. He couldn't knock anyone off that bridge, even though he had like 5 attempts.
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Brad DeRan
United States
Columbus
Ohio
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you actually should have had the pull from riverwatch with one more treasure since caches do not count
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nathan bivins
Charlotte
North Carolina
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Wait, I thought treasure caches DO count, and it simulates a market shortage, and you do not draw another card?
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Brad DeRan
United States
Columbus
Ohio
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not in riverwatch, that is the special ability of the town. Also Laughin would not have been able to train a dice in Riverwatch as it doesn't have the ability to train any dice upgrades
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nathan bivins
Charlotte
North Carolina
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Doh! Thanks for the rules corrections.
I'll have to flip another treasure and give them the chance to buy it....not sure what to do with the dice upgrade.
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nathan bivins
Charlotte
North Carolina
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It seems we've been playing incorrectly by not giving the heros 50 gold for each master monster they kill as well.
Ah well, I guess it's expected to have a few of these in the first campaign. At least it's caught early on and fairly easy to rectify.
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Posted Tue Sep 7, 2010 8:48 pm
