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We are starting off a bit into the campaign, since I didn't think to make a write-up about it, before we we're well under way. We are playing RtL, with the WoD expansion and the SoB rule for Divine favor to keep things a little balanced. The overlord is the Beastman lord doing the obsidian shackles plot. I'll be telling the story from the heroes perspective. No linkage, since www.descentinthedark.com doesn't work from my home internet(no clue why).
The noble heroes are:
Runemaster Thorn, with Wild Talent, gear of note: Staff of Punishment, Bane (blast rune) and cloak of deception
Silhuette, with Cautious, gear of note: Axe of returning, crystal shield, Magic bow and heavy leather armor
Steelhorns, with Leadership, gear of note: Bone blade, Knuckle dagger, Crystal shield and chain mail.
Varikas the Dead, with Knight, gear of note: Platemail, Ring of quickness, Dragontooth hammer, Shillelagh
Party upgrades:
Staff of the wild + 2 market upgrades (we missed the part about not being able to purchase tamalir upgrades when returning from a dungeon, and decided to let the action stand).
At the time of starting this session, the heroes have blitzed a few dungeons, the overlord has bought the second farrow brother and has full siege on Riverwatch. The heroes are in Tamalir. CP status is 55:34 in the heroes favor, the heroes have a bankroll of 5300 coins, and when last we stopped we we're discussing where and what to train.
Week 1 (more like week 7, but we didn't count at the start):
Overlord starts by managing to raze Riverwatch, and moves Alric to Vynelvale. Merick, having arrived at Vynelvale the round before, builds the first siegetoken. The overlord spends 25 xp on upgrading his humanoids to silver. My original plan was to train in Tamalir, then do the dungeon between Tamalir and Riverwatch. Finally rushing to Vynelvale to train before it burns. Since the OL has razed Riverwatch, we revise our plan to go directly to Vynelvale now, and hope to train before the siege is succesfull. The heroes move to Riverwatch, without getting any encounters.
Week 2:
Overlord continues building siege on Vynelvale (3), and buys the "big trouble" upgrade, hoping to stop the heroes from getting to Vynelvale in time.
Knowing what is ahead we move towards Vynelvale, and Big trouble is played. OL draws "the wild hunt", "friendly alchemist" and some other rather weak encounter. He decides on The wild hunt, not being happy with any of the encounters. The heroes kill the hellhounds while only suffering minor injuries and continue to Vynelvale. After some discussion we decide not to engage Merick in our own turn. The OLs keep is right next to Vynelvale, so engaging Merick now will only get us damage a bit more before he retreats. Since Alric is at Vynelvale too, we won't lift the siege, and engaging both lts seems like a stretch. Besides Merick will just get back the next week, to attack us again. Heroes heal up, get a rumor (the gain +12 CP rumor, placed between Tamalir and forge) and manage to get Belt of Might for Varikas and a second Crystal of Tival(Silhuette already has one), expecting to need additional healing for the double lt attack that is nearly certain to come.
Week 3:
The OL decides to attack the heroes with Alric Farrow, the location drawn is something like "the bog", where all tiles next to water costs an extra movement point.
Turn 1-2:
The OL set up, with 2 hellhounds, a sorcerer and a razorwing blocking the far escape route and Alric, 2 beastmen and a razorwing sets up near us, to go for the kill. The heroes spend their first 2 rounds on killing off the 2 hellhounds and the sorcerer, leaving only a wounded razorwing guarding the exit, the OL spawns a fresh beastmen at that end, to stop us getting away. We've used Silhuette and Runemaster Thorn as the frontrunning strikers, since the hellhounds were hiding in trees, while Varikas and Steelhorns were slowly following behind, covering our escape. The OL gets bold and puts Alric in front, ahead of his 2 silver beastmen and a razorwing. confident that he is mainly softening the heroes up, so Merick can get a total party kill. At the end of round 2 Alric does a run-action to get into base contact with Varikas (while hiding in a tree).
Turn 3:
The heroes spring the trap, while the OL was out getting a smoke during turn 2, we decided to try for a lt-kill if he advanced far enough into the map, and behold, he did. Varikas does a battle action with knight active on Alric, but only manages to shave off 5 wounds. Steelhorns then readies an aim-order (with leadership), drinks a powerpotion and shaves a decent 10 wounds off Alric, reroll was used for a single gold powerdice, which came up blank twice. Finally Thorn teleports back into basecontact with Alric, drinks a power potion and shaves another 11 wounds of Alric, leaving him with only 4 wounds, Silhuette spends the turn killing off the wounded Razorwing (we forgot about the +4 range on soar here, but i don't think it would have changed much), since shadowcloak from the trees and lack of fatigue prevents her from getting into the important action. The OL attacks with both beastmen and does an advance action with Alric taking 9 wounds off Varikas, and getting Alric out of harms way, the remaining razorwing takes 3 wounds off Steelhorns and provides even more blockage. Alric ends with 9 wounds remaining.
Turn 4:
Silhuette runs back with a Crystal of Tival to Varikas. Varikas uses the crystal to get back to 13 wounds and full fatigue, does another battle action with a knight active. The first two attacks are used to kill the nearest beastman, and by spending all his fatigue, he managed to catch up with Alric, however when the time comes to roll the dice, he misses. Steelhorns drops a rest order on Thorn, then goes on to maim the second beastman. Finally Thorn drinks a fatigue potion, runs past the razorwing and teleports in between Alric and his escape route, while doing another 3 wounds to him. The OL manages to do another 3 damage to Steelhorns with his beastman, while killing Thorn with the Razorwing and a battleaction from Alric. He does however leave himself 2 threat short of being able to retreat into the nearby tree. Alric ends the turn with 11 wounds left.
Turn 5:
Steelhorns does a rest order on Varikas, to let him do another battle action with his knight skill, then kills off the wounded beastman. Varikas does a battle action with knight active, but only manages to do a grand total of 1 damage to Alric. Silhuette moves in closer to both Alric but LoS prevents her from shooting at Alric(Varikas is in the way). Instead the Razorwing get it, leaving it with 2 wounds left. The OL decides that his current position only allows a single hero to attack at a time, so the heroes probably won't be able to break Alric against his regen. he focuses his forces on Varikas, though only dealing 3 damage. Alric ends the turn with 15 wounds left.
Turn 6:
Varikas does another knight-move, scoring 3 wounds, then retreats out of the way, so Silhuette can get a clean shot. Silhuette then does 2 and 3 damage to him, leaving him with 7 wounds left. Steelhorns does a ready-order, moves up to Alric and deals 6 wounds total, and drops a guard order on himself. The heroes end their turn, and immediately fire of the guard order, killing Alric.
Week 3(continued):
Much rejoicing is to be had, and the OL decides not to attack with Merick since he is no longer as certain of the strength of the Farrow brothers. He purchases the "law and disorder" upgrade, and gets up to 4 siege on Vynelvale. The heroes train in Vynelvale, getting "born to the bow" for Silhuette, "Blessing" for Runemaster Thorn, "Weapon mastery" for Steelhorns and 2 dice upgrades for Varikas (black+silver).
Week 4:
OL goes to 5 siege on Vynelvale. After some discussion, we decide that saving Vynelvale isn't really worth the extra week. It's right next to the OL keep, we have the skills we want from there, and it gives him no extra CP to raze it. Our minds is set on going to the rumor dungeon with our nice new powers. We go to the dungeon next to Vynelvale. The first dungeon-level is the arena, featuring an master ogre as its leader, and lots of potential for ranged support. The heroes are down a total of 15 wounds from killing Alric, and the OL is keeping all his monsters back for an all out killing zone. We open 4 bonepiles, getting 2 master skeletons, and 2 nothing. After getting the glyph and the goldpile we abandon the dungeon, without taking any damage at all, we end in Tamalir with buying our boat-upgrade and some other magic item I can't remember right now.
Week 5:
The OL fails to raze Vynelvale. We go to the rumor dungeon, first level is a spider level, with a potential 4/8 extra CP from saving villagers. We manage to clear it, but Steelhorns gets killed in a last ditch effort by the OL. We draw the next level which is #10 The ancient library, and decide to stop for the night.
Final score is 76:46(122 total) in the heroes favor. I'm getting slightly worried that with ~24 more CP coming to the heroes, along with how much the OL gets from kills, we are getting dangerously close to silver, without having trained at Olmrics hut. Given that we are playing obsidian shackles, he can't be guaranteed to stick around forever, and losing out on his skills would be a major miss for the party. XP wise we are looking good, but gold is scarce, and we need at least 6500 (4x500+3x1500) coins to grab everything from Olmric. Xp wise we are looking pretty decent, and it may be an option to forfeit the rumor entirely, just to gain an additional 2 normal dungeon levels before going into silver. Your thoughts?
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Congratulation for bringing Alric down, great job writing that one down. It was realy exciting to read.
If you run out of time, I would consider about training only one week at olmric, giving Silhouette rapid fire and let the others use their secret training options. This would leave a needed amound of 3000 gold. I think with her 12/5/1/5, Silhouette is strong enough to let one secret training out, although it may hurt.
I think especially against humanoid monsters there is a better skill available than cleaving: alertness. There will be only a few importent monsters left who die with one melee strike to trigger cleaving, and they can be killed easily by a aoe magic attack. Alertness on the other hand helps against all melee monsters. With a knockback weapon you can also trigger it yourself having several attacks in one round knocking the monster (for example merrick) again and again on a space adjacent to you.
You should also consider that you might want to give your overlord a reason to spend 15 XP for closing olmric's hut. He won't be able to use them for other things.
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Sebastian D.
Germany
Berlin
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reginleif wrote: Congratulation for bringing Alric down, great job writing that one down. It was realy exciting to read. More congratulations from me! You rarely see such a detailed Lt. fight report, thank you for that.
Comments on game sitution unfortunately snipped, no time  .
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Hmm, we are playing without AoD, so no knockback weapons. Still a nice combo though.
One major mistake the OL did vs. Alric was that he kept spawning beastmen. 4 movement, crowded spaces and a map where a lot of squares cost 2 movement to enter meant he would have gained a lot more from spawning Razorwings.
The suggestion about prioritizing Rapid fire over other skills and secret training is worth considering, especially if funds are tight. Currently we are sitting on ~2000 coins if I recall correctly and the coming dungeon level does have 2 coin piles and 2 chests, so we should end up with at least 3000 coins, regardless of us staying for the rumor level or not.
I'm still considering if we should be skipping the rumor level entirely, I'm favor off amassing more funds. This is also relevant for when Silver rolls around and we are looking at major weapon upgrades instead of just minor sidegrades from a depleted treasure deck.
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