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Well, as have been note elsewhere on these forums, the last Campaign ended with the Beastmaster throwing in the towel. This time around, I'll be playing the OL. This means the angle of storytelling is a little different.
The meddling insects, I mean heroes are:
Runemaster Thorn - Divine Retribution
Lord Hawthorne - Knight
Battlemage Jaes - Quick Casting
Laurel of the bloodwood - Born to the bow
I let the hero players do 4 sets of 3 heroes with a spare set of 3, in case any of them didn't like what they drew initially. The extra set was picked and after much discussion they ended up with this setup. I didn't pay much attention to the hero draw and pick, since I was too busy cleaning up the table from our last session and getting into position for this round.
I initially drew the Titan for OL, but decided against playing him. Mainly since the heroes wouldn't like the nearly constant sieging of Tamalir I would be doing. Winning by losing your playing group seems to short-sighted. Instead I grabbed The Spider queen and decided to do the Eternal Night plot. This decision was part a rush decision, and part just a "let's see where we can take this". The heroes decide to start the game without buying anything. I grab "into my Parlor", let the fun commence.
Week 1:
Alric goes towards Frostgate, I figure, they've given me an extra week, so should be able to get it burning in time. Looking back, I realize going for Forge might have been a better choice. Since they would then require a boat to get there.
Heroes stay in tamalir to shop, and draw a ring of quickness and a treasure cache, not the luckiest of starts.
score: 1:0
week 2:
Alric arrives at Frostgate. The heroes head to Starfall forest, without getting an encounter on the way.
Level 1 - The Citadel
Big giant is imprisoned in the middle, so passageways are extra dangerous. Overall a very large map. I choose the Minion setup where I get 2 Master beastmen and some regular beastmen, Set them up so they can't get to use Thorn to grab the glyph early. Into my Parlor gets loaded with a Crushing Block and Dark Charm. Initially the heroes head over to the weakly guarded gold pile. While they move into position, I spawn a group of Kobolds, to free up Beastmen from guard duties and get -2 threat pr. trap.
Next turn I drop a crushing block on Lord Hawthorne, to make sure he spends all his fatigue getting out of the dangerous passageway, then have him try to kill Thorn with a Dark charm. Sadly he ends up doing only a pitiful 4 damage. The heroes open the chest and find a Crystal of Tival.
The heroes clear out the weak wing with no bigger issue while I get the Leader-sorcerer into position with supporting Master beastmen for command. Jaes with a Chainmail is slowly dropping in health. The following round the heroes fall back to the first room, with Laurel running back to the starting glyph.
I then have a minor brainfart and move my beastmen to close where Lord hawthorne can get to them with a knight-move. My brain totally filtered out the fact that he was sitting on a rest-order so i only saw the 0 fatigue he had left. I still manage to blast Jaes down to 3 wounds, which he promptly loses falling into a pit (Spider queen bonus is lovely there. In the end they get the glyph activated, but fail to get the gold pile. They retreat to Tamalir, with Hawthorne at just 1 wound. They have to spend so much on healing themselves up, that they can only afford a single treasure, the Great bow for Laurel.
Lessons learned, wait a bit with the initial traps, heroes are a bit rattled though, since the previous campaign wasn't nearly as brutal on them.
Score OL 6: Heroes 4
Week 3:
I buy Merrick Farrow, I know I should go for the silver upgrade first, but since the heroes are down on XP, have 0 coins, and i'm already sieging my first town, I figure I need to cut them a little slack. Alric begins sieging Frostgate.
The heroes go to blackwing swamp. On the way the get the encounter that allows them to purchase any single skill, they cheer until they realize they are totally broke. The initial dungeon I drew was throwing stone, since I didn't want to win the campaign on the first night, I simply flip past that and get:
Level 1 - The ancient library
2 chests, 2 goldpiles and a weak master sorcerer who keeps coming back. The heroes end up doing all 10 encounter markers with no luck. I manage to kill Kill Thorn, twice, but don't get any spawncards in hand until the very end, when they have the entire area covered. One chest comes up empty, the other contains a heavy leather armor for Laurel. At the end of the level the Heroes buy a Platemail for Lord Hawthorne and the magic bow just to empty the treasure stack and while continuing to the next level.
Score OL 10: Heroes 11
Level 2 - The summoning
2 glyphs + 2 chests, no leaders. I go for the option of a master sorcerer, and don't even try to get the demon summoned, instead blocking the chests and glyphs. 3 of 4 Heroes spend the first round in town getting some healing in, while Thorn stays down with a Dodge order. From there on, i get to spawn a ridiculus amount of monsters. Before they are through, I've killed Laurel and Thorn while to spawning, Bane spiders, Kobolds, Razorwings and a Beastmen warparty. When they go through to level 3, i'm sitting with 0 threat and 0 cards in hand. The heroes are pretty damaged all round and there are only 5 cards left in the OL deck. We finish the session here. I'm afraid i can't remember what treasures were in the chests.
Final Score OL 15: Heroes 17
I'm still getting the ropes of being OL, and probably letting the Heroes escape too often. My main strategy thus far has been to delay the heroes, since time should always be in my favor. The heroes are going into level 3 at this point, which I really didn't expect them to do. I could have played trapmaster at some point to cause the players to flee, but i don't think i'd have gotten any kills from it. The pure "back-build your ressources and scare them into fleeing" strategy might still be a good idea though.
For the overland strategy, I'm contemplating sending Merrick to Forge just to stress the heroes. Sending him to Frostgate won't change anything as Alric will have it fully sieged in 3 turns with or without his help. I'm getting silver Beasts as soon as I have the XP for it, but then what?
Treachery? and if so, which?
Trap treachery is nice and cheap, but we don't play with AoD, so a lot of the good stuff is out. The scything blades+crushing block combo is something I'd love to throw at them at some point though, just to see their faces. Spawn Treachery would allow me to get a decent silver beast spawn in, like a master Manticore, or 2 master razorwings.
Event treachery is expensive, but getting Crushing blow into the rotation could be really nice. Especially for when the heroes start trying to repel my Lts from the sieged cities.
Plot cards?
The first 2 scrolls are pretty easy to obtain, so can be done as pretty much an after through. I don't know if I should be worrying too much about advancing my plot at this point, or I can comfortably wait until we reach silver.
Upgrades?
Super angry bane spiders look nice, but until I get my hands on at least 1 spawn treachery, I won't be getting enough of them for it to matter. Focused, Transport gem and Siege engines also look nice.
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Lexingtonian
United States
Unspecified
Massachusetts
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"Cut them a little slack?" I stopped reading there. Hope you had fun, though.
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joel cuthbert
United States
fort collins
Colorado
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i would highly suggest descentcampaigntracker dot com
this will help you guys out a lot and you can keep notes and track of just about everything.
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Problem is we don't have a pc available near by, so someone would have to get up and leave the room every time we wanted to record something...
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joel cuthbert
United States
fort collins
Colorado
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laptops for under $300 : good investment
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New apartment that can field a bigger gaming table: ~quite a bit more.
Originally we had plenty of gaming space, but then some guy moved into our gaming room. So before each playing session we are currently removing his bed and getting 2 small extra tables in. It is far from optimal, sadly the alternatives are even worse.
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Alain Gottcheiner
Belgium
Brussels
Unspecified
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I suggest taking 2 Trap Treachery fairly quickly. One for your combo, one for the second Dark Charm - the best way to kill heroes, and they have two of them with only 8 life.
Also, Focused is cheap and makes a good pack-thinning combo with Into my Parlour.If you want to play with two Dark Charms, don't ditch the Aim cards. I would perhaps ditch the Ferroxes (or Medusa), two Dodges and the card which wipes off three counters.
Then get Slaggorath and begin with plot items. Don't rely on winning in your final dungeon - you won't.
Monster Treachery isn't that good, as the Beast cards (Naga, Manticore, Major Apes) aren't very strong - compare with Legions of the Dead or Lone Troll.
Forget about buying 20-point treachery.
Frostgate is the first city to raze ; they shouldn't be allowed to get Ox Tattoo (for fighting Slaggorath), nor Lucky (too strong with Laurel).
NB : why would Throwing Stones be such a difficult level ?
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Corbon Loughnan
Singapore
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Merrimac wrote:
Monster Treachery isn't that good, as the Beast cards (Naga, Manticore, Major Apes) aren't very strong - compare with Legions of the Dead or Lone Troll.
Forget about buying 20-point treachery.
I very much disagree.
Death on the Wing is one of the very best cards you can get for Treachery, because those two Razorwings are difficult to kill (invulnerable to melee unless they attack it and Soaring) and can almost always get to anywhere with a powerful attack.
A high-end Master Manticore combines decent speed and range, Soaring, and the ability to take out a hero in a single round with Quickshot.
Master Naga are slow, but have one of the highest damage outputs in the game and provide command (not to mention grapple means blocking any fleeing hero, and affecting hero plans in general) for other monsters.
Master Blood Apes combine toughness, an extraordinary damage output and a lot of movement if you can get a leap in. Not to mention the way they force the heroes to adapt their positioning.
If you go 'basic' the basic razorwing and hellhound spawns work well - razorwings to create threat everywhere and block melee heroes, hellhounds because upgraded hellhounds are very very nasty if there are few trees.
Beast spawns are a fair bit more subtle than other spawns, but very much just as useful. once you have a couple each of trap and event treachery, you definitely want a monster treachery to put that extra touch of capability into your Lts.
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Alain Gottcheiner
Belgium
Brussels
Unspecified
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The difference obviously comes from our experience with those monsters. Mine is that :
1) leap is a very difficult ability to use, because after spawning you have to expend at least two points to get into position, and then leap and land on a two-square space with the remaining points *2. Seldom possible. However, their high resilience could be nasty.
2) razorwings are less powerful against a group with three ranged/magic characters and/or who have learned how to use guard orders. Also, remember that two of the heroes are Hawthorne (who is good at guarding) and Thorn (who can tickle a razorwing in its nook)
3) one manticore attacks twice. Six skeletons (or beastmen) attack 6 times, and a master silver skeleton does as much damage as one attack from a master silver manticore. Put range into the equation and they become better. Include shields and feats and the hero is able to block one or two attacks, so the number is important.
Most heroes that I killed fell to numbers, not to big attacks.
At gold, this changes a bit, as razorwings, manticores and hellhound become strong, while eldritch gain less.
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