Michael Sims
United States
San Jose
California
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At long last - having the game for 2 years and usually playing the Overlord, it's time to try the Heroes. I'm excited. Besides - I figure the best way to be a better Overlord is to play the Heroes and see what I like and dislike about them. Experience what works and what doesn't.
Traditionally the Heroes have gotten beaten -- badly. We usually find the Heroes down by more than 2-to-1, several cities burned, and the Overlord with multiple Lieutenants on Tamalir before too long. So we have pretty lax rules on picking Heroes. You can pick any, provided you don't pick the big 3. Tahlia, Nanok, or Landrec. If you want them, you can do 5 stacks of 3, pick the best 4, and take your chances. But otherwise, we'll just pick. We try to pick them different each time so the game isn't repetitive.
Hero choices.
A Striker - Laughin Buldar. I love his +2 damage right from the start. A core melee that we do pick a lot. Light on Fatigue, but a hard hitter.
A Defender - Brother Glyr. Never tried him before - but that armor 3 is so tempting. 2 free movement. If you can get him into position and pair him up with some battle-skills, it's battling with 2 movement all the way! The trick of course is to get him into play - and then keep him alive.
A Wizard - Mad Carthos. Hard hitting. A bit squishy, but with a dual melee we have some brawn already. This will make for two hard hitters right from the start. Pair one of them up with the appropriate double surge skill or a good weapon and we'll have two heroes that can take down leaders.
A Runner - Silhouette. Great stats, flexible skill. Hopefully turn her into an all around utility player.
Now the all important skill draws - which turn out to be completely awful.
Laughin Buldar - not a single offensive skill to choose from. The best he gets is Taunt. Pretty awful for the 3 AC striker. I suppose this could come in handy to keep Carthos alive, once coupled with a Ring of Protection... but there are so many skills I'd rather have gotten.
Brother Glyr - Unmovable. Ok this one's pretty good. It fits in with his plan of Battling and not dying. Extra armor makes him impossible to hit and the Battle actions are done naturally anyways.
Silhouette - Born to the Bow. A great skill, but one that alters her role. With a free Aim on every attack, one needs to be attacking as often as possible -- not running around gathering stuff. This optimizes her for taking out peripheral monsters. Not likely to hit for high damage, but very likely to hit, consistently, for good damage. Great for picking off those priests and sorcerers.
Mad Carthos - Willpower. Yuck. I think his alternatives were Fire Pact and Aura. This takes MC and makes him a psuedo-runner, only not very good at it with minimal fatigue and quick to die.
Summary:
Hero 1 (Laughin Buldar): {Taunt}
Hero 2 (Brother Glyr): {Unmovable}
Hero 3 (Silhouette): {Born to the Bow}
Hero 4 (Mad Carthos): {Willpower}
Overlord: The Sorcerer King. A solid pick for a newer OL to not have to be too situational on the Terrinoth map, and be able to fast-kill this rather squishy party in the dungeons.
Cutting to the chase, this game is a disaster. Jumping right in to the dungeon at Starfall Forest, we find skeleton snipers are getting damage thru consistently, and even Glyr is killed with traps. Silhouette finds the first magic weapon, the copper bow and becomes a shooting machine - but the rest of the party falls behind. Buldar as the melee hitter is unable to do significant damage when not paired up w a useful skill... Glyr dies to traps, and Carthos dies to most anything else. Even Silhouette finds it hard to stay alive, but manages simply cuz other heros are able to die faster, or for more CT. This game is called after the first dungeon when we realize the OL is on around 20 CT and the heros need to bail immediately or face a silver eldritch upgrade right off the bat.
Not an impressive showing. Tho as my first stint as the Heroes, I picked up some ideas. Mostly on hero selection. Glyr is just too slow. Without another way to move him into battle (Knockback? Telekinesis?) 6 MP on a run only gets you half-way to the battle lines even on small maps. Silhouette's ability did not get used. This might be because she transitioned into a striker role due to her good skill and weapon combo. She had little incentive to do anything besides get in position to use her skill. Buldar's mediocrity shined. Having only 3 armor he could be hit by monsters with even a little pierce - to the extent that regular skeletons could put damage on him 2-3 at a time. And Carthos, who we usually love to play, ended up being way too weak when he doesn't get something like Quick Casting, Inner Fire, a decent weapon, or anything else to enhance his natural strength.
This party was unable to skate a dungeon... Our best would be Silhouette for running, but she became a light striker instead, given that Buldar and MC didn't pull any attacking skills... leaving only two 4-MP heroes in the group - and the snail-speed Glyr. Silhouette didn't have the speed and power combined to skate a dungeon alone -- she'd need help clearing chests and glyphs... which meant committing Buldar and the others... but then the party was too weak to control the floor, as two 8-HP heroes in the same party were picked off far too easily and at too great a CT cost. Combine this w the strongest in-dungeon Avatar, and the OL was starting w 10 threat and drawing 5/round... making his own claim to dungeon control very strong.
So - we try again. Next thread!
Just thought I'd share a good disaster story.
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Corbon Loughnan
Singapore
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poobaloo wrote: picked up some ideas. Mostly on hero selection. Glyr is just too slow. Without another way to move him into battle (Knockback? Telekinesis?) 6 MP on a run only gets you half-way to the battle lines even on small maps. Silhouette's ability did not get used. This might be because she transitioned into a striker role due to her good skill and weapon combo. She had little incentive to do anything besides get in position to use her skill. Buldar's mediocrity shined. Having only 3 armor he could be hit by monsters with even a little pierce - to the extent that regular skeletons could put damage on him 2-3 at a time. And Carthos, who we usually love to play, ended up being way too weak when he doesn't get something like Quick Casting, Inner Fire, a decent weapon, or anything else to enhance his natural strength.
Its highly risky to take two melee heroes anyway, unless one is the designated runner option, as you run severe risks outdoors (not so bad against the Sorcerer King, but you still have retreating skeletons to deal with). Its especially risky with ToI in play due to shades...
But your main problem appears to be truly terrible skills. Did you draw an extra? Its pretty hard to believe Willpower is the best of 4 (though it does happen). Even Fire Pact can throw in an extra damage effectively in most cases, or Water Pact can allow knockback, or running through places that would otherwise be blocked..
Unfortunately too, Unmoveable, though a very good skill generally, needs to be on a faster melee hero (you'd think Glyr would work with it, but I find really only Tahlia, of the melee heroes is effective, because she can move with her guard) or on a ranged or magic hero.
You simply don't often see swarms of monsters clumped together coming at you that you can stand in place and cut down in ACs.
And even BttB I personally think is crap - I prefer the one handed weapons and a shield.
Carthos and Laughlin are actually part of my 'dream team', but they need a proper runner in their team, and a good ranged attacker. Their strength is clearing monsters before they can be attacked - decent speed and hard hitter, but they need some decent skills and a 3rd combatsupport to help clear while the fourth hero loots.
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joel cuthbert
United States
fort collins
Colorado
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Yeah, I don't think they are playing by the rules, the draw x skills, then choose one from any pile (typically you get to choose from 4).
Carthos, Laughlin and Silhouette make me very happy, you should consider yourself VERY lucky. I see way too many people make the choice of choosing two melee-centric characters for the advanced campaign. I would be curious to hear what your other choices were in the Glyr pile.
All in all, I feel as if you utilized your party poorly, but I can't really say because I didn't see how everything played out, considering you have played the AC for two years. Maybe it is your lack of experience as a hero, it is definitely a different mind set.
Telekinesis is not allowed in the advanced campaign.
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Michael Sims
United States
San Jose
California
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duhtch wrote: Telekinesis is not allowed in the advanced campaign.
Ah... There are a few HR's in play.
* Telekinesis is allowed, but does not affect Leaders / Lieutenants.
* Bear Tattoo is allowed, but does not affect Leaders / Lieutenants.
* Spirit Walker is allowed, but costs 1 fatigue per use.
* Nanok is allowed, but gets 1+* instead of 2+*.
Basically the FFG fix of "we're happy to sell you these, but now set them aside and never use them" is crap.
We also HR a few rules...
* A soaring creature does not block movement.
* Template and Blast attacks trump Shadowcloak.
* A miss on a Template or Blast attack stealth die only applies to the stealthed creatures.
The last 3 are "the way FFG ruled this is just dumb" type situations. I know there's tons of them but have to cut it somewhere.
corbon wrote: Its highly risky to take two melee heroes anyway
Indeed! Tho I wanted to try. My thought was to keep a spare ranged weapon in the pack of each melee. They may not get their 3 black dice, but can still use a magical ranged weapon if needed in an encounter. All too often you find extras that you don't have a use for but don't want to sell in case one breaks. Stick it in the pack of a melee who can drink a Power Potion, Aim, and shoot... in an emergency. That is enough to one-shot a Razorwing.
corbon wrote: But your main problem appears to be truly terrible skills. Did you draw an extra?
Actually, no - forgot this... You actually draw 1+, I forgot that part and just took the 3 each. That was 33% more likely to have a better draw.
corbon wrote: Its pretty hard to believe Willpower is the best of 4
Yep it was the best of 3. Thought about taking Fire Pact, but so little Lava comes into play in RTL.
corbon wrote: And even BttB I personally think is crap - I prefer the one handed weapons and a shield.
I actually liked BTTB. In terms of maximizing free turns, it's several free orders every round. That amounts to at worst, about +2 damage per attack, and at best, turning a miss into a hit. Every time. It makes that hero an attacker tho, and not a runner any more. She was the only hero in this party doing particularly well. Of course the others were all pretty bad skill draws, save for Glyr's which was ok.
In terms of Ghost-killing, BTTB was a major help.
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Corbon Loughnan
Singapore
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poobaloo wrote:
* A miss on a Template or Blast attack stealth die only applies to the stealthed creatures.
Err, this is actually the rule!
poobaloo wrote:
Indeed! Tho I wanted to try. My thought was to keep a spare ranged weapon in the pack of each melee. They may not get their 3 black dice, but can still use a magical ranged weapon if needed in an encounter. All too often you find extras that you don't have a use for but don't want to sell in case one breaks. Stick it in the pack of a melee who can drink a Power Potion, Aim, and shoot... in an emergency. That is enough to one-shot a Razorwing.
Indeed (well, a copper Razorwing). Especially for Breath or Blast weapons which ignore the 4 extra range on soarers.
poobaloo wrote: corbon wrote: But your main problem appears to be truly terrible skills. Did you draw an extra? Actually, no - forgot this... You actually draw 1+, I forgot that part and just took the 3 each. That was 33% more likely to have a better draw.
In terms of getting a really crappy skill, its huge. After you take the 3 worst skills out, there is now a very low proportion of 'bad' skills left in the deck for that last draw...
poobaloo wrote: corbon wrote: Its pretty hard to believe Willpower is the best of 4 Yep it was the best of 3. Thought about taking Fire Pact, but so little Lava comes into play in RTL.
Forget the Lava. But the Burn is an average +1 damage per attack (with a staff). It is a lot weaker than +1 damage most of the time, but it is still something.
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