Descent Session Report: Heirs of Blood Campaign - Part I

Prelude

As those that take an interest in Things of No Interest may know, I have a lot of Descent stuff. Like, a lot. Base set, two large box expansions, 4 small box expansions, a number of hero and monster sets, and the Heirs of Blood campaign book.

The original 2nd edition of the Descent base game came with a campaign - The Shadow Rune. At some point, Heirs of Blood replaced The Shadow Rune as the default campaign and they released the hardback book for owners of the original. I am one of these people.

However, without a regular group to play this, everything sat around while I was painting the figures. Then FFG released the Road to Legend app, which allows for the game to be played solo - much like the solo quests that FFG released for Descent, but rather than sets of cards specific to a setting, it was all handled by the app. And this was great and let me start really playing the game. Unfortunately the app has a couple of small drawbacks. The app has its own campaigns and handles travel on its own. This means that all the campaign material that come with the expansion boxes sits unused. It also means that a lot of the game material sits unused (all the overlord cards etc).

Prior to RtL being released, I found a solo system that had been developed by a BGG user - RedJak. RedJak had developed a system called the Automated Overlord Variant (RAOV) which was a set of rules and cards that gave an AI setup for monsters and for each quest of each bit of published material from FFG. This system was great, but maybe a hair clunky - keeping track of all the overlord stuff and hero stuff was a little much. RedJak also developed a system for creating random dungeons (DelvenDeep). Eventually the two systems were somewhat combined to create RedJak's Automated  Monster Variant (RAMV) which took out a lot of the overlord stuff and replaced it with a more streamlined event system. Interestingly, RAMV plays a LOT like the RtL app - except that you play the actual published campaigns.

So here we are. I decided that I wanted play through some of my actual materials. I already had all the RAMV cards printed up and ready to go. I also decided that I didn't want to have a set of figures in progress with painting needing to be used, so I decided that I was going to play the Heirs of Blood as the intro campaign, using only the base set - heroes, classes, monsters, shop cards, conditions, travel cards, and lieutenants. For the second half, I may end up adding in any monster and hero set that I've finished painting. One last note - I'm using the amazing D2E Campaign tracker this online tool tracks everything and is a great way to log your adventures.

Intro Quest - Acolyte of Saradyn

A caravan of monks that the heroes were tasked to protect had run into a goblin ambush on its way to the monastery. The heroes arrived just in time to come to the aid of a young boy that was fighting off the attacking goblins.
The heroes managed to fend off the ambush and saved what little valuables were left. They learned the boy's name was Tyrus and, as night set in, the heroes were met on the road by an elder-priestess of the monastery called Helena, who invited them to where her army was camped.

Acolyte of Saradyn is a little intro quest to get your juices flowing. The maps is tight and the goal is very easily achieved - defeat the "attack dogs" (Barghests). There are three villagers that you can rescue (one per round). I only rescued two, because I won before the end of the second turn. Yeah, it was that simple.

That's ok, this allowed me to refamiliarize myself with the RAMV system and enjoy a quick playing.

After a lot of quests, there is a choice of quests to pursue, which allows for replaying the campaign with fresh adventures. I was presented with two choices (the choice usually goes to the winner of the previous quest, the Overlord or the Heroes). Having no idea what might be more interesting, I simply picked the first option - Siege of Skytower.

Siege of Skytower

The heroes were visiting a bastion overlooking the valley when it came under assault of the Overlord's forces led by Belthir and Sir Alric Farrow, with the goal of taking the bastion's tower. 
 As the Overlord's minions managed to breach the gate and take tower of the bastion, the heroes only choice was to retreat and fall back to the monastery.

Now things are getting real. The map was larger and there were a ton of things to setup. First up was the campaign travel steps. There were three travel steps:

• In the first step the overlord would have normally gained a card. With RAMV and no overlord, the rules say to draw a certain kind of card, which said to replace the master monster with an agent (Merrik) in the first monster group.
• Nothing happened
• Each hero ended up failing a random test and started the quest with one less health and fatigue point. 

Swell, an extra hard monster (Merrik) instead of what ended up being a master goblin archer. Not quite the same at all. The quest already included TWO lieutenants - Sir Avric and Belthir, goblin archers and cave spiders, plus two random groups (which ended up being zombies and flesh moulders). Ugg. At the start of each round, the overlord side would bring in 3 goblins or flesh moulders (which were going to try and run off the map on the other side). Additionally, a new cave spider would get added at the end of each round (if one was available). All in all, a steady stream of things to deal with throughout.

For the heroes, the goal was to last 8 rounds without letting too many of the bad guess through. The map had three routes to the exit and three doors (only one of which could be shut at a time) that could be closed via remote switches. Sadly, the remote switches were guarded by zombies. 

The good news was, what looked overly hard at first, wasn't too bad. The goblins and flesh moulders only goal was to move off the map, so unless they couldn't move, they wouldn't attack. This meant really only having to take out the spiders and zombies. It also turned out that Belthir was just a story thing - he just flew around the map trying to move guys towards the exit in a faster manner. Sir Avric also wasn't going to attack, but only try to escape - he just counted for a lot more than all the little guys AND if he could be defeated, there was a good reward for the heroes. 

Starting to get overwhelmed!

Right off the bat, I ran a hero to the switches to flip them until I found the secret waterfall door. I lucked out and closed that on my first try, but that hero (my fighter) ended up alone and surrounded by zombies - they would later knock her out. The other two (thief and mage) took the responsibility of trying to thin down the spiders and anything that got through via the other two routes the monsters could use to exit. 

The first couple of rounds weren't too bad, but neither did I take command. I got rid of the master cave spider, but had a hard time getting rid of the others. My thief did manage to find a shield, which was a nice surprise. He has lots of ways to hide and defend himself (and as you'll see, it didn't matter). My mage had a lot of bad attack rolls and just slowly was getting beat up.

He's getting away and there are no heroes!

About halfway through, the flood gates seemed to just open up and the monsters started overwhelming the team. I had slowly picked off the zombies and turned to trying to kill off Sir Avric to win the end-of-quest relic. Though he didn't fight back, he was a bear to try and kill. While I was working on him, the spiders were working on my thief and mage and knocking them out again and again. Eventually, Merrik joined in and the spiders killed my mage and thief enough times that Sir Avric slipped through and I came up about one round short of beating him. 

I also ended up having some bad luck in that a RAMV global event reduced my ability to recover down to one die (instead of two), so my heroes were getting knocked out over and over with no real recovery.

With heroes down (and the damn fast goblins) a flood of bad guys got through and ended my chances for a quest win in the seventh round!

So, my first real quest (the intro REALLY didn't count) wasn't a win, but it was a success. RAMV worked really well for playing the defined scenarios. An interesting note - D2ETracker has stats on all the quests. This particular one favored the Overlord by a hair (52% of the recorded wins). The fact that my result was very close is a good sign for things to come. Until next time!

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