by Silversage
So... I've been reading about other people's experiences with the game all night long and most of them somehow seem to be the absolute polar opposite of mine, which was a big surprise to me.How the **** do you win as an Overlord?
I've been playing against 4 heroes, Avric Albright, Tomble Burrowell, Syndrael and Leoric of the Book, and have had absolutely no chance of winning the game that didn't involve the players' making mistakes or me getting pure awesomeness from every single die roll.
So far we've played up to the Interlude. We played First Blood, Cardinal's Plight, Fat Goblin and Castle Daerion. First Blood I didn't even really hope to win, as it is an introductory mission after all, so losing that is all fine and dandy. But the rest...
Cardinal's Plight. Miserable dice rolling. I mean, "you were Hitler in your previous life, god hates you and now you will pay" kind of miserable. Got exactly 1 zombie up with 6-7 tries with the lieutenant. Absolutely fantastic. Pulled all kinds of rabbits out my hat during the second encounter that made even my players go "whoa that was brilliant", but the dice gods wanted to punish me for something that day. Let's chalk that up to bad luck. Hero victory.
Fat Goblin. Stole 2 of the bags, so 50/50 which I guess is ok. Although I only got the second one because the heroes went "meh, let him have it" and killed everything else rather than chase down the goblin. Second encounter, I found the Frederick with my second attempt. This is when I got my one lucky break so far in the game and managed to run away with a combination of hero mistakes and suitable Overlord cards. To this day, it's the only encounter I've won.
Castle Daerion. This is what I laughed most about when I started looking things up today. Everybody's saying how the scenario favors the Overlord. I really, REALLY don't see how. In the first encounter I managed to again achieve 50% of the objectives (kill 2 villagers). But in the second encounter... when the setup was complete, all I could do was look at the board in utter dismay. I had absolutely no chance of winning it. The heroes obliterated every single thing I had by turn 3 and even though I immediately focused my hits on the NPC, he was barely wounded by the time I was off the board. It was an absolute massacre and ridiculously one-sided from the start.
We only have the 2nd edition base game with no expansions or conversion kits or monsters or anything. Just the basic game. I'm kind of suspecting that this is one of the reasons I'm getting slaughtered so easily as all the posts I looked up kept referring to Nagas or Giants or Beastmen or some other monsters that I've never even heard about.
There is absolutely no point in attacking the heroes as
1) They get ridiculous defense rolls
2) Even if by some miracle I manage to knock down one of them, one of the others will simply use an action to revive him after which all four of them will nuke anything in sight into oblivion
My monsters serve no purpose at the moment, they can't reliable harm the heroes nor can they slow them down as they will nuke an entire monster group with just 1-2 heroes no matter how I try to position them. This will leave the thief to go off looting and the healer to fix what little I've managed to accomplish. I've tried most of the monsters and the end result is always the same.
So, any advice on how to make the game tolerable for me? I can't believe I have to ask that, but I do want to enjoy it. With the heroes gaining skills, items and winning everything and getting the rewards it just seems so one-sided. All I get is a single card to add to my deck which I may or may not draw. Then it's back to getting my face bashed in. I really could use some good tips here. And "get the expansion packs" is not good advice in this case because we won't.