Excerpts from the Diary of a Mad Overlord - Part 5

by Ed Rozmiarek

Previous ramblings: Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4

< Week 8 >
< Garden of Tarn dungeon, level 3, "Pit Fiend (23)" >
Dear Diary,
Ah, Diary, It seems like it has been months since I last had time to record my thoughts here. These pesky heroes must have been lost in a time warp going from the second to third level of the Garden of Tarn dungeon. Whatever the cause was, they finally showed up knocking on the door of the Pit Fiend's lair.

The heroes were very cautious and set up a defensive position near the first intersection. Looking in my bag of tricks I could only find the summoning spell for a bunch of Kobolds. So I sent them to the dungeon to help out the Pit Fiend's razorwings and the Fiend's pet manticore. I hoped that the Kobolds would buy some time and I had the masters hang back with the Pit Fiend to help him spring traps on the heroes.

Then Runemaster Thorn made his normal speed run for the gold and ended up just in range of a couple kobolds and razorwings. This group rushed in and almost took Thorn out, but was not able to finish the job. Meanwhile, Corbin and Steelhorns went after the manticore and were able to just take it out. Thorn, hanging on to life was able to call up enough energy to take out a kobold and with the help of Kirga, they cleared out a couple razorwings and the other kobolds. This enraged the Pit Fiend who charged out of his corner and tore into Thorn, sending him back to town.

The tricky master kobolds were able to spring a couple of traps before Steelhorns realized what was going on. He then charged the kobolds and quickly brought them down. The rest was mop up action as Kirga was able to bring down the Pit Fiend with a couple of well placed dwarven firebombs. And even though the chest turned into a mimic Beastman, no serious damage was done to the heroes before they exited the dungeon.

(Conquest: Heroes +7, OL +5)
Editor's note: Total Conquest ... 199 ... one shy of silver.

< Week 9 >
Dear Diary,
I was not happy how last week ended up. However, I woke up today in a better mood. As I walked outside I thought I saw a glimpse of a silver ring around the sun. That can only mean that the gods are pleased with my work. At night the great comet appears closer. My Ascension can not be far away. I feel it.

The weekly updates from the minions have arrived. The siege at Nerekhall continues to show no end with the walls still holding and the population still determined to support the old gods. They will be reeducated soon as I tire of their resistance. Sir Alric reports that his siege engine construction is complete and will soon start his active siege of Greyhaven. And Kar-Amag-Atoth continues his uninterrupted building of siege engines outside of the capital of Tamalir.

As I await the right conditions to start casting the spells to strengthen my creatures, I have spent this week researching the tomes for new treacherous tricks to spring on those heroes. I will have a new trick or two up my sleeve the next time they test a dungeon.

Speaking of those heroes, they were seen passing by the Thelsvan Highway late in the week.
(Conquest: Heroes +0, OL +1)

< Week 10 >
Dear Diary,
What a glorious week!

Early in the week I woke to find what I was hoping for, a shiny silver ring around the sun. A clear sign that it was time to take the next step for my Ascension. I immediately rushed by to my chambers and started casting the spells to provide my humanoid monsters the same silver enhancement that my Eldritch creatures have been using.

I received more wonderful news later in the week as the report from Sir Alric came in. Greyhaven has fallen! The citizens of Greyhaven were caught unaware as Sir Alric started the siege. He made quick work of their defenses and razed the city. I must send my new priests to Greyhaven to oversee the construction of the first of my new temples. I have sent Sir Alric to Tamalir to relieve Kar-Amag-Atoth there.

Unfortunately, the entire week was not a success as the report from Nerekhall was the same. No success with the siege.

My servants in Riverwatch sent a report that the hero band showed up there. They went straight to the market to spend their ill gotten gains from the last dungeon.
(Conquest: Heroes +0, OL +6)

< Week 11 >
Dear Diary,

Oh Diary, what another magnificent week. Nerekhall has finally fallen! Lord Merrick showed the town no mercy as he cleared it out to prepare for the new temple. Two weeks; two cities razed. Much better progress. Can there be any question that the gods are truly on my side?

Sir Alric started the siege at Tamalir and as one could expect, the walls of the town held up to the first wave of attacks. I have sent Kar-Amag-Atoth south to follow up on the hero band.

I decided to try out the second level enhancement spell on my Eldritch creations. It worked flawlessly. They now glow with a golden hue; wonderful.

The heroes stayed in Riverwatch another week. Three of them were seen hanging out in the market digging for new toys. There was a report that Kirga was seen training and that later in the week was seen around town with a new Shadow Soul hovering around.
(Conquest: Heroes +0, OL +7)

< Week 12 >
Dear Diary,

The gods are surely pleased with my work...

The walls of Tamalir have collapsed.

The city is mine.

Nothing can now stop my Ascension.

The comet IS coming.

They will fear me!

---

Editors Comments:
And here ends our story. As foreseen, the heroes were behind the eight ball and everyone was ready to play it out and start fresh. Although, I am a bit sad I was not able to run a dungeon with completely upgraded monsters. If Tamalir had not fallen I did have enough conquest to upgrade the Beast category to silver during week 12.

Final Box Score:
Avatar: Demon Prince
Scenario: Ascension
Week: 12
Nerekhall: Razed
Greyhaven: Razed
Tamalir: Razed, Cathedral upgrade
Eldritch: Gold
Humanoids: Silver
Conquest: Overlord 154 (43 unspent) / Heroes 59 : Total 213 / Silver level

So where do we go from here? Another campaign of course. We had time to reset the game and start fresh. And this time I think the heroes will do much better. Not only do they have the experience from this first campaign, they have a much stronger party. They have:

Nanok of the Blade with Taunt (Yikes!)
Varikas the Dead with Leadership
Landrec the Wise with Quick Casting
Grey Ker with Eagle Eye

They will be facing the Sorcerer King and his sniping Skeletons. The Sorcerer King will be attempting the Endless Night scenario. What will happen? Stay tuned for the story to come...

More colorful beasties

by Ed Rozmiarek
With the plan of getting together this coming Saturday and playing Descent (after a 2+ month break), I have been finishing up several more sets of Descent miniatures. Pictures of the latest sets are below. As always, you can click on the thumbnail to view the larger image.

I must say that I am making much better progress on the figures than I originally thought. In my first post about painting the minis I thought it would take 9 to 12 months to finish them. Now about four months later I find myself with a large majority of them done and only three sets of monsters left to paint, Manticores, Demons and Dragons (that sounds like a title to a bad D&D movie). The demons and dragons are the largest and most detailed figures so they will take a bit to complete. One of the reasons to leave them till last. That, and I wanted to practice my painting techniques before tackling the "showpiece" figures. Oh, I still have about 20 or so of the hero figures to paint as well. They will take a while as each one is unique. At least Fantasy Flight Games has done their part in keeping my work load down by delaying the Tomb of Ice expansion.

If things go as planned this weekend, I should have another chapter in the "Excerpts from the Diary of a Mad Overlord" series sometime next week.

Descent Bane Spiders	Descent Nagas
Descent Chaos Beasts	Descent Golems
All monsters from Well of Darkness expansion	All monsters from Altar of Despair expansion

You can see all of the Descent miniatures I have painted in the picture gallery.

Yes, I would like a little cheese with my whine.

by Susan Rozmiarek

Wow, has this been a bad few months for gaming. We missed this month's Meetup group, the first since it started. The previous two have been less than stellar and I didn't want to write about them because all I'd be doing is whining. Other than that, we've hardly had any time for games at all. Okay, so I've changed my mind and I'm going to whine a little now. :-)

Last month, with it just before Halloween, I brought Last Night on Earth to the Meetup in hopes of a fun, spooky game. I set it up on the table in all its glory in order to entice people to the table. And there it sat while I played Shadow Hunters, a fun game but one in which we learned that it doesn't really work with just four players. More people began showing up and despite my asking around, LNoE continued to be ignored while I played Oregon, a pleasant (read boring) game but hardly what I had in mind. So, the night wasn't a bust but it was disappointing. I wish I could find more people willing to loosen up and have fun with some Ameritrash games. At least my family likes them.

The Meetup before that was one of the worst gaming experiences I've ever had. I brought a shiny, new copy of Journey to the Center of the Earth which I'd already played once and enjoyed as a light, family game that plays in about an hour. We get a lot of new people to the Meetup, often new to hobby games as well. This is actually a plus sometimes for me, as it provides a chance to get my "fluff" fix with games like Ticket to Ride. I try to go out of my way to get these newbies involved which I feel is important to keep the group active and growing. Alas, it did not turn out so well this time. This one new person was totally unable to grasp a few of the rules despite me (and eventually the others) trying to explain them over and over again throughout the game until I was blue in the face. The game took us over 2.5 hours to play and I was exhausted and thoroughly frustrated by the time we were finished. Ugh.

So, enough of the negative and now on to the positive: Ed and I are helping out our FLGS, Rogue's Gallery, by doing a demo of Memoir '44 next Sunday afternoon. We pulled it out this past Saturday to reacquaint ourselves with the rules and played the Sword Beach scenario. Why, oh why, don't we get this fabulous game out more often? We had a short but furious skirmish with my Allies falling just before breaking through the left flank. Fun stuff. We later broke out our new copy of Dominion and played a couple of games. Both were with the "big money" set of cards and it was fun trying out a different strategy each time. This game is going to see a lot of play as we both really like it.

We have a big gaming weekend of D&D 4e, Descent, and Memoir '44 planned. So, hopefully the dry spell is over!

Some random stuff:

Math trades on BGG - We haven't convinced ourselves yet that these are worthwhile, but I must say that we did pretty well in the last two. Usually we end up trading down or not trading at all and I'm not sure it's worth the price of shipping to trade one mediocre game for another. Then again, that does allow us to try games that we are curious about but not quite willing to buy to do so. However, we just traded Monastery for the 2nd expansion for Command & Colors: Ancients. Monastery is a game that has some neat stuff in it but it just didn't click with us. C&C: A exp. #2 is something we have been wanting but it is pretty pricey and our gaming budget is very meager these days. Our most recent trade, though, is the one that's got me doing a happy dance. We traded InterUrban, a lackluster Michael Schacht game with typical crappy Winsome components for a shrink-wrapped copy of Touch of Evil. I have been anticipating getting this for a while now, but was saving it for my BGG Secret Santa list.

We got a Hasbro catalog in the mail, presumably because we ordered Heroscape stuff from them recently. Of course, I immediately went to the games section. Their line of selected classic games all done up in pink to appeal to little girls (I guess) has always amused me but I was astounded to see a new pink version of an Ouiji board. I didn't even know they were still around. I thought that was some old new age-y occult fad and it isn't even a game. And pink?!?! Hardly creepy! What ghosts would a little girl want to try to talk to? Both bizarre and amusing.....

To make my thrift store hunting more interesting, I'm now collecting differently themed Monopoly sets for the little pewter tokens which I'm displaying in a curio cabinet with other little miniature things. I keep the dice as well, of course, and toss the rest. This week I scored a Star Wars copy that had all nine tokens in it. Oddly, it was missing the board. Barnes & Nobles currently has a Nintendo version in its stores right now. I'd love to find that in a thrift store some day.