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Hey, I was playing the level 10 Sorcerer in Matthews game above.
I actually enjoyed the horde'o'creatures we ended up fighting in that encounter (although I do feel sorry for Andrew having to track that many stat blocks, so as Matthew said, hats off to him). We were fighting the Runelord that specializes in conjuration, I expected the room to get really packed.
We managed to kill pretty much everything in the room except his spear, a babau (we were ignoring it as it was not powerful enough to hurt us) and a fire elemental. I say this to point out that the time delay made the encounter more challenging but not impossible for a properly kitted out party.
The problem was the Empower Maximized Horrid Wilting. To illustrate; A level 11 D6 hit die based character (read Sorcerer) with high, for a mage, con (lets say 14) only has 63 hit points. Now chances are a Sorcerer 11 is going to make the DC29 fort save nearly every time but even then she is going to take 76 damage. Which puts her on -13, 1 point from death.
If the Runelord simply casts Empower Maximized Horrid Wilting on the party as soon as they walk in, then recalls Horrid Wilting (using his pearl of power) and again casts it Empowered and Maximized the party is dead.
As a highly intelligent NPC (30?) there is no reason that I can see that he wouldn't do the above.
The only way that I can see a party surviving this scenario is if the GM doesn't do her prep thoroughly (Which I am occasionally guilty of but sadly Andrew was too good a GM in this case)
Lastly, I though that this scenario was well laid out both thematically and in challenge. Its only the combo of hitting a level 11 party with two consecutive level 13 spells that causes issues.