The Toll of the Bell Questions

[Zhadum]

So we ran this last night and missed victory by quite a large amount. Failed based on time.

The Villain reads if he is not the last card in the location he is undefeated.

Now to me that means if while both locations are open and you encounter the villain whether all checks are passed or failed a card will be lost off the top of the blessing deck.

We encountered the villain with both locations open SEVEN times and defeated him all seven times but he of course ran and took a card off the blessings deck every time because he counts as undefeated.

Are we playing this correctly?

[Andrew Klein]

Yes you are playing correctly. However, remember the temp close. This will force him to stay at his current location. If this scenario said no temp closing (I think it may have), then focus fire on one deck. Once it is empty, you can force him there as the last card.

[Zhadum]

Andrew Klein wrote:

Yes you are playing correctly. However, remember the temp close. This will force him to stay at his current location. If this scenario said no temp closing (I think it may have), then focus fire on one deck. Once it is empty, you can force him there as the last card.

Yes, it is a no temp close scenario.

I don't see how we can move him to the empty deck without playing Russian roulette. If we drain a deck and leave it open then encounter the boss in the other deck... Win or lose we still lose the top blessings card and there is a 50% chance the boss is in the same deck and a single blessing is in the previously empty deck.

I might be more inclined just to close that empty location because they can be closed IF EMPTY then just encounter the boss multiple time from the final location as those encounters will no longer lose us a blessings card as only one location is open.

Either way the odds are not in our favor.

I honestly wish the boss read on his last line of text "If he is not the last card in the location deck he counts as undefeated. However blessing cards from the box are used instead of the blessings deck if this power is the only reason he went undefeated."

[Frencois]

The strategy is to fully empty one location, then the other one, regarding of when you encounter the villain.

On average if you do so you will encounter it on average 4 times only.

The math is easy. Let's say I empty location A first, then B.

I will encounter it 1/2+1/4+1/8+...=1 time in A.
Then 1+1/2+1/4+1/8+...=2 times in B.
Then 1 last time in A.
Period.

[Ashram316]

Also, don't waste resources on the checks to defeat the villain unless you're actually ready to win the scenario. Save those blessings for extra explores...

[Andrew Klein]

Half the point of saying he's undefeated is so that the blessings do come from the deck, so using them from box is completely against the intent of the scenario and wouldn't work.

I was thinking you couldn't perm close either without the villain, so yes, burn through one deck until it is closed. You may find him once, twice, maybe even three times. Maybe more if you're unlucky enough. However, that's the strategy for this one. Focus fire in one place, and you'll have maybe 3 or 4 lost turns tops from him being undefeated (unless you are just absurdly unlucky.

[Dulcee]

Frencois wrote:

The strategy is to fully empty one location, then the other one, regarding of when you encounter the villain.

On average if you do so you will encounter it on average 4 times only.

The math is easy. Let's say I empty location A first, then B.

I will encounter it 1/2+1/4+1/8+...=1 time in A.
Then 1+1/2+1/4+1/8+...=2 times in B.
Then 1 last time in A.
Period.

I can see where you got your math from here, but one flaw is that you assume you only encounter the villain an average of 1 last time back in A. If you're encountering him an average of 2 times in B, then on average there will be an extra blessing in A. So on average you'll actually encounter him 1/2+1/4+1/8+...+1 = 2 times back in A bringing the total average to 5 times.

This was the first scenario where my group not only lost but lost BADLY. We still had roughly 10 cards left in the 2nd deck by the time we ran out of time. The problem is that there are 25 cards in each deck (there are 6 of us), requiring a minimum of 50 explores in 30 turns. If you average 5 villain appearances, that makes 4 more villain encounters plus the 3 (based on the strategy outlined above where one location will already be closed for the last 2 encounters) extra blessings which come from the blessing deck, meaning 57 explores in 27 turns. That's more than 2 explores every single character's turn! (Compare that to a typical scenario with an average of 44 explores in 30 turns).

This scenario just requires far too much luck to win. I think we're willing to give it 2 more tries before declaring it an automatic pass. We expect a certain level of luck in this game and enjoy it immensely despite the occasional bad rolls. But none of us had fun at the end of this scenario.

[Mechalibur]

Yeah, this is a really rough scenario; I kind of wish it wasn't so dependent on the boss getting shuffled where you want. My group also went with the strategy of clearing out one location so that the boss had a 50% chance to escape there. We won the coinflip, so the rest wasn't too bad, but it has the potential to really mess groups up (especially if no one has good strength or divine for the second boss check).

[Alazar79]

Not a fan of this scenario since its entirely based on luck. Perfectly prepared group with perfectly built deck win/lose still comes down to how the Villain is encountered. Clear one location and do not run into the villain increases your chances of victory immensely. Villain keeps escaping to the deck your trying to get through pretty much guarantees failure. The best strategy is still probably just praying you can evade him when he pops up so he stays in that location, and then clean out the other location.

[DenisA1]

You are mistaken :). You need to empty the fog location since there is a better chance that the vilain will not bo there (2/5 instead of 3/5 with 3 players) and NOT close it when empty. Then work on other location. When you enconter the vilain you send him to fog and check if he is there with the ally Dolphin. Empty and close Scar Bay THEN kill the vilain! Not easy to do and you still need some luck but it how i made it :).

[Mad Jack Deacon]

Another thing that helped our group is that I was running heavy on the sneak peeks. Several of us at the table have Augury (I currently have 2 in my Lini deck) so we were peeking deep, scouting for the villain and trying to control where he popped up at.

[Dave Riley]

Yeah, but if you're playing Auguries that deck is not strictly street legal. I'm not crazy, right? There's no Auguries in Skull and Shackles? Or have we somehow just not encountered a single one in our two runs through the existing content? :D

[ryric]

Maybe he's using class decks with Skull&Shackles? Some of them have Auguries.

But yeah, the dearth of low-end scouting makes this scenario tougher. Spyglass and Dolphin only go so far.

[Dave Riley]

Both times we beat it, we did it by brute force. We didn't even think of leaving a location open until we saw it here. Would've made it a lot easier!

(as would've a dolphin, probably)

[ryric]

The time I played it with my fiancé I was all set to use the "leave one location open and empty" strategy only to get super lucky and end up with Whalebone on the bottom anyway - thanks Dolphin!

Then it was just a matter of making darn sure we never shuffled that location.

[Mechalibur]

ryric wrote:

Maybe he's using class decks with Skull&Shackles? Some of them have Auguries.

But yeah, the dearth of low-end scouting makes this scenario tougher. Spyglass and Dolphin only go so far.

Not only that, but you can't even scout in the Fog Bank -_-

Well, I guess you can in the sense that you can find out what cards are in the location, but you have no control over where they end up.

[Alazar79]

Was this scenario even play tested with a 2 player group. I have ran this scenario 10 times without a success. Its not even fun at this point and no one wants to play the game anymore.

[Hawkmoon269]

It was. If you are having such a terrible time with it that it is ruining the fun of the game, then I suggest skipping it. If it give a feat or loot for the reward, go ahead and claim it. If you want to try it later, go ahead. But don't let 1 scenario ruin the game for you. It will be our secret that you skipped one. Mike Selinker will never know.

[IronGiant]

At the risk of resurrecting an old thread. ... this tactic worked for me. Thanks! I also had to get lucky, that villain is punishing! Fortunately, after failing hard on the first try and not seeing how to proceed, your tactic and a lot of luck allowed me to finish this scenario. I like a challenge, but , wow. I have another group going through, I might try the opposite and have Alahazra scan very card in scar bay in an attempt to find the villain and keep him in place.