This isn't the forum post I wanted to make, but it's the forum post I get to make.
I had taken a solo Merisiel all the way through Rise of the Runelords. Alas, she was not victorious against the Runelord of Greed. Part of it was bad luck, part of it was suboptimal strategy/planning. Here are some brief notes; I'll add to them later.
*) Playing a solo character in the Runeforge means you start every turn down a card. I was maxed out at 6 cards on my Thief role, but in hindsight i may have better off an Acrobat with 7. Ideally, I'd go into an encounter with Karzoug with 6 cards in hand, have Weapon/Blessing/Discard Fodder for each check. (All of my weapons had Recharge or Discard for extra damage).
*) Similarly, damage mitigation that stays in your hand is important. I got lucky and pulled a Ring of Energy Resistance in a prior scenario. Of course, in my second and final encounter with Karzoug, I rolled a 4 on the d4 and still had to discard a card.
*) I weighed my cards heavily in terms of scouting, with Revelation Quill, 2 Magic Spyglasses, and a Wand of Treasure Finding, in addition to Broderick Quink and Isolanthe Galadius (If they were real people, I'd feel bad about butchering their names like that). Do to a bad shuffle I needed to use a lot of that, but had I gotten more lucky with my Emerald Codex pulls and ended up with an Augury/Scrying I wouldn't have had to spend all those cards on deck maniupulation.
*) On the codex; I could have banished it for card advantage, if I held onto it until the turn I encountered Kargzoug. It would have provided cards to chuck towards Sneak Attack, as well as unavoided damage.
What's ahead for my Rise of the Runelords box now? Maybe I'll pick up my solo Lini run, I believe I'd gotten her through deck 2. Alternatively, I might give the Shield of Rannick a try. If I try to solo it, I'd probably use Meliski; I've been itching to see how he'd do going Brawler with access to Amulets of Mighty / Fiery fists. Or, if my fiancee is willing, we'll take a short break from our S&S game and see how Ranzak and Ekkie roll.
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I had a very similar experience with solo Merisiel in Runelords...made it all the way to the end but was beaten in the last scenario. It's a very different feel when the "timer" is switched around on you...most solo games the time limit is not a big deal, but suddenly in the final scenario the "Bury a card every turn" effect means you have a lot fewer turns as a solo character.
Presuming you have a +d8+2 or so ranged weapon, and spend a +2 dice blessing on each roll, if you have five cards in hand to sneak attack each time, you can be at 3d12+d8+d6+2d4+8 or so, which is an average of 40.5 - which is barely enough to have about a 50/50 shot at the 40. I've found doing this solo requires you to burn through discards to get a "perfect" hand, and still hoping you roll well.
Also if you have some healing in your deck, discard allies/blessings to explore like a crazy person. You want to get big K alone in the deck on turn 6 or so, so that you can concentrate on spending 3-4 turns fine tuning your hand.
I was able to solo Season of the Shackles with Meliski...he's quite strong.
If you can wait a few days, you can try Bloodlust Corsairs--my adventure path with the Skull and Shackles set--and see what you think.
Consider this my official vote of excitement.
Alternatively, I might give the Shield of Rannick a try. If I try to solo it, I'd probably use Meliski; I've been itching to see how he'd do going Brawler with access to Amulets of Mighty / Fiery fists.Well, Shield of Rannick is pretty awesome, I'll admit. :-) If you can wait a few days, you can try Bloodlust Corsairs--my adventure path with the Skull and Shackles set--and see what you think. I've honestly playtested very little of that with just a solo character (my usual group is 3 players), and I'll be interested to see what a solo run of that is like.
At the moment, my S&S box is doing double duty between S&S (my fiancee and I have started Deck 4) and the Season of the Shackles (our group has just finished Adventure 3), so purely from a logistics standpoint I'm interested in playing my solo games out of the Runelords box.
Once we've finished, i'll happily give soloing Bloodsail Corsairs a try; likely with a Class Deck character that interests me at the time.I will report that I did the first two scenarios of Rannick last night, and rather enjoyed them. Meliski is something of a combat lightweight at the moment (running a cure, another utility, and two Attack Spells, with an Amulet of Mighty Fists for "easy" fights). I was pretty worried about fighting Nualia after barely getting started, but I got lucky with my rolling and solidly thumped her. I did take a beating in Scenario 2 and needed to pitch Svevenka for the emergency heal. Because Meliski doesn't have weapons, I decided to randomly take another kind of boon instead for the Scenario 2 reward; I ended up rolling for spells and pulling a Scorching Ray, which was rather nice.
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I spent Meliski's first card feat on a weapon - eventually it became less useful, but at first it was a godsend. Especially since he can choose weapons as his favored card type so you're guaranteed to start with it. You never get proficiency though, so it's never going to be a really good weapon. It's a long way to Brawler, however, and any weapon at all is useful until then. Late game I found he becomes more of a spellcaster, with a good melee backup power. Once you have things like Lightning Bolt and can recharge two blessings on combat checks he can rock 3d10+3d6+4 on a check and that's pretty darn good.
A lot of early Meliski is dancing with risky die rolls - you can usually play the odds a bit because he can selectively reroll dice - so you can often score above average by rerolling only the low dice, while leaving good ones as they are.
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I just want to say, Ron Lundeen is awesome and his work is most appreciated. Thanks for being awesome Ron.
I spent Meliski's first card feat on a weapon - eventually it became less useful, but at first it was a godsend. Especially since he can choose weapons as his favored card type so you're guaranteed to start with it.
Yeah, I took a Meliski through Adventure 1 of Season of the Shackles, but haven't played him since. I took weapon as my first feat with that one. During that adventure, I was spoiled by elcoderdude's Abarundi; typically he'd have a melee weapon in his deck that he had no interest in available to borrow once we'd started, and the extra d4 from his Ranger ability was also quite handy.
For this play, I am wondering if I can hold off weapons and stick with the brawling. The Amulet of Mighty Fists helps a bit, but against all but the weakest monsters I'll still need a blessing. (Strength as my starting utility spell helped a bunch, but it got replaced by an Augury after Scenario 1). If so, I imagine I'll grab a couple of Spell feats, and maybe an item or a blessing. That said, if run into a Deathbane Light Crossbow or especially a Horsechopper +1 in an adventure I'll be getting a card feat, I'll be going with one of those. And it may be that having one of those come up and not being able to keep it would be a heartbreaker. We shall see.