1-1E is my Thursday session. My Sunday session fared a bit worse - we failed 1-1C once, and PrisonerSix's Wizard died to yet another Carrion Golem :( but we then managed to get through 1-1C and 1-1D.
Anyways, we had 5 people this week and managed to get through it easily. Even though the 3 Ladies each require a fairly hefty amount of resources to defeat individually, we had a lot of support personnel so it wasn't a problem.
I could see 1-1E being a problem for a solo or duo.
RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32
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My solo Merisiel didn't have much of an issue with this one, but I've already got that magic B longbow from the rogue deck so I'm usually rolling d12+d8+d6+4 before any blessings.
I did have an issue with what happens once you're down to one location - I presumed the henchman keeps shuffling back in when you banish a villain until all three villains are gone. The scenario didn't say what happens to the henchman when you corner the villain, just that the villain is banished. A solo player ends up confronting these villains five times at least.
Actually, you still close your location if your villain is defeated and would escape, the villain just goes to the bottom. So it's a straightforward "defeat 3 villains and close 3 locations" for a solo player, but if the solo player doesn't make defeat one of the villains, she would reencounter one of the other villains.
"To win the scenario, close all of the locations."
So you don't need to banish all 3, but you will end up encountering all 3 at least.
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This is why I shouldn't post without looking at exact wording. I'm looking at it now, and it looked like you only close the location if the villain would escape. That's what confused me.
There's three situations listed on the scenario:
Fail to defeat villain, shuffle henchman back in, location stays open
Defeat villain who escapes, close location, villain to bottom of stack.
Defeat villain who is cornered, villain banished, location - ?, henchman card - ?
That's where I was unsure. I felt like I had to keep fighting villains until they were all banished (because they escaped otherwise), and then close the location the hard way. I guess I made it tougher on myself than I needed to.
I believe that's impossible in 1-1E the way it's designed. Villains don't escape to other locations in this scenario.
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We actually failed this the 1st time. We had 2 Giant Flys who wasted our time, but more importantly our Radillo encountered 2 different Carrion Golems. The 1st time it reduced her to 0 cards (on her 1st turn, 2nd exploration). The 2nd time she would have died, even after being cured by both Kyra and the Herald, but the Herald barely saved her. It ate enough of her resources though we just barely lost on time.
We immediately adjusted and got a Chameleon (ally 1, evade) upgrade for Rad in case the golem showed up again. All casters should really have at least 1 card like this, whether it's the lowly Caltrops, Mirror Image, or armor.
Anyway, 2nd time we got lucky with henchmen and finished it fast.
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So, the shift from Henchmen-encounters to Villain-encounters happens based on closed Locations.
So, if you have time, you could theoretically go to a Location, find and kill the Henchman, choose not to close, go to another Location, lather rinse repeat. Once the Henchies are dead, clear out and close each Location normally.
That means encountering EVERY card in EVERY Location (hence, "if you have time"), but if you can cycle your blessings and explore-allies often enough, you could have zero henchmen to encounter by the time you've closed all but three of the Locations. So you could run the entire Scenario without seeing a Villain.
This could happen accidentally if you try and fail to close Locations early on.
Am I wrong on this?
You're right.
The time pressure could be prohibitive depending on the size of your group, though.
We defeated this scenario by only facing 2 villains because we failed a close check after defeating a henchman, and fought another henchman before closing the now henchman-less location.
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So, if you have time, you could theoretically go to a Location, find and kill the Henchman, choose not to close, go to another Location, lather rinse repeat. Once the Henchies are dead, clear out and close each Location normally.
Actually, you only need to leave three locations open after killing the Henchmen. Assuming you have at least two players, you can Henchman-close the remaining locations normally before emptying and closing those first three.
The villains are certainly more dangerous than the normal henchmen, but I'm pretty sure they're not more dangerous than half a deck's worth of cards, plus some closing requirements.
But whatever floats your crusade, I guess. I'm personally a fan of alternative win methods :)
If someone in charge wants to address this, you could change the scenario to not work off open locations, and instead base on displaying defeated henchmen.
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My group only faced two of the three villains as we had some horrible rolls while trying to close two locations. We didn't try to game the system, but I think at the end we felt we had. We did have to churn through those locations, but we really didn't have much of an issue doing this and we had plenty of time left once the scenario did come to an end.
We actually playtested this one in a variety of ways. One of the earlier versions we actually used Ulkreths as the henchmen; in that version, you'd often rather encounter the villain :)
I have to assume that if you defeat a villain and she cannot escape, one would close the location per the normal rules.
This is surely moot, since it seems like designer intention was clarified, years ago. But for the record, I don't think this works?
When a villain is defeated, the rules say to close the *villain's* location (as opposed to *your* location). The distinction typically only matters with trigger villains (eg in MM 5) or summoned villains (eg Sandpoint Devil). But in this case too, the encountered villains are technically in a separate villain pile, not the location.