Invincible Xykon

[Sendal]

I don't know if anyone else had this problem, but in our game The battle size for Xykon reached 160 when we ran out of cards.

Elan was facing an attack of 98.

[bwcMD]

The simple solution is multple places on this board. "I forgot they could do that", a Screw This! card, can be used to get rid of the Assist ability and drop his Attack back to a normal range. Or the hard route--just get enough Loot to give to everyone and boost your attack that high.

[The Giant]

I think you did something wrong.

The battle size for Xykon cannot possibly be higher than 4 (the floor number for Xykon's Lair) + 1 (for Leader) + 24 (total number of goblins in the deck) + 12 (total number of undead in the deck) + 10 (total number of demon roaches in the deck), for a total of 51. And even then, that's only if every single goblin, undead, and demon roach was played on Xykon's level at the same time, which is unlikely.

Note that demon roaches do NOT count as two Support for Xykon! They count as one Support each, as if they were either Undead or Goblins.

So yeah, I can't see how you could have gotten a Battle Size of 160 by the rules.

Now, having said that, yes, Xykon can get pretty unmanageable if players feed Xykon early. The smartest thing for players to do is to NOT play a goblin or undead on Xykon during the first round. If you can get through the first 5 Monsters without any goblins or undead (and you wisely took care of all the monsters on the same floor before wandering off to find Xykon), then Xykon will end up nice and tame without much problem. If not, then there's always Screw This! cards and/or giving all of your Loot away.

[Sendal]

The problem was that someone played redcloak as the third hord member, and then the goblin necromancer as the fourth. They both increase the battle size everytime a goblin was played so one goblin meant 3 more cards.

We thought we were being clever at the time because Elan was going to win, so we thought we could make a hard fight for him so we played goblins and undead to start with. We also ended up with fiends and ogers and orcs also increasing the battle size due to other reinforcements cards. By the time we realized whet was happening we were playing our whole hands, and couldn't stop it.

There was also a stack of about 15 (mostly undead) cards supporting the zombie hord in another room in Xykon's lair.

[Xanthos]

Aye, as Sendal pointed out, the stack can go exponential if other hordeing characters are played. In a game I played last night, we found Redcloak, and the battle size ended up to being something like 30 or 40 due to him, a goblin necromancer, and someone that horded off kobolds. We kinda said "screw this" and found Xykon, at which point we played the *other* Redcloak, and Orc Summoner and Demon Roach King (meaning +4 battle size for every demon roach on the floor), and we eventually ran out of monsters from the deck. Xykon's room was ~40 or so (lost count), and we technically needed to play another 30-40, but all that was left were "Screw This!" cards.

[The_Cowinator]

We technically needed to play another 30-40, but all that was left were "Screw This!" cards.

I had that happen once. We had played through the whole game and ended up having Haley give out all her loot for a +128 just to be able to finish the game.

[apegamer]

at which point we played the *other* Redcloak

You probabaly know this, but when you find the second Redcloak, the first one goes away, at which point it should be a much simpler matter to eliminate whatever monsters were in that pile.

[Arcade]

Sounds like we need some sort of rule to say that a monster can only increase the Support: Horde ability of one monster in any given battle stack. That way each Demon Roach doesn't drastically add to the battle size and people like RedCloak and Goblin Necromancer don't get out of control when placed under Xykon. But if you put Redcloak down first and fill him with goblins, that would still increase Xykon if he pops up later because he is in a different battle stack.

Alternatively, everyone playing needs to make sure they realize all of this before they start exploring Xykon's lair. Don't go down there if you have a pile of goblins and undead in your hand. Don't go down there if all the other players are sitting with 1 or 2 cards in their Battle Hand and are going to be forced to play support characters. And if someone does go down there, don't get so focused on screwing them over that you get yourself into the invincible Xykon stage.

[Sendal]

But that doesn't solve the problem of exponential growth of the monster stack. As I said, when we ran out of monser cards ie they were all in Xykon's lair or our experience piles, we added up the battle size we should have had and got 160.

This causes other problems byond Xykon being realy hard. If people go searching the dungeon for more loot to trade in, there are no monsters left to fight, so no more loot can be found.

I've been wondering, based on the Giant's post, whether the horde ability of the monsters doesn't occour until you meet them in battle. so Xykon might cause say 15 monsters to appear under his own power, several of which may have the horde ability. You ignore this for now. Then a player beats Xykon and the next monster is Redcloak. (Just for now, I'll forget the fact that they all runaway now to illustrate the point) you then add more monsters to the bottom of the stack from his hord ability if you choose to fight him.

Is that how the rules were intended, and if its not, is it not a good idea?

[Xanthos]

You probabaly know this, but when you find the second Redcloak, the first one goes away, at which point it should be a much simpler matter to eliminate whatever monsters were in that pile.

Aye, we remembered this, but since it was late, and all of us had full hands of Screw This! cards, we simply "forgot" he could be assisted and had haley Get Angry 3 or 4 times to kill him. Of course, Roy ended up winning, anyway :P

(Although, the previous game, Roy came in very dead last. By a lot)

[Arcade]

I've been wondering, based on the Giant's post, whether the horde ability of the monsters doesn't occour until you meet them in battle. so Xykon might cause say 15 monsters to appear under his own power, several of which may have the horde ability. You ignore this for now. Then a player beats Xykon and the next monster is Redcloak. (Just for now, I'll forget the fact that they all runaway now to illustrate the point) you then add more monsters to the bottom of the stack from his hord ability if you choose to fight him.

Is that how the rules were intended, and if its not, is it not a good idea?

I'm pretty sure that's not the intent of the rules. There have been various places mentioned on these forums that the battle size is only determined when the monsters first appear and are not changed at a later date.

I don't know if I like the idea of adding monsters after they've already been laid. It's nice to handle that event once and then leave it alone and not have to revisit it again. Functionally, it does slow down the monster stack, but it also prevents other synergies in the game (like putting a creature with support: horde underneath a creature with a different support ability but using the same support creature).

If you go with my previous suggestion to limit the support horde ability to only add 1 monster per battle stack for every supporting creature, it stops the exponential growth but still lets all of the horde abilities play out. It means that Redcloak can have a huge stack of goblins and a few other monsters under him, not a huge stack of goblins and a free dragon/kobold/zombie pet for each goblin because he brought the necromancer along.

[Sendal]

That might be a less drastic fix. It would still allow pretty large stacks, but not as big as the one we made

[The Giant]

Hmmmmm. I will have to consult with Kevin and Craig, but I believe having multiple monsters supported with Horde from the same single monster was not the rule intent. It seems like its one of those things that didn't come up in playtesting because we all knew it worked that way but forgot to spell it out in the rules. The intent was that Horde allowed monsters of a certain type to be "invisible" to the Battle Size, so that it increased by the same number of goblins that were able to be played, not that it increased exponentially if two or more Hordes were in play.

Whether it becomes an official ruling or not, my feeling is that it's an entirely valid house rule that any given monster can only increase the Battle Size once, no matter how many Hordes he Supports. In the same way that a demon roach only increases Xykon's battle size once despite counting as either an Undead or a Goblin.

[Xanthos]

Hmmmmm. I will have to consult with Kevin and Craig, but I believe having multiple monsters supported with Horde from the same single monster was not the rule intent. It seems like its one of those things that didn't come up in playtesting because we all knew it worked that way but forgot to spell it out in the rules. The intent was that Horde allowed monsters of a certain type to be "invisible" to the Battle Size, so that it increased by the same number of goblins that were able to be played, not that it increased exponentially if two or more Hordes were in play.

Whether it becomes an official ruling or not, my feeling is that it's an entirely valid house rule that any given monster can only increase the Battle Size once, no matter how many Hordes he Supports. In the same way that a demon roach only increases Xykon's battle size once despite counting as either an Undead or a Goblin.

Well, even if we go with this rule, Xykon's battle stack can be larger than you originally stated because of various Leader monsters and monsters that horde off other types (kobolds, demons, orc, bandits, etc.)

[The Giant]

True, I didn't think of that, but those other types don't add anything to Xykon, and they will never be encountered individually because all of the monsters vanish when Xykon is beaten. If Xykon has 40 kobolds, demons, and orcs beneath him, he doesn't get any bonuses and thus isn't any harder to beat than if he DIDN'T have them there. They're essentially dead weight. The maximum bonuses he can get is +102 to Attack and Defense.

[Sendal]

It does make it more likely that all, or most of the goblins and undead will get played though

[pvande]

It seems then that one possible way to write the Horde rule would be to say "[Monster Type] does not count towards the battle size" rather than "Battle size +1" - there would be a whole lot less ambiguity that way, and battle sizes wouldn't quite grow to the extremes some people have been seeing.