Mauve Manticore Discussion Thread

I tried playing Mauve Manticore #3 and got beaten so badly on the 3rd encounter with the demons and Xanthicus that I just gave up. Maybe I'll complete it later, but the difficulty seems higher than anything I've played so far. Of course, there's probably something exploitable that I'm overlooking. I would like to see a detailed guide on how to beat this encounter.

 

Yes: get lucky.

No, it's a ridiculously hard map.

 

Ignore the dragon and victory squares and just focus on the demons. Try to maneuver so that the dragon's attacks hit at least as many demons as your chars. Don't cast Nimbus until you draw Contagion.

 

How the hell do you beat The Binding of Xanthicius!? I've lost like 20 times in a row and I've never even gotten close to winning. Killing the dragon is almost impossible, and the demons all have so much more cards than I do I can't gain any ground against them!

EDIT: I see that the last poster was having the same problems as I am...is the goal really just to kill the demons? I tried that A TON, ignoring the dragons and I still never even get close to winning.

 

It's crazy hard. Anyone who says otherwise got crazy lucky.

 

its already cost me like 100 gold in retries

I just cant deal enough friggin damage to kill that many dudes and they POUND the $#&% out of me REALLY FAST!

 

I got lucky with drawing a decent amount of healing and won it on the 2nd or 3rd try. I rushed a couple of Victory Points to keep them out of demon hands, I seem to recall. I kept away from the dragon and maybe put lava on the Victory Points the demons might have gone for.

 

I played The Binding of Xanthicius today and did it on about the fifth try. The key was ignoring the dragon, rushing the demons in the upper corner with the spear-wielding elf and stabbing as many of them as possible near death and finishing them off with the female elf wizard. She also lava'd and acid'd as many demons as possible. By crowding them they couldn't escape. The elf priest provided healing for all. Don't let anyone die to deprive Gary of the points. It's not necessary to compete for the Victory Points, just kill enough demons for the win.

Succeeding in this battle requires both drawing enough attacks for the spear elf and healing for the priest. I think it's too hard as often you can't win no matter how sound your tactics are, you're completely at the mercy of the draw. I hope there won't be any more adventures that are this hard in Mauve Manticore. They could work as one-offs but as one part of three they feel like too much and can become stonewalls to players trying to complete an issue.

 

So, as the creator of that map, I can honestly tell you I won about 3/4ths of the time I played on it. And the version they used was actually easier than the version I submitted - there were a few spots of difficult terrain on the paths between the demons and the player that was made into normal terrain. While I'm sorry to have caused so much consternation with this map, I do enjoy it as a kind of capstone to the Xanthicius story that actually challenges the player - I felt like the original final showdown was a bit too easy, once you figured the dragon out. Killing a dragon, or even binding it, should always be a big deal.

 

Game creators are always blind to their creations' true properties. That's what playtesting with people who haven't seen the game before is for. You are now getting that player feedback and learning what your game really is as opposed to what you think it is. I'm glad it's easy and fun for you. For many of us, not so much — as the third battle in an issue of Mauve Manticore (over which you personally of course have no control over). As a standalone battle it is a beautiful, fun and well-realized challenge.

 

I finally made it. Not with strategy, but with pure luck. Was not able to find any logic that could help to win the map. Apart from the obvious 'ignore the dragon and victory squares' I just unloaded the cards as they come. That was not really fun, and you actually do not get the satisfaction of killing the dragon. To win you have to ignore the dragon and get the points by killing the daemons.

 

Mauve Manticore #3 was great fun. I won all the scenarios on the first attempt, but Bindings of Xanthicius was definitely more difficult than the other two.

I want to report a problem I encountered with Bindings of Xanthicius:

At the end of a turn, I had all my 3 characters on victory squares, while Gary had only Xanthicius on victory squares (and none of the demons), but Gary was awarded the victory star . Is this a bug? The rules state that you "earn a Victory star for whichever player has the most characters occupying Victory squares at the end of the round.", which seems to imply that the dragon should only count as one character even if it's standing on 4 squares.

Whether it was a bug or intentional, it made the victory squares in this map seem pointless (unless you were able to kill the dragon, I suppose). It took a lot of effort to get all my characters on victory squares AND keep all the demons off of them, while I could have just been killing them instead.

EDIT:
The wiki only has the line I quoted, but I just noticed the "How to Play" page has another line that makes it sound more ambiguous: "These earn a Victory star for whichever player has the most characters occupying Victory squares at the end of the round. Whichever Player/GM’s Characters are occupying the greater number of Victory squares scores a Victory star."

 

After beating my head against Bindings of Xanthicius several times, I finally hit on a strategy that enabled me to win the scenario. It still took a couple of attempts and a little luck on the card draw front, but changing my tactics made the scenario winnable.

Essentially, this is a logical extension of the 'ignore the dragon and victory squares' theory. Not only should you ignore them, you should avoid them. The dragon has a range, and his attacks are a major source of damage. Try to cram your heroes into the area where the demons begin. Not only will you outrange the dragon, but you can use the pillars up there to limit the effectiveness of the demons. It's literally the only cover on the map, so use it to your advantage. This needs to be accomplished on the first round or early on the second round, to avoid taking too much damage on the way in.

Once I'd started trying that tactic, I had two relatively close losses where my card draw was sub-par. (These elves have waaaaay too much movement in their decks.) After that, I had a run with above average card draw (finally managed to pull off the mass immunity spell, although it was on a turn where I had no attacks to capitalize with) which resulted in a narrow victory.

I generally agree that the scenario is overturned, but this should help some of you find victory.

 

I tried to make it so that the dragon only had 1 VP under them despite highlighting all four of the squares under him - it's possible this was changed back before the map was released. I did notice what you discussed about VP awards when I was making the map - the game seems to count each occupied VP square, regardless of how many creatures it takes to occupy them.

Also, Sunscar, you've hit upon the crux of the issue - you pretty much have to rush straight into the demons as fast as you can, and get away from the dragons breath attacks - and force it to hit the demons with it's rockfalls.

 

Okay, totally understandable. Thank you for the explanation. Congrats on having your module accepted, BTW.

I'd still be interested in clearing up with the Card Hunter developers whether VP are intended to be counted per square or per character, because it's not very well documented.

 

From my POV , some Mauve Manticore maps are a huge dump of gold , they are so freaking hard that you can only hope that one : you get good hand , two : AI's draw is crap to beat -.-

 

Yes, fling poop to Inkfingers , hes a sadistic

 

There are so many comments about the difficulty of the Manticores I felt I should throw out my opinion only to balance a bit. I don't think they're bad at all. Most are more difficult than other SP adventures, if for no other reason than you can't build a deck to optimize your opponents' weakness. I will also acknowledge that quite a few I didn't beat on my first try, but after one run through to see the board, cards and enemies, it wasn't ever that difficult to try to strategize a way to win.

The thing to keep in mind with Manticores is that you can't build a deck to your style of play. That means you must adjust to what approach will maximize your assets. Do you normally run in and hack like mad? Does this map require shadow games? Or is there one enemy that must be taken out first? Or completely ignored? Is time against you, maybe this map needs you to press. Do you ignore enemies and just go for victory squares? Or the reverse? Are there cards in your deck that you normally never play with? How can you make best use of them? My personal opinion is that learning to handle MMs will make you a better player as you'll be forced to fine tune a more diversified game and become more skilled across the platform.

 

That's all well and good, Scarponi, but the fact remains that some of the Mauve Manticore battles have been such that often no amount of skill is going to make you win. You are completely at the mercy of the draw. That's bad game design. Or do you enjoy playing Russian Roulette? Just spin the chamber, put the revolver to your temple and pull the trigger. Surely you can maximize your assets and strategize your way to a win there, too?

 

When I play CH, I prioritize the MM. Best way to farm lvl 18 items.

Most frustrating MM map is the 2nd battle of MM #3 supplement, the one with the dogs that have to cross a map with encumber armors, cowards that almost discard your whole hand and an opposite frosting imp. You can play perfectly and still lose several times in a row.
But as the first map of this adventure is really easy, so easy that's it's actually farmable, you can and should restart the adventure instead of spending gold.

2nd most frustrating is 3rd map of MM 3, the one with the dragon. Even if now I usualy pass it on the first try, I can still remember this game when none of my guys died. I early casted accelerated thoughts on the warrior, did no overkill and still lacked 3 damages on the last mob to win on time. Sometimes you win on round 3 (the 6 damages cave-in in the starting hand of the wizz is the nuts), sometimes you can't draw enough firepower.

Other one that can be tricky is the first map of MM #2, the wedding one. Just because the dwarf warrior can one shot one of your guys with Vicious Thrust + All Out Attack x2 when you can't prevent that to happen. But now that I start with killing this dwarf instead of the priest (unless the priest rushes you with nothing in hand while others are still way back) I have less troubles.

I never get defeating during the other battles.