Return to the Astral Shrine - HELP!

And I find it amusing, or AMAZING, to see other people who call the Astral Shrine difficult.

We've had months and months of people saying "The Compass of Xorr is literally impossible" and "Troglodytes are the definition of 'too hard.' There is no strategy here." I was the only person to post about the Astral stuff being "hard." I even started this thread on the premise:

http://www.cardhunter.com/forum/thr...ture-its-unfair-its-impossible-et-cetera.2171

And now, all this time later, I find people suffering in the one area of gameplay where I suffered. This says something about how strategy games work. It also make me feel vindicated, thank you.

 

I just did this the other day with no problems. My warrior and priest had a lot of Vicious Thrust attacks (albeit coupled with drawbacks), which helps with movement. The wizard was standard fire.

The basic rule is kill the bishops first. The rooks are blocked by terrain in both scenarios - particularly the second - so they can't easily line up on you unless you're careless.

In neither scenario should you panic about victory squares. In the first, you'll be on top of them anyway. In the second the rooks will wander off and ignore them, so take your time and do the bishops before worrying about victory squares. Unless you lose a man, you'll have loads of time.

I agree cleansing would help - rockfalls in the centre are actually more of a nuisance than acid jets. But I didn't use any as it happened.

 

I love these adventures because of the chess theme! I didn't have any trouble with them on my initial play through, but then got roughed up the last time I tried the first part of the Return adventure. Basically, what I did was set up my warrior with Bash weapons, Missile Block shields with movement armor and boots. Does good damage and knocks them off of victory squares. My wizard goes spark with WoW, WWE, counterspell, and/or discard. My priest just heals with a few attack cards to finish things off.

I agree with others saying to go for the bishops first. It's easy to dance around the pillars in the first battle once they are gone. In the second one, the SE bishop is a must kill. That area is pretty safe once he's gone.

On a side note, the only adventures I really, really struggled with were Mountain Pass and Lord Batford's Manor. Mountain Pass was just a gear issue for me. Lord Batford's Manor I figured out except for the last battle. I tried that battle 7 or 8 times using 30 gold and couldn't do it. I hate War Dogs! Anyway, eventually I learned to ignore the mercenaries and kill the dog 1st. I eventually did it and it felt great!

 

I played this in beta and somehow got through the archery level (Alonzo) in Lord Batsford's Manor without any trouble. But this time it took me about six tries! My current Vicious Thrust oriented loadout is how I eventually defeated it. Ever since then I've been running with a hard-hitting deck. No more pussyfooting about with small hits for me, I take the big cards even when they come with drawbacks!

In retrospect, Smoke Bombs would have been good against the archers... but I never thought of that at the time!

The rest of Batsford was okay for me - sometimes I lost a man but it was straightforward slugging it out.

 

I loaded my team up with:
-bash and mobility for the warrior (allowed him to easily hold a vp against a rook and his pawn buddy not by killing them (though I think he eventually killed one) but just by knocking them around so i could tand on the VP safely.
-as many "move an enemy" cards (ww, wwe, tk, wind of war, etc.) and walls of fire as i could fit on my wizard. the bishops have an extreme aversion to being on lava if the can help it; this plus the movement controlling stuff allowed my wiz to quickly displace and eventually kill the far right bishop.
-plenty of cleanse and hels for my cleric, who vacillated between LoS on the two other characters for spot heals and area cleanses (while ofc staying out of the line of fire himself)

this left them with equal VP standing, which drew the remaining rook and bishop off their points to try to kill me; too bad once they did this, I quickly racked up stars from the VPs and won.

the absolute key was plenty of cards that could push or slide enemies, to quickly remove their VP advantage and easily keep them out of line for their big shots. An early WWE draw is also likely to make this map a near instant win, as the big pieces are ridiculously slow.

 

Smoke Bomb is great for clearing the rockfalls and acid. The special enemies can replace the smoke with a new rockfall but they can't sight through the smoke. The starting point of their rockfall must be at the edge of the smoke cloud (if I saw correctly what they were doing). Therefore, if you want to keep an area clear for movement, lob the smoke as close to the enemy as you can (even taking the hits from the enemies on the near side of the smoke if necessary), that way his blocking rockfall doesn't reach the area you intended your guys to travel over during the round.

You can also create clear paths of movement with wall of fire, place it over the rockfall or acid and do a South Pacific glowing coals run!

Illusion wall and stone wall help a lot here, too. They give you cover from the enemies on the other side of the map. I think a stone wall stops the special abilities, too, but I'm not 100% sure of that.

 

I just finished round four of Batsford, and this advice was very helpful. It was very close, though. At the end, I was down to a wizard with 1hp and no cards except reliable armor. Alonzo had line of sight and 7hp. We were both standing on lava at the end of the turn. It's my closest game by a little bit.

 

This is the only adventure I had to restart (hopefully, there are only 2 battles).
On second battle, I went for SE bishop, put my fighter loaded with armors on victory point (dwarven fighter with encumbering platemail, useless anyway) and went for one of the rooks with my wizard and priest. Managed to put my priest on the VP, then started to get points, as the second rook left his VP to go center. I think this strategy pretty much always work.
My priest had also a few cleansing presence, both for healing and removing annoying acid/rock.

It's a tough fight, because you can hardly win it by sheer deck power. You have to move a lot, adapt to alignments, and be fast. A bit of luck is asked on VPs, as enemies can screw everything by just standing still. But it looks like they don't do it anyway.

 

It's interesting to see how much of this conversation happens in what is now the distant past. Here I am in 2015 and it's still a tough battle. I'm really close to winning that second battle, but even with lots of deck tweaking, I keep coming up empty. I must have played this one 6 or 7 times so far.

 

And then... on 8, I got it.