Imagine for a moment that you're relaxing in your catacombs, minding your business and plotting the destruction of Crystalia, when suddenly a group of do-gooder riffraff comes crashing into your dungeon, looting your hoard, and bullying your minions. When Heroic types invade your home, you need a dungeon floor plan that works in your favor.
Welcome Overlords! The purpose of this guide is to help you design the dungeon to your advantage. With Super Dungeon Explore 2.0 putting the dungeon design completely in your hands, there is no better time to be the Dark Consul! With that said, let's discuss the finer points of dungeon layout.
TILE ONE
One mistake I see Consul players often make is setting up three tiles in a straight line, hiding the treasure chest in the furthest possible corner, then rushing their monsters forward haphazardly. Often there are no obstacles between the spawn point and treasure chest and—since SDE 2.0 Classic rules require the chest be placed within 4 squares of the spawn point—they are very close together. This gives the Heroes one goal they can focus on, and makes the decision-making process very easy for them. Trying to protect the treasure chest on tile one is even harder because you have no idea which direction the heroes are coming from. This leads me to my first piece of dungeon building advice. Don't protect the treasure on tile one.
"Wait what?" I hear you say. "Don't protect the treasure?" That's right! Heroes will inevitably open at least the first (and probably the second) treasure chest. It's unlikely you'll prevent it, but you can make it costly for them. Since treasure chests don't need to be within line of sight to the spawn point, you can separate them using natural terrain like walls, structures, etc.
In the above example, it looks like the Dark Consul is giving away an easy treasure card, but it comes with a price. In this scenario, the exit closest to the treasure chest is furthest from the spawn point, forcing the Heroes to waste precious turns getting to the spawn point while the Consul's minions grow in number. If the minions castle up for a turn or two, how long will it take for the Heroes to reach them? How many will they be able to defeat? How many of the precious 12 turns before the boss shows up will be spent dealing with tile one?
If they don't take the bait, now they're looking at other options. The left entrance is closest to the spawn point, but furthest from the treasure chest. The bottom entrance is somewhere in the middle but involves sending one hero after it and diminishing the party. The fourth option involves them abandoning the treasure chest and pushing forward to keep momentum, but who wants to do that?
No matter what, the Consul has created a dilemma for the Heroes, and it's these tough decisions that lead to heroes making mistakes for you to exploit. Whenever I'm pressured into playing Dark Consul by my gaming group, I always set up tile one like this, and it has never disappointed me.
TILE TWO
So let's fast forward. The Heroes have made it off tile one, probably after more turns—and short a few more Princess Coins—than they would like, and the second tile lies before them. What does it look like?
With tile one out of the way, the Dark Consul has considerably more control over tiles two and three. In this instance, the spawn point and treasure chest are buried in the center of the tile. To further aggravate things, tile three is at the furthest exit away. In this specific build, the Dark Consul is delaying the heroes even further. Just count the number of turns it will take a Hero (averaging 6 squares of movement) to reach the spawn point and treasure chest, and that's before you factor in the minions (and possibly Mini Boss) they have to deal with along the way. This will likely instill panic in the Heroes, causing rash decisions as the Mighty Monster Chart steadily advances toward the Dungeon Boss's arrival. Even cool headed Heroes are losing precious time as they advance through your hoards, desperately pursuing the second treasure chest and spawn point. Fun fact, it was my wife who found this tile and first used it against me, sending waves of Ninja against my fleeting party of Heroes. It didn't end well for me -_-
The third tile could really be connected to any of the three available exits, as they all require backtracking, wasted turns, and difficult decisions for the Heroes between tile two and tile three. For simplicity, I chose the right exit since it is the furthest from the tile two entrance, but take a moment and let your mind swim in the possibilities. No matter what exit you choose, the Heroes have difficult decisions to make. And difficult decisions lead to tactical errors.
TILE THREE
Let's assume the Heroes are still kicking after tile 2, the spawn point destroyed, and treasure in hand. With their remaining Coins and resources, they still face tile three.
Tile three is the end of the road. For most groups it's often unnecessary to make this tile difficult if you've followed this guide. However, if you're playing in a cutthroat gaming group (as described in
Tactical Doctrine, Chapter One: Introduction) you'll likely want to ensure the group is challenged all the the way through to the last tile.
In this example, the Heroes still have an uphill battle ahead as the path to both the spawn point and the treasure chest is well above the average Hero movement stat. Furthermore, the spawn point and treasure chest are separated by a wall. With whatever limited turns the Heroes have before the boss arrives, they must choose between gaining one more power-up before the boss shows, or denying the Dungeon Boss a power-up for keeping a spawn point alive. While all this is happening, you, the Dark Consul player, will be building up your forces, doing your best to ensure the Dungeon Boss has a host of minions in support when they arrive. Depending on how you lay out tiles one and two, tile three has almost limitless possibilities, and this is just one of them.
THE BIG PICTURE
Now that we've discussed each tile, of a three tile game, in depth, let's look at the big picture.
Having gone through this example dungeon step by step, I am confident that you will be able to construct a dungeon that challenges your gaming group. Combining these dungeon making steps with good tactics (which we will discuss in a future chapter) I believe the Dark Consul player will be able to level the playing field against even the most cunning of Hero parties.
Stay tuned next chapter for more tips and tactics, this time favoring the Heroes of Crystalia. *booooo - hisssss*
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UPDATE
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Having talked to these dungeon building methods and play-testing them with my group, one of the group members (Discord name: Hrith) came up with a tile build that, while not as nasty as the one pictured above, was very effective at stalling the Heroes while the Dark Consul built up minions on tile 2. Here is the layout:
So what happened exactly? Here is a quick breakdown of how this game played out.
With the spawn point and treasure chest squarely in the middle of difficult terrain it took altogether too many turns to get successfully off tile one. The Spawn Point fell and the minions with it, meanwhile the second tile saw minions mounting in numbers and the Mini Boss closing in.
By the time the Heroes entered tile 2, it was crawling with monsters and the Mini Boss was just a turn or two away. At this point, advancing a Hero into range of a minion meant putting them in range of several other monsters for a massed counter attack. Loot starved and running out of time before the Dungeon Boss spawn, the Heroes couldn't afford to play cautiously. The Heroes were able to stock up on loot but not without losing Princess Coins to the massed minions, and ultimately failed to destroy the second spawn point, giving the Dungeon Boss two Relics once spawned.
On the Dungeon Boss' arrival, the Heroes had two choices, gun straight for the Boss, hoping to end things in a single turn, or thin out the hoards so as not to have to deal with a Dungeon Boss AND a hoard of minions massing attacks during what could be a prolonged Boss fight. The Heroes chose the latter, but it was not enough to turn the game around. Dark Consul victory was inevitable this game.
Lastly, in case you're wondering why I spared the detailed on Hero party and Spawning Pool composition, I plan to add those in a future article. Trying to cover all aspects of Consul tactics would be far too much writing for a single article.
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