Thunderstone Advance: Towers of Ruin - Tips & Strategies

Epic is pretty good with several players, but alone, you have no means to advance through the cards and you lose a lot of what makes Epic-mode fun. This house rule should help make it fun again.

As part of a turn, add a card phase where you can put the top card of any given village sale stack on the bottom of the deck – and can step through the next three cards if you like, putting the top card on the bottom of the deck if you like. Ddo this for one stack if you go to the dungeon, two stacks if you go to the village.

I find that going into the Dungeon as often as possible early on in the game helps you get a head start on everyone else. Particularly, going in when you can defeat a monster that is lined up, versus going in when you aren’t sure if you can. This will help you accumulate XP more quickly so that you can level your regulars into heroes, and your heroes into higher level heroes before that opportunity is lost. And you get your familiar after defeating your first monster – which is beneficial to have early on instead of halfway through the game in a pinch.

If you are really close to having the numbers you need to defeat a monster in the Dungeon, and you have the ability to draw more cards from a Dungeon ability, then it’s usually worth the risk to go to the Dungeon and try to defeat a monster.

You do need to find a good balance between how many monsters you’re filling up your deck with early on, because they could set you back a turn more frequently. The game tends to prevent you from filling up your deck with monsters, since you won’t be able to defeat a monster every time your turn comes around, so it’s not generally an issue.

The TSA rules, under Curses on page 23, say this:

“Curse cards are not affected by any monster trait or effect that does not specifically target curses.”

This means that if a monster requires or allows you to discard or destroy a card in your hand, you cannot choose to discard/destroy a curse. Gamer Bling stumbled across this while rereading the rules, and since then, he has yet to find a single gamer who plays by this rule. He even went back and checked the original rulebook, and it was in there. Go figure.

http://www.alderac.com/thunderstone/category/module/

There are 5 scenarios for Towers of Ruin and three for Caverns of Bane. Some additional mechanics are introduced that will help you change it up a bit. It is all presented as PDF downloads.

The Solo Adventure Variant is a different way to experience solo play with Thunderstone Advance. In this variant, the monsters attack the village and surrounding countryside, taking plunder and damaging the region’s production. These attacks make existing demand go up while supply goes down, and so as a result, things become more expensive.

Thankfully, there are heroes that can take the fight back to the home of these monsters, recover supplies, and give hope to the common folk to repair their village and continue business.

[I suggest using the Wilderness side of the board as this is the only way I have play-tested this variant. You will also need a 12-sided die or an electronic die roller as well as all 50 XP tokens.]

Set-up: The village is setup as normal, however the Dungeon deck is created differently. Once the three monster groups are chosen (one from each of the three levels), randomly take only six of the ten monster cards in each group. With the three piles (one for each monster group level) you take two of the level 1 monsters, three of the level 2 monsters, and four of the level 3 monsters.

Shuffle them together and place three face down on the space for the Dungeon deck. Place the Thunderstone-Bearer on top of those three cards and the remaining six cards on top of him. Now take the nine monster cards that were left over from before (four level 1′s, three level 2′s, two level 3′s), shuffle them together, and place them on top of the Dungeon deck. It may be necessary to turn over some monster cards from the Dungeon deck and place them in the Dungeon Hall, depending on the level of difficulty you wish to play;

Easy Mode – There are no monsters starting in the Dungeon Hall. At the end of your first turn you will take the top card from the Dungeon deck and place it face-up in the right-most rank (rank 4 on the wilderness side).
Normal Mode – Begin the game with one monster in the Dungeon Hall in rank 4.
Difficult Mode – The games begins with a monster in rank 3 and one in rank 4 of the Dungeon Hall.

Numbering the Village Cards: The Village cards are numbered 1-12 beginning with the left-most hero card. Do not include Basic cards in this numbering process as they are not effected. Thus, the hero cards are numbers 1 through 4; the regular is a Basic card and so is not counted.

The left-most weapon card is number 5 if there is any. Count any other weapon cards or go to the left-most item card. Keep counting the cards in this left to right, top to bottom fashion, until all the cards are numbered. The right-most Villager card will be number 12 (or right-most Spell card if there are no Villagers).

End of Turn: Use the official solo rules, but instead of a monster being placed in a “monster score pile” when it leaves the dungeon, never to be seen again, it now attacks the village. Slide the monster from rank 1 to the side of the board and each of the monsters to the next rank. Take the top card from the dungeon deck and place it in rank 4.

Now we resolve the monster attack on the village. Take a number of XP tokens (now called ‘plunder’ tokens) from the supply equal to that monster’s VP value (that’s VP not XP!). If there are no tokens left in the general supply, see “Party Frustration” below. Roll a 12-sided die to determine which village card to place a token on (remember, Basic Cards are not attacked). Make a roll for each plunder token.

A card pile can only have a maximum of five plunder tokens on it. If another token is to be be placed on that card, place it on the next pile that does not have five tokens on it.

A card’s cost is increased by 1 for each plunder token on it. The monsters have killed and driven away heroes and villagers, taken weapons and items as well as destroyed places where they were made, and increased demand on magic. With all these supplies lowered and production limited, prices are on the rise!

When a Thunderstone-Bearer attacks the village, things get really plundered! Resolve the attack as above, however there are two plunder tokens placed for each die roll. (So, if the Bearer’s VP value is 4, roll the 12-sided die 4 times and place two plunder tokens for each result).

Finally, take the monster that attacked the village and place it face up on the dungeon pile. It has retreated to the deepest part of the dungeon to rest and revel in its plunder. It cannot be directly attacked but it is still considered in the Dungeon Hall.

Party Frustration: If a monster attacks the village and there are not enough tokens in the general supply to use as plunder tokens, they are taken directly from the player’s XP token pile! Unfortunately, the persistent attacks on the village’s region has left the party’s reputation as plundered as the land around them. The harsh treatment they are receiving, compounded by their own feelings of frustration over the losses, is limiting their potential.

Party XP: After a monster is killed, you gain the monster card and the XP as indicated on the monster’s card, as normal. The XP tokens are taken from the plundered village cards first. Your success has returned some of the plundered resources and given hope to the people to rebuild. You can only take a single token from any one card pile unless there are no other cards with plunder tokens on them. If there are no more plunder tokens left on any cards you take one from the supply. Any bonus XP earned from cards, such as Thunderstone Shard, are only ever taken from the supply.

End Game: The game ends in one of two ways: either all the tokens have been placed on village cards as plunder tokens (in which case the village is destroyed and the monsters have successfully driven the population away; you lose), or, the party defeats the Thunderstone-Bearer and saves the village (you win).

If you win, there is also the question of how well you won. Add up all your VPs and subtract the number of plunder tokens on the village cards. If the number is positive you have gained a good reputation and the village prospers. The higher the number, the greater the reputation. If the number is negative, your reputation is tarnished as the impoverished and struggling population wonders if they have anything left worth rebuilding. There are no rewards or acclamations.
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I’d be very interested in any feed-back from play or questions. It seems fairly balanced in the several times I’ve tried it, although it may not be quite a difficult as I’d like – the games have been fairly tense and close but I only lost once. But then again, I’m a relatively new player. I’ve personally really enjoyed this way of playing solo as it creates a real sense of impending doom. Play time is about 90 minutes for me, including set-up and putting away.

Update: Added the difficulty modes.

A number of the Kobolds allow the player who defeats them to place them in another player’s discard pile. This can be a good idea since some very few VPs or even negative VPs, and they clog up your hand. I have been hampered quite a bit before in a 2-player game where the other player was placing these Kobolds into my deck early in the game.

This doesn’t work quite the same in solo play as a player has no fear of an undefeated Kobold ending up in their hand. As a variant, I play that any undefeated Kobold with the ability to be placed in another player’s discard pile gets put into my pile. If I defeat it, I have the option to put it into the monster score pile.

When playing old-school Thunderstone, the best strategy appeared to be the Rest-6: every turn rest out a Militia until they are all gone. Gamer Bling is undefeated in games where he used this strategy. No joke.

Thunderstone Advance fixes this problem by making Regulars better, but resting out a few Regulars still doesn’t hurt.

Village: At game start, your average hand’s gold value is 5. Rest out just 2 Regulars, and your average value is 6. That means each card is worth 20% more, and you cycle your deck more quickly.

Dungeon: At game start, you have about a 77% chance of drawing a Longspear in each hand, and as close to 100% chance of drawing a Regular as you like. Rest out just 2 Regulars, and your average chance of drawing a Longspear in your hand (and thus also drawing an extra card in the dungeon) is almost 87%, or 12% more likely (relatively speaking). Your chance of drawing a Regular still remains well above 99%, because the deck is smaller but your hand size is unchanged. And, again, you cycle your deck more quickly.

So would you like an extra gold each turn, and a 12% better chance of an extra card draw? Then don’t be afraid to rest.

I have played both of the games and prefer the advanced version. The key reason is the number of options you can do each turn. The new one that allows you to put cards from your hand to the top of your deck helps speed the game and makes it easier to go to the dungeon