Month: October 2020

Other encounter sets in this scenario: Poison, Temporal Flux
(1) If the players favored Ichtaca: Pnakotic Brotherhood, Dark Cult
(2) If the players favored Alejandro: Yig’s Venom, Guardians of Time
(3) If neither: Pnakotic Brotherhood, Guardians of Time

My take on this encounter deck: The thing that stands out most from the numbers above is the huge amount of doom related cards in the deck if the players decided to favor Ichtaca over Alejandro. This is especially relevant as this is the scenario that makes or breaks the Ichtaca path, anything less than three discovered paths will close that way off. Aligning with Alejandro or neither of the two adds Guardians of Time to the deck instead, a set that plays very well in this scenario. The Eztli Guardians can cover a wide range of locations here and stack up well with a bunch of damage treacheries from the encounter deck.
The scenario is mostly driven by its location mechanics, though. Because of that, the significant difference between the deck composition depending on the earlier campaign choices do not matter quite as much as they would have in other scenarios. There are also six scenario dependant treacheries added to the deck which take center stage over what came from the other encounter sets.
Cancel these: Timeline Destabilisation. While there are some rough treacheries coming in from various sets, the two scenario-specific ones really take the cake. One is basically Ancient Evils, so cancel it if you can – it does have Peril though, so that’s not something to plan for. Timeline Destabilisation however just needs to go into the encounter discard whenever it shows up. The alternative is finding it again and again as it gets shuffled back into the exploration deck. Standouts from the other sets include Lost in Time/Merging Timelines from Temporal Flux/Temporal Hunters and Serpent’s Call/Wrath of Yig from Yig’s Venom/Venomous Hate.

What it does: Serpent of Technochtitlán is a beefy Serpent enemy that exists as a one-of in the encounter deck. It has solid combat stats and high stamina, making it tough to take out. If a player suffers damage from one of its attacks, they are poisoned.
While not at an Ancient location with clues, the Serpent uses the Hunter keyword to move towards players until it either engages someone or lands at one such location. While at an Ancient location with clues, the enemy will start guarding that location. To do so, it loses Hunter and gains Retaliate and Alert instead. Those abilities increase the chance for it to land a successful attack and applying poison by a lot.
Killing the snake does award a victory point, but will also add a point of vengeance.

My take: This is a really interesting enemy that asks a lot of the players. It’s added to the deck right away, so it can turn up as sort of a mini-boss at any point during the scenario. If the plan is to defeat it for the victory point and to not be harrassed by it for the rest of the game, then the players will need to take down the five health in one turn if they also do not want to get poisoned. Alternatively, evading it first to pin it and then beat it up is the less risky option, especially if the Serpent currently has Retaliate active.
There is one important non-obvious interaction concerning this beast that is worth keeping in mind: Unless the players favored Alejandro until this point, this is the only Serpent in the encounter deck. This is relevant because one of the two Templo Mayor locations will put the next serpent from the encounter deck into play, thus making it likely that the Serpent of Technochtitlán is added to the final confrontation with Padma Amrita. Having two big enemies stack up like that can be a serous problem. On the other hand, should the players have met the snake previously, that Templo Mayor will just trigger an encounter deck reshuffle because the only serpent is either somewhere on the board or in the victory display.

Threat level: High. This is a major threat that warrants special consideration by the players.

Dealing with it: To get the best way of disabling this enemy right out of the way: This is a Humanoid and a non-Elite, which opens up Handcuffs as a convenient way to put it down. If you don’t have that card or one of the other special player cards that reshuffle or defeat non-Elites, there basically three ways to deal with the Serpent of Technochtitlán: Either evade it and run from it. Or kill it. Or park it on an Ancient location. The first option is not a great one. The web of locations doesn’t leave a lot of room to run from a Hunter and this can massively backfire once the Harbinger is also added to the map. This can really only be a short-term solution to buy time for one of the other options. Fighting it, players will want to ensure that they do not get poisoned, so either take it out in one turn (which will usually require at least one three damage action) or pin it down with evasion. If possible, try to take it out at a location that doesn’t put it into guarding stance so you don’t have to worry about being counterattacked on a failed test. For the last option, let it wander into an Ancient location with clues that you do not plan on clearing. Obviously that should not be the Templo Mayor. This will mean that you can not get all six paths anymore, but for most groups that should be perfectly fine.

What it does: Hand of the Brotherhood is a weak cultist enemy whose strength lies not in combat, but in its abilities. Spawning at an empty location, it stays there and prevents the use of any location abilities in its place and the ones surrounding it. Discovering the last clue from any Ancient location on the board will add a doom token to Hand of the Brotherhood. All of those abilities are only applied while the cultist is ready.

My take: This is a set of abilities that makes Hand of the Brotherhood a card that can not be ignored. Killing it is easy enough, but as is so often the case that will take precious actions away for moving towards it and hitting it. It’s a fine card, but not a particularly remarkable one. If you are playing an investigator (or a team of investigators) that are specialised in evading enemies and not in killing them, these can end up a bit more painful. But at least in my opinion, anyone tackling the Forgotten Age should be able to kill at least a few enemies. There’s cultists all over the place.

Threat level: Low to Mid. Not difficult to handle, but something you can not ignore for long.

Dealing with it: Just kill it. This is not an enemy to get tricksy about. When spawning it, you have a choice of putting it right next to you so you can kill it with fewer actions or putting it on the other side of the map where it doesn’t shut off the locations you are currently trying to flip. In the vast majority of cases the first option should be preferrable.

What it does: Window into Another Time forces a player (and only that player, no outside help allowed) to make a choice: Either add a doom to the agenda, possibly advancing the agenda. Or shuffle a revealed Ancient location back into the exploration deck, undoing all the progress that was done in that place.

My take: Let’s walk through what the first option of this card can undo. To fully uncover an Ancient location, the players did: Fulfill the condition on the Present-Day location, spend an action to explore, find the Ancient location in the exploration deck instead of a treachery, often suffer from some sort of “enters play” ability, discover clues and move on. Undoing all of this is not an option. Note that even if you didn’t do that last part yet and the clues are still on the location, those just drop down to the Present-Day location. And then, after exploring again, the Ancient location will drop another chunk of clues on top. That is a lot of actions and a lot of tests. Don’t fall for that, just accept the doom token.

Threat level: Very High.

Dealing with it: Unless you are really sure you know what you are doing, just take the doom. There is only one situation i could imagine where i could see shuffling back a location: In case you only just explored a location and didn’t grab any of the clues yet, you could shuffle that one back into the encounter deck, move the clues to the Present-Day location and then move on to a different Present-Day location and continue exploring there. Basically sacrificing the location you were at to avoid taking the doom. This will stop you from getting all six paths, but that is rarely going to be the goal anyways. Still, 99% of cases this card is simply Ancient Evils with more text on it. Regrettably, Peril is part of that text.

What it does: If the player fails a willpower test, they are dealt a damage and a horror. Also, Timeline Destabilization is shuffled into the exploration deck if that happens. The willpower test’s difficulty scales with the number of Ancient locations in play.

My take: This is a very nasty card. I am always happy to draw these early when i can still easily pass the willpower test because they are just so bad later on. Not only does the damage and horror represent a bit of pressure on the player, but being shuffled into the exploration deck over and over translates to failed explorations down the line which can really hinder progress a lot. The difficulty of the willpower tests escalates pretty fast, to the point where even investigators with a 5 in that stat will fail this test unless they invest into it further. There’s three of them in the deck as well, so unless you have some way of passing the test, canceling the treachery or otherwise stopping them from stacking up in the exploration deck, these will make finding the last couple of Ancient locations a lot harder.

Threat level: High.

Dealing with it: One way or another, you will want to make sure that this card ends up in the encounter discard pile instead of the exploration deck. If that means committing a couple cards or spending precious cancels, so be it. Having two or more of these in the exploration deck can cost the scenario on its own as players end up drawing these, failing their exploration and may just end up getting damage and horror again only to have to shuffle the card back into the exploration deck.

Return to Boundary Beyond

My take on the modified scenario: No new scenario specific encounter cards are added to the deck, but the scenario is changed in many ways nonetheless. The new exploration setup makes finding the Ancient locations a lot less risky as there are no treacheries in the deck (aside from Timeline Destabilisation down the line). Three of the encounter sets used are being replaced with new ones. Dark Cult becomes Cult of Pnakotus, a change that gives some more teeth to the cultists. When playing route (1), be aware of the interaction between Brotherhood Cultist and Brotherhood Acolyte. I highly suggest having one player on cultist duty, zipping around the place smacking these guys whenever they show up. Yig’s Venom is removed for Venomous Hate, so players will have to deal with the Vengeful Serpents and the Serpent Guardian. That gives some more teeth to route (2), which was held back a bit by the less impactful Yig’s Venom before. Finally, Temporal Hunters replaces Temporal Flux for all routes, a change that is about even but does introduce the highly unpredicatable Merging Timelines card to the proceedings.
All things considered, the scenario becomes a bit easier thanks to the exploration changes, but it’s still one of the more challenging ones. Getting the first three paths should be in the cards for everyone, but everything more will require some luck and preparation.

Surge

Continue reading here:

• Previous scenario: Threads of Fate
• Next scenario: Heart of the Elders #1
• Forgotten Age campaign hub

My take on this set: This is a neat little set that doesn’t see enough use during the Forgotten Age campaign. It’s only used in two scenarios. What’s more, if you align yourself with Ichtaca the set gets disabled for half of the one scenario and is completely omitted during the other.
Guardians of Time is a small set focusing on dealing direct damage to players. This is especially dangerous for poisoned investigators, who are already subject to periodically losing health to the Creeping Poison treachery.
The other thing notable about these cards is how hard they scale with the number of players. Both cards are able to hit multiple players at once, multiplying the damage they deal. For that reason, their value goes up in full parties dramatically.

What it does: These enemies spawn at empty locations, guarding their surroundings from investigators snooping around in the jungle. Eztli Guardians have two life, which makes them easy to take out at first glance, but their four fight and Aloof makes that actually quite problematic. They only deal a damage in combat, however they attack connected locations as well while unengaged. They do have Alert which is largely there just for flavor. With 2 evade and Aloof, the Alert keyword will pretty much never do anything.

My take: What a pain these are. They attack only for a single damage, so just suffering through it sometimes is attractive because the alternative means having to spend a turn moving over to their place, engaging them and passing a reasonably difficult combat check. These guys are especially annoying during the Boundary Beyond, both for ingame and for out of game reasons. They can cover a lot of locations during that scenario and are well worth taking out if they not spawn in one of the two corner locations. They also add a certain amount of book keeping to the shifting location connections during the scenario.

Threat level: Medium. Their strength comes from being able to attack multiple investigators in one turn, allowing them to rack up a good amount of damage over time if things go perfectly for them.

Dealing with it: The first decision to make is where to spawn them. If possible, an Ancient location has to be chosen, but nonetheless it’s often possible to spawn them a bit out of the way where they aren’t immediately dangerous. During Untamed Wilds, they often become a free mythos draw that way, even before parleying Ichtaca can literally turn them into freebies.
Whenever they are relevant, they are a decision of what is going to hurt more: The damage they cause or the actions needed to take them out. Fight events that also engage (Spectral Razor, Get Over Here) can do great work here and so can cards that can deal two damage to unengaged enemies (Blood Rite, Storm of Spirits).
One little detail about their unengaged attack: It only hits connected locations, not their own. So you can share a location with the aloof Guardian without being attacked. Ironically, that allows you to plunder the clues from the Ancient location they are guarding without being bothered by them.

What it does: Arrows from the Trees deals damage equal to 1 plus the number of allies they control. Not only the player who drew the card is affected, but also every other player at Ancient locations. There is no test attached to this damage, it simply happens.

My take: Even though the baseline of only being dealt one damage is quite low, there is no test here to avoid it. When players have allies with only 1 stamina around that things get bad. Being confronted with the choice of either discarding their Milan/Peter/Initiate or taking the hit themselves, players will often end up taking a lot of extra damage. Like with the Eztli Guardian, this card gains a lot of its punch from hitting multiple players at once, thus potentially racking up an impressive amount of health lost.

Threat level: Medium. The lack of a test is huge here, allowing the card to stack up with the poison related cards to chip away at player’s health until even small enemies can become a life-threatening issue. It’s held back by sometimes not doing a whole lot more than a single point of damage, though.

Dealing with it: First off, if you are playing the sort of ally heavy deck that has multiple weak allies out at the same time, you should not linger in Ancient locations if you can avoid it. For anyone else, it’s probably not worth playing around the two copies of this card specifically. The saving grace here is that the same allies that scale the damage on the treachery can also take the hit for you, allowing yourself to tank the hit with allies that have multiple points of stamina.

My take on this set: Focusing on delivering payoffs for the poison mechanic, this set is used in half of The Forgotten Age. It’s a bit of a mixed cocktail, with its impact mostly propped up by that one copy of Serpent’s Call. Aside from that, there are a somewhat generic, slightly above average enemy and a highly variable treachery that is most dangerous when it can surge into another card.
Despite that lukewarm first impression, it should be noted that the set is more dangerous to at least two groups of investigators. One, any investigator that relies heavily on assets to handle enemies can find themselves suddently without access to those assets, which can escalate any already ongoing issues on the board. Two, solo investigators can not count on any teammates to bail them out, so they will miss those assets more than anyone else.

What it does: Fang of Yig is a medium sized enemy with a 3 in all of its stats and Retaliate for a little bit of extra risk in combat. Investigators who are poisoned are prohibited from using their cards while engaged with Fang of Yig which does add an extra layer of punishment to the poison mechanic but is fairly rare to actually matter in practice.

My take: In spite of all that text on them, these are about as generic as it gets. They rarely play any different than your garden variety Ravenous Ghoul. Retaliate slightly pushes investigators towards evading them instead of attacking them. Especially when no attack for three damage is available, that can be a very viable alternative. Doom of Eztli and Boundary Beyond do feature a bit of backtracking, but the other two scenarios allow players to leave this enemy behind after exhausting it. This is a solid creature, but falls victim to not being all that special when put into a campaign where three health is already the norm on many enemies.
When they actually get to engage a player with poison, that player will find that many of their solutions to three health creatures (Vicious Blow can no longer be committed, Spectral Razor becomes unplayable…) are no longer available to them. This will force them to deal with the thing the conventional way, taking two attacks or having a teammate bail them out.

Threat level: Low to Mid. When the poison clause matters, these go up in danger but even then they shouldn’t be a big obstacly by any means.

Dealing with it: It should go without saying that getting poisoned is to be avoided, and there are far worse payoffs than Fang of Yig for it. It’s a fairly generic enemy either way – even if you aren’t allowed to use any special means to kill it, just attacking it twice should do the trick. That does open yourself up to getting retaliated, so consider evading the snake instead. It doesn’t have Hunter (a rare treat in TFA…), so that’s actually a fine way of dealing with it semi-permanently.

What it does: While affected by Snakescourge, the textboxes of all non-weakness Item assets are blanked, stopping investigators from gaining their static bonuses or activating their abilities. Snakescourge lasts until the end of the round, where it is automatically discarded to its own Forced effect.
If the player is poisoned, the card gains surge, thus dramatically increasing its impact.

My take: Very hit or miss, Snakescourge is hard to evaluate. Often, it will fail to do a whole lot but when players rely on certain assets to do their job, it can be surprisingly debilitating. This is most often the case for fighters who will find themselves without a weapon for a turn. For most other characters, the temporary loss of their items usually only translates to -1 to a stat or two as they lose access to their Magnifying Glasses and Holy Rosaries.
The card reminds me of Dissonant Voices from the Striking Fear set in its effect, sometimes stopping players from certain actions but allowing them to do other things instead. Where it shines is as a payoff for the poison mechanic, though. Tacking Surge on a potentially annoying effect can lead to bad beats, especially if it surges into an enemy.

Threat level: Low to Mid. There is a lot of variance to the effect, but especially when the conditional surge is active this card can become a bit of a problem.

Dealing with it: This card is a much better reason than Fang of Yig to care about poison. Drawing extra encounter cards can hurt a lot and surging into an enemy while having your weapons disappear for a turn can lead to some ugly turns.
As long as it doesn’t surge, it will often fizzle completely or just lead to minor inconveniences that should be easy to improvise around.

What it does: A rather simple treachery that makes players pick their poison. Literally. Either they have Serpent’s Call surge into the next two encounter cards or they have to get poisoned. Obviously, investigators that are already poisoned are unable to choose that option again.

My take: So what will it be? Pest or Cholera? Being drawn or being quartered? Being hanged or being shot? You get the picture, there is no good choice here, both options are quite severe on their own. Personally, i will almost always pick the poison option because i am deathly afraid of picking up two encounter cards at once.
This card is in equal parts an enabler and a payoff card for poison. On the one hand it can make you suffer from poison to unlock the related punishments from the other cards of this set (and from chaos tokens, other encounter cards, locations, …). But on the other hand, being poisoned already when you draw this makes you suffer from two encounter cards without any choice. Luckily there is only one of these in the deck.

Threat level: High to Very High. Whatever happens, you are not going to like it.

Dealing with it: The best way of preparing for this is probably to bring an extra medicine or two when picking up your supplies. Accepting right away that there will be some moments where you get poisoned and need to be cured from it can off yourself the freedom to take the poison option on this card without having to also consider the long term effects. It will make the rest of the scenario a bit more difficult, though. If it’s near the end of the scenario and you have the board under control (well, as far as possible in those four scenarios that use this card) taking the two encounter cards becomes more palatable, but i’d still not be happy about it.

Return to The Forgotten Age: Venomous Hate

My take on this set: Venomous Hate discards the poison theme of the original set almost entirely. There is one poison card left, but all cards in the set are Vengeance-related. Notably, they do not use Vengeance the usual way but put their own twists on it. As another change from what most other replacement sets do, this one breaks up the numerical breakdown of how many copies of a card are in the set, shifting from 2-2-1 to 3-1-1. That gives it two spots for powerful singleton cards. This set contains one of my favorite enemy cards overall, the Vengeful Serpent, but the other two aren’t exactly bad either. In total, the difficulty of this set is noticably higher than Yig’s Venom, despite the standout card from the original set being severely nerfed in a couple of ways. I think this is a good tradeoff. I’d rather have a set of threatening but not overpowering cards instead of a set with one killer card and a bunch of mediocre ones. Vast improvement, 10/10, would get lost in the jungle again.

What it does: The Vengeful Serpent is a Hunter enemy with a 2/2/2 statline. Individually weak, their ability turns them into a major threat. Defeated Serpents go into the victory display (without adding vengeance or victory points) and return to play whenever the next Serpent enters play. With three of these in the deck, this often happens rather sooner than later.

My take: Amazing. I adore the design of this card and how it uses very simple rules and abilities to turn this critter into something that deserves special consideration by the player. Make no mistake, these are dangerous. Slaughtering them may not increase Yig’s Wrath, but every dead Serpent will just power up the upcoming ones. Since they are Hunters, they are a huge bother to evade and spend actions on repeatedly. Especially during Doom of Eztli and Boundary Beyond it’s hard to just leave them behind. The Fang of Yig from the original set didn’t have Hunter, so these just add another three occurences of that keyword to the four scenarios they are in. This is a considerable amount of extra pressure, forcing investigators to stay mobile.

Threat level: Mid to High. These are not to be underestimated. If players do not have a solid plan of dealing with these creatures, they can easily get swarmed or bogged down in lost actions.

Dealing with it: It’s very likely that players will end up having to kill one or two of these along the way for some short-term benefit. This can easily turn into a problem later when drawing the next Serpents. They aren’t terribly difficult to deal with by themselves, but they are really good at escalating any already ongoing problems. Being already engaged with an enemy can turn south fast when another two or three snakes get dropped into that combat from just one card. Having to kill them one by one will also make it easy for any other Hunter enemies on the board to catch up. So when deciding on whether to kill a Vengeful Serpent, consider the short term benefits of having more actions available now to progress against the potential long term danger of having these drop into an already messy situation. Once there are three Serpents on the board, these can be killed with impunity of course. It’s not like most investigators are able to evade three enemies and move away anyways. Conveniently, the Serpents will still go into the victory display in that case, so they will not turn up again when the encounter deck reshuffles. There are some player cards that can help with these, like Storm of Spirits or Handcuffs, but they are mostly unsatisfying and/or conditional answers that do not answer the problem completely.

What it does: The Serpent Guardian is easy to evade, but at four fight, five stamina and with Aloof, it’s a tough enemy to kill. They spawn at a location with at least 1 clue and guard it, increasing the shroud of that location by 2 while they are there. Should players have collected three or more points of Vengeance, the creature stops guarding its location and trades Aloof for Hunter to put its combat values to work.

My take: The best case would of course be that there’s no Vengeance in the victory display and the enemy gets stuck at some low shroud location that can still be cleared. Worst case would be having it appear at an important high shroud location with no option to bypass the shroud increase. That could lead to a turn’s worth of actions (or more) required from a player to engage and slay the snake. Should it come down to a fight, that one evasion is a major achilles heel that can be leveraged to at least not be hit for two damage in the enemy phase.

Threat level: Mid. It’s potentially a dangerous enemy in the vein of Serpent of Yoth or Boa Constrictor, but the conditional nature of it keeps it easier to handle.

Dealing with it: Ideally, you are able to stay below the threshold where the Guardian turns into a Hunter and can bypass the shroud increase. That can be done either by simply having a high intellect yourself to brute force the test or by discovering clues through card effects. If the Guardian becomes a Hunter, you’ll have to once more consider the threat of having a Hunter that hits for two damage stick around against the effort of dispatching it. At least this one is easy to evade and doesn’t give any Vengeance penalties itself, so both options are a bit more reasonable than on the Boa or the Basilisk.

What it does: Wrath of Yig threatens to poison the investigator that drew the card. To avoid this, they have to pass a willpower test against a difficulty that scales with the current amount of vengeance points in the victory display. Investigators who are already poisoned will be dealt two damage instead if they fail the test.

My take: A much powered down version of Serpent’s Call. First off, getting to attempt a test to completely evade the effect is a huge change in favor of the players. The baseline difficulty is also quite low and only becomes more troublesome with added vengeance. Finally, the two damage for already poisoned players is a lot milder than the two extra encounter cards from Serpent’s Call. Wrath of Yig is still a notable card in the encounter deck, one that you are generally not happy to see. But it’s a mere shadow of Serpent’s Call.

Threat level: Mid to High. Being poisoned stinks, but this one gives a fair fighting chance to avoid that fate.

Dealing with it: Like mentioned for Serpent’s Call, bring an extra medicine in your supplies. Getting poisoned by this can be avoided with a test, but chances are that you will still see one or two extra poisonings over the course of a campaign thanks to this card. The two damage to poisoned investigators seem very mild at first, but it does stack with Creeping Poison and all the various traps and arrows from the encounter deck. Still, it’s preferrable to drawing two extra encounter cards, as long as you make sure that you are able to soak through some extra points of damage.
Avoiding the poison from this card is valuable enough that i would strongly consider throwing everything i got at the willpower test. I’d want to test at least at four above target so only the -5 and the auto-fail can get me. Of course, that won’t be possible or reasonable every time.

Other encounter sets in this scenario: Rats, Striking Fear, Cult of the Yellow Sign, Delusions, Evil Portents, Hauntings

My take on this encounter deck: Considering that Curtain Call is the first scenario of the campaign and that the investigators face it with their undeveloped level 0 decks, this encounter deck is incredibly vicious. Striking Fear, Delusions, Evil Portents and Hauntings all have treacheries that are meant to waste several of the player’s actions, while Evil Portents in particular also pushes down on the already tight doom clock.
Between Spires of Carcosa, Spirit’s Torment, Poltergeist and of course the Man in the Pallid Mask there is quite some extra stuff to deal with for Seekers and other investigators with high intellect, which is unusual. Unprepared players will find themselves struggling to progress here, this is one of the few places where a Mystic can’t just put down Rites of Seeking or Sixth Sense and be done with it.
Speaking of cards that hit you when unprepared, the Poltergeist has one of its two appearances here. Should nobody carry a spell or relic, that thing can be a massive pain. The other enemies from the deck are rather tame, even fledgeling investigators will find little trouble dealing with Fanatics and Rats. The Royal Emissary is usually enough to keep fighters occupied and only the Agent of the King provides a decent combat challenge aside from it.
This is easily the most difficult first scenario from all the campaigns. The last act can be especially brutal if the effect that spreads through the theater is a bad one and players get hammered by action intensive treacheries. There’s nothing quite like not being able to shake off Frozen in Fear and having to spend three actions on each move while being on a tight doom clock with a Royal Emissary in pursuit.
Cancel these: Spires of Carcosa, Frozen in Fear. If unanswered, Spires can flip the agenda all on its own. Even if answered, it wasted two thirds of the Seekers turn, which is a problem. Canceling it can take a lot of pressure away. Frozen in Fear once again shows up when wasting actions is something to desperately avoid.

Return to Curtain Call

My take on the modified scenario: This is already a pretty great scenario out of the deluxe box and the Return to Carcosa wisely doesn’t shake it up too much. Focusing on providing extra variance from additional locations and plugging some “exploits” by making the Emissary progress in danger on each reappearance, only a single card is added to the encounter deck. It is a super interesting one, but as 1 out of 33 cards it can of course not change a whole lot about how to approach the scenario.

What it does: La Comtesse is easy to defeat at only one fight, despite her stamina being surprisingly high enough to take a hit. When defeated, La Comtesse is added to the player’s hand as a Hidden card where it will count as four cards, effectively reducing the hand size by as many cards. Additionally, the player holding La Comtesse in their hand has to suffer a horror for each card they discard during upkeep.

My take: What a great card, the design is outstanding. I have only one gripe about this card: Why is it added to Curtain Call and not to a scenario where she matters a bit more? Or one where the tension of the card (Do i defeat her or do i keep evading her?) is a bit more of an actual choice.
Constantly evading her is just not an option in this scenario. The small map, the constant backtracking and the high pressure on conserving your actions make that option a non-starter. So that leaves players with having to defeat her and then continue dealing with the Hidden card.
Once added to a players hand, there is no way to discard her again, so she will stay there until the end of the scenario. Reducing the hand size by four is not a big deal for some investigators, but crippling for others. So when she shows up, the main thing to figure out is who has to take her.

Threat level: Mid. One way or another, this card is going to make its presence felt from the turn it is drawn to the end of the scenario.

Dealing with it: There are few cards in the full card pool that can stop La Comtesse from doing her thing for the rest of the game and since its the first scenario, the options are of course even more limited. The Guardian card Handcuffs is pretty much perfect and a useful card throughout the campaign in general. But aside from that, there is just not a whole lot around. So unless players are already on the last leg of the scenario and on their way out, it’s likely best to just defeat her and deal with the fallout instead of getting weighed down by avoiding her over and over.
Whoever ends up with her in hand will have to plan on not having to discard at the end of the turn. This requires playing or committing a card per turn on average, which shouldn’t be too hard. The last stretch of the scenario, when actions on playing random cards aren’t really something that can reasonably be spent, conveniently comes with tests on the locations with horror on them. These tests can be used to ditch cards as commits to avoid going over the hand size.

Surge

Continue reading here:

• Next scenario: The Last King
• Carcosa campaign hub

My take on this set: A whole set of 6 cards that plays around with doom mechanics. Sounds scary and in many ways it is. The thing that keeps this set from being completely oppressive is how two (well, one and a half) of the three scenarios treat doom differently than usual. During Black Stars Rise and the conviction version of Phantom of Truth adding doom to the agenda and/or the board sometimes even becomes desirable, thus softening the impact of these cards. When played straight, these cards can be a downright menace though. Spires can remove up to two full turns from the scenario, something that can hurt a lot during Curtain Call in particular where a single unanswered Spires will respawn the Royal Emissary even if it just had been dealt with the round before.
The set also plays into something that is seen on various other cards during the Carcosa campaign: Using the intellect skill to combat treacheries, replacing some of what would usually be willpower tests. Intellect is already arguably the most irreplacable stat, having a bunch of doom cards key off of it makes it only more important.

What it does: Following an intellect test with above average difficulty, the investigator failing it will have to choose between taking a horror for each point they failed by or to add one doom to the current agenda. This can cause an immediate advance of the agenda.

My take: This variation on Ancient Evils gives two opportunities to the players to prevent the extra doom from happening. They can either pass the test to completely defuse it or, failing to achieve this, take a variable amount of horror instead. In my experience, the two options are fairly even, i end up taking the horror about as often as i take the doom. This points towards the card being well balanced in that regard.

Threat level: Mid to High. Even when a test and a player choice are attached, a card modeled after Ancient Evils pulls some weight.

Dealing with it: The intellect test is easy to fail by most investigators, so completely negating the card this way is going to be rare. Most often, the decision is going to hinge upon how much the player failed by. A horror or two is easy enough to mitigate, but anything more and that doom token starts to look attractive.

What it does: Spires of Carcosa enters play attached to a location and places two doom on that location. It does offer players the opportunity to remove those doom tokens before they can cause an early advance of the agenda. To do so, a player has to investigate here spending an action. They can then remove a doom instead of discovering a clue.

My take: This is a really dangerous card that can easily cause the players to lose a full turn or even two. Even in the best case scenario, this will take two actions to clear from the clue getter of the group and thus stall the way towards finishing the scenario. Depending on the location that Spires gets attached to, it can become very difficult to clear. Not only can this randomly pop up on high shroud locations, but players will also have to deal with it using their natural intellect scores (plus static bonuses like from Milan and Mag Glasses). Cards like Fingerprint Kit, Rites of Seeking or Duke do not help here and neither do cards that find additional clues or fancy Survivor clue tech like Look What I Found.
Of course, this all depends on the players even being available to spend the actions to investigate here. If they are already bogged down from the previous turn, engaged in a fight for example or split up on a big map like the one in Phantom of Truth, then this can lead to some dire consequences indeed.

Threat level: Very High. There is a lot that can go wrong here and even the best case bogs the players down considerably.

Dealing with it: A good way to prepare yourself for this card is keeping your group together. You don’t want to have your fighter draw Spires while anyone with a reasonable intellect skill is in some other remote corner of the map.
Solo players of course lack this luxury, this is one of many things in the Carcosa campaign that require a somewhat specific answer and having all of them in one deck is going to be a challenge in any case.
Oh, and just pray you don’t draw this during the final part of Curtain Call where horror tokens on locations add some movement impending tests that can stop you from reaching Spires in time – and in turn cut short the time you have to flee from the theater.

What it does: The player has to take a willpower test and, should they fail, is forced to discard two random cards from their hand. The difficulty of the test scales with all doom in play (including doom on the agenda). Should no doom be in play, the card surges.

My take: Random discard is always a bit frightening and having to discard two cards can make a big difference. The difficulty of the test is very variable, ranking from “just don’t draw the auto-fail” to “literally impossible”.

Threat level: Medium. Discarding two random cards can hurt quite a bit and there are a good amount of situations where the test is near impossible to pass.

Dealing with it: There’s not a whole lot that can be done about this card, as the doom progression on the agenda can’t be stopped. Keeping the doom on other cards (Cultists, Spires of Carcosa) low is already something to prioritize, so the existence of Twisted to His Will doesn’t change anything for the players either. This is a “grin and bear it” type of card. Investigators that rely on specific cards (for example Segments of Onyx) may want to prioritize playing them to the board instead of holding them.

Other encounter sets in this scenario: Agents of Yog-Sothoth, Ancient Evils, Locked Doors, Bishop’s Thralls, Sorcery, The Beyond, Whippoorwills

My take on this encounter deck: Like many other scenarios from deluxe boxes, this encounter deck shows that its built only from campaign-wide building blocks. It’s a bit of a mixed grab bag of all kinds of things and could really have done with some scenario specific cards to provide some more flavor and coherence. Instead, we are left with a pretty large deck that does merely foreshadow several things that will get fleshed out later in the campaign. There’s the combination of Sorcery and Beyond that will appear two more times, but without any further support from the encounter deck the player discard theme is just a minor point here (Except for specific investigators of course). We got some Doom mechanics thanks to the ever present Ancient Evils and a smattering of various tests in willpower, agility and strength to complement the usual investigate tests on locations.
Extracurricular Activity has a bit of everything: A large map, some big monsters, an even bigger boss monster, some small enemies, some even smaller enemies, lots of clue grabbing, testing all the things, multiple win conditions and multiple fail conditions. In short: It’s a great introductory scenario, in my opinion it’s better than the Gathering for showcasing the game to new players because there’s just so much in it.
Cancel these: Ancient Evils, Beyond the Veil. These two cards are the anchors for two of the fail conditions in this scenario. Nothing else in this scenario really comes close in importance unless you are for some reason really afraid of Light of Aforgomon.

Return to Extracurricular Activity

My take on the modified scenario: Only one extra enemy is added to the deck. It’s an okay card, but doesn’t shake up the scenario in any meaningful way. Neither does the new location that can randomly replace the Orne Library, for that matter. However, a whopping four of the encounter sets used in this scenario get replacements from the Return To box and they do add at least a little bit more focus to the whole ordeal. Swapping Ancient Evils for Resurgent Evils doesn’t do much to change up the scenario and neither does the replacement of The Beyond with Beyond the Threshold. Secret Doors does however remove the token agility and strength checks from the encounter decks and replaces them with the more generic willpower and intellect tests. The treachery from Yog-Sothoth’s Emissaries adds another two cards with a willpower test while the creature from that set plays into the discard theme (although it is fairly inefficient at doing so).
As a result, the scenario isn’t really changed much in its core, but there is at least a little more focus to the deck than there was before.

What it does: Enthrealled Security Guard is a medium sized Hunter enemy that offers players two ways to defeat it. They can either go the usual way of defeating them in combat, which is easy enough to do due to a low fight stat on the card. Unless the player is able to deal three damage with one action they will need two attacks for this, however. Also, should they miss their attack despite the low difficulty, they are hit for one point of retaliation damage and have to discard the top two cards of their deck. The alternative way of dealing with them is evading them which will trigger a Forced effect that defeats the Guard. While this allows to get rid of the card in one action and without the threat of retaliation, the difficulty for evasion is twice as high as for fighting.
If Return to Extracurricular Activity is played after Return to The House Always Wins, then one of these guys starts in play at the Administration Building, enticing players to leave the Quad right away.

My take: I usually still end up just fighting the guy as there are only few other high caliber enemies around that would take up my fighting power. At a fight value of 2, the retaliation ability is very non-threatening… and even if it hits, it’s not that much of a problem in the first place. Of course, if evading ends up being the better option (because of investigator choice) then i will gladly take that option, but it’s not a thing to specifically plan for.

Threat level: Low to Mid. There are a bunch of keywords and effects printed on the card, but ultimately it doesn’t deal enough damage on an attack to be more than a nuisance.

Dealing with it: If you are playing this scenario as your second one, I wouldn’t suggest going after the one that spawns at setup right away. There is little reason left to enter the Admin building at all, just move towards the Humanities or Library/Observatory and set up your assets. Then kill the Guard while its at the Quad next turn. The two ways to defeat work very much in the players favor here, decide which one to go based on your investigators abilities. The choice should probably be fairly obvious as most investigators are heavily tilted towards either fight or evasion.

Surge

Continue reading here:

• Next scenario: The House Always Wins
• Dunwich campaign hub

My take on this set: One of my favorite sets from the game. These birds are one of the early examples of how game mechanics and flavor can come together perfectly. These are an important part of Lovecraft’s “Dunwich Horror” and they are represented in their cards quite well. Little more than tiny birds, they are no physical threat at all, but their presence makes every investigator at their location be worse at everything they try to accomplish. The treachery nails their flavor of being harbingers of death, instilling horror into investigators that are badly hurt already.
The Aloof keyword is used extremely well here. While players will find little actual difficulty in swatting these pests, the added requirement in actions to do so is still going to make them double guess themselves whether it’s worth it or if they should just take the penalty.

What it does: Whippoorwills are Aloof and Hunter, following players around but not engaging them. Anyone at their location gets a penalty to all of their main skills.

My take: It’s easy to underestimate the effect this penalty can have on your tests. Even if it leads to just one extra card that has to be committed to a test to ensure passing it, this little devil will have done its job. Defeating them is easy enough, but is going to take two actions. Factoring in the reduction of the fight value, they have an effective fight stat of 3, which at least puts them out of range to just be punched by any Seeker who runs across them. Players really shouldn’t let these linger around for too long, they do have quite the big impact on a lot of things and if nothing else, they shouldn’t be allowed to stack up.

Threat level: Low to Mid. A problem in multiples. While easy to defeat, they will usually take the better part of a turn away from the player who has to get them out of the way.

Dealing with it: Whippoorwills (and other Aloof enemies, for that matter) are good reasons to have ways of dealing damage without engaging. Beat Cop is the classic way to dispose of these creatures, but there are of course many other such damage sources in the player card pool.

What it does: The player has to pass a willpower test. If they don’t they are dealt 2 horror. The difficulty of the test scales with any damage the player already took prior to drawing this card.

My take: Aside from being a flavor homerun, this card is also potentially quite relevant. Being dealt 2 horror when already down on health can put any player into a situation where they have to be really paranoid about any card coming from the encounter deck. Usually this sort of card only stacks up with other encounter cards that deal the same type of token to the player. This one not only stacks up with other horror cards, it also does so with damage cards.

Threat level: Low to Mid. Mitigated in the usual ways, and not threatening on its own. It does however escalate any situations that are already problematic.

Dealing with it: On the surface, Eager for Death is just another variant on Rotting Remains: Do a Willpower check, if you fail gain some horror. So a lot of what was said about that card also applies here. If possible, try to pass the test. If that is out of reach (or simply failed to the whims of the chaos bag) then using soak from assets can be used to soften the blow. Those same assets can of course also be used to soak damage and prevent Eager from Death from becoming too much of a problem in the first place.