Month: January 2022

Encounter sets in this scenario: Ice and Death, Seeping Nightmares, Creatures in the Ice, Deadly Weather, Hazards of Antarctica, Silence and Mystery, Ancient Evils
Available experience: 5XP (flat value, for defeating all enemies)

Synopsis: Immediately following the happenings of Ice and Death I and II, the third part sees the camp under attack by the Eidolon creatures we already got our first taste of in part I. None of the enemies are part of the encounter deck. Instead enemies spawn every couple turns at predetermined locations (depending on player count and camp location). They are led by the Seeping Nightmares, scenario specific enemies that already start at those locations.
The goal is fairly simple: Kill every single Eidolon. While this does sound simple enough, this actually represents a whole lot of health points across 9-12 enemies to chew through and the enemies come in at a fast pace, with the potential of having them stack up. All in addition to the treacheries that are coming off the encounter deck in the Mythos phase, of course.
Having the map uncovered already from the previous scenarios is an advantage here, as it allows taking out the Seeping Nightmares proactively. Managing to take one of them out early will also stop some of the other enemies from ever spawning, so that can be very worth it.

My take on this scenario: This scenario can be quite difficult. At this point, the investigators have up to 9XP in their decks, so just got around to making their first upgrades. The fighters hopefully used that to get better at their job, because they will have their work cut out for them. A new enemy appears every two turns, but what makes this scenario spicy is the use of Ancient Evils and the scenario specific Phantasmagoria to accelerate the enemies coming out. This means you will run into situations where multiple enemies are bearing down on you at the same time. Combined with the relatively high stamina of the enemies this has the potential to overwhelm you.
This is the final Ice and Death scenario, so it’s your last chance to get any supply items from locations that you might still be missing. Anyone who is bad at fighting can make this their goal for the scenario.
Entering this scenario is optional, but considering that it’s rewarded with 5XP if you manage to kill everything, it’s hard to pass up. If things go sideways, you can flee from the scenario… however doing so will cost 4 clues per investigator. If you managed to kill at least one Seeping Nightmare, you’ll at least get 2XP then. This can be an option if you want to at least get some experience out of the scenario but also want to avoid the Frost/Tekeli consequences of having the first agenda advance. Should you feel completely unable to fight this many enemies, you can also just skip the scenario completely. This will make you miss out on the XP, but it will at least give you an additional choice of help from the surviving expedition members.

Scenario specific encounter sets: Of course, the Ice and Death set is used again, with its two treacheries in the deck and the Skittering Nonsense being part of the set aside enemy forces. The Seeping Nightmares set adds the actual Seeping Nightmare enemy and the Phantasmagoria treachery.

Act/Agenda: Again, the act has only one card that sets the rules for this scenario. Eidolons gain Victory 0, so you will need to defeat each one only once. There’s a resign option, however it requires 4 clues to use. The agenda deck works a bit differently than usual here. The first agenda only has a doom threshold of 2, however it will spawn an enemy instead of advancing when that threshold is met. The agenda only flips once there are no more set aside enemies. When this happens, the players gain some persisting consequences in the form of a Frost token and some Tekeli-li cards. After that, the second agenda gives players another 6 doom worth of time to finish up before everyone’s automatically defeated with physical trauma.

Seeping Nightmares: One of these for each player in the game is spawned around the camp at game start. The other eight Eidolons are randomly assigned to the Nightmares, as evenly as possible. Taking these out is made difficult by a number of circumstances. For one, they do hit hard and their high stamina makes them non-trivial to defeat in one turn. There’s also a high chance for them to come bundled with other enemies. Finally, if players didn’t manage to reveal all locations before, they might not even have a direct path to the Nightmares right away.
If your investigators are able to attack onto connecting locations, this can be fantastic value in Ice and Death #3. Anything from Marksmanship to Dynamite Blast or just being Luke Robinson will allow to defeat these with relative ease, potentially taking down all other Eidolons that were assigned to it but didn’t spawn yet.

The Eidolons: Once more the full range of Eidolons from Ice and Death and Creatures in the Ice is used. Due to how the scenario is set up, their Hunter (or Hunter-like) ability is a lot more powerful here than it is usually. The map is very interconnected and additionally the spawn locations are connected to the camp … so staying in the camp is really not an option. Chances are that the investigators will pick up a decent number of Tekeli-li cards along the way in this scenario.

Agility testing treacheries: See Ice and Death, part I.

Location based treacheries: See Ice and Death, part I. These can be a particular nuisance here if you are trying to maneuver around the Hunter enemies.

Horror and Damage: See Ice and Death, part I. By now, you might have picked up a number of Frost tokens already. If you did, Ice Shaft and Dark Aurora start becoming a serious issue to look out for. The non-Elite Eidolons don’t actually hit very hard (at least not in terms of immediate damage/horror), but if you are getting low on stamina or sanity, the treacheries in this set might very well finish you off.

Accelerants: In this scenario, every 2 doom spawn a new enemy. So Ancient Evils will make it so you get new enemies in back to back turns. Phantasmagoria can even skip one more turn ahead. So you have 5 cards in total in this encounter deck that will unexpectedly increase the pressure on the group. Both Evils and Phantasmagoria are prime targets for any Wards of Protections you carry.

Suggested partner assets: For general thoughts see Ice and Death, part I.
Claypool and Danforth become serious consideration for this scenario as well. Claypool is of course dependent on how many Frosts you start out with, but Danforth could even be worthwhile if you don’t have any Tekeli cards in your deck right away. Chances are that your fighter is going to pick up a decent amount and Danforth can help with the fallout from them.
This is also probably the best scenario to bring Cookie. With so many enemies stacking up on each other, players will probably not be able to kill everything before it’s able to get attacks off. Cookie can at least pin down a Nightmare or Manifestation for a turn to stop it from attacking.

Reward and Failure: Doing this scenario offers up 5XP, bringing up the total for the Ice and Death trio to a potential 14XP. Failing it by having the final doom clock run out will inflict a physical trauma on anyone who didn’t resign in time.
In addition to that, there’s an extra Frost token on the backside of the first agenda that is very hard to avoid if you are going for the full 5XP. There are also a lot of Tekeli-li weaknesses that can be picked up here and carrying those into Forbidden Peaks can absolutely be a noticeably drawback.

Encounter sets in this scenario: Ice and Death, Lost in the Night, Left Behind, Deadly Weather, Hazards of Antarctica, Silence and Mystery, Ancient Evils
Available experience: 1XP for each missing partner you recover. So in theory up to 8, but not really.

Synopsis: Playing this scenario is optional and doing so will add an additional Frost token to the bag. Following The Crash, a number of members of the expedition team went missing and the players need to find them before they succumb to madness. To do so, they venture out into the same map that was used in part I, with all progress regarding revealing locations transferring over. Each of the nine outer locations gets a random facedown encounter card assigned that is either one of the missing persons or a story card that gives some other benefit. The time available to do so is quite limited however. And a large number of doom acceleration in the encounter deck makes it unpredictable how much time exactly is left.
This scenario becomes easier if the investigators already revealed a decent amount of locations in part I since those can be checked for survivors without much hassle. That being said, part II can certainly be used to progress towards map completion as well, something that will then pay off in part III and that will allow recovering more of the expedition supplies hidden on the locations.
As in part I, you basically go into this scenario with multiple open ended goals:
1 – check facedown encounter cards for surviving team members and get them to rejoin the expedition
2 – uncover more of the map to transfer this progress to part III
3 – recover further supplies
4 – return to the camp in time
Even if all team members have been recovered, it can be worth checking more of the facedown cards. None of them are bad and a few even have effects that persist, like removing Tekeli-li weaknesses from decks or, most importantly, removing Frost tokens.
The encounter deck used for this scenario is the same as in part I, except with the Left Behind set replacing the Creatures in the Ice.

My take on this scenario: This is as closest as Arkham LCG has come so far towards a scenario with no fighting at all. Only the three small Eidolons are left as something that wants to get beaten up. The rest consists of possessed enemies that the players are much better off dealing with in some other fashion, using their Parley abilities.
The scenario is optional and choosing to do it will add a Frost token to the bag. This cost is generally worth it however, as there is much to gain here unless you already aced the first scenario and uncovered almost all of the map then. On the other hand, if your part I went bad, then you are pretty much forced to play this one and try to recoup as much of your ground as you can.
Due to somewhat small doom thresholds and a whole lot of doom acceleration on the encounter cards, this scenario is over much faster than the total of 16 doom on the agenda cards suggests. Players should make sure not to stray too far away from their camp so they can make it back in time even if they suddenly draw into multiple doom cards. Some of the hazard treacheries also play into this, making movement cost more actions which can cut off investigators from reaching the camp in time.
Due to how one-note this scenario is, i don’t think it would be able to stand on its own very well, but it works well as a part of the bigger Ice and Death trilogy. I would suggest playing it in the same session as part III, that way your fighters don’t get to complain about not having to do anything for the whole day… while this scenario will make Tony and Nathaniel feel like they barely did anything, part III will make up for that.

Scenario specific encounter sets: Again, the Ice and Death encounter set is used with the same three cards as in part I. This time, Skittering Nonsense does start in the encounter deck from the beginning right away. It’s also pretty much the only enemy to fight in this scenario. Keep in mind that Zero Visibility could make your way back to the camp take longer than expected.

Act/Agenda: Like in part I, only a single card makes up the Act deck, providing the players with the goal for the scenario (Find as many explorers as possible, return to the camp in time) and the means to reach these goals through an ability to check out the upside down cards for clues and through the resign option.
The agenda deck is fairly straightforward as well. A total of 16 doom across 3 agenda cards sets the timer for the scenario. For once, advancing the first and second agenda is actually beneficial to the players, allowing them to peek at one of the facedown cards at any location. Running out of doom on the final agenda will however defeat everyone and deal mental trauma, the cost for not making it back to camp in time.

The Lost Partners: For each missing member of the expedition team after the conclusion of part 1 the corresponding Possessed version is shuffled into the facedown encounter cards that are under the locations. After finding them, the players will still need to convince them to snap out of their delusions and rejoin. This is done through a Parley action that differs a lot from person to person. Successfully doing so will add them to the victory display.
You could also defeat them here, but of course that will remove them from your campaign. You do get the victory point for them, though…

Almost the same deck as for part I: The only thing changing in the encounter deck from part I to part II is switching out the Creatures in the Ice for the possessed researchers from Left Behind. So everything said about agility testing, location based treacheries and horror/damage from encounter cards is still true here. For details, please check part I.
As mentioned above, the removal of Creatures in the Ice means that the Skittering Nonsense is the only “regular” enemy left in the encounter deck. And that one isn’t really all that frightening. You could easily get through this scenario without anyone ever playing a weapon.

The Doom Clock: The Left Behind set adds a whopping 6 more cards with doom mechanics to the deck, meaning that with Ancient Evils of course also still being in there, every third card you draw from the encounter deck wants to advance the doom clock. This adds some considerable pressure to everything here, as you really can’t be sure about how much time you exactly still have left in the scenario. Walking back to camp and using the resign action there can often take more than a full turn, so you will have to make some good risk assessment there.

Notable locations: See Ice and Death, part I. You start with everything revealed that you managed to reveal in part I, so those locations are likely the first you’ll want to check for the missing team members. If you plan on revealing more locations in addition to checking the facedown cards, you will need a lot of clues. So make full use of the ones that are readily available in the top left (Wastes, Icebreaker) and in the Snowdrifts. If you picked one of the shelter 7+ locations, your camp will also have a lot of clues on them, but it might be at a prohibitive shroud value to fully clear right away. Having a good Seeker is worth a lot there.

Suggested partner assets: And again, i refer you to Ice and Death, part I for a general overview. Some additional thoughts:
Eliyah can be useful to deal with the Frenzied Explorer. If nobody in your group has the necessary means to oversucceed on evading that enemy, then Eliyah can at least give you a shot at it. Of course, you only have three shots at it, so make them count.
If you expect to need several turns to fully parley the possessed team members, Cookie can stop them from attacking you while you have them engaged.
Depending on how part I went, Danforth and Claypool might start to become relevant here. If i were to go into this scenario with 4 Frost in the bag/4 Tekeli-li cards in my deck, i would consider bringing one of them. However, the facedown story cards allow for removing Frost or Tekeli-li cards as well. So you will likely find someone better to bring.

Reward and Failure: You get a chance here to recover the XP you missed in part I, but the more important reward certainly lies in getting to keep the partner assets in your campaign.
Another possible thing to gain from this scenario comes from the facedown story cards. Two of them are able to remove a Frost token from the bag. Even considering that doing this scenario will make you add a Frost, you could come out with fewer Frosts at the end. Four other cards are able to remove one or more Tekeli-li cards. Not a huge boon, but it’s at least something. Actually, since there are only three cards here that hand out new Tekeli-li cards, chances are that the investigators will come out of this scenario with little to none of those weaknesses remaining just from drawing the few they brought from part I. The other two story cards are irrelevant.
While time is pressuring hard during the scenario, you will typically also be able to reveal another location or two, maybe even recover some supplies. If you get that chance, jump at it, those supplies are valuable and your only other chance to get them afterwards is the upcoming part III.

My take on this set: This is the closest thing that Edge of the Earth has to a cultist set, but they do work quite differently to what we are used to. The most important part is that defeating these won’t remove the doom from the board, it merely moves those tokens to the locations where they can’t be interacted with any further.
That can make them quite the pain to deal with if nobody with the correct skills is around to make these lost explorers snap out of it.
This set is used only twice during the campaign, during Ice and Death #2 and Fatal Mirage. Since both of those are optional, it is possible to finish Edge of the Earth without ever using this set. On the other hand, you might visit Fatal Mirage multiple times and be exposed to Left Behind more often. At least Fatal Mirage doesn’t have Ancient Evils which stacks up with the doom from this set dramatically in Ice and Death #2.

What it does: Lost Researcher spawns at an empty location, with a doom token on it. This possessed scientist is easy to defeat, however doing so will merely move the doom to the location. To get rid of the doom, the players need to instead Parley with an action, passing a willpower or intellect test. Should they succeed, a doom token is flipped into a clue token under the player’s control.
If no doom tokens are remaining following a successful Parley, the Lost Researcher is discarded.

My take: Of the two Possessed enemies from the set, this is the one that is less troublesome just because of the fact that there’s two different skills available here to test against. And one of them, Intellect, is pretty much a base requirement for someone to have anyways, so you should generally be able to handle this guy fine. Now, he does spawn at an empty location, so some movement is going to be involved which can cost some actions but you are free to spawn him as close as you can to minimize the effort. And hey, at least you are getting a clue for your trouble. That can save an action somewhere else down the line. All things considered i think this guy is fine… for a cultist. Anything that has doom on it is still making at least some impact of course.

Threat level: Low to Mid. Is not going to be too difficult to deal with, but you can’t ignore it either.

Dealing with it: Killing it doesn’t help in any way, so you will have to go through the Parley option if you don’t want to see the agenda advance prematurely. Willpower and Intellect are usually easy enough to get by, even if it is just in short bursts thanks to some Guts, Perception or whatever other icons you can scrounge up.

What it does: Frenzied Explorer spawns at the player’s location, with a doom token on them. Like with the Researcher, defeating the Explorer is no huge issue, however that would only move the doom to the location. To get rid of the doom, the players need to evade the Explorer by 2 or more which on success will have the same result as for the Researcher: The doom is flipped to a clue and if it was the last one, the Explorer is discarded.

My take: While Intellect and Willpower are usually readily available in a group of investigators, agility is sometimes much more of an ask. Especially since you need to oversucceed on your evasion here, putting the effective difficulty to flip the doom into a clue at 4. That’s not trivial at all.
There are certainly some high-agility investigators who will be delighted to pull this card instead of something else, as they can just spend an action and do their test to not only deal with their encounter card for the turn but also pick up a clue. But the majority will have to either hope that someone else on the team can bail them out or they might have to settle for just barely evading the Explorer. Or possibly killing him. Either way will not remove the doom from the board, though.
Following Innsmouth Conspiracy which already put a heavier emphasis on agility, Edge of the Earth has been increasing the pressure on that skill even more and the Explorer is an example of a card that does so without explicitly calling for an agility test.

Threat level: Mid to High. This one is actually hard to classify. If you don’t have someone that is able to do the +2 evade, then this is basically an Ancient Evils that also costs an action to evade/kill. Otherwise, it’s an almost free clue. Very low floor, very high ceiling.

Dealing with it: The way to deal with it is printed on the card and there are very few ways to get around it. It doesn’t explicitly call out agility, so the doom can be flipped into a clue by a Mystic with Mists of R’lyeh, Sword Cane, etc.
But anything that automatically evades, like Decoy or Daniela’s investigator ability won’t do you any good here.
If none of your investigators are up to the task of turning this guys doom into a clue, then you can enlist Eliyah’s help (as long as he’s still alive and not missing…). He will offer 3 tries at agility 5 which can get the job done. I’d still plan on throwing a couple icons into those tests, though.
As a final note: Going for the over-success and then pulling from the bag in a way that makes you succeed only by 1 or 0 is just the worst thing ever, as it means you have to spend another 2 actions on engaging and evading the already exhausted enemy again. Feels absolutely awful.

What it does: Abandoned to Madness attaches to the nearest Possessed enemy, adding a doom token to that enemy in the process. While attached, that enemy is more difficult to attack, evade or parley.
If no Possessed enemy is in play, the player has to search the encounter and discard pile for one, spawn it and then attach Abandoned to Madness to that card. Note that this will NOT put a second doom token on the enemy you just searched up.

My take: I am not in the habit of keeping enemies with doom on the board, so whenever i draw this, i am likely going to search up an enemy from the deck. For this one, i will always search from the deck instead of the discard pile, to reduce the amount of enemies in the deck. Which one to pull is going to depend on what you can most easily handle. Chances are, it’s going to be a Researcher because there’s just too much that can go wrong with the Explorer especially when its doom->clue difficulty is raised to an effective 5 by this card.
If you do have a Possessed enemy already on the board, this is much worse on an Frenzied Explorer than on a Lost Researcher. Removing two doom from an Explorer in one turn requires spending an extra engage action between attempts, while you can just double parley the Researcher without such extra hurdles.
In Ice and Death #2 there’s a chance that Abandoned to Madness attaches to one of the missing crew members, since those also have the Possessed trait. The effect ranges from annoying to barely noticeable. If one of them is already in play during Mythos, you will likely will have already worked towards parleying them last turn and now only need to get the final couple counters before they enter the victory display. Increasing the difficulty on the parley can hinder you a bit with that, especially Roald and Claypool who are already very difficult to parley. Others, not so much as it will only increase the difficulty from 2 to 3. Some are even completely unaffected. Of course they will get a doom. But that goes away as soon as the card goes into the victory display and you will typically not have the explorers around for 3+ turns.

Threat level: Mid. Acts as extra copies of the other two cards from this set. Can get nasty if it results in two doom on the same enemy, but you do get to choose what exactly this card searches up most of the time.

Dealing with it: When you draw this card, it’s already too late to deal with it. This card is a reason to be very proactive about the two Possessed enemies. Don’t let them linger, try to remove them before drawing Abandoned to Madness. This card is much weaker when it doesn’t put an additional doom into play.

Encounter sets in this scenario: Ice and Death, The Crash, Creatures in the Ice, Deadly Weather, Hazards of Antarctica, Silence and Mystery, Ancient Evils
Available experience: 8 (shelter value) + 1 (Terror in the Stars) = 9XP

Synopsis: The investigators and the team of explorers crashland somewhere on the shelf ice and needs to find a suitable shelter. The scenario is played on a rather large map of 13 locations. Each location has a shelter value, with higher values being better. Except for the first four, each location also requires a number of clues for players to reveal them. This means that players will continuously have to grab clues from the places available to them in order to unlock more, trekking their way across the map this way. While it’s in theory possible to uncover the whole map (there’s just barely enough clues available for that), this task is likely going to take the full three Ice and Death scenarios instead.
While the players are free to end the scenario at any location they cleared of clues, there’s really four goals here:
1 – Find a location with the desired shelter value and clear all clues from it.
2 – Uncover as much of the map as possible because this progress will transfer to part II and III
3 – Recover as many expedition assets as possible. These can be found on some of the locations and usually require some sort of extra test. Not all of them require the location to be free of clues.
4 – Minimize your exposure to the effects that persist through the campaign. Those are the Tekili-li weaknesses which stick around in your deck until drawn and the Frost tokens which stay in the bag until removed by some other effect.
Opposing the players in these goal are the harsh weather conditions (represented by treacheries that stay on a location for a turn or longer) and of course some Mythos creatures that are breaking out of the ice soon after the crash.

My take on this scenario: Scenarios in the Edge of the Earth are tightly connected with each other and doing well in this first one will make the rest a lot easier. Of course, the opposite is also true, as failing to secure a good shelter will leave you with fewer team members, resources and XP while missing some of the expedition assets is going to make later scenarios more difficult (and also cost you some XP down the road).
So it’s important to hit the ground running, this is not a campaign for decks that only kick into gear after considerable upgrades. You’ll want to be quick and efficient with clue discovery to make your way across the map towards the more valuable locations. Fights are fewer than usual, but the enemies that you meet are quite dangerous for a first scenario. There’s even a boss enemy that pops up near two thirds of the scenario that can be exceptionally difficult to kill with level zero decks. Previously i thought of Curtain Call as the most difficult first scenario of a campaign, but i think that Ice and Death has it beat. Not only does it have a more broad set of challenges, but it also has way more consequences for failing.
Playing these first three scenarios for the first time might be the most tense experience i had in this game yet. I very much like the sense of permanence to many of the things happening in this scenario (and really, this campaign). We had things like Vengeance or Conviction/Doubt before, but Edge does have a lot of persisting effects, both large and small. From just a Tekeli-li weakness or two making it to the next scenario over the chaos bag slowly filling up with Frost tokens to having a map that you uncover over the course of three scenarios, this campaign (and especially Ice and Death within it) takes this concept to a new high.

Scenario specific encounter sets: The Ice and Death set is used in all three parts. It consists of three copies of Skittering Nonsense, a smaller Eidolon enemy and two copies each of two treacheries. Both of those treacheries are quite impactful. Apeirophobia can force additional Frost tokens into the bag if the investigator doesn’t have clues to drop and is unwilling/unable to take the horror. Zero Visibility makes traversing the map a lot harder, as there are plenty of treacheries around that attach to locations. Low agility investigators that have this for several turns can lose a lot of actions to it. For part I, the Skittering Nonsense are set aside in the beginning, they will only enter the game once the agenda advances for the first time.

Act/Agenda: There’s only a single act card, doing nothing more than stating the goal of finding a shelter and providing the resign action for when you are ready to finish up. The agenda deck gives a total of 18 doom worth of time, divided across three cards. There aren’t any enemies or Tekeli-li related cards in the deck for the first couple turns, but as soon as the agenda advances the first time, they are shuffled in. Notably, the encounter discard is not shuffled back in – so drawing an Ancient Evils in the first three turns at least isn’t as awful as it is in Untamed Wilds. At the same time, one Skittering Nonsense is put into play engaged to the lead investigator. Since its a fairly minor enemy and you had plenty of time to prepare, this shouldn’t be an issue. Once the agenda advances a second time, the Terror of the Stars is spawned, an elite enemy with Massive and Hunter, lots of damage/horror and a huge pile of stamina. Once the final agenda runs out, the players are forced to resign at whatever highest shelter location they have available.

Terror of the Stars: This huge beast is by far the biggest threat in this scenario. It comes out for the last couple turns of the scenario, appearing at the highest shelter location that is currently revealed. If the players want to use that location for their shelter, they will have to either kill the Terror, lure it away or keep it evaded while they investigate any still required clues. We really haven’t seen anything quite like this is a scenario 1 of a campaign since the Core Set’s Ghoul Priest. And there’s no Lita Chantler in this one to bail us out…

The Eidolons: These are the only enemies in the scenario aside from the Terror. One Nonsense is guaranteed to spawn on agenda 1 advancing, the other cards come from the encounter deck past that point. They all share that they are Hunters (or quasi-Hunters), that they only deal a single point of damage and horror on attack and that they cause players to pick up Tekeli-li weaknesses. These weaknesses considerably add to the potential attack strength of these creatures. It’s worth noting that with the exception of Skittering Nonsense these are also not trivial to defeat. Unlike many other first scenarios, which feature something like rats, cultists or similar, these do all put up a fight. Having a way to deal three damage with an attack makes life a lot easier against the Manifestations, of which there are three in the deck.

Agility testing treacheries: Agility plays a bigger role than usual in the Edge of the Earth. Ice and Death gives the first taste of this by featuring these three treacheries that deal damage, tax actions or do both. The difficulties on these tests aren’t too bad, but low agility investigators like Leo or Preston would certainly have to think about how to mitigate these.

Location based treacheries: There’s a total of 5 different cards (2 copies each) in the encounter deck that attach to the location of the investigator and affect everyone there. The three hazards from Deadly Weather discard at the end of the round, but Polar Mirage and Through the Ice can potentially stay for several rounds. As a result, these cards do have some amount of scaling by player count built in as they can affect more than just the player who drew the card. Most importantly though, they interact with Zero Visibility from the Ice and Death specific cards: The location treacheries make moving forwards through them cost more actions for investigators with Zero Visibility. At the same time, Zero Visibility makes it more costly to escape those hazards.

Horror and Damage: While there’s (comparatively) not a lot of fighting, the encounter deck is able to inflict some serious hurt anyways. Ice and Death uses both Ice Shaft and Dark Aurora, two cards that can deal significant amounts of damage or horror. While they aren’t that horrible at first, they can get very nasty if the number of Frost tokens creeps up. Luckily, in Ice and Death I there are only few ways to actually get these tokens (Apeirophobia, several location effects) so this shouldn’t escalate too hard. Together with some other damage/horror cards like Polar Vortex and Through the Ice it’s enough to put players low enough that the Terror can become life-threatening when it shows up.

Ancient Evils: Yep, it’s back. Get used to it, it’s all over the campaign. In Ice and Death, Ancient Evils makes it so you can’t fully rely on being able to count the turns until the scenario is over. Once you are close to the end of the scenario you will have to be aware of how many Evils are in the discard pile. If you still have some to go in the deck, you could have the agenda run out fast than you expected. Running out of doom isn’t actually all that punishing for Ice and Death I, but Evils will be a bigger issue for parts II and III.

Notable shelter locations: When determining which shelter you may want to try and get, there’s three basic approaches:
– Crystalline Caverns: This is the only shelter 8 location, so you get the maximum in terms of XP and resources and you also don’t risk losing any of your team members. On the other hand, this is a rather difficult location to clear at shroud 5 and 3i clues. Also, taking this will automatically skip Ice and Death II, which can be a disadvantage if you plan on uncovering the whole map for the expedition supplies.
– Barrier Camp or Lake’s Camp: At shelter 7, you will risk only 1 of your team members in the upcoming Ice and Death II. If you want to play that scenario, this is the highest shelter you can take.
– Frigid Cave: Shelter 6, so it’s still decent. The big advantage this one has over the better shelters is that it’s less costly to reveal (2i clues instead of 4i). It is also the highest shelter that you can take if you want to play Fatal Mirage as early as possible(EDIT: without intentionally killing off partners through lethal damage/horror).
– Snow Graves or Icebreaker Landing: Shelter 5 is the bare minimum that you should accept. Anything less than that and you will actually go with a penalty to resources into Ice and Death II and III while also putting an unnecessary amount of team members at risk and forgoing valuable XP. Like Frigid Cave, these locations are cheap to reveal. In comparison to the Cave, they are a bit easier to clear off their clues as well due to lower shroud.
Each of these 6 locations has a supply item to recover on it, so you should make it your goal to reveal all of them over the course of the three Ice and Death scenarios.

Other notable locations: This scenario asks the group to pick up a whole lot of clues. Luckily, there are some locations that offer a good number of them at low shroud. Two of the starting locations, Frozen Shores and Treacherous Path are both easy to clear. One down from the Shores are the Broad Snowdrifts, where you can grab clues at shroud 1 (don’t fall for the trap of the ability on the card, you really don’t want to add a Frost token there). Going to the upper left, the Icy Wastes and the Icebreaker Landing both have another handful of clues at 2 shroud. These locations together offer 8i clues. 4i of those clues are spent on revealing those locations, leaving you with enough to also reveal one of the big camps or the Crystalline Cavern.
As far as dangerous locations go, there are two that stand out. Precarious Ice Sheet and Rocky Crags both have abilities that you’ll want to avoid being exposed to as much as possible. Crags is just dangerous to be at because it gives more than a third of the encounter deck surge. Ice Sheet lets each of the Hazard treacheries add a Frost to the chaos bag, which will potentially haunt you for the rest of the campaign. There’s 13 Hazards traited cards in the deck which is almost half. Don’t risk it. EDIT: I misread the Ice Sheet. The ability to add a Frost instead of resolving the Hazard is optional. I am leaving this mistake here and not edit it out completely to draw attention to that distinction. It’s an easy thing to miss.

Suggested partner assets: If your investigator is particularly vulnerable to either Dark Aurora (for example Tony) or Ice Shaft (for example Daisy), then you can bring Mala or William to keep them healthy until they get a shot at buying some better cards to fix their weaknesses.
If you don’t expect to be able to defeat the Terror of the Stars, then Eliyah offers help with keeping the thing evaded for a few turns.
Roald’s ability to blank attached treacheries has a lot of targets here, most importantly Polar Mirage. Note that blanking the text box will keep the treachery still attached, though. So Roald will not be able to help with Zero Visibility.
You could bring Claypool or Danforth, but both Frost and Tekeli-li shouldn’t be a huge thing yet so it’s probably not worth it, except maybe on higher difficulties which start with more Frost and/or with someone like Winifred who fears Frost tokens more than others.

Reward and Failure: With a potential 9XP, Ice and Death I does offer a nice bunch of XP to immediately upgrade your deck with. This XP is basically shared between I and II though, so be aware that the more you get in I, the fewer will be available in II.
A huge part of the reward also comes from revealing the locations to make II and III easier, as well as from uncovering the supply assets which will help a lot starting with Forbidden Peaks.
Failing this scenario then, by being defeated prematurely or by not managing to secure suitable shelter before the doom clock runs out, has dire consequences. A portion of the team will go missing and you will receive fewer XP. You’ll have a chance to undo some of those consequences by acing part II, but that can be very luck dependent and can not be relied on. Having a bad part I will lead to a more difficult part II which will in turn lead to a more difficult part III. Depending on how much you botched part I, this can snowball out of control to the point where the rest of the campaign becomes A LOT harder.

My take on this set: This is a very impactful set. Dark Aurora on its own is a card to be very afraid of, similar to Ice Shaft from the Hazards of the Antarctica. But it also comes bundled with a treachery that will either cost someone their cards in hand or blocks off a location from clue discovery. In the scenarios this set is used in, this usually means losing the hand. When i see Silence and Mystery going into the encounter deck during setup, i’ll probably reach for Roald Ellsworth just to counter Polar Mirage.

What it does: After failing a willpower test, the investigator takes 2 horror. Additionally, they have to take another horror for each frost token they revealed during that test, even if they succeeded.

My take: This is the Rotten Remains of this campaign. Rotten Remains is already a respectable card, but this version has several additional kinks to it, all working against the players. There is no scaling part to the damage, so this can’t be mitigated in part – if you fail the test, you get the full damage.
But the more important part is how the card gets worse and worse with the number of Frost tokens in the chaos bag. It allows Dark Aurora to deal horror even when the test was otherwise successful. And drawing two Frosts will autofail the test for a total of 4 horror, enough to eat a huge chunk out of an investigators sanity or even put them right on the brink of insanity.

Threat level: High. This campaign doesn’t hold back on horror and trauma. So a common card that just can deal 4 horror out of the blue is a big issue.

Dealing with it: The things said about Ice Shaft mostly translate to this card. These two cards are two of the best reasons to keep Frosts away from the bag. Once the amount of Frosts creep up, the best layer of defense is going to be some extra sanity soak or healing, especially for investigators with low innate base sanity. William Dyer is the partner best suited for that particular job. However, unlike Ice Shaft, Dark Aurora is not a Hazard. So Protective Gear does not afford an easy way out. The other thing that makes Aurora worse than Ice Shaft in direct comparison is that it is used in Fatal Mirage and City of Elder Things instead of Forbidden Peaks. Since that’s later in the campaign, chances are that there’s more Frost tokens in the bag at that point than they would be during Peaks.

What it does: Polar Mirage attaches to the nearest location that doesn’t already have a copy, but does have at least 1 clue on it.
If a player discovers or takes control of a clue token while at Polar Mirage’s location, they have to discard each non-Weakness card in their hand.
Polar Mirage only discards itself after triggering its effect.

My take: Just from reading the card i didn’t expect this to be so bad, but once i started playing with it, it was apparent very soon that i underestimated this card at first glance. I am actually still surprised by just how annoying this card turns out to be in practice. Both Fatal Mirage and Ice and Death will often have locations that you need to clear from clues. So sacrificing your hand of cards can just not be avoided in those cases. To make matters worse, the ones who gather clues are often also the ones who draw the most cards.
This card leads to some painful decisions and suboptimal play when you try to get the most out of your remaining hand before finally getting that clue. Fatal Mirage is probably the scenario where this card can be mitigated best by using clues from one of the other locations. But in Ice and Death and in City of Elder Things that’s often not an option at all.

Threat level: Mid to High. Very impactful in many circumstances and also hard to avoid.

Dealing with it: In a group, you can figure out who can discover that clue and hopefully find someone for whom losing the hand of cards isn’t as big of a deal. Depending on the shroud value of the location, this could be more or less difficult to do.
Polar Mirage is a Terror card, which means that it can be discarded by Logical Reasoning, a card that is good at counteracting Dark Aurora as well. But that’s 4XP, probably more than you want to spend for countering a set that mostly appears in the first half of the campaign.
The City of Elder Things has multiple locations that offer moving clues around, those are some of the few ways to get to the clues (or the key) on the location without setting off Polar Mirage. In the player cards, Gene Beauregard offers a similar service.
But the best way to defend against this card is Roald Ellsworth. In fact, this is very likely the most important card that Roald can blank.

My take on this set: These three cards all try to do something similar, but with varying success. They come down on your location and stay there until the end of the round. While there, players are encouraged to leave the location either through penalties while there, by punishing them if they end their turn there … or both.
This set is used for the first half of the campaign and unless you take a detour through the Fatal Mirage or skip some of Ice and Death, chances are that you have to deal with these cards for your first four scenarios back to back to back to back.
They gain some additional context from cards in those scenarios. Ice and Death has Zero Visibility in it, a card that makes moving in and out of locations with attachments cost and additional actions. Deadly Weather is not the only encounter set that plays into that card, but it’s the most important one.
Forbidden Peaks makes these cards more impactful on their own, as movement option in that scenario are very limited. Unless you manage to clear the location from clues, the only way to dodge these is moving backwards which has a host of other issues coming with it.
As a result, this ends up as a set that can have a noticeable impact in spite of the cards in it not being that threatening by themselves.
Something else of note: With Protective Gear, there’s a player card in Edge of the Earth that is tailored almost specifically to countering this set. And the campaign itself offers Roald Ellsworth as another way to neutralize these.

What it does: Antarctic Wind attaches to the nearest location that doesn’t have a copy of it attached, so usually to the location of whoever drew the card. It stays there until the end of the round when it gets automatically discarded. While in play, investigators at its location are unable to play or draw cards.

My take: A rather mild treachery in most cases. Comparable to Dissonant Voices from the Core Set, but affects everyone at the location. On the other hand, it can be sidestepped by simply leaving the location. This gives a good amount of counter play and makes the situations where you are directly impacted by this quite rare.
It is a more impactful card for investigators that are event based, like Diana (who will be left without the ability to throw cancels at any further encounter cards drawn that turn) or Nathaniel (who’s suddenly unable to properly fight anything at that location).
It sticks around until the end of the round which means it will prevent you from drawing a card in your upkeep if you end your turn on its location.

Threat level: Low. Contextually relevant for some investigators, but often nothing to worry about too much. Can go up to Medium if you are dependent on events to discover clues and/or if you are playing Forbidden Peaks.

Dealing with it: If it’s really a bother, move to the next location. You might want to in order to be able to draw in your upkeep anyways. Unless you are currently stuck with a Zero Visibility in your threat area, this will just cost a single action which is rather fair for a treachery.

What it does: Polar Vortex attaches to the location of the investigator who drew the card. It is automatically discarded at the end of the round. Anyone ending their turn at Polar Vortex’ location is dealt a direct damage to each of their cards with health. This includes the investigator card and story allies.

My take: Like Antarctic Wind, this card wants to force you into leaving its location. And it does a very good job at that, the damage really adds up if you have some allies or assets in play. Since it does count the partner allies, it will usually deal at least 2 damage.
If your partner is William Dyer, this one damage can even just outright kill him. But even if it’s not Dyer, the damage on those partners does persist through scenarios so avoiding any unnecessary tokens should be a priority.
I’ll pretty much always want to not end my turn on this location, even if it means taking an attack of opportunity from an engaged enemy.
This card is a lot more dangerous in Forbidden Peaks where it can force you to decide between taking the damage or going down a depth level.

Threat level: Mid. Ignoring this card is rarely possible. Mid to High in Forbidden Peaks.

Dealing with it: The actual thing to worry about from this card is not the damage, that part is easy enough to avoid. But it does more or less force you to move, which can be an issue if you are engaged, if you have Zero Visibility or when the only way to move is backwards.

What it does: Like Polar Vortex, Whiteout attaches to the player’s location and discards itself at the end of the round. Anyone at Whiteout’s locations suffers -1 to each of their four skills.

My take: Another mild one. Getting whipoorwilled (yes, that’s a word) for a turn isn’t too bad and usually not worth specifically leaving the location for. Of course the effect is not nothing and it might lead to failing a test, but it will be rare that this card costs the group more than the equivalent of an action or two.

Threat level: Low. Tests become harder for a turn, but it doesn’t have any lasting effects or more restrictive ones for that turn.

Dealing with it: It’s the weakest of the three attachments from this set. It’s worst case would be popping up on a location where you are currently fighting something, but in most cases this will just impact some investigation tests. There’s the possibility of having both of them stack on top of each other, but unlike with the Whippoorwills from Dunwich this is unlikely even in four player groups.

My take on this set: Ice Shaft towers high above the other card in this set. This new variant of Grasping Hands is an influential card that can threaten a big chunk of damage even to investigators with high agility and stamina.
Hazards of Antarctica shares is used in exactly the same scenarios as Deadly Weather and like the cards in that set it also consists only of Hazards. It can really just be understood as an extension of that Deadly Weather, there’s no actual difference between how the two sets are handled by the campaign setup.

What it does: After failing an agility test, the investigator has to take 2 damage. Additionally, for each frost token that was revealed during the test, another damage is dealt, even if the test succeeded.

My take: Ice Shaft is this campaigns version of Grasping Hands and can treated much the same way. However, it does crank up the potential hurt quite severely. For one, the additional damage from Frost tokens can make Ice Shaft deal up to 4 damage. Also, the damage no longer scales with how much the test failed by, giving less of a chance to at least partially mitigate the effect.
This is a very influential card and depending on your investigators, it (and its partner in crime, Dark Aurora) can be a main reason to keep Frost tokens out of the chaos bag. The possibility of drawing two frost tokens can give an additional chance to autofail this test, dealing 4 damage even to high agility investigators. And drawing a single frost token will deal damage, even if the test succeeded.

Threat level: High. A lot of damage from one common card in a campaign that is already not holding back on that front.

Dealing with it: For several investigators with low stamina and agility, this card can be a huge issue. And since its a very common card for the whole first half of the campaign, that’s something that players need to plan for when building decks for those investigators. The trouble with doing so is that having high agility doesn’t even protect from this damage burst perfectly. If there’s a lot of Frost tokens in the bag, failing the test from drawing two Frosts is a real possibility and no amount of agility will stop that. So there’s no way around packing additional sources of soak and/or healing. If you are worried about this treachery, you’ll probably want to bring Dr Mala Sinha with you, if available. Claypool is a viable alternative as well. Also consider Protective Gear, which can just outright cancel this Hazard.
And keep those Frosts away from the chaos bag as good as you can. Luckily, this card is only present in the first four scenarios, so there should be (relatively!) few Frosts going around still.

What it does: Through the Ice attaches to the nearest location that doesn’t already have a copy, which will usually be the location of the investigator who drew the card. Whenever a player tries to move in or out of Through the Ice’s location, they have to pass an agility test. Should they fail, the move is cancelled (the action is lost) and they have to take a damage and a horror.
Through the Ice is only discarded when someone failed an agility test, otherwise it sticks around.

My take: Damage and horror when it triggers, and a lost action on top. That’s certainly above average and the card also interacts with other things going on in the relevant scenarios.
The agility test is easy, but for some investigators it’s still going to be enough to catch them. Just like the Hazards from the Deadly Weather, this card gets a lot rougher in the Forbidden Peaks scenario when it stops you from going forwards or when someone gets affected by Zero Visibility in Ice and Death. Additionally, Through the Ice can stack up with one of the Deadly Weather cards for some extra awfulness.

Threat level: Low to Mid. Individually fine, but has a high potential to combine with other cards.

Dealing with it: If passing the test isn’t something you are able to do, then this might just be something to take on the chin. It’s probably not worth playing around it or using something like an Alter Fate on it. There’s more important things in those two scenarios. But if you are using Protective Gear or Roald Ellsworth anyways, then this can be worth a charge if losing the action would be too costly.