Month: February 2022

My take on this set: This campaign’s “Agents” set follows the same structure as the ones in the core set. 2 enemies, 2 treacheries. And pretty high impact. However, Agents of the Unknown isn’t really used all that much throughout the campaign, it certainly lacks the same sort of “signature” effect that Agents of Hastur has on Carcosa or Agents of Azathoth on Circle Undone. If you decide not to engage with Fatal Mirage, you’ll actually only shuffle these cards into the encounter deck once, during the finale. On the other hand of the spectrum, if you enter Fatal Mirage at every opportunity, this set can be responsible for the lion’s share of Tekeli cards in your deck.
What we have here are two cards that you are usually not going to be happy about when you draw them. Primordial Evil is a dangerous enemy that hits hard, is difficult to defeat and follows you around. The Madness Within is a treachery that dumps up to four Tekeli-li cards in your deck, for you to draw at the most annoying time later. I think these are both great cards, threatening and hard to deal with.

What it does: As a rather large Hunter enemy that hits for two damage, the Primordial Evil is a significant threat. Attacking it is discouraged by the Retaliate keyword, but also by its unique Forced effect that will shuffle the top Tekeli-li card into your deck whenever the monster gets damaged. Evading it is rather easy as the Primordial Evil only has a single point of evasion.

My take: I usually lean very hard in the direction of defeating enemies over evading them, as taking care of them permanently will often be preferable in the long run. That being said, this one is a rare example where the stats and abilities push really hard towards letting this thing live. And i think in Heart of Madness that is certainly the more attractive option. Fatal Mirage however has a lot of backtracking in it, so a heavy hitting Hunter like this is a huge liability. Except for the quest enemies, there’s also not a whole lot of other monsters around in Mirage, so these can provide an outlet for your fighting abilities there.

Threat level: High. It’s not quite on the level of Elite enemies, but it’s still a big threat that can dictate your lines of play.

Dealing with it: This is obviously a rather dangerous enemy and even if you are able to take it out in two hits that will still leave you with two Tekeli cards to shuffle into your deck. The only way to avoid that is defeating it without dealing damage, for example through Waylay. Waylay is really the perfect answer here, but of course not every group will have that card available.

What it does: After failing a Willpower test, the investigator has to shuffle the top Tekeli-li card into their deck for each point they failed by. Should the Tekeli-li deck run empty, they take a horror instead for each card they can’t shuffle in.

My take: The variance on how bad The Madness Within hurts you is huge. For one, there’s the scaling by how much you failed by, with a wide range from zero to four cards added. Also, the exact effect of the Tekeli cards themselves can of course be unpredictable. Both Fatal Mirage and Heart of Madness II do also have the Nameless Horrors set in them and Madness Within stacks up remarkably well with the cards from that set.

Threat level: Medium to High. The scaling test keeps the effect in check. Unless you completely botch your test, this should usually be fine. This can cost you a lot of draws down the line, though.

Dealing with it: The silver lining here is the delayed nature of how this card affects you. Even if you fail the willpower test, you still don’t have any immediate consequences from it right then. In case of Heart of Madness, you might just finish the scenario (and the campaign) before drawing all of these weaknesses, effectively making it a freebie. You are less lucky with Fatal Mirage, though. Even if you do not draw any of the weaknesses during Mirage, you will carry them into the next scenario without a chance to have William Dyer remove them… that always happens before Fatal Mirage, not after.

Encounter sets in this scenario: To the Forbidden Peaks, Deadly Weather, Elder Things, Hazards of Antarctica, Nameless Horrors
Available experience: 6 (locations) + 1 (Terror of the Stars) + 7 (Supplies)= 14XP

Synopsis: Following the eidolon attack from Ice and Death III, the investigators and the rest of the expedition team abandon their camp site and pack up their supplies. Their goal is the City of the Elder Things and to reach it they will have to pass the Forbidden Peaks, lugging all of their supplies with them.
Starting at the bottom of the mountain, they need to work their way to the top. The supply items they gathered during Ice and Death are now represented by asset cards that can be used, but that also need to be carried to the top (or left behind). The path up the mountain is a linear arrangement of 6 different locations, each triggering something nasty whenever someone enters them.
On their way to the summit, the group is confronted by Elder Things and of course the antarctic weather is still making things difficult. Around the midpoint of the scenario, the Terror of the Stars makes another appearance too and tries to shoo the group back down, away from their goal.

My take on this scenario: To the Forbidden Peaks follows in the footsteps of the Essex County Express, Heart of the Elders #2 and Horror in High Gear, asking the players to get through a set of locations in time. Moving on from one location to the following one requires the lower location to be cleared of clues first, so efficient clue gathering is absolutely vital here.
The doom clock is rather tight with not a whole lot of room for error and action taxes are everywhere in this scenario. Not only is there a treachery that adds more clues to the locations, but Nightmarish Vapors from the Nameless Horrors set also wants to just straight up remove actions.
Evading enemies is unlikely to work out in this scenario as the linear setup doesn’t allow much room to stay ahead of the Hunter enemies. The big boss enemy that appears mid-scenario likewise needs to be killed, at least if you plan on getting any of the supply items to the summit. Speaking of supply items, managing those is another angle where you can lose a lot of actions. Picking up any of them costs an action and there are events and treacheries that can make you lose control of them, meaning you have to waste precious time to pick them up yet again.
While this scenario is one of the few in Edge of the Earth that do not use the Ancient Evils set, it is nonetheless the one with the most pressuring doom clock. It’s a bit unfortunate then that not making it to the peak in time has very dire consequences. Not only will you lose a lot of XP that way, but you will also lose all the supply items you fought for so hard in Ice and Death. This scenario is very All Or Nothing in that way, which is actually one of my biggest gripes with the whole campaign. Do not fail Forbidden Peaks, it will leave you at a severe disadvantage that can not be made up for.

Scenario specific encounter sets: To the Forbidden Peaks uses a solid number of scenario specific cards, four treacheries and an enemy. Avalanche, Hanging on the Edge and Snowfall both try to slow down the group by wasting their actions. The Constricting Elder Thing grows more resilient the closer the group comes to the peak. Hypothermia picks up where Apeirophobia from Ice and Death left off, and threatens to add more Frost tokens to the bag.

Act/Agenda: Once more, the act only consists of one card, stating the goal of the scenario (reach the peak) and giving an ability to pick up the expedition assets. The agenda deck has two cards, with a total of 14 doom between them. Their front side has no further complications, only some rule text that makes sure that clues are removed from the game and don’t stack up forever. After the first agenda advances, the Terror of the Stars makes another appearance, forcing players to drop their expedition assets and fight it. A random crew members also dies at this point. Once the second agenda runs out, the scenario ends in defeat and any assets that have not been salvaged yet are lost forever.

Terror of the Stars: Once again, this massive monster is put into the way of the team. And while evading it and running away is a real possibility in Ice and Death, this is much less feasible here. You will very likely have to punch your way through it now. Making matters more complicated is the fact that when it appears, every investigator at its location has to drop their expedition assets. That means lost actions for picking them up again, but it also means that any of them that might have been useful in the fight (like the Dynamite or the Soapstone) are guarded by this thing now. Being aware that this happens means that you can prepare for it, at least if you aren’t playing solo. Fighting this thing is no small task, as it can dish out a lot of damage and horror and isn’t likely to go down in a turn. Evading it is possible, but that will still leave it with its other ability which pushes down anyone at its location. Which again translates to lost actions and having to go through the location triggers again. Since its fight and evade are tied to the current location level, you can lure it down to be better able to fight it. If you consider running from it instead of defeating it, you better be sure that you can manage to do so without having it catch up. Because if it does, that ability to push you down will put it right between you and your goal again. The rather limited amount of turns you have for this scenario probably doesn’t allow for such shenanigans, it’s going to be best to shoot your way past it.

Elder Things: The other enemies in this scenario besides the big one. They are all Hunters, which is a real pain considering the linear map. They also all have a rather high amount of health, which means taking them down takes multiple actions in most cases… again, sort of a pain in the context of what you are trying to do here. As with the Terror, you could evade them and try to run but i would only consider doing that if the peak is already in sight and you can be sure to make it in time. If they catch up and engage you again that’ll just mean you have to evade again and then you didn’t really gain anything over just killing them.

Tekeli-li: Unless you played Fatal Mirage already this is the first appearance of the Nameless Horrors set, which can be a huge deal if you go into this scenario with a couple Tekeli-li weaknesses already in your deck. The Elder Thing Scavenger and Guardian also play into this with their abilities trying to fast track your deck towards drawing the weaknesses. Consider bringing Danforth along to help with the impact of these cards.

Deadly Weather: Like in Ice and Death there are a lot of location based treacheries around here. However, there is a lot less room here to navigate around them, so you will be much more likely to just have to take the brunt of an Arctic Wind or Polar Vortex here. Roald Ellsworth shines in this scenario for that reason.

Locations: Except for the Summit itself, the locations all have some sort of triggered effect whenever that location is entered from below. Of course that means that being pushed down by anything (Avalanche, Terror of the Stars…) will have you go through those effects yet again. Running away from Hunter enemies is also complicated by these. All of this sort of teams up with the Tekeli-li weaknesses in this scenario to make players die a death by a thousand little cuts, by lots of small effects that are individually weak but stack up to something quite dangerous. To reveal a location, the one below has to be free from clues, making the way to progress somewhat similar to Essex Express or Heart of the Elders #2.

The Summit: The final location does actually not have to cleared from clues in order to be able to resign. Those final 3i clues only need to be discovered if you want to go for that last victory point. Also of note: On reveal, a Frost token is added to the bag. Luckily, this doesn’t repeat if you have to enter the location again, that one is truly just a one-of.

Suggested partner assets: Roald Ellsworth is an absolute all star here for his ability to ignore the Deadly Weather treacheries for a turn. While you don’t also have to handle Polar Mirage like in Ice and Death, the remaining treacheries are all so much more potent here due to the map not allowing you to dodge them.
With all of the little effects from locations and Tekeli-li weaknesses stacking up, this is another scenario where vulnerable investigators like Daisy or Roland could fall to damage or horror. If you are unsure about your survivability, consider Mala Sinha for the stamina heal or Amy/Danforth for sanity soak. Don’t bring William Dyer, he is too much of a liability here with his 1 hit point and Polar Vortex in the encounter deck.
It is possible you already did Fatal Mirage at this point. If you did, you might have someone who can use their ability as a free action. Free actions are huge in this scenario and are definitely worth taking along. This is especially true for Eliyah, who can take the pressure off of the enemies.
Danforth is a good pick if you are concerned about Tekeli-li, which feature prominently in this scenario. Claypool would only be a consideration if you already have a lot of Frost in your bag.

Reward and Failure: As mentioned before, there is a lot on the line here. 7XP from locations and the Terror, plus 1 each for the supplies. Those 7XP from the supplies have to be distributed among the team, but you’ll still make it out with 9-12XP in the end. Pretty nice haul. On top of that, you get the actual assets as well and they are all quite powerful.
However… you only get those if you reach the summit. Otherwise you will only get the XP for the locations you uncovered to that point, so around 3 to 5. Not great. Winning this scenario is absolutely crucial. Treat it like Unspeakable Oath in Path to Carcosa.

My take on this set: This set is nasty. The Tekeli-li weaknesses have a wide range of detrimental effects and Nameless Horrors is one of the sets that is best at making those weaknesses really hurt. This leads to basically losing draws and getting bombarded with these effects that range from a point of damage to discarding assets or losing actions. Two of the three cards in Nameless Horrors make Tekeli cards double up on their effects, turning even the weaker Tekeli-li into respectable weaknesses.
Due to impact and how often it is used, Nameless Horrors is one of the signature sets of Edge of the Earth to me.

What it does: The investigator shuffles the top Tekeli-li card into their deck, then puts Blasphemous Visions into their threat area. While affected by the treachery, the player has to resolve all Tekeli-li card they draw twice.
To discard Blasphemous Visions, any investigator at its location can spend and action and pass a willpower test.

My take: Since it does come with a complimentary Tekeli weakness itself, drawing it will never be a full freebie. Going from that floor, the impact of this card is going to vary wildly depending on how many Tekeli-li cards you already picked up. Doubling the effect of those weaknesses can be really nasty and you generally will want to spend the action to clear Blasphemous Visions from the board if you can reliably pass the Willpower test.

Threat level: Medium. There’s a good deal of variance with this one, not only depending on how many Tekeli weaknesses you have, but also which ones.

Dealing with it: So what Tekeli weaknesses do you already have in your deck? If Visions just ends up dealing an extra damage/horror or two then it wasn’t a huge deal. If it makes you discard extra assets from play or eats up additional actions, you will wish you got rid of the card beforehand. This is an impactful card and deciding on a best course of action isn’t always easy especially since there’s going to be at least one unknown Tekeli card in your deck after drawing Visions. Glimpse the Unthinkable can also be fairly awful. So can the Shoggoths in City of Elder Things, for that matter.

What it does: The player draws the top Tekeli-li card and resolves it immediately. Then, that weakness is shuffled into a player’s deck instead of moving it back to the Tekeli-li deck. That can be any player’s deck, not necessarily the one of the player that drew the treachery.
If no weakness is drawn by this treachery, it gains surge.

My take: Double dipping on a Tekeli weakness can be rather impactful and cause you to lose actions, assets or cards in hand. And even the testless horror and damage will absolutely add up over time. Since it adds a weakness to your deck it will also cost you a draw down the line. Add in the interaction with Blasphemous Visions and you end up with a card that will usually cause an above average amount of disruption to the player who drew it. There’s a little silver lining here as it allows pushing the Tekeli into any player’s deck. This is one of the rare occurrences where you gain such a weakness while knowing which one it is exactly, so you can give it to the player who is best able to handle it.

Threat level: Medium to High. This card does a lot at the same time. While it’s not all immediately pressing right when you draw it, the effects add up to something that is way above what you’d usually expect from your typical treachery.

Dealing with it: There’s not a whole lot to do about this card. There aren’t any tests on it and Peril even makes it difficult to cancel. I’d say the best way to prepare for this card is by not letting Blasphemous Visions linger in your threat area for longer than necessary. Aside from that, you’ll just have to roll with the punches here. Danforth can help with that.
The most important decision to make here is who gets to add the card to their deck. Due to Peril, the player has to make that decision on their own and they will have to gauge who suffers from it the least.

What it does: The player has to choose between either losing 2 actions immediately or shuffling the two top Tekeli-li cards into their deck. Nightmarish Vapors has Peril, so they have to make this decision on their own.

My take: Two actions is enough of a penalty that you’ll often end up seeing no other way than taking the second option. That being said, you should take the first one whenever you reasonably can do so. Drawing Tekeli-li later on will make you virtually skip your draw for that turn (~ roughly equal to an action, a bit less) and also do whatever that Tekeli-li does on top. Which might just be losing more actions or even assets.

Threat level: Mid to High. Again, losing two actions is above average for treacheries and Vapors will often end up doing more than just that.

Dealing with it: The card says “choose one” but often there’s not much of an actual choice here depending on your circumstances. Except for Fatal Mirage, the scenarios this set is used in do feature a notable amount of Hunter enemies and skipping two thirds of your turn might just not be feasible. Forbidden Peaks doesn’t look too kindly on anyone wasting their actions this way either. Especially during Peaks i would be leaning hard towards just shuffling in the weaknesses, pushing on and hopefully deal with the weaknesses in a later scenario. That being said, if you find yourself in a situation where losing two actions wouldn’t put you in immediate danger, you should probably go for the first option.

My take on this set: After Elder Things have been a mainstay in the chaos bag since the inception of the game, finally the Arkham LCG gets some of them on actual enemy cards. The two in this encounter set do somewhat mirror the enemies in Creatures in the Ice, with Scavenger being close to Manifestation and Guardian being close to the Phantasm. The main difference is that the Eidolons would put Tekeli-li cards into your deck with their abilities while the Elder Things search them up. They do so by discarding cards off the player deck and drawing all weaknesses among those cards.
To be perfectly honest with you, these enemies don’t seem particularly noteworthy to me, especially since they seem to be quite a bit weaker than the Eidolons we already handled at this point of the campaign. These aren’t bad or irrelevant at all, of course. But from such a noteworthy creature from the Mythos i expected a bit more than a pair of Hunters, one of which is just … bland?

What it does: The Elder Thing Scavenger has a 3 in all of its stats and is also a Hunter. The 1 damage and horror on attack rounds out the somewhat generic look of this creature. What sets it apart is its ability which will discard 3 cards from the top of the player’s deck on attack. Any weakness discarded this way has to be drawn immediately.

My take: Ultimately this isn’t a terribly exciting card. Difficulty 3 for fighting or evading it puts it at the base line spot of “Not too difficult, but also not trivial” and the 3 life mean that it doesn’t go down just from any single attack. The ability is of course meant to dig through the player deck for Tekeli-li cards, but to be honest i think this ability is actually in the players favor. Discarding cards off the top of the deck doesn’t really do much on its own (or can even be beneficial) and when this finds a weakness it means that this weakness doesn’t get to replace a draw later. Similar to Mr. Rook’s “drawback”, this is just additional card draw in disguise. Unless you are packing Doomed, i guess…

Threat level: Low to Mid. The player’s will need to put a little effort towards dispatching this creature, but nothing out of the ordinary.

Dealing with it: When you first meet these, you already had to deal with the Manifestation of Madness from the Creatures in the Ice set, another enemy with exactly the same stats but with a more potent Forced ability on attack. So however you dealt with that, you can just do the same with this.

What it does: The Guardian Elder Thing works similar to the Scavenger, but trading 2 points of evasion for an extra point of stamina. This encourages evading it over attacking. The Forced ability further works towards that same line of play, making the player discard a card from their deck for each point of damage dealt to the Guardian. Any weaknesses discarded this way have to be drawn.

My take: The same thing i said about the Scavenger’s deck decay ability goes for the Guardian as well. I don’t think this ability has any teeth at all, for the most part it’s beneficial to the players.
The stats of this enemy point heavily towards evading it over defeating it and in the City of the Elder Things this would be preferred for sure. However, in Forbidden Peaks this is going to be difficult because there’s nowhere to run in that scenario. Evading the Guardian will just set you up for being attacked later on when the Elder Thing hunts into your location again. This means having to defeat it which is at least a bit of a nuisance as well – at 4 health this will usually require two or more actions, which is relevant in Peaks for sure.

Threat level: Low to Medium. Medium in Peaks. Fine if you can evade it and forget about it, but if defeating becomes a necessity, it at least puts up some resistance.

Dealing with it: This is a non-Elite with low evasion and high health, so Waylay is a card that comes to mind immediately. Such silver bullets aside, the decision on how to deal with this enemy should usually be a fairly obvious one depending on how much room you have to move around.

What it does: Rise of the Elder Things spawns the topmost Elder Thing enemy from the discard pile engaged with the player. This enemy (and all other Elder Things already engaged) gain +1 fight and evade until the end of the round. If there was no Elder Thing in the discard or spawning an enemy fails for some other reason, the card surges instead.

My take: There’s a total of five different Elder Things that can be returned by this card. Two of them, the Guardian and the Reawakened Elder Thing have only 2 evasion even when boosted by this card. The third one, Benign Elder Thing, should be handled with a willpower parley test which is not increased in difficulty by Rise of the Elder Things. That leaves the last two as potentially more dangerous than if you had drawn them from the deck naturally. Increasing fight and evasion on the Scavenger from 3 to 4 is fairly noticable and can give that enemy some extra staying power for the turn. On Constricting Elder Thing from Forbidden Peaks, the evasion goes from 2 to 3. This can also be relevant.

Threat level: Medium. Mostly acts as yet another copy of an Elder Thing enemy, contributing to how much fighting players need to do in Peaks and City.

Dealing with it: Since there are only two of these in the deck, i don’t think it’s really worth playing around by keeping enemies on the board instead of defeating them or something. Elder Things also don’t have an ability that triggers on coming into play, so for the most part, this can just be treated as an additional enemy card. The one notable exception is Benign Elder Thing, if it ended up in the discard somehow.