Month: March 2022

My take on this set: This is a spectacular set that introduces three high power enemies to the final stretch of the campaign. Both of these Shoggoths hit very hard and killing them takes a lot of time. The decision to fight or flee from them is an interesting one and will actually depend on the board state and how far along the scenario you are. Having these around in the encounter deck is scary, as you don’t know when they will make their appearance. They remind me of the Deep One Bull in that way.
Both the Forgotten and the Rampaging Shoggoth are able to deal out Tekeli-li cards to the players, but note that this works differently than usual. These Tekeli-li aren’t added to the player’s deck, they are instead drawn and resolve immediately which will just put them under the Tekeli deck again. They basically add a semi-random effect to their attack/engagement which can throw off your combat math severely. Of course anyone currently suffering from Blasphemous Visions will want to stay as far away from Shoggoths as they can.
I like these enemies. On other encounter set pages, I have been critical about the enemies being a bit bland in this campaign, but the Shoggoths do make quite the impression. They are dangerous, they are interactive and they require some effort to take down. Good stuff.

What it does: Forgotten Shoggoth is a terrifying Hunter enemy that deals 2 horror on attack and is hard to take down. At 3 fight and 6 stamina, expect your fighter to take a turn just dealing with this thing. It can be evaded somewhat easily, however this not only brings with it the usual issue of having Hunters roaming around, but also that you might trigger its ability multiple times: Whenever the Shoggoth engages you, you have to draw the top Tekeli-li card. Note that this doesn’t shuffle the card into your deck – so it won’t cost you a draw later, however you do have to suffer the effect immediately.

My take: Thank god for that low evasion which can act as a bit of an insurance for any investigator who ends up drawing this thing and isn’t able to handle it otherwise. Of course the evasion might lead to triggering the Forced effect again at a later time, but that’s at least favorable when compared to being pummeled for 2 horror and a damage. If you are able to run away from it is going to depend a lot on where you are in the scenario. Both City of Elder Things and Heart of Madness do feature large maps, but if you are in a situation that requires backtracking (to get towards some token you need, a seal or a pillar) it’s quite possible that you need to deal with the Forgotten Shoggoth in a more permanent way. Doing so isn’t difficult per se, after all it just has 3 fight, but chewing through 6 health will usually take a full turn.
Having to draw a Tekeli for engaging can be devastating here. If it costs a turn or makes you discard a critical combat card or asset, defeating this before it gets to attack can just become a lot harder or even impossible.

Threat level: High. On the upper scale of what we are used to seeing from non-Elites.

Dealing with it: What really makes this enemy dangerous is how it is just a regular card in the encounter deck and can come out at any point. City of Elder Things will have these set aside at the start of the game and only introduce them later, but Heart of Madness could just throw these giants at you on the first mythos phase. So get your enemy handlers combat ready as soon as possible there… you are going to need the firepower for other things like the penguins as well.
When engaging it on your own terms, be aware that the Tekeli-li card might throw a wrench into your plans for your turn by immediately costing you an action or a key card.
Since this is a large non-Elite enemy with low evasion, i of course have to mention Waylay here as well, a survivor card that is generally pretty good in Edge of the Earth and that can deal with this monster in a very efficient way.

What it does: Rampaging Shoggoth is a huge Elite enemy and a real threat to the whole group. While it does have only 3 fight, which is moderate for this sort of Elite, it does boast a large pool of 6 to 12 hitpoints, depending on player count.
Rampaging Shoggoth is both a Hunter and Massive, which enables it to attack multiple investigators at the same time for 2 damage. In addition to this, another 2 damage on top of the attacks are dealt to each investigator and non-Shoggoth enemy at its location, which can put some investigators on the brink of death just by itself in one phase. To make matters even worse, each investigator damaged by the Forced effect also has to draw and immediately resolve the top Tekeli-li card.
Defeating the Rampaging Shoggoth awards a victory point.

My take: Yikes. This thing shares its basic stat layout with the Forgotten Shoggoth: middling fight, high health and low evasion. The last part is key to enable running away from the Rampaging Shoggoth or to defeat it over the course of multiple turns. Do however note that its Forced effect of dealing damage and a Tekeli-li to everything in the enemy phase will still trigger even if the monster is exhausted.
In any player count but true solo the Shoggoth sports enough health that you will want to attack it with multiple investigators at the same time if you want to take it down in just a turn. If that’s not possible, either plan on weaving an evasion into your attacks so you don’t get slapped around in the enemy phase or weaken the enemy beforehand with attacks from connecting locations like Dynamite, Marksmanship or Fang of Tyr’thrha.
The timing for the Tekeli-li card is actually less problematic than it is for the Forgotten Shoggoth, so you can move into its location without immediately having to suffer a semi-random effect.
The rampaging effect of this enemy can hit other non-Shoggoth enemies, but i have at least not seen this being relevant myself. The one enemy where i could see this coming up is a penguin that i left behind, but the 2 damage won’t even kill that annoying bird.

Threat level: Very High. This is a big chunky enemy that will take a lot of resources to defeat.

Dealing with it: Whatever you do, don’t become a victim to this enemy’s full force of attacks in the enemy step. If you evade this and it catches up to you later, it will deal 4 damage, 1 horror and a Tekeli-li effect to you. That’s huge! And possibly this thing can even hit multiple investigators. Unless you are sure that you can stay ahead of it, keeping this menace on the board is quite dangerous and i would only do so as a last resort. At the point where this enemy appears, the 1 victory point isn’t hugely important anymore, but i found myself to be plenty motivated to kill it nonetheless.

My take on this set: Among a number of rather conventional enemies in Edge of the Earth, the Penguin set stands out as something that is actually a bit more situational in how you handle it. So there are some decision to be made when you encounter it which is always a good thing. I feel like Wuk! Wuk! Wuk! is missing a certain something to make it really cool, right now it’s just basically another two copies of the penguin and it usually won’t matter which card from this set you drew. But the enemy itself is a great addition to the game. It’s high impact without featuring any big numbers and has an ability that asks for player interaction in one of two different ways (defeat it or leave it) while also opening up the possibility to tech for it with certain card choices from the player pool. Good stuff.

What it does: Giant Albino Penguin is an Aloof enemy with respectable 3 health, but only 2 fight and evasion. Entering or leaving the Albino Penguins location costs an extra action. So while this enemy doesn’t pose a threat in the traditional sense, it is a huge action sink between Aloof and its main ability.

My take: I like this one. If you have to move through its location it’s a huge bother because it would cost you 2 actions extra. Fighting it makes the action tax go up even further. Luckily it spawns right on top of you, though. That means your choice is usually to fight and kill it right now (and do so through Aloof and 3 health) or just move ahead and leave it behind. That way you’ll only lose 1 action to it, but the critter will stick around and hinder you if you need to backtrack. Or hinder your teammates that might want to pass through the same location.

Threat level: Mid to High. These can drain a lot of actions from you. They become extra relevant the more players you have in your group.

Dealing with it: These penguins are just tailor-made to see the business end of a Spectral Razor, aren’t they? Anything that lets you bypass the Aloof engage action is of course very valuable here and so is anything that lets you deal 3 damage in one attack. Without at least one of those, you are looking at a whole turn just to shoo some bird away. What makes this more complicated is that it spawns on the investigator who drew the card. And that’s not necessarily the one that does the enemy handling, so they would have to move into the penguin’s location (which is taxed by another action) first. If your enemy handler is able to run cards that deal damage to connected locations, that is going to be very valuable. In fact, it’s something to spend XP on past Forbidden Peaks just so you are able to deal with these enemies more efficiently. Marksmanship is great here and so is Get Over Here!. Dynamite Blast works just fine as well and the campaign actually offers you a stack of Dynamite through one of the expedition assets.
In one or two player, seriously consider just moving on though. If they aren’t at a location that you need to move to again, you can just eat that one extra action to leave the location and be done with it. At least until…

What it does: The investigator has to either move the Albino Penguin that is farthest away to their location or put a doom on the enemy. If none of the penguins is in play, one is found from the encounter and discard piles and then drawn.

My take: I don’t think the option for doom is all that viable except for very few corner cases like when you are about to take out the thing with a Dynamite Blast anyways. So for the most part, Wuk! Wuk! Wuk! is just another copy of the Albino Penguin.

Threat level: Mid to High.

Dealing with it: Instead of dealing with this card, you’ll be dealing with the penguin. See above for notes on how to do that.

Encounter sets in this scenario: Fatal Mirage, Agents of the Unknown, Left Behind, Miasma, Nameless Horrors, Silence and Mystery, Chilling Cold
Available experience: For each of the 9 team members, there’s either 1XP (if they are alive) or 2XP to gain (if they aren’t), for a theoretical total of: 18XP

Synopsis: The investigators, exhausted from the things they had to go through, enter a dreamscape in their sleep. In this, they meet up with their team mates and relive events from their past, which they hopefully are able to face and steel their resolve for the things to come. Alternatively they meet echoes of their fallen partners and learn from them. Either way, the investigators are facing a rather big map consisting of 19(!) locations that can be put into play as the players make progress on grabbing clues and spending them for progress. It’s way too much to uncover in one go, so there are up to 3 opportunities to enter Fatal Mirage along the campaign trail. For each expedition member, there are three locations that connect it to the central one (with the first being shared among several partners). At the end of such a trail, the players either have to defeat a special elite enemy to turn their partner “resolute” or, if the partner is already dead/missing, they just gain some experience as they learn more about the person.

My take on this scenario: This scenario uses a rather large encounter deck, which leads to some increased variance in draws. There are some main themes to expect, though. For one, there’s a bunch of doom acceleration here that players will need to deal with if they want to achieve as much as they can. Then, there’s a decent amount of Tekeli-li related cards around which will likely lead to players finishing the scenario with more of those weaknesses in their deck then when they entered Fatal Mirage. Finally, the scenario very noticeably cuts back on the agility tests and damage sources that are everywhere else in Edge of the Earth. Instead, willpower and horror take the front stage, like it used to be in Carcosa times.
The strength of this scenario lies in it’s narrative, containing valuable background info on the people you have in your expedition. It’s also a way to protect your favored partner assets from random disaster later on. Mechanically and in terms of gameplay i don’t find Fatal Mirage all that enticing, though. Despite the high concept and the number of locations and special enemies, it all plays out very formulaic and repetitive. I just don’t think Fatal Mirage holds up very well on replays. This is a big deal, considering that it’s supposed to even be replayed up to three times in one playthrough. If i’m perfectly honest, i wish the massive amount of card budget that was spent on locations and enemies here would’ve been spent on enhancing the other scenarios instead or on making two more “conventional” scenarios.

Scenario specific encounter cards: The Fatal Mirage set adds three cards to the deck, each of them with three copies. Horrifying Shade is an aloof hunter enemy that punishes players for discovering clues at its location in the worst possible way: With doom tokens. You’ll certainly want to get rid of this one. Also playing into the doom theme, Anamnesis threatens to be an Ancient Evils… but you get a chance to take 2 horror instead. Considering the amount of horror sources around this could be an issue. Finally, Evanescent Mist adds extra clues to locations and slows them down by making them either spend more clues or taking damage. With how few other damage sources are around, taking that damage should often be not too much of an issue.

Act/Agenda: While there are 3 act cards and 3 agenda cards in the Fatal Mirage set, only one each is used for a play of the scenario. The three versions only differ in doom threshold and flavor text and are used depending on if this is your first, second or third visit to the dreamscape in this campaign. The act only vaguely hints at a goal and that there are limited opportunities to leave Fatal Mirage. This is true, the only opportunity to finish comes when players either defeat a Memory elite or reach the final location for a dead partner. The agenda offers the ability to warp to the central location as a free action at the cost of a horror. A fair price to pay if it saves multiple actions. Of course, it also provides the doom threshold, which is different depending on how many Fatal Mirage plays you already did. It’s 15 doom for the first time, reduced to 13 and 11 for the second and third visit.

The Memory Eidolons: At the end of each partner specific trail waits a memory to be defeated, as long as the partner in question is still alive. These are elite enemies with above average stat lines, Retaliate or Alert (or both) and some sort of alternative way of defeating them. This can be something like accepting Frost tokens to defeat them or dealing them damage on evading. There’s nine different ones of course, one for each team member. Defeating them will flip them to their story side, awarding 1XP and turning the expedition member into their resolute version with better abilities, stats and protection from randomly being chosen by murderous story events. The group then gets the choice to resign or to continue and try to get another memory done. Most of these aren’t terribly hard to defeat, but if you aren’t able to fulfill their special condition for extra damage, their stamina pool can make them take a lot of time… time that you usually don’t have, especially if you plan on going for more memories afterwards.

Other enemies: Agents of the Unknown throws Primordial Evil into the mix, a quite dangerous hunter enemy. Opposite of that, there’s the missing researchers from Left Behind, which add to the doom theme and require alternate ways of getting them from the board than just killing them. The scenario specific Horrifying Shade lies somewhere in the middle, being a milder but still respectable foe in combat than the Evil, and it’s using doom mechanics to play into what the Left Behind set is doing. The hunters can be an issue in this scenario because it’s somewhat linear and can require backtracking, but remember that if necessary you can spend a horror and warp back to the starting location.

Tekeli-li: About 1 in 4 encounter cards are relating to Tekeli-li weaknesses, which isn’t an excessive amount but the high variance of such a big deck can still leave you with draws that stack these on top of each other. The combination of Agents of the Unknown with Nameless Horrors can have a huge impact for investigators with low willpower as they are neither able to resist The Madness Within or easily capable of discarding Blasphemous Visions. Danforth is very useful in Fatal Mirage, both as a way to soften the blow from Tekeli-li and to provide an emergency soak for excessive amounts of horror. Speaking of Danforth, should you follow his line of memories, you will have to go through locations that all also relate to Tekeli-li in some way.

Locations: The large stack of locations and the Mirage keyword make this look a lot more complicated than it really is. You have your central location, the Prison of Memories. From there, you can discover ways into one of three hub locations. This is the red lines in the image above. From there, you can move into three further locations, indicated by the yellow lines. Finally, you follow a green line from there into one or two final locations. What this means is that you need to cross three locations to get to your first memory, but some memories share locations with others so successive ones might be easier to get to afterwards. As an example, to find William Dyer’s memory and make him resolute, you need to move from the Prison of Memories into either the Deck of the Theodosia or the University Halls, then into the Standing Stones and finally into Dyer’s Classroom. Afterwards, getting to Claypool’s memory is going to be easier because his final location The Black Stone also branches off of the Standing Stones.
In terms of shroud values, it starts rather tame near the center of the map but gets more difficult on the final locations that hold the memory. Having the right partner with you will lower the shroud value, but you should probably save any limited investigation tools (like Drawn to the Flame or Read the Signs) for those difficult ones.
The amount of clues to discover in this scenario is gigantic and having a consistent source of extra clues(Pilfer(3), Rex Murphy…) is going to be even more powerful than ever here.
As a final note on these locations, take care to read their connections correctly. They don’t all allow for moving back to the previous location, but they all connect back to the Prison of Memories.

Suggested partner assets: Unless you are using a specific expedition member to fix a central issue with your own deck (like using Eliyah to be able to evade the Frenzied Explorers from the Left Behind set or using William to keep your Tony Morgan sane), my suggestion would be to bring those that you are looking to turn resolute. This will reduce the shroud value of the final locations, making it easier for you to get through to the memory and conserve your resources and cards for other locations that might prove difficult.

Reward and Failure: In theory you could grab quite a lot of XP in this scenario, to do so you would need to go after the locations of team members that already died. If you flip a final location of a dead partner, you get 2XP immediately without even having to defeat an elite enemy. So that could be a way to finance some extra card upgrades. On the other hand, turning your crew resolute has a lot of advantages as well, especially for those that have their ability turned into a free action.
Failing the scenario by hitting the doom threshold on the agenda can happen quite easily in Fatal Mirage, as you aren’t allowed to resign except for whenever you finish up your business with one of the partner assets. Depending on if this is your first, second or third visit to Fatal Mirage, the consequences are different, becoming gradually more severe every time. At the first try, everyone gets defeated and has to shuffle a Tekeli-li into their deck. No trauma though, so unless you are running Charon’s Obol you get out with just a slap on the wrist. Second time, you either get two Tekeli-li or a mental trauma, your choice. Third time, you just straight up get a mental trauma. As far as punishment for failure goes, this is actually fairly tame, so taking some risks to hopefully get another branch of the dreamscape done in a couple turns can look attractive enough to just go for it.

My take on this set: Miasma is a set that takes over for all the weather themed stuff from the first half of the campaign, to still provide some location based treacheries once the players are no longer exposed to the antarctic colds. Both of these cards make an effort to come after the health and sanity of your partner assets, so they do at least have some urgency to them and can’t be ignored.
Their actual impact is debatable, though. If you are willing to take some risks and don’t sweat the occasional damage/horror token on your partners, these cards shouldn’t be much of a concern to you. If you have healing available, they are downright trivial. If you want to play super safe however, you will need to make time and spend actions on discarding Torrent immediately or moving out of the way of the Miasma. That’s still not too taxing though when compared to what else usually lurks in the encounter deck.

What it does: Miasmatic Torrent attaches to a partner asset controlled by the investigator, exhausting the asset in the process. While the treachery is attached, the asset can not ready and is dealt either a damage or a horror at the end of each turn.
To discard the card, the player has to take an action and pass either a Willpower or an Intellect test.
If the player controls no parter asset when drawing this card, it gains surge.

My take: Thankfully you get to choose on whether to deal a damage or a horror when this card triggers. This card alone is usually not going to threaten to kill your partner asset, but it can absolutely contribute to making it more vulnerable to either Nebulous Miasma or Polar Vortex.
Getting rid of the card isn’t terribly difficult, but it does cost an action. I am rather paranoid when it comes to the well being of my partner assets, so i usually try to get rid of this card as soon as possible, but if you do have healing available in your deck you might even decide to have it stick around a bit while you care about more pressing matters.
It depends on the ability that gets blocked as well, of course. If you depend on Eliyah for emergency evades, you will want to clear this immediately. If you brought Tanaka to help with money, it’s probably less of a priority.

Threat level: Low to Mid. The partner assets do have a good amount of combined health and sanity to take this for a turn or three.

Dealing with it: If you do use your partner’s health and sanity to soak damage and horror for yourself aggressively, this card becomes a much bigger issue. During the scenarios where Miasma is part of the encounter deck, you might want to hold back on that a bit and make sure that your partners can survive this card (and Nebulous Miasma).

What it does: Nebulous Miasma 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 its location is dealt a direct horror to each of their cards with sanity. This includes the investigator card and story allies. .

My take: During the first half of the campaign, the Deadly Weather set is everywhere and with it, the Polar Vortex card which goes after the stamina of players and more importantly, of the partners. Once past the Forbidden Peaks, that set disappears completely and we instead have to deal with Miasma and therefore this card. Nebulous Miasma is an exact mirror of Polar Vortex, only it attacks sanity instead of stamina.
In the direct comparison between the two cards, there are two reasons why Polar Vortex is a much stronger card, though. The first reason is Forbidden Peaks, which dials up the danger on location based treacheries (like Vortex) through its linear setup. The scenarios that Miasma is involved in do not have such restricted movement, making it more easy to evade. The other reason lies in the affected partner assets. The two low stamina assets threatened by Vortex are Danforth and Dyer, both quite important and powerful. On the other hand, the two low sanity assets threatened by Miasma are Ellsworth and Cookie. Ellsworth can actually protect himself through his own ability. And Cookie… personally i would call him the most expendable member of the expedition, but of course your mileage may vary.
Basically, i don’t feel nearly as threatened by Nebulous Miasma as i do by Polar Vortex.

Threat level: Low. Can usually just be sidestepped. That can take an action from you, but that’s just par for the course for a treachery.

Dealing with it: It’s going to be very rare that you’ll run into situations where you aren’t able to move and where the loss of sanity is hugely impacting. In most cases, you can just either take it or invest an action or two to move away.