Month: April 2025

We did it!

The first Drowned City playthrough is in the bags and aside from the weird factoid that i apparently refer to myself as “We” in a write-up when i play multiple characters, there’s a bunch of more useful impressions left hanging in the air. Time for us for me to collect my thoughts and try to put everything into words.

If you are just here for the final verdict, let me not bury the lede: I definitely rank it in my Top 5 of campaigns, but it doesn’t break into my Top 3 of TFA, Carcosa, Innsmouth. I would put it on #4 right now, ahead of Hemlock Vale at #5. It’s a good campaign, i didn’t dislike a single scenario and i will absolutely replay it many times. But it’s also not exceptional in the same way that my Top 3 are in some regard. To shamelessly steal borrow a phrase i just read a few minutes ago on reddit, it’s “Not Victory 2, but definitely Victory 1”.

The playthrough was not just about playing the campaign itself, but also to give two decks built on the very limited cardpool of Drowned City + Core a chance. And i think the takeaway there is that you can still build some deceptively powerful decks from that. And yes, i ended up shooting a basic .45 Auto at Cthulhu in the end, but it did get the job done. I won’t pretend that my playthrough here is in any way representative of a new player’s who got their first expansions, 10 campaigns worth of experience in playing the game and building decks does count for something after all. But still, i think this does demonstrate that (especially in light of current doom saying around the lack of reprints) those old sets of yore might not be as essential as some people think. You don’t need to buy Dunwich, Carcosa or Edge of the Earth to play Drowned City – and i feel like that’s an important takeaway here.

A Quick Disclaimer

Before i get into more details, i want to make clear that these are just first impressions. I only do my encounter set and scenario review pages on this site after three plays and that’s for a good reason, as you rarely get a full impression on the first go through. So take anything that follows as something i might very well change my opinion on in the coming weeks.

I’ll just go over my write-ups now and comment on what i think stands out.

One Last Job

Somehow, i managed to start off the campaign with a wipe, having everyone defeated at the hand of the gangs. Overall this is a somewhat chill scenario however and the enemies don’t pose a problem until the climax as you are meant to parley them, not fight them. The scenario works very well as a sort of playable backstory, using almost only Core Set cards to establish Arkham as a place in the story and only faintly hinting at what is to come. It provides a good contrast for the alien stuff that is coming up, but at the same time, this makes it work not at all as a mechanical introduction. The best scenario openers have usually been the ones that inform the players of what’s going to be expected of them going forward. Pit of Despair introduces floods and Deep Ones. Riddles and Rain shows off both main factions of Scarlet Keys. Untamed Wilds drops you off right in the jungle, with snakes, exploration and serpentfolk. One Last Job does none of that and i think that’s missing a bit of a trick there. It makes the scenario detached from everything and feel a bit … irrelevant … to anything else going on. Overall i’d call this an okay scenario, but when specifically comparing it to the openers of the other campaigns, it’s one of the weakest. Do i prefer it to Hemlock Vale’s situation which pretty much doesn’t have an opener? Yes, i think i do.

The Tasks

The next thing after One Last Job is picking the Tasks, so let’s talk about those. I found the impact of specifically the No Place Like Home task to be fairly huge as it informed much of my movement all throughout the campaign. Michael was simply the one who had to reveal locations and i only did so with Lucius in a few exceptions. On the other hand, Lucius task was being the one who’d clear all clues off of locations and that had nearly no impact at all on my decision making, after all this was his job (and his alone) anyways. This was of course a result of my investigators being so binary in their roles, Michael couldn’t find a clue to save his life. If he was even slightly flexy, then Plumb the Depths would certainly have mattered more as i would have needed to pay some extra attention to it.
The tasks are an element of this campaign where i think that it really requires a replay or three to get a firm grasp on what i think about them. I do like that they take up a lot of decision space and i can imagine that playing the campaign with different tasks will add to the replayability by introducing different circumstances. On the other hand, i could also see them becoming too distracting or too dominating, overshadowing the mechanical drive from the scenarios? Really not sure on this one.
Either way, i did like that each task has one scenario where it matters a bit more and asks a trade-off. Either get extra progress, but a severe penalty for the scenario. Or lose progress and gain a boon. I was deathly afraid of mental trauma, which made these a non-choice for me but i could imagine these work especially well if you missed your task once or twice and need a catchup mechanism.
You then finally get a powerful boost from the tasks for the finale, in the form of a stack of XP and an ability. Or, if you fail, you get trauma and a bad token (and just a few pity XP). That’s a real threat and i think the stakes need to be this high for the tasks to matter, so that’s good. The payoff is fine, but next to the artifacts and story allies it’s not as huge as one would assume near the start of the campaign when the tasks are chosen.
Overall, these are an interesting addition to the campaign. Not something i have a desire for porting over to other campaigns like i’ve seen talk about on Discord. But as a campaign gimmick, this works.

Obsidian Canyons

This scenario was one of the high points of the campaign for me, i very much enjoyed the way the locations moved around and how i was able to manipulate them. It came with a heavy setup tax that made the whole thing take about two or three times as long to set up than any other scenario in this campaign, but at least to me, the play was worth it.
The jump from the simple One Last Job to this mammoth of a scenario is definitely jarring however and i wouldn’t wish this on any new player checking out a real non-Zealot campaign for the first time. There is a noticable increase in complexity for the scenarios coming from west to east and starting at the east has you go through it in reverse order: from most complicated to most simple. And that’s just kind of weird? I feel like these could have been put in an order where either way through R’lyeh would have made for a better progression curve.
I am not a new player however, so i got to appreciate this scenario in all its overblown weirdness. It’s important to point out that the fiddlyness imo stopped at the setup, during gameplay everything was smooth to handle and flowed well. A leap forward from things like the mines in Hemlock Vale or even TFA’s Boundary Beyond where i still tend to fuck up the location connections once or twice each play despite having played it like two dozen times now.
I am looking forward to seeing this scenario when coming from the other side, as that will add a whole additional stage to it with a fourth row to search through for the locations you need.

Artifacts

Obsidian Canyons is the scenario that earns you the infamous Obsidian Claw, so let’s talk about the artifacts. Over the course of the campaign i have seen five of these:
Obsidian Claw: Gives a free movement per turn, up to two locations away.
Shard of Y’ch’lecht: Ignore the first attack by a Deep One or Star Spawn each round.
Tidal Tablet: Free move if your location gets flooded.
Barrier Node: Tanks 1 point of damage each turn for free.
Horror in Clay: Star Spawn enemies prey on you.
Even setting aside the Horror in Clay which is deliberately one that is more of a burden than a boon, these artifacts are clearly not made equal. They don’t need to be. Of course, there’s no requirement for story assets to be balanced against each other. That being said… that Claw is a bit much, isn’t it?
I think what bothers me about these is that they start in play from turn 1 on. That allows them to just dominate your game through all of the campaign and with exception of Doom of Arkham I, where i was forced to let go of them for a second, i never even considered to use something other than the Claw for Lucius. Like, there wasn’t even a sliver of a choice there, that thing stands heads and shoulders over any other story asset or even any level 5 card in the whole existing card pool. It’s an utterly absurd card to get on my scenario 2… to the point where i suspect that coming from the west is simply going to make for a better campaign experience because you don’t get all your movement solved instantly. If it at least was only added to your deck instead of being a quasi-Permanent, there’d at least be some requirement to still care about that aspect for the investigator that has it.
Of the non-Claw artifacts, i think the Barrier Node is pretty neat. We think highly of Jessica Hyde and Peter Sylvestre as allies that can soak for you forever and this gives the ability to do so for health to non-Survivors. Great little artifact. The Shard can serve as a way to take some of the sting from The Inescapable or the Star Spawn Elites away if you struggle with them more than i did, so it definitely has a place too. The Tidal Tablet however seems pretty weak and i don’t even see it competing with the Diving Suits that are available from the start.
Overall, hunting for these artifacts seems worth doing. Even if you don’t plan to get all of them to unlock the special ending, they do have their value. Maybe the Tablet looks better if you don’t already have both a Claw and Ruby for free movement, either? I doubt it, but maybe.
The artifacts all have an extra ability on them that can be unlocked with the translation of glyphs, but i’ll talk about that when i get to the glyphs.

Court of the Ancients

The elevator ride down the archive. I do like scenarios that are easy to just finish, but leave it to you to decide how much extra you think you can do in the time offered and this delivered on the premise really well. A standout in this scenario for me were the enemies which are reasonably threatening and offer a lot of variety between the Aloof Observer, the huge Colossus in the lift and the freaky Keepers. I didn’t do exceptionally well here either and probably left a good amount of secrets and VP in the archives that i would want to grab on my second go here.
One elegant piece of level design here: This was my scenario 3 and the thing went very linear: Start at the top, move down until you get the required glyphs and clues to enter the altar at the bottom, plunder it and leave. If you come from the other side and this is your scenario 6, you start at the bottom, have to move up to get the glyphs and clues, down again to open the Altar and up again to leave. I think that’s a cool way to increase the scenario complexity without having to add anything extra to the setup.
Less elegant was the high variance from a huuuuge encounter deck where you are supposed to find specific cards in, but can just end up finding the same Omen treachery over and over and over and over again.
Overall an enjoyable scenario! Not as outstanding as Obsidian Canyons, but still very good.

Glyphs

So let me just lead with my gripe about Glyphs: There’s too damn many of these things. I get that they wanted 26 of them so they can match them to our alphabet and write “Cthulhu fhtagn” and the like in cypher on various encounter cards. That’s cute and all, but this is just too many to care about. Thing is, they even made an effort to diversify how you get them: Some are on a treachery that attaches to a location, some on a location itself, some on an enemy, others on an asset that you can carry around until you can manage the difficult test on it. That’s all very well and nice, but when you have 5 delivery mechanisms and 26 glyphs, you still end up with 5+ repeats for each mechanism. And that just gets a bit repetitive to see the xth Ancient Vault or Orrery, all with the same illustration on them. This didn’t bother me at all during the first two or three R’lyeh scenarios, but in the later half of them my reaction to finding a glyph was more like “Oh, yet another one of those” and that’s sort of the opposite reaction that one would hope to get from finding strange things in the sunken city of R’lyeh.
The other thing about the glyphs that i found just a bit frustrating: At the end of the campaign, i had 19 of the 26 glyphs uncovered. I still didn’t get to unlock even a single of the extra abilities on the artifacts. Unlucky? Maybe. Feels bad? Definitely.
That’s not to say that these aren’t worth hunting for either, though. More often than not, they’d be tied to Victory points which makes a lot of sense considering that the whole conceit of the campaign is that we are going through the Drowned City to uncover these glyphs. Anchoring a big chunk of our victory points there ties the backstory to the game mechanics very well.
I still would have preferred fewer of these glyphs and instead have them matter more. Aside from being a vehicle for being sort of “stretch goals” for VP i have to say these were a bit of a miss for me.

The Great Vault

This one worked really well for me. The idea of the central location that needs all the ones around it active to be accessible is neat, as is the whole conceit with the floating platform that allows you to make the way around it. Along the way there’s stretchgoals again, actually the inside of the central location is a stretchgoal itself and there’s a stretchgoal within the stretchgoal of defeating the Inescapable inside of the Core. Lots of layers to it and it’s easily understandable what’s going on and just fits together mechanically very well. Flood matters for the first time here and while i’m never in danger of drowning due to the platform being around, the Flood encounter set is threatening enough (in particular the Deadly Torrent) to make me rethink staying in the water for too long.
Another good one and also one where i have more to achieve on my next playthrough.

The Inescapable

The Inescapable is a big chunky Star Spawn that just won’t stay dead. It even returns from the victory display, through the treacheries that are in its special encounter set. Well, at least it does so potentially. My team of investigators was in the fortunate situation where agility(2) tests weren’t too much of a problem most of the time and if i remember correctly i never had the Inescapable return to the board due to the Still Behind You treachery. And even when he was on the board, Lucius was able to keep him down very well. A different team of investigators could easily have a very different experience here.
I grew a bit tired of the dude by the end of the R’lyeh portion of the campaign, but to be fair that is sort of the point and there is a way to permanently shut him down during The Great Vault.
I think he’s overall a nice addition to the campaign and at least for my money, he’s a notable improvement on previous similar recurring enemies like TCU’s Spectral Watcher or Edge’s Terror from the Stars.
And yeah, i am ready to eat my words as soon as i try to do the campaign with an investigator that has a 1 in agility.

The Apiary

My favorite scenario from this campaign. I like the location mechanics, the funky stowaway enemies and the general Alien(s) vibe. The texts even dip into some body horror that is genuinely a bit unsettling. The finale against the Broodmother is a bit toothless, as the enemy can’t leave its nest and can be pretty handily defeated through damaging its minions. For the same reason, the rotating location that happens there also doesn’t really matter all that much. But that doesn’t take away from my overall very pleasant experience with the Apiary to that point. Making your way through the corridors is just the right amount of unpredictable and weird.

Andy and Ruby

When prompted for which route to take, i went west instead of east, mostly because Ruby seemed like the more interesting character to follow on the blind run. This gave me her story asset, a very good ally that is truly worth her ally slot and 4 resource cost.
Now that i am finished with the campaign, i also know about Andy, the alternative that would have accompanied me had i started in the east. And he doesn’t measure up to Ruby.
Now, as i mentioned before, the options do not need to be balanced at all. But combine it with the circumstance that we get the Claw early on in the Eastern expedition and we just get movement handed to us for two investigators. One could make an argument that this is necessary to make Obsidian Canyons playable as a scenario 2, but i’d argue against that with my earlier note about Canyons not really feeling like it should be scenario 2 in the first place.
Having a movement enabler on either side of the campaign instead of two on one side and zero on the other would have made more sense to me at least from what little insight i have after one play of the campaign.
And it’s not like Andy is a bad ally either, his intellect bonus is by itself more valuable than the agility bonus on Ruby. But he does of course share his spot with Milan and Lawrence, both of which arguably have better secondary abilities… while Ruby doesn’t have that sort of competition in the card pool.
It’s just a bit unfortunate that the two are out of whack in terms of power this much, even if it might make some sense to give you a shot in the arm if you decide to tackle the high-complexity scenarios first.

The Drowned Quarter

This scenario is optional, you are allowed to just skip it and go ahead to the Western Wall. I was thirsty for some Deep Ones however, so this was an easy choice. The encounter deck promised to deliver on this as well, with encounter sets for Deep Ones, flooding and undersea creatures. And then it just didn’t really come together. I blasted through the scenario fairly quickly and while i got to play around with flood tokens a lot, there was barely a fish person in sight. Only cards that alluded to them… and then never went off.
I have a feeling that playing this as your scenario 3 will be a lot more interesting than as your scenario 6 however, so i don’t want to be too harsh on it right now. After all, i barely have seen any of its scenario specific cards yet. And i seem to have gotten a really weird draw on the random order of locations. But at least for now, this is the scenario from this campaign that ranks lowest for me so far. It’s not that it’s bad, like i wouldn’t want to skip it on replays the way i sometimes just turn 1 resign on Undimensioned and Unseen or Wages of Sin. But it also failed to leave much of an impression beyond delivering the artifact that i liked best design-wise out of the bunch i’ve seen.

Fishpeople (and other tribal stuff)

There were several instances in this campaign where enemy traits mattered. The one i paid attention to straight away was Deep Ones – i am a huge fan of these enemies in Innsmouth and while i knew they’d play only a small role in Drowned City, i was still looking forward to seeing what this campaign would add to them. And the answer is… not much. And what there is, kind of didn’t work, at least at 2 players? There’s a treachery that goes off on engaging a Deep One… and i never drew another one of those every time after gaining that treachery. There’s even a Elder Deep One that boosts all others around him… that never entered play with others on the board. The main reason for that seems to be that there are only two other Deep Ones aside from the Elder (the Young and the Thrall) and Drowned Quarter doesn’t even use both of them. Maybe this works better in a full party where double the amount of encounter cards gets revealed per turn than it did for me. But this element fell completely flat for me, similar to the “collect 3” treacheries from Circle Undone which also barely work in lower player counts.
Another fluke for me were the Pilgrim cultists in the scenario with the elevator. I got an Aloof cultist leader near the start of the scenario only to never see another cultist again for the rest of it. Meh.
The Apiary uses the Stowaways in a major way and that works much better. Drones seek out Tenders to place doom on them and cause extra attacks and the Mother interacts with her swarm as well. That was well done.
Finally, Star Spawn get called out on a couple artifacts and treacheries. Not in a huge way, but it did end up mattering here and there and was fine.

The Western Wall

The Western Wall and the Drowned Quarter felt very similar to me, in that they have the same vibe of making your way through locations, manipulating flood tokens and fighting the occasional Deep One. The encounter decks are very similar as well and i wish these two were spaced out more instead of right one after the other to make these similarities less obvious. That gripe (and the Deep One related rant i just made) aside, this is a solid scenario. The location mechanics require dipping up and down levels, the shroud values constantly increase and you get to do a bit of nice exploration here with fairly simple mechanics. I quite like the thought of going here as a scenario 2 and getting the introduction to R’lyeh mechanics here that One Last Job didn’t provide. As a scenario 7, it didn’t really hold up the way that i expect Obsidian Canyons to do when coming from the other side, but it was not bad either.

Story Text

There’s some chatter online about there not being enough story text. Which is a wild thing to read after the community was ablaze for two years for being asked to read (allegedly) too much in Scarlet Keys and Hemlock Vale. Obviously, it’s not all the same people complaining now that were complaining then, but it’s still just a great example of how whatever you do as a designer, the community will appear unhappy because social media will always amplify the negative voices over the positive ones. Best thing they can do is put different focus on different things with each campaign. And after two campaigns with notorious amounts of story baggage, it makes sense to do one where the prose takes a backseat.
As for my take on the matter, i don’t mind the lack of lengthy introductions. I am aware that i am playing a game here and that i am showing up to do scenarios that take a conceit and run with it. Being told “There’s a platform here! You can use it to get around and turn on the gadgets so the thingamajig opens and you get the McGuffin!” works perfectly well for me, because that’s what i am here for. That being said, the Apiary where the descriptions get a lot more vivid do show that there’s definitely a place for some more fleshed out narration as well.
Overall, this isn’t a huge factor for me.

The Doom of Arkham I

This ended up being more of a playable interlude than a full scenario. Not to the same degree as the ones in Hemlock Vale, of course. But i don’t see how any group that made it through R’lyeh could struggle with the short trip around Arkham and then get the artifacts back from Tillinghast. Potentially this could be a very short affair if you find the Esoterica on your first or second location and then just keep investigating it for all the clues you need.
It does a good job of connecting One Last Job back to what is about to come however and i appreciated a bit of a calm before the storm.

Taking Tests

When it comes to taking tests during a campaign, we have had several ones that put a focus on specific skills (TFA, TCU) or required particularly high skill values (TSK, Carcosa, TCU again). Drowned City seemed to not be extreme in any way like that. Treacheries and effects were testing everything. But in exchange, many of these tests were fairly low difficulty. This is true for treacheries like Still Behind You (an agility test vs 2) and many of the shroud values on locations seemed to be rather tame as well.
As a result, i would assume that this campaign can be played with almost any configuration of investigators and even flexy investigators with flat statlines can expect a reasonable rate of success here.
This is very good and gives Carcosa a run for its money as the default suggestion for a campaign that you don’t need to have specific conditions in mind for. It also gives you the freedom to do some more fun things with your deck than just trying to get intellect or combat to 8.

The Doom of Arkham II

So what did i think of the fight against Cthulhu? It was fine. Possibly even good. Like some other campaign finishers, this one too gives you a whole host of story assets which i am never a huge fan of. But unlike with for example the Scarlet Keys finale, these assets don’t completely trivialize the scenario and you still need to defeat Cthulhu yourself. At least in the version that i played i had plenty of time to do so, being able to snipe at the big lumbering beast from the roof and defeat one or more of its parts per turn.
It was a solid finale, not overwrought with trying to throw too many fancy mechanics at it and i think that’s worth acknowledging. Introducing Cthulhu himself as the final adversary needed to be safe and it could have been a real stinker for many if he would have had similarly controversial mechanics as the final boss of Hemlock Vale, for example.
So i’d say this was well done. A bit on the easy side at the end, but i’ve got two more endings to see and this was just the basic one.

A preliminary ranking of scenarios

1: The Apiary
2: Obsidian Canyons
3: The Great Vault
4: Doom of Arkham II
5: Court of the Ancients
6: Doom of Arkham I
7: Western Wall
8: One Last Job
9: Drowned Quarter

This will definitely change a bit on replays. I think there’s a heavy slant towards the scenarios i played first here and i expect to think higher of Western Wall and Drowned Quarter when i am not able to just breeze through them.
The big takeaway here however is that while i feel like some mechanics don’t quite live up to what i hoped for (Glyphs being the primary one) i don’t actively dislike anything here. I have so far only been able to say that about Carcosa. And Innsmouth, almost.

Next up

I have some more initial thoughts about encounter cards and the like, but i want to wait with those until i have gotten the extra plays in. My plan right now is giving the campaign another two or three attempts. The first one is actually already underway, my custom investigators Sofia and Edwin finished One Last Job and are about to leave for the Western Wall. And once i feel more secure in my opinions, I’ll get started on doing the thing i originally created the Ancient Evils site for: Doing the pages with the encounter set and scenario deck overviews and reviews. So, lots of Drowned City stuff to come in the following months… should be interesting.

Setup

The introduction to the finale is short and to the point. Cthulhu arrives in Arkham and levels Rivertown. There is a choice on how we intend to face it: Either guns blazing, or finding another way. That “other way” however requires having five or more artifacts. So arguments through superior firepower it is. Good thing i just got myself a second minigun.

We are joined by Ruby, Andy and Inspector Legrasse and all their story assets start in play with us, costing no ally slots. A considerable boost. We also start with all four collected artifacts in play, evenly distributed. Lucius grabs his trusty Obsidian Claw and the Shard of Y’ch’lecht. Michael gets to hold onto the Horror in Clay and the Barrier Node.

An Elder Thing token is added to the bag, so there are now three of them.

The board looks similar to the one from last scenario, with the seven Arkham locations in their usual configuration. In addition there are two Rooftop locations, one to the west and east, where we supposedly can find refuge from the flooding. The Rivertown has been swapped out with one that has been trashed by Cthulhu however. The big guy starts in play there as well, of course.

Cthulhu is represented by one card on the board, but actually made of three parts that are displayed prominently on an extra board to the side. They are double sided cards, with an Enraged and non-Enraged side. These cards mention “Cthulhu’s Rage“, a number that starts at 2 for me because i am playing at 2 players. Groups of 3 or 4 players would start at 1. The campaign book informs us that Cthulhu’s attacks are the sum of his three parts, so he deals 2 damage and 2 horror on attack. When attacking or evading, we target one of this parts specifically.

The encounter deck is relatively slim. We have Domination, Elder Mist and Flood for some environmental effects and if i am not mistaken then Agents of Cthulhu is the only one that actually adds a few enemies to the deck. The Star Spawn set is set aside, but it looks like we’ll mostly be able to concentrate our fire on the Elder God. This seems required, as there is a second encounter deck in play, called the Cthulhu deck. Those are eighteen cards that i assume represent attacks and special moves that Cthulhu executes. I expect this to work somewhat like in Aeon’s End?

Finally, we have our act, agenda and token overview to look at. The agenda has only 3 doom on it and it’s the only one. So i assume another recurring one, probably ramping up the Cthulhu’s Rage counter. There’s two Forced effects here: At the end of the enemy phase, we increase flood at Cthulhu’s location and draw a card from the Cthulhu deck. And if we end our turn at a fully flooded location, that’s cost us a point of health or sanity.
The act gives us our Objective: Have three Cthulhu enemies in the victory display and advance at the end of the round. Easier said than done, the guy is impervious to damage? We also get an ability to spend a clue during an attack to add +1 damage (once per). This can be used on any attack at the location, so Lucius can spend to support Michael here. Helpful!
For token effects, the skull scales with Rage. So it starts at -2. Cultist and Tablet are both -3. The Elder Thing (of which we now have 3 in the bag) is a -1 that rolls into another token and if the test fails, Cthulhu plays an extra of his special attack cards. That sounds nasty. So it looks like we usually want to be 4 up on tests, to account for Elder Thing into Tablet/Cultist, but even then we aren’t safe from drawing two Elder Things or something.

Turn 1

For what i assume is the final time in this campaign, we draw starting hands. Better make it good ones.

Michael gets an exceedingly mediocre mulligan, considering the amount of power that is in his deck at this point. Derringer, .45 Auto and Emergency Cache make for a solid opening however and the two skills are bound to come in handy too. So it’s not a bad hand, just not… one that stands out. Basically, where’s my minigun?
He starts with Ruby and Legrasse and still has two ally slots to go which seems kinda nuts. He gets two free moves per turn, probably more than he’s going to need most of the times.

Lucius once more gets his patented Milan + Memories start and if that’s what you have, do the other three cards even matter? Courages and a Mag Glass are perfectly fine, of course. Like Michael, he has two free actions per turn, but has to take them in one go with the claw. I also get my first look at Andy here. +1 Intellect is great, but that ability (ignore the first AoO if your location doesn’t have clues) doesn’t hold a candle to Ruby’s free move. Still, it means that Lucius is likely going to hit the ground running with 7 intellect and 4 actions by the end of his first turn.

Alright, what’s the plan then. Our goal is defeating Cthulhu, but he can’t be damaged. Maybe he can on the enraged sides of his parts? He doesn’t hunt, only will move through his Patrol keyword, so he’s at least slow and will hang out in the Riverside for a moment. Unlocking at least one of the Rooftops is probably a good call, so i can use my free movement to retreat there in emergency situations.

Cthulhu doesn’t do attacks of opportunity, so Lucius can start working on setting up and getting that rooftop. I play Milan and Mag Glass, then investigate Riverside with Memories committed. I gain a clue and Leo de Luca. For my third action, i investigate again which gains me a card for my task (Seek Answers). I use the Obsidian Claw to grapple to the eastern rooftops, spending the two clues i just earned.

The ability to attack and evade into connecting locations from here seems incredibly powerful. Not sure what a sigil is yet, but that part is also noted. I assume it has to do with the alternate way of defeating Cthulhu that i had been locked out of but who knows what this scenario has in store for us.
Lucius has one action left and i think i want to check out the backside of one of Cthulhu’s cards right away. I evade, targeting the wings – because they deal the most damage/horror on attack they are probably the thing i want to focus on first. The 5 vs 2 succeeds, but not before giving me a heart attack with an Elder Thing token. Luckily it rolled into a -1. Cthulhu’s wings get enraged:

So what am i missing? Are they really just a 2/2/2? Michael doesn’t even need a weapon for that. Am i still in the window after evading the enemy and could i trigger that 1 damage now? I am not sure, so i grimrule it to No. But first, i need to draw my first Cthulhu card. Let’s see what you got, big boy.

All three bodyparts are still in play, so i execute all three of these effects, starting at the top. Michael has to discard a random card from his hand and loses Guts. Then he has to test willpower 3 vs 2, something that Guts would have been really useful for… he fails, placing a horror on Legrasse. Finally, Cthulhu swipes at Michael, dealing him 2 damage and 2 horror. Welp, just like that my allies have their horror soak maxed out, if they take any more, they die. Note to self: Don’t enrage Elder Gods while there’s still someone at the location.

Michael is out for revenge now. I play the Derringer and shoot at the wings. Cthulhu doesn’t count as a Star Spawn, so Legrasse isn’t giving me +1 skill. But 7 vs 2 sounds good enough already. I oversucceed and regain an action. The Wings go into the victory display. Is it that easy? I consider using my last two actions to shoot the claws as well, but decide to play it safe. I use a bonus move to get to the roof tops, then play ECache and the .45 Auto.

End of the enemy phase, Cthulhu partially floods Rivertown, then we have to draw another of his action cards.

The wings are no longer in play and nobody is at Cthulhu’s location, so i skip the first two effects. For the third, i get a choice. I can’t pick option 2 and there’s already been too much horror going around, so i sacrifice one of my actions next turn.

Upkeep draws are Overpower and Man Dex.

Turn 2

(1 doom) Michael finds that Something is in the Water and i have to increase the flood level of a connecting location. I pick Riverside which is now fully flooded. The encounter card surges into Lay Waste, a scenario specific one.

Michael has to test 4 vs 2 at the threat of 2 damage. I decide to throw my Manual Dexterity into the test, in the hopes of drawing something more immediately useful. I succeed and draw Dakota. Her abilities aren’t terribly useful to me right now, but I mean, i suppose she’s at the very least sanity soak if i need it. Lucius gets a new card as well. Gross Plasticity offers choices. The middle one is not available (the roof can’t be flooded), doom is out of the question right now, so we both take a damage. That’s perfectly fine.

Michael only has two actions right now, but if the back of the claws look like the back of the wings, then that’d be enough to take them out. He shoots the .45 Auto at Cthulhu’s Claws, which enrages them. I brace for another Cthulhu card, but …

The claws gain a doom instead of triggering an extra attack. That would cause the agenda to advance early next turn, but we do plan on taking it out now so hopefully it doesn’t matter. Using the Derringer, i go 7 vs 2 against the claw, disabling it. That’s two out of three in the Victory display. If it’s really this easy, this beats out even the Innsmouth finale in terms of how anticlimactic it ends up.

Anyways, Lucius is up. He has three actions left and i think i want to grab some more clues with him now. I move into Southside (2 shr, 2 clues, part. flooded) and just basic investigate twice there at 7 vs 2. Both succeed and i get a card from my task (Cryptic Research). I grapple back up to the rooftops.

Cthulhu patrols to the Eastside which so far has been unflooded. He changes this at the end of the enemy phase of course, adding a flood counter.

For the Cthulhu card, he gets Eldritch Call which surges because nobody is at his location. Seismic Stomp surges for the same reason. We finally end up with Rising Tides which puts Eastside back to unflooded, but floods the Southside instead. What i am trying to achieve here is trying to make him take as long as possible to make his way around town so i can keep plucking away at him from the rooftops.

Upkeep draws are Guts for Michael, while Lucius gets his weakness, Dreams of the Flood. My man, wake up, it’s not a dream.

Turn 3

(2 doom) Under the assumption that the agenda will crank up Cthulhu’s Rage, i will want to shoot his face this round before the agenda advances next round. But first, Arkham is under assault as this treachery that Michael draws informs us:

Despite our notoriously fragile willpower situation, i think we have a chance here. Michael has Guts and if he passes, then Lucius could try an Unexpected Courage on his test, too. The 5 vs 2 for Michael passes (he gets Primed for Action for his draw from Guts) but Lucius fails his 4 vs 2 with a -3 token. The Cthulhu deck reveals Ruthless Charge, but with wings and claws out of play all that is left is the middle effect… which draws a treachery. Back to the encounter deck then, where Deadly Torrent surges into Deadly Torrent which surges into “Cthulhu fhtagn!” So in the end, Michael has to test combat to avoid a direct damage. What a rollercoaster. I fail and take the damage. All that for a drop of blood.

Lucius meanwhile draws Corrosive Fog and this could be a problem if it autofails as it would instantly kill both Milan and Andy.

Testing 7 vs 4, i do however pass.

I have two goals this turn: One, defeat the “Fierce Visage”. Two, snatch the clues from under Cthulhu’s feet at the Eastside. I start off with Lucius because i want to start by playing Cryptic Research on Michael. He draws Luger, Sure Gamble and Mob Enforcer. The Enforcer is too much of a distraction right now, so Lucius spends the action and 4 resources to make the Enforcer go away. He moves into Eastside, another 2 shroud, 2 clue location. These Core Set locations don’t really stand a chance against what i am wielding here, so i just test 7 vs 2 twice, grab the clues and get a card for my task (String Along). I then grapple back to the roof, satisfied with my turn. Of course i did have to take a horror and shuffle my weakness back in, but that seems fair.

Let’s see if we really finish this on turn 3, shall we? Michael shoots the .45 at Cthulhu’s face, to draw out the enrage.

The random discard hits Sure Gamble. Guess i am not getting to play it even once all campaign. Womp womp. I point the Derringer at the face and shoot. 7 vs 2 hits and the last Cthulhu bit enters the victory display. We only advance the act at the end of the round which has me hoping that there’s more going on, so i spend my last action on playing Dakota.

Cthulhu’s enemy card is still on the board, so in the enemy phase, he floods the Eastside. For a Cthulhu card i get this:

We are going to advance the act in a second, so that doesn’t matter. For what its worth, any of the cards that do things based on which body parts are around are blanks as well right now, so i wasn’t particularly afraid of what i’d get here.

In upkeep i draw a Gatling Gun and Milan.

The act advances at the end of the round.

Ah, so there is more going on. The act is repeating and we only get a resolution if we defeat Cthulhu while his rage is at 4. Assuming no other sources of Rage increase that means we do this two more times, but with 3/3/3 and 4/4/4 stats on the body parts. Alright, alright. Wait, how does the Gatling Gun i just drew interact with Cthulhu? Oh boy.

Turn 4

(3 doom) The agenda advances.

Cthulhu moves to Southside and trashes it, in the process putting it back to partially flooded. This means that he will not walk around the path i had planned, but go clockwise instead. I will need to unlock the other rooftop soon. I put clues back on Riverside and Easttown, then shuffle the encounter deck back with a random Star Spawn Elite, as instructed. After that it’s back to drawing encounter cards for the round. Michael draws Elder Mist which attaches to the Rooftop, lowering all stats there until someone oversucceeds. This should be fine. Lucius draws Ominous Silence. As long as he has that card, he’ll have to pay 1 extra for all cards, but an action at an unflooded location is enough to get rid of it. Also fine.

I have a plan to take two of Cthulhu’s body parts out this turn. First, Lucius will evade two of them to draw out their enragement flip. And then Michael can shoot them on his turn. I’ll keep the wings for last this time, to minimize the impact of the extra Cthulhu card drawn when it enrages.

Lucius uses an action to discard Ominous Silence, plays String Along, then uses it to enrage the claw. It suceeds, drawing him an Antikythera. A doom goes on the claw as before. I actually oversucceeded, so i gain a clue from the rooftop as well and discard the Elder Mist. For his final action, he tries to enrage the face as well. I commit Manual Dexterity and succeed, drawing Deduction. Lucius has to discard a random card and loses the Antikythera. Damn.

It’s Michael’s turn to clean up then. The tests are 6 vs 3 (with the .45) and 7 vs 3 (with the Derringer). Cthulhu counts as neither Creature nor Monster (that’s BS, btw), so no bonus from Dakota either. I consider using my Overpower, but i better save that for when i need to hit at difficulty 4 soon. But tests are regular successes and Lucius spends two clues to boost the damage from 2 to 3 on each. The Derringer is now empty, so i play Primed for Action to drop the Luger into play. Then i use the Luger to enrage the wings. It succeeds, the wings flip and i have to take an extra Cthulhu card. It’s Ruthless Charge, a card we’ve seen earlier already. None of its abilities have any effect right now, so we got off with a freebie.

Uderstandably pissed off, Cthulhu keep on his roaring rampage of revenge and fully floods Southside. Then he plays his card for the round:

He’s trying to regenerate! How neat. Michael takes the test and gets a Courage from Lucius. 5 vs 3 succeeds. No regeneration for you.

Upkeep draws are Overpower and Perception.

Turn 5

(1 doom) Cthulhu finally gets some reinforcements.

Michael gets Eyes of Y’ch’lecht and autofails the 3 vs 3. One horror for him and he has to ditch one of the Overpowers. Lucius however draws a big guy, the Coral Star Spawn. We are probably not going to kill him this turn because i want to finish off Cthulhu first, but we’ll see.

Lucius tries to evade the Star Spawn. I want to disengage, so i will not be using String Along. Thankfully, the 5 vs 3 succeeds on the first try. Lucius moves twice, first to Southside, then St. Mary’s, to reveal those locations. I then grapple to the Rooftops in the west, spending the two clues to open them up. From the safety of the western roof, i play Seek Answers, committing Deduction and Perception. I succeed, grabbing two clues off St Mary’s and one from the rooftop. Perception draws Lockpicks.

Michael is out of range for Lucius to durn his two damage attack into three damage, but with the Luger we should still get there. With my first action, i fire both the .45 and the Luger into Cthulhu’s face. Both tests are 6 vs 3 and they succeed. We will be able to advance the agenda and get Cthulhu to Rage 4 at the end of the round. Michael uses his three(!) free moves to join Lucius on the other rooftop. For the remaining two action, he draws cards, finding exactly what i want: A Remington and a Derringer.

In the enemy phase, the Star Spawn readies at the rooftop on the other side of town. Cthulhu shambles into St. Mary’s and fully floods it. The Cthulhu card is Rising Tides, the one we got earlier that lowers his flood level to increase it somewhere else. St. Mary’s goes back to partially flooded, while Easttown goes to fully flooded.

This is what the board looks like right now, as we advance the act, let Cthulhu go to 4 Rage and regain his body parts.

Turn 6

(2 doom) The goal is in sight. As long as i can defeat one of his body parts each round, i am well set up to finish this relatively soon. In the mythos phase, Michael draws another Eyes of Y’ch’lecht, so he gets another direct horror. He also has to discard the Gatling Gun. Bummer. Lucius draws “Cthulhu fthagn!” and fails the 1 vs 3 combat test so he takes a direct damage. He fails with a tablet, so he has to drop a clue back to the rooftop.

The plan to enrage two parts through evasion with Lucius so Michael can shoot them worked out well before, so let’s just go for that again. The test is now 5 vs 4 however and the face and wings both have Alert. I start with the claw for that reason and i draw a 0 on the first try. The claw flips, gets a doom and Michael now has a first target. I want to use String Along to at least try the 6 vs 4 against the face once. I draw +1 and succeed. Nice! String Along draws Memories of another Life, but the random discard from flipping the face threatens to discard it right away. It discards Milan instead, leaving Lucius with Memories and Lockpicks in hand. And oh god, i just realize i have the opportunity here to do something amazing. I hope it goes through. I want to evade-enrage the final body part as well. The test would be 5 vs 4, but i can bring it to 6 vs 4 by committing the Derringer from Michael’s hand. I draw a 0. I pass and flip the Wings. Cthulhu is now fully enraged and throws a bonus attack card at me:

As a result of these effects, Lucius takes a horror and both investigators will lose an action on their next turns. For now, Lucius has an action left however and he investigates his location with Memories of Another Life. It passes he gains a clue, and Memories searches up… Dynamite Blast. I toss a stick of Dynamite into St. Mary’s Hospital (realizing now how bad that sounds) and dealing 3 damage to each of Cthulhu’s Face, Wings, Claw, Shoulder, Knees and Toes, Shoulder Knees and Toes. Yeah, i double and triple checked that it works like that.

That’s going to make Michael’s job a lot easier. In fact, i think i am favored to just finish Cthulhu off right here and now. If only i had my Gatling Gun still, i could do it in one action…
So i shoot the last bullets from both my .45 and my Luger into Cthulhu, one in his claws, the other in his face. The tests are 6 vs 4 and both fail, making him take a horror and a damage in Retalation. Fine. Second action, play Remington and take the free shot from its enters-play-trigger targeting the claw. 7 vs 4 hits with Elder Thing into Elder Thing into -1. And the claw goes down (and with it the doom that was on it). For my third action, i shoot another 7 vs 4 at the face. Actually, i commit Overpower, making it 9 vs 4. I hit with an Elder Sign, which i use to put an ammo on the Luger. Overpower draws into Manual Dexterity. The second body part enters the Victory display.

Eh, didn’t quite manage to finish him off after all, but he’s one damage away from falling.

The Coral Star Spawn tries to catch up and moves into Southside. Cthulhu fully floods St. Mary’s, then stares at us with his Fifth Eye:

Shouldn’t matter anymore, i think?

Upkeep draws are ECache and Book of Verse.

Turn 7

(3 doom) The agenda advances and Cthulhu gets to rage one last time. He destroys St.Mary’s and after reshuffling the encounter deck it’s off to what i assume will be one last round of encounter cards. Dreams of R’lyeh for Michael. And Lay Waste for Lucius. Lucius doesn’t pass his test and takes another 2 damage which puts him at 5 damage now.

To make a long story short, Michael shoots Cthulhu for his last bit of remaining health and disables the wings. I skip ahead to the end of the round (resolving a couple effects along the way that don’t matter in the grand scheme) and advance the act which sends me off to the Resolution.

Resolution

We manage to drive back the Great Old One. It disappears into the water and Arkham is safe… for now.

Cthulhu is driven away , we win the campaign! We are rewarded with our usual celebratory trauma and are sent off to the epilogue which i won’t spoil for you. Neither will i do so for the Design Notes which i will now read in peace.

After-Game Thoughts

Not bad. Not exceptional either, but as far as campaign finishers go, this was perfectly fine. I am happy that this finale manages to both do something unique and appropriately grand with the extra Cthulhu board and Cthulhu cards – while at the same time keeping it simple and approachable. It ended up on the easier side of campaigns, but i feel like my investigators were exceptionally well set up for this scenario (this campaign, actually). What also makes me appreciate this finale a bit more than many others is that this was just the basic ending out of three possible ones. The Doom of Arkham part 2 has another version that works differently (something about sigils, i assume from what was printed on the rooftops) so that’s something i will want to check out on the second play. And eventually i might even get that Sepulchre scenario with the alternate ending, but that seems remarkably difficult to get as it basically requires you to claim everything that can be found: every glyph and artifact.

So yeah, looking forward to diving back in.

Next up

I might do a final look at the investigator decks or a more detailed round of after-campaign thoughts sometime next week. Not sure yet.

Interludes

Before I get to the two-parter that makes up the finale of the campaign, there are a couple of interludes to go through that hopefully reward me for my efforts – or not, depending on how sufficient they deem my achievements. As a reminder, i have not spent my XP yet because i want to first see if we get any more from these interludes. Michael has 4 unspent (and would really like another point so he can get a Gatling Gun) and Lucius has 5 (but only really needs 4 of them to get that last Cryptic Research).

Sepulchre of the Sleeper
“That is not dead which can eternal lie and with strange eons even death may die.”
Possibly the most quoted line of Lovecraft’s and it’s what we can decipher from the glyphs we discovered. As a reward, we get to add a 0 token to the bag. I learn what the campaign requires me to enter what is basically the “secret” scenario of Drowned City, the special ending. I won’t call it out here for spoiler reasons, but i was pretty far away. It’s difficult! For those that unlock the super special ending, there’s a scenario here (i think it replaces the finale) but for me right now, it’s onto the next interlude.

The Awakening
We bear witness as Cthulhu awakens and rises from the sea.
The symbol tokens in the bag are being reset. All cultists, tablets and Elder Things currently in there are removed and instead replaced by 2 of each of those. Basically, we trade a Tablet for two Cultists. We return to Arkham.

Return to Arkham
Tillinghast receives us back home, visibly satisfied.
We gain experience equal to the amount of progress we made on our tasks. That’s an extra 5xp for both investigators. Very nice! We also each get to check a section relating to our specific tasks. Five or more progress are required to get the Completed side of our task from now on, and five progress is exactly what we have. Note that this means that the choice to erase one of your progress can only be taken if we are sure that we fulfill it on every scenario. Tall order, but we did it. I glance at the punishment for failing to get the 5 progress: A bad token in the bag and a trauma. Yeah, we want to avoid that…
In any case, from now on Michael gets another move action each turn and Lucius gets +1 intellect and can draw a card after clearing a location. Powerful bonuses for the final two scenarios indeed.

And with that, we are sent off to The Doom of Arkham, part 1. I spend my remaining XP. 9 for Michael which gets him a Shotgun and a Gatling Gun. Not drawing a weapon last scenario annoyed me, so let’s bring some extra heat for the big guy. To make room, i toss both You’ve Had Worse. Lucius gets the second copies of Cryptic Research and Antikythera. They replace the last copies of ECache and Pickpocketing i had in the deck. Both investigators got some substantial last-minute upgrades there. That plus the now flipped tasks and i don’t see myself struggling with the finale too much.

Setup

A month passes and people in Arkham report a mysterious sleeping disease. Also, Tillinghast is a bad guy and the missing shipment was actually not his. Working together with the cops, specifically one Inspector Legrasse, we try to find Tillinghast and confront him.

Using the familiar locations from the Midnight Masks set, we set up our grid of seven locations which we need to search. Under each of these locations (except for the one we start at) is a facedown encounter card. Five of those are a treachery from the Midnight Masks set. The other one is Tillinghasts Esoterica, his shop. Obviously they are randomized so we don’t know what’s what.

The encounter deck is fairly slim and features both of the Deep one sets, two Star Spawns, and the Dreams and Domination encounter sets.

Two doom are added to the agenda from the start, one for each investigator. The threshold on the agenda is 14, so 12 more to go. We get a resign option on the agenda where we give up the search (probably not a good idea) and also a Forced effect that will increase the flood level of the lead investigators location by one each time doom is added. The lead investigator is Michael. There is however no Drowning effect defined, so at least we won’t die when we stay in the deep water.

The act is also only one card. The objective is to be at the Tillinghast Esoterica with at least one Artifact in our hands. If we do, we can optionally end the scenario at the end of the round, but we are encouraged to find as many artifacts as we can. Makes sense.
To help us with this we get an ability on the act. For an action and two clues, we can draw the top card beneath a location. If it’s an asset, we get to keep it, so it stands to reason that artifacts will be placed under locations some time during the scenario as well.

Right, this doesn’t sound so difficult. Find clues, spend them to uncover encounter cards from locations until we find the Esoterica. Probably eat a Hunting Shadow or False Lead a few times on the way or maybe just get lucky and get it first try.

The setup instructions don’t tell us what to do with a Tillinghast enemy that is also in the Doom of Arkham set. A quick look into Discord reveals that it’s meant to be set aside. There seems to be a bunch of little mistakes in the setup instructions this time around. Hemlock Vale already had a couple of those as well, FFG clearly should spend more time on making sure these are all correct. It’s overall not a huge issue and the FAQ will clear this up, but if i were a new player, this could trip me up quite a bit when i shuffle Tillinghast into my encounter deck now and just randomly draw him on turn 3.

While we don’t start with any artifacts this time, we do have one piece of support. Inspector Legrasse is a powerful ally and starts in play for Michael. He adds +1 to attacks against Deep Ones and Star Spawn, but perhaps more importantly he soaks for 3 and 3. For the final two scenarios he also won’t take an ally slot, so this just solves Michael’s main issue of being weak to horror.

Turn 1

(2 doom) Considering the power that is now in our decks, i expect some preem starting hands!

Michael: 45 Auto, Gatling Gun, Primed for Action, Where’s the Party, Ruby
Lucius: Milan, Memories, Cryptic, Backstab, Seek Answers

With both Milan and Ruby, i don’t expect Michael to ever take a move action again. And Lucius draw is generically very powerful. I’ll probably just go for Leo de Luca and Milan first turn again and then let it escalate from there.

Le’s get the big new toy on the board first. I play Primed for Action, putting the Gatling Gun into play. That leaves Michael with 2 resources, not enough to play Ruby. But with an action at our disposal now that can deal up to six damage, why not just go for Where’s the Party straight away? So i do that with my second action. I check for Victory enemies in the deck and the only two are Star Spawns that i actually can’t take down in one go (one of them regenerates once, the other is Aloof). So i just take the Elder Deep One before we get it at a less opportune time.

After drawing two cards (Dakota and Derringer), i unload 4 of the 13 ammo i have on the Gatling into the Deep One, murdering it… with an Elder Sign, so i even get an ammo back. 10 ammo to go on the big toy. Finally, Michael moves into Southside(2 shroud, 2 clues) with his No Place Like Home move.

Lucius plays Milan, then basic investigates with Memories committed. I pick up a clue and Leo de Luca. Next up is Cryptic Research, drawing Man Dex, another Seek Answers and a Mag Glass. The Mag Glass goes on the board. My third action is spent investigating again, grabbing the last clue on Rivertown and getting rewarded with a card from my task: Unexpected Courage. With the fourth and final action, Lucius joins Michael at Southside.

Upkeep draws are Where’s The Party and Lockpicks.

[EDIT: While i am reading through this, editing and formatting it after having played the scenario, i realize that i somehow forgot that Where’s The Party also engages the enemy. So i could have taken the Aloof Star Spawn here and killed it after all. Oh well.]

Turn 2

(3 doom) Michael has to add a flood token to his location. Michael draws Deep One Thrall which engages him and knocks the .45 Auto out of his hand. Lucius gets Young Deep One which engages him and deals a horror to Milan Christopher.

Two enemies straight away, how exciting. That means i can hopefully show off how good the Minigun is. The two enemies have a combined combat of 6 and a combined health of 5. If i were to spend 5 ammo from the Gatling, that’d be a 11 vs 6 to kill both of them. That seems like a great deal, so i take it. I briefly see my life flashing before my eyes as i see the first token is an Elder Thing: -2 to the test and because the location is flooded, draw another token. This could actually fail on a -4 now. I draw Cultist which is a -3. Close! I should have remembered about the rolling -2 in the bag and spent that extra ammo to cover it! But i got away with it and both enemies are down for the price of an action and 5 ammo.
For my second i action, i spend the clues that Lucius collected with Michael and reveal the encounter card beneath Southside. Hunting Shadow, which deals 2 damage to Michael. Sure. I move into St. Mary’s (2 shroud, 2 clues) and for my last action and the rest of my money i play Dakota.

None of these 2 shroud locations should prove any challenge to Lucius, so i don’t see any reason to waste my cards on doing something else than basic investigates. Due to an autofail, i actually end up spending 3 of my 4 action on getting the two clues on Southside (my task draws me Backstab as a reward). The fourth action is then just spent on following Michael again.

Guts and Milan are drawn in upkeep.

Turn 3

(4 doom) A flood counter goes on St. Mary’s. Dreams of R’lyeh enters Michael’s threat area. That sucks so much as it brings down his max sanity to 4. I do hold a Guts, but even then we are looking at a 4 vs 3 to discard it which can easily fail. Thankfully i have currently 5 sanity soak in allies on the board. Lucius draws Oppressive Influence and will get 2 horror if he can’t pass a willpower test 2 vs 2. I decide to give myself a fighting chance with an Unexpected Courage… and pass with a -1. At least there’s that.

I’ll have Lucius go first because if i check the face down encounter card and it’s a False Lead, i don’t want it to surge. So my first action is spent collecting a clue from St. Mary’s, then the second spends two of my three clues to reveal the encounter card. It is indeed a False Lead. I commit the spare Milan from my hand to test 7 vs 4 and pass. With my third action i pick up the final clue on St. Mary’s and draw Dreams of Clay for my task. Finally, i move into the Miskatonic University (4 clues, 4 shroud, 1 victory).

Michael is looking for trouble again and plays Where’s the Party. I find Star Spawn Observer which appears at my location exhausted and aloof. I draw two cards, Overpower and my second Derringer. I engage it with Dakota, then unload the final 5 shots from the Gatling into it. It dies and i gain a Victory. I then play the first Derringer, replacing my Gatling Gun which is out of ammo. For my bonus action, i move into MU where Lucius is waiting.

Michael gets Watch This(3). Good card but he’s only at 1 resource right now. Lucius draws his personal weakness, Dreams of the Flood, which will deal a horror to him very soon.

Turn 4

(5 doom) MU gets partially flooded. Michael draws Tortured Visions, a very annoying card for me right now. It’s a willpower test against 3 which would if i fail deal a horror and knock a random card out of my hand. I don’t really want to lose any of my cards right now, but spending Guts and Watch This here also seems like overkill. One of them alone wouldn’t seal the deal though because of that Dream’s of R’lyeh.

I end up throwing both skills at the test. It’s a 7 vs 3 that way and if i pass i will gain a card for Guts and a resource for Watch This. If i fail i will lose one of Ruby/Derringer/Overpower, both skill cards and the resource i staked on Watch This. I draw a skull which is currently a -1. Phew. The card i draw for my Guts is the other Guts which is neat.
Lucius mythos phase is much less exciting. He gets Drawn to Darkness which will reduce his max hand size to 5 for the rest of the scenario. He’s at 7 cards in hand right now, but we have handled this effect just fine a few times before.

To get the clues on the MU, i don’t really want to test 6 vs 4 four times, so i move back to the St Mary’s Hospital and play both of my Seek Answers there. That allows me to test 6 vs 2 instead and i can get 2 clues off of the MU for each of the events. I suceed twice, picking up the 4 clues (drawing Cryptic Research for my task and getting a horror from my weakness which shuffles back). After moving back into the MU, i still spent 4 actions to pickup 4 clues, but doing 2 easy tests instead of 4 that could fail was very worth it. And i need to spend the cards in my hand anyways now or i’d just have to discard to handsize later. With that in mind, i end Lucius turn by playing Cryptic Research on Michael who draws Luger, Viola Case and Confiscation. His Derringer is shuffled back into the deck to satisfy the cops. If only i didn’t play the Derringer already, i could have shuffled back my empty Gatling instead.

To recover from the cop shakedown, Michael does actually have some gas in his hand. But only two resources. So i do what i have to and use two of my actions to gain resources. The other plays my second Derringer. The free action moves me ito Northside (3 shroud, 4 clues, 1 victory).

Upkeep draws are Man Dex and String Along. Lucius has to discard down to 5, losing a Backstab.

Turn 5

(6 doom) Flood goes onto Northside. Michael draws Domination and despite not being scenario-specific i believe this is the first time i see this card:

Both of my investigators have free actions from somewhere, so everyone losing an action this turn seems fair enough. Lucius adds another card to his threat area, Deep One Ambush. Next time he engages a fishman, he’ll suffer an extra attack from it.

Lucius spends two of his clue to check the facedown encounter card beneath the MU. It’s Tillinghast Esoterica, the thing we are looking for.

There are now five artifacts beneath the Esoterica: The four we uncovered during the campaign plus a fifth one that was added by the scenario. That means Randall Tillinghast is currently a 6/12/3 with Retaliate and Relentless. Thankfully his last number doesn’t scale, so we can keep him in check with evasion from Lucius. Quick check with regards to clue requirements: If we want to recover all 5 artifacts (and i don’t see why we wouldn’t), this would take 10 clues. We have two, six more are on the Esoterica itself. Not quite enough, so if i want to do it without having to refill a Victory location with another six clues i would want to get those from the Northside first. But that’d potentially set me back two turns and i don’t really need to bend over backwards for Victory at this point, my decks are done. I probably also want to play down my String Along for this. The lost action to the Domination treachery actually limits me here as i can’t play String Along, Move in, Evade anymore. I decide to just move things along. I move into the Esoterica and evade Tillinghast, committing Man Dex to put this into “everything but the autofail” range. I suceed by enough to gain a clue from the Esoterica and draw Perception off of Man Dex.

Spending his free action and a regular one, Michael follows into the Esoterica. I spend two clues and my second action to uncover a random artifact. Since one of the artifacts is doublesided i use a dice instead of shuffling to make it fair. The doublesided one is the one i most want, after all (the claw). I find the shards of Y’ch’lecht, so Michael gets to ignore the first attack of a Deep One or Star Spawn each turn now. With one fewer artifact in his hands, Randall “shrinks” to a 5/10/3.

In the enemy phase, Randall readies and engages Lucius.

Upkeep draws are Unexpected Courage and Memories of Another Life. Oh fancy, i wonder what we can do with that at this point! Discarding to hand size, Lucius ditches Lockpicks.

At the end of the round, i actually have the option to declare the scenario over, but i want to keep going until i have at least seen the new artifact for the scenario and recovered my Claw.

Turn 6

(7 doom) Water rushes into the Esoterica. We have another 7 doom left on the agenda threshold. Assuming that i get at least one artifact per round, that is plenty. A second Dreams of R’lyeh comes down for Michael. Yikes. Lucius draws a second Drawn to Darkness, but since that one is limit 1 per investigator it fizzles and Lucius gets a lucky break.

I spend a moment checking my options for Memories of another Life. With the limited card pool, there aren’t any great damage options here (maybe i should have only played one Backstab, leaving the other for the Memories as an option?)… unless i want to drop a stick of dynamite on us of course (i don’t). So maybe the most prudent thing to do is just go for Nautical Charts again after all and just plow through this location’s clues.

Lucius evades Tillinghast, committing Memories. I oversucceed, gain a clue and put Nautical Charts into play. I investigate using the Charts, at 8 vs 4 which is a success and i discard Dreams of Clay for an extra clue. With my final two actions, i spend the four clues i have to pick up two artifacts. I get both of the ones i want: The Obsidian Claw and also the Horror in Clay.

Wait, that’s not actually a good effect. Cute, we picked up a cursed artifact. Randall isn’t a fan of losing it however and his statline goes down to 3/6/3. Ah, that’s much more reasonable now, isn’t it.

Michael plays his Luger, then shoots both the Luger and the Derringer at Randall. Randall is neither Creature nor Monster nor Star Spawn nor Deep One, so none of the traits my allies are looking for are relevant here. Still, it’s a 6 vs 3 with the Luger and a 7 vs 3 with the Derringer. Both succeed, dealing 3 damage in total. For the final action, i play the Viola Case, and find a shotgun in my deck.

Randall readies again, this time engaging Michael.

Upkeep draws are Unexpected Courage, one for each investigator.

I decline ending the scenario again, i am going to grab one more artifact and 2 VP next turn.

Turn 7

(8 doom) The Esoterica is now fully flooded, for whatever that is worth. Michael draws Tortured Visions again, but at this point it no longer matters. I test 1 vs 3, fail and gain a horror and lose a Man Dex from my hand. Lucius draws ANOTHER Drawn to Darkness which yet again fizzles and gives him a freebie. There’s three of those in the encounter set? That seems excessive.

Alright, let’s finish this. Lucius investigates with the Charts, hoping to get the final two clues from the Esoterica. He succeeds and discards String Along to gain the extra clue. For his second action, he grabs an artifact, the Barrier Node. Randall becomes a 2/4/3 with 3 damage on him. I backstab him to finish him off.

I forfeit my remaining actions on both investigators and skip ahead to the end of the round, where i advance the act. And ah, i get punished for getting lazy and not recovering the final artifact as well. The back of the act asks me if i have recovered at least 5 artifacts…. which i have not. Randall gloats about us being too late and that Arkham’s destruction is at hand. We gain an experience for suffering through the rant and then move onto the resolution.

Resolution

Wait, did i actually just get rewarded for recovering only four artifacts with an XP? Weird. But sure, i’ll take it. We update in our campaign log which artifacts are available to us and gain XP. In total i earn 5: two from locations, one from Tillinghast, one from the Star Spawn, one for listening to Tillinghast monologue with his final breath.
We also have to record which locations were flooded at the end of the scenario: Southside, St. Mary’s, MU, Northside and the Esoterica.

For Michael, i spend the xp to replace Intimidation with something far more intimidating: Another Gatling Gun. I liked what it did at the start of the scenario, that was satisfying. For Lucius… i don’t really see anything that i still want so i just skip the upgrades for him.

After-Game Thoughts

This felt more like a souped-up version of a Hemlock Vale style prelude to me than a full scenario. At least at this point in the campaign, this didn’t really challenge me, my investigators or their decks in any way. That is fine, it is titled part 1 after all and is meant to be a bit of the calm before the storm that hopefully part 2 will deliver.

Not much to say here otherwise. The decks were doing their things, the Gatling Gun was suitably impressive in how it tore through the first couple enemies. Lucius is just super consistent all the way through, has been for a while.

Sounds like we are ready to finish this.

Next up

Time to face the old squidface in Doom of Arkham, part 2. I hope i can get it done by tomorrow, this series has gone on for long enough now :D

Today, I am taking a break from my ongoing Drowned City campaign to put the last finishing touches on the first versions for my next set of investigators in the Arkham’s Finest series. I gave a preview of what i am cooking a bit ago, but a good amount of things have changed since then.

They are all now leaving the initial design and concept stage and are ready for playtesting and getting tweaked. If you are interested in giving these a go yourself, you can find a download here: https://upvi.org/myTmrZC8wo5YOWj/file
(Note that this download is only good for about a month after this article went up. If you see this in the future and the link is expired, let me know and i will upload a fresh one. Hopefully i will have updated versions by then though!)

That upload is a 120mb file that includes both the Strange Eons files and a basic set of png images (without bleed) exported from them. I included the SE files so that you can modify the cards with Strange Eons yourself in case you want to tweak something to your own liking or change the images.

With that out of the way, let me introduce to you the roster of Arkham’s Finest Series 2.

Guardian-Survivor : The Hand of God

I already talked about Sofia and why she replaces Margaret Grady, the Railroad Worker, in this batch. I didn’t change much about her since then, but i did change the Elder Sign. I think her Bless focus gives her enough of an interesting playstyle without also needing an ability to tutor her signature. I don’t want Penance to replace the need or want for other weapons in her deck. Also, i want to keep that trick (tutoring up a signature with the Elder Sign) up my sleeve for an investigator concept that i am considering for Series 3.

Seeker-Rogue: The Underworld Chemist

Edwin’s cards didn’t change much since the preview article. I tweaked the weakness a bit, but overall this seemed like a solid place to start. The abilities on the upgrade sheet of the Field Lab are still mostly in the air and i plan on playtesting him as one of the first investigators (alongside Sofia) in Drowned City once my current playthrough is done to see how the stuff on there right now feels.
Since Lucius already plays the role of the very open-ended Seeker-Rogue extremely well, I do specialize a good deal more with Edwin. Still, with how many Researchables there are plus the Customizables, there should be a good amount of range to him.

Rogue-Mystic: The Hustler

A lot happened here, as The Hustler was barely even a concept when i made the first preview. What I ended up here started as a character playing shell games with cards, but once i wanted to involve more than 3 cards, the whole flavor changed to the Deck of Many Things idea you see here now.
He shares Sefina’s card pool and the idea behind him is that he is sort of Sefina for assets. It was important to me that he can use his combat stat well, which is a notable blind spot for Sefina. Mace pulling out a Gatling Gun with his deck is definitely something that i want to enable, but of course feel free to find Shrivellings or whatever else your heart desires too.
I also mirrored Sefina’s special mulligan in a way. The text didn’t fit the front of the card anymore so i had to put it on the back like was done for George, but i hope it’s still obvious enough how everything works here. The Elder Sign and both signatures all reward you for having 5 or more cards beneath the Deck of Many Things, my hope is that this is enough incentive to not just have 3 cards there for more control over what is drawn from the deck. If it isn’t, i will probably change the weakness to at least not punish putting more cards there.
Getting to this design was a bit of a wild ride with a bunch of dead ends, but i am very eager to see how this plays now.

Mystic-Guardian: The Lionheart

Since we last saw her, Imani has gained her weakness, the Echo of the Pride “Sauti ya Kundi” which will test her on her worthiness from time to time. To give her another signature beyond her permanent one, i also added a one-time cancel that she can use to get a pause from all the treacheries she likely invites. That cancel is really strong and i am considering slapping a 2 cost on it to compensate but didn’t want to for this first playtest. It also needs a new name, the “At All Cost” is still from a time when the card canceled a thing, but drew two other encounter cards instead…
She’s hard to estimate how good she really ends up in the end, so there’s been some back and forth on numbers everywhere.
As with Mace, that 4 in combat is a very core element of her design, i want her to be able to use the weapons from her Guardian subclass, something that Diana was never quite able to do in a satisfying way.

Survivor-Seeker: The Salvager

Felix asks a simple question: What if i want to play a Survivor flavored Seeker, but don’t want to play the (imo) completely overpowered Difficulty Zero deck that Darrell spearheads? Accordingly I kept Felix very generic in his abilities, giving him a mix of survivor recursion and seeker draw, then added a splash of team spirit through the signature that allows recurring other players cards. So he can run a variety of different strategies that his cardpool allows for. Flavorwise, i did contemplate making him a proper forensic scientist, but all the ideas i had for that felt more Seeker-Survivor to me than Survivor-Seeker. So Felix ends up being a talented street rat that plays informer to the cops or sells restored texts to the MU. I am not completely convinced by the title “The Scavenger” for this character, but it’s the best i’ve got so far. I have half a mind to actually call him “The Street Rat”.
On a self congratulatory note, I’m somewhat proud of the weakness. I think it solves the role of a recursion disabling treachery a lot nicer than Wendy’s “Oops, i don’t have a deck” weakness does and also doesn’t require all that shuffling upkeep that Mara from my first series of investigators introduces with her discard-less playstyle.

What’s next?

With design done, I now move into development. Taking in feedback, playtesting myself and changing what I have until I am fully satisfied. Once i finish my ongoing blind run of Drowned City, i am going to jump into that campaign again straight away and my current plan is to do so with Sofia and Edwin. If you have any feedback to give, please let me know, either in the comments here, on reddit or on Discord.

Setup

After leaving the Drowned Quarters, we find ourselves in deep waters. We need to make it to the Western Wall before we drown.

At first glance, this scenario seems pretty straightforward.

Starting at the Obsidian Foundation at the bottom, we need to make our way up to the top. The exit location is shuffled somewhere in the upper level of 3 cards. We start in a fully flooded location and even the next one is fully flooded, too. The water levels then taper off to the top of the map. There are two quirks to movement in this setup: One, we can not enter an unrevealed location if the one we are coming from still has clues. Two, every location is connected to every location one level above and below it, but not to the ones on the same level. So, if we were on the far right location on level 4, we could move to the far left location on level 5 from there – but not to the middle location on level 4 despite them being on the table next to each other. I hope i don’t make any mistakes with this!

Just like in the Drowned Quarter, the act allows us to spend two clues to lower the flood level of our locatian as a free trigger. Good thing too, otherwise i would probably just drown on turn 1… Speaking of the act, this scenario only has a single act and agenda, so the situation is clear right from the start: Reach the Western Wall at the top of the level, and i have 13 doom worth of time to do it.

The encounter deck is very similar to that of the previous scenario, using all sorts of Underwater, Flood, Deep One and related things, plus the usual R’lyeh and Inescapable sets. As a cute little novelty, this scenario also uses Agents of Cthulhu. There is one funky bit about the setup that is a bit suspicious: The setup tells us to remove The Inescapable from the game if the creature got defeated, but has no instructions for when that is not the case. For the Apiary scenario, the exact same thing was an error in the book. I take a look at the setup instructions for the Western Expedition version of this scenario and see there that it tells you to set the Inescapable aside and shuffle his treacheries into the deck. I make the call to use that for this scenario as well. A strict reading would have the Inescapable be shuffled into the encounter deck, but that seems wrong to me?

The token effects this scenario seem mostly fine. Skulls scale with location level, so will eventually be -3s, -4s, even -5s. The tablet is a -3 that on fail increases flood level. The Elder Thing is a -3, but turns into a -5 in fully flooded locations. So while I was avoiding non-flooded spaces for difficult tests in Drowned Quarters, i will want to avoid fully flooded ones in this scenario. Noted!

We get to pick artifacts again and while Lucius is pretty much married to his Obsidian Claw now, i actually have some options for Michael. Laudanum to help with horror. I didn’t really need it so far, but the Young Deep Ones from Agents of Cthulhu are another source of horror that i know about. There’s the Barrier Node which could help me take attacks of opportunity aggressively, a nice combo with the Remington. Or a diving suit, because this level starts in deep water already. So what am i more likely to die to? Drowning? Or horror? I decide to take the Diving Suit, i have three allies in my deck now that can take some of the horror for me hopefully.

Turn 1

Some decent starting hands.

Michael: Viola Case, Remington, 45 Auto, Dakota, Primed for Action
Lucius: Deduction, Deduction, Lockpicks, Mag Glass, Memories

Bunch of weapons for Michael, so he’s happy. Lucius hand is a bit skill heavy, but it does allow him to quickly investigate at the start and drop some flood levels for us to survive.

Lucius takes the lead. I have Memories in my hand again, so i do want to do something stupid with it again. The best options i see are Leo De Luca, Nautical Charts and Lawrence Carlisle. Probably has to be Leo, right? The other question is, do i want to use my Deductions here? I would like to clean the location, so Michael immediately has the option to move up, so i probably will need to. Alright, here’s the plan: I’ll investigate with Memories, get Leo De Luca, then just investigate three more times and save the Deductions for the tougher locations. And if i fail a test, i can always make up for it with a Deduction if i have to.
I play Mag Glass and investigate 5 to 1, committing Memories for another +2. I draw -4 which i beat even before skill icons, get a clue and put Leo de Luca on the board. I then use the other three actions to investigate, using the first two clues as soon as i have them to lower the flood level once. I pull three tokens, don’t see the autofail, so the location is now cleared off of clues (Lucius gets credit for his task), only partially flooded and Lucius still has 2 clues on him for later.

Michael uses Primed for Action to play the 45 Auto, then moves into level 2.

Oh, a Star Spawn on turn 1? Thankfully it enters play exhausted and will even stay down for another turn. That will give me all the time in the world that i need to kill it. With my third action, i play the Remington, which fires off a free shot at the monster when it enters play. It hits with an Elder Sign, so i now have 5 ammo on both my 45 Auto and my Remington. Feels good!

Upkeep draws are Watch This and Milan. Ooooh, great draws, both of them.

Turn 2

(1 doom) Michael draws Cyclopean Architecture which tries to knock two cards out of his hand if he can’t pass a test 1 vs 2. I am holding some really good cards right now, so i already have to use my Watch This on it, making it a 4 vs 2. That’s dodgy enough that i don’t really feel like betting my resources on passing it by 1 and just take the test without investing cash into it. I draw a 0, so i would have gotten away with it. But at least the treachery is handled! Lucius draws Undersea Hunt, and i don’t think i have seen this one last scenario.

If this goes through, it would probably force me to spend two clues to avoid drowning. The test is 5 vs 3 and i pass, drawing my second Elder Sign in not even two turns. Good omens?

Lucius plays Milan, then spends his second action on the intellect test on the location. 6 vs 3 passes and he draws the Seafloor Frieze which attaches to the Obsidian Foundations.

Two tests need to pass to earn what i assume is another Glyph and possibly a Victory. If anyone can do it, it would be Michael, so let’s leave it for now. Lucius uses the claw to get into Michael’s location and investigates there twice with his remaining actions. I spend the two clue to lower the flood level here. We are both not in danger of drowning this turn, but i want to make the chaos bag slightly weaker, now Michael’s upcoming attacks against the Star Spawn won’t have to fear running into a -5 token.

Michael fires both of his guns into the Star Spawn. They hit and i get my first point of Victory. Now that he has 4 resources again, he plays Dakota with his final action.

Upkeep draws are a Luger and a Backstab.

Turn 3

(2 doom) Eye of the Deep comes off of the encounter deck for Michael, so unless he gets rid of it, he has to treat his Tablet tokens as Elder Things. This almost works to my advantage, as long as i stay out of the fully flooded locations, but could have consequences when the Inescapable or other enemies show up that trigger stuff on the Elder Thing token.

For now, the point is moot, i am not spending actions to test 3 vs 3 to maybe discard a treachery. Speaking of the Inescapable, Lucius draws Still Behind You but passes the 5 vs 2 so we escape a little longer.

I now have a decision to make. Do i go back with Michael to solve that Seafloor Frieze thing? The fight test is no problem, but Willpower 3 vs 2 could fail a couple times… unless i commit my Viola Case to the test, i guess. If i do go down there, Lucius doesn’t really have anything to do anymore as i don’t want him to open up locations – for now, that’s Michael’s job until we have his task done. I decide to move on forwards, we can spend any time left over in the end to explore the top two levels instead. With his first action, Michael moves up and actually we get two locations for the price of one here.

Moving into the Sunken Stairway on level 3, the Undersea Vault is also put into play. This gives Lucius plenty to do for a bit. And just like that, i revise my plan that i just made seconds ago. While Lucius is taking care of these, Michael can do the Frieze on the Seafloor. He moves twice, arriving back at the starting location.

I have to say, so far these locations are a lot more engaging than the ones we found in the Drowned Quarter. Using the claw, Lucius jumps straight into the Undersea Vault. Let’s check out the text on its back first. Testing 6 vs 2 succeeds and i learn the glyph for “City”. You know, i got 17 of these glyphs in my logbook by now and i don’t think i can use the extra ability on a single one of my artifacts… kinda weird. I hope this glyph thing has another payoff later. Lucius plays the Lockpicks, so we can crack the 5 shroud on this location. Third action, i use the Lockpicks, add a Deduction to the test and arrive at 12 vs 5. I don’t draw the autofail so i clear the victory location and progress my task. Only two more to go for Lucius (4 more for Michael). With his final action, Lucius moves up to the Stairway.

For upkeep, Lucius gets a Perception and Michael has the special unit of underwater cops show up and confiscate his guns. Ah crap. At least the waters are quiet right now. Michael has a Luger and a Viola Case in hand still, but only 3 resources, so rebuilding could be a bit annoying.

Turn 4

(3 doom) Michael draws Deadly Torrent, the flood related treachery that threatens to deal him a damage and take one of his assets that take a slot unless he passes a 5 vs 4 fight test. Welp, the only asset i have now that would qualify is Dakota and i’d rather not lose her now. So instead i decide to take the agility test that will deal a damage and horror when it fails. At 3 vs 4 i am unlikely to pass, but i’d rather take that than risk losing my ally. I do indeed fail and have to take the horror (Dakota soaks for me) and the damage (i am forced to put it on the Diving Suit). Lucius draws “Look Out!”, a scenario specific new thing.

Can you imagine being Joe Diamond and having this in your threat area. Oh boy. Lucius will likely get this in his threat area, but at least he has a decent chance of getting rid of it. Still, it deals horror. Not liking that right now. I draw an Elder Sign on the test, but his Elder Sign is so shitty, it doesn’t even pass. Look Out enters his threat area.

At least no enemies, am i right? Michael tries to do the tests on Seafloor Frieze. And immediately passes both, thanks to the skull only being a -1 down there. I do indeed earn my 18th glyph (“Parasite”) and gain a Victory. I then play a Luger and move up, into the Undersea Vault.

I would really like something with an agility icon or two (other than Backstab) to commit to the upcoming end of turn “Look Out!” test, so Lucius spends his first action drawing a card. It’s a Mag Glass. I’ll do one more, if that also misses i’ll just have to commit Backstab after all. Artistic Inspiration off the top, that’s a wild icon. Actually, i can play it and get my icon that way if i need it, of course. Third action, i play the Inspiration. With my fourth action, i investigate with the Lockpicks, picking up one of the four clues at my location. The end of turn test to discard the treachery is 5 vs 3, with the AI included i would beat everything but the autofail and the -4. Good enough. I draw a skull which is a -3, so i do need that +1 from the Inspiration to pass. But the treachery is done, that’s what counts. I discard the Mag Glass from my hand to recharge the Inspiration token.

In upkeep, i draw Guts for Michael and Courage for Lucius. There’s the icons i’ve been looking for.

Turn 5

(4 doom) Michael draws Dreaming Migration which (like the only other time we’ve drawn it so far) surges because no enemies are on the board. It surges into Something in the Water which introduces a flood token to the Undersea Vault and then surges again. Third draw for Michael is Still Behind You. The test is 3 vs 2, but i really don’t want the Inescapable now, so I commit Viola Case to turn it into a 5 vs 2. I needed that Case to find a gun :< At least the test succeeds. Lucius gets Deadly Torrent and has to test 5 vs 4 to avoid a damage and a horror. I do have a Courage in hand, but decide to save it. I get a -3 which puts the fail out of range of the Artistic Inspiration too, so i just have to eat it. Milan takes the horror for me.

To start us off, Michael reveals the other location at level 3 by moving up.

Yikes, that’s a point of horror. This turn didn’t really go as well as i hoped and i spend my other two actions just on joining Lucius on the Stairway.

For Lucius, i probably don’t want to open up a location with him still (Michael still needs to do 3 of them for his task), so i should probably just clear this location so we can move up to level 4 next turn. 3 clues to go and wanting to save my cards i just do them without any commits. Lockpick tests 11 vs 3, the other two tests are 6 vs 3. They all pass. Lucius now has 8 clues on him, enough to drop the flood level four times if required. For his last action, he draws a card and gets Milan Christopher.

Upkeep draws are Backstab and Courage.

Turn 6

(5 doom) I draw another “Look Out!”, for Michael this time. I have Guts and Courage in hand as my only cards and i think this treachery is crippling enough that i want to commit both. I pass and draw Man Dex for my troubles. Lucius draws Crumbling Masonry, a card he has seen a lot this campaign. 5 vs 3, failing means taking 2 damage. He currently has 2 damage on him already, but i don’t think this is concerning enough to throw a Courage in there. I draw a 0 and things are good.

Moving forwards, Michael opens up the first of the level 4 locations.

This is not so bad. Failing the test will scratch the Diving Suit again, but the flood level can be easily counteracted. I test 3 vs 4 and fail. The location is now fully flooded and the Diving Suit has 2 damage (out of 3) on it. For my second action, i draw a card. Overpower. Fine. I still have that Mob Enforcer in my deck, so i don’t want to draw on my last action. I collect a resource instead.

Using the claw, Lucius follows and also has to take that agility test. He however tests 5 vs 4 and passes. For the first action, i investigate with Lockpicks and easily pass. The second investigation is 6 vs 4 and only passes because Artistic Inspiration helps out. I discard one of the Backstabs from my hand to recharge the asset. This was the fifth location i cleared this game and Lucius has once more done his task. Michael has two more locations to reveal. With the third action, Lucius draws a card (Doppelgänger) and with the fourth, yet another one (Courage). I am stocking up to beat the shroud 5 locations that i am likely going to see next turn. I even still have one of my Deductions from the start. To make any upcoming treachery tests easier, i spend 4 clues to drop the flood level on our current location to zero.

In upkeep, i draw Where’s the Party (better question would be: Where are my guns?) and Pickpocketing.

Turn 7

(6 doom) We are halfway through the agenda threshold now, but the goal is likely within reach. During Mythos, Michael gets a Deep One Ambush:

Interesting. Basically some extra damage and/or horror that stacks up with whatever engagement effect i’d get anyways from the Deep One. If i remember correctly, Young Deep Ones hit for a damage and a horror, so if Michael were to draw one, that’d put him at 3 horror in total. Not what i’d call comfortable. But … where are the Deep Ones at anyways? I’ve been walking around with just a Luger, but strangely it didn’t really matter so far. Maybe that changes with Lucius encounter draw. He gets Cunning Mimicry, which surges because there are no monsters around. Then draws into Ominous Silence which will make him spend extra resources on his cards unless he takes an action and passes an agility test to get rid of it. I am probably able to just let this one sit in my threat area.

Let’s see how it looks at the top level, shall we? Michael moves into level 5. And immediately finds the Western Wall. I don’t want to finish the scenario yet however, so with my second action i go back to where i came from (once more failing the agility test there, destroying my Diving Suit and raising the flood level in the process), then my third to move up again and get another level 5 location open.

Oh for fucks sake, it’s another one of those locations that give me a horror just for moving in there. At least Michael’s task is now done as well.

The Western Wall is not a Victory location, so there’s not really a reason for Lucius to move there before we want to finish the scenario. Neither is that stupid Treacherous Path. I might decide to call it quits next turn, but in this turn i figure i might as well just reveal one more of the locations (3 are still unrevealed in total), maybe there’s something left to gain there. Lucius uses the claw to drop down a level, then moves into one of the unrevealed level 4 locations.

Lucius indeed has more luck with his location, finding another victory and glyph up for grabs. Sure, let’s get that done before we head out. Can i do all of it in my remaining four actions? The test to investigate is 6 vs 4, but i do have a Perception and two Courages for commits, the Lockpicks for one of the tests, the Artistic Inspiration as backup and a Deduction to make the Lockpick test pick up two clues. In fact, i can hold back a Courage and still test three times against “everything but the autofail”. The Seeker does what Seekers do best and collects all four clues. Along the way i draw Morbid Curiosity off of the Perception, but that won’t matter anymore. I spend two of the clues to erase the flood on this location, then pick up the glyph with my last action.

Upkeep draws are Book of Verse and Manual Dexterity. I’ve really not seen a weapon ever since the underwater cops showed up in turn 3.

Turn 8

(7 doom) Unless something weird happens in the mythos phase, i will resign this turn. Michael draws another Deep One Ambush. It’s 1 per investigator, so it just fizzles. No surge or anything? Just a freebie? That’s rare. Lucius draws all his greatest hits: Cunning Mimicry which surges because there are no enemies into Dreaming Migration which surges because there are no enemies into Crumbling Masonry for a 5 vs 4 test that’d deal 2 damage if it fails. I commit Courage and Pickpocketing and pass.

Both investigators move to the Western Wall the scenario is over.

Resolution

The city continues to rise as we return to the ship.

We gain 4xp: 2 from locations, 1 from the Star Spawn and 1 from the Seafloor Frieze.
During the scenario we managed to get three glyphs for our translation book. We have 19 in total.

After-Game Thoughts

Michael’s precarious sanity situation aside, i was never in all that much danger this scenario. This can be scenario 2 for anyone coming from the other side, so some scaling issues are probably not avoidable. What’s kind of weird however is how there are cards that trigger off of Deep Ones appearing and last scenario we have also seen a bigger Deep One that heals others and gives them Relentless… but there hardly seem to be any of the Deep Ones around? If i’m not mistaken, there’s only the one with the random discard in the Deep One set and the Young Deep One from Agents of Cthulhu? I feel like the encounter decks might just be a tad too chunky, so you get a lot of variance in what you actually get to see at low player counts. Not really enough to warrant cards that key off specifically them, especially not when Drowned Quarter didn’t even use the Agents set. I like a lot of the encounter cards i see individually, but at least in the last two scenarios, they didn’t really come together to form something more coherent. As usual, random chances are random and repeat plays will show if there’s actually a problem here or if i just got some weird atypical draws. For what it’s worth, i took a quick look browsing through the bottom half of the encounter deck that was still left at the end of the scenarios and it looked to be quite saturated with enemies, so the numbers seem to be there at least?
Since i only got 4xp and went through it fairly fast, i assume i have also missed a couple tricks that the scenario could have had for me. Two locations were unrevealed and possibly some Victory enemies in the deck?

Next Up

The campaign log next points me to the Sepulchre of the Sleeper scenario, but glancing ahead a bit it seems like there’s actually a bunch of interludes. And then it proceeds to the first part of the finale, The Doom of Arkham.
I didn’t spend my 4xp yet, in case i get more in the interludes. I will go over all of that at the beginning of the next article.

Setup

An undersea dome is held up by some force emitted by an orb. Ruby wants to steal and ponder the orb, so i guess we have to, even if it means that the water will crash down on us… remind me, who decided it was a good idea to bring her?

Before I do anything else, I need to make another task-related decision. For his No Place Like Home task, Michael can either lose a progress and heal a trauma OR gain a mental trauma, two progress on the task and have both investigators start with 2 fewer cards in hand. The threat of a mental trauma makes this not a discussion worth having right now. We are doing good on our tasks, have so far gotten both of them done in every scenario, so losing one progress doesn’t scare me much. We are powerful, but mental trauma is the exact kind of thing that i could see stopping me. I take the first option and erase a progress (both tasks are now at three marks in the campaign log). I also heal my physical trauma which is fine but probably not super relevant.

We have a nice and simple location grid for once. The Barrier Core in the middle, some Sea Floor locations all around us.

The encounter deck uses the final two encounter sets in the Drowned City box that we have not used at all so far: Deep Ones and Undersea Creatures. Looking forward to those. We also got Alien Machinery in this, so Persistent Constructs are in play. Then some flooding, R’lyeh, Elder Mist and only 3 scenario specific cards. I’ve not read them, but i saw they were enemies. This scenario doesn’t have the Inescapable in it. Did we finally escape it?

The agenda gives us 7 doom worth of turns and tells us about the dangers of drowning.

The act tells us our Objective: Reactivate the Barrier Core. To assist us in this task, we get the free activated ability to decrease a locations flood level by paying 2 clues. How does that help? Well, the Core activates if we manage to reveal and completely unflood 6 of the ocean floor locations around us. The are all unflooded right now, however entering a sea floor location will flood it and also a connecting location. In other words, to undo the flooding from entering a location, 4 clues need to be spent. With six required locations, that’s 24 clues in total. We can probably push this down a bit by diverting some of that flooding into the central location or a Sea Floor we don’t intend on opening, but this worries me slightly anyways. While Lucius is good at consistently picking up clues, getting multiple at once is not my strongest suit. And the encounter deck will surely add some flooding as well that we need to counteract. Should we run out of clues, the Core has one final trick for us: By letting flooding move from the core to a sea floor, we can generate 6 clues at that sea floor. Mechanics are clear and understood, time to start this and see how good Lucius really is at powering through clues. Notably, this is the first time this scenario we only have one act card, one objective to care about.

Token modifiers are solidly in the -3 to -4 range again. The three tablets in the bag are particularly nasty: -4 and if i fail, i have to drop a clue. Oof. I’ll want to make sure to spend them as soon as i get them. The Elder Thing is -3 while at a flooded location and -5 at an unflooded one.

Turn 1

Michael’s starting hand is a bit mediocre, while Lucius got some killer cards in hand.

Michael: Luger, Robert, Ruby, ECache, Man Dex
Lucius: Milan, Antikythera, Memories, Memories, Man Dex

Only a single gun in my hand and it’s a Luger. That’s not going to cut it and i will need to dig for more. On the other side of the table, Lucius gets three level 5 cards in his hand, plus Milan.

Michael goes first, as i need to remember that he still has his task of revealing six locations over the course of a scenario. There’s only eight of them in here, so every bit counts. I play Ruby and have her carry me to the first Sea Floor, i arbitrarily pick the one on the 9 o’clock position. I increase the flood on that location and on the Core.

For a second there i thought the shroud on this Abyssal Trench location was zero, but the Core does have the Seafloor trait as well, so it’s 1. We almost got to see Michael win another Intellect test or two! Instead, he plays ECache, then the Luger.

Lucius plays Milan, then uses the Obsidian Claw to follow Michael. Committing Memories, i investigate 7 vs 1 and collect a clue. With memories, i bring Leo de Luca into play. Two actions left. Another investigation, another Memories committed, another clue collected. And this time, Memories puts Nautical Charts into play. I spend the clues to lower the flood level here, then move back into the Core with my final action. I want to use that ability to spawn more clues next turn. Double Memories first turn, what an outrageous start into a scenario.

Upkeep draws are Backstab and You’ve Had Worse.

Turn 2

(1 doom out of 7) I would have liked to draw some cards and dig for a weapon this turn with Michael, but he does get an enemy right away:

Welp. To be fair i have been asking for Deep Ones, so here they are. Deep One Thrall knocks Manual Dexterity out of my hand as it engages me. Lucius draws Elder Mist, a familiar card by now, and attaches it to the Core.

Lucius goes first and uses the ability to move the flood token from the Core to the revealed Sea Floor. This spawns 6 clues there. I spend all my resources on the Antikythera, then claw back to where Michael, the Deep One and a stack of clues hang out. I investigate twice, on 6 vs 1 and 5 vs 1. The first test oversucceeds by 4, giving me a card (Pickpocketing) and resource off of Antikythera. The second test succeeds as well, so i get two clues in total.

To kill the Deep One, i will need to shoot it with the Luger and punch it. We have some really shitty tokens in the bag, so i don’t really want to punch it 5 vs 3. I decide to take an attack of opportunity to play Robert, at least my punch ill beat the -3 token then. Before i do that, i need another resource however, and that will be provided by the Luger. So the sequence is Fire Luger 6 vs 3 -> play Robert -> punch 6 vs 3. If everything goes right, i defeat the fishman and still have an action left. I pass my tests with a 0 and and Elder Sign. The location has an ability that allows me to lower the flood level after successfully fighting, so i do that. I have Ruby move me forwards opening up another location, at the upper lft. It floods and so does the location i just came from. Lucius spends his two clues to remove that flood token at the next opportunity. The location i reveal is exactly the same one as the one before, an Abyssal Trench. I entertain the thought of drawing a card or opening up another location with my last action, but play it safe and just gain a resource.

Upkeep draws are .45 Auto and Seek Answers. Great, there’s a weapon, now i only need the money to play it. Michael is at 2 resources, Lucius is at 3.

Turn 3

(2 doom) The encounter deck gives us a double serving of Corrosive Fog this turn, one for Michael, one for Lucius.

We both have two allies in play that we hold dear, so this could get ugly. Michael passes, but Lucius draws the tablet. -4, drop a clue. I don’t hold a clue right now, so that’s good. The test was 5 vs 4, so i fail by 3. Damn. Lucius gets a damage, Milan dies and if this happens again, Leo dies too. That’s really rough.

Opening up another location would increase the shroud of the Abyssal Trenches, so Lucius goes first. I play Seek Answers, testing 4 vs 1. I succeed by one, which nets me a bonus clue from the Antikythera. The two clues i get for Seek Answers i don’t take from the Trench, but from the 4 shroud location in the middle of the board. There’s three more clues on this location and i have three more actions. I’d like to make this happen so i can move on with the claw this turn. I do the two natural 4 vs 1 tests first , then the one boosted by the Nautical Charts. That way, if i fail one of the first tests, i can discard a card to still get there. The second test does indeed autofail, so i ditch a Manual Dexterity for the Charts to make up for it. That’s been six clues collected this turn, not bad at all! Also, i now cleared three locations, so only two more to go for Lucius task. I claw into the location where Michael is waiting and spend two clues to remove the flooding there.

Using Ruby, Michael opens up the next location. And it’s a third copy of the same location! Are they all the same? Surely not. I was told to shuffle the Sea Floors during setup, that means there have to be versions and i am just having a freak draw here. Well, it is what it is. I flood this location and the Core. I spend my actions simply taking two resources and playing the .45 Auto. It’s about time for the cops to show up now.

Upkeep draws are Where’s the Party and ECache.

Turn 4

(3 doom) I again get the same card for both of my investigators, Eye of the Deep.

Weirdly, this almost can work in our favor. The Elder Thing is only a -3 as long as we are in flooded locations. It is a -5 while at a dry one, though. So it’s definitely a double edged thing.

I want to start a party, so Michael goes first. Playing Where’s the Party, i scan through the encounter deck for Victory enemies and find this cute little fellow:

The Voltaic Eel enters play exhausted and i shoot it with both of my guns. I hit both times, dealing 3 damage. I decrease the flood level at my location because i made a successful attack. Taking stock real quick, there are now three revealed and non-flooded Seafloors in play, half of what i need. I am realizing at this moment that the Core does count as a Seefloor itself, so it counts for its own ability. If i remove the flood token from it, it could count as one of the six required locations, i missed that up to now. Noted! Michael has one more action, so i shoot the .45 at the Eel again. I hit, it dies and goes to the Victory display.

Lucius might be able to get the remaining 4 clues on the board this turn. They are spread between two locations but with the claw that’s hardly a problem. More of a problem however is how much worse my tests are without Milan around. Using the Nautical Charts i get to test 5 vs 2 at the first location. I succeed by one, so Antikythera gets me the second clue saving me from needing to discard something for the Charts. The claw moves me ahead and i get to test 4 vs 2 at the second location. I have three attempts left. I don’t need the third as i draw 0 and -1 from the bag. Lucius now holds eight clues, enough to undo the flooding caused by entering two locations. This is going A LOT better than i expected, holy crap. With his last action, Lucius draws a card. It’s a Magnifying Glass which i immediately play. Just what i needed!

In upkeep, Michael gets an ECache, Lucius gets a Courage.

Turn 5

(4 doom) Michael enjoys a bit of surge this turn, drawing three encounter cards:

Cunning Mimicry fails due to a lack of Monsters on the board. Dreaming Migration due to a lack of enemies in general. So Michael finally ends up with Ominous Silence. Honestly, not a problem at all. He’s actually standing in an unflooded location right now, so chances are this just takes an action away. Lucius gets our old friend Cyclopean Architecture again. Testing 4 vs 2, he passes with an Elder Sign (aka “+0”) and doesn’t have to discard anything. In fact, the Antikythera *gives* him a card (Perception) and a resource.

I need to see if there are other locations in this scenario than Abyssal Trenches, so Michael goes first to check it out (with Ruby, of course).

Finally, something different. I increase the flood at the newly revealed Blasted Ruins and at Lucius location (he spends two clues right away to undo that). Looks like i am not supposed to stay at this location or else it gets more floody. Fine, then. But before i move on, Michael will use the ability on the location to set it dry. This costs him the only two cards he has in hand right now, but i think it’s worth it to keep speeding this thing along. His second action is spend on moving down, to the 3 o’clock position, revealing another location with one action left. And it’s another Blasted Ruins! Whoever shuffled these cards, did a great job! This location gets a flood counter and so does the Core. The Core is now fully flooded. Well, i can’t stay here either. I have two choices: Either move to the bottom right corner and risk something bad happening. Or move into the Core and suffer from the -1 to everything from Elder Mist in the next mythos phase. I choose moving down, finishing my task.

Well, it’s no Blasted Ruin, but Drowned Acropolis has an effect if i end my turn there anyways. And now i’m out of actions. Didn’t even get to discard my Ominous Silence this turn… Right, more flood tokens go on the board, for revealing another location. One on the Necropolis, one on the still unrevealed Sea Floor to my left. I end my turn and take a horror (which Robert graciously holds for me).

Lucius could actually end the scenario now, spending 6 clues to remove the three flood levels across the Core and the Blasted Ruins. I have so much time left though! Oh actually, i need to have both investigators at the Core to finish the scenario, so i couldn’t finish after all, only prepare. I definitely want to explore more, though. At least check out if there’s maybe a Victory location somewhere in here, so far i only have one Victory in the display and i know there’s not another in the encounter deck.

Using the claw, Lucius moves to the unrevealed location in the six o’clock position, the one where Michael just spilled a flood counter into. It becomes fully flooded and so does Michael’s location. I spend 4 clues to make sure Lucius stands on dry land again. This is what i reveal:

Six clues at shroud 4? We actually need to work for the Victory on Coral Reef, don’t we. Since i have four actions left, i am going to activate that double action straight away. Whatever enemy we pull there, we can likely Backstab it or at least evade it. I gain 2 resources and 2 cards in the process, pulling Dreams of Clay and Deduction. The Undersea Parasite is a curious one.

5 combat and 5 evade make it hard to either Backstab or evade it. It does have Aloof, so that’s probably something i’ll leave to Michael after all then. Weirdly, it flips not only when defeated, but also when it attacks. How suspicious. Lucius turns back to what he does best: Starting to work on these clues. I put my eggs all in one basket, using Nautical Charts and committing both Perception and Deduction. The test is 9 vs 4 and after succeeding i discard ECache to the Charts for another clue, so 3 in total. The draw from the Perception draws another Perception. I could test 5 vs 4 on my last action, but i think i’ll rather draw a card so i can keep feeding my Nautical Charts and gain clues though the backdoor in a way that doesn’t risk pulling bad tokens. I find a Doppelgänger.

Upkeep draws are Primed for Action and String Along. Did i really only see two pistols all game so far?

Turn 6

(5 doom) I am pretty sure we could have finished the scenario this turn if we wanted to. At this point we are flexing on the game. Michael draws Cunning Mimicry again, but this time there is a Monster on the board: The Parasite. I test intellect 1 vs 3 and predictably fail. The bug attacks me for a point of damage which triggers its Forced effect. And it’s a case of the designers getting cute with us as the effect isn’t actually the same if it attacked you than it would be if it gets defeated. Basically, this bug has a sort of Elusive effect on it and will run away after attacking, into a connected location without investigators. I move it to the Core.
Lucius draws Infernal Machinery, the treachery that shuts off his Claw.

First things first, i want to try and turn the claw back on. If i test agility and toss a Courage and a Dreams of Clay into the test, that’d be 8 vs 4. That would currently fail against the Elder Thing which is a -5 while i am not in the water. So i spend a move action first, walking into the Core where it’s fully flooded and do the test as planned there. I pass by two, the treachery is discarded and Dreams enters play. I also draw a card (Mag Glass) and gain a resource from the Antikythera because i succeeded by 2. I use the claw to get back onto the Coral Reef with 2 actions to go, possibly enough to get the last 3 clues from this victory location. Nautical Charts succeeds and i discard Doppelgänger for an extra clue. For my last action i investigate with Perception to the test. I pull the Tablet and fail. Not only do i fail, i even have to put a clue back. Boooo!

With Ruby’s help, Michael spends one action to walk past Lucius to the last unrevealed location in the lower left corner. Flooding goes on that location and on the one Lucius is at (as usual, i immediately pay the two clues to mop up the water).

It’s another location with 6 clues on it. The ability to gain some sort of relic sounds great, but i currently have only one card in hand. I use my second action to draw a card. If it’s not a weapon, i can probably throw it away. And it’s a .45 Auto. I think i want to keep that actually. I decide to just leave this to Lucius and move up one location. Next turn i could Ruby into the center and possibly deal with that Parasite finally.

Upkeep draws are Book of Verse and Man Dex. Mike is at 4 resources, Lucius at 8.

Turn 7

(6 doom) The agenda flips next turn.

Michael draws a Persistent Construct. The first one is no biggie, these only become annoying with the second and third one. Lucius draws something much more interesting, an Elder Deep One. Its engagement effect and static ability don’t do anything for now, as there are no other fishmen around, but its stats are respectable. Notably, four health puts it out of Backstab range.

I don’t think Michael can kill this guy for me this turn, so evasion will have to do. To increase my chances and even open up the possibility of getting a clue for the evasion, i first use the claw to move into the Ancient Gallery in the bottom left. There’s water there, so the Elder Things are -3 for this test. The test is 5 vs 4 and i commit the Book of Verse to make it 7 vs 4. I succeed by one, meaning i don’t get the clue from my ability, however i get one from the Antikythera. More importantly, the Elder Fishman is handled for a turn. For my second action, i activate the ability on the location, discarding two cards from my hand (Pickpocketing, Mag Glass) to get the Relic

This is very similar to the one we had to ignore the other day. But instead of a willpower test, this asks for Intellect. Much more realistic to achieve! There’s nothing else to gain here, so i drop the flood level to zero before i want to move. Actually, that’s finally the sixth location that is revealed and unflooded, so the Core goes active.

That’s what’s on the other side that is now up. Of course, there is still a flood token (fully flooded), an Elder Mist and the Parasite at this location as well. The ability asks for 4 clues. Lucius currently has 5 left, so that works out. I move twice and enter the Core.

My first action with Michael is pretty obvious, i shoot the Construct with the .45 which succeeds without any fanfare. I have three goals left on the table: One, pass the intellect(8) test on the Relic. That’s definitely Lucius job. Two, pull the Barrier Node out of the Barrier core. I could do that now, spending Lucius clues in the process. Three, kill the Parasite. The problem there is that the thing has 5 fight and i only test at 6 while it’s at the location because of the Elder Mist. The only fight icon i can commit right now is the Backstab in Lucius hand and that seems like a bit of a waste. So here’s what i came up with. I use Ruby to move into the Core, then my second action to spend the clues and pull the Barrier Node. It turns out to be another artifact asset:

This seems very strong… just not for my investigators, both of which are already good on health. If this this would soak horror instead, it’d be an incredible pickup for me here. Still i got the thing and that’s nice. One of three bonus objectives done. With my third action, i engage the Parasite. The plan is to let it hit me, so it buzzes off to a different location, one that doesn’t have Elder Mist on it.

In the enemy phase, the Elder Deep One readies. The parasite attacks me (conveniently i now have unlimited soak for it) an flees to the location to the right. I want it there because there’s still flood there.

Upkeep draws are Courage for Michael and Dreams of Clay for Lucius. That Courage is going to be a huge help against the Parasite, making sure that i will beat the -4.

At the end of the round i have the option to finish the scenario. I decline.

Turn 8

(7 doom) The agenda advances. And serves up a Victory 2 enemy! Enemies on the back of agendas are always hype.

Seafloor Leviathan spawns right on top of us. Easy to attack or evade, but i do need to chew through 10 health. Challenge gladly accepted, you had me at “Victory 2”. The new agenda gives us another 7 doom to play with, which should be fine unless we get a string of floodings that would flip back the Core and require me to get more clues to remove flood levels again.

Of course, we still draw regular encounter cards, too. Another Elder Mist for Michael, i attach it to the location above us, assuming that i don’t need to return there. Lucius draws Crumbling Masonry. He tests 5 vs 4 to avoid 2 damage and fails. He has 4 damage now.

Lucius evades the Leviathan, which would be a 4 vs 2, but Michael throws a Manual Dexterity into the test to secure it. The test oversucceeds by 2, meaning that the Elder Mist on the Core is discarded and Lucius gets a resource and a card (Deduction) from the Antikythera. For Man Dex, Michael draws a Remington. The Barrier Core is fully flooded, so we can’t stay here. I should probably use that Deduction this turn too, so i have some clues held back in case i need to reset some flooding again. But first, i backstab the Leviathan. 5 vs 2 succeeds and 3 damage go on the big guy. He then uses the claw to move to the top right location where there’s still 2 clues to get and there is no flooding. Using the Nautical Charts and discarding String Along, i pick up those clues. I think i’ll try and keep Deduction in hand just for the intellect icon, so that i can pass that intellect(8) test. With his last action, Lucius draws a card, the other Backstab. Oh, that is good timing actually.

Michael fires both of his guns (the Luger and the .45) into the Leviathan, dealing another 3 damage to it. It’s now 4 damage away from dying, so i spend my last two actions and the rest of the ammo on the .45 on sealing the deal. I test at “everything but the autofail” and earn my deserved 2 Victory points. Since i don’t want to drown, i let Ruby carry me out of the Core, into the location where the parasite is hanging out.

In the enemy phase, the Elder Deep One moves towards us, but is still a good deal away.

In the upkeep, we draw Watch This(3) an Lockpicks. Sadly the 3 wilds on Watch This can only be used on a test Michael performs, so this won’t help with the relic. The Lockpick is another small step towards it, though.

Turn 9

(1 doom) Michael draws the second Persistent Construct. Lucius gets Something In The Water, the surging treachery that increases the flood level at his location. I pay the two clues to counteract the treachery. The surge rolls into another Crumbling Masonry, but this time the test is 5 vs 2. I commit the Dreams of Clay from my hand to make this a sure thing and do indeed end up drawing the -4. I pass and add the second Dreams of Clay to the board.

Michael plays his Remington(4), to replace the .45. This causes an attack of opportunity that gets caught by the Barrier Node. He has to spend an extra resource on the card because of the Ominous Silence he is actually still carrying around in his threat area. The Remington gets a shot on entering play and i use it to kill the Construct. This spawns the other construct exhausted at my location… basically i evaded the damn thing in a roundabout way. With my second and third action i engage the Parasite and (finally!) shoot it with the Remington. It’s an 8 vs 5 that i turn into an 11 vs 5 with Watch This. Obviously i bet 3 resources on succeeding here. The autofail stays in the bag and i pass, collecting my winnings and defeating the bug. As a reward i learn the glyph for “Sum” and earn a victory point. I see a chance to finish the scenario this round, so i have Ruby bring me back to the Core.

All that’s left to do is pass that Intellect(8) test. All committed icons count double, so by committing Deduction and Lockpicks would let me test 8 vs 8. Michael however also has an Unexpected Courage… and that would bring me to 12 vs 8. So let’s see if i win this. The claw brings Lucius back into the Core and i do the test as planned.

The autofail says No.

*sigh* I think i will just end the scenario here anyways, i don’t feel like rebuilding my hand and everything in the hopes of getting another try. I forfeit the rest of my actions and will have to give up this relic.

In the enemy phase the Elder Deep Ones catches up to us and bites Michael.

Then we advance the act.

Resolution

This underwater bubble collapses, but we escape with the valuable artifact.

We gain the Barrier Node for our supply and honestly, it’s been kinda neat these last few turns. Maybe i will actually use it on Michael now so i can play a bit more aggressively. We also gain 5XP. 1 from a location, 1 from the Parasite, 1 from the Voltaic Eel and 2 from the Leviathan.

I’m honestly not sure what i still want to spend XP on with Lucius, his deck is kinda done. Do we just buy Cryptic Researches and call it a day now? It’s as good a plan as any. I remove an Emergency Cache from the deck, add a Cryptic and bank the final XP for later.

Michael already has two leftover XP from before, so he has 7 to spend in total. He upgrades Robert Castaigne to level 4 and removes Hard Knocks for Sure Gamble.

After-Game Thoughts

So, I did dunk on this scenario a bit, didn’t I? Finishing next to everything with 7 turns left on the doom clock is quite the showing and i don’t think it’s really because the scenario was too easy. It definitely has shown some teeth here and there, like with the Corrosive Fog nuking Milan early on, something that echoed through the rest of the scenario. The Elder Mist was also quite impactful this time around, after being a bit of a wet noodle in previous scenarios. But when Lucius puts a first turn like that forward, what is the game supposed to do. From turn 2 on Lucius took 4 actions per turn, almost didn’t need to take any move actions and had Antikythera serving up the cards to perpetually fuel a Nautical Charts. With that much investigation power, the encounter deck never stood a chance. In fact, i almost finished the scenario on turn 6 with like 2xp in the bank because due to random chance the more interactive locations were all only coming up near the end. I am happy i stuck around after all.

So the investigator decks clearly were performing, but what about the scenario? I did like it, but i’d say it was probably the least impressive/interesting of the ones in the campaign so far? I think i really need to reserve my judgement here until i have played this one coming from the other side. For campaigns that go west instead of east like i did, this would be scenario 3 and probably a whole lot tougher to keep up with the clue requirements when your investigators aren’t throwing around 4xp and 5xp haymakers left and right. There were also a good amount of chunky enemies around here which could easily keep a less experienced fighter busy … or worse. I’ll also note that i barely saw anything from the Deep One, Undersea Creatures or scenario specific encounter sets. It might very well be that random chance has made the scenario miss a trick or two here.

Up next

Now that we finished our little detour to stir up the local ecosystem, we head on to The Western Wall.

Upgrading my decks

I didn’t immediately spend my XP after last scenario, so let me do that real quick now before we get into the scenario. The reason for the delay is that i wanted to check something first. I have been toying with the idea of putting Memories of Another Life into Lucius deck. While an absolutely amazing card in a full cardpool, i needed to check what’s available at this low level. After checking the list of available stuff on arkham.build, I came up with and set aside about 10 different cards that i could reasonably go for. That’s easily enough to justify the inclusion of Memories in the deck.
So Lucius spends his 7xp from the Great Vault on a Memories, then uses the other 2 to upgrade his Magnifying Glasses. I remove a Doppelgänger from my deck to make room. While it’s a good card and came in handy last scenario, i don’t need three of them.
For Michael, it’s easier. He had 1xp left after Court of the Ancients, so he has 8xp to spend now. I swap both Remingtons for their much better level 4 version.
With that out of the way…

Setup

Another change of scenery awaits us deeper in the city and it’s not a pleasant one. Tunnels that are covered in organic growth. We also find another dead body. We press on, still hoping for something of value.

Another tablet token is added to the chaos bag. Oh-oh. That’s #3 now, the bag starts to look a bit ugly.

When assembling the encounter deck, things get weird again as we are shuffling locations into the encounter deck. I dig it, we have not done this ever since it was a huge success in Lost in Time and Space all the way back in Dunwich Legacy. Other things that go into the deck include a specific Star Spawn Elite, The Inescapable (yes, we are shuffling it in this time), a new set called Stowaways that has freaky aliens on its images and a not-so-new set called Striking Fear. Ugh. Had we managed to kill the Inescapable in the Core last scenario, it would be removed now… but we didn’t, so we just have to deal with that again. Actually, there is a bit of a possible problem here. The setup instructions don’t mention the Inescapable beyond that i remove it completely if i defeated it. So that’d shuffle it in. However, i got told on reddit that this breaks an upcoming interlude, so the text should instruct me to set the whole encounter set aside? I can’t find a reference to this being a known bug in the rules text anywhere else, but still decide to go with the recommendation and set aside those four cards. Worst case, i am treating the scenario as if i had defeated the thing. That’s preferable to potentially have something break down the road.

There’s only a single location in play that we start at. And we are going to find our locations from the encounter deck.

We once again get to pick starting artifacts and i once again pick the Claw and Laudanum.

The starting agenda has no game text and a doom threshold of 12. Twelve? That’s a lot. There’s even another card behind it. This is going to be a long scenario.

The act is more interesting and combined with the starting location, it becomes clear what the game wants us to do this time:

We can spend clues to discard from the encounter deck, drawing any locations we see in the process. The starting location lets us recycle locations that otherwise ended up in the discard and gives us an endless source of clues to use. Let’s hope i have more luck with these discards than i had with the Glyphs in Court of the Ancients. At least we aren’t drawing Omen cards as well this time… Our first objective is finding a Sanctum location and spending 4 clues there, but if the agenda threshold is any indication, that’s going to take a bit. Luckily we can spend clues as a group this time, otherwise it would have been next to impossible for Michael to reveal locations for his task this scenario.

All that’s left is a look at the token effects and i can start. Skulls scale with half the amount of doom on enemies and assets in play. Oh, is that the reason for the high agenda threshold? This is a scenario with extra doom mechanics? Noted! The tablet (of which we now have 3 in the bag) confirms this, it’s a -3 that on fail puts a doom on an enemy. And the Elder Thing is once again a -4 that deals damage or horror.

Turn 1

Starting hands are good.

Michael: Ruby, Derringer, Remington, Guts, Courage
Lucius: Milan, Mag Glass, Book of Verse, Memories, Man Dex

Michael is missing the resources to play all his cards, but it’s of course hard to complain about a hand with Ruby and two upgraded guns. Lucius has a ton of impactful cards in his starter, the Memories is particularly intriguing as it offers a strong opening if i desire to.

I consider my options for Lucius. I could just investigate here, committing Memories and put a level 0 card into play from any class. Top contenders are Leo De Luca, Nautical Chart and Dial of Ancients. Indeed, this would be an opportunity to get the Dial researched after all and include the upgraded one in the last 3 scenarios. Leo de Luca is the high value play, but Milan is in my hand and i don’t have Charisma. And Nautical Charts is simply the best utility, allowing me to convert excess cards into clues.
After playing this out in my head for a moment, I go and play both Milan and the Mag Glass with my first action, then investigate with my second one. Committing Memories and testing 8 to 1, i pick up a clue and put Nautical Charts into play. For my last action, i pick up the other clue, clearing the location for task progress. I then refill the clues with the ability on the location and Michael has his go.

He plays a Derringer, then uses the ability to spend 2 clues to discard 10 cards from the encounter deck. No locations are found, just a bunch of encounter cards with artwork that looks straight out of Alien: Resurrection. I briefly consider spending my last action investigating 1 vs 1, but decide to just gain a resource instead.

Upkeep draws are You’ve Had Worse and Dreams of the Clay.

Turn 2

(1 doom) The encounter deck isn’t playing around and comes out swinging.

Eye of the Deep makes it so that Michael now has six tokens in the bag that count as -4s. That might be worth spending a Guts and/or Courage on. Lucius meanwhile draws Corrosive Fog, threatening not only his health, but also to kill Milan. I believe that is a more pressing concern than Eye of the Deep, so Michael helps out Lucius test with his Unexpected Courage. Lucius also throws in his Dreams of Clay, bringing the test to 8 vs 4. The test succeeds and the Fog dissipates while Dreams of Clay enters the board.

Lucius spends his first two actions investigating, once again clearing the location for progress on his task. I reset the clues on the locations back to 2, then pick up a third clue with my last action.

Michael plays Ruby, then spends the three clues that Lucius holds on discarding 15 cards from the encounter deck. If that doesn’t find anything, i am truly cursed.

I do find two locations however, so two Fleshy Paths are now open to us. Both are dead ends, at least according to their connection icons. But they do offer more easy clues, a Victory, a glyph and even a relic (which will probably lead to another glyph?). From now on, the refill ability on the starting location will refill one of these locations instead of the starting one, something to keep in mind.
For his last action, Michael attempts to get rid of Eye of the Deep. Thanks to a Guts, the test is 5 vs 3 which passes with a skull (they are still +/- 0). Guts draws a Derringer and the treachery goes in the bin.

During upkeep, the cops show up and take Michael’s Derringer away. I’m currently at only one resource so rebuilding is a bit annoying, but overall i’d rather see Confiscation now than later. Lucius has more luck and draws Artistic Inspiration. I now have both Book of Verse and AI in hand, if i play both that should give me exceptional security in taking tests. Michael has 1 resource, Lucius 5.

Turn 3

(2 doom) Michael draws Cunning Mimicry, which surges because no monsters are in play. It is replaced by Grasping Corridor, our way forward in the tunnels. The encounter deck reshuffles and two new locations are put into the deck from the set-aside pool.

Lucius draws Apiary Tender, an Aloof enemy that does talk about doom again. It comboes nicely with the tablet token, i’ll give it that. For now i am just happy that it’s Aloof because Michael doesn’t have a gun right now. And also not the money to play one…

I think i am just going to have a somewhat rancid turn with Michael and accept it as the tax to pay for drawing my weakness. I take two resource actions, then play my other Derringer. And that’s already all i got. Can’t even use Ruby because there’s a ready enemy at my location.

Lucius investigates, thus clearing the starting location for a third time. He then joins Michael in doing just a setup turn and plays both the Artistic Inspiration and the Book of Verse. With the claw, he does move however, entering the Victory location with the glyph. We should be able to take care of all of that next turn.

The upkeep phase has an ECache, but for Lucius and not for the one who needs it. Instead Michael gets Overpower.

Turn 4

(3 doom) Corrosive Fog strikes again, this time against Michael. I don’t want Ruby to take a damage, so i use the Overpower to test 7 vs 4. I succeed, but only because i got rid of the Eye of the Deep earlier which would otherwise have turned the tablet into a -4. Overpower draws a Crack Shot. Lucius encounter draw stumbles into another location.

The Growing Fields also connect to the starting location and puts a second location into play alongside it. We can get a story asset here, the Grisly Mask, but the willpower 8 test is not really playing to our strengths. I better start saving up icons. In the Hidden Vault that has opened up alongside the Fields, another Victory waits for us and also what looks like another glyph. We also get to search for an enemy, any enemy, and spawn it at that location.

In my greed, i pick the only Victory enemy in the deck. It might come from the encounter deck at any point anyways, at least we now know where it is and what it does. Infected Star Spawn is a fairly tanky enemy that while it effectively has 6 health, won’t go down in three shots. I’d really like a Luger to deal with it, but in absence of one, i can punch it too.

Lucius opens the investigation phase by discovering the glyph for “Time” at the location he’s at. He investigates, using the Nautical Charts for a smooth 7 vs 2. Suceeding, i ditch ECache from my hand to discover an additional clue. I clear the Victory location, progressing on my task. After clearing the starting location three times, this is the fourth, so only one more to go. Easy enough. While we are at it, Michael has so far found 3 locations, so he needs 3 more to fulfill his task as well. But one thing after the other. Lucius takes the claw and moves into the other Fleshy Path where he attempts the intellect(2) test to take posession of the Ancient Relic that is there. It autofails. Womp womp.

Michael meanwhile has to find a way to gear up. He has a Derringer in play, but with the Star Spawn coming up soon and the Apiary Tender still around that’s not going to cut it forever. The Tender is stopping me from using Ruby, so i think it needs to go first now. I engage the enemy with my first action, then shoot the Derringer into it. I want the oversuccess, so i commit Crack Shot for a 10 vs 3. The chaos bag doesn’t fight back, so i get my action and put two damage on the enemy. Now that i have two resources again, i play the Remington from my hand. I take an attack of opportunity (1 horror on Ruby, 1 damage on me) but the Remington gets off its bonus shot on entry and kills the Tender. With my remaining action, i spend the three clues that Lucius is carrying to discard 15 cards from the encounter deck.

I find the Corrupted Vault, another dead end glyph location with Victory. This one connects to the Grasping Corridor instead of the starting location however.

In the enemy phase, the Star Spawn moves closer to me into the Fields. It is now in an adjecent location to Michael, so hopefully i can take care of it next turn.

For my upkeep, i draw another ECache for Lucius. And another another ECache for Michael. Fine.

Turn 5

(4 doom) Some new devilry for Michael. Infected! has horrifying artwork and the effect is no joke either.

Right now, my investigators aren’t sitting on top of each other, but this is just a matter of time before it becomes an issue. Lucius meanwhile finds Alien Eggs.

There are currently no non-Elites in play, so Alien Eggs fizzles. Good thing i killed that Tender last round. It’s coming together now what this encounter deck is trying to do mechanically. The Surge sets us up with another location that leads deeper into the Nest. I’ll note that we have not seen a Sanctum location so far, so we need to go deeper to make headway on our objective. Two new locations enter the reshuffling encounter deck.

Time to throw hands with the Infected Star Spawn. Ruby lets me go into the fight with all three actions in store. I am hoping to get a fourth off of my Derringer. If i do, i could kill the thing with Derringer + Punch, twice. To make a long story short, the plan works and after four attacks, the beast goes own.

Using the claw and a move action, Lucius speeds past Michael into the Hidden Vault where i can earn a Victory point this turn. And if i draw an enemy next turn, i might even get the glyph there. At 6 vs 3 and 7vs 3, the two clues are collected with the last two actions and a Victory is earned. Lucius has also now fulfilled his task.

During upkeep, Lucius draws Lockpicks, but Michael draws his other weakness, the Mob Enforcers. He’s at 3 resources right now, so unless he is willing to take an attackof opportunity to play his ECache in hand, he can’t pay off the mobsters. Lucius has 5 resources however, so maybe he will.

Turn 6

(5 doom) During mythos, Lucius gets Infected! as well, so ending my investigators at the same location could add 2 doom to the board. Yikes. I cancel it with Dreams of Clay. Michael finds this goofy looking fellow slithering around:

The Stowaway Drone‘s interaction with other enemies is no immediate concern, it does however interact with the Infested! treachery Michael picked up.

I decide that i want to keep moving and not spend overly much time on the Growing Fields and Hidden Vault locations, meaning that i will likely miss the glyph there and possibly also pass on the story asset. The latter smarts a little, but i can’t pass a willpower(8) test without serious card commits, even if those get doubled. And if i draw a Guts or Courage i think i want to use them to try and lose the Infected! treachery i have on me.

Lucius spends an action to move, another action to pay off Michael’s mobsters, then uses the claw to jump ahead into the Grasping Corridor. I investigate there using the Charts. Easily passing the 7 vs 2, i discard Lockpicks from my hand to pick up a second clue.

I wonder if i should just let the Stowaway live, but ultimately decide it’s not worth the risk. I engage it and easily punch it to death. Ruby gets me back to the Apiary Entrace, then i play ECache with my final action.

Upkeep draws are Viola Case and String Along, both quality cards that i’m happy to see.

Turn 7

(6 doom) Halfway on our way to the doom threshold.

Both investigators have crap attach to their location this turn. Michael finds Hungry Walls at the Entrance, and even with his 5 combat he might very well take 2 direct damage once he moves out. Lucius’ Elder Mist is much less threatening, he tests so high when investigating at the 2 shroud location that it’s unlikely to matter that he gets -1 intellect and probably is just going to oversucceed and discard this thing with the first test anyways.

Lucius investigates the location, using Charts for another 7 vs 2. It oversucceeds by enough to ditch Elder Mist, just as expected. To get a second clue, i discard ECache into the Chart’s trigger. He uses the Claw to move into the Corrupted Vault where he translates the glyph, taking a double action that will end his turn. We now now the glyph for “Hand”, three slashes. Not five? Hm.

Michael starts his turn by spending all four clues that Lucius has to drop 20 cards off of the encounter deck. This better be good! As it turns out, there were exactly 20 cards left in the deck, so i find all the remaining locations. Well, the two of them.

Acidic Coelom connects the Entrance with the Starving Corridor, bypassing the Grasping Corridor. It also has a Victory. More importantly, it’s a Sanctum where we can spend the four clues to move on with our objective.

Churning Chasm is a dead end location on the far end of the map. It’s most interesting feature is the Squamous Parasite that spawned at the location, but I’ll definitely make a mental note of being able to teleport from there to anywhere else if i start my turn there.

Interesting developments. I guess that means that Michael’s next job is squashing that parasite, so Ruby and an action take him one location away from it, ready to strike next turn. The 5 vs 4 test on the Hungry Walls doesn’t just fail, it fails with an Elder Thing, meaning Michael has to take an additional damage or horror. I make him take 2 damage and a horror, putting him at 4 damage and 1 horror in total now. For reference, Lucius still only has the one damage from the trauma. For his final action, he plays Viola Case, finding a Derringer and a pair of Lugers. I pick the Derringer because the one on the board only has 1 shot left and add it to my hand.

Overpower and Man Dex are drawn during upkeep.

Turn 8

(7 doom) Michael finds another Apiary Tender and it spawns at his location. Lucius finds Dangerous Curiosity:

A damage and a Stowaway would be sort of annoying as it would mean that i do have to care about that Tender more immediately. But it’s a willpower test with 2 vs 3, so it’s not like i can do a whole lot about it anyways. I pull a -3, putting it out of range of my Book of Verse and Artistic Inspiration as well, so the treachery does its thing.

Lucius investigates the Corrupted Vault, hoping to pick up both clues in one go with the Nautical Charts. It succeeds, i discard one of my Manual Dexterities and secure another Victory point. Using the claw, he speeds past Michael into the Acidic Coelom. In theory, i could pick up the two clues here with my last two actions, then advance the act. While the first half sounds like a good idea, i think i’ll hold off on the act thing till next round. The tests to get to those remaining clues are both 6 vs 4, i pull tablet (which i turn into a pass with Book of Verse) and -2 which is a natural pass. I get those clues, clear another Victory and now hold the four clues required to advance next turn. Oh, and Book of Verse drew me an Unexpected Courage.

Michael wants to kill the Parasite before we advance. I can’t use Ruby because of the Apiary Tender, so i walk into its location like a peasant. It only has two health, so a shot from the Derringer should be enough. I succeed and get to read the back of the bug. It’s another glyph and it’s also worth a Victory point. Nice. We know how to write “Air” now. With my remaining action, i play the Derringer from my hand.

Enemy phase, the stowaway crawls towards the Apiary Tender but the Tender hunts away from it, following Michael.

In Upkeep, i draw a Luger and Lucius random basic weakness, Morbid Curiosity.

Turn 9

(8 doom) 4 turns away from the agenda flip, we are ready to advance the act first thing this investigator phase. But first, one more round of mythos shenanigans. Another Apiary Tender for Michael which means two of them now get to hang out on that dead end on the far right side of the map where i’ll be teleporting away from in a second. And another Stowaway Drone for Lucius who spawns the creepy-crawly with him at the Coelom.

Michael triggers the ability on the location to move to any revealed on at the start of his turn and joins Lucius in the Coelom. I then advance the act. We are greeted by flavortext that explains how we are not only knocked out from behind, but also feel that something buries into our spine. Then it’s time for an Interlude, called “The Hive Mind”. Oh boy.

Captured by the hivemind we are being absorbed into it, but Ruby cuts us free. The Hivemind, the “Mother”, needs to die.

Time for a midgame setup.

So… what happened? The locations rearranged, most of them leaving play (Victory locations went to the Victory display of course.) The four locations that are left are arranged in a circle around the new Central Chamber, a special location that rotates in either direction each turn (it’s a coinflip). It is always only connected to the location its bottom points at (currently the Coelom). In the Central Chamber, Mother resides in all of her Massive, Relentless, 16 health glory. The Inescapable enters the board, turns out the info i got about having to set its encounter set aside at the start of the game is correct! If we played it as written, we would have had to deal with it possibly beforehand and would now probably grab it from the encounter deck? I assume we get an errata for that in the next FAQ. The two Stowaway Drones we had in play both stayed in play, meaning that we can defeat them to hurt Mother through the Forced effect printed on her. The new act tells us to kill Mother. Duh. It also allows us to put discovered clues back to our location as a free activation to deal that much damage to a non-Elite at the location. Sounds pretty useful to kill all those Aloof enemies here.

Well, it’s still Michael’s turn, he didn’t spend an action yet, so off to work we go. Michael engages the Stowaway Drone at our location and kills it with the Derringer. The two damage are moved over to the Mother. Michael oversucceeds, recouping an action. With two actions to go, he moves to the Starving Corridor with Ruby, draws a card (Remington) and plays a Luger.

Lucius plays String Along, then uses the Claw to engage The Inescapable at the Grasping Corridor. Using String Along, he evades the big guy, using Book of Verse to turn a regular success into one by 2. It’s evaded, i draw a card (another String Along) and gain a clue. This triggers Morbid Curiosity, dealing me a horror and shuffling the weakness back into the deck. Investigating with my last action would risk pulling an Elder Thing which would ready the Inescapable again. I don’t want to take that risk, so i just gain a resource.

In the enemy phase, the Inescapable readies. The Drone does nothing as it can not see a non-Elite in play to patrol to. Upkeep draws are Dakota Garafalo and Dreams of the Clay, both excellent cards. The Central Chamber rotates clockwise, now facing Michael.

Turn 10

(9 doom) I wonder if we can kill Mother before we get to the agenda flip at 12 doom? Michael draws Dangerous Curiosity, threatening to put another Stowaway into play. Honestly, i want to fail this, to get the opportunity of damaging Mother again without having to engage her. The test is 3 vs 3. I fail, take another damage (now at 5) and find an Apiary Tender. Lucius draws Still Behind You, but as in previous scenarios, that treachery doesn’t do anything if i am already engaged to the Inescapable. I take the opportunity for an easy 6 vs 2 with Dreams of the Clay committed and put Dreams into play.

Michael engages the Tender and shoots both the Remington and the Derringer at it. I commit Overpower to the first test so it will also beat the -4. At 8 vs 3 and 7 vs 3 the tests succeed. The Tender dies and four more damage are moved over to Mother.

Lucius strings along the Inescapable. It succeeds, but without gaining a clue. I do however reveal the Elder Thing, so if i draw another one this turn, it will not ready the Inescapable (only the first one drawn each round counts). I draw Perception off of String Along. My other two actions are spent investigating. First, using the Charts. I discard Manual Dexterity to find a second clue with it. Then, a regular investigation, committing Perception. Another success, drawing Doppelgänger from my deck. I then put the 4 clues back on the location to deal 4 damage to a non-Elite at my location: The other Stowaway Drone. It dies and the 4 damage are moved to Mother who now already has 10 damage on her. I might just be able to engage and shoot her to death next turn.

The Inescapable readies, we draw Intimidation and Mag Glass. Neither is particularly useful right now. The Center Chamber rotates clockwise again, now facing Lucius in the 12 o’clock location.

Turn 11

(10 doom) Can we finish the job this turn? It’s close. Michael draws Elder Mist, attaching it to his location. Everyone at this location now get -1 to all skills until someone oversucceeds by 2. Annoying, but fine. Lucius draws Infected! which i will once more cancel with Dreams of Clay.

I want to see what’s going on in the Central Chamber, so Lucius moves in with the claw. It doesn’t have any abilities helping with the fight, it’s not a Victory location either. So fairly uninteresting except for the 6 clues on it. Of course, Lucius now stares down both the Inescapable and Mother, but they have 2 and 1 agility. How bad can it be. I spend two actions evading the big guys, stringing along the Inescapable. Predictably, both attempts pass and i do get to pick up a clue here for good measure. String Along draws me the Antikythera. For my last action i do want to leave the location however back to where i started the turn, the Nest in the center isn’t really a place to be.

Unless your goal is murder, of course. Michael has a chance to finish the deal this turn. It does require passing some more dodgy 6 vs 4 tests, but even if it fails it’s not too bad. So let’s see. I play Dakota, then use both of my allies to move into the center location. I shoot the Remington first, then the Derringer. I commit the other Remington from my hand, so i test 9 to 4 on the Derringer and 7 to 4 on the Remington. I pass and oversucceed for an extra action, even get an extra ammo from the Elder Sign which i put on my other Derringer. Originally, the plan was to deal the final two damage with the Luger (once now, once in upkeep), but this works too! I commit Intimidation to test 8 vs 4 on the final shot and it hits. Mother goes down and with her, the scenario is finished.

Resolution

We exterminated the alien parasites and add a log entry to that effect to the campaign log. We made progress on both tasks and translated 3 glyphs. We didn’t manage to pick up the story asset that could be earned here, but the important part is that we walked out of there with 8xp: 4 from locations, 1 from the Star Spawn, 1 from that weird parasite with the glyph on its back and 2 from Mother.

Michael spends the experience to upgrade the two Crack Shots into Watch This(3), to give him a good out against cards like Infected! which he had to carry around all scenario. All the other cards i am still eyeing with him cost 4 or even 5 xp, so i just bank the other 2 for later.

Lucius gets another copy of Memories of another Life. Having that Nautical Charts last scenario was pretty hype and i have some other good options still in my stack that i set aside. The other 3xp go to a copy of Charisma, so now i can conjure up Leo De Luca with my Memories as well. To make room for the Memories, i cut a Manual Dexterity.

After-Game Thoughts

I liked this one, too. The location mechanics don’t quite live up to Lost in Time and Space, but what does? It still managed to convey a sense of things just being a bit alien and weird while down in this nest of fleshy tunnels. I got some heavy Alien vibes here and there, but without it being too overt. If i had one complaint, it’d be that the final boss was maybe a bit too easy? The way i could use excess damage to Drones and Tenders to spill that over to the Mother made relatively short process of the thing. Not sure that the rotating location mattered all that much either, except to draw the parallels to Dream-Eater’s Weaver scenario. I thought the first two thirds of the scenario were quite strong though and exploring the Nest through the encounter deck was a good spin on familar mechanics.

The investigator decks are in full swing now. It doesn’t really feel much like a constrained card pool anymore, i am just playing the game like i’m used to. Well, with maybe a good deal more skill cards in the mix to make sure the important tests don’t fail.

Next up

For our next scenario we are actually given a choice. We can either head straight for the Western Wall or we can do a little detour into the Drowned Quarter. Look, i’ve been promised the return of the Deep Ones and still have not seen a single one of them, so i give marching orders for The Drowned Quarter, where i assume they might hang out.

Setup

The stairway we escaped into leads to a great machinery. Interconnected chambers with a sort of heart in the middle. We decide to explore here, expecting to find more artifacts and glyphs.

We add yet another token to the bag, an Elder Thing this time. You hate to see it. No special task interactions this time.

As with the previous two scenarios, we once again have to put out locations according to a placement diagram in the manual. For what it’s worth, it’s even easier to put together than the one in Court of Ancients, but these elaborate location setups have definitely become a bit of a pattern. What we have are four specific locations, starting with the Stairs we are coming from on the left. Then a moving platform and the Core. On the far right a sealed chamber. The other seven locations around the Core are randomized facedown. The idea is that we can not enter the Core or Sealed Chamber and have to use the moving platform to get to the Vault Chambers where we can gain access to the Core. The book introduces rules for how the platform moves (it can swap places with one of the Vault Chambers to move and is connected to the ones next to it). Notably, there is an important piece of errata to know about: The Core as printed is missing the line of text that forbids you from entering it. I place a coin on the Core to remind myself of this and not accidentally move into it before i am actually allowed to. I also have to place a resource on three of the corner locations, indicating that they are “activated”. I will need to activate all of the others too to get the Core to open up. As a final piece of board setup, the lower three locations have flooding in them.

The encounter deck we are starting with is very thin. There is only 19 cards in it, including those from two encounter sets i have not seen before this campaign: Flood and Alien Machinery. So hopefully the Flood tokens get a bit more of a role this time than in the previous scenario. There’s a fat stack of 12 cards set aside however, so even if the deck starts out small, we can assume it’s going to fatten up soon. Among the set aside cards is once more the whole Inescapable set… that guy really has it out for us.

For our starting artifacts, Lucius again grabs the Obsidian Claw. It’s simply way too good to pass up. Michael goes for Laudanum, to have a way to heal horror. He came awfully close to defeat through sanity last game and i want a reassurance.

Finally before I start, as usual a quick look over token reference, act and agenda. The skull scales with half the number of activated abilities, so it starts at -1 and can reach -3. Possibly -4, if the Core also counts as activated once flipped. Tablets are -2, scaling to -3 and -4 with flood. Elder Things are straight up -4s and on fail will add Still Behind Yous that are in the discard to the victory display which will make the Inescapable harder to avoid. We have two of each of these tokens in the bag now.
The act gives us our Objective: Find the Tidal Tablet. Whatever that is and however we get it. No idea yet. It also tells us how to open the Sealed Chamber on the right: Translate three specific glyphs. Noted. I guess the first thing to figure out then is how that platform works and to get into the Core. That should probably point us towards where the Tidal thingy is.
The agenda only offers 3 doom worth of time. Makes sense, we’ll probably get some of those set aside cards into play then. We also get the drowning effect again, 5 damage if we can’t get into a non-fully flooded location throughout our whole turn.

Turn 1

I am very happy with these starting hands.

Michael: Primed for Action, Primed for Action, Derringer, Luger, Ruby
Lucius: Milan, Antikythera, Lockpicks, Deduction, ECache

Michael has Ruby, two guns and enough Econ to play all of it in one turn. Chances are i will do exactly that.
Lucius has Milan, an investigation tool and Antikythera, literally all he needs to do great. Some econ and a Deduction are never wrong either. I actually didn’t even need to mulligan with Lucius, this was straight up the first 5 cards i saw.

Michael goes first, using all of his money to play all of his cards. Then Ruby leads him onto the moving platform, revealing it (-1 for his task) and I learn how to operate the thing. As a free action, i can spend 2 clues to have it swap places with a connected Vault. It has some cheap clues to offer as well, 4 of them at shroud 2 – same as the starting location.

I think i will actually go ahead and clean those first two locations with Lucius early on so we can operate the platform. But first things first. I play Milan and investigate, then play ECache. This puts me back at 5 resources, so including the one i will get in upkeep, i am set up to play both Antikythera and Lockpicks next turn.

Upkeep draws are Overpower and Perception. I have a thought at this moment about how much Confiscation would currently screw me over. I probably should have played this safe and play only one of my guns. Let’s hope i don’t get punished down the line.

Turn 2

(1 doom) The first Mythos phase is always exciting. New encounter deck, new cards i’ve not seen before. Let’s go.

Cyclopean Architecture is something that I have actually seen before. It fails by 2, knocking the just drawn Overpower out of Michael’s hand. You know what, maybe playing those guns immediately was right after all. Deadly Mechanism is something scenario specific and new however. As one would expect, Lucius fails his willpower test and has to pick a result. I don’t know what we need to activate a location yet, so i don’t want to deactivate something. I have no desire to draw an enemy at this point. So i pick the movement which will put Lucius on the platform with Michael. I can just claw back to the starting location if i want to finish it up, so that’s no problem at all. This will be much more interesting once we get to act 2, Tidal Tablet in hand. Having to pick two options will be a lot more demanding, right now i don’t see myself not picking the movement thing. That being said, i am in the luxurious situation that both of my investigators have a story asset card that gives them a free move each turn. Honestly, that’s a bit outrageous.

Time to go explore a bit. Ruby leads Michael into the first unrevealed Vault, and it’s a Victory location.

Activating it is very simple, it merely requires an action. And once we peeled the two clues off of it, we not only get a point of Victory, but also a glyph translation. I check the act and it’s one of the glyphs we need to open up the Sealed Chamber. Good progress! Michael has no cards in hand and no enemies to shoot, so i spend an action to activate the location, putting a resource there. Then, i spend the other two actions to also reveal the location below the platform.

This one is much harder to activate, requiring 5 resources. Luckily it’s one of the locations that started with an activation in play. An Ancient Vault is also here, housing another glyph that we can use to get into the Chamber. However, the translation requires the discard of a 3-cost (or higher) asset from play. I am obviously not going to get rid of my Derringer just yet and Ruby is also out of the question. I might eventually chuck the Lockpicks into it?

Lucius goes straight for the Victory location, moving there with the claw. Then he spends two actions, playing the Antikythera and the Lockpicks. Finally, he investigates with the Lockpicks, committing Deduction. Hopefully that does it right away. The test is 11 vs 4 and I pull the +1, putting the result far out of Antikythera range. But i won’t complain about a successful test. I gain two clues, the glyph for “Arm”, a resource from Milan and remove a chip from my task. Again, this feels like I’m making excellent progress on this turn 2!

Upkeep draws are Hard Knocks and Seek for Answers. The talent is pretty useless right now, but Seek is clue compression that is coming in very handy with all those clues on the locations.

Turn 3

(2 doom) We’ll advance the agenda next turn and i have no doubt that this will bring some fresh horrors. Probably spawn the Inescapable, too. But first, regular encounter draws!

Michael draws Deadly Torrent and he is indeed currently standing in a flooded location. This is a pretty rough treachery! High difficulties and gnarly consequences on either side. I am lucky to have a 5 in either combat or agility on both of my investigators, but even then passing this unmodified is not a given at all. I commit the freshly drawn Hard Knocks to the test for an extra icon and thankfully pass by exactsies. Otherwise that would have been a damage and the Luger gone… brutal!
Less brutal is Lucius draw, he gets another copy of Deadly Mechanisms. It makes him move back on the platform, essentially saving him an action. Thanks, encounter deck, very cool.

Here’s a little funfact about Ruby: Unlike the claw, she can move you in any free trigger player window, it doesn’t have to be your turn. So that’s what she does, getting Michael back on the platform right away. The reason for this is that i want to start with Lucius and i think it’s time to get the platform moving. And i do want to move it up, away from where Michael is right now. I figure that we aren’t ready to throw away an asset for that translation yet and i don’t want to backtrack for it. So we are moving the platform in a way that lets us pick the glyph up at the end of the merry go-around.

I do however want to get those clues on the bottom location before we start moving away, so i play Seek for Answers, testing 5 vs 2. I oversucceed by 2, triggering the Antikythera for a card and a resource. Also, Milan. In total, the action nets me 2 clues from a connecting location, 2 resources, progress on my task and a card… which is another Seek for Answers. Cute. I immediately use that one too, and get to pick up 2 clues from our starting location, as fuel for the platform. The location has one clue left, but i don’t want to go back to pick it up. While it would count for progress on my task, i don’t think i will find it difficult to get the remaining 3 location clears i need elsewhere. I spend 4 clues (i have 3 left) to move the platform twice clockwise, parking it between two unrevealed locations that Michael can explore in a second. For his last action, Lucius grabs a clue from the platform.

For Michael, i think i am actually not going to explore right away. I am a bit uncomfortable with having zero cards in hands. Confiscation could still wreck me at any time and if it does lurk on the top of my deck, i’d rather see it earlier than later as we are currently enjoying a bit of breathing room. So i spend the first action drawing a card: Intimidation. Works as a panic button, but i want another one. Next draw action: Viola Case. Now we are talking! I can use that to grab a gun from my deck and have a backup in case i lose the ones i have in play. I already used Ruby earlier, so i think the safest thing here is not head into a new location with my last action of the round and right before triggering an agenda advance. So i play the Viola Case, finding the other Derringer. It also reveals that Mob Enforcer and Confiscation were card 2 and 6 in the deck at that point. Not that it matters of course, random chances are random and they are shuffled back into the deck now anyways.

Upkeep draws are Guts and String Along. Michael is now at 1 resource and Lucius is at 3.

Turn 4

(3 doom) Brace for impact, here comes the agenda flip. As i expected, the Inescapable pops up at our location. An agility(4) test can exhaust it, so Lucius gives that a go. It succeeds, which almost is a shame, I could have evaded him for a clue otherwise. It was however an oversuccess by 1, meaning i can use the Antikythera to get that clue after all. Yay me. The Still Behind Me treacheries are shuffled into the deck alongside a random Star Spawn Elite and the discard pile. The new agenda has 5 doom threshold, the same text about drowning in deep water and it does boost the Inescapable: The thing gets +2 life and can treat adjacent locations as connected no matter if there’s a platform or not. It now has 8 life instead of 6… not awful by itself but in case it appears multiple times that extra bullet required could stack up.
Encounter draws are relatively harmless. Michael draws Still Behind You which has pretty low stakes. Failing the test would simply engage the Inescapable with him, possibly costing Lucius an action down the road. But the 4 vs 2 passes, so the point is moot. Lucius draws Cyclopean Architecture, making me realize that all the times so far in this campaign, only Michael has drawn this card. At 5 vs 2, Lucius successfully passes this treachery as well, drawing his incredibly awful Elder Sign.

Time for Michael to start earning some money, so he shoots both of his guns into the Inescapable, dealing 3 damage (no bonus action though… 7 vs 4 is hard to oversucceed by 3). He then moves into the connected location that has not yet been activated.

Oh, that’s a tough one. Activating only costs an action, but will increase the flood level of every location that can be flooded. Notably, the the stairs, the core and the sealed chamber can’t be flooded. Neither can the platform, so i don’t think we’ll be in much danger of drowning. But this would make cards like that Deadly Torrent we’ve seen last turn a constant danger while exploring the Vaults. It will also make the tablet token scale from a -2 to a -3 or even -4 where it’s now fully flooded. The way i see it, i have two options here: Either come back for this location last, which will require a little bit more traveling with the platform than just going around once. Or just open the floodgates right away. After some thinking time, i decide to just go for it. I was asking for flood to matter this game, so let’s make it matter. For my third action, I flood the level, putting an activation counter on this location in the process. Also, i remember that i just revealed a location for my task, so that’s nice too. With my actions gone, i take the Ruby train back to the platform.

[EDIT: As i have learned since publishing this article, i played this location wrong. I was only supposed to increase the flood level of “any” location, not of “each”. So i didn’t need to flood the whole level, only one location. I am almost disappointed tbh, that’s barely a cost!]

This is how the board looks now. Bottom row is fully flooded, as is the place we just were at in the upper left corner. The other three are partially flooded. We only have two more locations to activate before i can enter the Core which seems to me like we are making good time.

Lucius still has to take his turn. With the Inescapable around, i want String Along on the table, so that’s what the first action goes towards. The other two are spent investigating the two last clues on the platform. I only get one of them however, as the Lockpicks test autofails, costing me one of the 3 uses on it.

In the enemy phase, the Inescapable readies and engages Lucius.

Upkeep draws are a Luger and Backstab. After playing a string of expensive assets, Lucius is a bit strapped for money but i am always happy to have this up my sleeve. Thanks to both Milan and the Antikythera, he has great passive income anyways so we should be ready to take out something soon enough.

Turn 5

(1 doom) Some interesting encounter draws this turn!

Michael finds and engages a Persistent Construct. Oh what the fuck is this, i love it so much. It’s kind of like a Vengeful Serpent (genuinely my favorite enemy design in this game), except it doesn’t stop coming! The mechanics are different than the ones of the serpent, they are sort of turned on their head – now killing it triggers the comeback of the previous ones that were defeated so we don’t have to fear an ambush by 3 enemies in the mythos phase. But instead we can run into a situation where killing one will just return the other over and over and over. I wonder if there are two or three in the encounter deck. If there’s only two we might not even see that one again… although now that i think about it maybe that’s why the encounter deck is so thin in this scenario! Crafty fellows, these designers. If there are three (or more!) in the deck, then this could get ugly. Super interesting enemy, i absolutely adore it. I wonder how i will have to play around it and handle it. The first one we can just kill without negative side effects, but starting with the second one, their effect will start being relevant. Maybe i will string one of them along or something. Real talk, as someone who has spent considerable amounts of time analyzing this game’s encounter cards to a point that probably isn’t recommended for the enjoyment of the game, it’s genuinely super exciting to see such a fresh take on an enemy. 10/10, no notes except that i hope there’s three of them.
Lucius meanwhile gets Something in the Water. Not only is the deck thin, there’s also Surge in it? This takes the Rising Tides treachery from Innsmouth and just staples unconditional Surge on it. Honestly good call, the Innsmouth version often ended up a free draw. This means that the top right location is now also fully flooded. If we draw this two more times, everything that can be fully flooded will be. And Lucius has to draw another encounter card… and it’s another Still Behind You. Since the Inescapable is already engaged with me, this does literally nothing except make me test. I pull my crappy Elder Sign again (i only got it once with Michael all campaign…), oversucceed by 4 and gain a resource and card from the Antikythera. The card i draw is Dreams of Clay. I already look forward to playing this campaign with investigators that don’t just pass any old agility test thrown at them. I will hate the Inescapable so much more than i do now.

But for now I’ll keep enjoying that i got this guy under my thumb. Lucius opens up the turn with a String Along evade on the Inescapable, at 6 vs 2. It oversucceeds, making up for the clue I failed to get last turn and drawing Doppelganger off my deck. The platform is now cleared and i get another chip off of the Plumbing the Depths task, then spend 2 clues on the ability of the platform to position it in the upper right corner, once again between two unrevealed locations. I figure that it’s fine if Lucius reveals a location for once, so i use the Claw to jump into the deep water of the so far unrevealed location to our left.

Another record chamber, potentially giving us the second glyph tor recover this scenario. I spend my last two actions to investigate twice: once with the Lockpick, the other time with a Perception committed. Both attempts are successful, netting me a total of 2 clues, a glyph, a resouce, progress for my task and a card (the other Dream of Clay). He ends his turn in a fully flooded location, but since he didn’t start in deep water, it’s fine. Just need to make sure to get out next turn, but with the claw that is all but guaranteed.

Michael puts a bullet from the Derringer into the 2/2/2 construct, easily oversucceeding to recoup the action spent to do so… or so i thought. The -4 turns the 7 vs 2 into just a normal 2 damage attack. Fair enough. Ruby then leads me down into the location under the platform.

Another one of the Ancient Vaults is here, which is sort of convenient. We are almost near the Sealed Chamber and are missing one more glyph to be able to open it. Transcribing the glyph costs a damage and an action here, which i gladly pay with Michael. For my third action, i also activate the Vault i am at. This costs another damage and, much more importantly, a horror. Still, i fell like this was again a very productive turn. I need to only activate one more location for the Core to open up. For translating our third glyph, we get to flip the Sealed Chamber over to its other side.

This is what we need to advance the act. Do i want to do this before i open up the Core? I think we are well ahead of schedule at this point, as we went through the scenario fairly efficiently until now. So maybe that’s worth a consideration. Then again, on a blind play this sort of cute stuff is maybe not the best idea. Also, if we get a new artifact there, it might be helpful. So chances are that i will be going for the Tablet as soon as able. Technically, it was Michael who triggered the reaction on the act to reveal the Chamber, so i count this towards his task which is now done.

For now the investigation phase is over. The Inescapable readies, still engaged with Lucius and enjoying a swim in the water with him. Upkeep hands us a .45 and a Courage. Michael is at 6 resources, Lucius at 5.

Turn 6

(2 doom) Michael draws another Persistent Construct! Here we go. Luckily i have something prepared for it in my hand. Lucius also draws a repeat from last turn, Something in the Water. This floods the location Michael is currently at fully, then surges into Cyclopean Architecture. An intellect test 5 vs 4 that threatens to knock out 3 cards is kind of annoying, so i commit both a Courage and a Dream of the Clay. Not only does that beat the -4, but it also puts the first backup cancel on the board for later.

In the back of my mind i had already planned to let Michael use Ruby to get on the platform again and start with Lucius, but the Construct prevents that (Ruby can only be used while there is no ready enemy at her location). So Michael goes first and i do have one trick to delay the Construct recycling for at least a bit: Intimidation. I pay 3 resources and test 5 vs 2, in an attempt to shuffle the thing back into the encounter deck. Luckily it succeeds… the whole ordeal wasn’t terribly efficient to begin with and a fail there would have stung. Now i can take Ruby back to safety. With two actions left and nothing immediately important to do, i draw a card (Manual Dexterity) and play my other Luger. Thanks to the Viola Case i am now holding a Derringer and two Lugers while still having two backup weapons in my hand as backup in case the cops show up.

Lucius uses the claw to get on the platform as well, then evades the Inescapable again, but this time without the String Along as i want to disengage. The 5 vs 2 oversucceeds by 2, netting me a resource and an Emergency Cache, courtesy of Antikythera. I then leave the Inescapable behind under Michael’s caring supervision and move the platform in front of the now unsealed Tablet Chamber. I attach Doppelganger to the platform, then move into the chamber. There, i simply spend my last action using the Lockpicks to investigate and grab a clue.

To top off the investigation phase, Michael exhausts both his Lugers to try and put two bullets into the Inescapable. One hits, the other fails due to an Elder Thing token which as part of its effect adds a copy of Still Behind You to the victory display. Should i draw that treachery again, it will be 3 difficulty instead of 2. If i am not mistaken, there is only one more copy in the deck, but sure it could be relevant.

The Inescapable readies in the enemy phase, engaging Michael. Upkeep draws are You’ve Had Worse and Manual Dexterity. A bunch of agility icons to negate whatever threat the increase to the last Still Behind You could have posed.

Turn 7

(3 doom) I was hoping that Michael would be able to focus on the Inescapable this turn, but apparently the encounter deck has some other ideas.

Michael draws the Slitherer in Darkness, yet another in a series of just mad Victory enemies this campaign seems to have on offer. It stays in the water, can’t enter the platform or any of the other safe locations, however it will attack out of the water into connecting locations. So at some point Michael will need to jump into the water with it. At 3/5/4, it’s even a respectable enemy to boot. Not to be outdone, Lucius also finds some thicc bois. Deadly Torrent comes first, but it surges – a circumstance i am happy about as that card is scary. It does however surge into a Hunter Massive Relentless Monstrous Star Spawn. Yep. And it’s a 2/6/2 with a healing ability. At least it’s easy enough to evade so Lucius should be able to stall it for a bit. This campaign has been knocking the enemy design out of the park so far, i really enjoy all these impactful critters.

Michael fires the Derringer twice at the Inescapable and while he doesn’t get an action out of it, he does deal the final 4 damage required to send it to the shadow realm victory display. The Derringer is out of ammo, so he plays the other from his hand with his third action, then lets Ruby carry him into the Chamber where the Slitherer can’t reach him. Right into the arms of the Star Spawn, but i have to assume that Lucius will be able to defuse that guy. Once he arrives in the Chamber, he fires both Lugers into the Star Spawn. While he draws the Elder Thing again, this time his 6 vs 2 is good enough to beat it, so he deals two damage (while earning two bucks).

Lucius obviously starts by evading the Spawn, hoping for an oversuccess that nets him a clue. I really don’t get the clue from his investigator ability often, do I? Seems to happen very rarely. I consider committing the Man Dex in my hand to make it happen, but decide it’s not quite important enough. Testing 5 vs 2, i draw the -1 and my greed gets rewarded. I exhaust the monster, gain a clue and the Antikythera gives me a resource and a card (my signature book). I investigate twice, picking up the remaining two clues from the location. With the location now cleared, I not only finish Lucius task, but i also pick up the Tidal Tablet and will in turn advance the act at the end of the round.

Here’s the price. Honestly, at this point in the scenario it’s not really helpful anymore, there is only one location that isn’t fully flooded yet. I am also still missing one of those glyphs required to use the bottom ability. It definitely has potential to be a solid pick in a later scenario – obviously not in place of the claw, but maybe Michael is interested in this at some point.

During the enemy phase, the Star Spawn readies and threatens us again. The Slitherer can’t reach us and keeps spawncamping at the platform. During upkeep, i draw Guts and Deduction, but more importantly we have an act to advance afterwards.

And we find that the flood levels increase everywhere where it’s possible. As i just noted, this only affects a single location. I am happy with my earlier decision to open the floodgates now, as it didn’t ultimately matter too much to have the water in play a couple turns earlier. We also refill clues on the non-Victory Vault locations, so there’s more fuel for the platform available. The new act simply tells us to resign, but the flavortext encourages us to explore further. There is a resign option on our starting location, so we could be out of here in the span of a turn or two without even checking out the Core. Obviously, i do want to see what else is going on here. We will shortly be at 4 out of 5 doom on the agenda, however there is another agenda behind it – depending on how much time it offers us we might even be able to fully explore the last remaining three Vaults at the bottom. At the very least i want to activate the final one that stands between me and the core. I also do want to kill both of the Victory enemies that were spawned this turn. So there’s still plenty left to do!

Turn 8

(4 doom) Is this really only turn 8? I feel like so much has already happened, this is a very densely packed scenario. Pretty cool. For encounters, Michael draws Deadly Torrent, which surges (good riddance) into Crumbling Masonry. It’s a test 4 vs 3 that threatens 2 damage. I commit Man Dex and pass, drawing the other Man Dex off of it. Lucius also draws Crumbling Masonry. For him it’s a 5 vs 3. I consider also committing a Manual Dexterity but decide against it. He fails with an Elder Thing. He is dealt 2 damage (which isn’t too horrible, he has 3 now in total) and another Still Behind You enters the Victory display from the discard. The final one in the deck will now be difficulty 4. We might actually see that Inescapable guy again… yuck. Good thing i saved that Manual Dexterity.

Michael starts us off, shooting the Derringer twice into the Star Spawn at 7 vs 2. Provided i don’t draw an Elder Thing that heals the creature, this should kill it. I hit twice, oversucceeding for a bonus action on the second shot and i add the Star Spawn to the Victory display. That’s two big guys down, one Slitherer to go. I get back to the platform with Ruby, then use the remaining two actions to reload both of my Lugers.

Lucius uses the claw to also get to the platform, then spends 4 clues to move it twice. It’s now parked in the lower middle position, between the unrevealed location we still need to activate and the location with the Ancient Vault we left for later all the way back on turn 2. The Slitherer is two locations away from us now, so we are safe for this round and can hopefully kill it on Michael’s next turn. With his first and second action, Lucius moves to the Ancient Vault from earlier und uses it to gain another glyph. This costs us a 3 cost asset. I decide on losing Lockpicks instead of String Along. In exchange for our Lockpicks, we learn how to write “Power” in whatever language they speak down here. With his remaining action, Lucius plays Book of Verse, then once again ends his turn in deep water.
Quick check-in on our progress: We currently have 5 clues left on Lucius, enough to get us to the exit. We have gained 5xp so far.

During the enemy phase, the Slitherer slithers next to the platform, onto the location we want to activate next turn.

Upkeep draws are Unexpected Courage and Perception. Lucius now holds both a Perception and a Deduction, which should hopefully be good enough to just clean up a location if it’s still required.

Turn 9

(5 doom) The agenda advances. A couple things are shuffled into the encounter deck: Another Star Spawn Elite, the encounter discard pile and all the Still Behind You treacheries from the victory display. I think that last thing actually works i my favor, i’d rather have three cards in the encounter deck that test agility(2) than one that tests agility(4). If the Inescapable were in play (it isn’t), it’d heal a couple life. If any Constructs were in play (they aren’t), they move to the platform. Overall, nothing immediately threatening, so unless the Mythos phase has something to say about it, i can hopefully deal with the Slitherer this turn. The last agenda has 8 doom threshold which sounds like excellent news! That’s plenty of time to explore the rest of the board! I also note that the Inescapable now gets +4 life, if it should show up again.

Michael draws Cyclopean Architecture once more and has to test 1 vs 2. With 6 cards in hand, i figure i can discard two of them, so i take the test raw without committing Courage. I draw a -3 and have to discard Guts and You’ve Had Worse. Lucius gets something we’ve not seen so far:

How rude, this Infernal Machinery would deactivate the Obsidian Claw. We can’t have that, so I use my Dreams of the Clay to cancel it.

Michael and Ruby start the investigation phase by engaging the Slitherer, in the process revealing the last location we need to activate.

There’s another Ancient Vault here, so we can earn yet another glyph (and the Victory that comes with it). Activating the location and getting the glyph asks for a lot of discard from the hand, 5 in total. No small number, especially after the mythos phase just knocked 2 cards out of Michael’s hand as well. Anyways, those concerns are for later, Slitherer first. The enemy engages us as soon as we enter the location, of course.

I have two shots left on the Derringer, so that’s what i start with. The Slitherer has 5 life, so hopefully i can finish it off with a Luger afterwards. Testing 7 v3 two times, both shots hit and oversucceed, so i get an extra action. The Luger tests 6 vs 3 and hits with an Elder Sign, so i kill the thing, earning my Victory and adding a new ammo token to the Derringer. I have two actions left, so i do want to at least do one of the actions on the Vaults. My hand currently is .45, Guts, Courage, Man Dex. I decide to just discard all three skills and activate the location. This means that at the end of the round, the Core will be revealed. My last action is used getting back on the platform.

The claw lets Lucius jump straight to the new location, to grab the translated glyph. I discard an ECache and a Man Dex and the glyph for “Weather” is now mine. That’s 7xp in the bag, finally a good payday in sight. And we aren’t done yet. I move back onto the platform and draw a card (Doppelgänger).

Upkeep draws are a Remington and a Courage. At the end of the round, we finally get to see the other side of the Core:

Well, now i kind of want the Inescapable to show up again, if this means we can defeat it permanently. It requires a failed agility test vs difficulty 2 once i draw the treachery… but that’s easier said than done. Suffering from success…
We definitely are going to study the machine here. I have five clues in hand. We need six here, then four more to get home, so Lucius will need to get at least 5 of the clues here.

This is how the board looks right now. There’s still an unrevealed location to the middle right, but to get there, we’d need another four clues to move the platform back and forth one extra step. We had to skip it earlier when the Slitherer was threatening the platform. I am currently thinking that i will probably not go back for that platform, but we’ll see what the Interlude brings and how that changes things.

Off we go into the next turn, 7 more to go before the agenda runs out. Should be plenty of time?

Turn 10

(1 doom) Michael draws Still Behind You! That’s right on cue, now i only need to fail the 4 vs 2 and i get a chance to (i assume) permanently defeat The Inescapable. Obviously, i pass the test. Damn. Lucius gets Cyclopean Architecture. We just got rid of a bunch of cards in our hand and losing another 3 here would be painful. I decide not to take any risks and commit Perception and Dreams of Clay to test 8 vs 3. I succeed and put Dreams into play. Perception draws me a Manual Dexterity.

I start with Lucius, who claws into the Core and starts working at the clues. First test, i commit Deduction for a 6 vs 3. I only pass thanks to Book of Verse because the Elder Thing throws its -4 at me. Having two of these in the bag now is really damn noticable. Anyways, a pass is a pass, i gain two clues from the Core and draw a Mag Glass off of the Book of Verse, which I immediately play. While at it, i also play a Doppelgänger here. The other two actions are also spent investigating, now at 6 vs 3 thanks to the Mag Glass. I draw skull two times which is a -3. I manage to pass three tests in a row by +/-0, failing to trigger Antikythera. No small feat with a Book of Verse on the table!

Michael spends some time preparing for trouble, now that the board is quiet. First action draws a card… and it’s Mob Enforcer. Second action pays the Mob Enforcer 4 resources to get lost. Crazy O’Bannions, literally following me into R’lyeh to collect on debts. With the third action, i draw another card. If it’s Confiscation, that’s fine by me right now. It’s not, it’s an Overpower. Sure. Ruby gets Michael into the Core with Lucius and that was already his turn.

Upkeep draws are Where’s the Party and Artistic Inspiration. I wonder if i can use WtP in some helpful way right now? I think all the Victory enemies in the deck (there should be at least one big Star Spawn) are Elite and i don’t really want to use it finding out that the only enemy i can grab in the whole deck is a Construct… Probably a blank card right now then.

Turn 11

(2 doom) Michael draws a Persistent Construct. Lucius triggers Doppelgänger to immediately evade it. It oversucceeds by 2 and i use the Book of Verse to make it a success by 3 instead. This allows me to trigger Antikythera to pick up the 10th clue we needed. Doppelgänger goes back to Lucius hand and the Construct is evaded. Lucius draw is Deadly Mechanisms. So far this card has only been helpful, but now that we are in act 2, we’d have to pick two of the three options on it if we fail the willpower test. So either drawing a set-aside enemy or deactivating a vault. Does it even still matter if the Vaults are active or not? We opened the Core, so it’s not relevant anymore, right? I double-check the cards in play and am pretty sure that the activated thing no longer matters. If anything, it’d power down the skull token if two locations would end up being deactivated. I take the test 2 vs 3 which predictably fails. The treachery moves me back onto the platform and i deactivate the location that is closest. Reactivating would cost 5 resources, which i would have if i really need to.

Lucius moves back into the Core, then spends the double action (and 6 clues) to study the machine. The shortest story interlude ever presents us with a red blinking button (no, really). If we press it, we record that the “Inner Sanctum has been unsealed”. Spooky. If we don’t, we gain an XP each. You don’t give me a red button and expect me not to press it. I record the entry about the inner sanctum in my campaign log. With my actions spent, i drop a Doppelgänger on the Core again, then claw back onto the platform.

Ruby and Michael follow, then we spend the four required clues to get the platform back into its orginal position. With three actions still left, i want to go ahead and draw some more cards. There is still an Elite in the encounter deck, so drawing Confiscation and putting out new guns would still be helpful. The first card is Robert Castaigne who has been notably absent this campaign so far. The second one is ECache. For my third action, i play Castaigne.

Upkeep draws are Mag Glass and Courage. I realize i have not seen any of Lucius weaknesses yet. I am not mad about it, of course.

Turn 12

(3 doom) My investigators are both 2 actions away from having resigned, so there’s probably not a lot that could still stop us. There’s a couple turns left to see if we draw another Victory enemy. Also, we might make the Inescapable appear, drag it over to the Core and kill it. Let’s check out our encounter cards.

Both investigators draw Deadly Mechanisms.

I decide at that point that it’s late in the evening and i don’t really feel like sitting on this location and detail my draws that are likely not even going to matter for another 45 minutes so i call it quits. I resolve the two treacheries which don’t do anything relevant, move to the resign spot and finish the scenario. The right play would obviously have been to see if we can squeeze another point out, but if that bothers you, just imagine i sat on this location for another 4 turns and didn’t draw the one card in the encounter deck that i was looking for.

Resolution

We make it out alive and having learned a bunch. The Tidal Tablet is now available for us to choose in future scenarios. We made five glyph translations and gained 7 Victory points (2 from locations, 3 from Ancient Vaults, 1 each from the Slitherer and Monstrous Star Spawn). Out of curiousity, i check the still facedown location – no Victory on it. I also browse through the encounter deck, finding that the last Elite Star Spawn was indeed the only Victory still up for grabs. 7 out of 8 is pretty good!

After-Game Thoughts

This was the first scenario where my decks felt like they were really performing at capacity. Lucius was tearing through clues, Michael handled a couple dicey enemy situations really well. Feels good. So even when your card pool is limited, that doesn’t mean you are playing underpowered yank… well, not necessarily anyways. Obviously, Ruby and the Claw are still a good part of why we were able to plow through many of the challenges so fast, but it’s not like they handle the enemies for us or pick up the clues.

The scenario was yet another good one. The flooding mattered, i quite like that encounter set which is a lot more impactful than its Innsmouth counterpart. I got to see another wave of cool enemies that aren’t just retextured ghouls, but do interesting things and ask me to think about how i defuse them. Good stuff. After 4 scenarios, we are probably half-way through now and so far my impression of the campaign has been super positive.

Next Up:

We next move into The Apiary.

Bees? GOB’s not on board.

Setup

Getting out of the storm, we make our way deeper into R’lyeh. We come to a sort of archive covered in glyphs, a chance for us to make great headway into our translations. Exploring this archives involves going down an elevator shaft however. We find bodies of previous explorers(?) in colorful clothes and hear a roar. Time is running out.

A tablet token is added to the chaos bag. Also, there is a special interaction with Lucius’ task, Plumb the Depths. It represents the dangers of learning too much in these archives and gives us a sadistic choice: Either lose the progress we just made towards the task and each of us starts with a bonus clue into Court of Ancients. Or gain 2 progress, but we start with 1 fewer card in hand. Should i pick the latter, Lucius also has to take a mental trauma. Not an easy choice at all. Lucius is strapped for sanity as it is and one fewer card per player is a significant penalty. On the other hand, this is a three point swing with regards to task progress, either -1 or +2. After much deliberation, i erase the progress and start everyone out with an extra clue. I simply can’t afford the mental trauma this early, that could snowball in a very dangerous way. If i already had the Elder Sign Amulet in my deck, i probably would have thought differently about it, but as it is right now, i just can’t.

Moving onto the setup proper, it’s time to consult a setup chart again for where the locations go. Not nearly as involved as the previous one however and this is done fairly quickly. We start at the top of a 4 story structure that we can only move between with a moving location that acts like an elevator. The locations at the bottom are flooded. So instead of Wind, we have Water now. Looking forward to the Fire, Earth and Heart scenarios that are sure to come up.

In terms of encounter sets, we aren’t using anything from the Core at all, but we do have a bunch of repeats from the previous two scenarios. The Inescapable is around again, this time set aside from the beginning and his treacheries start in the deck. So we could have him show up right away. There’s the Dreams set which features some heavy discard. And a couple others. The new Domination set and a good amount of scenario specifics make sure we have new horrors to look forward to as well.

We once again get to pick an exploration asset to start in play with and we actually earned the right to pick the Obsidian Claw now! That thing is insanely overpowered and goes straight back into Lucius hands. We didn’t use the Alien Tablet a lot last scenario, but considering we are now in an archive, i expect translations to heavily feature, so Michael picks that thing once more. Maybe the Laudanum could have allowed me to go for the mental trauma? Eh, too late now, the decision has been made.

Before i start the game, i observe what i can learn from the cards laid out before us. The token reference has all Tablet tokens now act as curses (-2, roll into another token) while we are in flooded locations. We got two of those tokens now, so that’s going to potentially be bad. The skull scales with Glyph cards in the Victory display. Just how many translations are we supposed to get here? The Elder Thing is just straight up nasty. A -4 that deals a damage or horror when pulled during an attack or evasion, even on success. Yikes.

The agenda gives us a doom threshold of 6 and the same drowning effect that Innsmouth had a few times: If all an investigator sees during their turn is fully flooded locations, they take 5 damage. Let’s not. The act advances as soon as the Lift is activated, which only requires gaining the 2 clues on that location. That should be a first or second turn advance. It also gives an ability to spend 2 clues to discard the top 5 cards of the encounter deck hoping to find a Glyph card… but will also have to draw Omen cards revealed that way. Famously, Ancient Evils is an Omen. While AE itself is not in the deck, that doesn’t sound like something i want to necessarily invite anyways. Aside from the Lift, there is one other notable location on the board: On the bottom level is an Altar that is fully flooded, requires 8 clues to reveal and 3 Glyph cards in the Victory display. I guess that’s where we are going eventually! I’ll also note that there are eight unrevealed locations here, six of which i need Michael to reveal for his task. Doable, but i will have to be conscious about not having Lucius move into locations first.

Turn 1

The start hands after mulligans are okay.

Michael: Overpower, Man Dex, ECache, .45, .41(2)
Lucius: Milan, Lockpicks, Lockpicks, Man Dex, Pickpocket

Two guns and the money to play them for Michael, Milan and an investigation tool for Lucius. No reasons to complain, but nothing to write home about either.

Michael plays his Derringer (now with 4 ammo which feels great), then moves twice to reveal the location on the far right of this level. He finds nothing special, just a regular 3 shroud location with 2 clues and an ability i likely won’t use because it uses sanity as a resource. Still, it counts towards the task. 5 to go.

Lucius plays Milan, then investigates twice. He passes both of the 5 vs 3 tests and clears the location which counts towards his task. 4 to go for him. He then uses the Claw to move into the Lift location so we can get that thing going next round.

Upkeep, Perception for Lucius, Guts for Michael.

Turn 2

(1 doom) Michael draws something new from the deck, a Cosmic Omen. Lucius gets something we’ve seen before in the first scenario, Drawn to Darkness.

We’ve not at all been involved with glyphs this scenario. I quickly check that the Obsidian Claw doesn’t count as a glyph… and it doesn’t. Good. I also see this is an Omen. Good to know what sort of thing the ability on the act can dig up as a side effect. In any case, right now this is a test willpower vs 3, threatening a random discard and a horror. And that’s plenty scary already, luckily i just drew a Guts and i use it to pass the test.
Drawn to Darkness meanwhile puts Lucius max hand size to 5. I think that’s going to be his life now, unless i find a really good moment to empty my hand. But it’s very unlikely, so this will just cause me to discard a bunch over the course of the scenario.

Lucius plays Lockpicks, then investigates twice in the hopes of turning on the Lift. He succeeds (which counts for his task) and the agenda advances. And spawns a huge honking monster on me, the Colossal Tyrant.

There’s an agility test to have it start in play exhausted and considering that it’s a huge Massive pile of pain, i throw a Manual Dexterity into the test to make it 7 vs 3 and succeed. It’s now exhausted on the Lift.

Act 2 reveals our new objective: Resign at the East Antechamber, a location on the bottom floor. So this seems to be the type of scenario where finishing it is fairly easy but there are a bunch of stretchgoals along the way and you need to assess how much of them you can do. The act also has the same ability as the previous one, where i can spend clues to find glyphs and omens in the encounter deck.

We also flip the Lift, revealing how we can move it. By passing an investigate at this 2 shroud location. Easy enough, at least for Lucius. We can also spend 2 clues to move it one level extra which might come in handy at some point. Right now, Michael has 1 and Lucius has 5 clues.

Finally, before i continue i want to take a closer look at our Colossal Tyrant. Twelve health is a lot. He can’t leave the Lift but if there’s nobody in the Lift with him at the end of the enemy phase, he will deal a horror to everyone in connecting locations (so on the same level). He’s worth a Victory. I think i am going to need to whittle him down over the course of the next couple turns, evade him with Lucius and put pistol shots into him with Michael. And get stuff done at the same time. And have someone stay in the elevator for babysitting. Got it.

Lucius is out of actions. He could use the claw to move out of the location, but i don’t think we need to clear the last location on this level. I’d rather have us descend one down immediately next turn.

Michael can’t really use the elevator well, so he does what he can do best instead: Move into the location and shoot his Derringer at the monster. I want that bonus action, so i commit Overpower. I get what i want (and draw Hard Knocks from the Overpower). I use my remaining two actions to play the .45 and shoot it as well. I don’t have an Overpower for this one, but 6 vs 3 is good enough and that’s the first 4 damage on the Tyrant. Do this two more times and we are good.

Upkeep draws are Uncanny Specimen and Crack Shot. Great, looks like another Derringer shot is likely to get its full bonus down the road.

Turn 3

(2 doom) We get some more new stuff this mythos phase, as Michael finds a Pilgrim Leader. And Lucius comes across an Ancient Vault.

The Pilgrim Leader isn’t an immediate problem, but will turn other cultists into something more dangerous. I put him on one of the side location on the next level, but my first impulse is to just let him be and deal with the Cultists that come. This could backfire massively if there are multiple Pilgrim Leaders in the deck however, as that would stack their combat values sky high. I sort of expect that not to be the case though.

The Ancient Vault is discarded and surges into Cosmic Omen. Lu fails the test, takes a horror and has to discard the Specimen he just drew. Not great, not awful. So let’s take a look at that Ancient Vault again as it’s the first Glyph card we’ve seen and much more interesting. The way to draw cards from the discard is by using the ability on the act (discarding 5 cards, then drawing one of them). Now, the glyph has been spilled into the discard pile where we can’t retrieve it again, at least not with our current means. So i suppose i need to use that ability more aggressively after all, even if it means getting bullied by Omens. Side benefit is that this will reshuffle the encounter deck eventually when it runs out, putting the Ancient Vault back into circulation. On the other hand, the ability isn’t going away either. So i might as well enjoy easier skull tokens and other scaling effects (like that Cosmic Omen) while i work on my tasks and getting closer to the resign location.

Lucius evades the Tyrant, then investigates the lift to move it down. I don’t want to use the claw to reveal one of the connecting locations (that’s Mike’s job), so Lucius just spends his last action on playing Pickpocketing. If we have to babysit a giant monster, we might as well get some cards for it.

Michael starts by putting another 4 damage into the creature, firing both of his guns. Crack Shot goes into the test for the Derringer, making it oversucceed by 3 despite drawing a -4 from the bag. With one of his remaining two actions, he moves into the unrevealed location that also has the Pilgrim Leader. And this one, the Luminous Archives, is an interesting one:

It offers a way to grab Glyph cards from the discard pile, exactly what i was just asking for a couple minutes ago. But unless we clear all six clues from the location, those Glyphs return to the encounter deck at the end of the investigation phase. Actually, this is now in effect for any glyphs we pull, so we should probably get this done… even if it costs Lucius two full turns. Satisfied with the discovery (and removing another chip from his task), Michael goes back into the elevator, hoping to kill the big beast next turn.

Upkeep draws are Where’s the Party and the second Dreams of the Clay. Both good cards i am happy to see.

Turn 4

(3 doom) The Mythos has been cooking and is ready to reveal today’s menu, Winged Keeper with a side of Oppressive Influence.

Michael draws the Influence and it’s the exact sort of thing i was deathly afraid of when i was thinking about possibly taking a mental trauma on Lucius. This is exactly the type of card that just goes ahead and murders me. The test is 3 vs 2 and Michael has nothing to commit. Lucius helps out with one of his Dreams of the Clay to at least make it 4 vs 2. I draw a skull which is still a zero at this point, so no horror is dealt and Lucius gets his Dreams of Clay in play. He then of course proceeds to draw the Winged Keeper and just look at this mad freakshow that is going on there. It spawns on the top level, that’s where we are coming from. And will just move into Michael’s location during the enemy phase and attack him. So that’s a smooth damage and horror coming in that i can’t really do anything about. Welp, at least Michael won’t run out of stuff to kill anytime soon.

Speaking of stuff to kill, let’s bury the Colossus. Both the .45 and the .41 hit, so we collect our well deserved Victory point. No oversuccess by 3 though, so one action to go. Michael moves to reveal the other location on the floor and finds a 2 shroud location with 2 clues and a negative trigger should we use the act ability while here. Still, progress on the task and a good location for Lucius to clear as well.

Lucius moves into Michael’s location and picks up the two easy clues there, making another progress on his task. That’s the third location cleared, so two more to go. I am still not sure if i really want to commit two turns to clearing that Luminous Archives location, but i use the claw to move there for now. I’ll do a quick call on this next turn.

In the enemy phase, the Keeper ambushes Michael and hits him for a damage and a horror. Ouch.

Draws for the turn are Book of Verse and Manual Dexterity.

Turn 5

(4 doom) Just as we disposed of our big chunky enemy, another one stirs. Both Michael and Lucius draw Still Behind You, the treachery that can make the Inescapable appear.

Michael holds two Manual Dexterity in his hand and isn’t really in the mood for another chonker, so he tests 6 vs 2 and wins. The draw off of the Man Dex is You’ve Had Worse, a card i really would have liked last turn to prevent that attack from the Keeper. But sure, solid card to hold in my hand in this position.
Lucius takes the opportunity to get his other Dreams of the Clay to the table as well, also winning his 6 vs 2.

First things first, Michael takes care of the googly-eyes gremlin in his face by shooting it twice. He even gets the oversuccess for the bonus action and the enemy goes to the discard. With the other two actions, he moves onto the lift and plays the other Derringer from his hand, discarding the spent one. 4 new shots ready to go, plus one left on the .45, this Locked and Loaded card is really a lot better than people gave it credit for during spoiler season.

Lucius makes the call that we are *not* going to clean out the Archives. Instead, he claws back into the lift, moves us down one level. Then draws a card (the second Pickpocketing) and plays Book of Verse.

Upkeep draws are a Remington and String Along.

Turn 6

(5 doom) We are going to advance the agenda next turn. This has me slightly worried, as i believe that the next one is already going to be the final one. While we could get out of here pretty soon, we also didn’t really get a lot done yet, so i hope the other act gives us more than just 6 dooms worth of time. Anyways, encounter draws first and it’s Cyclopean Architecture and Elder Mist, both cards we’ve seen before.

Michael tests his Architecture with 1 vs 2… and pulls the +1 to succeed. Another successful intellect test for the history books. Didn’t matter too much, i probably could’ve just discarded two cards here, but I’ll take it. Lucius gets Elder Mist and it attaches to the Lift. That could be sort of annoying, we spend a good amount of time here. I briefly consider spending a Dreams of Clay to discard it, but next time i use Lockpicks to move the lift i should get that that oversuccess to discard the Mist out of the way anyways.

Michael takes the lead on opening up locations and runs headfirst into another Lofty Walkways, but this one is special:

A Star Spawn Observer appears right in front of Michael. It’s Aloof, so unless I get an oversuccess on the Derringer, I won’t be able to kill it with my remaining two actions. The Derringer would be a test 7 vs 4, making a success by 3 too unlikely to count on. We have only one Elder Thing token in the bag, so i think i can just risk having it float around for a turn while Lucius tries to go after the first of those shroud 5 clues with his lockpicks? Sure, should be fine. To open up more options, Michael spends his last two actions to also reveal the other location on our new level. No enemy there, just 4 clues and 2 shroud. It’s also the only other Passageway we have in play right now, for whatever that is worth. Two more locations revealed, one more and Michael has done his task for the scenario.

Lucius claws his way into Michael’s location, then just investigates three times. Let’s let the Observer come to us, no need to risk it if we don’t have to. One of the investigation attempts almost failed to an Elder Thing, but Book of Verse saved it and even drew a card in the process, Mag Glass. I play the Mag Glass so i don’t have to discard to handsize in upkeep.

The Observer wants to observe and moves towards us, into the Lift.

Upkeep draws are Backstab and You’ve Had Worse. Sadly that Backstab isn’t good enough to kill the Observer, but it’s still a nice reassurance to have in hand in case we get more of these Keeper things or whatever. Speaking of, it’s time for the Mythos to have its turn and advance the agenda.

Turn 7

(6 doom) As a change of pace, the backside of the agenda reads like it’s entirely positive for us. Well, in ingame terms at least. In the story the city of R’lyeh starts to rise from the waters which is most definitely not great. But we get to enjoy decreasing flood levels. And also get to shuffle all Omens and Glyphs back into the deck. So two Cosmic Omens and the Vault go back into the encounter deck. The new agenda has 8 doom for us. Okay. More than 6, at least. It no longer has the info on what happens when we drown (because no locations are fully flooded anymore), instead it states that the Lift is now unstable. When using it, we need to pass agility tests to not get damaged while moving. Fair enough. Oh, and during the enemy phase, locations are connected between levels now. So enemies can hunt up and down. We can’t though :| Unless we move during the enemy phase somehow!

My encounter draws are Cosmic Omen for Michael and Ancient Vault for Lucius. Didn’t i just shuffle these back? I was about to put the cards back and shuffle better this time, but then i noticed that it’s a different Ancient Vault, this one has the “Life” glyph where the other one had the “Cthulhu” glyph. Alright then, looks like a fair draw after all, so let’s resolve this. Neither of my investigators has any willpower icons in hand, so Michael has to take the 3 vs 3 on the Omen and fails. One point of horror for him and he loses the Remington from his hand. The Vault that Lucius drew is discarded and surges into Still Behind You. I really don’t want any Inescapable Ones right now, so i commit a Pickpocketing to test 6 vs 2 which beats the -4. I pass.

Michael doesn’t have a whole lot to do right now, so he moves back on the Lift, then plays an Emergency Cache and Hard Knocks. That leaves him with 10 resources available, enough to use Hard Knocks to secure the occasional agility treachery or Derringer test. Hard Knocks isn’t really a great card overall, but sometimes it has its moments.

Lucius spends his first action getting the last clue on his location (needs to use Book of Verse to pass again, drawing another Milan). Then, he claws into the 5 shroud location on the other side of the lift and hopes to get the two clues there. First test will use the Lockpicks (11 vs 5), the second one will use the Perception (8 vs 5) from his hand. Since i already had to use my Book of Verse, i commit Milan as well, making the second test 9 vs 5. I don’t end up drawing a -4 one either of those tests, but it’s good to be prepared. That’s alltogether 3 clues collected, 2 locations cleared and Lucius task is done. But the game can’t let a good thing just be a good thing, so i draw Lucius personal weakness off of the Perception. The next clue i discover will give me a horror. Whatever, game. I still win this round.

Draws are a Luger and the other Backstab. Lucius is at 5 resources, not quite enough to double Backstab yet.

For my next turn, I’d like to not get an enemy that Michael needs to handle. I want to kill the Observer next.

Turn 8

(1 doom) Michael draws Dreams of Darkness, so he has a hand size of max 5 now as well. Lucius gets another Omen, which he cancels with Dreams of Clay. I could take a horror right now, but i don’t actually want to lose a Backstab from my hand.

To work. Michael engages the Observer and shoots it twice. Elder Mist is still at this location, lowering all his skills by 1, but i figure i just pay a bunch of resources on the first shot with the Derringer to make sure i oversucceed anyways. That will then also discard the Elder Mist along the way. The thing has 4 combat, Michael with his Derringer shoots at 7, -1 for the Elder Mist makes 6. I want to oversucceed by 3. If i want to beat oversucceed by 3 when i draw the -4, i need to hit skill value 11. So 5 resources? Fine. I pay up, then reveal a -1 from the bag. Hit, oversuccess, Elder Mist discarded, two actions left. Shoot the .45 at 6 vs 4, spend another two money to get to “everything but the autofail” level and the Observer goes into the Victory display. For the final action, Michael replaces the now empty .45 with a Luger.

Lucius claws his way back into the lift and lets it ride to the bottom floor. Michael only needs to reveal one more location for his thing, so Lucius does open up the one left of the elevator. There’s some elevator controls there that i likely won’t need and Lucius just picks up one of the two clues that are also there. This triggers a horror from his weakness, which reshuffles.

Upkeep draws are a Remington and an Unexpected Courage.

Turn 9

(2 doom) I suppose i should start digging through the encounter deck for glyphs this turn. Let’s hope nothing distracts us too much from that.

Michael gets another googly-eye, the Court Keeper even has Victory and counts as a Glyph! I suppose the game figured that if we refuse to make progress on our own, it forces some upon us. Lucius draws Oppressive Influence and i cancel it with my other Dreams of the Clay.

I start with Lucius, who takes his first action spending clues to discard stuff from the encounter deck. I find neither glyph nor omen, so i do it again. I once more don’t get a glyph, but i do get a Cosmic Omen. I commit an Unexpected Courage and am barely passing the test with the help of my signature book. I don’t really want to dig up more cards this turn, after all they disappear at the end of the investigation phase and Michael is busy. So i just collect that spare clue on my location instead. Or more to the point, i try. Autofail says no.

Michael shoots the Derringer at the Keeper, for full value. The Luger is next, putting the third point on it. Finally i punch it (spending a resource for Hard Knocks) to death. With the first of my remaining actions, i move into the location to the right, finishing my task. It’s basically a copy of the elevator controls that Lucius found. With nothing better to do, i draw a card (Unexpected Courage).

I quickly check the clue situation right now. Lucius has 10, Michael has 1. We are going to need 8 to enter the Altar, but to get there we first need another two glyph cards in the victory display. The more clues are on the locations down here, so we have in total 6 clues that we can spend on the act, so three activations. This turn was pretty awful when it came to that, but let’s hope the next one looks better. Alternatively, I’ll take more glyph enemies!

Upkeep draws are a .45 and an ECache. Michael has to discard to handsize, ditching Where’s the Party and one of the You’ve Had Worse.

Turn 10

(3 doom) Cosmic Omen for Michael. How many of these are in this deck? The deck is huge but i keep drawing these things. I throw an Unexpected Courage at it and pass. Lucius gets an Ancient Vault (“Cthulhu”) but has to discard it and surges into another one of the Keeper freaks. Sadly not one with Glyph and Victory though, it’s another one of the Winged Keepers that we had earlier. So Michael is going to get ambushed and slapped again.

Lucius uses the ability on the act again, spending two clues… and again finds nothing at all. There’s only four cards left in the encounter deck, so i spend another two clues to check them out. This gives me a choice between spawning another Court Keeper or a Ruined Orrery which would require me to make a intellect test with my third action.

I pick the Orrery. The encounter deck reshuffles. For my last action, i try the test on the treachery, committing Lockpicks from my hand. It succeeds and i add the thing to my victory display. That’s two glyphs collected, we are going to need another one if we want to get into the altar. That means either drawing the Court Keeper from the deck or hitting one of the Ancient Vaults with our one remaining use of the act ability. Or i suppose we could climb all the way back up to the tower and activate that ability on the Archive that takes things back out of the encounter discard pile.

Michael can’t do much except mentally prepare for the Keeper who’s coming for him in the enemy phase. Drawing cards isn’t really necessary anymore either, he has a solid couple cards in hand. So he simply converts his three actions into three resources.

In the enemy phase, the Keeper engages and attacks Michael, but he can cancel the damage and horror with You’ve had worse, paying two resources.

Upkeep draws are Morbid Curiosity, the other of Lucius weaknesses, and Where’s the Party. The glyph enemy is an Elite, so we can’t get it with that. We could grab the other Keeper so that we don’t get ambushed by it? Maybe. But first, the bad guy’s turn.

Turn 11

(4 doom) Four more turns to go. We can resign at any moment, so unless we start anything overly clever like trying to get up the tower again, we are reasonably safe.

For the millionth time this game, Michael draws Cosmic Omens. He fails the 3 vs 3 and takes his third horror. He could now die at any moment to that treachery that deals 2 horror. What was that about being safe again? Lucius draws Still Behind You and commits String Along for the 6 vs 2.

Lucius uses the act again, finding only sadness. And yet another Cosmic Omens that hits him for the third point of horror and knocks an ECache out of his hands. If i activate the act again, i won’t be able to enter the Altar. But then again, if i don’t, i’m not likely to get in there either, right. So I just take a deep sigh and decide to keep that Altar as a surprise for a future playthrough. I spend another 2 clues, finding the Court Keeper. It spawns engaged with me. Lucius isn’t able to kill it (at least not with just a single action), so he evades it and for the first time this scenario gets to pick up a clue with his investigator ability. Using the claw, he leaves the Keeper behind and joins Michael. The discovered clue doesn’t count as an investigation however, so when i end my turn i have to take a horror and shuffle Morbid Curiosity back into my deck. I put that horror on Milan.

Michael has his own Keeper to take care of first. That’s easy enough however, the Derringer and the Luger put it to bed real quick. The other two action are spent to move towards where the Victory enemy is about to ready.

When the Court Keeper readies in the enemy phase, he no longer finds the dainty Lucius in front of him, but a much scarier opponent.

Upkeep draws are Robert Castaigne (aka “2 points of sanity soak”) and Unexpected Courage.

And this is where i realize that i can get into the Altar after all. Unlike all the other effects and abilities i’ve seen so far this campaign, we can spend clues as a group to get into the Altar. So the one clue on Michael actually makes a difference. If i pick up the two clues on Lucius locations, i have exactly the required 8 clues between my team. And if kill that Keeper, i have exactly the required 3 glyph cards in the victory display as well! That task-related decision during setup is paying off big time now, as it gave me two extra clues that are coming in clutch right now.

Turn 12

(5 doom) That being said, clock’s ticking. No enemy please, Michael is busy.

I draw Corrosive Fog, twice. Michael doesn’t mind it much, he just takes the damage after failing his test. Lucius himself doesn’t mind either, but this could kill Milan. So I use Unexpected Courage and pass the test.

The Court Keeper goes down in pistol fire and Michael pays 4 resources across two tests to make sure of that. He moves to Lucius location and plays Robert, now feeling much safer knowing he can survive getting hit for 2 horror again. This puts him at 1 resource, even in spite of all the gunfire related income he had over the last turns.

Lucius wants to go for the two remaining clues, then open up the last location with the claw and have one action left. At least that’s the plan. The tests pass, i collect my clues and spend all of them, revealing the mysterious location that has been calling to us since setup. Thankfully, there’s no monsters here, just more clues, victory and potentially even a new story asset, the Shard of Y’ch’lecht. We currently have 7 glyphs translated, so the test to pick that thing up is difficulty 4. We can do that, right? In my hubris, i spend my last action testing 5 vs 4. Thanks to Book of Verse, it succeeds. So let’s check that thing out.

That is very good. Ignoring any first attacks by Deep Ones or Star Spawn. That means that if you didn’t provoke an AoO you even cancel their regular attack instead. Hot stuff.

Alright then, the plan now is to get the clues from this location and then get out of here. It’s going to be very very close. In fact, i think i am unlikely to make it as my Lucius doesn’t really have any clue compression in his deck apart from two Deductions. Right, Deduction could turn this around. Let’s head to upkeep and see what we get.

We get Intimidation and a Mag Glass. Fine, looks like it’s not happening then. We got the artifact, that’s the important part. If nothing weird happens, i think i want to resign next turn.

Turn 13

(6 doom) Michael draws Oppressive Influence, the card i was afraid of last turn. I commit Intimidation and test 4 vs 3. I fail and take 2 horror. Last turn that would have killed me, now they kill Robert. Phew. The Inescapable tries to sneak up on Lucius again, but if you try to sneak up on a 5 agility investigator, it’s your own fault if you never enter play all game.

Both investigators resign.

Resolution

We escape the tower, into a stairway that leads deeper down…

We earn 5XP for the cards in the victory display and also acquire the Shard artifact. We translate another three glyphs, the ones for Dreams, Sleep and Y’ch’lecht. That’s seven in total now. We also gain a mark for both of our tasks (Michael’s is now at 2, Lucius is at 1).

Spending the XP, Lucius diverts from the plans i initially made. He will be picking up two copies of Seeking Answers(2). We need some clue compression, relying on the Deductions and Antikythera is not enough as we just experienced. For the final xp, i will buy a full set of Doppelgangers. Honestly, i just want to test them, no idea how good they end up being. If they aren’t great, i will just remove them for something else again. To make room, i remove the Forensic Kits, the Specimens and one Pickpocketing.

Michael has still 2xp banked, so he can spend 7 now. He gets Dakota and Charisma. He almost died to horror there (again) and i figure having another ally in the deck is a good way to mitigate it. Dakota can also do a great job of being Ruby when Ruby is not around. She replaces Intimidation.

After-Game Thoughts

That went okay. I feel like i got royally unlucky with the activations of the act ability there, but to be fair there are locations that boost it a bit which i have been ignoring. Had i used those location boosts, i would have seen some extra cards from the encounter deck which might have made a difference. But it would also have forced me to go for this earlier and have ramped up skull tokens from the start. I was profiting massively from having skulls be +0s for the longest time, so i think i stand behind my call there.

I am very much enjoying the enemy design in this campaign so far. They are weird, do new things and are actual threats. Very happy about that. Overall, this was another good scenario. I like the part of it where the resign is in reach fairly early but you can keep pushing for more to achieve. I liked the random aspect of the reveals from the encounter deck less, but maybe i just got the short end of the stick there. Like with the previous scenario, i wonder how much more you can get here in terms of XP. I got 5, but there’s probably close to 10 in the scenario, isn’t there.

Flood made an appearance for the first time, but didn’t really factor into the scenario at all besides the (admittedly pretty cool) representation of the city rising on the game board by having the flood go down.

Yeah, another good one. Let’s move on.

Next Up

Apparently we find The Great Vault at the bottom of the stairwell we fled into?

Setup

Again, the prologue text is short and to the point (that’s a good thing): Ruby is exploring R’lyeh with us and the part we are in now is particularly windy, it seems. We have to brave a storm while navigating an alien land. Cool enough, that works for me!

There’s an interaction with two different Tasks here, neither of which i am using. Spending all my willpower, i do not read anything in the boxes and move on to the setup proper. And this one is a bit of a bear, not only when compared to the super simple (but apparently not idiot-proof) intro scenario, but also when compared to the game as a whole. Two different side decks are defined (the “Open Sky” which is made out of treacheries and the “Summit” which is facedown locations, then a grid of cards from both of these decks is assembled into the game board following a chart. Columns and Rows are being defined, a story card introduced that flips between western and eastern winds which apparently are moving the locations around and replacing them with new ones from the two decks when they fall of the grid… kind of like that old Labyrinth game from the 90s. There’s a storm intensity that counts up too. The rules text for all of that takes a whole page and is longer than all of the setup and story bits to the first scenario taken together. Three more pages follow showing different configurations of the board, spoiling that we are going to increase the size of the board from act to act until we end up with a 5 by 4 grid. Oof. It’s a lot to wrap your head around and understand, but i will say that it at least looks easy enough to execute the mechanics once you do get them. So while this was at first giving me hard flashbacks to the dreaded mine scenario in Hemlock Vale (which i really dislike the mechanics of), this should hopefully be a lot better in actual gameplay. Fingers crossed. Still, not looking forward to two bouts of midgame setup.
Some enemies are set aside again and you can be damn sure i quadruple checked that i did everything right this time. A bunch of other stuff gets set aside or even removed and in the end we finally do end up with a chunky encounter deck that is mostly using new cards that we’ve not seen before. And the Nightgaunt set. I’ve done my best to not read any cards while sleeving and sorting them, but i did get the impression that this scenario is going to have some biiiig enemies… Fair enough, after a scenario that had just various shades of dudes with guns. As a final bit, both investigators get to pick a story asset to start the game with. Lucius goes for Laudanum, which can be used to heal horror, but more importantly it can be ditched to cancel a Power or Terror treachery. That should come in handy, after all Frozen in Fear is around (although as part of the Open Sky, whatever that means) and that’s a Terror indeed. Michael goes for a kit that gives him +2 skill when interacting with alien artifacts. With his broad statline, that should give him a great chance to keep up with our language translation efforts.

We are starting on a corner location that won’t be moved around and houses 6 clues. Notably, this corner is surrounded by Open Sky, so before those get blown away by the storm, we are stuck in that location.

Again, a quick look at the token reference: Skulls are scaling with storm intensity, so at a -1 for starters. We’ll have to see how fast that goes up, but could potentially become a second and third autofail in the bag. Tablets scales with adjacent Open Skies, so between -0 and -4. Seems manageable. The Elder Thing is a simple -2, but rolls into another token if an enemy is around. Basically a persistent curse token. The cultist is terrifying, a static -4 that puts a doom out on a fail… but luckily there’s no cultist in the bag (so far…).

The act gives us our first objective, every investigator has to reach the Central Spire. Central Spire has been shuffled into the last three locations to put on the board in the rather tall Summit deck, so that could take a while. It does give us an ability to spend clues to look into the Summit deck and put a location from there into play which sounds like it should be a huge help. Ideally we can just spend a rush of clues on this and burst through the Summit deck.

Meanwhile, there is only one agenda card and it has a doom threshold of 3. The obvious assumption is that it’s a recurring agenda, probably scaling up the storm intensity or bringing more Open Sky treacheries into the mix. Or both. We’ll find out relatively soon, i guess. The agenda also informs us that if the location we are on leaves play, we take 2 damage and have to go back to the starting location. Bit of a Lost in Time and Space vibe!

Turn 1

Starting hands are drawn and they are … okay. Nothing too famous, but I should be able to make these work. I enjoy seeing Ruby in Michael’s initial 5 cards, I’ll probably want her to get to the table soon. While i don’t have Charisma yet, i do think that she’s probably just straight up going to be more useful than Robert. As mentioned, we also start with our story asset for the scenario and of course our Tasks. I will want to keep those tasks in mind and make sure that Michael reveals enough locations while Lucius cleans out enough of them. Considering the huge number of locations in this scenario i don’t expect too much trouble with either of those.

Michael: ECache, Primed for Action, Derringer, Viola Case, Ruby
Lucius: Mag Glass, Lockpicks, Lockpicks, String Along, Book of Verse

I figure there’s not much sense in staying on the starting location for too long, chances are that we are going to have to return here unwillingly once or twice anyways. So Lucius goes straight away for getting us out of there. Playing Mag Glass, then Lockpicks, he uses his second action to investigate with those. I pick up a clue and with the third action, i immediately spend it for the ability on the act to put the next card in the Summit deck into play instead of one of the connecting Open Skies. That Open Sky goes onto the Summit deck instead. As part of that effect, Lucius also gets to move there. Oh great, these locations also have on reveal effects… Lucius loses a precious point of sanity.

Oh by the way, i don’t think i mentioned this yet, but i don’t have a mini for Lucius yet. So i am using my Ursula Downs instead… My Michael is also not fully painted yet, it’s amateur hour all around here on Ancient Evils. Anyways, back to the game…

Michael uses all his money to play Ruby and the Derringer (through Primed for Action), then follows Lucius into the new location with Ruby’s ability. The third action is used on the ECache. Pretty solid first turn, even if it leaves him with only one card in hand.

Draws for upkeep are You’ve Had Worse and Perception. At the end of the round, the westwind blows, but no locations move. Time for our first Mythos phase of the day. Lots of new cards in this deck, i am very much looking forward to this.

Turn 2

(1 doom) Michael draws Wings of Terror, which threatens him with an enemy encounter as soon as he fails a test next. Not too bad, Michael can handle enemies, but of course this makes it that i could potentially have two enemies stack up on me which would be bad. I’ll just see how this plays out, i don’t think i need to specifically play around it now. Lucius gets Eye of the Deep, which has him treat tablet tokens as if they were Elder Thing tokens. That seems fine, the Elder Thing is (at least for now, who knows how it looks in later scenarios) basically a curse token.

I start with Michael investigating with his 1 intellect vs the 1 shroud on the location. I figure that i either get a precious clue here that i can use for the ability on the act some time or i bait out the treachery i have just drawn and no longer need to worry about it. Either would be fine, so i don’t even commit Lucius’ Perception to the test and just let it happen. I actually draw a 0 from the chaos bag, making this possibly the first and only time i will ever investigate successfully with Michael this campaign. I realize right now as i am typing this, that so far i haven’t done great for my tasks… Lucius has revealed a location, Michael has cleaned one. The idea was to do this the other way round. Eh, plenty of scenario left to go, right… Michael uses Ruby to move into the location above him, but fails the agility test that is required to do so. This does now trigger Wings of Terror, luckily he still has two actions left. The enemy that i encounter is…

… a Star Vampire. I have the option to either discard it and just take a damage. Or engage it. The Victory on the enemy has me wavering a bit here. I can’t kill it this turn, unless i oversucceed by three with the Derringer and gain an extra action… but that is unlikely to happen and even then a reckless use of my ammo. In the enemy phase, it hits for 2 damage, but Lucius could engage and evade it. That’s a lot of used actions though. Considering that i need a win after the failed first scenario, I just once don’t let greed take over and discard the Vampire, taking only a damage on Mike. I use my second action to try and move again, this time i succeed and find the Suspended Reef. It has a trigger on ending your turn there and i have nothing better to do with my third action, so i spend my clue on the act ability to put another card from the Summit deck into play instead of an Open Sky, then move to it. “You cannot trigger abilities on Firearm assets” is awfully specific text, let’s hope i don’t draw into an enemy. Anyways, the good news is that this counts as two locations revealed, so i remove two counters from Michael’s task.

The Magnetic Spires seem like a good place for Lucius to hang out and gain clues, so he moves twice to get there and uses his Lockpicks to easily pick up the first of three clues.

Draws in upkeep are a Hard Knocks and an ECache. Mike is at 4 resources, Lu at 3. Once again, the wind does nothing. Hm.

Turn 3

(2 doom) Luckily, I didn’t draw any enemies in the Mythos phase, but both of the treacheries i got here are quite interesting. Corrosive Fog for Michael threatens to come after Ruby’s health as well has his. His test of 5 vs 4 fails, but luckily not bad enough that Ruby would also get hurt. Note to self: Don’t use Ruby for soak unless absolutely necessary. Michael is now at 3 damage (to his 9 health). Lucius treachery is St. Elmo’s Fire which attaches to the location we are currently at. End of the round, everyone there gets damaged, then the treachery moves to a connecting location. If there’s a connecting location with investigators, that’s where it goes, otherwise i can start moving it towards the edge of the map. That’s a wild card, very interesting.

Lucius takes his first two actions getting the last two clues from the location (and removes a token from his task as a reward). For his third, he could move out of the way of the Elmo Fire, but a) I do want Michael to be the one to reveal more locations and b) i want to take this opportunity to get String Along to the board. So i spend my resources on String Along and just submit to that 1 point of damage that I’ll get at the end of the round.

Ruby enables Michael to move into the top row of locations and reveal another Summit… and it’s a copy of Magnetic Spires, which keeps his Firearms deactivated. Fine, i wanted to move on anyways. With the first of his actions, he moves again, this time unveiling something much more interesting. 5 shroud, one clue, and if it’s discovered i get to discover the alien glyph for “Elder Thing”. Obviously i want that. But even with the Alien Kit that i started Michael with, i don’t see that happening right now, that’ll be a job for Lucius down the road. So i spend my second action playing the Viola Case which finds my other Derringer. I don’t have quite enough money to play the Derringer, so i just take a resource for my final action. Taking resource actions? With Michael? It’s high time i get something to shoot at.

Draws in upkeep are Manual Dexterity and Milan. As for the end of the round, i have two effects to resolve and as far as i can tell I am allowed to decide on the order. So i do the Elmo Fire first, dealing a damage to Lucius. The Fire is moving to a connecting location, none of which have an investigator, so i get to decide. I choose the one that would fall off the edge of the table if the winds were finally blowing like they are supposed to. I pull the token to check if that happens and it’s a skull. Finally, the scenario mechanics do a thing. The middle row moves one to the right, pushing the outmost right location off the board (and the Elmo’s with it), then a new location enters the board on the left from the summit deck. Honestly, these are pretty clean mechanics. The Western Wind flips to Eastern Wind, so next time the wind blows, it will push the top and bottom row to the left.

Turn 4

(3 doom) But first, let’s check out what the back of the agenda has in store for us. And it’s simple enough: The intensity goes up by one (so the chance that something moves goes up) and once we are at 6 intensity, it’s game over. Roger that, we have our timer now. For encounter cards, Michael gets slapped in the face with this big ball of yikes:

Cyclopean Architecture has him test 1 vs 5, which he obviously fails by a lot. This costs him three cards from his hand. At least he gets to choose, so he can keep the Derringer. Lots of nasty discard effects in this campaign so far! Discard at random, lower max hand size, now mass discard. This could be crippling for certain investigators like Marion. Lucius draws an enemy and it’s a weird one.

Primeval Terror can be engaged so we can move with it into Open Sky. Huh. No attacks of opportunity, which i will happily use, but not in the way the devs probably envisioned…

Lucius moves into Michael’s location where he evades his new pet Terror with String Along. Oversucceeding, he picks up the clue from the 5 shroud location and draws a card for the String Along (getting Pickpocketing) while exhausting the critter. This also gives me the translated glyph from the alien location. Nice. I could probably keep this Primeval Terror around for a while, just stringing it along. The only drawback would be that i will have to keep treating the Elder Thing token as a curse … and due to the treachery i got in the first mythos phase, the same would go for the tablet. That could mess with my (over)success chances quite a bit. Maybe i just let Michael kill it at an opportune time to get a few resources back or something. Speaking of resources, Lucius is almost out of them, so the third action goes towards playing an ECache.

Michael is a bit torn. On the one hand, playing the Derringer now would leave him completely blank if he were to draw his Confiscation weakness afterwards. On the other hand, I don’t want to have my Derringer knocked out of my hand. Hoping for an answer to the conundrum, i spend my first action to draw a card: You’ve Had Worse. Not terribly helpful right now. So i draw another card: Unexpected Courage. Hm, i was hoping to either draw another Firearm or the Confiscation itself, these two cards don’t really help with the decision here. So i spend my third action on drawing a card as well. It’s Where’s The Party, which is an interesting draw that potentially opens up some options next turn. Either way, with four cards in hand i at least don’t risk having my second Derringer knocked out of my hand if i happen to draw Cyclopean Architecture again next round.

Upkeep draws are Dreams of the Clay for Lu and the Luger for Michael. Hey, that’s a gun. And not a bad one either. Winds are blowing from the east, moving the locations around a bit.

Turn 5

(1 doom, 2 intensity) Michael draws a familiar Core Set oldie: On Wings of Darkness. The good old Nightgaunt taxi would be quite inconvenient right now, but thanks to the +1 agility from Ruby and a committed You’ve Had Worse i pass by exactsies. Phew. Lucius draws Elder Mist which attaches to our location. Thankfully we were about to leave there anyways, so this whippoorwon’t affect us. At least not right now, who knows if we have to end up here again.

Lucius moves down to the previously revealed Suspended Reef. There, he strings his pet along, but the Elder Thing token rolls into a Skull for a total of -4. The evasion succeeds and he gets a card, but he doesn’t get a clue. Oh, and the card he drew is his weakness, Dreams of the Flood. Meh. With the final action, Lucius can however spend his four clues to look at 4 cards from the Summit deck and put one of them into play. If i am not mistaken, this should be able to find the location we are looking for. And i did indeed get it. It’s another non-moving fixture and Lucius ends his turn there. Now only Michael needs to go there too and we can advance the act. I feel like i am well on track with everything here, but let’s not celebrate early. For my tasks, i also still need to have Michael reveal two locations (no problem) and Lucius clean out 4 locations (that’s been surprisingly difficult so far…)

Last time i advanced an act with only an action to spare, it ended in a wipe, surely nothing like this could happen again, right? Surely. I spend two actions to move Michael to the Spire, then advance the act with one action left. This triggers a whole new midgame setup where all the locations except the Spire are reshuffled, some of the set-asides are added, others removed, etc etc. Too much to recount here. And then we spawn this chunky boi at our location:

But thankfully unenaged and exhausted this time. The Inescapable also comes with its own encounter set which is shuffled into the deck, alongside the discard pile. Hey, we might see that Star Vampire again and get that Victory after all! Here’s how the board looks now after the dust settled:

The new act has the same ability to spend clues for replacing Open Skies as the previous one, but the new and final objective is to resign. I assume this requires finding one of the two special locations that were set aside until now. We do have a fair amount of time left, i hope i can farm some more Victory in this scenario too.

But first, one more action to go. Actually, let’s take a look at that big boi on our location again. Hits super hard due to Relentless, so we need to avoid that at all costs. Chunk of life, but easily evaded. Readies and hunts after pulling an Elder Sign token, however. And that’s scary. Actually, with Lucius Eye of the Deep still in play, that’s extraplus scary because that’ll make him wake up and hunt on Lucius’ tablets as well. He goes into the Victory display after defeat. However his name, The Inescapable, and the fact that he has a whole encounter set devoted to him makes me think he’s probably able to return from there. This guy is going to be a huge pain. Thanks to Ruby, both of my investigators are reasonably able to evade him, which might just save me a lot of headache. And i think that points towards the solution not being to kill him. If i knew what his encounter set does, i’d probably be more able to evaluate my course of action here, but that’s the thrill of the blind play, isn’t it. Soooo…

With my last action for the turn, Michael plays his Luger, then uses it to put a damage onto the Primeval Terror that is still engaged with Lucius. I want that thing gone after all, it’s probably more trouble than it’s worth.

During the enemy phase, The Inescapable readies and engages Lucius. In upkeep, we draw Overpower and Uncanny Specimen. The wind blows from the west, moving the center row.

Turn 6

(2 doom) On Wings of Darkness come after Michael again. We are at the Center location, but i still don’t want to take a damage and horror from it, so i commit my Unexpected Courage and succeed. I cannot possibly overstate how incredible the +1 agility from Ruby has been for Michael this game. 4 agility is so much more than 3, it’s a game changer.
Lucius draws Still Behind You, the card from the Inescapable set that was shuffled into the deck three times. Genuinely couldn’t come at a better point in time!

So it can indeed come back into play! But only if you fail an agility test. That seems like something my team can handle. If it’s already in play, it just moves to you and engages you. In the current situation, this doesn’t even do anything. But of course, Lucius passes his 5 vs 2 test anyways, so the point is moot. More importantly, I now know what this enemy does. Killing it just became a good deal more attractive. To get the most out of this situation, I also commit Dreams of the Clay to the agility test on the treachery, so i get to put it into play to cancel something worse later down the line. Nice!

Michael takes a free action to kill the Primeval Terror with the Luger. Then, he shoots the Derringer at the Inescapable, committing the Overpower to fish for an oversuccess and make it much less likely to accidentally shoot Lucius. 9 vs 4 turns into an oversuccess indeed, so he gets his action back. The Overpower draws a card, a Remington. Pretty good start and we still got 3 actions left on Michael. There’s an enemy at my location, so i can’t use Ruby right now, so i spend an action to move into a connecting location. What i find there is a Dazzling Skyline, a location we’ve seen before. I take a horror. Using Ruby, i move on straight to the next location… and it’s another Skyline. Just in case that there are treacheries we’ve not seen yet in the deck that can deal 3 horror, i put that second horror on Ruby. The good news however is that Michael has now fulfilled his task. And these are two excellent locations for Lucius to make quick progress for his one as well. I don’t want to get too far ahead of Lucius, so i spend my last two actions drawing a card (the second Luger) and reloading the Luger i have in play.

Lucius starts by stringing the Inescapable along. I figure i better take him with me, that way he can’t hunt into me unexpectedly for four damage. I oversucceed, gaining a clue from the Spires, which triggers my weakness. I gain a horror and have to shuffle it back. Such a nasty weakness. I move into the first Skyline and play Book of Verse. No need to investigate, I’ll likely get that clue next turn for evading the big boy again. All I’d do is risk pulling an Elder Sign that’d wake it up.

Obviously, it readies during the enemy phase. In upkeep, i draw a Backstab. And an ECache for Michael. The Eastern Winds fail to do anything.

Turn 7

(3 doom) Wind intensity goes to 3, the agenda resets. The mythos phase has another good trick up its sleeve, as Michael draws Cunning Mimicry.

The Inescapable is a Monster, so Michael takes two damage here. That’s 5 in total now. Lucius in the meanwhile draws another one of those Primeval Terror things. Sure, whatever. I’ll have Michael take care of it.

Using Ruby’s shortcut ability, Michael rushes back to Lucius location and fires the Derringer at the Terror. One oversuccess later, the Terror is dead and Michael is still at 3 actions. I consider my options here, because on the one hand having the Inescapable around into Lucius turn would be nice to string it along again. On the other hand that’s not really super needed right now and i kind of want it off the board after that slap in the Mythos phase. So here’s the plan: Shoot the Derringer at the monster, play the other Derringer, shoot the monster again. That’s two tests at 7 vs 4, risking that i’d hurt Lucius if i miss. If i do, it’d just be for 1 damage though, so that’s probably okay? If i am short a damage due to succeeding only by 0, i can use the Luger as well. Eh, you got to take some risks sometimes, so i go for it. One of the advantages of playing two-handed solo, you don’t risk pissing off another player with reckless stuff like this.

First shot pulls a -1 from the bag. That’s a hit. I play my other gun and shoot again, committing the spare Luger from my hand for good measure. I draw Elder Sign (-2, draw another) into a 0. Another hit (but not an oversuccess for a bonus action). Good job, team. The Inescapable escapes to the victory display. For now.

Lucius job this turn is easy: Investigate, move, investigate. No autofail gets pulled, so he easily collects the two clues from the two 1 shroud locations, for 2 more tokens off of his task. Two more locations to clear and he’s done.

Upkeep draws are Manual Dexterity and Pickpocketing. The Eastern Winds blow some locations around. With three tokens revealed each turn, i’d expect that to happen basically every turn now.

Turn 8

(1 doom, 3 intensity) What fresh horrors does the deck have for us today? A Nightgaunt for Michael. Not great, that’ll take most of the turn to kill. Lucius gets Corrosive Mist and fails the intellect test, which deals a damage to him. He has 3 damage now, he’s fine.

Let’s first deal with that Nightgaunt. I fire the Derringer and oversucceed by a lot (drawing a +1), regaining the action. I fire the Luger next, dealing the third damage. Finally i attempt punching the Nightgaunt for the fourth point and the 5 vs 3 succeeds as well. Good riddance. I use my second action to draw a card, hoping for another gun. Instead i find Primed for Action. While i still have a Remington in hand, i don’t want to play my last weapon before i have seen Confiscation so i simply draw another card (Overpower) and use Ruby to move to Lucius.

I think it’s time for Lucius to once again spend his clues (he has three) to check the Summit deck for a location to put into play. I find a Suspended Reef and two treacheries, so there’s not much of a choice. Ending the turn there will cost me a random card from my hand, but i am at max hand size so that’s fine. I want to spend my last two actions to get the two clues off of this location and advance my task. I succeed, but the second test requires me to use my Book of Verse to change a fail by 1 into a pass by 0. This gets rewarded with a card draw (Backstab). I end my turn and randomly discard a Perception.

Upkeep draws are Robert Castaigne and Dreams of the Clay. Lucius has to discard to handsize, ditching one of the two Pickpocketings he holds. The Western Winds actually fail to do their thing.

Turn 9

(2 doom) Michael gets another treachery we’ve not seen before and it put him to a choice:

Except it’s barely a choice between the three options on Lost in the Clouds. 2 horror for each one is out of the question, doom i don’t want and the blowing wind hardly matters. So i let the Western Winds do the thing they failed to do at the end of last turn. Lucius also gets something new, the Crumbling Masonry:

It’s a 5 vs 3 test for him, but one Manual Dexterity and Dreams of the Clay later it’s actually an 8 vs 3. It succeeds, he gets to draw for Man Dex (Forensic Kit) and put another Dreams of the Clay into play. He’s very well warded against any treachery that tries to test him on willpower or combat now. Actually, thinking about it now, there seems to be very little willpower testing in this, right? I am testing agility left and right instead. Not that i am complaining, i am much better equipped for that, but that’s quite unusual.

We need to get moving on our objective, so Lucius spends his 2 clues to keep digging through the Summit deck. He finds the Aerial Waterfall. While that is one of the two locations that were set aside and only shuffled in for the second act, it doesn’t have a resign option available. Instead it allows grabbing the Obsidian Claw story asset. I’m not sure that i need it for this scenario, but just in case i get to keep it, i do want it. Whatever it does. But first… seekers gonna seek. I spend my last two actions going for the two clues on the location. Both succeed. At the cost of one of the charges on the Lockpicks, but that’s a small price to pay because i now have both of my tasks done. Highfives all around, team.

Michael spends Ruby and an action to move past Lucius and reveal another location in the upper right corner. It has been added to the board recently, which makes me suspect that it could be the one we are looking for. It’s another Suspended Reef though. Womp womp. So i spend the rest of my turn drawing another card (Intimidation… that’s almost a weapon!) and moving back to Lucius’ side.

Upkeep draws are Crack Shot and Uncanny Specimen. Michael actually has to discard to hand size, ditching an ECache. The Eastern Winds put two new locations into play, one in the top right, one in the bottom right. I am highly suspicious of either of them to be what we are looking for!

Turn 10

(3 doom) Intensity of the wind goes up to 4. Time is running short. Well, kind of. We have six more turns which is actually kind of a lot. Didn’t I just wonder about where the willpower tests are? Well, here’s what Michael got:

Acrophobia. That’s terrifying! Luckily we are currently surrounded by no Open Skies at all, so it’s a 3 vs 1 to avoid taking a horror. Completely fine. This could be much worse at another point though! And then Lucius draws … the same card, another Acrophobia. Now he already has 2 horror on him, no ally to soak for him (a Milan in hand, though) but i also don’t really want to lose an action here. Instead of going for a 2 vs 1 i spend one of my Dreams of the Clay here to cancel the card. Probably not really necessary, arguably even a waste, but the scenario should be over soon enough, so I might as well use my consumables.

Lucius spends his two clues and earns himself a shiny new Obsidian Claw. That thing is a Pathfinder on Steroids, letting you jump two locations ahead as a free trigger. It even can jump over an Open Sky as long as you land on a proper location. If you have a bunch of stuff translated (which we are far away from) it can even serve as a weapon. But that’s still far away, i assume. Thanks to this artifact, Lucius can spend his last two actions to move, then jump into the other corner location to check it out. And it’s also not the resign location. But it’s an interesting one nonetheless:

It’s a Victory location (finally, we only have 1 Victory so far… this is making me a bit nervous) and also can lead to another translation site. Obviously, i want it. But first, our investigation phase is over again.

Draws in Upkeep are another Where’s the Party for Michael (maybe i need to grab those Vampires for Victory… but i want to know that i am able to finish the scenario first!) and Lucius gets his other weakness, Morbid Curiosity. Yeah, he got another weakness that deals horror. At least it asks him to do what he plans to do anyways, so it’s probably not too bad.

The western winds blow Michael in the direction of Lucius. How romantic.

Turn 11

(1 doom, 4 intensity) Michael gets off easy this turn, with another Cyclopean Architecture that threatens to discard his stuff from his hand. But this time he’s at a 1 shroud location, so it couldn’t do much even if he autofailed. To flex on the game, he instead proceeds to pass his second intellect test this game. Lucius also gets a repeat from earlier, Crumbling Masonry. It’s a 5 vs 4 that threatens 2 damage. I’m not feeling it and cancel it with the other Dreams of the Clay.

Lucius plays Milan and investigates twice, clearing the Victory location. I decide that i will have to pass on the translation thing and need to get moving, so i use the Claw to jump out of the corner location, to hopefully be able to reveal some more locations next turn.

Looking at the board, Michael hasn’t great ways to get to new locations because he can’t jump over Open Skies the way that Lucius now can. So i think this is a good time to cause some trouble. First action, Where’s the Party invites a Star Vampire to the board. I draw a card for the effect… and it’s Confiscation. You couldn’t make this shit up if you tried. So right after i get the big nasty on deck, the cops show up to my party and carry away my guns. Big sigh. I shuffle my Derringers and the Luger back into the deck.
Fine. Two actions to go, i play the Remington i have been holding back for this moment all this time and shoot it at the enemy. I commit an Overpower, hoping to dig for another gun that i can play next turn and i do indeed find one of my Remingtons again. I half expected to find the Mob Enforcer that’s still somewhere in my deck instead…

Enemy phase, the Vampire gets up. Upkeep, i draw a .45 Auto for Michael and a Manual Dexterity for Lucius. Winds are blowing, worlds are shifting and i once more eye the two new locations that just came into play suspiciously.

Turn 12

(2 doom) This is taking too long. The encounter deck threatens Michael with putting the Inescapable back into play with Still Behind You, but Manual Dexterity committed and an Elder Sign on the 5 vs 2 say no. I draw Guts off of the Man Dex and put an ammo on my Remington. Lucius draws Elder Mist and turns his location into one that is haunted by Whippoorwills. Completely fine.

Jumping ahead with the Claw, Lucius reveals another location… and it’s another translation site. I has an agility(1) test on reveal which isn’t worth talking about and the ability to grab a relic for an action. Sure, i’ll take a relic, so i spend my first action on that. It’s a Relic with glyphs on it, so i assume the agility(8) test is to learn that glyph. Anyways, it can wait, i have it as an asset now.

I am getting a bit desperate now and double check everything in the game if i have overlooked a resign ability anywhere. But no, i have to assume it’s somewhere in the locations. I feel like i went through the deck at least once, but what other options do i have than keep looking under every rock? I investigate the clue off of my location to satisfy my weakness and because i can spend it on the neighbour location to move anywhere revealed. That should give me some solid options for next turn. The first attempt at getting the clue autofails (costing another lockpick, one to go) but the second succeeds. I can’t move into the Waterfalls location that would allow me to teleport this turn however and if the locations shift, that’ll be an extra action to even get there next turn. So we’ll see how useful that would be. I guess i could use the claw to get there.

McGlen shoots twice at his Vampire, emptying the Remington. Both shots hit, i even made sure that the second one would with a Crack Shot. I realize i stand on the location that would be blown off the board next, so i have to move. I move into the top lane… and find the location we need. Hallelujah.

The location comes into play with a treachery attached.

Another translation job? But why is it a treachery? Very suspicious. Something to check out next turn, with one action left i can’t fully translate it (with my fist!) anyways. For now, i simply play a Derringer and end the investigation phase.

Upkeep, Michael draws Guts. Lucius draws Dreams of the Flood again. Ah, one weakness that punishes me for not investigating and one that punishes me for doing it. I suppose i could investigate a location without clue to get out of this. Or just do the penalized investigation on Morbid Curiosity. Or just live through the last bit of horror… what could possibly go wrong.

Winds blow and they move Lucius closer to the resign location.

Turn 13

(3 doom) Intensity goes to 5. It’s getting wimdy in here. Michael draws Eye of the Deep, the treachery that Lucius has been riding out all this scenario. Sure. Lucius gets Wings of Darkness and that’s something that i cannot let happen right now. I commit Manual Dexterity, Pickpocketing and a Backstab, so the resulting 9 vs 4 even beats the skull which just became a -5. I draw a skull and congratulate myself on how much of a gamer i am. Holy shit.

Inspired by this gamerness, Lucius spends 2 resources on playing out the two Uncanny Specimen he had been holding. I had been holding my money in case i need to play my Backstabs, but i just committed one of them and also the Specimens are a great insurance against those skulls. That leaves me at 3 resources, exactly enough to play the Backstab i still have in my hand. Using the claw and a move action, Lucius joins Michael at the resign location. Time to decypher that Sky Relic he’s been lugging around. Agility test against difficulty 8, all committed icons count twice. I can commit Backstab for 7 vs 8, Michael adds Unexpected Courage for 11 vs 8, then also uses the Alien Tablet for 13 vs 8. Good enough, even beats the skull all by itself. I pass and gain the glyph for “Stars”. And it’s worth a Victory as well, nice! For the final action, Lucius resigns. I trust Michael to be able to fist-translate that treachery on his own.

If nothing goes wrong, then this should be action 1 and 2, pass a fight test and put a resource on the thing each. Action 3, resign. But of course i don’t know what’s on the back of the treachery. And i might fail a test, either of which could send me into another mythos phase. I have two fist icons in my hand, so i test 6 vs 3 twice. I pass both times, although the first one runs a scare on me first with a tablet (which i have to treat like an Elder Sign) but it rolls into a 0. There are no nasty surprises on the back of the treachery, instead i learn another glyph (“Darkness”) and gain another Victory. I resign on my last action, finishing the scenario.

Resolution

Pats on the back for everyone, we made it through. We check Obsidian Canyons off our R’lyeh map. We register the Obsidian Claw as an “Artifact earned”, but apparently don’t add it to our decks just yet. Victory gained is two from locations, one from the Star Vampire and another 2 from the last-minute translations. Five in total, only one more than our first scenario wipe. I was hoping for more, considering the ride this was, but without knowing how much else is hidden in the locations i don’t want to judge. I know there is at least one big Victory Elite in the encounter deck left as well, for example. Possibly another Star Vampire. And there was one more translation too that we skipped on. So yeah. We got out, that’s the important bit and i think with the artifact earned and three glyphs translated we might have gotten more out of this than just the 5xp after all.

Spending the XP, Michael buys Charisma and banks the other 2XP, as we are aiming to get a bunch of expensive upgrades down the line. Hopefully, we can get something like Castaigne(4) and a Derringer(4) after the next one. Lucius spends his experience on an Antikythera. He removes the Dial of the Ancients for it. If we don’t get it translated in the first two scenarios, it’s probably too late so we might as well ditch it. Not sure if that means i am also ditching the Relic Hunter + Elder Sign Amulet plan. Probably not?

[EDIT: Actually, instead of the Charisma, Michael will go for a Locked and Loaded. This campaign seems to have a heavy enemy presence and some extra ammo on all our guns can go a long way to enable us to keep up better with the challenge.]

After-Game Thoughts

That was fun! I am a sucker for well-done location mechanics and i think this was pretty good. The setup was intense and honestly a bit of a bad first impression, but once in the game, the scenario played very smoothly and the wind effects were easily resolved. Locations were leaving and entering play, following what goes where is interesting and i felt like i had plenty agency in searching for what i wanted. It was way less random than for example the last part of Hemlock Vale’s Twisted Hollow where you are also searching for a resign location in a bunch of facedowns. But where the Hollow was completely random, you could make educated guesses here and use much more of a system. That was good. Really nice. I enjoyed the chunky enemies, too. Some scary stuff. Treacheries were varied and threatening as well. All great. Very very good first impression. One to look forward to on a replay. 9/10, no further notes.

I also feel like it’s worth recognizing that our low cardpool decks are doing quite good! Michael could really use another set of guns, i’d feel a lot more comfortable with 10 in the deck instead of 8. But otherwise, i am quite happy with how this plays out.

Next Up:

No interludes this time, so we go straight to the Court of the Ancients.