Month: August 2026

Intro

The Chapter 2 switch has had some time to sit now and as I have made no secret of, it’s something i generally very much approve of. That being said, change is scary and there will always be things that especially long-term players of the game will be hesitant to accept. There’s a lot of various criticism around. Some relevant and worthy of discussion, like concerns over the new release format or perceived shift in tone. Some less so, like complaints over the seeker ochre being slightly different or a random “while while” typo on a card. And some that are just cringe, like the accusations of AI or whatever. As someone who has routinely dismissed many such criticisms, I figured i would only be fair to point to some things that annoy me personally.
I’ll order these starting with just some minor things that barely even register as a complaint, more as a note or a missed opportunity but I will end on some things that genuinely bother me and I feel like they need to be said.

Investigator-Allies

This one is not really a complaint, more like pointing out a missed opportunity. I know there’s some people complaining about Jim Culver being an ally asset in the new cards, but i actually like that a lot. In fact, my complaint goes the other way: Why only Jim Culver? Why single him out? I think they should have made a proper statement and commitment by having an “Investigator turned Ally” in every class. Set a signal that this can happen to anyone, don’t make it look like this is a slight against Jim specifically, who is not a completely beloved character in chapter 1. Dorothy could have been Daisy Walker. Olivier could have been Skids. Logan could have been Leo. Daniel could have been Silas. Or whatever, you get the idea. Now it just kind of looks half-baked and like a personal vendetta against Jim. And that’s a pity, because I’d really like having investigator-allies with excellent abilities. More, please! Go full Marvel Champions on this.

New Cultist set

The original Chapter 1 Core encounter sets were near perfect, so living up to them was always going to be an uphill battle. In spite of this, I am overall liking the new Core encounter sets quite a bit. I think they are mechanically very well done and i am looking forward to playing with them in all sorts of new campaigns. There are two things i want to point out about them however, the first being the new Cultist set just being mechanically inferior to the old one by a large margin. Since they spawn on your location, they lose pretty much everything that made the old set stand out. If you draw a Zealot now, you engage it and fight it. Same with the Dark Magician. Their doom is unlikely to ever really matter. The old set forced you to move, to do more than just engage and kill. They broke out of the mold and made an Acolyte notably different from drawing a ghoul. In fact, no enemy in the new encounter sets spawns anywhere else than directly on the player. So they all are just variations on “spawn on you, they take X actions to defeat”. That’s a major loss in my book, albeit one that can be pasted over with campaign specific enemies or scenario text that spawns them in other locations.

Fire and Bad Weather

The other thing that i can’t help but notice about the new encounter sets is that some of them are still tied quite close to specific themes, something that I expected to get extra attention considering that it was a problem with the old sets as well. Ghouls notably was barely used because it rarely fit anywhere and the same goes for all of the “Agents of …” sets. With that in mind, i expected the new encounter sets to embrace more universally usable themes. And to some extent they did, sets like Bystanders fit in a lot of places and can be interpreted many ways from dock workers over train passengers to expedition members, so you could slot them in in all sorts of situations. But all the fire stuff and Hellhounds? Tough fit. I also noticed when i did my project to find better replacements for the chapter 1 campaigns that putting Bad Weather into indoor scenarios is really awkward. You’re not going to have a flash flood in the middle of the Miskatonic Museum or a downpour inside Carl Sanford’s mansion while the old “Chilling Cold” and “Obfuscating Fog” were able to slot in pretty much everywhere. Overall, i think this is probably still an improvement over the many Agents of X sets in the old Core, the Nightgaunts being everywhere and the Ghouls being nowhere, but i feel like there’s still some awkwardness here that could have been avoided.

Alright. Before I’ve just been picking at some things that i find not quite as good as they could be, now we are getting to things that actually bother me.

The Grimoire

It’s not what we were promised :(
That’s not “a living document, […] maintained online and updated”, that is just a PDF, same as it always was. It even gets uploaded with different filenames after an update, so you can’t put one link down somewhere that would always get the most recent version of the Grimoire. After the announcement of the living rules that we could always refer to and that would frequently be updated, this is a disappointment. Just a PDF and it took forever to even just get the first update with the day-1-patches to Machete and the like.

Sorry, but that’s not a living document. A living document would always be in the same place and get frequently(!!) updated with all of those rulings that are only carried through the community by word of mouth because they never made it into the FAQ.

As usual the community had to step up and arkham.build delivered something close to what we were hoping for, a proper in-browser viewer for the rules, FAQ and everything else in the Grimoire.

The Hat Slot

Introducing a new equipment slot is big news! This should have been a big deal and done in a memorable way. Instead it was done with Fedora, an unplayable waste of cardboard. This is incomprehensible to me. Effectively, this new equipment slot is still very much not a thing except a meme. I suppose that is still memorable, but not for the right reasons. Which is a damn shame, because introducing a new equipment slot and the mechanical depth that this brings with it could have been super cool. But that’s not Core Set material, that’s what you do with a proper Investigator expansion that can include two or more relevant assets for each class and really make that new thing shine as all investigators suddenly find themselves with relevant choices for their shiny new slot.

I mean, there is still hope for the headwear equipment slot to become a cool gameplay element in the future. But man, was its first impression wasted by putting it on an unplayable neutral card and a niche upgrade for Mystics. They should’ve just put the headwear icon (and the footwear icon!!!!!) in the Grimoire without a card to go with it and let the community hype itself up until its eventual appearance on several cards a year or two later. You know, similar to what the old Core did with the Double-Arcane slot.

Those were two things that are bothering me, but i got two more. When all is said and done, the above things all don’t matter to me compared to how good the game is. But the one thing that i need to have to continue to buy into the game as much as i have done in the past is faith in the designer’s abilities to keep designing new good content. As long as I believe that, everything else is secondary at best. Well then, i do have two things now that scratch on that faith.

Consistency and Coherence

In the lead up to the release of the Core Set, there was much talk about the “modified reprints”, a couple of cards that got reprinted, but with changes to their effects that were deemed relevant enough to do, but not relevant enough to make a new card from the changed version. One of these cards is Laboratory Assistant, who got her trigger condition changed from “After ~ enters play” to “After you play ~”, so you won’t be able to draw cards with her if you put her into play with something like Chance Encounter. Now, there are things i dislike here on just a base level: One, that nerf is silly. Lab Ass is not strong because of interactions like that, the only notable strong interaction she has is returning to your hand to play Calling in Favors. And for that the change does nothing. Two, it should never be the goal to minimize possible card interactions. It’s a deckbuilding game, finding cards that interact with each other is half the point. Curbing something for no good reason is bad form.
But that’d just be nitpicking single card interactions if it weren’t then for University Archivist from the Carolyn deck basically releasing at the same time. And that one uses the old wording of “After ~ enters play” again. And that’s where for me things go from “Eh, they mishandled that…” to “What are they even doing?”
So in summary, the change to Laboratory Assistant demonstrates to me a lack of understanding why a card is good, applies a nerf that limits card interactions, then proceeds to break that new baseline immediately by using the old wording on the next card. What a mess.
In the same evergreen card pool we also have Prestidigitation and Mirror Form. One plays an asset from your hand, the other puts it into play. So you got that same wishy-washy mix of wordings on that end as well, made worse by both of them being Dexter-coded and available to him. One of them triggers Dexter’s investigator ability, the other doesn’t. Thank god neither Prestidigitation nor Mirror Form can put allies into play, else you’d have to write a thesis on how these four cards intersect. How is any of that appropriate for the new player experience? It’s one thing if this sort of inconsistency accumulates over the course of the years, like i don’t bat an eye if a Dunwich card uses different wording from a Hemlock Vale card. But these were all released together. Lab Assistant was even part of a deliberate change in wording to create this inconsistency!

It just looks like there’s no real plan or coherence here and i feel like we should expect both. Especially from the Core Set and its immediate companion product.

Literal Waste Paper

I have a very high tolerance for “bad cards”. As long as they can be played somewhere, it doesn’t matter much to me if they are a bit niche. It is worth a discussion if niche cards do belong into the evergreen pool, but that’s not even what I am going for here. I believe that all through chapter 1, we have only gotten very few actually bad cards. I’d point to Trench Knife and Curse of Aeons as good examples. So it came as a bit of a shock to me to get this double-whammy of Fame and Marcus Sengstacke(0) in the André Patel deck. Two cards that are so bad that not only don’t they even pass the most basic sniff tests against just taking resource actions, they actually struggle to be resource neutral. One really has to wonder how this ever got put into a design file and went through to print.
Weirdly, this is not a chapter 2 specific issue. The tail end of chapter 1 also brought us the similarly questionable Blood of Thoth and Ample Supplies, which suggests to me that whoever is designing these cards simply has a skewed view of this type of cards that accumulate resources and approaches them with the basic assumption that they always stay in play for 10 rounds and shouldn’t pay off before that. This has to stop because these cards may as well not exist. Fame and Sengstacke are definitely a new low though as they even have good chance to be a net negative for you.
There is absolutely room for cards that are worse than Emergency Cache, like Same Old Thing. Same Old is pretty mediocre but can at least act as ECache #3 and #4 in Survivor decks and the ability to pay for other players may even be relevant. Same Old is a fringe card and will likely be outclassed and forgotten with the next expansion, but i don’t actually mind it existing. But I feel like Rogue of all classes should have cards that beat ECache. Fame doesn’t even do that after spending 5 actions, 4 of which while having an enemy on you.

So yeah. My bar for what sort of cards are still considered playable is probably already fairly low compared to most of the community, so it really is just that much worse when something limbos under that bar and it’s not even close. Obviously we can’t know if these cards exist due to what I would call a flawed design philosophy or if they are the result of last-minute changes like what was claimed to be the reason for Blood of Thoth. But it’s really apparent how this seems to just always be these long-term econ cards that are horrifically underbaked, making it at least look to me like there’s a more systemic reason for these being the way they are than just time crunch.
And just to make myself clear, the problem here isn’t really that the cards themselves exist, they are just two out of many. The problem is that they undermine my trust in the abilities of whoever put them into the design file in that state.

Wrapping Up

So that was a look at chapter 2 that skewed uncharacteristically negative, so i think i should make clear once again that overall I am a supporter and fan of both the game itself and of the soft-reboot that is chapter 2. Still, this Core plus the investigator decks is laying the foundations for the future and seeing cracks in that foundation is somewhat troubling and leads to questioning other things. Like, now i look at the icons on Out The Door(0) and just have to assume that they are a misprint/misfile like that missing wild icon on Endurance(3). Oh well. It is now what it is, I suppose. There are some things that aren’t perfect, but ultimately a few unplayable cards are not going to be enough of a reason to stop me from enjoying the other 98% of the game. And i am having a good time with the chapter 2 player card pool indeed. And that’s all that matters in the end.

It’s time. Again. We arrive at the abandoned elementary school. While our past selves enter through the back, we will enter through the front at the same time and finally stop the Myriad’s ritual.

This is the one scenario in this campaign that uses a little bit more of setup before it gets going. This is because this is where the previous choices and results come together and shape the encounter deck and other parts of the scenario in various ways.

As usual, we start with the involved encounter sets:
A World Torn Down, Again. Obviously.
Night of the Ritual, a rather large stack of cards that return from A World Torn Down
Agents of Aforgomon, a 3-card set that was used a couple of times already but we never drew the Victory enemy in it. Maybe this time?
The Myriad, so we are going to get bullied by Myriad Gentleman again. And Omnipresence. Oh joy.
Nyctophobia and Thugs, so i am looking forward to drawing Irregulars together with Pitchblack Night again.
Unleashed Chaos and Paradox, which are set aside and i believe that i won’t need them this game because i didn’t actually cause any paradoxes and didn’t unleash any chaos.

The initial location setup looks similar to how scenario 3 started, with some differences: We no longer get a choice to go through the backdoor. We did that then, this time we will have to take the Front Hallway. You’ll also not only notice that the starting location is different, but also that Joe is not there…. that is because he didn’t resign in A Year to Plan. He’s literally late to this now. He’ll have to sit the first round out and enter through the Sports Field at the end of round 1. Meaning that he will however will indeed be around for the first Mythos phase…

The agenda deck has three cards, the first one just offering us a 6 doom threshold and nothing else. The act deck has 4 cards in it, our objective is the same as the first time: Enter an interior location. However this is more difficult while the second agenda deck is still on act 1c. Yes, there’s a second agenda deck and it tracks where our past selves are right now. As a short rules blurb explains, it will advance based on the campaign log entries i made during A World Torn Down:
– Boundary Broken: Act 1, doom 4
– Ward Dispelled: Act 2, doom 2
– First Circle Broken: Act 2, doom 3
Long story short, we get a penalty of having to pay extra clues on this first act (and likely the next ones) if we are moving faster than our past selves did. Thankfully, i think i was fairly fast back them, so this should not be a huge problem.

Chaos tokens are looking fantastic for me! We have 3 skulls, each of which scales with the number of actions remaining. So while there will be shenanigans where i have extra actions, this will likely be mild throughout. We have 4(!) cultists which are only a -1 and if i pass i get +1 to skill tests for the rest of the round. That is stellar and a very significant reward for the Final Preparations i did last scenario. I have 1 tablet and it’s a -3 that can put a doom in play on fail. Just the one and -3 isn’t awful, but failing this would be pretty bad of course. There are no Elder Things in my bag, so that -5 that always deals a horror is not in play. Hell yeah. Now, this looks pretty great of course, but Ages Unwound has one more note on the chaos bag: I have to add a -5 token, just for arriving here. Fiiiiine.

Then there’s a bunch of conditions, but none of them are fulfilled thanks to doing all the mandatory tasks in A Year to Plan. So no further penalties.

A hefty chunk of cards is set aside and the rest is shuffled into the encounter deck. That encounter deck is a fat stack, a total of 40 cards.

And with that, we are ready to go.

Round 1

Isabelle: Loner, Offering Bowl, Aleksey, Twin 45s, Cosmic Flame
Joe: Dorothy, 2x Counterattack, Vicious Blow, On the Beat, Perception

Izzie’s start hand is fantastic. Didn’t even mulligan here, just kept the initial five i drew. While it doesn’t have a skill in it yet to start enabling her, it does have two good weapons that are well suited to take out Myriad Gentlemen, an Offering Bowl to afford them, Aleksey to afford the Bowl. And Loner which is just good.

Joe’s hand is … fine. I was hoping that i could leverage the Studious to mulligan into both a Mag Glass and Dorothy, but at least i got one of them.

As mentioned, Joe sits out this first round.

Isabelle wants to get out of the starting location. As long as the past act deck didn’t advance, there is a chance to get 2 horror at the Sports Field and i’d like to avoid that. So first action plays Loner, then i activate that to move down to the Side Building. The Side Building is a 3 shroud location with 2 clues but more importantly, it’s safe to end my turn there. I play Offering Bowl, use it (taking a damage), then play Aleksey Saburov.

In upkeep, Isabelle draws Daniel Jameson and goes to 2 resources. Joe gets nothing because he’s not there yet.

End of round, Joe finally arrives at the Sports Field. Basically, he lost 3 actions, a card and a resource for not properly resigning last game. Harsh, but fair? The Sports Field has that ability to make people there at the end of round test to avoid horror – it’s not quite clear to me if that includes Joe or if he arrives past that timing point. My read on it is that it doesn’t include him. He arrives just as we go into the next round. Alternatively, the two effects use the same timing in which case i can stack them in any order and also avoid the test. There’s a possibility here that i am not quite reading this correctly, but i am confident enough in my read to not Grim Rule this.

Round 2

(1/6 doom)

Isabelle draws Omnipresence, our old nemesis. Honestly, not that bad right now. I only have three empty locations in play, so there’s no choice on where to put them, but touching on the Playground, Front Gates and Front Hallways before the agenda advances should be possible.
Joe gets something scenario specific, You Must Not Be Seen. A potential 3 horror are to be avoided here with an agility test. And if i do particularly bad, there’s even a mental trauma in it. Yikes. I commit a Counterattack for its one agility icon and test 3 vs 3. I pull -1 and take a horror. That could have been a lot worse.

I want the two clues from the Sports Field, but i also don’t want to stick around to test agility for horror again with Joe. That means i can’t play Dorothy before i do my two investigates if i still want to be able to move. Fine. First test is 4 vs 2 and succeeds with an Elder Sign. Oh, nice. That makes up for the missed upkeep phase. Joe gets a clue, a resource and two cards. The cards are Overpower and Deduction. For my second action, i commit Perception, to make sure i can move on and not come back. I pass with a skull, grab the clue and get another card, an Insidious Truths. With the final action, Joe joins Izzie at the Side Building.

Izzie uses the Offering Bowl, putting the damage on Aleksey. This brings her to 4 resources which i use to play her Twin 45s. Loner moves her into the Front Gates, where i discard the Omnipresence.

The Front Gates are 4 shroud with another 2 clues and on reveal they have me find one of the treacheries related to avoiding our past selves. So Izzie also has to test this card, You Must Not Be Seen, now. The test is 3 vs 3 and i actually have nothing to commit here, a somewhat novel feeling with this investigator. I draw skull, which is -2 right now because i have 2 actions left. I take 2 horror, one on Izzie, one on Aleksey. With my remaining actions i don’t have anything better to do than draw cards or gain resources. I could use either. First i draw card, a Longbow. Not really what i was looking for, so i draw again: Extra Rations. Also not a skill, but not a bad card.

In upkeep, I draw Timely Intervention which is indeed a skill and Pursued which … is a weakness. The presence of Myriad Gentleman and other swarm enemies really makes Pursued a bigger deal than usually, so i probably need to get rid of that asap. Maybe Izzie can spare the actions next round.
Izzie goes to 1 resource, Joe to 7.

Round 3

(2/6 doom)

Isabelle’s encounter card is Preserve Causality. Ah, so that’s the counterpart to You Must Not Be Seen then. Sure, i will test willpower 4 vs 3. I draw a cultist, which not only is a pass, but also increases my skill values by +1 for the rest of the round! Nice.
Joe gets Time Loop and has to test willpower 2 vs 3. If he doesn’t get a +1 or Elder Sign to pass, he’ll only investigate this round… guess i am not meant to play that Dorothy. He autofails. Only investigations for him this round then.

I might as well start with Joe then. The investigate test is 4 vs 3 and i have three tries. If i fail the first two, i might consider using the Deduction, but with the chaos bag being what it is, i actually might get there without that. First attempt is a skull, a fail. Second attempt is an Elder Sign. His second Elder Sign already. Hey, i’m not complaining. He gets a clue, a resource and two cards: Another Deduction and an ECache. I have nine cards in hand, two of which are Deduction(2), so i might as well commit my On the Beat here for +2 to make the third attempt easier. I draw -1 and pass. That’s 4 clues collected in total now. Two more to go to enter the school.

Aleksey heals at the start of Izzie’s turn, but Offering Bowl put that damage right back on him. That was the last charge on Bowl and it discards. Izzie simply spends her three actions moving to Joe and discarding his weakness. I could Loner back into the Front Gates afterwards, but i think i will just stick around in case Joe draws an enemy.

Upkeep draws are second Timely Intervention and second On The Beat. Joe has to discard to hand size and drops Emergency Cache. Izzie now has 4 resources, Joe has 9.

Round 4

(3/6 doom) Next round is when i “breached the boundary” in scenario 3, i think we are well on track to match that.

Isabelle draws Rigged to Blow which threatens to punish me for staying with Joe by dealing two damage against both investigators. There is an opportunity for me to use this card to my advantage however. If i pass the agility 4 test, that’d basically give me a free move for both Izzie and Joe. Failure would be quite bad here, so i do commit my Long Bow to the test, making it a 5 vs 4 with Timely Intervention still in hand. Notably, this doesn’t cover the -5, so i also commit Extra Rations just to be super safe. Turns out i didn’t need to be that paranoid, as I draw a Cultist which is a -1 and boosts my tests for this round. Joe and Izzie both get moved from the Side Building to the Front Gates.

Joe then draws Time Reshaped and before it surges, he has to decide whether to take an extra action this turn with -1 skill or give up an action for +1 skill. I think this is another opportunity to make up for lost time from Joe’s late arrival, so i choose the extra action. the surge hits a Myriad Gentleman who engages Joe.

I start the investigator phase with Izzie who now can once again introduce the Gentleman to her Twin 45s. First action, i play Daniel Jameson. Second action, engage the Gentlesir. Third action, fire my guns. The first test is 4 vs 3. I don’t even need all that Daniel and Timely backup, I simply pull a zero and hit. Easy game. I then trigger my second shot, now at 5 vs 2. I hit again, the host body is down. With my actions spent, i Loner into the Playground, revealing it to be a 5 shroud location with 2 clues and Victory 1 where you can spend extra actions on investigation to lower the shroud. I believe this was the same when we were here the first time? I discard the Omnipresence there, of course.

Despite being only 3 intellect this round, i think i can have Joe pick up the clues from the Playground instead of the ones on the Front Gates. I don’t need to care about Victory a whole lot anymore, but there are some luxury upgrades i will still like to have for Joe at least. His first action moves him into the playground, second action plays Dorothy Simmons. He then investigates with Deduction(2) thrown into the test and Izzie commits a Timely Intervention for a further +3. The end result is a 3+1+2+3=9 vs 5. I draw a -2, so i do get the clue. I also get a card for Joe’s ability: Stock Ammo Reload. But i don’t get a resource from Dorothy, she’s not impressed.

Good round! Upkeep draws are Canteen and M1911. New resource counts are 2 and 7.

Round 5

(4/6 doom)

The past day agenda advances, signifying that our past selves now entered the building through the back door. No other immediate consequences. Next advance of the past day agenda will be at agenda 2, doom 2 of the main agenda deck which will mark the point when we dispelled the unstable ward in the classrooms.

Isabelle draws Sheldon’s Finest, a souped up version of the lowly Hired Thug we loved to bully around in the first couple scenarios. Yeah, Ages Unwound isn’t huge into the whole concept of a breather enemy and replaces them with these guys for this scenario.

Joe also draws an enemy, the Irregulars. For once appearing here without being further enhanced by other sources.

Izzie goes first, simply because i want her to be able to Loner into the building once i am done with her round and i can’t do that if Joe is already there. She shoots the Sheldon’s Finest with her pistol and Joe commits a Vicious Blow so we can conserve some ammo. Izzie also takes a horror to commit Timely Intervention from her discard pile for a total of 3+1+3 = 7 vs 4. I draw the -5, but Daniel Jameson triggers a redraw and i hit with a -1. The Sheldon boys are down and Timely Intervention reshuffles into my deck.
She then uses Loner and spends Joe’s clues to enter the building into the Front Hallway. The act advances and stuff happens.

Two more locations enter play, the Principal’s Office and Cafeteria. Both of them connected to the Hallways, but not to each other. Then, we spawn the Hound of Unmaking, a hulking beast with Massive, Retaliate and 12 health in Izzie’s face. Thankfully, as the new act points out, the Hound only makes attacks when he’s damaged. Just don’t damage it then, right? Hell, there’s effects that can ping it and enrage it, like for example the Haunted effect on the Hallways. Or the two copies of the Stirring Titan treachery i just had to shuffle into the encounter deck. At least it seems to stay in the Hallways, it doesn’t have Hunter. Our new objective: Either defeat this monster of an enemy. Or find 10 clues and bring them into the Cafeteria.

There’s definitely a world where Joe and Izzy both spend their full turns emptying pistols into this enemy in the hopes of taking it down. But for now i probably should get out of the Hallways with her since i do have two actions left. Izzie moves into the Principal’s Office with the first one. There’s another four clues there, the shroud scales with the number of completed actions. With her last action, she plays Canteen and uses it to remove her only two horror.

Joe has Irregulars to deal with still. And i think i will just have to throw a bunch of cards at it to take care of that. I play Insidious Truths, discarding Stock Ammo Reload and On the Beat. That makes the test 8 vs 5 and since this really needs to hit, i also commit Overpower. Overpower draws Bounty, which i am allowed to play her to collect 3 resources for defeating the Irregulars. I then play my M1911 and move into the Hallways.

Upkeep draws are Emergency Cache and Perception.

Round 6

(5/6 doom)

A Time Loop for Izzie. The 4 vs 3 fails with a -2. I could correct that with the Timely Intervention from my hand, but decide against it. I think i will just let this fail, choose “draw” and spend my turn restocking my hand. Better save that Timely for something more dire.

Joe gets Sheldon’s Finest, which is somewhat annoying as it will bait the Counterattack out of my hand that i was planning to keep in case the Hound is going to make trouble. Oh well. It is what it is, the criminals engage Joe.

I’ll start with Izzie because that’s easy enough. I draw three cards: Guts, Soul Link, Shadowmeld. Oh, Shadowmeld could come in clutch if i want to take down the Hound!

Joe shoots his M1911 at the thugs. He draws his Elder Sign, dealing two damage, gaining a resource and drawing a card. The drawn card is Detective’s Intuition which triggers to draw another two cards: Mag Glass and another M1911. Well, that’s fairly spectacular. Two damage go on the Thugs. I play the Magnifying Glass right away. I investigate the location and commit Deduction(2). The Sheldon’s Finest make an attack of opportunity, which i Counterattack to defeat them. The investigation is 8 vs 3 and i commit a Perception on top of that so i can make sure to oversucceed and gain my 3 clues here even if i pull a -5. I draw the -4. Perception made a difference! I gain three clues and draw two cards, one for Perception and one for Joe’s ability: Psychoanalysis and Bodyguard. With my final action, i play the Bodyguard, who is a solid replacement for the Counterattack that i was originally saving for the Hound.

Upkeep draws are Extra Rations and Overpower. Both have 3 resources.

Here’s a look at my play areas at this point.

Pretty happy with how things went so far. Especially that both investigators are pretty much untouched, with the only damage being the one on Izzie that she dealt to herself on round 1. That Offering Bowl really made setup with Izzie super smooth, without it I’d have five resources worth of asset less now. A big deal.

Round 7

(6/6 doom) -> (0/6 doom)

The agenda advances for the first time.

Both investigators test willpower, at stake is gaining an action vs losing an action. Izzie commits Soul Link and passes. Joe just accepts his fate and fails. So Izzie will have 4 actions this round, Joe will have 2.
No enemy disappeared unexpectedly during World Torn Down, so none re-appears now.
The new agenda is once again offers 6 doom worth of rounds. And gives us that ability again to save up actions from one round to the next. That could be a good way to prepare for a fight against the hound!
But first: Encounter cards.

Looks like the decision on when we engage the Hound is taken out of our hands, as Isabelle draws Stirring Titan. A damage is put on the Hound, it is now able to attack. The card surges into Lost in the Dark. Moving this round will require a test or a charge from the Canteen. Fair enough.

Now Joe. Bear with me here, cause this is going to be an outrageous surge cascade. He draws Time Reshaped and again has to decide whether to lose or gain an action. I already lost an action to the agenda, I am not comfortable going down to just 1 action with a hound staring me down, so Joe takes the extra action and lower skills for this round. This surges into Time’s Surge. What Time’s Surge does is draw three(!) extra encounter cards now, but gives you a mythos draw cancel + extra action to cash in on later. So if we survive this ordeal, that’s going to be great. Here’s what i flipped up for my three encounter cards and have to survive:

That’s six cards?! Well, Time’s Ebb (the opposite of Time’s Surge basically) just surges here without effect and so does the other copy of Stirring Titan. What we are left with as actual draws then are, in order:
Temporal Instability: For the rest of the round, failing a test will cost Joe a clue. and move him towards the Sports Field.
Rigged to Blow: The test is agility 1 vs 2. I fail, so i have to take two damage. Temporal Instability makes me drop a clue and move to the Children’s Playground.
Weight of the Cosmos: At the end of the turn, i will need to test my willpower of 1 against actions taken and if i fail as i’d expect, i’d have to take that much damage. And drop a clue. And move away. Oof.

Damn. That’s 10 encounter cards drawn this round. That is … uuuh… yeah. We survived it though and Joe now has a powerful get-out-of-jail card in his threat area that he can cash in at some point.

I start this round’s festivities with Isabelle because i am going to start messing with the Hound. Depending on how that works out, i will either Loner back out or Joe can come join. She plays Shadowmeld, then moves into the Hallway. To move, she has to test her treachery and i commit Guts to pass. Guts draws Bandages. For my third action, i use Shadowmeld to evade the hound, committing Guts from my discard again. I pass with a cultist, so i get +1 to my future tests this round. With my final action, i shoot my Twins at the hound. The first test is 4 vs 4 and it autofails. I repeat the test with Daniel at 5 vs 4 and pull a skull. Skulls scale by the number of remaining actions, which is zero. A pass! The Hound goes to 3 damage and i trigger the followup shot from the Twins, with agility 5 vs 4. I commit the Offering Bowl to make it 6 vs 4, but draw a -3. I use Timely Intervention to make the shot hit despite that. I use my Canteen to get rid of my horror and that’s it. Solid turn!

Now Joe. The combination of getting -1 to everything due to Time Reshaped and being heavily punished for any fail is rough. There’s also the fact that i will need to test against actions take at the end of the round. I think my best course here is actually to just move to join Izzie and pass my turn with two unspent actions. This makes me test Weight of the Centuries 1 vs 1 and i commit Detective’s Intuition to turn it into a 3 vs 1. I pass with -2.

In the enemy phase, the Hound readies.

Upkeep draws are Bandages and Fingerprint Kit.

End of the round, the Hound heals 1 damage, going back to 4 damage on it. Izzie discards her treachery. Joe does so as well, but first has to take one more test that tries to bait a clue and a move out of him. The test is willpower 1 vs 2 and i decide to fight this test as best I can, by committing Psychoanalysis for +2 and Extra Rations from Izzie for another +1. I pass with a skull and this nightmare round is finally over.

Round 8

(1/6 doom) – note: next round, my past selves will have dispelled the ward

Can i kill the hound this round? I’d need to deal 8 damage to it, that’s all three bullets from the M1911 and the final shot from the Twins. Seems unlikely. Let’s do encounter draws.

Isabelle draws Time Loop again and if she fails, she’d need to commit to just one type of action. With how i envision the round to go, that’d be awful so i need to pass this. I commit Timely Intervention from my discard pile and test 7 vs 3. I pass and Timely shuffles back into the deck. I am still not super happy about this, i currently don’t have great commits in hand and was banking on the three wilds from the discard pile to secure my upcoming evasion test. And while i do have another Soul Link in the discard, Izzie’s ability is sadly once per round.

For Joe, i just cash in on his Time Surge from last round now. I cancel the encounter draw and gain an action instead. I could have kept this to combat another time when cards surge into one another, but now that we are staring down the big elite, this is also a good point to use this.

Okay, Izzie first. The test to evade the Hound with Shadowmeld is 4 vs 4. Not great. I don’t have any willpower commits either, all i have is Daniel. And the knowledge that the Hound isn’t Alert, so at least I do have a couple tries here to get it done. First attempt: Skull. That’s a fail. I use Daniel to immediately try again, now with 5 vs 4: Cultist. That’s a pass and my skills are +1 for the rest of the round. Thank god for these cultists, they have really been saving my bacon this game. The Hound exhausts. Instead of doing some fringe tests for attacking, i spend my last two actions playing Emergency Cache and Cosmic Flame.

Joe is not going to deal 8 damage here, but he does have 4 actions to go ahead and do as much as he can. And i think that just means firing his gun three times, then playing the spare from his hand? Let’s see. First shot, i commit Overpower for 8 vs 4. I hit, but Overpower just finds my personal weakness. Fine. Then the next two shots, both at 6 vs 4. I pull the 0 twice, so all three shots hit. Nice. That’s 10 damage on the beast. Had i not evaded the enemy, i could now provoke an attack of opportunity to have the hound kill my Bodyguard and be defeated. But as it looks now, i don’t see how i can make that happen. So with my fourth action, i just play my second M1911, now that the first is spent.

In the enemy phase, the Hound readies.

Upkeep draws are second Aleksey and second Dorothy. Not particularly useful, either of them. Izzie is on 4 resources, Joe on 3.

End of round, the Hound heals to 9 damage on it.

Round 8

(2/6 doom) – The past day agenda advances, the ward is now dispelled. Since we did that back then without unleashing chaos, we don’t get any penalties from it now either. There is some text on the new agenda about penalties if we are at Ritual locations, but we don’t see any of those yet and the past day agenda is going to advance next round already anyway so it won’t matter.

Isabelle draws Temporal Instability. Should she fail a test this round, she’ll have to drop a clue (she doesn’t have any) and move once towards outside. I think this should be fine?
Joe draws Lost in the Dark and for the rest of the round has to test if he wants to move. I don’t think i’ll be moving with him this round, so again this is fine.

Let’s kill a dog, shall we? Joe shoots his gun at 6 vs 4 , and draws a cultist. That’s a hit and he gets +1 for the rest of the round. The hound now has 11 damage on it, out of 12 health. I simply shoot it again at 7 vs 4. Another hit and the Hound of Unmaking has been unmade to the victory display. The act advances.

Two Ritual locations are spawned. Well, turns out the text on that past agenda might matter after all if we decide to enter them this round. I don’t think i will do that however. The new and presumably final objective: Move through the two circles and collect all clues on them.
Since we already slapped the Myriad High Priest around with our past selves (in fact that is happening right now, in this and next round) we don’t encounter him here now.

With his final action, Joe gains a resource. That puts him at 4 resources, so he’ll have the option to play his weakness out next round if that’s convenient.

With Izzie, i am just going to draw three cards again. I don’t have any meaningful commits in hand right now and i do hold a treachery that punishes me for failing tests. So i might as well not do any. The drawn cards are: Breaking Point which deals a direct damage to her. Blood Ward. And Lucky Cigarette Case. Notably, these are all not skills. One is even a weakness. Meh. End of turn, she has to test the Instability treachery, with intellect 2 vs 2. I don’t really care here if i fail, even if i have to move, i can just use Loner to make up for it. I draw a skull which is a pass. Sure, I’ll take it. The treachery discards.

Upkeep draws are Timely Intervention (ah, there we go) and Stock Ammo Reload. Both investigators go to 5 resources.

End of round, Joe is no longer Lost in the Dark.

Round 9

(3/6 doom) – Our past selves walk through the portal and are removed from this scenario as they are headed for the Unstuck scenario. The extra act deck is removed from the game, from now on we don’t need to worry about that anymore.

Izzie’s encounter draw is Beckoning of Oblivion. She has three actions, so it’s just a willpower test 4 vs 3 which i can just take unmodified. If i fail i can always decide if it’s worth doing a Timely Intervention or not. I draw a -1 so i don’t even need to think about this too much.
Joe gets Night Black as Pitch, so without enemies on the board that mostly means that all shrouds are +1 this round. And should Izzie decide to use her ability or use Soul Links, that’ll be extra hurtful.

Izzie plays Bandages, just in case something bad happens. Then uses Loner to move into the first Ritual Circle. The text on it is pretty yikes, so she uses her second action to move into the second Ritual Circle as well, that way I at least have all the info right away. Here they are:

First ritual circle (red): Pretty disgusting Forced effect that inverts all player card effects that gain cards, resources or actions into negatives. Thankfully, Joe’s ability is not mandatory. “Haunted – Move to Front Gates” is also insane text to put on a card. That’s three actions lost. That being said, healing here each round? Also kind of nuts.
Second Ritual circle (purple): Investigators that are both at this location can’t interact with each other. That’s what that last line means, it pretty much opens up an instanced version of the location when you move there. Clues are still shared, to my understanding.

So that’s two locations with 4 clues each at 4 shroud. Guess i will want to play that Fingerprint Kit after all, that still seems very much worth it then. But first, Izzie has one more action. She moves back to the red circle, that healing is too good to pass up.

Joe plays his Fingerprint Kit, discarding the M1911 for it. Then he moves twice, into the purple circle. I think i am going to start at the back and leave the one that teleports me back to the gates for last.

Upkeep draws are Lethal Curiosity and Emergency Cache. ECache is a nice draw and will allow me to push that 5 cost weakness out of my hand after all. Lethal Curiosity is of course less nice and Izzie will need to test willpower(4) to avoid getting up to 4 damage. Night Black as Pitch is still in play, otherwise i’d commit my Soul Link from the discard now, but 4 horror for that seems a bit much. So instead i commit Aleksey and Lucky Cigarette Case, each of them worth a willpower icon and test 6 vs 4. I draw the -5. Yeah, let’s not. Timely Intervention makes this a pass by exactsies. That’s three cards lost to my upkeep.

I go to 4 and 2 resources.

End of round, Night Black as Pitch discards. Due to the location effect of the ritual circle, Izzie heals a horror and a damage.

Round 10

(4/6 doom) – Is it really only round 10? Feels like it’s been going on for longer.

Izzie draws Time Reshaped for a change. That sort of fits my plans. I pick the extra action, my intention is to just draw cards again. However, on the Surge i draw Chronophage, the Victory enemy from the Agents of Aforgomon set that we so far failed to meet despite using the set a couple of times. Guess that means that Izzie won’t be able to just draw cards after all.
Joe draws Weight of the Centuries and will take damage at the end of the round if he took more actions than he can test against. Truth be told, i might just take this damage, i don’t really feel like stalling out anymore. It’s time to finish this scenario.

I’ll start with Izzie. I am not a huge fan of having to test 3 vs 4 to attack here right now, so i will just evade the thing this round and care about it next round when my stats aren’t lowered by Time Reshaped. To that end, i use Shadowmeld, committing Timely Intervention from my discard pile. It fails, but Daniel retries the test and it works on the second pull. Chronophage exhausts and Timely reshuffles. I spend my next actions on drawing cards: Soul Link, Blood Ward, Guts. Yeah, that works.

Joe investigates with Fingerprint Kit, 7 vs 4. He draws Cultist, which is a pass. He gets two clues, but as usual, Dorothy is not impressed. His ability does at least give him a card, a Lab Assistant. I was originally planning on just doing ECache and weakness now, but since i got the +1 from the cultist for the rest of the turn now, i probably should make use of that. I investigate two more times, drawing a 0 and another cultist. Both successes and the zero even makes Dorothy give me a resource. Thanks, lady. Very generous. I then have to test willpower against difficulty 3. Due to drawing two cultists, my willpower is currently at 4 and i commit the Stock Ammo Reload from my hand to make it 5. I pass with a -1. Look at you, Joe. Passing willpower tests. Proud of you, buddy.

In the enemy phase, the Chronophage readies and engages Isabelle.

Upkeep draws are Cosmic Flame and Bodyguard.

End of the round, Izzie heals a damage and a horror from the ritual circle. She’s completely healed now.

Round 11

(5/6 doom)

Encounter draws are Night Black as Pitch for Isabelle and Sheldon’s Finest for Joe. I am not terribly worried about Night Black as Pitch, but Sheldon’s Finest is annoying. Izzie is already bound by an enemy and Joe has no weapon. I guess i will need to do this with Bodyguards then…

Joe moves to the other Ritual Circle, where Izzie is hanging out with her pet Chronophage. Sheldon’s Finest make an attack of opportunity, hitting the bodyguard for 2 damage. I basic punch the dudes and Izzie commits a Soul Link to make the test 7 vs 4. I pass with a -3, dealing the damage. With my third action, i investigate with the Fingerprint Kit. The test is 7 vs 5 and i commit Dorothy from my hand to make it 8 vs 5. Before i pull the token, the Sheldon’s Finest get to attack me again. Izzie plays Blood Ward, canceling that attack and healing Joe. He’s back to 0 damage, 0 horror as well now. I pull the token for the investigation and it’s a -2. Pass. I gain two clues and a card, my other Magnifying Glass. Dorothy even hands me a buck.

Izzie uses Cosmic Flame on the Chronothingy and uses Guts. The 6 vs 4 passes and she draws Blood Curse. Sure, might as well use that now, i am going to heal that away end of round. She shoots the last bullet from her pistol at the enemy, commits Blood Curse and after Daniel says no to an autofail, the Chronophage goes into the victory display. For the final action, i draw a card: Emergency Cache.

In the enemy phase, Sheldon’s Guys hit me and i take 1 on me, 1 on the bodyguard. Bodyguard is defeated and deals the final two damage to the enemy, taking them with him.

Upkeep draws are Ward of Protection and Insidious Truths.

End of round, Izzie and Joe both heal to full.

Round 12

(6/6 doom) -> (0/7 doom)

We advance the agenda one final time this scenario! Only two clues left, but Joe also needs to play his weakness out still.

Both investigators have to pull a token and will be randomly affected with fewer actions/higher skill or more actions/lower skill, just like that one treachery. Except we have no choice in the matter. Izzie draws a skull, Joe draws a -2. That means Izzie will have only 2 actions, but +1 skill. And Joe will have 4 actions, but low skill. I think i would have preferred it exactly the other way round?

There’s also a bunch of text about saving actions and having one fewer once there’s more doom in play … but i think i got this in the bag already and there’s a good chance that i finish this round. Next round maybe if the game is being difficult about it.

Does this qualify as being difficult? Izzie draws Preserve Causality at first, but that surges into Myriad Assassin who threatens an immediate attack. I don’t think i care about this attack all that much, so i just take the agility test to avoid it raw at 5 vs 3. I pass. Cool. Izzie engages the Assassin.
Joe draws Myriad Gentleman. Right, this guy is also still around. Aren’t there supposed to be four of them in the encounter deck? If my count is right that means that in the final 5 cards that are still in the deck, two more are Myriad Gentlemen. Oh joy. This dork engages Joe.

Let’s see if i can get the Victory point. Izzie has only two actions, but if she can make both Cosmic Flame attacks hit, that’d be enough. First attack i commit Guts and the 7 vs 3 just hits with a -3. Guts draws Timely Intervention. Second attack i commit Guts again, from the discard pile. Another pass and the Assassin goes to the victory display. Guts draws my second Ward of Protection and reshuffles. With that, Izzie’s turn is already over.

Joe plays Insidious Truths, discarding Bodyguard and Lab Ass. He tests 7 vs 3 and deals 3 damage to the Gentleman’s swarm card, one of which spills over to the host. He then punches the host and Izzie commits Blood Ward for two combat icons to help. The Gentleman is down but it took two actions. With his two remaining actions, he plays ECache and his weakness, Dead Ends.

Upkeep draws are Vicious Blow and Lucky Charm.

Round 13

(1/7 doom)

I only need Joe to investigate with FPK this round and pass his test and then we won.

Encounter draws are Time Surge for Izzie which i snap-cancel. No need for this toxicity on the final stretch. And Myriad Gentleman for Joe.

I take attacks of opportunity from the Myriad Gentlemen as i investigate with Fingerprint Kit. Izzie commits enough icons for this to be “anything but the autofail” and i collect the final two clues.

The act advances.

Resolution

With the ritual fully destabilized, we once more step into the timestream. But this time we are prepared and we don’t just drift along it. We navigate it towards our final confrontation, straight towards Aforgomon.

Resolution for this scenario is as short as it could be. We simply gain experience. We cleared 3 Victory locations and we have 4 victory enemies in the display: Assassin, Chronophage, Irregulars, Hound of Unmaking. The Hound is worth 2 victory, so we get a total of 8xp to spend. Cool, that should be enough for what i had in mind still.

Spending xp

Okay, i feel like this was a lot easier than i anticipated. Yes, there were some tight spots and the encounter deck sort of combo’d out on me that one time with a surge cascade. But overall, this was very manageable and i finished undamaged and unhorrored and with six rounds to spare. I attribute most of that to the chaos bag being the way it is now. Thanks to those cultist tokens, I passed all sorts of tests that otherwise would have been much bigger problems.

For upgrades, Joe gets a second Studious for sure. For the final 5xp i considered taking a Commune with the Cosmos to be able to nuke a single location, but ultimately settled on just upgrading my Vicious Blows instead. My memories of the finale are very minor because both times i got blown out very early, but i do remember some big honking enemies being around. With Vicious Blow(2) on an Insidious Truths i can deal 5 damage in one swoop, i have hopes that this sort of thing can buy me the breathing space i need. In that same spirit, i use the last point of experience to swap a Service Revolver into the deck. I cut Laboratory Assistant for it.

(Link to Joe’s final deck)

Izzie gets two Meat Cleaver(3), cutting a Bandage and the Lucky Charm from the deck to make room. Gotta be honest with you, i don’t trust my Longbows and I want another option for when the Twins run out or i don’t draw them. I think the bow is good, but this campaign specifically seems to be tailored to make 3 damage an awkward amount of damage to deal to an enemy. In hindsight i probably should have taken the Cleavers from the start. The cleavers are a considerable source of extra horror however, so i will upgrade one of my Guts into another Fearless(2) to hopefully offset that.

(Link to Izzie’s final deck)

And with that i am off to face Aforgomon in Time Runs Out. I hope that even if i fail, it’s not going to be too anticlimactic. Or maybe i even pull out a win? How the last couple scenarios went gave me some hope that i can at least put up a fight.

Setup

We return from our trip through time to present day. Well, not quite. We are a year early. Which among other things means that we are homeless – after all, your past selves live in our homes, currently still unaware of what is to come. Since we don’t want to meddle with our own past, we set out to prepare for what is coming up in a year, doing research and actively working against the Myriad all around the world.

Despite being a scenario that is huge in scope, our setup instructions are once again not all that complicated. First, as usual, our encounter sets:
A Year to Plan and Missions are both scenario specific.
The Myriad set is used, so we’ll tangle with the Myriad Gentleman again.
Shifting Reality is used, the set that among other things had the investigators draw cards from each others decks.
We got Unravelling Years, which brings asset hate and discard.
And finally, two sets from the Core Set: Dark Cult and Midnight Masks Treacheries.

A Year to Plan is large in scope, as it not only covers a timespan of a year, but also much of the world. A total of 12 locations are put into play, to create our world map:

We got a little North American cluster on the left, a bigger (mostly) Eurasian group in the middle of the table and finally an isolated Sydney on the right. For setting these up, i didn’t care about geographical accuracy, i put these so i could have all connections represented by adjacency. Well, except for needing one extra arrow to connect Rome and Istanbul.

Using six specific cards from the Missions set, a “Task deck” is created where we’ll draw objectives from as the game goes on. The first Task is already in play: Helping Ourselves. Every time we had marked down a Strange Assistance earlier in the campaign, that assistance actually came from us, during our Year to Plan! So we need to take care of that in this scenario, otherwise we create a Paradox. I’ve not accepted any Strange Assistance beyond the mandatory one, so there’s only one resource on Helping Yourself now. If we look at the starting location, Arkham, we can see how to resolve this: It costs us an action and 4 clues at Arkham to remove 1 resource from here.

The rest of the Missions set is set aside for later, a fat stack of cards. Then everything else is just shuffled up as the encounter deck. Done.

Chaos tokens look interesting. The skulls start out as zeroes, but scale up slowly. I don’t think these are too bad. The Elder Thing is a -3 with damage and horror on fail. Could be annoying, but a -3 is beatable and there’s only 1 Elder Thing in the bag. We do have two cultists however and those are -5. They do draw a card or gain resource for us though, and that is independent of the outcome! Tablets we don’t have, so let’s not worry about it.

The act deck has only 1 card, giving us our objective: Do as many Tasks as we can. It also gives us the way to get new tasks, by spending 2 clues once per round we can draw new tasks from the Task deck.

The Agenda deck has four cards in it and since the first is called Autumn, it’s presumably the four seasons. Doom threshold of 5 for the first one. If we draw Myriad Gentlemen, they spawn like Cultists, at an empty location and Aloof.

Guess we know everything we need to know, let’s get cracking.

Round 1

(0/5 doom)

Starting hands are a bit weird?

Isabelle: Lucky Cigarette Case, Second Sight, Twin 45s, Ward of Protection, Timely Intervention
Joe: Deduction, Psychoanalysis, Bodyguard, M1911, Bounty

The lack of an intellect booster for Joe means that i might actually go for Second Sight instead of the Twins for Isabelle, having them both lean on their secondary roles at the start.

I start with Joe, thinking that i will just raw investigate 4 vs 3 now. The three skulls are 0… that’s solid enough odds and my hope is that i get to draw a card from his investigator ability (or a cultist token) and that this draw might help me decide on what to do with Izzie. I get the +1 and pass, collecting a clue and a card: Perception. That does at least mean that i don’t need Izzie to investigate Arkham, Joe can get that done. For my second action, i do exactly that, committing Perception. That passes as well and Perception draws me an Overpower. For his last action, Joe plays the M1911.

For Izzie, here’s my thought: I move with her now. If i find a 2 or 3 shroud location, i trust that Joe can handle it unmodified. If it’s 4 shroud, i play Second Sight to help. If it’s more than 4… don’t know, i might just move again. With that in mind i move to Mexico City.

Well, that is brilliant! Not only does that have low(ish) shroud, but it also has a cost reduction for Item assets. That means i can spend my last two actions playing the Twin 45s and my Lucky Cigarette Case for a total of 4 resources.

Since the ability is once per round, i also want to spend the 2 clues that Joe got this round and flip up the first new task. I reveal A Treasure Unearthed and am now tasked with stealing a book from the British Library. Said library is a new location that connects to London (duh) and has wild numbers on it: Shroud 10 and 7 clues, gaining -1 shroud for each clue on it. So it starts at 3 shroud and only goes up from there. Wild. I’ll have to see what i do about that when it’s time!

Upkeep draws are Blood Curse and Lab Assistant. Izzie has 2 resources, Joe has 3.

Round 2

(1/5 doom)

The encounter deck comes out swinging with Aspects of Infinity, offering Isabelle that sadistic choice of one good thing and one bad thing from a whole menu of them. I did consider going for the extra encounter card and gaining 2 actions, but chickened out in the end. I simply take 2 horror on Isabelle here, trusting in her exceptional capability of soaking horror that she has proven in previous games. I also stop the card from surging.
Joe feels Without Home or Identity and has to do an agility test to prevent losing resources and taking a damage. Predictably he fails, thankfully only with a -1. Still, that’s two of his three resources gone and a damage on top for good measure.

Izzie doesn’t have a whole lot to do this round, so i have her move into San Francisco first.

Two easy clues here. Also, the ability to get to Shanghai or Sydney. Or to stay here for some extra resources. I don’t think that testing 2 vs 2 is all that useful here and i also don’t want to leave America yet, so i simply draw a card. I gain Bandages. Sure, those are nice, especially when i already have Blood Curse in hand. With my third action, i play the Bandages.

Joe joins her in San Francisco and investigates. The 4 vs 2 passes with a 0 and he picks up a clue and a card: Stock Ammo Reload. Weird how Joe is getting all his combat cards right now and next to nothing to investigate with. I really would’ve liked an extra +1 intellect from somewhere for when i use Deduction(2) in Mexico. Joe investigates again, but this time the 4 vs 2 fails with an Elder Thing, meaning he not only doesn’t get the clue, but also has to take a damage and a horror. Bah.

In upkeep, i draw Will of the Cosmos and the other Deduction(2). Both investigators gain 2 resources, taking them to 2 and 3.

Round 3

(2/5 doom)

Isabelle draws Hunting Shadow. She doesn’t have a clue on her, so that’d be 2 damage. I am very much tempted to ward this, but i kind of don’t want to do that yet. With Bandages in play, i think i can take one of these. Isabelle takes a damage and removes a supply from her Bandages.
Joe then also draws Hunting Shadow. He does have a clue to spend. He also has 2 damage on him already. I don’t really feel like going to 4 damage on the second Mythos phase already, so i spend the clue.

I start the investigator phase with Joe, who plays Laboratory Assistant, looking for something to help him with investigating. Lab Ass finds Stock Ammo Reload and Insidious Truths. Well, that’s not helpful. Guess i am not doing Mexico City this round yet. Second action, Joe investigates 4 vs 2 at San Fran again. He passes, gains a clue and a card: ECache. Also no intellect icons on this one. But to be honest, the Cache is sort of needed as well. With his third action, Joe plays the Emergency Cache.

Isabelle has that classic issue that fighters have when the coast is clear and their 2 intellect doesn’t get them anywhere. I suppose i probably just stay at San Francisco and get another bonus resource from the location? With the first action, Izzie draws a card. It’s a Canteen. Not so bad. Another card draw: Soul Link. Also good. With her final action, she plays the Canteen. There is a world in which i would want Joe to play Psychoanalysis next round, so i don’t use the Canteen yet.

Upkeep draws are Aleksey Saburov and Detective’s Intuition. Sure, the Intuition works as a pauper’s Perception so i can probably clean out Mexico next round. Izzie goes to 4 resources, Joe to 6.

Round 4

(3/5 doom)

Izzie draws Accelerated Decay. It attaches to her Bandages which will now run out faster if i draw skulls. Meh. Why can’t she draw anything with tests on it. She’s good at tests, let her do some!
The Myriad Gentleman makes an appearance for Joe. So, here’s the thing about this guy in this scenario. According to the agenda, he loses hunter but gains Aloof. That means that between aloof, his swarm card and 2 health it will likely take 3 actions to defeat him. That’s rough. Also, he’s a cultist and thus a legal target for Mysterious Chanting which can randomly plop 2 doom on him. That makes him potentially a HUGE headache. That being said, he’s not an immediate threat. We go into the Witching Hour next round and a new agenda the one after that, so Mysterious Chanting wouldn’t be a problem for at least two more rounds. Still, i don’t want to put him too far away. I spawn the Gentleman in Arkham.

I want to take Joe’s turn first, to see if i get the three clues from Mexico as planned. I move, i investigate. I commit Deduction(2) and Detective’s Intuition to the test for an 8 vs 3. I pull the Elder Thing, which is a -3. That’s an oversuccess and i get my 3 clues. My draw off the top of the deck is a Mag Glass. About time. I play the Magnifying Glass and investigate again. I pull an Elder Sign and gain the clue plus a resource and a card (Scene of the Crime). That went well!

I think it’s about time for Isabelle to become a bit more useful. She should take care of that Gentleman. I have her move to Arkham, then draw a card: Another Soul Link. Finally, i play Second Sight. I’ve now got soak for days and wild icons for days. A gun. An investigation spell. Time to turn all of that into value over the next rounds. I considered playing Aleksey here instead of the Second Sight, but i still have my Bandages and Canteen up. I should be able to play Aleksey by the time the Bandages ran out.

Upkeep draws are Second Sight and Perception. Izzie has 1 resource, Joe has 8. Both are at max hand size: Isabelle holding 8 cards, Joe is holding 10.

Round 5

(4/5 doom) The Witching Hour round. This means i will want to see if i can play that Will of the Cosmos, if i can.

Oh, now there’s a scary enemy. Izzie draws a Smilodon. This kitty cat appears in San Francisco and will hunt us from there. If we leave by boat, it won’t be able to follow us, but i don’t think that’ll be possible for both of us right now. So i suppose Isabelle’s priorities just shifted and the Myriad Man gets to live another round while i turn my Twin 45s towards this awful thing.
Joe draws False Lead, another classic annoyance from the Core Set. Thanks to a Perception, he passes the test. Perception draws him Logan Hastings.

Let’s fight a proper enemy. Isabelle moves into San Francisco and engages the cat. I fire my Twins at it, both shots. On the first test, i commit Blood Curse. On the second shot, i commit that same Blood Curse, from the discard pile. This costs me the final two charges from my Bandages and a horror, but the shots hit and the Smilodon is defeated. Blood Curse shuffles back into the deck. The first shot even oversucceeded, allowing me to draw a card with Lucky Cigarette Case, my second Will of the Cosmos. However, Will would only gain me one clue right now, from the Library. I don’t think that’s worth playing yet, so i will wait for the next good opportunity. I could just walk back into Arkham, but instead i will make use of being in San Francisco again and get some resources. My final action is a resource action, bringing Izzie to 2 resources which will become 4 in upkeep. Enough for Ward of Protection and Aleksey.

Joe moves into Arkham and spends 4 clues on the Helping Yourself task. Yay, first task finished! And it only took us… oh well, let’s not spoil the mood with that kind of talk. With his final action, he plays Logan Hastings.

My upkeep draws are Cosmic Flame and ECache. Isabelle has to discard to hand size and i choose to drop my second Second Sight. Izzie goes to 4 resources, Joe to 5.

Round 6

(5/5 doom) -> (0/4 doom)

The first agenda is already done and all I have to show for it is the one starting task done. I spent a lot of time setting up my board, i hope i am able to convert that prep into some results starting now. This round i do want to get rid of the Myriad Gentleman, who takes over that job will depend on the encounter cards i draw. But first… we got an agenda to advance. Stuff is happening.

We move on to winter where we only have a doom threshold of 4. That’s mildly concerning, but maybe thinking that we’d get 4 x 5 = 20 turns was a bit optimistic. The Myriad Gentlemen lose Aloof and gain back Hunter, which is actually great for me right now! Saves me the action to engage them. The Myriad Gentleman in Arkham engages Joe Diamond.
We also got some more action on the board, as there is something going on near Paris and Cairo.

Cairo is being visited by a Sphinx. We can fulfill the task either by defeating her or by solving her riddles. Seems like we should be able to do some intellect tests once we get there!

Another Realm, a new location opens up and it’s only accessible through a portal in Paris. Notably, the trip back is not obvious. One would assume that whatever text is on the other side of this card will take care of that, but obviously there is no guarantee that you’d end up back in Paris. Thankfully i think that both of my investigators would be able to clear this location, otherwise they could even end up stranded there on their own.

With that bit of admin out of the way, it’s time for encounter draws.

Ah, it’s time to talk about A Multitude of Plots, the card that Izzie just got. Disgusting piece of cardboard, it offers us the choice between two things: Ancient Evils with Surge. Or putting this card into the Victory display where it will be relevant for future scenarios. Now, this is one of the few things i vividly remember from my previous plays of this campaign, because this card fucking sucks :D The wild thing is that as awful as a surging Evils is, the consequences from that other option are really really bad. Bad enough that surging Evils might be the better option. And those final two scenarios are going to be tough as balls even without the shenanigans this enables. Long story short: I pick option C: Ward of Protection. Screw this noise. That being said, i am pretty sure there are two more of these in the deck…
Joe also got something awful, but to be fair this card has such a bad worst case that i am happy to see it now. A Long and Lonely Year asks to make a willpower test. And if you fail it, you get 2 horror and are reset to the Arkham location. That could easily undo like 5+ actions worth of movement. Joe already is in Arkham, so he’s just testing for the horror. The test is 2 vs 3 and he fails with a cultist (-5). He takes 2 horror, parking one of them on the Lab Assistant. Then draws a card from the Cultist token effect… and it’s his weakness, Dead Ends. Sure, we’d draw it eventually.

Joe’s turn is simple enough. He fires his gun at the Myriad Gentleman twice, first test at 6 vs 3, the other at 6 vs 2. Both hit and the dude and his doppelgänger are done. Joe plays Bounty and triggers Logan, for a total of 3 bonus resources. For the third action, I play Stock Ammo Reload and the M1911 goes to 7 ammo.

Izzie spends her turn moving. First action into Arkham, where she takes a boat trip to Paris with the other two actions. I think she’s best suited to wander into the Strange Portal and that seems like something she can knock out fairly fast. Paris reveals and it’s a 3 shroud location with 2 clues, the ability to travel back to Arkham and a Forced effect that will steal an action when I defeat an enemy here. Izzie also takes a sip from her canteen, going from 4 horror back to 2.

Upkeep draws are Daniel Jameson and the second Bodyguard. I go to 4 and 7 resources.

Round 7

(1/4 doom)

Isabelle draws her encounter card, a lowly Acolyte. In the context of Ages Unwound, this guy looks so tame and quaint! I spawn him at the Another Realm since that is where i want to go next and he does need to die soon due to how short the agenda is.
Ah, and Joe gets a second A Multitude of Plots. That’s unfortunate but was also bound to happen. Well, let me refer back up to my ted talk from last round. I don’t think i am going to pick the second option unless there’s more than a lost round happening due to cultists or similar. This isn’t the case here, this won’t cause an early advance but it does mean that the Acolyte definitely has to die this round. I take the surging Ancient Evils and the current doom count goes up (3/4 doom). The surge provides us with another Myriad Gentleman. Now that is actually super annoying. This guy will take me two actions to defeat, meaning that Joe won’t have the two actions left to take the ship to Europe. Well. It is what it is. The gentleman spawns with a swarm card and engages Joe in good old Arkham.

Alright, i got some murder to do this round. Starting with Joe who fires his M1911 at the Gentleman twice. 7 vs 3 and 7 vs 2 both hit and the guy is done for. Logan Hastings offers up a resource as a reward. Unable to travel, Joe uses his third action simply to play Emergency Cache which brings him to 11 resources. Sounds like a lot, but of course 5 of them are already earmarked to pay for his weakness, so the money from this ECache will probably be relevant over the course of the game still.

Isabelle plays Daniel Jameson and takes a sip from her canteen to clear all of her horror. Thus prepared, she walks into the Another Realm and engages the Acolyte. With her last action, she punches the Acolyte. No need to waste ammo and with Daniel, i got the autofail safeguard that the Twins would otherwise grant me here. I commit Soul Link (taking the horror on myself instead of Daniel in case i get an Elder Sign some time) and test 6 vs 3. I pass and defeat the Acolyte.

Upkeep draws are Extra Rations and Dorothy Simmons. Izzie has 2 resources, Joe has 12.

Here’s a look at the current play areas:

Round 8

(3/4 doom) And just like that another Witching Hour arrives. That was lightning fast! Izzie has two Will of the Cosmos in hand, it’d be real nice if i was able to play them now!

Well shit. Isabelle draws Omnipresence and this is a really bad time for it. If i had a Ward in hand, i would cancel it, but alas. Omnipresence searches up the other two copies from the deck and then i have to place them on three different empty locations. Any of those locations we haven’t visited until the next agenda flip will put a starting doom on the new agenda. That agenda flip is next round. Isabelle is currently stuck in another dimension. And Joe can at best touch two locations this round. So i suppose i put two of these on Paris and London since that is where i want to go with Joe now. The third one i put on San Francisco… because there is also the possibility that Joe draws an enemy now and moving to Europe is once again not possible! In that case he can hopefully get at least the thing from San Fran.
To present an alternative: I could put the third Omnipresence on the British Library instead and hope that the portal spits Izzie back out in Paris. That would allow Joe to go to London, then the Library and we cover all three. But then we’d have no backup plan at all if Joe draws an enemy. And i would need to trust in the portal bringing Izzie back without having to move herself. So the San Francisco backup plan makes sense to me and that’s what i am going with. But yeah, this is at least Ancient Evils now. Possibly two. If things are really fucked up and Joe doesn’t get to move at all, it’s three. Oh boy.

Joe thankfully doesn’t draw an enemy again, it’s Hunting Shadow #3 instead. Fair enough. I do have a clue, but i plan on getting rid of my Lab Assistant soon-ish anyway, so i take the damage, placing one on the Lab Ass who is defeated and one on Logan who can take it.

I pretty much have my turns planned out. Joe moves from Arkham to Paris, discards the Omnipresence there, then moves with his last action to London where he also ditches the Omnipresence. London is a 4 shroud Victory location with 2 clues that is harder to investigate. No issue though as i will plunder this location with my Will of the Cosmos in a second.

Isabelle plays double Will of the Cosmos, taking both clues from Another Realm and both clues from London. The two doom tokens i put on my Canteen, but as usual when i play the card, that doesn’t matter. With the final action, I use the special action on the location to flip it over and resolve the backside. The text describes us having tea with a woman there who leads us back home? Truth be told, the reference is lost on me, but feel free to read the text yourself. However, i do get a campaign log entry marking the occasion and the location goes straight into my victory display. Isabelle gets transported back to Paris.
So with hindsight i could have gotten all three Omnipotences here after all had i placed the third one in the library instead of San Francisco. Eh, real talk: I have been blown out by this treachery much worse before, i am kinda happy it’s just one extra doom. In any case, the Strange Portal task is completed, leaving the sphinx and the library as active tasks.

Upkeep draws are Manual Dexterity and Magnifying Glass. Joe no longer has Laboratory Assistant and also has 11 cards in hand, time to discard 3 of them. I discard Mag Glass, one of the bodyguards and the other M1911.

And that’s another round done. Another agenda actually.

Round 9

(6/4 doom) -> (1/4 doom) The new agenda starts with an extra doom due to the one copy of Omnipresence left in play.

We arrive in spring, which has another four doom worth of rounds for us. Well, three thanks to Omnipresence. We get a new Task, the Tunguska Event.

Spend 4 clues in Tunguska? Sounds easy enough, Isabelle has 4 clues on her right now. Something is fishy however, why the requirement for spending only at the end of the round? It’s probably not quite that easy.

Also: The agenda flip shuffles back the encounter discard pile! That’s awful. I really had to draw those Omnipotences right before they shuffle back? That also puts the Multitude of Plots that i cancelled earlier back into circulation. I am not happy about this, this is some Untamed Wilds level of bullshit … Well then. I reshuffle, then draw encounter cards.

Isabelle draws Acolyte. That’s not so bad. Makes me choose a direction where i want to go to now. I spawn the guy in Istanbul. That’s right in the middle of all those locations on the right and i can go from there either towards the sphinx or the Tunguska.

Joe draws Memories Fade To Dust and that’s also not so bad, at least if he doesn’t completely botch the test. I pitch Scene of the Crime from my hand for 5 vs 3 and draw the -1. That’s a pass.

I will start with Isabelle because my plan for her is pretty simple: Move to Tunguska. Defeat the Acolyte on the way. To that end i spend my first action moving to Istanbul where i engage the cultist. Istanbul reveals and does offer an interesting opportunity here.

I could spend 2 resources to move straight on into Tunguska and leave the cultist to Joe. That’s not such a bad proposition, going there with Joe next would put him right next to the Sphinx who i could then hopefully parley with next round. But i do only have 2 resource with Isabelle right now and i think i do want to get Aleksey out next round. So i let her deal with the cultist. Second action, attack with a basic punch, committing Soul Link from the discard pile, paying 2 horror. I use my canteen one final time to wipe those horror away immediately. I oversucceed, the Acolyte is off the board, Soul Link reshuffles and i draw a card with Cigarette Case, a Timely Intervention. This is only the second card that i drew this game with LCC, isn’t it? Did i forget about it or did i just not take a whole lot of tests? Hm. With my final action, i move into Tunguska. It’s a 4 shroud location without any clues or abilities. Just an ominous HPL Quote from The Color Out Of Space that fills out the text box.

Now, Joe. I could move into the Library and investigate there. See if i can do the break-in and get the book. Or, i could move towards the sphinx and possibly get her done next round. Or i could join Isabelle in Tunguska. After thinking this over for way too long, i end up deciding to move Joe to Rome. That’s another location revealed, so i get some more information, possibly a Victory location. And it puts me right next to the sphinx. I am just not thrilled with how i see it play out if i were to move to the library. Even if i manage to get an investigation with Deduction(2) in, that’d be 3 clues discovered, so there’d still be 4 on the location. And shroud would be 6 then. That simply doesn’t sound great and i don’t know what mechanics wait for me on the other side of the library. If any willpower or agility tests are required to get the book, Joe has a rough time. With the sphinx, i got everything i need to do printed in her text box at least, so it’s a known entity. I need a few clues to put on the sphinx first, so hopefully i can pick those up in Rome.
So yeah, long story short: First two actions are moving from London to Rome.

That is pretty much perfect. With my third action, i investigate and commit Deduction(2), hoping to pick up 3 of the 4 clues… or actually, do i want to play Dorothy first? If i do, i don’t have enough actions to investigate, move, parley, parley next round… but that +1 intellect seems fairly important for that Parley to succeed anyway. Eh, i am going to want to clear this location anyway, so maybe i just play Dorothy next round and don’t move to the sphinx yet. That also gives me some time to maybe draw some extra intellect icons. Alright, back to the last action. Investigate with Deduction(2). I draw -1 from the chaos bag, an easy oversuccess. I gain 3 clues and draw a card, a Stock Ammo Reload. No intellect icon on this one.

Upkeep draws are Blood Curse and Overpower. I learned this scenario that my Joe deck seems to slant waaaay more towards combat than i was actually planning on. It does pay off to put some attention towards what sort of icons you have on the cards in your deck and clearly i did a bad job of balancing that right for Joe in his current state.

End of the round, Isabelle pays the 4 clues to flip over the Tunguska event.

Well, there’s always something with this campaign, isn’t there -.-
I spawn the Brainwashed Expedition on Isabelle, with two swarm cards. That means i may have to take a full round to defeat it next round. If i can’t, it’ll get a new swarm. Madness. Thank god these are only 2 health each. Imagine playing a 3 or 4 player game and each of the swarm cards takes multiple hits. What a nightmare.

Round 10

(2/4 doom)

Myriad Gentleman for Izzie? That’s a rough pull. She is already engaged to 3 enemies, guess it’s five now. Those Twin 45s are going to work overtime, shame i can only get an extra shot off of them once per round.
Joe draws Hunting Shadow. Again. I pay a clue.

Okay, priorities. The big Elite has to leave the table this round, i don’t want it to spawn even more swarm cards. First action, fire the 45s at the Brainwashed Expedition. No commits on the first shot, i will trust in Daniel Jameson and/or Timely Intervention. On the 3 vs 3, i draw a -3 and i use Timely Intervention to turn it into a hit. First swarm card gone. Then, i trigger the second shot, using agility. It’s 4 vs 3 and i use Manual Dexterity from my hand to turn it into 6 vs 3. I pull -1, so the other swarm card is down and i draw two cards: one from Man Dex and one from LCC. I get Long Bow and Lucky Charm. With my second action, i fire my pistols again, this time at the host body of the Expedition. I commit Timely Intervention from my discard pile to test 6 vs 3 again. I hit and defeat the Host. Assuming that this is it, i flip over the card, expecting to just be able to move it to Victory.

No, there is more. Thank god it’s only a willpower test and thank god i don’t need to do it with Joe. With my second Timely Intervention still in hand, i simply take the test raw, 4 vs 3. I pass with a +1. Hey, even Joe would’ve passed with that! The Tunguska Event task is complete, the Expedition enemy goes into the Victory display. That was a lot! I am now somewhat suspicious of the Sphinx after all. I similarly expected her to just go to the victory display if i parley her twice, but who knows, there might be more there as well.
Anyway, Isabelle still has an action left and two Myriad Gentlemen in her threat area. I need to take at least one of them out, so i use the pistol once more, spending its final bullet. I commit Soul Link (going to 3 horror) to make it count and i do indeed hit. One less gentleman, but of course the host card remains.

Joe plays Dorothy, then investigates 6 vs 2. I draw 0, so Dorothy doesn’t trigger, but Joe picks up the clue and a card for his ability: Bounty. No intellect icon on that either. For my third action, i play Stock Ammo Reload and the M1911 goes to 10 ammo.

In the enemy phase, the Myriad Gentleman slaps Izzie. Not very gentleman-like. She takes a horror and a damage and i park both of them on Daniel.

Upkeep draws are Emergency Cache and Insidious Truths. I go to 4 and 9 resources.

Round 11

(3/4 doom) We are about to advance to the last agenda next round. Wait, here’s a thought I am having only now: I need to think about resigning at some point, don’t I? That’s actually a real problem. Walking all the way back to Arkham and resigning there does take what? Two rounds? At least, possibly more if i also have to handle another gentleman or something like that along the way? I may have to start getting comfortable with letting the final agenda run out and just taking the trauma or whatever the punishment is going to be if that would allow me to get another one or two tasks done. On that note, really only flipped up a single task from the task deck so far… and didn’t even do it. Oh well. Let’s see where i end up on that whole resigning business in two rounds or so when i will need to make a definite decision on this. For now… encounter cards!

Izzie draws Hunting Shadow #5. Welp. Could be worse, i guess. Like one of those saber cats or whatever. Still, i don’t have a clue to spend with her, so two damage it is. I don’t want to lose Daniel, so I take the damage on her directly, meaning she goes to 3 damage. I will need to heal during her turn to make sure she doesn’t just instantly keel over from drawing her signature now.
And it does get worse. Joe gets A Multitude of Plots. Fine. Eyes closed, i am determined not to take one of the longterm penalties. Ancient Evils with Surge. Hit me. We’ll advance the agenda with 4/4 doom.

We enter the final season/agenda prematurely, but at least it has another 5 doom for us and the agenda flip doesn’t do anything horrible. We get one final task that allows spending 4 clues for a resource on the act, up to 3 times. Not sure where i am supposed to get 12 clues right now, but maybe that is a more realistic endeavor than trying to discover any of the tasks from the task deck and complete them? Anyway… we still have a Surge to deal with now. Joe draws another encounter card, False Lead. If there ever was a time for the autofail to show up and completely wreck me, it would be now. The test would be 5 vs 4, even without an autofail that seems pretty dire. I commit Psychoanalysis from my hand for +2 and i pull a 0. Well, i passed but this baited the one card i had in hand with double intellect icons. I think i will just have to murder the sphinx then :)

After a way too eventful Mythos phase, i am finally able to take my turns. Izzie goes first. Since she is out of bullets, she will need to punch the Myriad Gentleman into submission. The test is 3 vs 2 and i take it unmodified due to having Timely Intervention in hand and Daniel in play. I pull -3, so i use Daniel to repeat the test. I pass with +1, dealing a damage and drawing a card from LCC due to the oversuccess. I get another Extra Rations. For the second attack, i pull -3 again, so this time i have to use my Timely Intervention and the Gentleman is defeated. With my final action, i would really like to play Cosmic Flame, but i think i do need to play Extra Rations instead and immediately use it to get back to “only” 2 damage on her.

Time to confront the Sphinx. She has eight health, so even if i were to dump my complete hand to play my two Insidious Truths, i would not be able to kill her in two actions. So i might as well keep shooting my pistol at her and take the hit this enemy phase. First action moves into Cairo which turns out to be a 4 shroud location with 2 clues that gets +1 shroud for every action already taken. No Victory on it, so probably not worth bothering with. I engage the Sphinx and shoot twice. The test is 7 vs 3 aka “anything but the autofail”. I do not draw the tentacle (in fact, did i draw it at all during this scenario yet?), so both shots hit and i deal 4 damage to the enemy.

During the enemy phase, the Sphinx hits back, 1 damage and 2 horror. I take 1 and 1 on Logan who is defeated and 1 horror on Joe himself.

Upkeep draws are Guts and Vicious Blow. Oh, good pull. That would allow Joe to deal 4 damage with Insidious Truth next round and save an action! They go to 3 and 10 resources. Izzie has to discard to hand size, i drop a Lucky Charm i don’t think i have the resources for.

Here’s a look at the play area:

Round 12

(1/5 doom)

Isabelle finds another Acolyte. Again, not so bad. These don’t even require a weapon to defeat. I place him on Shanghai. My assumption is that since Shanghai is a travel destination from San Francisco, i can also go the other way, so going there towards a possible resign is a reasonable plan. Punching a cultist on the way should be no biggie.
More of a biggie: Omnipresence… or it would be if this wasn’t the last agenda. This is an actual freebie now, sort of almost a little repayment for the round this card has cost me earlier. Just in case it ends up being relevant after all, i place the three cards on San Francisco, Himalayas and Istanbul which i all expect to touch in the next rounds.

Alright, let’s kill a Sphinx. Joe plays Insidious Truths, committing Vicious Blow. I discard Bounty and Overpower as additional costs, so it’s a test 9 vs 3 to deal 4 damage. I hit and the Keeper of Knowledge task is completed as soon as the sphinx leaves play and moves to the Victory display. Joe then moves to Istanbul, discards the Omnipresence there and investigates 5 vs 2 to pick up a clue. My plan is to grab all four of the easy clues here and throw them into Final Preparations. For a successful investigation, i gain a resource from Dorothy and a card from my investigator ability. It’s Pursued, my random weakness which finally shows up. Unless some treachery unexpectedly hits me for a bunch of horror, I should be able to tank this for the rest of the game.

Isabelle takes a setup turn, staying in Tunguska for another bit longer. She uses her three actions for Emergency Cache, Aleksey Saburov and Cosmic Flame. Extra Rations heals her for another point. With Aleksey out and back down to only 1 health, i don’t expect that i can get killed anymore.

Upkeep draws are Guts and Counterattack. Isabelle has 1 resource, Joe has 9.

Round 13

(3/5 doom)

Big Enemy! Isabelle draws the Displaced Legion, a Victory enemy with 8 health. Thankfully, they can also be handled through two actions and skill tests. This is good news, Izzie is a huge fan of taking skill tests, so this might just be a Victory point that’s not terribly hard to earn.
Joe gets Skills of Another Life. Right, we’ve not done this all game yet, have we? Joe randomly discards two of his five cards. This could hit his weakness which would be funny. I am not that lucky however, so i discard Overpower and Insidious Truths. Womp womp. Joe does get a card from Izzie’s deck as compensation and it’s a good one: Timely Intervention(3). A reactive +3 to any test? Feels incredibly broken for Joe specifically.

First the Legion. Isabelle spends two actions doing the two tests. First one is intellect, 3 vs 4. I commit Blood Curse from my hand to pass and use Extra Rations to immediately heal that damage i took from the skill. Next up is the willpower test on the now aloof Legion, to which i commit a Guts. 6 vs 4 again is not good enough to beat the -4 that i draw, so i have to use Timely Intervention from my hand to pass. I get to draw a card for Guts: Lethal Curiosity, the random weakness that will deal up to 4 damage or drop up to 4 clues, depending how well you do on your willpower test. Well, with no clues on me i suppose an autofail on this would deal 4 damage to me. I commit my other Guts and this time i draw the -1. Good enough. Guts draws Bandages. I passed both tests on the Legion and move it to the Victory display. With the final action, Izzie moves to Shanghai and engages the Acolyte there.

Shanghai is a Victory location that does indeed allow us to travel to San Francisco. Also to Sydney, but i don’t think i have the time for that left. It also has an ability to buy clues. Interesting, maybe if Joe is missing one or two clues to get another set of 4 clues for the Final Prep task this could be an option.

Joe has a simple turn ahead of him: Investigate the crap out of Istanbul. Three actions, three investigations, all of them 5 vs 2. I draw -1, -1 and -3, somehow managing to not trigger Dorothy with any of the tests. Probably doesn’t matter, but still … what nonsense. I grab the clues and draw a card for the investigator ability, my second Counterattack.

In the enemy phase, the Acolyte attacks and Aleksey takes the damage for me.

In upkeep, Joe draws his Fingerprint Kit, one turn after emptying the exact type of location i wanted to use the FPK for. Not sure if this is still worth it. Izzie draws her personal weakness, Breaking Point. She currently has 3 horror on her, so she takes 2 direct damage, for a total of 3 on her afterwards.

Round 14

(4/5 doom) Please, no Multitude of Plots now. I wouldn’t be able to choose the surging Evils now without immediately ending the game…

Isabelle draws Memories Fade to Dust. Sure, there’s a test on that so I got a good chance to just pass this. I pay a horror to commit Timely Intervention from the discard pile and test 6 vs 3. I oversucceed which draws me a card with LCC: my second Long Bow. Timely Intervention reshuffles into a deck that has become fairly small by now.
Joe draws Accelerated Decay. Excellent, that’s just a freebie because i can put it on my Mag Glass(1) which i can take back into my hand and play again as soon as it’s Joe’s turn.

For the third time this scenario, Izzie just bareknuckle punches an Acolyte. She does commit two Long Bows from her hand however to make sure the guy goes down. With that bit of business taken care of, she takes the boat to San Francisco. She discards the Omnipotence there and uses up the last supply from her Extra Rations to heal.

After using his Mag Glass like a Jo-Jo to shed the treachery, Joe moves to the Himalayas. Two clues there. Here’s how the situation around Joe looks right now:

I have two actions now. Another three actions next round. I own 8 clues. If i want to finish the Final Preparations, i do need 12 clues. How do i get 4 clues from this layout in 5 actions then? Is it even possible? I also have a Fingerprint Kit still in hand, if that matters. The thing that destroys most plans here is that the Himalayas require two actions to investigate. Meaning i can’t play FPK this round and also investigate. I do however need the FPK, otherwise i’d use 4 actions just on the two clues on Himalayas. So… i don’t think claiming both Himalayas and Shanghai is possible. Next idea: Istanbul can be traversed without an action by paying 2 resources. Can i do Paris and Shanghai? If i can, i am not seeing it.
There is also the not so small matter that i still need to play my personal weakness, otherwise i get fewer XP and that’s a big No-No. Joe can still resign, by moving back to Paris now and playing the weakness. Then next round take the boat back to Arkham and resign. So that’s an idea. Oooor i could greed one more Victory point here by claiming either Himalayas or Shanghai.
OH WAIT. There’s the ability to pay 3 resources for a clue on Shanghai. If i move there now and play FPK, that’d leave me with 6 resources. 7 next round. I could then use my three actions to investigate with FPK, hopefully getting the two clues from Shanghai. And buying two more clues. That’d get me to 12 clues and allow me to finish Final Prep. Now if only i knew that the reward for that is good enough to not resign and also not play my weakness. On the plus side, the Shanghai plan would also give me a Victory which pretty much cancels out the XP loss from the weakness if i squint hard enough. Well, i would need to pass the investigation test in Shanghai as well of course, but i do still have that Timely Intervention in hand. And if i fail, i can just play the weakness and will mostly be fine. Yeah, i think i just talked myself into this.
With my final two actions i move to Shanghai and use its ability to buy a clue. I then spend 8 of my clues to put two resources on the act through the Final Preparations task. I figure i better do this now, just in case something like a False Lead comes after my clues in the Mythos phase.

Upkeep draws are Ward of Protection and Vicious Blow.

Round 15

(4/5 doom)

Last round of the game. I got a plan, last chance for the Mythos phase to mess it up. I don’t want to jinx it, but i think there is literally only one card in the encounter deck that i don’t want to see right now (Multitude of Plots) and Izzie even holds a Ward.

Isabelle draws Hunting Shadow #6. Looks like we got all of them before and after the reshuffle. It’s irrelevant now of course, i just take a damage on myself and on Aleksey that’ll disappear in a moment.
I have a bit of a god gamer moment and draw False Lead, the one card i played around at the end of last round. Very satisfying, got to pat my own back for this one for thinking of this possibility. Since i don’t have any clues to lose anymore, the treachery surges and finds a Smilodon. Sure, i put it at Tunguska. This will hunt into me in the enemy phase, but that won’t matter anymore at that point. I even have a Counterattack to just make this completely irrelevant.

One more test to make, the rest is deterministic. Joe plays Fingerprint Kit, discarding his M1911 and all 8 ammo on it. Then investigates. I throw my Bodyguard into the test and it’s 8 vs 4. Even without the Timely, that’s already “everything but the autofail”. We’ve not seen the tentacle token all scenario, it would be almost hilarious if it popped up now. Thankfully, the autofail lacks comedic timing and i pass the test with a very unspectacular -2. I collect two clues, buy one more, then spend the 4 clues i have on a third resource for the act, finishing the Final Prep task. Feels good.

Izzie moves to Arkham, then resigns.

The Smilodon hunts into Joe, then attacks. Joe Counterattacks.

In upkeep, Joe takes a horror because he has to reshuffle his deck. He draws Overpower and goes to 1 resource.

Round 16

(5/5 doom)

The agenda advances.

Oh. No penalties for dooming out, at least not right on the card as we usually find in official campaigns. Let’s check out R1 then! Wait, does that mean that if something bad happens, it will happen to Izzie too?

Resolution

It’s been a long year. We did what we could. But now it’s time to face the Myriad at the Ritual Site again.

There is only one resolution. So … resigning wasn’t really necessary? Had i known that Izzie was able to help gain clues, then Joe would have had time to play his weakness… oh well.

The resolution text spans a whole page in the booklet, more than any setup instruction so far. So let’s see:

“The ritual is nigh” is recorded in the campaign log.

Because he didn’t resign, we record that “Joe returned to Arkham late”. Ah, there it is. So no trauma, but consequences for the next scenario? I might just have preferred the trauma on my 7/7 investigator… anyway, looks like it’s probably a good thing after all that i had Izzie return and resign.

Then we get quizzed on whether we did NOT achieve any of the following tasks: Helping Yourself, Keeper of Knowledge, Strange Portal, Tunguska Event. I achieved all of those, so no (presumably malicious) log entries are made.

For each copy of Multitude of Plots in the victory display we have to pick a penalty. I avoided all of those.

Next up we are quizzed on a bunch of other Tasks, i assume these are the ones from the task deck because the Library thing is among them. Each one you finished here gives a story card to add to my deck. I have not achieved any of those and in turn i don’t get any of these.

Then the token bag gets modified. All cultists, tablets and Elder Things get removed and instead i add 1 cultist and 1 tablet back in. Then, for each resource on the act i also add a cultist token, for a total of 4 cultists in the bag now. This is my reward for my Final Preparation, i collected 12 clues and took some significant compromises for them so these better be good tokens in the last two scenarios! If they are, that is a huge reward though.

Finally, experience. I have 4 Victory locations in play and another 4 Victory (Legion, Portal, Sphinx, Expedition) in my display. That’s a total of 8. Joe only gets 6 thanks to his weakness.

Spending XP

I think it’s genuinely a bit of a problem that Joe doesn’t seem to have much in terms of intellect icons left in his deck. This makes solving locations with 5+ shroud difficult and even the somewhat frequent 4 shroud locations that we often see in Ages Unwound become iffy if you are just testing 5 vs 4. My solution to this is a pair of On the Beat. Those can either be committed for +2 or i can play them to get +3 on a full round worth of investigations. Seems great and is only 2xp. I was planning to get a second copy of Psychoanalysis(3), but it did stick around in my hand for an uncomfortably long time this game. It did come in with its icons at a crucial time and the effect is powerful enough that i might play it, but i think i will just get a Studious here to just generally improve my start. For my final XP, i buy myself a second copy of Dorothy Simmons. I have come to the conclusion that i don’t need Logan in this deck and i’d rather have some extra consistency in getting my intellect bonuses to the table. Overall that means:
Additions: 2x On the Beat, Studious, Dorothy
Cuts: Logan Hastings, Bounty, Scene of the Crime

Link to Joe’s deck

Isabelle has been doing pretty well, the one limiting factor for her has been her resource situation however. I am running an above average amount of assets with her, a result of doing both Charisma and Relic Hunter, while really only having ECache as extra income. That’s something i probably should look at now. The other thing that is on my radar: I just added 4 cultist tokens into the chaos bag. I am not sure if Second Sight is worth keeping around with that in mind. Cutting Second Sight would almost completely push Izzie over into combat, but it would also remove my most expensive asset from the deck.
Options for resource acceleration that Izzie can take and make sense for me right now are Spiritual Charm and Offering Bowl. Am i so confident in my damage soak now that Offering Bowl is on the table? If i also take a second Aleksey, that does sound like something i could manage, yes. That’d mean trading Second Sights for Offering Bowls and Arcane Initiate for Aleksey. That’d leaves me with 5xp and i am not sure i want anything else. Or, more accurately, i don’t know that i can cut anything else to include something like Blood Ward. Is having two Blood Ward better than having two Will of the Cosmos? Honestly, i am not really sure about this trade, but in the interest of playing the new cards and testing them, sure. Let’s give Blood Ward a go. Never put it in a deck before and i have actually been taking hits.
For my final xp, i am going to grab a Shadowmeld. I got an unaccounted arcane slot now and Shadowmeld is a nice cheap way to give me some extra enemy handling capacities since without the Will of the Cosmos that is now Izzie’s only job. It’s also a good complement to the Long Bow. I cut a Blood Curse for it, now with Timely(3) in my deck i am not hurting for wild icons and removing a source of direct damage makes sense here i think.
Additions: 2x Offering Bowl, Aleksey Saburov, 2x Blood Ward, Shadowmeld
Cuts: 2x Second Sight, Arcane Initiate, 2x Will of the Cosmos, Blood Curse

Link to Isabelle’s deck

Little sidenote: Don’t be afraid to spend xp to swap out level 0 cards. If the best card for the job is level 0, then just do it. There is no wasted xp, only wasted opportunity from limiting yourself to upgrade only into level 1-5 cards. Obviously there is always a hindsight element where you think whether you could have included that level 0 card at deck creation already, but in the case of something like my Offering Bowls or the Shadowmeld here that may not even have been the right call either and led to a worse deck for the earlier scenarios. Other times, like with the Daniel Jameson i put into the deck after Unstuck, that card should have been in the initial deck… but oh well. Suck it up and just pay the 1xp to fix your mistake :)

And on that slighly rambly note, that’s it for today. See you next time for some deja vu when we mess with the ritual site at the elementary school once more, in A World Torn Down, Again.

Setup

The time stream has spat us out in the future. We escaped the cultist that had us cornered… but how do we get back to our time now?

This scenario is basically one huge standalone within the campaign. It has its own encounter set, a total of more than 60 cards in it. Just as a benchmark, the official standalones like Rougarou and Carnivale have less than that! So clearly we once again got things going on. But the setup is done rather quick. The only set we need aside from the Unstuck set is one called Paradox and it’s set aside at the start of the game.

The eight locations that are put in play all exist in two versions in the encounter set and we are to select one at random each. The other are shuffled together and set aside. The selected locations are put in play, in a circle in random order. This is the places in the time stream we can visit this scenario. A rules blurb informs us that there might be random movement happening. When it does, we are to shuffle and draw from the set aside locations to determine the random location. Since we stepped into the future, we start the game at the location “A Disquieting Future”, depicting a possible dystopian version of Arkham. When? Who even knows. Here’s how all of that looks on the board now:

There’s four big Elite enemies in the encounter set that we have to shuffle and randomly set aside three of them without looking. The fourth one goes into the encounter deck, as just something we might encounter on any Mythos phase. You know, as a treat.

As one last bit before we are ready to go, we have to add a chaos token to the bag according to our difficulty. On Standard that means a -3 token. Speaking of tokens, here’s the token reference:

We don’t have any tablets in the bag and i am quite happy about that, the tablet token looks nasty. That being said, i am not looking forward to failing treachery tests with Joe by revealing cultists either. Doubling the effects of a failed test can be BRUTAL. The one Elder Thing is a -4 and moves locations around the board. And the skull scales from -1 to -4 over the course of the game. So our previous approach of generously fishing for -1s in the bag or just generally being only 2 over might come and bite us this time.

The agenda deck has four cards, starting at a low doom threshold of only 3. While this agenda is in play, locations are connected to their neighbors in the circle to each side. Potentially this could stop being the case later on.
The act deck has 2 cards and the first gives us a nice long-term goal. Grab 10 clues. No special requirement on where to bring them, we can just spend them as a group. There’s also an additional move option on here. For an action, an investigator can take a willpower test. If they pass, they can move to any location. But if they fail, they are moved to a random one. The difficulty is 5, but lowers by 1 for each doom on the agenda. Interesting!

Round 1

(0/3 doom)

Starting hands are decent, but could be better.

Isabelle: Long Bow, Canteen, Man Dex, Man Dex, Guts
Joe: Machete, Dorothy, ECache, Gather Intel, Scene of the Crime

The location i start at has a Forced effect that makes anyone who ends their turn there, test intellect. If they pass, they draw a card. If they don’t, they take horror and discard a card. So while i could see myself staying there with Joe this turn, Izzie needs to get out.

Izzie plays her Longbow, then moves clockwise, to the Tatterdemalion (which some might recognize as the spaceship from the Dark Matter campaign).

The Tatterdemalion also forces a skill test on me to avoid discard, random discard even in this case. But it is agility which i am much better at. Since i do however not want to risk having to discard my Canteen, i use my third action to play it. I take the agility test, committing Manual Dexterity for a 5 vs 3. For now i stay lucky and pass. Man Dex draws me Ward of Protection.

Two locations, both of them are shroud 4. I was hoping to find something easier here for Joe to go to. So i guess it can’t be helped, this is just what i need to attempt to beat. Joe plays Dorothy Simmons, then with his second action investigates the Disquieting Future at 5 vs 4. It passes with a -1. His ability draws Logan Hastings. I don’t want to attempt this again, so my final action is simply playing Scene of the Crime for the second clue. That’s one location down. For the location test, i commit Gather Intel from my hand, to test 6 vs 3. I pass and draw Bounty.

Upkeep draws are Will of the Cosmos and Dead Ends. Izzie has 2 resources, Joe has 1.

Round 2

(1/3 doom) It’s a whole new encounter deck, we’ve not seen any of this yet. Exciting!

Isabelle draws The Endless Fall and has to retake the agility test on her location again. And potentially get tossed around the locations and having to take all sorts of other tests. Yikes. I pay a horror to commit Manual Dexterity from my discard pile again. 5 vs 3 fails with a -4. That’s actually a fail by 2, so The Endless Fall does its thing of throwing me to the next location in clockwise direction. An Earth Long Dead is a 6 shroud location without clues. When i enter the location, i take a damage and a horror. No test here, you just take it. Welp. I suppose that at least stops The Endless Fall from escalating further.
Manual Dexterity shuffles back into the deck despite the failure. However, the failed Forced effect of the Tatterdemalion costs me a random card. Ward of Protection goes into the discard pile. Oof ouch owie. Rough start into the scenario!
Joe draws Dystopia. At the end of the turn, i will need to test willpower. On a fail i get a horror which needs to go onto an ally if possible. That’d defeat Dorothy if it goes through! The difficulty for the test is 1 (current doom in play), but for Joe that’s still a test he can easily fail.

All of that does complicate things. I would really like to use the Guts in Isabelle’s hand to help Joe with his Dystopia test at the end of his round, however that is remarkably difficult to engineer unless i am willing to simply move Isabelle three times counterclockwise, into the unrevealed location on the other side of our starting location. Joe could then move into that location as well and Isabelle would be there to help his test. A test which is 2 vs 1, so i could also reasonably just risk it… but losing Dorothy really would suck.
There is also another very awful plan that would protect Dorothy. And that is having Joe play ECache and Logan from his hand. That way, if the horror does hit, it can kill Logan instead of Dorothy… that would be a massive blow to his economy however and i don’t think i can let that fly either.

After way too long of indecisiveness, i finally go with the safe route that works hardest to keep Dorothy alive. After using her Canteen to heal both of the horror tokens on her, Isabelle takes three move actions, backtracking past the Tatterdemalion and the Disquieting Future into the so far unrevealed 16th Century Arkham.

Finally something with less than 4 shroud, i was getting worried. If we grab the two clues here, we even gain a Victory. Ending the turn here might cost us a horror if i fail a willpower test. Since i already spent all my actions with Izzie now, it’s time for that test. 4 vs 3 passes.

Time for Joe to follow. Ending the turn here will likely deal a horror to him, but that one he can at least take on himself instead of having to basically sacrifice his ally. He moves into 16th Century Arkham, then investigates 5 vs 3. He pulls 0, which means that Dorothy is not paying him for his success… but he does get a card from his ability and it’s his signature Detective’s Intuition which triggers to draw two more cards: Perception and Counterattack. With my last action, i have Joe play Emergency Cache and go to 4 resources. Then it’s time for his willpower tests, one from the treachery, one from the location. I test the Dystopia first and commit Guts for 4 vs 1. I pull -1, so the test would have passed without help, but I’m just happy that i got past that. For passing with Guts, Joe draws another card and it’s Insidious Truths. Then it’s time for the location test and at 2 vs 3 i just let that happen. I pull Elder Thing which is a -4 and fails the test. It also swaps the locations position on the board with the one on the opposite side of the circle, so 1600s Arkham is now on the left of the table, clockwise from the Earth Long Dead where Isabelle started her turn. Sure, i don’t think that matters too much for me right now. Joe takes a horror for failing the test.

My upkeep draws are Arcane Initiate and Lab Assistant. Initiate is an insanely good pull here, she has PERFECT timing. Next round is the one where we are one doom short of advancing the agenda, so we can put whatever doom into play without it mattering (the “Witching Hour”). I was already planning on playing Will of the Cosmos and i happily add Initiate to these plans. Now i only need to not have an enemy or treachery eat up my actions and next round should be fairly productive!
Isabelle goes to 3 resources, Joe to 5.

Round 3

(2/3 doom) Witching Hour! First round of encounter cards last round was rough, let’s hope this one is a bit softer.

The encounter deck has other ideas and throws a Velociraptor at Isabelle! The dinosaur makes an immediate attack which would be the second damage on Isabelle, but i let Joe prevent it with a Counterattack. The Raptor engages Izzie, but it is the Raptor that gets a damage token.
Joe also draws something quite impressive. Overwhelming Numbers threatens a damage and a horror on both investigators unless they pass tests against difficulty 4. I can drop a clue to reduce the difficulty of those tests to 2 and decide that’s worth it. We seem to have a lot of incoming damage in this encounter deck and at least when it comes to Izzie’s health i will want to preserve whatever i can. Joe tests combat 4 vs 2 and autofails. 1 damage and horror for him! Isabelle tests agility and commits Manual Dexterity for a 5 vs 2 and succeeds. Man Dex draws her a Guts.

Isabelle fires her Longbow at the Velociraptor. Testing 5 vs 3, i pay a horror to commit Man Dex from the discard pile for another +2. I pass and the Raptor is toast. Man Dex draws Breaking Point, my weakness. I currently have no horror on me, so it “just” deals me a direct damage. It’s the second one on her. Joe plays Bounty, creating 3 resources. He takes two for himself, the other for Izzie.
Her second action plays Arcane Initiate and i immediately peek at the top of my deck. I find a Cosmic Flame and draw it. Finally, the third action plays Will of the Cosmos, parking a horror on the Canteen (not that it matters). I grab two clues, one from the location we are at and one from the Tatterdemalion. At the end of the turn, i have to test willpower from the location again. I take the 4 vs 3 unmodified and pass.

Joe wants to pick up his clue again. The test is 5 vs 3 and i commit a Perception on top just to make sure i can move on from here. I succeed and draw two cards, a Hand-Crank and a M1911. I now have 5 clues across both investigators, half of what we need to progress the act. With the second action, Joe moves clockwise into Banks of the Nile and reveals it.

That’s a good chunk of relatively easy clues, one short of all that we need! Ending the round here risks revealing a Sandstorm. I don’t know what that is and don’t intend to find out, but either way i obviously want these clues before i move on! Before i get to that however, i want to play my M1911. Izzie’s bow currently doesn’t have an arrow in it and i want at least one weapon ready to go in play just in case.
At the end of the round, Joe has to test intellect for the location. The 5 vs 3 passes.

Upkeep draws a Soul Link for Isabelle, but Joe gets Pursued, his random weakness. Any enemy that engages him will now cost him a horror until that thing is discarded for 2 action. We can’t catch a break this game so far and now the agenda is also about to advance and without doubt do something horrible.

Round 4

(5/3 doom) -> (0/4 doom)

Let’s advance this thing.

Oh, this is a lot less than i expected. I would have put money down that one of the three set aside Elites would come into play now. So… all that happens then is that we get new random locations. That is sort of annoying as i was looking forward to just tear into those clues at the Nile, but sure. I do the time shuffle and now it’s Izzie standing at the Nile while Joe ends up at a so far unrevealed location, “Millions of Years Ago”.

There’s a lot of easy clues here as well! But if i stay, dinosaurs come out and play. I have no idea if there is smaller dinos than Velociraptors in the deck, so it’s probably best to assume for now that staying there attracts a Raptor. At least it spawns exhausted!

The new agenda is short again, with 4 doom threshold. My goal now is to advance the act before the agenda advances. That should be possible, right? Well, let’s see what the encounter deck has to say about that.

Good. Grief. Isabelle draws the one Elite enemy that I had to shuffle into the deck during setup. The Shambler from the Stars is an Aloof Hunter, so at least it doesn’t engage her right away. And it stays in aloof while i don’t use any action abilities. So no reloading my bow unless i want to get smacked. Yay… guess i got the Elite that i expected to come from the agenda flip after all.
Meanwhile, Joe draws his own enemy, but it’s much milder. The Persecuted Witch discards the top card of the encounter deck, a Sphinx enemy with way too many big numbers and ability text that i am not sad to see go away. No Hex, no Paradox, so her ability for an extra encounter card fizzles. She engages Joe who has to take a horror from the Pursued weakness.

Alright then, what can Izzie do? She can’t reload her bow without being hit and 2 vs 2 is not great for trying to investigate. I could flee towards Joe? That would spawn a dino at the location, but by next round i could have my bow ready again and take care of it. That does seem like a fine plan, i would want to stay at the location with Joe anyway, so i would spawn the dinosaur even if Izzie wouldn’t go there now as well. Also, i get to reveal the so far unrevealed Heart of an Empire (Rome) location when moving through it.

Okay, plan stands. Izzie starts her turn and uses Arcane Initiate and finds Second Sight. If it weren’t for the Shambler, i could play that now and start on the clues. As it is, i move twice and join Joe in dinosaur land. On my way, i reveal Ancient Rome.

I am tempted to just stay in Rome, play Second Sight and then investigate. But i feel like i really should be getting that arrow back on my bow now, so i stick to my original plan. I move past Rome into the far far away past and reload my bow. At the end of the round, i spawn a Velociraptor from the encounter deck at the location, exhausted and unengaged for now.

Joe takes a shot at the Witch in his threat area and defeats her. For his other two actions, he has options. I could either take care of my weakness. I could start on the clues at the location. I could start shooting at the Raptor. I think since the Raptor has 3 health, i want to use the Longbow for that, leaving investigation and the weakness as options. Joe is at 3 horror right now, but i still think i should get some progress done – i can’t just get stalled out from round to round, that way i lose for sure! So i investigate, 5 vs 2 and draw a 0. That gains me a clue and a card: Stock Ammo Reload. Since i oversucceed by 3, i also get a resource from Dorothy. With my third action, i play Stock Ammo Reload. I now have eight ammo on the M1911.

During the enemy phase, Shambler moves to Rome. The Velociraptor readies and engages Izzie. Since its ability for a free attack on engagement specifically only triggers in Mythos and during the investigator phase, i don’t need to take an attack here.

Upkeep draws are Aleksey and Vicious Blow. I am very relieved to see Aleksey!
Isabelle goes to 5 resources, Joe to 6.

Round 5

(1/4 doom)
Starting the round with two enemies already in play, this is how loss spirals happen. I need whatever happens now to not take too many of my actions away!

Isabelle gets Beckoning of Everywhen. That doesn’t seem so bad? Just introduces a little bit of chaos, but that’s fine? I pull an Elder Sign and i am not actually not sure what happens here. Nothing, i guess? I didn’t reveal a number and i didn’t reveal any of the listed symbols. Huh. I suppose the same would happen had i revealed a 0. Well, i won’t complain about small favors. Getting a freebie is only fair after the last three rounds.
Joe draws Dark Maledict. With only 1 doom in play, i have to pick just one of the options which is actually fine. I have both investigators discard a card. Isabelle drops Cosmic Flame, Joe drops Machete.

Because of how my current location works, i want to start this turn with Joe. I get right to investigating. I oversucceed by 1, gaining a card (Overpower) and a resource along with the clue. I then use two actions to discard my weakness. At the end of his turn, Joe doesn’t need to spawn a dinosaur because we already have one at this location.

Isabelle fires her Longbow at the Raptor. I hit, it dies. Arcane Initiate peeks at the deck, but finds nothing she would like to keep. I don’t want to spawn a new dino right away at the end of the round, so I move into the final unrevealed location, A World At War. Welcome to WWII France, i guess.

I reload my bow and end my turn here. If i end up having to drop a clue to the effect here, that’d not even be that bad. If the game cooperates and lets me have a moment of peace, i plan on playing Second Sight next round and hover everything straight up. But let’s take the test first. I commit Guts from my discard pile and pass, drawing a second Long Bow.

In the enemy phase, the Shambler moves to Joe’s location.

Upkeep draws are Emergency Cache and M1911. Izzie goes to 6 resources, Joe to 8. Joe has to discard to hand size. The M1911 is discarded.

Round 6

(2/4 doom)

During Mythos draws, Isabelle gets a Persecuted Witch. With two doom on the clock, the witch discards two cards off of the encounter deck and reveals Beckoning of Everywhen which has to resolve now. I draw a -1, so my location moves one step clockwise, trading places with the one where we began, Disquieting Future. This does put some distance between Joe and Isabelle again which might be something that could be a problem eventually.
Joe draws Overwhelming Numbers, also a card we’ve seen before. Since it will only hit him now, i don’t want to drop a clue. Instead i commit Overpower to the test and go 6 vs 4. I get an Elder Sign, so Joe gets a resource and draws a total of two cards: Deduction(2) and Bodyguard. Oh, those are excellent cards for me right now!

I’ve kept an Insidious Truth in my hand this whole time instead of using it on a Raptor. The idea is that i can use it as an attack on the Shambler without having to do an action ability. Now i am wondering if the Bodyguard could fulfill a similar role here. But with 9 cards in hand i probably don’t need to be too precious about them. First action, i engage Shambler. Second action, i play Insidious Truths, discarding two cards: Hand-Crank and Detective’s Intuition. I also commit a Vicious Blow, so this attack actually does the full required 4 damage in one go if it goes through. The test is 9 vs 3 and i don’t draw an autofail, so the Shambler is defeated and goes into the Victory display. With my final action, i investigate here. I don’t really want to waste a Deduction(2) on a 2 shroud location, so basic investigate it is. As a result, Joe earns his sixth clue, a resource from Dorothy and a card for his ability: Overpower. Not bad. At the end of his turn, he has to spawn a Velociraptor.

Isabelle starts her turn by using Arcane Initiate, finding Blood Curse. She fires Long Bow at the witch, defeating her. For the second and third action, I play Second Sight and use it to investigate. Paying a horror, i commit Guts to the test from the discard pile, then immediately use Canteen to go completely sane again. The test passes and i pay a charge to grab both clues. Guts reshuffles and also draws me a card: my random weakness, Lethal Curiosity. That could cause me to drop my clues again or deal a truckload of damage, neither of which i am fine with. Soul Link goes into the test, 7 vs 4 and i draw the -4. Damn. I have exactly the 10 clues i need across my investigators right now, so i don’t want to drop one. But a damage is awful, too. In the end i decide to take the damage. That puts me at 3 out of 5 damage, but my weakness already happened, so i don’t need to fear a chunk of direct damage. And i do have Aleksey coming down very soon. And if all else fails, Initiate can also soak one point. So i think that should work out!
Alright, three actions taken, if i end my turn now i need to test to not drop a clue again. So instead i will just spend all 10 of my clues now before passing. That’ll advance the act with no actions left, but what’s the worst that can happen? Eh?

Wait, that’s not bad at all! I am simply putting two locations into play and revealing my new objective: Resign. How hard can that be?

Okay, so the Timestream is connected to each of the random Adrift locations that we’ve been visiting all this time. And to open up Arkham, Present Day where we presumably can resign to return back to our time, both investigators need to be at the Timestream at the end of the round. Roger that! That does sound like we can even go and grab some more clues from everywhere and fish for XP? Unless of course something horrible happens in the near future…

In the enemy phase, the Velociraptor readies and engages Joe.

Upkeep draws are Soul Link and Vicious Blow. Good timing on that Vicious Blow, actually!

Also, i realize i didn’t give you one of these yet, so here’s a shot of the play areas:

and here’s the location grid:

Round 7

(3/4 doom)

I am feeling a lot better about my chances now than i did two rounds ago!

The Mythos Phase greets Isabelle with a Dark Maledict. Since there are now 3 doom on the agenda, i have to execute all three things: Choose an investigator to take 2 horror. I choose Isabelle. Heal a damage enemy: Fizzles, there is none. Discard cards: Isabelle discards Soul Link, Joe discards Logan Hastings. Fiiine? At least it’s not a big enemy that takes my turn away again.
Joe draws Cabin Pressure. Next time he ends his turn on a location with at least once clue, he’ll take 2 damage. It’s two actions to discard and Isabelle can’t help with that. Joe only has a single point of damage right now, so this seems perfectly acceptable and i won’t need to play around it.

Isabelle takes the last sip from her Canteen to heal the horror she just took. The Arcane Initiate peels a Blood Curse from the deck. I think the first thing to do here is see how the Timestream location looks. Surely it won’t be as simple as “just move your two guys here and the path back will open”? So my first action is exactly that: Move to the Timestream.

As long as there’s clues on the location, the Timestream will try to push me away. Fair enough. That leaves me with two options: I could just empty out my Second Sight here and presumably just grab all 4 clues. Joe also has his Deduction(2) still in hand which could pretty easily grab 3 of them once he moves in. He does still have that raptor in his face though. I was sort of hoping to be able to play ECache and Aleksey now and with how much time i still have left (there are two more agendas after next rounds advance) i should probably just play it safe now. Second and third action i play Emergency Cache and Aleksey Saburov. End of turn, i need to test agility and i commit the spare Longbow from my hand for a 5 vs 3. If this fails, it’s not awful. If it passes, i might move Joe in and secure his test with a Blood Curse. The test passes with an Elder Sign. As is tradition, i have no horror to heal whenever i pull that thing. No complaint, of course!

Joe’s turn is planned out in a fairly obvious way: Kill Raptor. Get last clue from the location. Move to Timestream. First action pans out as planned, as i shoot at the dinosaur with the M1911, committing Vicious Blow. The 7 vs 3 connects and the beast dies. Second action, the investigation is a 5 vs 2 and passes by exactsies. Dorothy isn’t impressed, but i do get my clue and Joe draws a card: Perception. Finally, the third action has Joe join Isabelle at the Timestream. Ending the turn there, he has to test agility 2 vs 3, but a Blood Curse from Izzie turns it into a 6 vs 3. I succeed and it is at this moment that i realize that Blood Curse deals direct damage. Well crap. I was planning on putting that on Aleksey. I have a short moment of weakness where i am tempted to undo the action, but i end up just going through with it. Isabelle is at 4 damage to her 5 health now. Argh. I guess that means the other Blood Curse in my hand is now a dead card… Well. Moving on! At the end of his turn, Joe experiences his Cabin Fever from the treachery and goes to 3 damage in solidarity. Cabin Fever discards.

Isabelle draws another Emergency Cache in upkeep, Joe gets a Bounty. Isabelle goes to 3 resources, Joe to 11.

End of round, the “Arkham – Present Day” location reveals:

It is where we can resign, however we can only do so while there’s no ready enemies at the location. And it comes with a random one of the set aside enemies: A frigging tank! Well, that’s scary, that thing shoots into connected locations. If it ends up on the Timestream, it shoots into literally every location on the board as everything is connected to it! I probably should make sure that doesn’t happen. The idea is doing something involving evasion and the Longbow? And hoping that no other enemy shows up, i guess!

Round 8

(4/4 doom) -> (1/5 doom)

It’s really only round 8? Gotta be honest with you, it feels like round 18. I’ve been playing on this scenario across three real-life days now :D

The agenda advances. Nothing super major happens, no further enemies dropped on our heads or similar. But we do shuffle a new encounter set into the encounter deck at this point, alongside the discard pile. It’s 4 cards in a stack of around 30, so we’ll see how relevant that will end up being. The new agenda has a threshold of 5, but already starts with 1 doom on it. So it’s effectively only 4 rounds again, but the effects that scale with doom tokens that we’ve seen start a point higher now. The skull is now also a -3 which seems relevant! There is text about Adrift locations on the backside of the agenda, but since the Timestream is not Adrift, i can ignore it.

For encounter cards, Isabelle draws The Endless Fall, but that one surges because she’s not at an Adrift location. She gets Reality Undone instead and that one is a brutal one – It’s one of those from the Paradox set i just had to shuffle in a minute ago! Both investigators need to pass willpower(3) or something awful happens. If both fail, they can’t even pick the same option which is definitely a bit more spicy than i would love here! Assuming that Joe fails and that i don’t want to go to 6 damage or horror with him and also not surge twice, that’d mean i’d have to discard Dorothy. Which then means that i can’t also discard an asset with Isabelle if she fails despite an empty Canteen in my play area. Isabelle would take 3 horror of those, i guess. So the question is, is it worth committing Soul Link from the discard pile for 2 horror here or do i just take the test unmodified and hope for the best?
I end up talking myself into taking the test unmodified. 4 vs 3 fails. Joe then tests 2 vs 3. I could throw in my Lab Assistant, but i think i better keep her in hand just in case i need her horror soak at some point. Joe also fails. I have Joe discard Dorothy from play. Isabelle takes 3 horror (one on Aleksey which will heal at the start of her turn).

All that and Joe didn’t even draw his own encounter card yet. He gets the Eager Sphinx i threw into the discard pile ages ago. The Sphinx spawns at the Egypt location which i don’t love. It’s where i was planning to go with Joe this round.

Finally it’s time to take my turns. I want to handle the tank first, so it’s Izzie’s go. She moves into Arkham Present and with her second action tries to evade the tank. Even with Soul Link from her discard (1 horror for her, 1 for Aleksey) the test is only 6 vs 4, not exactly comfortable. I draw -2 and take a deep breath of relief as i get to exhaust the thing. With my third action, i put an arrow on the bow.

Joe follows Isabelle. Mental note: If something horrible happens now, it’s because of greed. My investigators could have both resigned at this point. But obviously i am not going to do that while there’s still two agenda cards running and 4xp open on the board for the taking! Joe plays Bodyguard(2) which feels very good right now as a safety net. With his third action, he fires his gun at the tank, dealing 2 damage.

In the enemy phase, the Sphinx hunts into the Timestream location. The Panzer readies.

Upkeep draws are my second Canteen and an Emergency Cache.

Round 9

(2/5 doom)

Encounter cards this round are cards we’ve seen before, but that is not to say that they are weak… not at all. Isabelle draws Strength in Numbers which has both investigators test to avoid getting a damage and a horror. Joe drops his one clue to reduce the difficulty for the test from 4 to 2 which allows Isabelle to pass. But Joe fails his 4 vs 2 here and the Bodyguard already has to take his first two tokens. Then, Joe draws his card and it’s a Velociraptor which gets to do an immediate attack, putting another damage token on Bodyguard. Let it not be said that our man isn’t earning his keep!

Joe goes first and i simply want to shoot three shots. First at the raptor and once it’s dead, i’ll continue with the tank. Attacks on the raptor ar 6 vs 3 and both hit. The thing dies. Third attack goes against the tank, at 6 vs 3 as well but for this i throw in an icon from Bounty to make it 7 vs 3. The tank has now 4 damage on it.

Izzie of course aims to finish off the Elite enemy and fires her bow at it with 5 vs 3. I use another Soul Link from my discard to push this test into “everything but the autofail” and i do succeed. The Panzer goes into my victory display. With the second action i play Canteen and immediately use it once to go back to 2 horror on Isabelle. With the third action, i reload the bow. Arcane Initiate peeks at the deck, finding one of the Soul Links again and draws it. This Arcane Initiate <-> Soul Link thing feels really nice!

In the enemy phase, the Sphinx hunts into our location, engages and attacks Joe. This defeats the Bodyguard who then takes the Sphinx down with him. Not too shabby, you can’t really get much more value out of the guy than using all 5 of his soak points and then taking down a notable enemy in the process. Do i want a second one?

Upkeep draws are Fearless(2) and Gather Intel. Isabelle is at 4 resources, Joe at 9.

Round 10

(3/5 doom)

In the Mythos phase, Izzie draws Sandstorm which attaches to the Egypt location that still has four clues left on it. It gets +3 shroud as long as the treachery is in play. So that’s probably only an option on the last agenda, assuming that the agenda flip will again discard all persistent treacheries from play.
Joe draws a Persecuted Witch who discards three cards from the encounter deck, searching for cards she can recur. The only card that is eligible is Endless Fall, which surges into another Cabin Pressure that goes into Joe’s threat area. While being at 3 damage, this is a good deal more concerning than when i was at 1 damage. Maybe i can manage to not trigger this until the agenda advances as well? After engaging the Witch, Joe plays Gather Intel, drawing the other Deduction(2) and a Mag Glass(1).

I want Joe to have all three of his actions available this round, so i will go first with Isabelle and defeat the Witch for him. I play all of this super safe and spend way too many actions to kill a 2/2/2, but at this point i think this is fine. I engage the witch. I shoot at it and defeat it. I reload the bow. And that’s already my three actions. I use my Canteen to get rid of the last bit of horror on me. Arcane Initiate goes full meme on me and finds the other Soul Link. The deck isn’t even that small at this point, this is just weird :D

Joe moves twice, into Heart of the Empire, the roman location. There is two clues here, at shroud 4. I play Mag Glass for free, then investigate with both Deduction and Perception committed. I easily grab the two clues. Perception and Joe’s ability both draw a card, netting me the level 0 Mag Glass and an Insidious Truths. End of his turn, he needs to do the test on the location which is willpower, difficulty 3. If i fail, i get moved to a random location – which is why i over-committed to the investigation, i wanted to make sure i get it before i get yanked away. As one would predict, i fail the willpower test and get randomly booted to 16th Century Arkham, currently situated at the far left of the table. This location is 1 away from Egypt and 2 away from the Tatterdemalion, which are the two Victory locations i didn’t claim yet. Maybe i can make the Tatterdemalion happen next round?

Upkeep draws are Izzie’s Twin 45s and Counterattack.

Round 11

(4/5 doom)

Isabelle draws Beckoning of Everywhen, which surges into Rewritten Existence. Another one of the Paradox cards! For being only 4 inside a stack of 30, i sure am drawing these things. Isabelle actually doesn’t mind this. Swapping her agility and willpower could be a minor annoyance if i was relying hard on spells right now, but since i throw 3 wild icons around at everything anyways, it’s not too relevant. I guess it means i can’t throw Fearless into a willpower test now.

And Joe draws Velociraptor #2056. These things really do hunt in packs. How many of these things do i have to kill?

Oh crap, i am just realizing something. Let me break out the cursive text for this. I cheated! Timestream is connected to every Adrift location, but i am realizing only now that this is a one-way connection, the Adrift locations don’t have a connector pointing at the Timestream. To get from an Adrift location to the Timestream, one has to pass a willpower test against 5 minus number of doom on the agenda. So… i only did bypass this mechanic once, in the turn where i opened up the Arkham Present location. There were 3 doom in play, so i suppose we just have to hand-wave this now and pretend as if Isabelle and Joe both passed their willpower(2) tests. For what it’s worth, that is not an outrageous assumption. But yeah. I missed taking those tests. It is what it is, too late to go back now. Back to our regularly scheduled scenario.

Joe plays Insidious Truths, discarding Mag Glass and ECache and after passing the 8 vs 3, deals 3 damage to defeat the raptor. He then plays Laboratory Assistant, drawing two cards. This reshuffles his deck, dealing a horror to Lab Ass. The two drawn cards are M1911… and the random weakness, Pursued which goes into my threat area. Yeah, that sounds about right. With the final action, Joe moves once space towards the Tatterdamelion, into An Earth Long Dead. Whenever someone enters that location, they are dealt a damage and a horror. I put those on the Lab Assistant as well and she is already defeated again.

Isabelle moves twice, into Banks of Nile. If i am correct, the Sandstorm should pass next round which would enable me to just quickly grab the four clues there and get out. With my third action, i simply draw a card, finding Hunter’s Instinct. Initiate looks at the deck and finds nothing she wants.

Upkeep draws are Lucky Cigarette Case and Perception.

End of the round, i test against the treachery that switches up Isabelle’s stats. I commit Twin 45s for an agility test 5 vs 3, but fail.

Round 12

(5/5 doom) -> (1/5 doom)

Ah, i misplayed.

The agenda flip does indeed discard all persistent treacheries (Sandstorm and both the treacheries in Izzie’s and Joe’s threat areas), but it also moves everyone to a random location. I forgot about that. There is also some location switcheroo happening. When the dust settles, it’s not as bad as it could have been:

Isabelle is now near the Tatterdemalion and Joe is near Egypt. So from that end i can still make this work. However, there is also of course the small thing of needing to get home. The last few turns are running now and Joe will need to pass his willpower test to move back into the Timestream. And then also his agility test there to stay there. Isabelle has ways to help with that, but this could with some unfortunate intrusion of enemies at the wrong point still go south.

Dark Maledict for Isabelle is fine. I take 2 horror which i will heal at the earliest convenience with my last Canteen sip. I really went through two of those things, huh.

Roman Outpost attaches to Joe’s current location, 16th century Arkham. At the start of his turn, he’ll have to spawn a roman soldier (represented by a card from his deck) and engage it. He’ll take a horror from Pursued for that.

I start off with Joe and go through all of that. One horror and one roman soldier later, i simply move into the Nile location. The soldier takes an attack of opportunity at me, i Counterattack it and the soldier is down. No more wasting of time here, i need to get going! I investigate with Perception and Deduction committed and despite drawing the -4 from the bag, i oversucceed by 3. Deduction gives me two extra clues, so i collect three in total. Perception and my ability draw cards, so i also gain Overpower and Vicious Blow. With my final action, i investigate again, hoping to get the remaining clue. 5 vs 2 succeeds. Good turn.

Isabelle moves into the Tatterdemalion and investigates. Soul Link (soaked by Aleksey) joins the test and i pass, collecting the final clue there. With my third action i want to move into the Timestream which requires me to pass a willpower(4) test. I spend 2 horror to use my Soul Link from the discard pile again, shuffling it back and passing the test. Arcane Initiate looks at the deck, but disappoints. At the end of my turn, i need to test agility to stay in the location. Time to throw my other Soul Link at this! I go to 3 horror on me. For good measure i also throw the Hunter’s Instinct into the test to beat the -4. I draw skull which is indeed a -4 now. Phew. I kinda forgot about the skulls also being -4 now. That’s spicy.

Upkeep draws are Timely Intervention and Dorothy.

Round 13

(2/5 doom)

Both investigators draw the same encounter card and it’s a relatively mild one in the current situation. Dystopia goes into the threat area of each investigator. At the end of their turns they will need to pass a willpower(2) test or they take a horror that needs to go on an ally if possible. Sure.

Isabelle starts her turn. I go fishing for Soul Links with the Initiate, but find only my second copy of Second Sight. Eh.
Her first two actions are then spent investigating. The plan is clearing all clues from the timestream which will allow us to forget about that agility test and also allow her to commit skill cards to Joe’s attempts to enter the Timestream location. For the first attempt, i commit Fearless for a 6 vs 2. I draw Elder Thing which is also a -4. Right, we have five -4 tokens in the bag right now along with the autofail. Well, a success is a success. I heal a horror and spend a charge to gain a second clue. For the second attempt, i commit Fearless again, from the discard. This time i properly oversuceed and get to clear all my horror again. Fearless reshuffles and i spend my last charge on Second Sight to clear the location. With my final action i draw a card, Lucky Charm. Wish i had gotten this sooner, it’s one of the few ways i have to deal with direct damage on me. End of her turn, Izzie passes her test on Dystopia.

Alright, can i make Joe pass a willpower test against difficulty 3? I think it’s best if i save that for next round. Instead i play my personal weakness, Dead Ends, spending all of my resources. Then i discard Pursued. I need to take a test on my location, but failing there would only cost me resources… which i don’t have anymore. Still, i take it because the Elder Thing could move me to a random location which may be relevant. I draw -1 and nothing happens. Joe fails his Dystopia test and has to go to 5 horror.

Upkeep draws are Ward of Protection and Hand-Crank. How did the Ward dodge the Initiate all this time? Anyway, this is very nice to have.

Round 14

(3/5)

Please, nothing horrible. I want to get out this round!

Isabelle draws Beckoning again. It surges again. And again it surges into one of those nasty Paradox cards. This time it’s Uneven Acceleration and it threatens to draw up to three more encounter cards. Bruh. Ward of Protection came just in time for this nonsense.

Joe draws something new, an Aerial Bombardment that happens at his location. Leave the location? Take damage. Stay there? Take damage. Enter the location at a later point? Believe it or not, more damage. Oof. The good news is that this doesn’t impede me in trying to get out of here.

Okay, Joe first. We got three tries. Izzy spends a clue to commit Timely Intervention to his test. It’s 4 vs 2, genuinely the best i can do here. It’s enough. I draw the +1 and Joe is allowed to move into the Timestream. Second action, he moves straight on to Arkham, Present Day. Third action, resigns.

Isabelle follows.

Resolution

We did it! The timestream brings us back to a more familiar time. But as we orient ourselves, we find the current date on a stack of newspapers: It’s 1924. We are a year too early, one year before the Night of Fire and everything after it happens. Whoops.

No grand entries into the campaign log or anything, us being back speaks for itself.

We do however get experience! We got two Victory enemies in the display, plus seven Victory locations cleared. That’s a total of 9XP!

Not going to lie, this was hard earned. There were some real nail-biting moments in this where i went thinking about what to do for quite some time, sometimes literally slept on it. Great scenario and i am happy with the outcome as well.

Spending XP

Starting with Isabelle, there are a few things i want to get done here. Goal 1: More damage soak, and not just for her, but also for Joe. Goal 2: Now that i got Charisma, i want more allies. Also, Timely Intervention upgrade to get more wild icons.
Upgrade: 2x Timely Intervention level 0 -> level 3
Cut: Hunter’s Instinct, Premonition, Unexpected Courage
Add: Daniel Jameson, 2x Extra Rations
I kinda want a second Aleksey too, but couldn’t make him fit in this yet. A Blood Ward would also be nice. Maybe next time.

This is what Izzie’s deck looks like now (https://arkham.build/deck/view/tij3y4L9pGsSHEz)

Then we got Joe. I was very impressed by Bodyguard’s showing in this scenario and i am heavily considering getting a second copy. I also am somewhat taken by the idea of Psychoanalysis(3) which would help both investigators with finding what they need and also provide sanity healing for Joe which he currently doesn’t have. Another card that did essential work this scenario was Stock Ammo Reload and getting a second one of those would probably also be good. Final decision:
Upgrade: Mag Glass level 0 -> level 1
Cut: 2x Gather Intel, Hand-Crank, Machete
Add: Psychoanalysis, Stock Ammo, Fingerprint Kit, Bodyguard(2)
I don’t think i ever want to play Hand-Crank or Machete anymore with this deck. FPK at least gives me something aspirational to play in the last few rounds to convert excess money into clues while Hand-Crank is just a bad Mag Glass. As for Machete, it seems really not that great specifically in this campaign. Since Izzie now leans heavy into fighting, i can live with having only few weapons in Joe now, but ones that i am actually happy to play.

Here’s his list now (https://arkham.build/deck/view/IcZPE9GB8pTpsEX)

Next up: A Year To Plan. After a start that had me looking in control, Ages Unwound is bringing the heat now, having me in the defensive much more often. There were several turns this time where i just reacted to what happened and had to wrestle control and agency back. This scenario was close, next should be interesting as well!

Setup

We are off to try and stop the ritual that we learned about in Baxter’s mansion. For that purpose, we arrive at the condemned Elementary School…

Setup is a bit more than in the previous two scenarios, but still not super excessive. We got seven encounter sets here:
– A World Torn Down, which is of course scenario specific
– Night of the Ritual, which is also scenario specific. Well, sort of. You’ll see.
– Agents of Aforgomon, Nyctophobia and Thugs, three sets that we have seen in the first scenario before.
– Myriad and Unleashed Chaos, two new ones that we’ve not seen before

Six locations go into play immediately, the rest are set aside for now. The investigators start at the Front Gates of the school and can visit such cozy places as the Sports Field, Front Hallway or Children’s Playground.

A rather large amount of other cards are set aside, then the rest is shuffled together to form the encounter deck.

There are four cards in the agenda deck and three in the act deck . The first agenda threshold is 6 again. Apparently the ritual is already starting, there is a barrier forming and we need to get inside the school. This is reflected in the Objective on the act: Enter an Interior location. Looking back at the location grid, that means either the Rear Corridors or the Front Hallway. Either option requires a hefty 6 clues to break into. Looks like we have a choice to make whether to go in through the front door or if we sneak around the back.
The agenda also gives us a special action that we can take at any point, to call out for our mysterious benefactor and get advantages in trade for accepting Strange Assistance. Here’s the Aid from Afar card:

The token modifiers do include an Elder Thing this time. I don’t have one yet, but that means we might pick one up mid-scenario? Or maybe we could’ve gotten one if we failed somewhere, not sure. Our bag currently has three skulls which scale by half the number of actions remaining. Under regular circumstances that’d mean -1 to -2, but i can already tell you this isn’t regular circumstances. The two tablets we have are -3 and failing to them will lower all skill tests that investigator takes for the rest of the round. This could be nasty if it pops up in the Mythos phase. We don’t have any cultists, but just for the record, had we taken the Strange Assistance after scenario 1, we’d have two cultists instead of two tablets now and would get a much nicer token here.
Okay, looks like we can generally still expect a “3 over difficulty” to pass, with only the -4 and autofail beating that. Noted!

Before we are let loose, there are a few more rules to read, this is the first time the setup instructions actually do end up filling a page. Just the one, though.
– We might get instructed to record when specific events happen, noting their occurrence and which agenda we are on with how many doom on it. So every round counts, it might come into play later whether we achieved something with 3 doom or 4 doom on the agenda!
– We get a reminder of how Gaining and Losing actions works. Well, worked. The rules actually slightly changed with the chapter 2 Grimoire. For this playthrough, i will be using Legacy rules, since that is what the campaign has been built for. Most notably that means that an effect that makes us lose an action when we do not have any actions available will fail to remove anything. Actions refresh during upkeep, so notably that means that the enemy phase is in that window where i got no actions to lose.
– We are reminded of the rules for the Haunted keyword which triggers bad effects if we fail to investigate. Basically, it’s retaliate for locations. Right, i forgot that Haunted was a part of this campaign. I generally don’t like Haunted as a mechanic, but my specific team should probably not be too scared of it. I don’t remember how this comes into play in this scenario, but it hopefully isn’t too bad.

Round 1

(0/6 doom)

Isabelle: Cosmic Flame, Twin 45s, Timely Intervention, Guts, Fearless
Joe: Machete, Hand-Crank, Counterattack, 2x Gather Intel

Starting hands are fine, but not great. Unlike the previous two scenarios where the first location was a softball that was easy to investigate, we are staring down a shroud 4 right away. I wish i had gotten a Deduction or at least a Perception here to make that a bit more comfortable.

But no sense in wringing our hands over that. Joe takes the first action of the game, playing Hand-Cranked Flashlight. I could now either move into a connecting location and hope for an easier shroud or i could just try it. I think if at least one of the two remaining actions passes, then i am better off staying here, so i do that. Second action, investigate with 5 vs 4. I draw -1 and pass. Good start. I gain a clue and the card from the top of my deck is a Mag Glass. Interesting. Do i just stack the Mag Glass and Hand-Crank here? Seems like a good plan. I play the Mag Glass and investigate again at 6 vs 4. I draw skull which at my last action counts as a 0. That’s a pass and the location is cleared. Not so bad. I now have no free hand slots for the Machete in my hand, but Izzie drew a combat heavy hand again so she can take that part.

Isabelle plays Cosmic Flame. And then just takes two resource actions. Resources have been a problem for her, so i want to just get those extra actions out of the way now.

Upkeep draws are Lucky Charm and Vicious Blow. I go to 5 and 4 resources.

Round 2

(1/6 doom) New scenario, new awfulness. Alright game, what do you have for me?

Isabelle draws Temporal Stutter which heavily punishes you for failing skill tests for a round by moving you towards the starting location and dropping your clues. Here’s the thing though: I am at the starting location. I have no clues. I don’t plan on doing tests unless Joe draws an enemy. That’s a freebie.
Joe does indeed not draw an enemy, but he draws Omnipresence. This is a crazy one and might actually be my overall favorite encounter card from this campaign. A card that when drawn also draws all of its copies from the encounter deck and discard pile. They attach all to different empty locations and i need to visit those to discard them before the agenda flips. If i don’t, then the next agenda starts with an extra doom on it for each Omnipresence still in play. This is some serious bullshit if you draw it right before the agenda advances and still absolutely annoying in many other circumstances when enemies are around or you just don’t want to move. We sort of hit a best case scenario with it here, though. We want to move anyways and the agenda only just started. I place the three copies on the other three exterior locations: Side Building, Sports Field, Playground. Touching those over the next rounds should be a non-issue.
So i guess this first Mythos phase went about as well as it could have!

Isabelle moves into the Playground, expecting it to be maybe easier than the others. Well, that didn’t pan out. Playground is a 5 shroud location with 2 clues. When investigating there, you can spend extra actions to lower the shroud by 1. Oof. The location does have Victory 1 though! I decide i want full information before Joe takes his turn, so Izzie spends her other two actions, moving through the Sports Field and into the Side Building, revealing all of them and discarding the Omnipresences everywhere along the way. Here’s how it looks now:

Six clues on the board, i need four of them to enter either the Hallway or the Corridors. The Playground is definitely a lot harder to investigate than the other two. Victory 1, though… i want it. Okay, this is risky, but i am going to just do it. Joe moves into the Playground and investigates. I could spend an action to test 6 vs 4 instead of 6 vs 5. So what’s more likely to pass, two times with worse odds or once with okay odds? I don’t really feel like spending two actions just to draw one of the -3s in the bag, so i just take the first test at 6 vs 5 and see what happens. And what happens is i draw the +1 which is a success. I gain a clue and draw a card: Deduction. I want to get the second clue as well, and since its the last one, i want to make it more likely to pass and commit one Gather Intel for a 7 vs 5. I draw tablet which is a -3 and thus a fail. Fair enough.

Upkeep draws are Arcane Initiate (yay!) and Detective’s Intuition (boo!). 3 resources on Izzie, 5 on Joe. End of round, Temporal Stutter discards itself.

Round 3

(2/6 doom)

Isabelle draws Beckoning of Oblivion and has to test willpower 4 vs number of actions she has (3). Any point she fails by incurs a lost action or a direct horror. I take the test unmodified and pull another tablet (-3). It would fail, but I use Timely Intervention to turn that into a close pass.
Joe gets something similar, but different. Due to Weight of the Centuries, he will have to test willpower against number of actions taken as well, but at the end of his turn and probably get some damage from it unless he skips actions.

Joe has an interesting opportunity here to pay extra actions for his investigation at the playground and thus not have to test as high for Weight of the Centuries. Is that worth doing? Actions are about the highest price i can take, after all. Eh, let’s do it. Joe investigates the Playground, pays his other two actions to bring the test down to a 6 vs 3. He passes, clearing the Playground and drawing an M1911(2) from his deck. And that’s the turn. He has to test willpower against difficulty 1 … and true to form fails it with yet another tablet, but only takes 1 damage from it now instead of the 3 that could have been.

I don’t just want to take resource actions again with Izzie, so i start her out by drawing a card. It’s Second Sight. Neat, she doesn’t need to linger around anymore while there is nothing to shoot. I take a resource action and play Second Sight.

Upkeep draws are Longbow and Counterattack. Izzie is at 1 resource, Joe at 6.

Round 4

(3/6 doom)

As encounter draw, Isabelle gets Time Loop. If i fail a willpower test, i have to choose a type of action that will be the only one i can take this round. If i fail and only can investigate, that wouldn’t be super awful … as long as Joe doesn’t draw an enemy. I decide not to commit my Guts, saving it for later. The 4 vs 3 draws a -2 and fails. I choose investigate as my only allowed action for this round.
Joe gets another Temporal Stutter. He’s going to move a lot this round, so this shouldn’t matter, i think.
Still no enemies, but after last scenario that doesn’t really put me at ease. Also i know that at least the enemies from the Thugs encounter set (including some Elites like the Irregulars) are somewhere in the encounter deck so this is just variance, they will come out eventually.

Izzie can only investigate, so that’s what she does. Might as well do it unmodified 4 vs 3 for the first try, it’s not like there’s a point to saving actions here. I get an Elder Sign and may heal a horror. I don’t have a horror, but a success is a success of course. The ability on the location raises its shroud to 4, making it an even test 4 vs 4 for the next attempt. Failing with a tablet here would make the third try test at 5, which is something i want to avoid. So on my second test, i pay a horror to commit Timely Intervention from my discard pile and test 6 vs 4 instead. I pass, get the clue and Timely goes back into the deck. With nothing else to investigate, I have to forfeit my third action.

Joe could now take 3 move actions and advance the act, but that’s probably not a good idea with no actions left on anyone. So i will instead make a short stop on the Sports Field and try to grab the two clues there. They might come in handy later? First action move to the Sports Field, second action investigate, committing Deduction for a 7 vs 2. Easy game, i get the two clues and my action draws me my Lab Assistant. I have 9 cards in hand and would need to discard to handsize again. So instead of moving to Izzie, i use my third action to play that Lab Ass to draw 2 cards and be allowed to keep 10 cards in hand. The two cards drawn are Overpower and ECache.

Upkeep draws are Lucky Cigarette Case and Vicious Blow. Oh, is it finally time to play LCC? Izzie is at 2 resources, Joe at 5. End of round, Temporal Stutter discards.

Round 5

(4/6 doom)

We finally meet our first enemy and it’s one with Victory! Myriad Assassin from the Thugs set shows up and engages Isabelle. She also needs to pass an agility test straight away or get an immediate hit for 2 damage here! My only agility icons in hand is my Longbow though… maybe i shouldn’t have shuffled away my Timely Intervention from the discard earlier, i could have used any of the many willpower icons in my hand at that point. Well, i can’t just take a 3 vs 3 test here, those 2 damage are pretty significant for Izzie. So i suppose i need to pitch the Longbow and hope to draw the other before the guns run out. With the Longbow discarded, the test goes to 5 vs 3 and passes with -2. Phew.

Joe’s encounter card is also concerning. His plan was moving into the Interior now and his Lost in the Dark treachery asks him to take 2 horror or pass a test he won’t pass with each move until the end of the round. Yikes.

I think i do need to move Joe at least into the same location as Izzie, so she can potentially spend his clues to move inside after cleaning up the Assassin. I currently have 10 cards in hand with him, so i might as well give it an earnest try by committing Detective’s Intuition and do the test 4 vs 3. I fail with a -3 and take the two horror to move into Izzie’s location. I play my M1911(2), discarding the Hand-Crank from play. Then fire at the Assassin. The test is 6 vs 3. I commit Machete from my hand for 7 vs 3 just to take care of the -4 token. After all the Assassin is engaged to Izzie still and a fail would be pretty nasty here. I draw a 0 and the Assassin takes his first 2 damage.

Itching for murder, Izzie uses Cosmic Flame on the Assassin and commits Guts for 6 vs 3. I draw +1, pay a charge and the Assassin goes into the Victory display. Guts draws… another Guts. I got Guts for days. I don’t want to wait yet another round, so with her second action, Izzie pays the 6 clues (taking all of them from Joe) to enter the school through the backdoor. The location reveals, the act advances.

We record in the campaign log that the “boundary is broken” alongside the time: Agenda 1, doom 4. Depending on the way of entry, we get different acts now. We “snuck in the back” so we are continuing with Doorway to the Unknown and are confronted with a door that is held by some sort of warding spell that we need to break. To break it, 4 resources need to be put on Unstable Warding which attaches to the Rear Corridors. We’ll take a closer look at that in a moment. First, the rest of the locations. Front Hallway removes, so we can’t go back and take the other way, we are locked into this route now. Then three classroom locations are put into play, all of them connected to the Corridors, but not among each other. Here’s how everything looks now, including the Unstable Warding:

Okay, so we need to put 4 resources on the Warding. To put down one of them, i need to spend an action at the Corridor, pass a test of willpower or combat against 2 and spend 2 clues. The test doesn’t seem like an issue, so that’s 4 actions and 8 clues to spend at the Rear Corridors to advance. I already own two clues which is definitely helpful! If i end up failing that placement test twice, the Warding reacts and flips into something else. I genuinely don’t know what happens then. Never looked, never needed to and i don’t intend on finding out today!

Right, that’s the mid-campaign setup done, back to Izzie’s turn which still has an action left. I use Second Sight and investigate, committing Guts from my discard for a horror and Fearless(2) from my hand. The test is 8 vs 4, i pull a -2 and pass. I spend the charge to gain both clues here. Guts draws a card, Blood Curse. Then shuffles back. Fearless heals all my horror, then waits in the discard for another go later.

Another eventful investigator phase done, upkeep draws are Loner and Bounty. Aw, i wish i had Bounty to use on the 4 health enemy i just killed! Boo!
End of round, Lost in the Dark discards and Joe is free to move again.

Here’s a look at the current play area of the investigators:

I am feeling pretty good about all of this. I got barely a scratch on Joe, i got 4 clues on Izzie already, i got both jobs enabled with both investigators and my hands are full of goodies.

Round 6

(5/6 doom) Witching Hour! Time to play my Arcane Initiate! But first things first…

Isabelle draws Night Black as Pitch and attaches it to the agenda. For this round, all shrouds and evades will be +1 and all sources of horror will increase. This was rough in scenario 1, but doesn’t look so bad now.
Joe has a choice to make, as Time Reshaped makes him either lose an action or gain. If he chooses to lose one, he’ll gain +1 to all skill values this round. If he chooses the extra action, all of them will get -1 skill value. Since he’s still outside the building and will need to spend some time moving into relevant location, i choose to gain the action and just be a 1/3/3/1 investigator for a round. However, that’s not all because Time Reshaped surges… into Irregulars, the enemy that already comboed with Night Black as Pitch to great effect in the first scenario. So we are doing this again, huh. The difference is however that i now have ways to deal 3 damage in one go, so maybe i can just burst my way past him. I also have Counterattacks to avoid a worst case, that Counterattack would even stop them from shuffling back into the encounter deck from their ability. Joe reacts to their appearance by playing Gather Intel, drawing his personal weakness Dead Ends and Insidious Truths.

Let’s see what we have then. Joe could attack with his pistol and commit both Overpower and Vicious Blow to test at 3+2+2+1 = 8. Meanwhile, the Irregulars sit at 3+2 = 5 combat this round. Yeah, that works. I test and pull a tablet (-3), a pass. 3 damage are dealt to the Irregulars and they go into the victory display. Overpower draws a card: Deduction. I play Bounty, taking me to 5 resources. Three actions to go. Not going to lie, seeing the Irregulars and the Night Black as Pitch together there gave me a short moment of panic, but this wasn’t a big deal after all. Joe moves twice, into one of the classrooms.

It’s just a shroud 2, but the night is still dark and full of terrors, so it’s actually shroud 3 right now. Meanwhile, my intellect is down by 1, so this would just be a 4 vs 3 after all. That being said, it’s my last action and that means the Haunted effect here does nothing. I don’t have anything better to do, so i just investigate here, with Deduction for a total of 5 vs 3. I pull skull which is a 0 on my last action, so i gain both clues from the location. Joe’s ability draws Machete.

Izzie plays Arcane Initiate and immediately uses her ability, finding Ward of Protection. Always nice to have this in your back pocket. She then spends the rest of her money on Lucky Cigarette Case and with her last action, attempts to put a resource on the Warding. I commit Guts from hand, test 6 vs 2 and draw skull, once more a 0 on my last action. Two clues are spent, the first token goes on the Warding. I draw two cards, one for Guts, one for LCC: Soul Link and Emergency Cache.

Upkeep draws are Guts (lol) and Perception. Guts for days!

Round 7

(7/6 doom) -> (0/6 doom)
We got an agenda to advance!

Time goes weird again. If there was an enemy around, it might disappear unexpectedly now… but there isn’t, so i ignore that part. I also have to take willpower tests here, possibly gaining or losing actions. Izzie throws in Guts from her hand, testing 6 vs 4 and passes. She gains an action and draws Manual Dexterity. Joe tests 2 vs 4, draws -1 and fails by 3. He loses an action.
The new agenda has 6 doom threshold again and gives us an interesting option. If we pass with at least 1 action remaining, we get an extra action on the next round. That might come in handy! The agenda also retains its ability to call for Strange Assistance, but currently it looks like i won’t need that. I move on to encounter draws!

Ugh, this dork again. How often do i have to teach you this lesson, old man? It’s the Myriad Gentleman, back for more and engages Izzie. In his form as a regular enemy, he is just a 2/2/2 with swarming 1 that gets stronger the more of him are around. If he escalates through multiple copies, then defeating one host body can weaken the others. At two player, this is probably not too relevant, but it’s a good safeguard for four player. Fun fact: Four of this encounter card are in the encounter deck.

Ha, i spoke too soon. Joe gets a Myriad Gentleman as well. Looks like we get to partake in this ability after all. Neither investigator should have too much of an issue with these guys. Hm, i will note though that the Longbow is uniquely bad against them. Luckily i got the Twin 45s on the table instead which are uniquely good here!

Isabelle goes first. Arcane Initiate looks at the top of the deck, finds no spells. For the first of her four actions, she uses her Twins pistols to fire at the Myriads. I use Soul Link to get the combat test to 6 vs 3, the horror for Soul Link i put on the Initiate. I hit with a zero, so the swarm card is defeated and i get to draw a card for LCC. It’s my weakness, Lethal Curiosity, which inserts itself rudely into the fight to have me test willpower(4). I secure the test with Blood Curse, opting to take a guaranteed damage here to prevent worse outcomes. With that business out of the way, i take my second shot from the Twins, using agility and committing Manual Dexterity from my hand. 5 vs 2 hits, the guy is down. I draw another card for Man Dex, it’s an Emergency Cache. When the host body dies, it takes one of the swarm cards on Joe’s copy of the Gentleman with it. A lot happened, but that was only one of four actions! With my second, i attempt to put another thing on the Unstable Warding, paying a horror to add Guts from my discard pile to the test. I pass and spend my last two clues to add the second resource to the Warding. Guts draws a Premonition, then shuffles back. With the last two actions i play Emergency Cache and Loner. I use Loner to open up another Classroom, finding a location with 2 clues and Shroud 7. When investigating there, the shroud is lowered by 2 for each action the investigator has remaining. So if i start with 3 actions next round (not a given in this scenario), i’d test against 3 on my first action. Seems doable, but also easy to disrupt if the Mythos phase costs me actions or an enemy appears. The location has a Haunted effect that spawns enemies if i fail there.

Finally, it’s Joe’s turn. He has a 2/2/2 enemy in his face and two actions to try and beat him. It’s a quick turn, i simply shoot the enemy, defeat it. Then move into the Corridors where i hope to spend my two clues for the third progress on the Warding next round.

Upkeep draws are Canteen and Scene of the Crime. Izzie is at two resources, Joe at 6.

Round 8

(1/6 doom)

Isabelle and Joe again draw the same encounter card. And it’s again an enemy. But it’s just a common Hired Thugs. At the risk of sounding cocky, the encounter deck will need to come up with something better if it wants to stop me right now. Both investigators engage their enemy and go on with their turns.

Joe shoots the guy unceremoniously with his first action. With his second action, he tries the test to spend clues for the third Warding. He tests combat, 4 vs 2 and improves his chances to 5 vs 2 by committing Scene of the Crime for its icon. He passes, both investigators are now out of clues. With his final action, he moves into the last classroom.

Another Victory location if i can get the four clues that remain on it. Due to a Forced effect on the location, Joe will need to draw an extra encounter card at the end of the next Mythos phase. Welp. I was asking for things to start trying to stop us. “Haunted – End your turn” is diabolical text in context with this Forced effect, by the way. Damn.

Izzie uses Cosmic Flame on her Thugs, going to 3 horror to commit Fearless(2) from the discard pile. 6 vs 2 oversucceeds. After spending a charge from the Flame the Thugs are down, she goes back to 1 horror on her and Fearless shuffles back into the deck. Lucky Cigarette Case draws a card, Second Sight. Arcane Initiate peeks at the top of the deck, but doesn’t find anything because as it turns out Auguries aren’t Spells. Investigating the location would now be against difficulty 5, so i think i got a better idea. I play Emergency Cache, then pass my turn with an action still left. That means i get an extra action next round due to that ability on the agenda!

Upkeep draws are Guts and M1911. Guts for days! Both investigators hold 7 resources.

Round 9

(2/6 doom)

Isabelle draws Temporal Stutter. Until end of the round, she’ll need to be careful not to fail tests or she faces the consequences. Fine. I’ll just not fail then.
Joe gets Weight of the Centuries again, threatening a bunch of damage scaling with actions taken. Since he has to draw an extra encounter card from the location effect, he then also pulls Rigged to Blow. Thing is, i don’t want to leave the location but with Weight of the Centuries on me i also don’t want to take damage. Time to let the chaos bag decide. I test 2 vs 2 and draw an autofail. Well then. Joe takes 2 damage, taking him to 3. If he were to fail his Weight of the Centuries by 3 at the end of the round, he’d be at death’s door. So… i don’t know. This location is rough, staying here to draw more encounter cards again next round seems unwise, there’s a pretty straight line visible that would lead to Joe getting defeated.

Okay, time to decide how to approach all of this. My plan is this now: I go with Isabelle first and have her advance the act. Then, depending on what happens, i decide whether i should go through the effort of cleaning those 4 clues from the Victory location… somehow.

Arcane Initiate finds a Blood Curse in my deck. Neat. Then Isabelle investigates. She has four actions in total, so three left after initiating the test, meaning the shroud of the location goes from 7 to 1. A test 4 vs 1 doesn’t even need the usual Guts. I pass, spend the charge from Second Sight and grab the two clues. I then Loner back to the Corridor and with my second action try to put the fourth thingy on the thingy. I do commit Guts for this, testing 6 vs 2 again. I pull -3, which isn’t the oversuccess i hoped for, but good enough to pass and advance the act. First, i do draw from the Guts though, some Bandages. Those might actually come in handy. Alright, back to the act advance:

We note that we “dispelled the ward” at doom 2 of agenda 2.
We didn’t unleash any chaos, so that middle part is ignored.
But we do face off with the Myriad Gentleman again. He’s at a Ritual Circle, where he put on his robe and wizard hat.

The new and final act has a simple goal for us: Clear all clues from the Ritual Circle. Even the game doesn’t care whether the Myriad Man survives or not. But let’s take a closer look at him.

Eight health, four combat. Alert and Retaliate. He can’t leave his Ritual Site. No abilities relating to his myriadness, but he can push us out of the circle with his attacks. Pretty sure i can take him unless the Ritual Circle has something nasty on it. To prepare I play Bandages, then end my turn with an action left that i will take over into the next round.

Joe… i don’t want to see you die here. Maybe we just let this one point of Victory go. He moves out of that dangerous location back into the Corridor with Izzie. There, he spends his second action to play his weakness Dead Ends, paying 5 resources. The scenario could be over any moment, this seems like a good moment to get rid of the thing. Then he too ends his turn with an action left, preserving it for next round. Joe has to test Weight of the Centuries 2 vs 2 and Isabelle commits Lucky Charm to the test to make it 3 vs 2. He draws a 0 and passes.

Upkeep draws are Soul Link and Bounty. 5 resources on Izzie, 3 on Joe.

Round 10

(3/6 doom) Both investigators have four actions this round, let’s make it a good one! The goal should be to take down the Gentleman this round, then clean the Ritual Circle the next.

The Mythos phase tries to stop us by throwing Time’s Ebb at Isabelle. That doesn’t even do anything this round! Ah, but next mythos phase i do need to lose an action or decide on someone to take an extra two encounter cards. So i will very likely sacrifice an action next round… if the Myriad Gentlemen is down then, that is all fine by me, i think.
Joe gets Beckoning of Oblivion which tests at the number of available actions. So it’s an intellect(4) test at the threat of up to 4 lost actions or horror. Yikes. I use Perception to test 6 vs 4 and succeed by exactsies. Perception draws Dorothy Simmons.

Before i decide who goes in first, i play Premonition and find an Elder Sign. Oh, that’s spicy! Joe definitely has the better Elder Sign effect, but Isabelle could use it to make her first pistol shot hit without any commits. That combat test is always a bit awkward… I think that’s a great idea actually.

Isabelle goes first, uses her first action to move into the Ritual Circle and engages the Myriad Gentleman.

Only two clues on the Circle, i could basically end this scenario at any point. Well, i could advance the act, which i assume will end the scenario. It’s a pretty safe bet though.
While at the Circle, i can’t end my turn prematurely, which is probably intended to force me to test against Alert, Retaliate or Haunted with all my actions. Speaking of Haunted, that effect makes my brain hurt. I assume the idea here is that my actions don’t refresh from one round to the next when this hits me? Seems like a rules nightmare… i think i will just try to not fail my investigation here so i don’t need to think about the implications of this effect too much.

Second action is activating the Twin 45s. The first shot is combat, testing 3 vs 4. I resolve the Elder Sign on Premonition which turns this into a hit and heals the only horror i have on me. That’s the first 2 damage for the Gentleman, 6 to go. I trigger the second shot on the pistols, testing agility. I take two horror to commit Soul Link from the discard pile and test 6 vs 4. I pull a 0 and hit again. Soul Link shuffles back, LCC draws me my second Longbow to hand.
Arcane Initiate takes a look at my deck and finds my Soul Link again. Ha. Soul Links for days.
I have two more actions and need to do 4 more damage. The autofail should literally be the only thing that is able to stop me here. I use Cosmic Flame and commit Blood Curse to the test. The damage from the Blood Curse is immediately healed by Bandages. I pull a 0 and pass. I spend the last charge from the Cosmic Flame and Myriad Gentleman is at 6 damage. Finally, i shoot the pistols again. I won’t be getting a second shot and i have to test combat, but at this point that seems irrelevant. I spend 2 horror and commit both Soul Links from my hand for +6 to the test. I hit and the Myriad Gentleman goes into the Victory Display.

Joe, can you play us out, please? Joe moves into the location and starts investigating. I don’t have any clue compression on hand, so i will need to pass two tests here or get frozen in time with that weird Haunted thing. Second action plays Dorothy, so i am testing 6 vs 4 as a baseline. Isabelle commits Second Sight from her hand to take it to 7 vs 4. I gain a clue and a card, my (upgraded) Magnifying Glass. I play the Mag Glass, discarding my M1911 in the process and use my fourth and last action to investigate again at 7 vs 4. I succeed again.

As i pick up the last clue from the Circle, the act immediately advances.

Resolution

We fight our way past the cultists to the Ritual Circle, with time breaking down around us, giving us flashes of other timelines. And also the revelation that this isn’t the only Ritual Circle, there’s two more.

In the campaign log, we note that we “broke the first circle” and that we did so on agenda 2, with 3 doom on the clock. Then we move to resolution 3.

Trying to push through to the other circles, we are overwhelmed and have to retreat. Backed towards a rift in reality, caused by our sabotage of the circle, there is only one way out… through the rift.

We step into a portal into the future and note as much in the campaign log as well. Then, we have to adjust our chaos bag. Instead of zero cultists and two tablets, we now have two cultists and one Elder Thing. And zero tablets. Also still our three skulls, of course.

The campaign log also gets an entry signifying that we “eliminated the High Priest.” Well yeah. If more Myriad Gentlemen show up, we’ll eliminate those too!

As for experience, we got three victory locations and three victory enemies for a total of 6xp. That’s not bad. We had to leave one Victory location on the board unclaimed, but i believe that was the right call.

Spending XP

I am surprised how well this scenario went to be honest. There were some moments where a different decision could have caused problems or where an untimely -4 or autofail could have complicated things. But especially Izzie was just always in control as long as a test was involved. We are still doing a lot of uncomfortable testing of just 2 over difficulty here and there, but we are at least able to do that consistently. Well, except for Joe with his treachery tests, of course.

For Izzie, i make this simple. I buy two Permanents: Relic Hunter and Charisma. Relic Hunter allows me to keep my survival accessories in play together with LCC. And Charisma right now lets me keep both Aleksey and Initiate in play. Those two alone wouldn’t be enough, but i do plan on getting some more allies with the next round of xp. Maybe it would make more sense to get the allies first, then buy Charisma after the next scenario, but honestly i am pretty happy with where Izzie’s deck is right now.

For Joe, i will be getting one Stock Ammo Reload. Now that i upgraded my M1911s, it seems worth it to double up on them. In exchange i cut a Machete, those seem remarkably bad against all these big enemies and Myriad Men. I also find that i am severely lacking some clue compression. While the upgraded cards don’t really have a whole lot i can do there, i can at least upgrade my Deductions to level 2, to keep them in hand for the occasional 4 clue location. I was also genuinely considering paying XP to grab level 0 Fingerprint Kits… maybe next time. I could see myself tossing the other Machete and the Hand-Crank out for them.

NEXT UP:

See you for scenario 4: Unstuck.

Setup

After surviving the attempt on our life, we start researching who has it out for us. We find out that the Sheldon gang was likely behind it, and also that the Sheldons recently have found a new benefactor, one Joseph Baxter. Time to pay the man an unannounced visit. The scenario starts just as we scaled a wall and let ourselves drop onto Baxter’s lawn.

There is some immediate blowback from the decision not to take the package that was offered to us in the previous Interlude. Since we had to do the legwork to get on Baxter’s trail ourselves instead of just having it served to us, the agenda is going to start with 1 doom already on it.

Other than that, the setup is again minimalistic. We fetch 5 encounter sets: Myriad Gentlemen, the scenario specific set of course. Shifting Reality we’ve not seen yet. Unravelling Years makes a return from the previous scenario (it’s the one with the little tombstone, like Memories Fade to Dust). And we fetch Agents of Yog-Sothoth and Locked Doors from the Core Set. I considered using chapter 2 cards in their stead, but ultimately went with the original encounter cards. If i am not mistaken, this is the only time the campaign reaches for the Core encounters.

Four locations start in play, a handful others are set aside. Most of the scenario specific Myriad Gentlemen set is set aside as well. And that’s it, we are ready to roll. There is a small rules blurb about “Copies of Enemies” to read and it informs us that copies are created by using the top card of a player deck and putting it into play, then treating it as if it was the original enemy. If such a copy gets defeated, the player card goes back under its owners deck. Basically, it’s like swarm but they are simply treated as their own enemy card.

Like the setup as a whole, our starting Lawn location is once again dead simple. 1 shroud, two clues, an option to resign. It is connected to all three of the other ones around it: Stables, a Hedge Maze and an Ornate Fountain.

The token reference is somewhat spoilery, referring to Myriad enemies and to creating copies of “The Myriad Gentleman”. None of this matters immediately, but will soon enough of course. The cultist is only a -1 and deals damage to a Myriad enemy, so it’s even a good thing… however remember that due to our decision in the Interlude, we don’t have any cultists in the bag anymore. And instead have a second tablet. Presumably that would have been reversed had we accepted the Strange Assistance. A worse chaos bag and a doom? Talk about some immediate impact from our choices!
I’ll note also that Elder Things are still not part of the campaign. As for test modifiers… those seem very weak. The -2 on the tablet we should be able to routinely beat and the skull is only a situational -3 which isn’t all that horrible either.

The act and agenda decks do again have three cards each, promising more twists and turns. But their initial state is yet again as basic as it could be… No abilities on either of the cards, just a doom threshold of 6 and the requirement to find 6 clues which we may spend at the end of a round to advance the act. Guess I’ll just start investigating … according to the token reference we’ll be able to meet this Myriad Dude from act 2 on. Shouldn’t take long.

Round 1

(1/6 doom)

Starting hands after mulligans aren’t too bad.

Isabelle: Cosmic Flame, Twin 45s, Aleksey, Ward of Protection, Guts
Joe: Mag Glass, Mag Glass, Hand-Crank, Machete, Insidious Truths

Joe will be able to fill both his roles as usual. All those investigation tools are a bit overkill though. Izzie is locked into fighting for now, she didn’t draw any investigation support. That being said, dropping Cosmic Flame and Aleksey early, then starting to save for the Twins is a solid plan! Considering that this scenario features quasi-swarming enemies, having some extra firepower seems wise.

Isabelle starts us out, playing Cosmic Flame. I consider just trusting in the weak chaos bag to test 2 vs 1 for clues, but ultimately decide to instead take a resource and play out Aleksey. Seems like the more solid route that has me ready to brawl right away.

Joe plays out a Mag Glass, then investigates twice for two easy clues, drawing a Deduction with his investigator ability in the process. With his final action, he plays Machete.

Upkeep draws are Gather Intel and Hunter’s Instinct. Izzie now has 1 resource, Joe has 2.

Round 2

(2/6 doom)

Our first Mythos phase of the game has two treacheries for us.

Isabelle draws Skills of Another Life, a crazy card that makes us discard two random cards from hand… but then we draw one of the top 3 cards of Joe’s deck into Isabelle’s hand. Yes, this bends regular rules about card ownership, but we are in custom content territory now where things can get a bit funkier. By the way, if you are a solo player and wondering how this works in solo, there is a bit about constructing a small generic 5-class “dummy” deck following some basic guidelines at the campaign start that will act as a stand-in for another player for effects like this. Definitely a mechanic where playing actual multiplayer (or two-handed solo like I do) hits a bit better, though! Anyways. I like the cards in Izzie’s hand, so i Ward of Protection this right away. I am a bit miffed to use Ward right on the first card that pops up, but i got good stuff in hand and i don’t want to lose them for whatever random card in Joe’s deck. Izzie gets her first horror and puts it on Aleksey, pays her only resource and uses up the Ward… maybe i will eventuall get to dig it out again with Hunter’s Instict? Sounds like something that’d end up being worthwhile.
Meanwhile, Joe’s Memories Fade to Dust. His Mag Glass doesn’t help with the intellect test, so i commit the Hand-Crank from hand to test 5 vs 3 and pass.

Joe uses his first action to move into the Stables. Stables is a shroud 3 location with two clues, but to investigate here, i have to use my combat skill instead of intellect. Joe might be the Seeker best equipped for this turn of events, but even he can only test 4 vs 3 here. Well, might as well try. First attempt pulls a -2 and fails. Second attempt pulls a tablet which counts as a -2 and fails. Welp. Turn over.

Isabelle can’t really do a whole lot here. She could test the Stables at 3 vs 3, but that seems dodgy. I consider just taking 3 resources here which would allow me to play out the Twins next round. But that doesn’t seem super great either, so i just draw a card with my first action, to see if that opens up any new ideas or maybe even finds an ECache. It’s an Unexpected Courage. Useful, sure. Immediate impact… not really. So i draw another card. Soul Link. Same deal, really. For my last action i could either move to Joe, draw another card or take a resource. I decide to move to Joe, that way he can Gather Intel should she draw an enemy and she can potentially help his treachery tests with her skills.

Upkeep draws are Timely Intervention and the second Machete.

This was not exactly a super productive round. Let’s hope the next one goes better.

Round 3

(3/6 doom)

Isabelle draws another treachery from that crazy Shifting Realities set. Here’s Aspects of Infinity, a Power with Surge that has us select two out of four options. Each option has a good and a bad side and we basically have to execute one good side and one bad one. We can take or heal 2 damage or horror, we can lose or gain 2 actions and/or we can draw an extra encounter card on top of the Surge or lose Surge. Okay, so let’s see. Since i have Aleksey in play and was able to buy two horror healing cards before the scenario, i feel pretty okay with taking two horror here, even though Aleksey can’t help with it right now. He still is carrying last round’s horror around.(*) That’s the bad side chosen. For the good side, i could either gain two actions or stop the card from surging. Since i don’t have anything super good to do with my actions right now, i choose to lose Surge. In the end, the treachery ended up costing Izzie 2 horror, which is not great, but also not terrible.
Joe draws Offer of Power from the Agents of Yog. I either draw 2 cards and take 2 doom or i take 2 horror. I want to get my clues before the agenda advances, so the doom is out of the question for now. Joe takes 2 horror, just like Izzie did.

(*) Edit from the future: Reading this back later, i am realizing now I forgot to heal the horror from Aleksey last turn. I could have soaked one extra horror from the treachery here with him. Oops.

And with that it’s back to the issue of the clues on the Stables. I don’t really want to use my Soul Link or Courage here, so maybe i should just continue brute-forcing it with Joe? He’s bound to succeed eventually, right? There’s actually a lot of tokens in the bag that win here. Fine, let’s go.

Joe investigates, 4 vs 3. First attempt pulls a -1. Success! I gain a clue and a card, Emergency Cache. For my second attempt, i commit the Machete from my hand and test 5 vs 3. I indeed draw a -2, which this time passes. With his final action, Joe moves to the Fountain. It’s another 3 shroud, 2 clues location. Its ability lets me spend an action to heal a horror and a damage, once per round. That seems actually pretty good for a location based heal!
At the start of Izzie’s turn, Aleksey heals his horror. She follows Joe to the fountain. There is a world here where i use the skills in my hand to gain these two clues and advance end of this round… it would cost a lot though and be a bunch of effort to achieve something that Joe can do super easily next round with a Deduction. So instead, with her final two actions, she does some more setup since there are also still no enemies around to fight. She takes a resource action and plays Hunter’s Instinct. That way, once an enemy shows up, she’ll regain her Ward. Seems good!

Upkeep draw for Izzie is Loner, but Joe does get his random basic weakness, Pursued. If enemies show up, it results in horror for him unless someone discards the thing for two actions. I probably should get on that before we got swarm-like enemies around. Isabelle has 1 resource, Joe has 4. Both have two horror on them.

Round 4

(4/6 doom)

I’d really like to get the final two clues this round, so this better not be anything too awful.

Locked Door. Solid attempt at stalling, game. Sure, i’ll break through a Locked Door first.
Then it’s Joe’s turn to draw Skills of Another Life and this time there’s no Ward to prevent it. I discard two random cards and get lucky: I discard Mag Glass and ECache, which would be the two i would’ve discarded as well if i had been given a choice. Joe then gets to draw one of the top three cards from Izzie’s deck: Look What I Found, Guts or Soul Link. I decide to take the Soul Link, as i can use that to break through the Locked Door.

Joe spends his first action knocking on the Locked Door, committing Soul Link (which goes into Izzie’s discard). This costs me a horror, but the 7 vs 4 test succeeds. For my second action, i investigate with Deduction. It’s 5 vs 3 and i commit an Unexpected Courage from Izzie to take it to “anything but the autofail”. I pass, collect two clues and draw Scene of the Crime for my ability. With Joe’s final action, I just draw another card and gain a new ECache. If only Isabelle could draw hers sometime.

Speaking of Izzie, her first course of action is to discard Joe’s weakness for him. Then she just takes a resource as we wait for the end of round.

Upkeep draws are Premonition and Perception. They go to 3 resources and 5 resources.

End of the round, we spend our 6 clues and advance the act. A bunch of stuff happens!

The Myriad Gentleman finally shows himself. He is however not put into play, he just lingers around the agenda and instead we will for now only meet his proxies that are spawned by abilities. One such effect happens now, spawning a copy of him with each investigator. The lead investigator would get even more copies on them if “he was ready for us“. Which he isn’t, i assume because we got here before the agenda ran out. Phew. Anyways, both investigators are now engaged to the top card of their deck which represents a copy of the Gentlesir. Greaaaat. Note to self: Don’t forget to play Gather Intel once i am done with all of this. As one would expect, the Gentleman isn’t super terrifying on his own, but starts to ramp up if multiples of him are in play. He also has abilities that are supposed to do a similar job to what the Swarm rules do with regards to spill over damage and multi-evades.

We also get access to the Gentleman’s mansion now, six locations in total, accessible through the Maze or the Lawn. Here’s the full location grid for the rest of the scenario, with connections represented through adjacency, except in one case where i had to use an arrow to help out.

All Myriad treacheries from the set aside area enter the encounter deck now, a total of eight of them. Also the encounter discard pile shuffles back which was the style at the time.

Finally, a look at the new act: We are to find 8 clues now and bring them to the Landing, in the middle of the mansion. We are also informed that any enemy search effects now spawn a Myriad Gentleman instead.

Alright, intermission over! Two enemies in play, stuff is starting to cook. Time for a Mythos phase to crank up the heat. WAIT WAIT WAIT… actually, i play Gather Intel before that happens. Drawing two cards: M1911 and Counterattack. Oh, that Counterattack is not bad here, these guys are only 1 health after all! Alright, now we can continue. WAIT WAIT WAIT… actually, Isabelle also uses Hunter’s Instinct to return Ward to her hand. Alright, that was it for real now.

Round 5

(5/6 doom) One more round before the agenda advances. The goal is defeating the two gents on us and making it inside the house? Sure, that sounds achievable. Unless…

Yith Observer? I suppose that is one way to keep us busy a bit longer. How inconvenient. Well, Izzie engages the big guy, i guess.
Joe draws Locked Door, but since there are currently no clues in play anywhere, i get to attach it wherever. I park the Locked Door on the Stables.

Joe attacks the Gent engaged with him, swinging the Machete. The test pulls a skull which is a -3 now because a Myriad enemy is at our location. At 6 vs 3, it still passes however and i use the exhaust to deal two damage, one of which i am allowed to spill over to the Gent engaged with Izzie. Both are defeated and i get my cards back under my decks. Joe then engages the Yith and with his final action plays Insidious Truths, pitching ECache and M1911. The test is 8 vs 4 and succeeds, dealing 3 damage. Unless something really weird happens, the Yith will die to Counterattack in the enemy phase. I got to say, that was pretty clean.

Isabelle plays Loner with her first action. I use it to move into the Hedge Maze, just in case it’s a Victory location i at least want to know about it before moving on.

Okay wow, that is indeed a Victory location and it’s not an easy one. I don’t think we currently have the means to cleanly just grab the two clues and move on. Something to keep in mind for later and grab on our way out.
With her second action, she breaches the mansion, entering the Entrance Hall. 3 Shroud, but no clues. A Forced effect that says that after revealing the location, at the end of the round, two copies of Myriad Man spawn here. Notably, the guys do not have Hunter, so if i were to use my final action to move out of here, they’d not follow. Or i could just stay, so I can defeat them next round. I think that’s the better plan, actually. For the third time this scenario, I simply take a resource action and wait.

In the enemy phase, the Yith attacks Joe, but gets Counterattack‘ed to death. Yith Observer enters the Victory Display.

Upkeep draws are Arcane Initiate and Logan Hastings. Izzie is at 3 resources, Joe at 2. Here’s a quick look at the current play area:

At the end of the round, two Myriad Gentlemen spawn in the Entrance Hall and immediately engage Isabelle.

Round 6

(6/6 doom) -> (0/6 doom)

The agenda advances!

As expected, this is where we could have picked up the “he is ready for you” thing, had we been too slow. Instead, we just get another copy of Myriad Boy on each of us. It really pays off that both of the investigators are able to fight. Notable development here is that Isabelle is now engaged by three of these nerds, so they do get +1 to combat and agility as per their gametext.
The new agenda threshold is 6 again. I still need 8 clues and also need them in a specific place. That’s not going to be trivial if i want to get it done before the final agenda flip.

But of course that is not all, as we also have a regular Mythos phase.

Another Offer of Power, this time for Izzie. I take the two horror, one for Izzie, one for Aleksey. I briefly considered Warding the card to save a sanity, but i actually want to keep the resource so i can finally play my Twins next round…
Joe meanwhile goes Out of Phase. He fails a willpower test by 4 and as a result will not be able to interact with Izzie’s threat area (and vice versa) until the end of the round. Also, he has to spawn another Myriad Gentleman on him. That means he won’t be able to exhaust the Machete to kill both at once. Thankfully, they only have 1 health so this is not as bad as it could have been…
Before the Investigation phase starts, i play Premonition as a way to make sure i don’t lose an extra charge to a skull when i use Cosmic Flame now. I reveal a -2. Sure, that works.

Aleksey heals the horror on him while Izzie starts her round by using Cosmic Flame on one of the Gentlemen engaged with her. The test is 4 vs 4, i know i will draw a -2, so i commit Guts to pass. I do spend a charge on Flame to kill two Gentlemen. Guts draws me Second Sight which is an interesting option. But directly competes with the Twins for my limited resources and right now it looks like i need the combat capabilities. For the final, now solitary gentleman, i test Cosmic Flame again, 4 vs 3. I want to draw more cards, so i commit Guts from the discard for 6 vs 3. I succeed and defeat the last dude. My draw for this Guts is Canteen. Oh, that’s really good and i want that in play even if it puts the Twins (and Second Sight) out of reach again. With my third action, i play Canteen and immediately use one of the supplies on it to go from 4 to 2 horror. I decide against using Loner to open up another location, to avoid more shenanigans.

Joe might not be able to exhaust his Machete right now, but he can still use it as a Knife. He attacks twice, with 5 vs 3, hoping to take out both of the enemies in his threat area. The first test passes with a 0, the second one autofails. Oh well, one down at least. Nothing else to do than swinging a third time and hope to get the other Gent as well. He passes with -2 and there are once again no Myriad Guys on the board. That being said, Joe is out of actions again and still at the Ornate Fountain, two locations away from the Entrance Hall. This clone boy is really good at stalling us out!

Upkeep draws are ECache for Izzie and Bounty for Joe. That ECache really opens up some plays, very happy to see that! There might be a Second Sight in Izzie’s future after all which would be grand, considering how stalled out Joe is. Bounty is looking less exciting, these enemies all have only 1 health.
Regular income brings both investigators to 3 resources.
End of round, Joe discards Out of Phase.

Round 7

(1/6 doom) Let’s see what fresh horrors await us…

Isabelle draws the other Locked Door, which attaches to the Hedge Maze. Not great. If i eventually want those two clues and the Victory, that’ll take some effort. I consider Ward of Protection here, but decide against it – the encounter deck has worse things in store and i should stay ready for that.
Joe draws once again Skills from Another Life and has to discard two random cards from his hand. This time i get less lucky and have to discard Perception and Logan, the exact two cards i would’ve kept if i had the choice. Ouch. I do get to draw a card from Izzie’s deck again however, so Joe gets to choose between Timely Intervention, LWIF and Arcane Initiate. Having Timely Intervention on call as Joe sounds amazing, i grab that and shuffle the other two back.

It’s finally time to explore the mansion a bit. Izzie uses Loner to dash into the Kitchen. The Kitchen is a Victory location (yay!) with only 2 shroud (yay!) and 4 clues (yay!). When revealed, two Myriad Gentlecopies spawn there however (boo!). There’s also a location ability that allows discarding a Gentlemen for each oversuccess on a willpower(3) test. I basically would have to pass a willpower(5) test to get rid of my two enemies in one go. That sounds like a good opportunity to save a charge on the Cosmic Flame, actually. So my first action is attempting this test, committing Soul Link (parking the horror on Aleksey). I pull an Elder Sign, which heals a horror. I don’t mind that! Of course this also means i oversucceed by enough to discard both nerds that just spawned on me. With the remaining two actions i play ECache and Second Sight. In the back of my mind i start formulating a plan to eventually move into the Hedge Maze with Izzie, discard the door, grab the clues with Second Sight and move out again wih Loner, all in one round. Not the worst plan!

Joe’s turn is simple: He moves three times and joins Izzie in the Kitchen.

Upkeep draws are Guts and Lab Assistant. Izzie now has 3 resources, Joe has 4.

Round 8

(2/6 doom)
Will I be able to clean out the kitchen this round? Not if the Myriad Gentleman has a say in it!

We are finally getting some of those Myriad treacheries that were shuffled into the encounter deck on the act flip.
Isabelle draws They Just Keep Coming, which spawns a Gentleman on each of three specified locations if they are revealed. Only the Entrance Hall is revealed right now, so i get off easy here, with only one Gentleman spawning.
Joe then gets Not Welcome Here, which moves that freshly spawned Gentleman to one of us and then spawns additional copies until the chosen investigator has three of them in their threat area. I choose to have Isabelle engage them, so Joe doesn’t have to ineffectively wave around his Machete again. Isabelle uses Hunter’s Instinct, recovering ECache from her discard pile.

Joe starts the round playing Scene of the Crime and collects two clues. Then plays Lab Assistant, drawing Perception and Dorothy. Finally, i have him investigate the Kitchen once, at 5 vs 2. It succeeds, giving him the third clue and drawing him an M1911.

Aleksey heals. Isabelle uses her Cosmic Flame on her gentlegroup of attackers and i commit Guts from my hand to make the test 6 vs 4. It succeeds and after spending a charge from the Flame two copies disappear. Guts draws Bandages. I attack the remaining Gentleman with the Flame again, committing Guts from my discard as well. 6 vs 3 also connects and the guy is done. Guts reshuffles and draws me my other ECache. With one more action to go, i use Second Sight to investigate 4 vs 2. I draw -4 and fail. I could turn it into a pass with Timely Intervention, but that doesn’t seem worth it, so i just end my turn here.

Upkeep draws are Manual Dexterity and Gather Intel. Izzie now has 4 resources and two ECache in hand! Meanwhile Joe sits on 1 resource and has a Bounty in hand which is decidedly less great.

Round 9

(3/6 doom) Okay, 3 more rounds to collect 5 clues and bring them to the Landing if i want this done before the agenda flips. I am not super optimistic about this. Unless i really am able to get some stuff done this round, any bit of disruption could easily stop me from getting there in time.

Isabelle’s encounter draw is Aspects of Infinity, so she has to choose 1 good and 1 bad thing again. I decide to go with “Take 2 horror” and “Gain 2 actions.”. One horror goes on me, one on Aleksey. That man has done work this scenario! Aspects does surge into Ex Uno Plures, another Myriad card. An agility test threatens to spawn up to 3 new copies of the Gentleman. I want none of that, so i commit Manual Dexterity and pass. Man Dex draws me Will of the Cosmos. Oh, maybe i can manage to play that twice to clear the Hedge Maze without evan having to go there! In the player window opened up by the test, i also use my Canteen to clear all horror from Isabelle.
Joe’s encounter card, Fragmented Existence, is a weird one. A willpower test and if i fail it, i take 2 damage and that’s it. However, if i pass i get this card in my threat area and that’s actually a good thing because i can use it for a testless emergency evade against every enemy i am engaged with. Using that evade will draw an encounter card, but it could potentially save my ass. Joe draws a 0 for his 2 vs 3, so he could actually succeed this with the Timely Intervention he nabbed from Izzie earlier. I do decide against it though, i think it’s better to keep it in hand in case Joe needs to pass his own Ex Uno Plures or similar in the future. He takes his first two damage.

Joe tries to investigate the final clue off of the Kitchen, but autofails. The second attempt succeeds, giving the clue and drawing an Overpower. He then moves into the Parlor with his last action.

Revealing this location spawns another two Myriad Copycats, but due to the text on the location, they don’t engage Joe yet. They will do this at the start of next round, but if things go as i want, they won’t be alive for that. Parlor has another 2 clues, at shroud 3. And another point of Victory if i clear it.

But first things first, let’s murder some dudes. Isabelle starts her turn with 5 actions and Aleksey heals. She moves into the Parlor and with her second action, attacks a Gentlecopy. I commit Arcane Initiate to test 5 vs 3 and succeed. Spending my last charge on Flame, i burn both of the enemies. Action #3 is used to play the Twin 45s. Action #4 is used to investigate with Second Sight. The test is 4 vs 3 and i pass with a skull (-1). I spend the charge from the spell to gain both clues. With her final action, Izzie plays ECache. Then she uses Loner to get back into the Entrance Hall. Good turn!

In upkeep, Joe draws a Hand-Crank, but Izzie gets her random basic weakness Lethal Curiosity. She has to pass a willpower(4) test or take a bunch of damage and/or drop clues. This would be fairly horrible right now and just in general is a disaster waiting to happen this campaign. Aleksey and I take two horror to commit Soul Link from my discard pile, testing 7 vs 4. I pass.
Izzie goes to 4 resources, Joe to 2.

Round 10

(4/6 doom) Last turn was productive, i might actually be able to make it before the agenda flips!

Isabelle draws Accelerated Decay and has to put it on an asset of hers. That’s actually kind of interesting, i could use this to get rid of something after i put doom on it with Will of the Cosmos… I attach the treachery to my Canteen which only has one charge left.
Joe draws Ex Uno Plures and might find himself accosted by a bunch of dudes here. The test 2 vs 3 reveals a -1 and i use Timely Intervention to pass by exactsies. Spending Timely Intervention here basically defeated two Gentlemen, that seems very much worth it.

Isabelle wants to use Will of the Cosmos this round, so she uses Loner to move into Landing in search of clues. She finds 2 of them there, on a shroud 2 location. The Landing has an ability that allows shooting into the Entrance Hall, cute. Also cute: Some player count difficulty scaling for 3+ players that i get to ignore. Anyways, i think i can do better with my autosuccess clue card than a 2 shroud location, so i use my first action to move right past the Landing. The Study is sealed and i can’t enter it, so i move into the Master Bedroom. And bingo, that one is a 4 shroud with 2 clues, Victory and some annoying abilities.

With my second action i play Will of the Cosmos, putting a doom on my Canteen and taking a clue from the Bedroom and the Hedge Maze. I realize that both of my investigators now have 4 clues and i can advance the act this round! That kind of crept up on me. So while i am tempted to finish off this location now, i move back to the Landing with my final action. I use my canteen to heal the last horror from me, then discard it to Accelerated Decay along with the doom on it.

Joe moves twice, joining Isabelle at the Landing. He investigates 5 vs 2, passes and picks up a clue and an Overpower.

Upkeep draws are Guts and Vicious Blow. Joe has 9 cards in hand, but thanks to Lab Ass that is allowed.

At the end of the round, i pay 8 of my 9 clues (leaving one on Isabelle) and advance the act. I run into the real Myriad Gentleman now, the guy the others are just copies of.

We reveal the study and The Master of the House spawns there alongside two of his reflections. He’s relatively dangerous and can hit quite hard if enough of his goons are still on the board. Thankfully i have so far cleaned up all of them. Still, i probably will have to evade him for a round or two while i finish him off.

Here’s the Study:

Myriad Prime is not leaving his study and while we are there, new copies of him spawn there. Our objective to finish the scenario is actually just to spend 4 clues in the study, so we could just ignore him. But we are of course going to take him out and also clean all the Victory locations. Scenario 1 I missed some XP, i want to make up for that now.

Round 11

(5/6 doom) I hope to draw an enemy here, so i can recover Will of the Cosmos and play it while the doom doesn’t matter because next round we’ll advance anyways!

I don’t get my wish. Isabelle draws Offer of Power, once again taking 2 horror, sharing the load with Aleksey. Joe gets Skills from Another Life again, for the third time this game. His random discards are the two Overpowers. Boo. He then gets to choose between three of Izzies cards again: Bandages, Will of the Cosmos, Lucky Charm. Hahaha, that works too. I grab Will of the Cosmos. What a silly game this is.

Joe’s turn is simple then. Move into the bedroom. Play Will of the Cosmos. Back out of the bedroom. I grab the final clue from the Bedroom and from the Hedge Maze this way. I put a doom on the Mag Glass.

So anyway, i started blasting. Izzie moves into the Study and engages the whole gang in there. Hunter’s Instinct returns Premonition to my hand, then discards itself. I play Premonition, revealing a skull which is a -3 with all these Myriad dudes in my face. Not great! That means a Man Dex from my discard wouldn’t be good enough to evade Myriad Prime but i do have a Soul Link in the discard as well. I take 2 horror to recur Soul Link as i use my second action on an evade of the big man. The skull applies, the test passes and the Gentleman is exhausted. Soul Link shuffles back into the deck.
With the final action, Izzie uses her pistols. I don’t really have anything great to commit to the combat test. While i do have a Courage in the discard, her ability is once per round. So it’s just a 3 vs 3… and i pull an Elder Sign. Woah. I was fishing for a -1 so that i can Timely Intervention the test to pass, but that works as well! Both copies fall and i heal a horror. I can now take my second shot if i want, using agility against the Elite enemy. It’d be 3 vs 4, but i do still have that Timely Intervention, right. Sure, why not. I commit Bandages to make it a 4 vs 4 and pull a -3. Fiiiine. I miss.

In the enemy phase, the Master of the House readies and engages Isabelle.

Upkeep draws are Look What I Found and Bounty.

At the end of the round, the Forced effect on the Study spawns a Myriad Boy in Izzie’s care.

Round 12

(7/6 doom) -> (0/5 doom)

Time for the final agenda.

Reality gets all fucky-wucky and as a result, each investigator has to discard 3 cards or take 2 horror. I discard ECache, Will of the Cosmos and Guts with Izzie and I discard Hand-Crank and both Bountys with Joe. Then both look at six cards from the other investigator’s deck and draw 2 of them. Joe actually only has 5 cards left in his deck. Two of those are his signature and his weakness, leaving Izzie to pick two out of Deduction, Insidious Truths and Psych Student. I take Truths and the Student. Joe looks at Bandages, LWIF, Lucky Cigarette Case, Cosmic Flame, Second Sight and Blood Curse. I pick LWIF and Blood Curse for him. Also, it’s been a while since I’ve shown you a snap of the play area and since a lot of stuff has happened recently, this is a good moment. Behold:

The new and final agenda has 5 doom left for us. While it’s active, all Myriad treacheries gain surge… which is the sort of bullshit that is signaling pretty strongly that we need to get out of here. But first: encounter draws!

And Isabelle draws the other Yith Observer. Because being engaged to the Prime Myriad and one of his lesser selfs wasn’t enough apparently. Well, time to crack your knuckles and earn some Victory, i guess!
Joe draws Accelerated Decay and puts it on the Lab Assistant. Sure, that’s no big deal.

Alright, so Joe. He has three cards left in his deck, one of which is his signature that would draw the other two cards if i were to get it now. And one is his weakness. In other words, if i take a draw now, i got a 2 out of 3 chance to get my weakness in hand. The third card is a Deduction. Maybe i want to draw those things before joining the Study? Reshuffle my deck and get the weakness out of the way before i finish the scenario? I am actually not really sure what’s correct here, but after some thinking in circles i just decide to go for it and investigate the Landing. That way i get the clue and a card and know more. It’d also give me my fourth clue, meaning i can end the scenario at will if shit really hits the fan with back to back to back Myriad treacheries surging into each other or some nonsense like that. So, first action i investigate, 5 vs 2, and succeed. I gain a clue and the draw from my ability does indeed give me my signature which triggers to also draw Deduction and Dead Ends. With my second action, i play Detective’s Intuition, healing a horror (down to 2) and gaining 2 resources (up to 6). For my third action i play the M1911, discarding the Mag Glass from play to make room.

While Joe is dicking around outside, Isabelle is hanging on for dear life in the Study. Aleksey heals, then Isabelle starts her turn by playing Insidious Truths, discarding LWIF and the Student and targeting the Yithian Observer. The test is 7 vs 4 and succeeds, dealing 3 damage to the Yith. Second action, i use my pistols. The combat test goes against the small Myriad Clone, testing unmodified 3 vs 3 which I don’t expect to succeed. And indeed I miss. The second shot, using agility, targets the Yith again and i commit Man Dex from my discard, for a 5 vs 4 with Timely Intervention still in my hand as backup. I pull the skull (-3), so i do need that Timely Intervention, but the shot hits. The second Yith enters the Victory display. I draw a card for Man Dex (which reshuffles) and now have two Wards of Protection as my only cards in hand. I use Cosmic Flame with my final action to attack the baby Myriad and commit a Ward of Protection for its wild icon to make it a 5 vs 3. I pull a -2 and hit, the guy gets defeated.

In the enemy phase, Myriad Prime hits me for 1 damage and 1 horror, both of which get tanked by Aleksey.

Upkeep draws are Cosmic Flame and Counterattack. Joe has to reshuffle his discard pile into a new deck, taking a horror (on Lab Ass). End of the round, a new Myriad copy spawns on Izzie.

Round 13

(1/5 doom) This could easily turn bad still. I am somewhat afraid of having a bad cascade of surges here that could potentially bury me in Myriad Gentlemen.

Isabelle draws Aspects of Infinity, so for the third time, she has to play “good news, bad news” with the encounter deck. I think it’s pretty clear i have to cancel the surge here, because as mentioned a surge chain is the worst that could happen to me right now. Losing two actions is also out of the question. So as the bad effect, i decide to take 2 damage. This is risky because i didn’t draw my weakness yet, but i want to keep my options open to use my sanity for my ability and to tank treacheries.
Joe gets Fragmented Existence, that weird one from earlier that can give you a decent emergency evade if you manage to pass a willpower(3) test here. That could actually be really useful here and get me out of a sudden Myriad incursion, so i think this is worth using Blood Curse for. I test 6 vs 3 and pass and now have a testless emergency evade on call. I do have to take a damage from the Blood Curse, of course.

Joe moves into the Study and investigates. I commit Deduction and Perception to test 7 vs 4. I pass, but i do pass with a skull, which has a bad effect from the Accelerated Decay on Lab Assistant. I have to put a resource on Decay, then take as many damage. I take a damage, put it on Lab Assistant and she’s gone, alongside the Decay. But a pass is a pass, even if it costs an assistant. I collect two clues and draw two cards (one from Joe’s ability, one from Perception): Insidious Truths and my second Deduction. Oh, nice. I investigate with my final action as well, committing Deduction, Dorothy and LWIF for a total of 8 vs 4. I grab the last clues that i needed to clear all locations. Now i only need to get rid of the Myriad Man … and play the weakness in Joe’s hand, of course.

Izzie’s turn. Aleksey heals a damage. Izzie uses Loner to go back into the Landing. Myriad Prime cannot leave the Study per his gametext, so he stays back and engages Joe. Izzy is still engaged to a clone, so she tries to get rid of it using Cosmic Flame and a Guts from the discard pile. This succeeds with an Elder Sign, healing the horror i just gained for replaying Guts. Guts reshuffles and draws me a Lucky Charm. The enemy is gone. That was only my first action, so i continue by playing a new Cosmic Flame, discarding Second Sight. With the final action, i play Lucky Charm and move a damage token from Isabelle to Aleksey. Aleksey has been CRAZY good this game.

In the enemy phase, Joe takes a damage and a horror from an attack by the Myriad Elite, bringing him to 4 damage and 4 horror. I really would’ve liked to Counterattack here, but i need the 5 resources next turn.

Upkeep draws are Fearless and Mag Glass. Izzie goes to 3 resources, Joe to 5.

End of round, a Myriad Gentleman spawns on Joe.

Round 14

(2/5 doom) Die already!

Ugh. Here we go with the Myriad surging. Isabelle draws Not Welcome Here and has to choose an investigator to become the Myriad’s new target and spawn new Myriads until they have three engaged. Joe is already engaged to two, so this spawns just one new copy in his threat area. Not so bad, but of course the card now surges. She draws Memories Fade to Dust. I Ward of Protection it to take the worst case autofail off the table.
Joe draws Not Welcome Here as well and chooses himself. Nothing happens, but the card of course surges… into another Memories. This is fine, i assume i can pass the test? I commit Gather Intel and Mag Glass for a 6 vs 3. I draw a tablet which is -2, so i succeed.

Okay, time to hopefully close this out! Joe uses the evade ability on Fragmented Existence. As a cost to do so, he has to draw an encounter card. The third Memories Fade to Dust pops up! Well, i am all out of commits, so i just have to test this 4 vs 3. I fail with a tablet(-2). The symbol effect of the tablet spawns yet another clone baby on Joe. Since i fail by one, i decide to discard a random card – hey, this could potentially hit my weakness! It doesn’t, though. Counterattack is discarded. Then, all enemies engaged with me, including both the Elite and the three copies, are evaded.
With my second action i spend all my money to play my weakness, Dead Ends. Has to be done, no way around it. With my final action, i shoot the M1911 at the Elite, committing Vicious Blow and Insidious Truths. 7 vs 4 hits, dealing 3 damage. 3 more to go. Over to you, Isabelle.

Aleksey heals 1 horror, then Lucky Charm moves one of Izzie’s horror tokens to Aleksey. She moves into the Study with two actions left. I don’t have a 3 damage attack, so i have to hit twice. Should i miss the first time, i could try a hail mary with my pistols, but without any combat commits that doesn’t look like a good plan. Let’s just not miss then. Cosmic Flame activates, i commit Fearless from my hand for 6 vs 4. Could be better, but it is what i have. I draw -1 which means i hit. I heal a horror from being Fearless and i spend a charge to deal an extra point of damage. For my third action, i use Flame again. This time spending a damage and a horror to commit Blood Curse from my discard. If 8 vs 4 hits, i can go home.

I hit.

The Myriad Gentleman is defeated.

This nightmare is over.

I pay the clues to reach Resolution 1.

Resolution

Searching the manor, we find notes about a ritual that is about to go down in a run-down elementary school near Southside. It’s purpose? To reforge time itself for the glory of Aforgomon… yeah, let’s not, shall we.
We also find further proof that it was indeed Baxter aka The Myriad Gentleman who put out the hit on us, as retaliation for something we did in Cairo? We never even have been to Cairo. How strange… So anyway, we got a ritual to disturb!

We record in our campaign log that we “learned of the ritual”.

For defeating the Myriad Gentleman, we earn his weapon, the Aforgomon’s Blade… if we want it.

Aforgomon’s Blade is a pretty sweet weapon, on par with something like the Timeworn Brand from TFA. However, if i decide to take it, that investigator also has to take the Gaze of Aforgomon weakness which can be pretty brutal. The weakness threatens physical trauma, which makes me not want it for Izzie at the very least. As for Joe… maybe? 5 resources are a lot, though. I think it’s best to decline, we should be able to manage without it. I know, i know, boring. But i actually do want to win :D I think if it had +2 to the test, i’d have taken it but i don’t want to spend 5 resources on a weapon that will have me test 5 vs 4 all day with Joe.

Finally, we earn experience. 5 victory locations plus 3 victory enemies make for a sum of 8xp earned per investigator. And earn it we did! Feels good, we can some real noticeable upgrades with this!

Spending XP

So, do I just get two Longbows with Izzie? Plus another Canteen? I don’t really see anything wrong with this plan, so let’s just go ahead with that. To make room, i remove both copies of LWIF and one Arcane Initiate. In other news, i am having a bit of regrets over not taking Daniel Jameson in my starting deck. I might spend 4xp on Charisma + Daniel after the next scenario.

Joe similarly has to gear up his combat capabilities, as we just seen the enemies in this campaign don’t mess around. Now, his options are somewhat limited in that regard due to only getting up to level 2 Guardian, but upgrading our M1911s to level 2 is the least we can do. I am also kind of vibing with getting myself a Bodyguard(2), that seems like it could save us at some point. And the second Counterattack for good measure. That leaves me with 1xp, and i might as well upgrade a Mag Glass with it. I need to cut two cards from the deck and that’s actually somewhat difficult. In the end, i decide to let a Hand-Crank and the Psych Student go.

These upgrades slant heavily towards fighting over clueing, but that is intentional from my end. I am very afraid of the Elite enemies that we are about to meet in the following scenarios…

Deck Performance

Since there’s no Interlude this time around, let’s take a step back and review how the first two scenarios went.

Joe Diamond has done well in his flexible role of being both a fighter and a cluever. So far, setup was quick and effective, with a tool and a weapon coming down on round 1 he’s immediately capable. I started him out with 4 allies and got him an immediate Charisma after game 1, but that hasn’t really come into play yet. His resource situation simply didn’t allow for multiple allies. Holding two Bounty while all enemies only have 1 health was sort of a worst-case scenario though. Having to random discard my Logan didn’t help either. So hopefully this improves going forward, because i can’t really do too much about it with upgrades anymore. I can upgrade my Mag Glasses to shave off one more resource cost and that’s kind of it unless i want to pay xp to add some more level 0 skills to bring the total cost of the deck down. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. Two ECache, two Bounty and his signature should really be enough income even when Logan isn’t around.

Isabelle Barnes has handled a remarkable amount of crap that got thrown her way. Her ability to spike test values has proven a good problem solver, like with that jacked up Irregulars in scenario 1 where she pulled off that crucial evade. Buying two pieces of horror healing from my first 4xp paid off very well this scenario, thanks to the Canteen i was able to keep my horror down to a point where her signature would never deal her more than one or two points of damage while still using her ability as required. Aleksey of course was an all-star in this scenario, without him i couldn’t have taken horror on those Aspects of Infinity and might have been forced to lose actions or draw extra encounter cards.
My gimmick with Isabelle was including a Lucky Cigarette Case at the cost of 5 extra deck size. The LCC hasn’t come up yet… but i also don’t feel like the extra deck size mattered yet. My cards are all good and so far i have not had problems getting my weapons or spells.
Speaking of spells, Cosmic Flame was a real good card against the replicating enemy of this scenario, that ability to just attack for 1 without spending a charge came up multiple times. Her Twin pistols also worked out nicely. I have high expectations for the Longbow, i hope it’s enough to take down some larger bosses with a combination of Longbow and Cosmic Flame.

That being said, both investigators did a lot of somewhat dodgy testing of one over or two over difficulty and there’s been a decent amount of failed tests as a result. Arguably the reason i did well enough was a somewhat lenient chaos bag with low modifiers. Once those ramp up, i might be in trouble and will have to ration my icon commits better than i have so far. All the game needs to show is a -3 with a bad symbol effect attached that i need to play around and a lot of the tests that i took in this game become ill-advised.

With these cheery thoughts in mind, see you soon for scenario three, A World Torn Down!

Hey, so I just wanted to give a quick shoutout to two fellow Arkham creators where I appeared on their respective channels as a guest around a week ago.

The Mythosbusters are gearing up for an Ironman at ArkhamCon where they (and any other group at the con that wants to join in) play through a full campaign in one go. This year, it’s time to play The Scarlet Keys. Any Ironman will require a decent amount of pre-planning, TSK even more so. So they made a pre-planning stream and invited me to join them to talk shop. A good time was had.

Mythos Busters: The Scarlet Keys Arkham Ironman Prepisode

Tatort Arkham is a german-language YouTube channel that reports Arkham-related news and posts special episodes about specific investigators, decks, etc. The host of the show, Didi Carrera, started a new series to cover the Evergreen Investigator Decks and I joined him for an episode to add my take while we check out Tommy Muldoon’s preconstructed deck and give the thing some rankings.

Tatort Arkham: Tommy Muldoon Deckvorstellung

Setup

Ages Unwound starts us of with very little fanfare in terms of story text. We get a mysterious phone call from someone who knows remarkably much about us, a warning that we are about to be attacked. While still mulling this over, we go home, finding our house in flames. The attack is happening now. We have to flee as gunfire suddenly tears through the night…

Just as economic as the story text is with its word count, the setup instructions are also minimalistic. One location is put into play, the Rivertown, and both investigators start there. The other locations are all shuffled together, making up the “Arkham Streets” deck.
We pull five encounter sets, all from the campaign specific ones: Night of Fire. Agents of Aforgomon. Nyctophobia. Thugs. Unravelling Ages. The Agents of Aforgomon set and a few high caliber enemies are set aside at the start, so we got 24 cards in the encounter deck at the start and another 11 set aside. And that’s already all of the setup.

One other thing i should mention: The campaign log has a space where we record ticks for “Strange Assistance“, signifying that whoever is calling us to warn us has given us help. We have to record one tick right away, with the ominous possibility of more to come and no indication of how this may come back to bite us later!

The chaos bag is ready, with the usual array of numerical tokens for Standard difficulty. Notably, there are three skulls in the bag, one cultist and one tablet. No Elder Thing, and judging by the scenario card with the token effects we won’t be able to get one in scenario 1 either. There’s seven cards in the Arkham Streets, so the skull will be a -3 at worst. The tablet is also a -3, so except for the singular -4 token and the autofail, we can expect to pass any test where we are three over the difficulty. Good to know and keep in mind! Also, good to keep in mind with a look at the token effects: Moving before doing tests and getting Arkham Streets to the table will help us get the token modifiers down. Not something to obsess over, but sometimes every bit helps.

Our starting location is Rivertown, a 2 shroud location with 2 clues, so about as tame as they come. However, ending the turn here means taking a willpower(2) test, at the threat of 1 horror. We do however get the intriguing ability here to discard Darkness treacheries. Possible failsafe for Joe if he gets stuck with something that needs to go?

Finally, the act and agenda deck both have three cards in them. On the agenda side, the first one only has 3 doom threshold, so probably some sort of grace period before the heavy hitters from the set aside cards come into play. We are informed that doom on the board will subtracts from the doom on the agenda, not add to it – meaning this is the type of scenario where we have to survive until the time runs out. The Objective confirms this: “Survive the night.” Okeydokey. Finally a Forced effect triggers at the end of each turn if we didn’t move: We have to take an agility(2) test at the threat of 1 damage if we didn’t move. Makes sense, we got to stay on the run to get away from the gunfire! This is very concerning for both investigators… Joe isn’t really good at passing those tests. And Izzie can’t afford to fail them with only 5 health. So we better keep running!

How do we stay in movement with only one location on the board though? Luckily, the act deck has the answer. We can just take a move action blindly and will then move into the next random card from the Arkham Streets deck. Immediate concern here: If that random location is then not connected to where i came from, i can’t turn back. Also, the other investigator can’t follow and they get split up. Uh-Oh. To add to the chaos and to make sure we don’t just map out the grid of locations in a few turns, there is another hitch: At the end of each round, locations without an investigator or enemy on them shuffle back into the Arkham Streets. This means that bringing down that skull to -1 or even just -2 is not going to be easy unless there are some enemies around that helpfully keep some locations in play for us. Finally, there is no real objective here. We are just told again to keep running until something tells us to advance.

Round 1

Starting hands look good. Great, even. We need a running start in this scenario and thankfully that’s what we get. Both get options for fighting and clueing, plus some extra goodies.

Isabelle: Manual Dexterity, Soul Link, Timely Intervention, Second Sight, Twin 45s
Joe: Magnifying Glass, Machete, Scene of the Crime, Gather Intel, Overpower

I want to keep moving with both of my investigators, even if that will put them in different locations. There is actually nothing i need clues for right now… but it’s a safe bet that they will be useful eventually, so i should try to get those two from the starting location, they are easy enough to grab.
So i start with Joe. Play out the Mag Glass, then investigate twice at 5 vs 2. I don’t draw either of the two tokens in the bag that could make this fail and get the two clues. Joe’s investigator ability draws a Perception from my deck. With two clues secured, Joe uses his third action to move. He finds A Place To Hide, a 4 shroud location without clues that will autosucceed any tests from the agenda that investigators there have to take. So Joe could hide there from the gunfire. Neat. It is however not connected to Rivertown, so Izzie won’t be able to follow.
Izzie will have to decide sometime early if she wants to play the Second Sight or the twin pistols. But with her first action, she will also move into a random location, maybe that helps with the decision.

All three locations in play are unconnected. The Winchmore House which Izzie just found has some easy clues, but any enemy she’d run into here would get a buff and would need to be handled. The location comes with an ability to disengage from that enemy, but i kind of like the cards in Izzie’s hand right now and am not super keen on discarding them. So the choice is either: Play Second Sight and investigate, then hope to not draw an enemy in Mythos. Or keep moving on and let the House reshuffle at the end of the round. Or just investigate 2 vs 2 and hope that it passes, then play the Twins and prepare what might come. After thinking about it, i decide that most of the enemies are currently set aside and that i am just going to risk it. I play Second Sight, then investigate with it, 4 vs 2. It passes. I decide not to spend a charge to also pick up the other clue, i think that can wait for more difficult locations.

And that’s the first investigation phase done. Everyone kept moving, nobody got shot. In upkeep, Isabelle draws Look What I Found, Joe draws his second Machete. At the end of the round, Rivertown shuffles into the Arkham Streets deck. Time for our first Mythos phase.

Round 2

(1/3 doom)

Isabelle draws Just Business, a somewhat terrifying card that i hope Joe doesn’t draw too often. It’s a willpower(3) test and with Timely Intervention in hand, i just do the test unmodified. It’s 4 vs 3. I pull a skull which is currently -3, so i play the Timely Intervention to pass. Meanwhile, Joe finds out that The Place to Hide isn’t completely safe as there’s Arsonists about, aloof hunters that hurt anyone at their location at the end of the enemy phase. They have Aloof, so Joe will probably just have to spend his whole round dealing with it. Good thing he doesn’t need to move while at the hiding spot. This would have been a rough enemy to draw at the Winchmore House… Joe reacts to the Arsonists appearance by playing Gather Intel, drawing Deduction and Emergency Cache.

Joe plays his Machete, engages the Arsonists and attacks them. Not only does he fail, but he fails by drawing Cultist into -4, meaning the effect of the Cultist forces him into a new random location. He (and the Arsonists in his threat area) move into Independence Square, another 2 shroud location. This one has 4 clues on it, but while there any tests from the agenda get +2 difficulty. Thankfully the forceful move from the token does count and Joe will not have to test this turn.
Independence Square is connected to the Winchmore House, so Izzie could in theory come and run interference and help Joe out. That being said, while engaged the Arsonists only hit for a single damage and Joe will just have to take that. Instead i try to investigate the final clue off of the Winchmore House. The test succeeds with an Elder Sign, but since i don’t have horror to heal yet, that doesn’t matter. Still, a clue is collected. With my second action, i move into Joe’s location, then raw investigate 2 vs 2, trying to bait out the Look What I Found. I fail just as planned, play the LWIF and collect 2 clues.

In the enemy phase, the Arsonists draw first blood on an investigator, dealing 1 point to Joe.

Upkeep phase gives another Man Dex for Izzie and a Bounty for Joe. End of round, all locations except for the one we are standing on go back into the Arkham Streets deck.
The board looks like this now:

Round 3

(2/3 doom)

Isabelle draws Hired Thugs, an enemy that isn’t particularly scary. There’s some keywords on there and her agility is reduced while they are engaged… but the raw numbers make this guy not that threatening. The thugs enter Izzie’s threat area. However, it is now Joe’s turn to draw Just Business. I could help him out with a Soul Link from Izzie, but that might not even be worth it. We have to move anyways, right? And taking 2 horror here is not (yet) an issue for our 7 sanity investigator. On the other hand, if he stayed at the location, he could use his Machete to take care of the Hired Thugs for Isabelle. In the end, i decide to just take the test unmodified. 2 vs 3 fails and Joe takes 2 horror, then is forced to move into a random location. He gets Twisted Alleys, a 4 shroud location with 2 clues that is connected to the Independence Square where Izzie is still hanging out.

With his first action, Joe plays Scene of the Crime, collecting those two clues. Second action, he swings the Machete at the Arsonists, again testing 5 vs 2. It’s successful, the Machete exhausts to defeat the Arsonists and Joe plays Bounty to recover the 2 resources he just spent on Scene of the Crime. I only now realize that the forced movement from Just Business doesn’t count for preventing the test on the agenda ability: It didn’t happen in my turn. Therefore, i spend the final action on another random movement. Joe rediscovers the Winchmore House, back again with 2 fresh clues. It’s connected to both of the other locations on the board.

Izzie doesn’t have the resources to play out her Twin pistols, so i think i will just have to evade the Thug for now. Agility is reduced by one, so the test would be 2 vs 1. I throw in a Manual Dexterity to make it 4 vs 1. I suceed by exactsies (tablet). Manual Dexterity draws me a card, my personal weakness Breaking Point. It only deals a single point of direct damage now, so i am actually happy to see that here. I want to spend my final action to move to Joe before the agenda advances, but first i can do one investigation with Second Sight. 4 vs 2 fails with a skull. Fair enough. I move into Joe’s location, then that was it for the investigator phase.

In the enemy phase, the Thugs ready at the Independence Square.

Upkeep draws are Unexpected Courage for Isabelle and the second Mag Glass for Joe. Izzie now has two resources. Joe has three. At the end of the round, the Twisted Alleys leave the board.

Round 4

(3/3 doom)

The third doom hits play, the agenda advances and some stuff happens.
First off, we are instructed to spawn a Time Spirit in each investigator’s care … unless we just pay 2 clues as a group. Time Spirits are 4 health enemies which i really don’t need two of in play right now. And we have 9 clues in total, so spending 2 of them seems perfectly fine. We shuffle a couple of set aside cards into the encounter deck, along with the discard pile. There are now some bigger enemies around than Thugs and Arsonists. Oh joy. Finally, we advance to both the next act and the next agenda.

The new agenda looks just like the first, with two differences: One, the agenda threshold is now 8. Two, the test to not get shot for moving is now difficulty 3 instead of 2. This likely doesn’t matter for Joe, but very much does so for Izzie. Well, let’s keep moving then.

The new act finally gives us something to do with our clues: We can spend 2 of them to stop locations from leaving play. We also get a proper objective now: Put all locations in play and put resources on each of them. So what… eight locations means 16 clues to seal all of them? We have 7 clues right now, which means we need at least another 9. That seems reasonable enough to do, probably even before the agenda advances again.

Encounter card draws are next. Isabelle draws Weight of the Centuries, from the Agents of Aforgomon set we just shuffled in. At the end of her turn she will have to do a willpower test against a difficulty equal to the number of actions she took, then take damage by how much she fails. I am not too worried about this one (yet…), just don’t let Joe see it.
Joe in the meantime gets In Every Shadow. He has to test agility with a high difficulty, 7 in this case. And then for how much he fails by, needs to discard from the encounter deck, drawing a Darkness and a Criminal he finds. Oof. Since Izzie isn’t allowed to help (Peril!), he fails by seven, discarding as many encounter cards. He finds exactly one Criminal and one Darkness card:

Night Black as Pitch affects everyone for a round. Shrouds +1, evades +1, horror taken +1. That last bit includes Izzie’s investigator ability, should i choose to use it, of course. But the bigger immediate concern are the Irregulars, one of the big enemies that were just shuffled into the deck. When they enter play, they get considerable bonuses… and that Night Black as Pitch stacks with it quite badly. Oh, and he gets +1 fight and evade from the Winchmore House. When all is said and done, Irregulars are 6 combat, 3 health, 6 evade this round. If they hit, they hit for 4 horror. Yikes. And should they ever get to attack, they also shuffle back into the deck, ready to come down buffed again, and healed of course… Oh, and due to the location, while the guy is ready, i can’t move away except through the ability on the location.

Alright, so we know what our primary goal right now is: Handle this Irregulars enemy somehow. If i had a Vicious Blow or Insidious Truths available right now, i’d be tempted to just put everything into one attack, hoping that a 3 damage hit goes through. With only Machete as my weapon, i am much less optimistic. So the safer course of action would be to evade the guy, then take him down next turn when all his buffs are gone and he’s just a dude. I could also consider using the ability on the location but since that doesn’t exhaust the Irregulars, only disengages them, i’d have to use that for both investigators which would cost me four cards.

Okay, after some thinking, here’s the plan. Izzie will engage the Irregulars and try to evade them. If it works, great. We can continue from there. If not, i may have to take the location ability with both investigators. Alright then. Two actions spent, i am facing the evasion test. 3 vs 6, i spend 2 sanity to commit Soul Link from my hand and Manual Dexterity from my discard pile. Night Black as Pitch deals another 2 horror to me, bringing the total cost just for the test up to 4 horror. Damn. That brings me up to 8 vs 6. I decide this is too important to fail to one of the many -3s in the bag, so i also throw in Unexpected Courage, bringing the test to “anything but the autofail”. I do indeed pull a -3, but that is a pass now. Irregulars exhaust, i draw a card from Man Dex (it’s Timely Intervention) and Man Dex shuffles back into the deck. Phew. This better be worth it. I realize i didn’t move this turn yet, so i do that. A random move brings me to Twisted Alleys, the 4 shroud location from earlier. It’s connected to both other locations in play. I immediately spend 2 clues to make sure it stays in play. Then, after a turn that feels like it took forever, i still have one more test to make: Weight of the Centuries, the treachery Izzie drew this turn. Willpower(3) test, if i fail it means damage. Due to Intervention being on call, I just take the test raw, 4 vs 3, and pass.

I decide against trying to poke the Irregulars with a Machete already. There are still those Thugs around which are going to hunt into me this turn. While that only deals a single point of damage, it could interfere with Machete being able to do its thing next turn. And i want to move anyways. Alright, first things first, i seal the Winchmore House with 2 clues. Then, first action, i move into the Independence Square and engage the Thugs. Second action, i swing the Machete against them, 5 vs 2. I hit, they are toast. I spend two more clues, sealing the Square. That’s all three locations in play taken care of. Five to go. My final action is spent investigating, 5 vs 3, which i improve with Deduction and succeed. I collect two clues and draw a card for my investigator ability. It’s Joe’s signature, Detective’s Intuition which triggers to draw yet another two cards, Overpower and ECache.

In the enemy phase, Irregulars ready.

Upkeep draws are Blood Curse and Gather Intel. Joe suddenly finds himself with 9 cards in hand and has to discard Mag Glass to get back to max handsize.

At the end of the round, Night Black as Pitch discards. Quite the eventful round!

Round 5

(1/8 doom)

Izzie draws Lost in the Dark. If she wants to move this turn, she’ll have to take a test or have the move canceled. Not terrible?
Joe’s location is now Rigged to Blow. There’s 2 damage on the line unless he passes an agility test. Passing that test would also give him a free move which i find somewhat attractive right now. While it won’t count for avoiding the gunfire at the end of the turn, it would give me an additional action to deal with the Irregulars if i need it… The only agility icons i have in hand right now are 1 on Gather Intel and a wild icon on the signature. Tossing them just to test 4 vs 2 here seems wasteful, but on the other hand i just had to discard to handsize… I decide to go for it, after last round i need to pick up some momentum again and those Irregulars need to go. I pich both cards, draw -1 and pass. The free move takes me into the Winchmore House where i engage the Irregulars as planned. They are a lot more Regular now but they do still get +1 combat and evade from the location.

I swing the Machete, committing Overpower, at 7 vs 4 and hit. Overpower draws Logan Hastings. Oh right, i allegedly had four allies in my deck. How nice to finally see one. Anyways, second attack, committing the other Overpower, also hits. Irregulars go to the Victory display (actually the first point of Victory i have now) and Overpower draws me Vicious Blow. Again, this would have been really useful a turn or two ago. I could use the third action to move now, but i think i can take a damage this round. So instead i investigate 5 vs 2, pick up a clue and draw a card: Insidious Truths. I am now well prepared for another big enemy. At the end of the turn, the agenda makes me test 2 vs 3, which i fail and take a damage for.

For her first action, Isabelle moves to a random location. Her treachery makes her test for the privilege and i choose to test agility, 3 vs 3. I throw in a Manual Dexterity from my hand and pass, drawing Bandages. The move takes me to A Place to Hide. Not terribly useful, but i do have the two clues left on me to make sure it stays in play. I decide i finally need to get my guns into play, so i take a resource action to get me to 4 resources, then play the Twin 45s with my final action.

No enemies are in play, so i head straight to upkeep which draws a Soul Link and a Perception.

This is what the play areas look like right now:

Round 6

(2/8 doom)

Encounter draws this round are two treacheries.

Isabelle gets Memories Fade To Dust. A test of Intellect(3), and for each point she fails by she has to either drop a clue, discard a random card or take a horror. Those are all bad right now and for her specifically. This is worth a Blood Curse to me, so I take a damage to bring my intellect from 2 to 6 and pass the test.

Joe gets Accelerated Decay which attaches to an asset, threatening to deal increasing amounts of damage when drawing skulls. Unless i discard it to a free trigger ability on the treachery. There’s three skulls in the bag, so this is serious enough that i can’t ignore it. I will just treat it as if it discards my asset straight away. The question is, Mag Glass or Machete? i just discarded my other Mag Glass, so i don’t have a backup right now. Machete is more expensive, but i do hold a second copy and two ECaches in hand right now. So i decide on discarding the Machete to handle the treachery.

Joe uses his first action to investigate the final clue off of the Winchmore House, bringing him to 4 clues, enough to seal two of the four remaining locations. I only need 4 more clues to get everything done. The draw off his investigator ability is Hand-Crank Flashlight. Guess i could have discarded the Mag Glass instead of the Machete after all. Second action is a random move which lands him in a Cramped Passage. Only one investigator can be there at a time, shroud is very low and there is only one clue here. But whenever someone enters the Passage, another clue is placed on it. So it’s an endless supply of clues if we should need them. I spend two clues to immediately pin the location to the board. With the third action, Joe plays out his backup Machete.

While Joe is swimming in Emergency Caches, Isabelle is too poor to even play her Bandages. So she just takes a random move to start the turn and we’ll take it from there.

Izzie finds French Hill, a 6-shroud location with Victory 1 and two clues on it. Thankfully, it has an ability that lowers its shroud by 3 if i didn’t start my turn there… which i didn’t! So this is great. I use Second Sight to investigate here. I spend a point of sanity to commit Timely Intervention from my discard pile, making the test a 6 vs 3 which passes. Timely Intervention reshuffles into my deck and i spend a charge from Second Sight to also pick up the second clue here. Then those get immediately spent to seal the location as well. With my final action, i simply draw a card and it’s Manual Dexterity.

Upkeep draws are Blood Curse and M1911. Joe discards the Hand-Crank to max handsize. Izzie goes to 2 resources, Joe to 3. No enemies around, no end of round effects, so we go straight to the round.

Round 7

(3/8 doom)

Encounter draws are both treacheries again, cards we’ve seen before. Isabelle gets Just Business and has to pass a willpower test to not get hit for 2 horror and randomly moved. I still have a Timely Intervention in my hand, so i take the test raw, 4 vs 3. I draw -1 and pass. Nice. Joe gets Lost in the Dark. If he wants to move this round, he first has to pass a willpower or agility test or take 2 horror. Oh, this will probably not happen. So i suppose he’ll be exposed to gunfire at the end of his turn for not moving and i can just take a bit of a setup turn.

Joe picks up the clue on the Cramped Passage (drawing Scene of the Crime as a reward), then plays Emergency Cache and Logan Hastings. End of his turn he has to test agility, fails and gets shot for a damage. It’s fine, unlike Izzie he can take it.

Izzie finally plays her Bandages. Then takes another random move for her second action. It brings her back to Rivertown, the location where all of this started. As a reminder, it’s a 2 clue, 2 shroud location and if i end my turn here, i have to pass a willpower(2) test or take a horror. Fair enough, i don’t think i need to be scared of that with her. With my final action, i use Second Sight, pass and spend a charge, collecting both clues. Which are then immediately spent to seal the Rivertown. Only one location to go and Joe already holds the clues for it. Unless something goes really wrong, i should be able to advance the act early next round. End of turn, Izzie has to take the willpower test from the location and passes.

Upkeep draws are Ward of Protection and another M1911. End of round, the treachery on Joe discards, so he can move again.

Round 8

(4/8 doom)

Encounter cards! Izzie draws ANOTHER Just Business. Look, at some point it’s no longer “Just” Business, but becomes Serious Business. Anyways, same deal as before. I take the test with Timely Intervention still in hand. This time, i do need to use it to pass the -3 tablet.
And then Joe ALSO draws Just Business. Okay, whatever. I guess that’ll mean that Joe will take 2 horror here, but also that he’ll move randomly… which means he will go straight to the one location that is still missing. But first, i need to fail the test. 2 vs 3 … and i draw a +1. Ridiculous. The one time i would have preferred to fail.

For his regular action, Joe moves to the final missing location, it’s Easttown and we’ve actually not seen it yet. It’s a 3 shroud with 2 clues and two useful abilities that could have come in handy had we seen this earlier. Here’s a shot of the full location grid now (cleaned up a bit for adjacency connection and using arrows where that’s not possible):

Joe spends two of his three clues to seal the Easttown and the act advances.

The back of the act once again has some instructions for us. We are placing some clues on three locations. And we spawn a Hired Thug at the Winchmore House that also gets 2 health extra for the rest of the game and stays in place. Then there is some talk about an Eternity Sentinel, but that thing isn’t in play… yet. Safe to assume that this will come into play once the agenda runs out. Our new objective: Picking up all clues on A Place to Hide, Winchmore House and Cramped Passage. Six clues in total. Well, seven actually…

…because once Joe moves with his second action back to the Cramped Passage, the ability on the location spawns a clue there bringing its clue total up to 3. Guess i am not leaving before this is done. With the third action, he gets to work, picking up a clue (and a Vicious Blow from his deck).

The Place to Hide is 5 shroud now, so i think i’d rather have Izzie go to the Winchmore House and start tangling with the Thugs. They only hit for 1 damage, so the Bandages can just buffer a hit from them this turn should she not defeat them. Izzie moves twice, to the Winchmore House and engages the Thugs. With the third action, she attacks with the pistols. She gets two shots, should both hit, that’s already the Thugs taken care of. The tests are are 3 vs 3 and 2 vs 3 however (because the Thugs reduce my agility by 1) so this will once again require some investment of health, sanity and cards. I take a direct damage (healed by Bandages) to play Blood Curse on the combat test. It passes, dealing the first two damage. Now i want to make sure that the second shot hits as well. I commit Timely Intervention from the discard, taking me to 6 horror on 9 sanity. Cutting it close, but we are almost done here. I also throw in the Manual Dexterity from my hand, so the test is 6 vs 3. I pass and the Thugs are down. I draw Lucky Charm off of my Man Dex and shuffle Timely Intervention back into the deck.

Upkeep draws are Will of the Cosmos and Dorothy Simmons. Joe once more needs to discard to handsize, dropping Dorothy and an M1911.

Round 9

(5/8 doom)

Izzie draws the attention of another enemy, as Arsonists appear at the Winchmore House. Ugh. That’ll take at least another two actions to clean up. Joe gets Weight of the Centuries, which means he will have to take a willpower test at the end of his turn, difficulty equal to number of actions taken, and then take damage for each point failed by. Not much he can do about that, i suppose. Skipping my actions isn’t really an option here either

Joe starts us off, his first two actions picking up the final two clues on the Cramped Passage and drawing a Hand-Crank from his ability. With the final action, he moves out of the now cleared location to avoid getting shot, into Independence Square. The 2 vs 3 willpower test from his treachery fails by two. I let Logan soak one damage and Joe takes the other on his square chin.

Izzie plays out the Lucky Talisman and immediately spends one of its charges to move one horror from her to the charm. Second and third action are engaging the Arsonists and shooting at it. I have two tries from my pistols and i think i will just take the first 3 vs 3 unmodified. It might miraculously hit. And if not, i can boost up the second one. The first shot does indeed fail, so i spend another sanity to commit Manual Dexterity from the discard pile for a 5 vs 3. The shot lands, the Arsonists go down. Man Dex draws me Aleksey (hey where have you been all day) and shuffles back into the deck. At the end of the round, i have to test agility because i didn’t move. I draw my first autofail of the game and get hit for a damage, which the Bandages immediately patch up.

Upkeep draws are ECache for Izzie, another card i sorely missed all game. And Laboratory Assistant for Joe. Joe discards Hand-Crank and ECache to handsize.

Round 10

(6/8 doom)

Alright, i am pretty sure that i can end the scenario this round unless i get stalled by an enemy again. There is only two more locations with two clues each and with the help of Will of the Cosmos that should be relatively easy to do. Let’s see what the Mythos phase has for us… and it’s a pair of enemies. Thugs for both Isabelle and Joe. Not particularly terrifying enemies with their 2 combat and 2 health, but might be just enough to stall me out of finishing this round.

Isabelle uses her Lucky Charm again, moving another horror from herself to the charm. That discards the asset, but it has done its job of healing me for 2. I am back to 5 horror with her which is a lot more comfortable and allows me to keep using my ability without getting in range of getting defeated by an autofailed Just Business. For my first action, i shoot at the Thugs. I only have 2 ammo left, so it’d be nice if the first shot hit so i have one left for another Thug or Arsonist. I commit Unexpected Courage from my discard, bringing me back to 6 horror, but putting the test at 5 vs 2 which passes. Second action investigates the Winchmore House and after passing, i spend the last charge from Second Sight to get both clues. With my final action, i move once, towards the final location we need to clear.

Joe has to take care of his Thug as well, and the Machete does that very cleanly. I even pull an Elder Sign which gives me another resource (on top of the resource from Logan) and a card, Insidious Truths. That’s just overkill at this point, but sure. The final two actions are spent moving, into the Place to Hide where we hopefully can pick up the final two clues next round!

Upkeep draws are Premonition and Psychology Student. Joe has to discard again, Lab Ass and M1911.

Since this is what i strongly assume to be the final round, here’s one last look at the investigator’s play areas:

Round 11

(7/8 doom)

Isabelle’s encounter draw is In Every Shadow, that terrifying card that served up the Irregulars and Pitch Dark Night earlier. It’s considerably more mellow now, only an agility 4 test… but you know what, it’s the final round and before an autofail pops up and annoys me, let’s just Ward of Protection the thing.
Joe gets Memories Fade To Dust, which we’ve also seen before. It’s the Intellect test that threatens to drop clues, discard cards or deal horror. Sure, that’s no problem. For one, Joe might just pass. But even if not, discarding some cards is no big deal. Just for fun, i throw a Perception into the test. I pass and draw Deduction. Perfect.

Before moving into the investigator phase, I use Premonition and see a -1 token. Knowing this, Joe takes the first action and uses Deduction to get the final two clues. The act advances and we move into Resolution 4. Yay, we did it!

Resolution

We only stop running once we no longer hear gunshots. Silence is around us. We are out of breath , but we made it. We survived the Night of Fire.

In our campaign log, we get to record that “the investigators escaped the night of fire”.

As for XP… we have 1 Victory enemy in the Victory display and another Victory location in play. Luckily, the resolution also awards us 2xp for a successful flight, bringing the total up to 4. Not great, but at least we got through!

Now that the scenario is over, i take a quick look at the remaining encounter cards. Turns out that in the 5 cards that are left in the encounter deck, two more Victory enemies were hiding from us. Oh well!

Interlude: An Unknown Benefactor

The next day, we are approached with a package from an unknown benefactor. It could be help or it could be a trap. We have a choice to make…

I can either accept the package or not. If i do, i have to mark another Strange Assistance in my campaign log, along with the one we started with. I decide against it and instead get a campaign log entry that “we declined the offer of help.” I think the decks performed well enough this scenario that i don’t need extra assistance right now, especially not if it comes with ominous campaign log ticks that are sure to come back around on us. For additional context, I actually don’t remember the full specifics of the mechanics from my earlier plays of the campaign, but i do have a faint general idea of what the Strange Assistance will ask of us later. If i remember correctly, it’s not something to avoid at all costs, but when i can do without it, i probably should.

As a result of my choice, i also am instructed to remove all cultists from the chaos bag and add a tablet instead. My bag now has 2 tablets and 0 cultists. Also, 3 skulls and 0 Elder Things.

Spending XP

Joe gets Charisma, as planned. I didn’t really see much in terms of allies this game, but that really shouldn’t be the norm. I almost got completely through Joes deck and only found 1 of 4 allies. At least I didn’t find any of his weaknesses either, right? The final XP goes towards a copy of Counterattack which is simply a solid card that might get us out of a bind. I cut a Scene of the Crime to make room for it.

Now Izzie. I really would have liked for her to pick up a Longbow after the first scenario, to have another weapon alongside her Twins. But that’d leave me with not enough to get some of that essential horror mitigation that makes her go from merely good to amazing. So the Longbow will have to wait. I purchase a Canteen and a Fearless(2), removing a Lucky Charm and an Unexpected Courage.

Now, we are ready to take on the second scenario and meet The Myriad Gentleman.

Intro

I want to do another series of gameplay reports where you can follow along a campaign that I am playing. Basically, a Let’s Play series, but in written form instead of a video.
The challenge is this: Beat Ages Unwound with decks built from chapter 2 only. Or, more likely, reach the final scenario of Ages Unwound, then get clobbered to death there because that’s how every play of this custom campaign has gone for me so far! Or maybe i get clobbered way earlier, who knows. Either way, this should be a good bit of distraction!

Ages Unwound

Ages Unwound is a custom campaign by Olivia Juliet. It has seven scenarios and follows a plot where you get involved in time travel shenanigans and cultist activity. It’s very good. I have played this campaign before, so it’s not a blind play… but i also didn’t dissect this campaign the way i do with the official ones, so i wouldn’t say that i am overly familiar with everything in it either. It’s also been a long while since i last played it.

Some things that make Ages Unwound stand out for me in a way that makes it a good pick for a series such as this are:

• It’s difficult. Like, TFA-tier difficult. I want this to be a challenge and if this ends in me crashing and burning, then that’s a fair enough result too.
• It’s low maintenance. Easy setups, relatively simple mechanics. Ages doesn’t indulge in the sort of overwrought mechanical complexity that some other fan creations (and real talk, the official campaigns at the tail end of chapter 1) are bogged down with. Playing two-handed and also doing a write-up at the same time is already stressful enough without additional tedium.
• It’s novel. Despite its simplicity, it does some things that are notably different from what official campaigns do, making it a unique experience that is worth showing off.
• I really like the campaign and its design. I usually don’t feature custom content on this blog in the same way i do the official stuff because my dissections of the encounter cards always comes with (sometimes scathing) critique as well. That is fine for official stuff that we pay for – but when it comes to free stuff that someone poured their time into with no other expectation than getting a thank you for it, i would feel dirty ending up going over their encounter sets and being like “Meh, boring.” or nitpicking on things i would do differently. Luckily, Ages Unwound features some of my favorite encounter design (both official and fanmade) and i have no issues highlighting something that i like!

Notable mechanics as i remember them to keep in mind for deckbuilding in Ages Unwound are:

• Turn length is all messed up. The concept of time is all screwy and as a result, so is our action economy. Some turns will have 4 actions, some will have 2. Others might have 1 or 5. We might skip a turn to take a bonus turn later. Maybe we don’t draw an encounter card this round, but three next turn. There are going to be tight spots where consistency alone won’t cut it.
• Chunky Elites. While Ages won’t have you fight constantly, there are some real big boy enemies in this campaign that you need to be able to spike.
• Swarm. At the same time, the swarming keyword is a thing, so we got enemies across the whole range.
• Self-sufficiency is good. Not just because the maps might get big which can make splitting up super valuable, but also as a result of the action count per turn being somewhat unreliable. If your fighter ends up with just one action in their round, it pays off if the other investigator can also defend themselves.

Investigators and Decks

For investigators, i will be prioritizing flexibility and go with Joe Diamond and Isabelle Barnes. Izzie is going to be the lead investigator.

Joe Diamond

(This deck on arkham.build)

A pretty straightforward split between combat and seeking, as one would expect from Joe. The deck runs an array of allies, primed for picking up Charisma at my earliest convenience. Aside from the allies, this deck is fairly cheap, Bounty and ECache should easily be able to cover everything. The plan is simple: Find one of the tools, find one of the weapons, do each job at skill 5 and hopefully that’s good enough. Along the way hope that 7 health and sanity is enough to cover for getting pelted by damage and horror from treacheries and scenario effects.

Isabelle Barnes

(This deck on arkham.build)

I’ve been cooking a bit more here, most notably I wasn’t able to resist the lure of Collector + Lucky Cigarette Case. LCC should be pretty spectacular for Izzie, so i hope this works out. I am leaning towards the clue side with this deck at the start, with Second Sight, Will of the Cosmos and Look What I Found all able to help Joe with the clue effort. Cosmic Flame and her signature are the only weapons in the deck right now, but i do plan on picking up a Longbow rather sooner than later. For that reason, there’s also nothing in her handslots. Another thing i plan for is Relic Hunter so i can have two out of LCC, Lucky Charm and Canteen in play. Usually i’d avoid Ward of Protection for Izzie as she needs her sanity for her ability and skills can often do a similar job when they allow skill tests to pass… but Ages does have some real bastard cards in it and having an easy out for them is worth it.

The Campaign

I’ll be playing Standard, two-handed solo. Everything i write will be done immediately after i take an action. Basically, i will constantly switch between taking an action and writing up the consequences and my thoughts as i go into the next action. So expect trains of thoughts, misunderstandings, surprises and all the other good stuff. Obviously that also means i will spoil all of Ages Unwound. It’s basically just like you’d watch a campaign playthrough on Youtube.

Links to the individual play reports:

• Night of Fire
• The Myriad Gentleman
• A World Torn Down
• Unstuck
• A Year To Plan
• A World Torn Down, Again
• Time Runs Out

[EDIT: Hey. BK from the future here! After finishing the campaign, i also did a short deck review. Which you can find here: Post-Campaign Deck Check]

Some Links related to custom campaigns

Want to play this campaign yourself? You can!

The PnP files can be found on Mysterious Chanting.

If you want to send this to a printing service, there are two major options to make this easier for you. US folk might want to look into Inexorable Fate which can streamline the process of ordering from makeplayingcard.com considerably. Outside of the US, the shipping costs from mpc.com are kind of rough, but there is an alternative that is based in Poland. It’s called MBPrint where ordering is simple for any projects that were already uploaded there. This is where i got my cards for Ages and a couple others and i can recommend them.
There are other services, but i can’t comment on them in a way that’d be useful. MPC.com and MBPrint are the two proven ones in the community.

Finally, if you are interested in a review of this fanmade campaign (or others), then you can check out the Karkham Horror blog which covers Ages Unwound and many others.

Cheers o/