I reached the end of my Ages Unwound play with chapter 2 decks. And you know what? While I didn’t quite cross the finish line in the end, getting beaten down and worn out as I headed into the final stretch, the two decks sold themselves well. A lot better than I expected, actually. This is the first full campaign that i played with the new chapter 2 card pools, so i think it’s valuable to have a look back at the decks and the investigators. Did they perform as I expected them to when I made my “Hot Take Edition” reviews of the Core Set, of the Evergreen decks and my Investigator Tier List? Which cards were surprisingly good? Which ones failed to impress as much as i hoped?
Joe Diamond
Here’s the link to Joe’s deck: Joe Diamond Unwound. Note: In arkham.build, you can use the History tab to check out how the deck evolved, so you can get to the level 0 deck there as well as the one that entered the finale. Or any inbetween.
Joe was just super solid throughout. His innate card draw really came through big time and made sure that he not only found his stuff in time, but also that he usually was able to throw cards into tests when it made a difference. Reading over my evaluation of him in the tier list, that all reads still correct to me. I was certainly impressed by his ability to soak, the 7/7 split was doing a lot of work. His card draw was great, he was often discarding to hand size and i even cut my extra card draw that i originally included from his deck. The signature triggered its extra draw a few times, felt nice each time that happened. Overall, he definitely felt a good deal stronger than original Joe to me. I ranked him an A in the tier list, he is probably even hitting the upper bound of that range.
Some choice cards that overperformed are: Bodyguard(2): Each time he showed up, he did excellent work. I was able to wring a lot of value out of this dude, using both his soak and his free 2 damage to good effect. I really liked him and will certainly play him more from now on. Insidious Truths: I never really liked this sort of event that throws a bunch of cards away for just a single attack, but Insidious Truths really did shine a lot in these games. Joe Diamond is kind of the perfect investigator for Truths. It still uses combat to attack, not intellect and Joe has the best combat of any Seeker. It tosses your cards and Joe draws cards without even trying. Finally, the combination with Vicious Blow is nice, especially with the upgraded one where the massive bonus to the test from Truths makes sure that Vicious Blow gets its oversuccess. I think this card will prove to be A LOT worse if i were to put it into literally any other Seeker, but here it was very impressive and nuking that 5 health big boy in the final scenario in one action was an enjoyable moment.
Some choice underperformers: Bounty: Dunno, didn’t really seem to do much for me all campaign. I think it’s likely a fluke, due to all the swarming enemies around that often only had 1 health individually. But i don’t think i ever got to play this for more than 2 resources and even getting 2 wasn’t always guaranteed. Stock Ammo Reload: I mean, it did what it’s supposed to do, so i am not sure i can really call this “underperforming”. But i want to mention it here because only during one of the last scenarios i realized that this can’t put ammo on someone elses gun the way chapter 1’s Extra Ammunition can. I really wanted it to be able to refill Izzie’s Twins that one game and couldn’t.
The deck as a whole worked well. I think i went a bit too heavy on the combat upgrades. Thanks to Insidious Truths working as well as it did, i probably could have skipped the Stock Ammo Reloads and instead kept some extra horror healing in the deck. The second Psychoanalysis could have been nice or keeping the Psychology Student in the deck. I found myself with combat cards stacking up in my hand a few times when all i was looking for was some extra intellect icons to throw into investigations.
I got some raised eyebrows for putting Izzie into S-tier in my tier list. But i have to say, after this campaign, I stand by it. The amount of damage and horror she was able to take was exceptional and even when she was skirting death for a moment, she was able to recover from it very well. I even put Offering Bowls into her deck later on despite her 5 health because she was just shrugging off damage. She dunked on encounter tests left and right while also able to punch way above her weight in combat. I want to highlight her signature pistols which did A LOT of work in the first half of the campaign, dropping Myriad Men with little fuss. Her weakness was also quite manageable, turns out she is able to keep her horror minimal even though i was agressively using her ability and as a result the weakness usually only dealt a point of damage. The recycling part of her ability came up plenty of times as well, from having “Guts for Days” in early games to getting extra uses out of Timely Intervention(3) in later ones. The combo of using Arcane Initiate to keep fishing for Blood Curse and Soul Link in the deck after reshuffling them was also super neat. Fantastic investigator, both fun and dynamic to play and super powerful. As easy for me to latch on to as Winifred was in chapter 1.
Some overperformers: Aleksey Saburov: For Izzie, he’s better than either Jessica Hyde or Peter Sylvester would have been because she does indeed use both the horror and the damage healing parts of Aleksey very well. He’s been a key piece in making sure she survives and i should have played two copies from the start. Offering Bowl: I only added these later on, but maybe Aleksey and Bandages can carry this from the start? Anyway, even if you treat this as a 1xp upgrade to only get once you also have Extra Rations, the effect an early Offering Bowl had on my setup was immense. Resources was the one weak spot of my deck, without drawing an ECache setting up with a weapon/spell, an ally and a support asset took some time or extra resource actions. Bowl instead made that super smooth. I didn’t expect to put this into a 5 health investigator, but this was great! Timely Intervention(3): I knew this was a good card, but i didn’t expect it to be THIS good. Save one test, commit from the discard for 3 icons for the next test, shuffle back, do it again. Scrape By is probably better for other investigators, but for Izzie this card rules. The level 0 version is already good, but the level 3 is on a whole new level.
Some underperformers: Longbow: This is just an awful campaign for Longbow. Like 95% of the enemies in this campaign fall into one of two camps: Swarmers. Or 4+ health. Only scenario 6 had some 3 health enemies (Sheldon’s Finest, Irregulars), but i didn’t draw Longbow in that game :D So yeah. Bad showing, highlighting the exact situations in which this card falters.
Something that performed just like i hoped it would was the Lucky Cigarette Case. Running LCC in Isabelle with Collector was a bit of a gimmick twist to the deck, but i think this worked well enough. The LCC did draw a handful of cards whenever it was in play and the deck size increase didn’t hurt. I feel like LCC helped with redrawing the skills that i shuffled back into the deck quite a bit, but it’s sort of hard to quantify that effect. That being said, a streamlined version without Collector and Relic Hunter that simply uses two copies of Canteen for the accessory slot would work perfectly fine, too.
In terms of upgrade strategy, I think I messed up a bit by removing the clue finding capabilities from her deck completely. I was hesitant of keeping the Second Sights once i had 4 cultists in the bag. That does make sense to me still, but in that case i should have at least kept the Will of the Cosmos around. That would have been super helpful in the final scenario for sure.
Moving on
That was it for this Ages Unwound playalong! Good times were had and i am happy that I both got to show off a cool custom campaign that i deeply enjoy and two good chapter 2 decks that were able to take on the increased challenge that comes from Ages Unwound being a bit of a bastard sometimes :D Now i finally do have the time to check out Children of Blood. I won’t be documenting that in detail like i did this playthrough, but expect some sort of first impressions article in the near future. I’ll be playing that mini-campaign with Tommy and Marie, so hopefully I’ll be able to comment on their capabilities a bit as well once i am done.
We are able to navigate the timestream now and as a result see all of time before us, a magnificent and humbling sight. And behind it, the presence of Aforgomon. Intent on destroying us. What can we even do in this situation?
Woo, once more into the breach! Izzie and Joe reached the end stop of the Ages Unwound journey and will either defeat Aforgomon on its own turf – or perish trying. For setup, we have four sets. Well, actually five — but since we never unleashed chaos, we simply remove the Unleashed Chaos set, just like we did in previous scenarios. Time Runs Out: The scenario specific stuff, a hefty stack of treacheries and monsters that makes up most of the encounter deck in the end. Agents of Aforgomon: Well, duh. Unravelling Time: Some asset hate and discard, not all that bad in the grand scheme of things! Paradox: A set of four haymaker treacheries with big impact. We had this set once before and it made an impression then.
For locations, we have eight locations, each of them in the set in two variants. We are to select one of each at random and put it into play. The others are shuffled up in a stack for use when we need to determine a random location. We did this before in Unstuck, same deal here. Except this time we aren’t creating a circle, but there’s a specific layout that basically resembles a time stream from the past on the left to the future on the right:
We are starting in the middle, in the present on the Fulcrum of Possibilities. All locations are in play revealed, their backsides presumably will have some Veiled-like texts for us. I am actually not sure, i don’t think i ever got that far in this scenario!
Four cards are being set aside, the rest is shuffled up and the setup is done. Easy.
So let’s check out the agenda and act deck.
There is only two agenda cards and the first one has only 3 doom threshold. Seems fishy to me. At the end of the round, some clues are placed on random locations, at least for those few early turns. The act deck is 4 cards deep and the first card already presents us with a 6 clue objective to meet. It also informs us that locations with a resource on them are considered “warded”, but there’s no hint so far as to what that means. Is that good? Bad? How do resources arrive on locations? To quote the flavor text, what can we possibly do here? We’ll find out, i suppose. Six clues is a straightforward enough goal for now!
The token reference is not quite as harmless as it was last scenario, but the fact that we don’t have any Elder Things and a whopping four cultists is still something that’s going to help us out a lot. Those Cultists are -2 now and might even give us extra actions. On the other hand, failing with the -4 tablet will cost an action, but i only have one of those in the bag. The skull scales from -1 to -4 as the act deck progresses which seems fine. Yeah, i should be able to handle this.
Round 1
Isabelle: LCC, Canteen, Meat Cleaver, ECache, Soul Link Joe: 2x Bodyguard, Service Revolver, Mag Glass, Insidious Truths, Stock Ammo, Perception
I am again very happy with Izzie’s hand here. Meat Cleaver, relevant skill, Canteen to get thrashing. LCC to start accumulating value. ECache so i can drop my allies when i draw them.
Joe’s is fine, but to be honest, i expected a seven card mulligan to be a bit better. That being said, double Bodyguard and Service Revolver isn’t a bad hand, considering that i am somewhat deathly afraid of getting killed by something big early on. That’ll allow Joe to pretend to be Daniela for a bit until he hopefully finds Dorothy to start being able to investigate at 4 shroud more comfortably.
Before i get cracking, i probably should start by getting a lay of the land. All locations start revealed, that’s a major information dump right at the start and every bit of advantage counts. So let’s start at the left and just check all of them out. Dawn of the Universe: Whenever i enter it, i get to draw one of six cards. Powerful. If i end my turn there, i get trauma. Do i also get horror and damage? As printed, i don’t. Since this is the last scenario this is pretty inconsequential then unless there are enough other sources of trauma that Isabelle’s 5 health could be threatened. Secrets Long Forgotten: A source for level 0 skills from my collection? Any of them and with no limit to it. Kind of insane, but shroud 6 is of course something real, so this might actually not be in range for me. Days That Never Were: Also allows reaching into the collection, even for upgraded cards. Requires exiling my leveled up cards, though. Might be an interesting option to feed a Bodyguard, Longbow or even a Mag Glass into this. I will also note 3 shroud, so this is easy enough to investigate. Today, A Thousand Times: What does repeat a skill test mean? Do i also repeat the outcome? So if i investigate, i investigate twice? It could potentially double some treacheries as well, of course. But this seems overall beneficial, especially with the chaos bag i have. [Note: I found a clarification from Olivia Juliet on Discord that my interpretation of how this works is correct.] What Could Be: Allows easy travel around, might be useful if the investigators get separated. What Could Never Be: Can’t be Investigated. I don’t have Will of the Cosmos anymore, so i am not sure if i can even get these clues. I hope the scenario doesn’t expect me to clear all locations… The End of All Things: Moving there permanently costs me an asset from play. But getting to a location with 3 shroud and 4 clues could be super helpful especially in the beginning.
Okay, so that makes me think that to get our 6 clues i will either want to shoot for Days That Never Were, Today A Thousand Times and Fulcrum of Possibilities. Or involve The End of All Things somehow.
I’ll start by having Joe investigate Fulcrum. Playing Magnifying Glass and committing Perception, i should be able to get my first clue and draw two more cards. That’ll help me make a plan. Knowing whether i get a second bonus to Intellect or not will decide if i can do the 4-shrouds or if i want to stick to the 3-shrouds. The test is 7 vs 4 … and i start the scenario with a Cultist. I get my action back. Man, this could be really huge throughout the whole scenario. I get the clue and draw two cards: On The Beat and Insidious Truths. That’s not the permanent bonus i’ve been looking for, but On the Beat can give me a real good turn at Today A Thousand Times next round. Three actions left. I investigate Fulcrum again. Isabelle commits Soul Link from her hand, and the test is 8 vs 4. I pass and get the other clue. With my final two actions, i move into Today A Thousand Times and play a Bodyguard. This does open me up to having an encounter card double up on me next round, but the bodyguard can take it for me and i do want to make sure that i am able to clean out that location with On the Beat next round.
Izzie’s turn is simple. She follows Joe to the location, then plays her Meat Cleaver and Lucky Cigarette Case.
Upkeep are Longbow and Vicious Blow. Izzie has 2 resources, Joe has 3.
End of the round, i have to place two clues on two random locations. I randomly pull Dawn of the Universe and What Could Never Be.
Round 2
(1/3 doom) Alright, Ages Unwound. What do you have for me. Please don’t say “Big Scary Enemy”.
Isabelle draws Syzygy. No, not the one from Innsmouth, that wasn’t a thing yet when this campaign was created. We are currently at a Present location, meaning that both investigators get hit for a damage and horror. Ouch. Joe takes this on the bodyguard, Izzie has to take it on the chin. Joe get Grandfather Paradox, a willpower 3 test to prevent 2 horror and an ominous thing he’d have to remember. I do not want to commit my On the Beat here, so i got to test this just 2 vs 3… and because of the ability on the location he has to do this twice. Long story short, he fails both tests and is dealt 4 more horror. And now Joe’s “existence is waning“. Twice. Not a great start! That’s what i get for not respecting the location ability.
Joe goes first again and plays On the Beat. Until end of turn, he’ll test at skill value 8 (including the Mag Glass.) The plan is just to investigate with all three actions. The first one will be duplicated by the location, so it’s four skill tests with 8 vs 4, if i pass all of them, i get all four clues. Simple enough. The first test succeeds with an Elder Sign, so not only does he get a clue and a resource, but also two cards: M1911 and Overpower. None of those are relevant for the current turn, so i just pull the next three tokens: Skull, 0, -2. All passes. I grab all the clues. I now have enough clues to advance the act if i want. Do i want to or do i wait until next round? With a doom threshold of only 3 ticking down and Izzie still having a full turn, i think i can risk it. I spend all my clues and advance the act.
Nothing bad happens. We learn how to “ward” locations, by spending 4 clues and an action at them. Our new goal is warding all locations, meaning i need 8×4 = 32 clues. That’s a lot. Even if i were to gain 3 clues per round, which is already unrealistic, that’d be 11 rounds. Plus the movement, activation costs for the warding and of course fending off the encounter deck’s dickery. Yeah, this is going to be a tall order. This is where it’s going to hurt a lot that Isabelle can not gather clues anymore beyond just testing intellect with a Blood Curse or whatever.
I am only just now realizing that Joe will have to go through another Mythos phase while at this location. That could be rough. Another 4 horror and he’s just straight up defeated. But i can at least move Izzie out. Which has me make a decision now: Do i want to do go over the locations from left to right or from right to left? Left to Right looks a bit better to me, mostly because one of the locations on the right can’t even be investigated. So she moves twice, all the way to the left to Dawn of the Universe. Entering the location lets her pick one of six cards from the top of her deck and draw it. I find Daniel Jameson. For the final action, i play Canteen and use it. End of turn, the location has me mark a mental and physical trauma in the campaign log, then a fifth clue is added to the location.
Upkeep draws are Fearless and Stock Ammo Reload. Joe has to discard to hand size and drops one of his Insidious Truths. Both go to 2 resources.
End of round, two clues are put on Dawn of the Universe and What Could Be. There’s now seven clues on Izzie’s location, it’d be really nice if Joe could get his Deductions sometime soon.
Round 3
(2/3 doom)
Izzie draws an enemy, but it’s not too bad? At least not immediately. Ageless Watchers spawns on the other side of the board and will hunt towards me. Fairly harmless right now, but if i end playing a bunch of events, it’ll grow. There’s an ECache in my immediate future that i probably can’t do without, but otherwise this seems perfectly fine. Not to be outdone, Joe also draws an enemy and it’s also one that spawns somewhere else. Fateweaver puts down doom if it gets to stay. Well, we are in the Witching Hour round, so this wouldn’t even be bad if it got to live through this round, but of course i’ll need to deal with it somehow. It’s not like Izzie got better things to do. It spawns at Secrets Long Forgotten. Here’s how the board looks now:
Izzie wants to take care of the Fateweaver right away. With an advancing agenda ahead of us, having enemies around might be a bad idea. She moves into its location, engages it and swings the Meat Cleaver. This attack costs me a total of 3 horror: One from the cleaver, and two from committing Soul Link from the discard pile. The test is 8 vs 4. I pull -5. A miss. Yikes. Soul Link reshuffles, but this is pretty bad. I use my Canteen to get some of that horror off of me.
Joe moves into the location, engages the Fateweaver, then moves into Dawn of the Universe. This triggers an attack of opportunity which kills the Bodyguard who kills the Fateweaver. That Bodyguard didn’t last long, but at least that takes care of the monster and i had him soak for 2 damage and 2 horror. Not bad at all, actually. For moving into Dawn of the Universe, i get to search my top 6 cards for something i want… and i find my personal weakness which has ultra-narrow text just for this occasion. The search is canceled and i have to pick Dead Ends. Hilarious. End of turn, Joe marks a mental and physical trauma in the campaign log, then spawns clue #8 on the location.
In the enemy phase, Ageless Watchers move into What Could Be.
Upkeep draws are Shadowmeld. And Pursued. Joe’s other weakness. Oh dear. He also has to discard to handsize, losing a Stock Ammo Reload. Both have 2 resources now.
End of round, two clues each go on random locations, this time it’s Today A Thousand Time (hey, we just cleared that!) and What Could Never Be (which now has 6 clues that we may just be unable to get at all).
Round 4
(3/3 doom) -> (0/3 doom)
Time to advance the agenda.
Ooooh, it’s a repeating agenda! That explains so much. And it means i don’t need 32 clues after all, i just need to do what? Get three locations warded so the failure condition that gets me to R1 doesn’t trigger? And from then on just do as best i can? Okay, 12 or 16 clues sounds like a much more reasonable goal! A random location gets removed from the board and placed under the agenda. It’s Today A Thousand Times. The agenda resets and we are back to our doom threshold of 3. Time for encounter cards!
Isabelle draws Watch You Break. Getting a random weakness in the final scenario doesn’t sound so bad and Isabelle doesn’t reshuffle her deck so there’s no longterm consequences beyond just being basically a fancy encounter card. There’s three cards this could hit. Amnesia would be pretty rough, but still preferable to a doom, i think. The other two, Paranoia and Syndicate Obligations, are mostly fine. I head to the Mythosbusters Discord to employ a highly scientific method to determine the random weakness to draw here:
Paranoia it is. I draw the weakness and lose all my resources. Both of them.
Joe’s draw is from the category Big Scary Monster. The Blessed of Aforgomon is not on the board, it’s not engaged, it just kinda hovers around and can be attacked by anyone. Five health to chew through. Until i do, all turns lose one action. Yikes, talk about a priority.
When upgrading Joe’s deck after the last scenario i put upgraded Vicious Blows into the deck and mused about the potential of dealing 5 damage with the skill on an Insidious Truths. Let’s find out if that ends up becoming a real thing! Joe plays Insidious Truths for an attack on the Blessed, discarding Stock Ammo Reload and the M1911 for it. I also commit Vicious Blow(2). The test is 4+4+2 = 10 vs 3. Even a -5 would lead to an oversuccess by 2, so this is really just “everything but the autofail”. I pass with a 0. Four cards invested, but the 5 health monster is down in one attack. However, the Insidious Truths is gobbled up by the Ageless Watchers as a swarm card. Annoying, but can’t really be helped. What also can’t be helped is having to get rid of Pursued. There’s swarm enemies about, Joe is already at 4 horror, i can’t just randomly take more horror just for engaging stuff. So the final two actions discard Pursued. For ending his turn on his specific location, he marks another physical and mental trauma and places clue #10 on the location.
I have a fun idea for Izzie. I move to Days That Never Were and use the location ability to swap an upgraded card in my hand for any other of the same (or lower) level. I hand in my Longbow and collect a Blood Curse(3) instead. Should be fun to have one of those as Isabelle. She then takes a resource action, as Emergency Cache would grow the Ageless Watchers to a point where i can no longer defeat them with an attack from the cleaver + Blood Curse.
In the enemy phase, the Ageless Watcher moves to the Fulcrum, now in an adjacent location to Isabelle. If everything goes to plan, i will attack them next round.
Upkeep draws are Timely Intervention and Dorothy Simmons, both great draws. However, Joe just spent his last resources on the event, so he only goes to 1 resource this upkeep. Izzie goes to 2.
Random clues go on the two locations on the far ends of the board, Dawn of Universe and End of All Things. Yep, Dawn has 12 clues on it now.
Round 5
(1/3 doom)
Isabelle gets Rewritten Existence, which switches around her skill values while in play. Honestly, not that bad for her. It will notably result in -1 skill value when fighting this round, but the obscene amount of wild icons on Blood Curse(3) should cover for that. Joe draws Reality Undone and that one is nastier. Both investigators have to test willpower. As one would expect, Izzie passes but Joe fails. I can’t lose my Mag Glass right now, horror would kill him, two extra encounters are out of the question. So he simply takes 3 damage.
Izzie first. She moves into the Fulcrum, engages the Watchers automatically and hits them with the Cleaver. I pay the horror to deal extra damage and i commit Blood Curse(3). The test is 9 vs 3 and succeeds with a Cultist. That means the Watchers are dead, all swarm cards return to their rightful owners, i heal the horror i dealt to myself and i get an action back. Oh, and i draw a card with Lucky Cigarette Case, a Ward of Protection. With my final two actions, i play Emergency Cache and Daniel Jameson.
So what do i do with Joe? I am not really feeling the option to investigate 5 vs 4 here. That feels like just throwing away actions on something that isn’t even 50/50 to succeed. One idea could be to just take two resource actions and play Dorothy and then start on the clues properly next round. But i think the better course is moving to the 3 shroud location next to Joe and investigate there. Trigger his investigator ability, maybe find a Deduction or ECache. So that’s what i do. Move to Days That Never Were. Investigate 5 vs 3, which succeed with +1. I gain the clue and draw a card, Overpower. With my last action i use the ability that lets my trade one of my upgraded cards for another from my collection. (It’s Limit once per game, so each investigator may use it). I exile my Bodyguard and collect an Old Compass instead. I am slightly worried about surviving and getting the Bodyguard to the table would be huge, but i don’t have the resources for him anyway, so no sense fretting over that. The compass should however be a godsend in helping me investigate as it stacks with both Mag Glass and Dorothy.
Upkeep draws are Manual Dexterity and M1911. My investigators are still poor, at 3 and 2 resources.
Random clues go to the two locations i have investigators at: Fulcrum and Days That Never Were.
Round 6
(2/3 doom)
The agenda advances again next round and all we have to show so far is one piddly clue.
Isabelle draws Syzygy again. Seems to me like lots of encounter cards in this deck affect both investigators. Joe is currently at a Past location, so he loses an action. Izzie is in the Present, so she takes an damage and a horror, which both go on Daniel. Joe draws an enemy, the Fateweaver we’ve also seen before. It spawns at Secrets Long Forgotten, adjacent to both Joe and Izzie.
Isabelle starts us off by hopefully managing to defeat the enemy this time, so Joe can spend his round investigating. She moves into Secrets Long Forgotten, engages the aloof Fateweaver, then smacks it with the Cleaver, spending the horror for extra damage. No commits, i trust in Daniel and Timely Intervention to bail me out as necessary. The 5 vs 4 fails, but the 6 vs 4 on the retry succeeds and the Fateweaver is dead. Cleaver pays back the horror i just spent.
Joe plays Old Compass and uses it to investigate his location. The 6 vs 2 passes and he gets a clue. Also, he draws a card, my second Mag Glass. The third action also investigates. An autofail pops up, but thanks to the Compass, Joe also can retry his test and he passes on the second go. That’s clue #3.
Upkeep draws are Manual Dexterity and Emergency Cache. That Cache is very welcome actually, it hopefully will allow me to get Dorothy to the table. Izzie now has 4 resources, Joe 1.
Random clues go on Joes current location Days That Never Were and on Dawn of the Universe which now has thirteen clues on it. I hope neither of them disappears in th upcoming agenda advance.
Round 7
(3/3 doom -> 0/3 doom)
The agenda flips, a random location is purged and then the agenda resets. We’ve done this before, so we know the drill now. The random location is What Could Never Be. That’s the one i wasn’t able to investigate anyway, so i am not sad to see it go! Still, clock’s ticking and i’ve not put down a single ward yet. Here’s how the board is looking now:
A bit of a concern: Disappearing random locations could cut off locations from the rest of the board. Once i got my clues, i will also have to be able to actually reach the locations i want to ward. Fulcrum and What Could Be both have movement enabling abilities on them, but that only helps a limited amount.
For her encounter card, Isabelle draws Watch You Break. Oh, this again? This now has a 50/50 chance to give me Amnesia and discard my hand, so i Ward of Protection it. Joe gets Memories Fade to Dust, a treachery i am well familiar with by now. I commit my spare Mag Glass to the test and the resulting 5 vs 3 passes exactly.
Joe investigates his location and the 6 vs 2 passes. He collects a clue and a card: Deduction(2)!. Ah, now that’s more like it. We’ll likely use this next turn. For now, i just investigate normally again since there’s only 2 clues left on this location. He gets the clue. With the final action, he moves into Dawn of the Universe. The location trigger lets him draw one of the top 6 cards of his deck and finds the second Deduction this way. Nice. Big things ahead! End of the turn, he has to mark a physical and mental trauma again, he now has 3 each. Not terribly dangerous for Joe at this point, he can still stay in this location for 3 more rounds.
Izzie joins Joe at that location and in turn also gets to pick something from the top of her deck. She grabs Aleksey Saburov and then also plays him for her second action. With her final action, she spends four of Joe’s clues to put a resource on the Dawn of the Universe. That’s the first location warded and this made sure that our nice battery of clues here doesn’t get swallowed up by the next agenda advance. For ending the turn at the Dawn of the Universe, Izzie also has to mark traumata in the campaign log, she has two each now.
Upkeep draws are Blood Curse and, for Joe, another Emergency Cache. Joe now has 10 cards in hand and has to discard down to handsize again. I make the decision to commit to Joe only investigating now and discard both the M1911 and the Service Revolver. Isabelle now has 1 resource, Joe has 2.
Random locations to get clues are Secrets Long Forgotten and Fulcrum of Possibilities.
Round 8
(1/3 doom)
Izzie draws Weight of the Centuries. I don’t really fear this card, but it does have the ability to hurt me badly if i autofail it. Still, i don’t think i am going to play around the tentacle just because of it. Joe draws “Am I Real?” and that is actually a good question, because his existence is indeed waning. A willpower(6) test is of course laughable for Joe and even if i were to throw three icons into the test from Izzie, then i could easily still end up taking a horror and trauma here. That being said… due to the location effect, i am already at 3 trauma and going to 4 here would limit my time that i can spend on the location even more. Not to mention that i don’t know if there are more copies of this in the deck. So i should try to fight this as best i can, even though i don’t really care about exiling part of my deck here. Isabelle commits Blood Curse, taking a direct damage in the process just so Joe can test 6 vs 6. He draws Cultist, which is a -2. He has to exile the top two cards of his deck (Fingerprint Kit, Perception). But doesn’t get further penalties for now. Am I Real does have surge and so Joe also has to draw Accelerated Decay which he places on his Magnifying Glass. While it’s there, skulls will hurt Joe now.
Joe investigates with the Compass, committing both copies of Deduction(2). The test is 10 vs 3, so again even a -5 would not stop the oversuccess. I draw the -4 and thus gain 5 clues. I also draw a Vicious Blow. I investigate again with the Compass and the 6 vs 3 also passes, netting me my seventh clue. With the final action, Joe leaves the location and moves into Days That Never Were so Izzie can lock that one up as well.
Izzie does just that, moving to follow Joe, then uses her second action to spend 4 of his clues to ward Days That Never Were. For the third action, she takes a resource. End of her turn, she has to test for her treachery, testing 4 vs 3. I commit Fearless and pass, losing the one horror i still had on me and getting to trigger my Lucky Cigarette Case to draw a card. I get my second Timely Intervention.
Upkeep draws are Offering Bowl and Counterattack. Both go to 3 resources.
Random clues go on our current location and on What Could Be.
Here’s a look at both the board and the player areas:
Round 9
(2/3 doom) I should be able to lock up the third location this round, meaning that i am now officially further into the scenario than on my first two tries. Well, if i survive the Mythos phase.
Isabelle draws Grandfather Paradox. Like Joe earlier, she is threatened to have her existence wane. She does however pass the willpower test, so nothing happens. Joe draws Memories Fade To Dust, for what feels like the 6th to 8th time this campaign. This is actually a solid attempt at stalling me out, as all three of the options on the card are bad for me right now. Izzie commits one of her Timely Interventions into the test, so Joe tests 7 vs 3 and passes with a tablet (-4). Had this failed, i would’ve needed to lose random cards from hand and might have had to drop Dorothy which would have been annoying.
Mythos phase went well, so forwards we go. Joe plays Dorothy, then investigates. He passes and gets his fourth clue, even gets a payout from Dorothy for it. His ability draws a card: The other Dorothy. Turns out i shouldn’t have worried. To be honest, i kinda forgot i was running two of them. With the third action, Joe moves into Fulcrum of Possibilities.
Izzie follows Joe and then spends his four clues to ward the Fulcrum. That’s location #3. That’s the minimum done, maybe i can get another one. With her final action, she plays Offering Bowl, then pokes Aleksey with it for some resources.
Upkeep draws are Lethal Curiosity and Counterattack. I have to resolve Lethal Curiosity, so i take a horror to commit Fearless from the discard pile into the willpower test.
I pull the tentacle. The test autofails. That means taking 4 damage because i do not have clues to drop here. I can have Aleksey and Daniel both have soak one damage which discards both of them. Woah. Then Izzie has to take the other two on the chin, bringing her to 4 damage to her 5 health. Oh shit. Drawing her personal weakness at any point would kill her now. I need to find an Extra Rations before that happens!
Joe has to discard to handsize, discarding an ECache. Izzie goes to 5, Joe to 2 resources.
Random clues go on Days That Never Were (where we just came from) and Fulcrum of Possibilities (where we are now).
Round 10
(3/3 doom) -> (0/3 doom)
The agenda advances and gobbles up a random unwarded location. The End of All Things, on the far right of the board, is removed. Then the agenda resets.
Isabelle draws Chains of Aforgomon, a treachery that is well able to kill her now. I commit Manual Dexterity from hand to test 5 vs 4. I pull a Cultist, which is -2, so i save myself with Timely Intervention. This turns the test into an oversuccess, meaning i get two cards out of it (one from Man Dex, one from LCC): Ward of Protection and Longbow. Joe starts questioning himself again. Am I Real? With both Timely Interventions in the discard, I have no useful commits left, so Joe just has to test 2 vs 6 here. He draws -1, so the top 5 card of his deck are exiled. He actually only had 5 cards left. Much worse however: He takes a direct horror, putting him at 6 horror to his 7 sanity. And his deck is empty, meaning he will need to reshuffle and take a horror soon. Which will kill Dorothy. One of the exiled cards is Psychoanalysis by the way, one of the ways Joe has left to heal his horror… Oh, and he also has to take his fourth mental trauma. That is not all however, as the encounter card surges into another one. Entropic Shade. Big Scary Monster! It has a wild ability that attaches copies of Accelerated Decay to assets you use to hurt it. And that’s something that Izzie can not afford right now.
So if i were to kill this thing with the Cleaver, i’d have to throw it away afterwards because Accelerated Decay deals a damage whenever the owner of the asset pulls a skull. And that’d outright kill Izzie. The alternative then would be to have Joe basic punch it, using Vicious Blow(2) to hopefully deal 3 damage. And then Counterattack can do the rest. Or i can have Izzie do the punching, that way i can use Blood Curse(3) from my discard to deal the final point. That is actually a good way to do this! So. First action, Izzie engages the enemy. Second one, punch. I spend a horror to commit the upgraded Blood Curse. Joe commits Vicious Blow. That puts the test at 3+5+2 = 10 vs 5. I commit the Long Bow, that way the -5 and -4s won’t stop the oversuccess from happening either. I draw a 0. The punch deals 3 damage, Blood Curse the fourth. The thing is defeated, the skill reshuffles. LCC draws me a card, a Blood Ward. Oh! This can heal me as soon as we draw another monster! I might be back in the game. With my final action, i play Shadowmeld.
We still have a job to do. Joe investigates, a 7 vs 3 with the Compass. I pull a skull which passes, but also deals a damage to me due to the Accelerated Decay on the Mag Glass. That’d damage #4 on him now. I get a clue and draw a card for my ability, which reshuffles my deck and deals a horror to Joe. Dorothy takes it and is discarded. I draw Perception. For my last two actions, i play Emergency Cache and Dorothy Simmons again. I want her around for the intellect, but honestly even the one point of horror soak matters right now.
Upkeep draws are Offering Bowl and Mag Glass. Well, the Bowl is kinda worthless right now, but the Mag Glass means i can replace my rotten one next round. I’ll use the discard ability on the Accelerated Decay at the next player window that opens, and since such a player window opens before pulling the token for a test, i am not in danger of getting a skull with this thing in play. I go to 4 and 3 resources.
Clues go on Secrets Long Forgotten and What Could Be, the two only locations left unwarded. I don’t plan on leaving the Fulcrum until i have 4 clues to spend, though.
Round 11
(1/3 doom) We are hanging on by a thread, but we are hanging on!
Izzie is hoping for an enemy, but gets Rewritten Existence again. Sure. Joe draws Accelerated Decay. No. Oh no no no. I was just happy that i got rid of it! Now i have to attach it either to Dorothy or the Compass. I suppose i have to go with Dorothy, that way if i have to use her to soak horror, the Decay is gone too.
Joe can investigate in peace. The test is 7 vs 3 and if i pick up three clues here, i can ward another location next round. I pull -5, Elder Sign and -5. Two of the three tests fail, so i only get 1 clue. Wow. The one that passed did so with an Elder Sign, so i am at least getting a resource and two cards in addition to the clue. The cards i draw are Stock Ammo Reload and Vicious Blow. Oh right, my guns are back in circulation.
Izzie doesn’t really have anything useful to do and drawing cards is too dangerous right now. If i draw the weakness before i can use Blood Ward to heal myself, i am dead. Sooo… basic investigating it is! I move to Days That Never Were because the shroud is only 3 there. Then i investigate and commit Timely Intervention from my discard pile. I use the canteen to wipe away my horror. Even if this 5 vs 3 fails, i did at least shuffle back my Timely. It passes. With a cultist. So i not only get a clue, but also get my action back from the token effect. Not sure what to do with that action though. I guess i just move Izzie back into the Fulcrum, to stand next to Joe again.
Upkeep draws are Izzie’s Twins and Deduction(2). Right, those are back in the deck too. That could be useful. Both investigators go to 5 resources.
Random clues go on the same locations as last round.
Round 12
(2/3 doom)
Isabelle draws the Chronophage. That’s an enemy! Good. Clawing myself out of a pit here. Joe gets the Chain of Aforgomon, which can deal up to 4 damage. He’s at 4 out of 7 damage right now, so this is serious. Izzie can at least throw in a Manual Dexterity. Joe has two Counterattacks to commit for +1 each. I consider holding one back, but if i die here because i was holding back a card i’d be too annoyed with myself, so both it is. After all that, the test is still only a 6 vs 4. I pass with a +1. Phew.
First things first, Isabelle triggers an attack of opportunity by drawing a card. I cancel that attack with Blood Ward and heal 2 damage from her. The drawn card is Fearless. I attack with the Meat Cleaver and take 2 horror: one for activating the cleaver, one for committing Timely Intervention from the discard pile. Joe throws in a Vicious Blow(2). That makes the test a 12 vs 4 which easily oversucceeds and sends the Chronophage to the victory display. The Timely reshuffles and i draw a card from Lucky Cigarette Case, an ECache that i am unlikely to need. with my final action, i draw another card: Aleksey Saburov. Now that is a much more welcome sight.
Joe investigates with Deduction(2). The test does oversucceed and he does get 3 clues, however it succeeded with a skull, meaning that Accelerated Decay deals a damage. I could either take it on Joe, as his damage #5. Or i could take it on Dorothy and defeat her, getting rid of Accelerated Decay in the process. I decide to take it on myself, i somehow feel strangely safer with a point of horror soak in play. I get to draw a card for my ability, an Insidious Truths. With the final two actions, Joe moves into What Could Be and spends 4 clues to ward it.
Upkeep draws are Soul Link and Vicious Blow.
Random clues go on Dawn of the Universe and What Could Be, but i suspect this doesn’t matter because it’s time to advance the agenda one last time now.
Round 12
(3/3 doom) -> (0/7 doom)
The agenda advances again, and this time there is no need to randomly determine a location, as there is only one unwarded location left. Secrets Long Forgotten goes bye-bye. Now all locations in play are warded, so the conditions are met to go to the next stage of the scenario and advance both the act and agenda.
Three things happen as the act deck advances. One: New locations are introduced, The Past, The Present and The Future. They are connected among each other and to the locations that belong to that time period. So Dawn of the Universe and Days That Never Were are connected to The Past. Fulcrum to The Present. And What Could Be to The Future. Here’s how the board looks now:
Two: Each investigator has to engage a version of themselves, represented by an enemy card that spawns the top card of each investigator’s deck as a copy of it. Isabelle’s clone is a 3/4/4 that hits for 2 damage and 1 horror. Joe’s clone is a 4/4/2 that hits for 1 damage and 2 horror. That seems manageable? At least if the upcoming encounter draws don’t add further enemies on top.
Three: We get a new objective. Finding eight clues and spending them at the end of the round. Since all clues in play got wiped, both the ones on locations and the ones we had left, we are going to have to grab those clues from the new Past/Present/Future locations.
We also get a new agenda which offers us 7 doom worth of time to get this done. Actually, there is also another act card behind the current one, so time seems rather limited. If i manage two clues per round, that’ll leave three rounds for whatever waits on the final act. Considering that there’s enemies to deal with, i wonder if 2 clues per round is even a realistic average. Going to depend on how those locations look once i reveal them, i guess. As a final detail, we are informed that Fate treacheries can’t be cancelled or discarded from play. The only Fate treachery we’ve seen so far is Am I Real?, so i have to assume that this refers to something we’ve not seen yet and will probably come into play for the last act, should we reach it.
So… encounter cards! This better not stack too badly with the Yourself clones or all of this is fairly moot anyway.
Isabelle draws a Fateweaver which spawns at The Present. Well, that’s a problem. Move, Engage, Fight already would take my whole round even if i didn’t already have an enemy in my face. So unless I manage to get extra actions from cultist tokens while fighting Izzie’s engaged clone, that Fateweaver is going to drop a doom this round. And then still require my attention next round. Joe draws Memories Fade To Dust #3491. I test intellect, committing Perception and pass. With a skull. So that’s another point of damage. I can’t keep doing this, this time i have Dorothy take the damage for me and get defeated. That sucks. But i do pass and Perception draws me an M1911.
Alright, what do i do now? I see two lines of play here. The first one has just every investigator deal with their own copy of Yourself. Izzie would hit hers twice with the cleaver, then either play Aleksey or move up towards the Fateweaver. Joe would need to dump his hand into Insidious Truths plus Vicious Blow, then have two more actions. The alternative would be to use Shadowmeld on Izzie’s clone, then move Izzie to Joe and have her attack the Joe clone with Cleaver + Vicious Blow. That’d leave her own clone still on the board, but Joe would have a full round now to move and investigate twice. That’d leave the Izzie clone still on the board as a future problem, but Joe would get to work on the clues right away. And i think i need to just take every risk now, otherwise i am sure to doom out.
Okay, let’s put this plan into action. Izzie uses Shadowmeld on her clone. The test would be 4 vs 3, but i commit Fearless and the Offering Bowl to make it 7 vs 3. I pass with a -4. Close one, but it worked. I also only now realize that i can spend a charge from Shadowmeld here to save an action on moving! Fantastic! Izzie’s clone stays back while Izzie herself joins Joe. I also heal a horror for Fearless. I swing the Meat Cleaver at the Joe clone, committing Soul Link from Isabelle and Vicious Blow from Joe. The test is 3+2+3+2 = 10 vs 4. A -5 would ruin the oversuccess, so i also throw in the Twin 45s. I pass with a -3 and the fake Joe is gone. I also draw a card from LCC, a Cosmic Flame. Cleaver heals a horror back that i had to spend on attack, so Izzie is back to 2 horror on her. With the final action, she plays Aleksey. Slight misplay: I should have done that before the attack, that way he could have soaked the Soul Link or Cleaver horror for me. Hopefully won’t matter, i am much more concerned with my health than my sanity. I do however use my Offering Bowl to collect two resources and let Aleksey tank that.
[EDIT: BK from the future here. Reading this back now after the fact, i am realizing a much more serious misplay here. The bonus move from the Shadowmeld would have enabled me to move towards the Fateweaver instead with two actions left. Enough to then engage and defeat the thing before it can drop doom. Joe would have had to deal with his clone on his own then and would not have gotten to investigate, so who knows what would have happened… but this is definitely something i did not consider in the moment!]
Joe now moves into The Future. And honestly, the location is almost underwhelming considering all the buildup. It’s a 4 shroud with 2 clues. If i start my turn there, i have to discard a card and draw a new one. Sure. Fair enough. With my remaining actions, i investigate twice here. Ideally i can get those two clues before having to move onto the next location next round to deal with the doom spammer. Thanks to the Compass, the test is 5 vs 3. Not great, maybe i should have kept Dorothy around and just trusted to not draw any further skulls. The first attempt fails, even on the Compass-enabled repeat. However, the second attempt passes, with a cultist. That hands me another action, so i try again. And pass with another cultist! Ooookay. I pick up both clues and a card (Stock Ammo Reload). With the action i now still have left, i move into The Present. And this location is a bit more interesting than The Future:
Basically, it allows weaving one of Joe’s actions into Izzie’s turn if that is beneficial for some reason. I don’t see a good use for that right now, but who knows. More relevant: Shroud 3 and 4 clues. That’s good.
In the enemy phase, Izzie’s shadow clone readies. Also, the Fateweaver poops out a doom onto The Present. Yuck.
Upkeep draws are Meat Cleaver and Deduction. Deduction is literally the god draw, this couldn’t have been a better card for me right now! This could make up for the doom at least! Joe does have to discard to hand size, dropping an Emergency Cache.
Round 13
(2/7 doom)
Uneven Acceleration for Isabelle. I am supposed to pull a token and then either get one, two or three additional encounter cards. Yeah no. This is exactly the sort of thing i was thinking of when i put Ward of Protection in this deck. I cancel it. Joe draws Entropic Shade. Not another 4 health enemy! Ugh, this is so much to chew through! I should have brought Hypnotizes. *sigh* The beast engages Joe.
Okay, let’s see. Three enemies on the board. The Fateweaver has to die. And Joe still has a job to do as well. Izzie could move into the location with her clone, evade the clone plus bonus move to Joe, then engage the Fateweaver. That’d leave Joe with the job of killing both the Shade and the Weaver. Not great. Better sequencing is the other way round. Have Joe kill the Shade. Engage the Fateweaver with the last action. Izzie can then move and evade-move into Joe’s location and attack the already engaged Fateweaver. Sounds like a plan?
Joe attacks the Shade with Insidious Truths, discarding both an Overpower and Stock Ammo for it. I commit Vicious Blow. This all totals up to 10 vs 5. It passes and the Shade is dead. With the second action, i investigate with Compass and Deduction. 7 vs 2 oversucceeds as well, netting 3 clues and a card. That card is On the Beat. Not bad, actually. With the third action, Joe engages the Fateweaver to pull it down for Isabelle.
Now, Izzie’s turn. First action move into Fulcrum where the Yourself clone engages me again. Second action, Shadowmeld. I commit Soul Link from the discard pile (Aleksey takes half of the burden for that) and oversucceed my test, evading the enemy and moving up to The Present. Soul Link reshuffles, then LCC draws me Extra Rations. Finally, i swing the Meat Cleaver at the Fateweaver. Hey, that rhymes. Joe commits Overpower, Izzie commits her spare Cleaver from the hand and the resulting 9 vs 4 autofails. Ah fuck. The Fateweaver lives and i am all out of actions.
In the enemy phase, Fateweaver lays down another doom. Yeah, i think that’s probably game. Let’s see how this plays out, though. The Weaver attacks Izzie for 1 damage and 1 horror. Aleksey can take the damage, but for the horror i have to make a choice. Either i take it on myself where it would be horror #6 or i sacrifice Aleksey here. Having 6 horror on me means that my personal weakness which still hasn’t shown up would deal 3 direct damage to me, for an insta-kill. On the other hand, i don’t see myself surviving this long without Aleksey. I take the horror on myself. I just have to trust.
Also in the enemy phase, the Izzie clone readies at the Fulcrum.
Upkeep draws are Loner and Service Revolver.
Round 14
(4/7 doom)
The beatdown will continue until morale improves. Izzie draws The Chain of Aforgomon which comes after her health again. She’s currently at 2 damage, so while this could kill me, it’s at least not likely to. I commit Manual Dexterity and Extra Rations and pass by exactsies. Man Dex draws me a Soul Link. More enemies to the board. At least the Ageless Watchers which Joe has drawn will spawn on the other side of the board. That being said, the board is small and Dawn of the Universe on one side and What Could Be on the other are just two locations away. I choose to spawn them at What Could Be because i plan to move into the other direction with Joe now.
Aleksey heals a horror at the start of Izzie’s turn and i will desperately need that bit of horror soak. Swinging Meat Cleaver with Soul Link is going to cost 2 horror upfront after all… but what am i supposed to do? Attack with 5 vs 4 isn’t really going to work well. The 8 vs 4 however passes with a tablet which is -4. The Fateweaver is finally down. What now though? If i move down to the clone and engage it, i won’t be able to kill it in one swing. I could evade it, but that’d still mean that the Ageless Watchers hunt into me which isn’t great either. I can’t stay here because that’d mean that the clone hunts into me. I don’t know. Maybe we just move on to The Past and hope that we can advance the act and that this will cause the enemies to go away? As good a plan as any, to be honest. Isabelle plays Loner, then uses it to move into The Past. There, she plays Cosmic Flame for the last of her resources. A way to attack without using horror is welcome. Actually, this is a way to attack that allows me to commit Fearless from the discard, maybe even netting a horror heal in the process. Anyway, here’s The Past:
If i read this correctly, this activated ability allows me to reset the scenario to the start? Nah. I appreciate the thought, but i am not doing that. I will say that this makes the whole thing of getting trauma and weaknesses during this scenario a bit more spicy, but i just don’t want to play the same scenario twice. I’m tired, boss :D I think this already went as well as i could expect it to go with these decks, restarting the scenario only to get then swarmed by enemies in the first few rounds would just spoil the good time i am having with this right now. The Forced is kinda cool, though! Potentially could be quite powerful even. Shroud 4 is also manageable, maybe i actually get to advance the act after all!
Joe will need to get that last clue from The Present before moving on. I will keep that On the Beat in my hand for the final location next round, so i just investigate 5 vs 2. I pass with a cultist, so i get the clue and my action back. And a card for being Joe, of course. And that card is Pursued, the weakness that deals horror to him whenever an enemy enters his location. Which puts me into an awkward position. Thanks to that bonus action from the cultist, i could actually move into The Present, play On the Beat and investigate twice. If i pass both tests that’d mean i’d get to advance the act this round. However, any horror will kill Joe right now, no questions asked. Ah, screw it. At this point we are so unlikely to win, safe and conventional play is just going to see me doom out. I just have to hope i won’t draw an enemy next round. Joe moves into The Present, plays On the Beat and investigates twice. The test is 8 vs 3, so anything but the autofail. I pass both tests and get the clues. I even pull another cultist, so i have another action. With it, i play the M1911, replacing the Mag Glass. I expect that this last act is going to be some sort of final boss fight, i feel like i investigated way more than enough already this scenario!
Enemy movement happens, bringing the Fake Izzie to Days That Never Were and Ageless Watchers to The Future. I intentionally moved them in a way that would split them, so i have the option of attacking one without having the other hunt into me afterwards.
Upkeep draws are Bandages and Bodyguard. Bodyguard is actually the last card in Joe’s deck as i just now realize, meaning i need to play Bodyguard before drawing the next card… otherwise i die from the horror on the reshuffle. I go to 1 resource for Izzie and 2 resources for Joe. Notably not enough for a Bodyguard. Oh.
End of round, i spend 8 clues to advance the act. Okay, let’s see what this is about.
We are not placing doom on the agenda anymore! We are so back. Well, kinda. We still need to “weather the storm”. What that means is that the four locations that the agenda ate up during the first part of the scenario do all have a backside. For the next four rounds one of those backsides is revealed and we have to deal with the fallout. If there’s enemies we need to kill them, if there’s locations we need to clear them. Well shit, maybe i tossed that Mag Glass too early. (Sadly no removal of enemies in play as i hoped though. Those Hunters are still active.)
Round 15
And here’s the Storm we have to weather this round:
Ahahaha, what the fuck. Okay, so this is in addition to the regular encounter cards, right? So eight encounters this round? Suuuure. If one of them is an enemy that spawns on us, then Joe is immediately defeated, but i guess most enemies in this scenario do actually spawn somewhere else. Alright, let’s rip the bad-aid off. Three cards for Izzie, one at a time.
The above image has five cards, what gives? Let me explain. The first card drawn is Reality Undone. Izzie tests and fails, discarding her empty Canteen. Then Joe also fails and has to draw two encounter cards because either the damage or the horror option would immediately kill him. He draws Entropic Shade and Am I Real and just immediately goes insane from the final horror that is dealt to him by his Pursued weakness. With Joe out of the game, i assume that i do not need to resolve the surge on Am I Real. Welp. Isabelle engages Entropic Shade. The other two cards that Izzie draws after that are Rewritten Existence (this is fine) and Chain of Aforgomon. I take a horror to commit Manual Dexterity from my discard and also throw in Bandages from my hand for good measure, testing 6 vs 4. I pull the tablet, a -4. That means 2 damage to Isabelle. I take one on Aleksey (which discards him) and one on the chin (the third damage on Izzie). Also, failing with a tablet loses an action. Yeah. Great. That’s the first of four final haymakers survived!
Then, there’s the regular encounter card draw. It’s Syzygy. Isabelle is at a Past location, so that’s another action gone. Heh.
I go into my investigator phase with one action. I couldn’t even use the reset ability on The Past location if I didn’t already rule that out. What can I do? Well, i am at three damage to my five health and the Entropic Shade hits for 2 damage. So i do have to evade it because i am unable to kill it in one action. If i do that, i get to squeeze another free move out of my Shadowmeld. But that free move would leave me either in range of the Yourself clone (which hits for 2 damage) or the Ageless Watchers (which hit for 2 damage). If there’s a way out of this, i don’t see it. I basically just get to choose which enemy gets to defeat me here. After careful deliberation, I draw a card to let the attack of opportunity kill me.
Resolution
What was set in motion by the ritual of the Myriad goes to its final conclusion: Aforgomon is able to make all time one. Reality as we know it ceases to work the way we knew it to and everything is forever existing at the same time.
All investigators are driven insane.
The campaign log records that “all times are one”.
We lost the campaign.
Well! That was good fun! I feel like i sold myself well over the course of the scenario. While I did get overwhelmed in the end, this went better than I anticipated! This has been an exceptionally long scenario and for that reason i will call it here and will hit “Publish” on this article now. There will be one more in which I do a post-campaign chat about all sorts of things that i might find worth commenting on. Soon!
