Undimensioned and Unseen

Other encounter sets in this scenario: Striking Fear, Beast Thralls, Dunwich, Whippoorwills

My take on this encounter deck: For Undimensioned and Unseen, the campaign takes a wild step to the side and attacks the players from a direction that is very out of character for the rest of The Dunwich Legacy. In a campaign that is otherwise dominated by intellect centric scenarios, this one asks for willpower a lot. A LOT. Not only does almost one third of the encounter deck consist of cards that require willpower tests, but the Broods of Yog-Sothoth which are to be eliminated here, can only be fought with willpower instead of fight. This puts many investigators out of a job right from the start.
Aside from the Broods, the only enemies in this deck are the Whippoorwills and the Beast Thralls, all of them Hunters and at least something for the fighters to do. Those two are good sets and they both come with a treachery that is very relevant in Undimensioned and Unseen. Eager for Death from Whippoorwills is two of eleven horror treacheries, easily enough to push investigators over the brink to insanity. Altered Beast from Beast Thralls can attach to Broods of Yog-Sothoth and heal them while giving them a horror trigger. When that happens, just flip the table, the playthrough clearly is cursed anyways…
Where the Broods appear, when they appear and how they move is all at least semi-random and often leads to the scenario moving on at a snail’s pace and taking what feels like an eternity. It’s just not all that great, honestly. One of my least favorite scenarios in the game.
Cancel these: Altered Beast, Frozen in Fear. If you are stuck with a Frozen in Fear, you might aswell limp towards the Dunwich Village and resign. Having the mobility to react to the Brood’s movements is key in surviving here and Frozen in Fear removes exactly that. Altered Beast will always find a target here because it can attach to a Brood. If that happens, it can be devastating because the Brood will now deal horror each time it moves into an investigator’s location, something that will leave that player vulnerable to the big chunk of other horror sources waiting in the encounter deck.

What it does: Towering Beasts attaches to a Brood in play which will get +1 fight and stamina while it stays attached. If the Brood is at the player’s location, the investigator is dealt 1 damage. Towering Beasts has Peril, mostly to make it more difficult to cancel it.

My take: The +1 health is the important part here. The difference between 6 fight and 7 fight isn’t all that large, but having to attack through it an additional time is.
Unlike the base health of the enemies, this card doesn’t scale with the investigator count. As a result, this is less impactful at higher player counts.

Threat level: Mid to High. This directly affects your chances at defeating that Brood. If you draw multiples and they stack up on one Brood, that can even put it out of reach unless you can throw a lot of clues at it.

Dealing with it: Do you plan on defeating every single Brood? Or are you fine with having one survive? If the latter is true, consider throwing all of these onto one Brood and then just kill the others. If that is not an option, then you might need to offset this card’s effect with additional clues on the monsters and extra actions for the attacks.

What it does: Each investigator that shares a location with a Brood has to pass an agility test. If they fail, they take a damage for each point they failed by. If nobody is at the same location as a Brood, Ruin and Destruction surges.

My take: This is the only way for a Brood to “attack” a player after moving into their location before the player gets their turn. It’s the Grasping Hands effect that we know from the core set, but the potential to hit multiple players at once is scary. Anyone who is affected by Ruin and Destruction of course is also still at the same location as a Brood, so this naturally stacks up with the danger coming from that.

Threat level: Mid to High. It’s a bit more situational than Grasping Hands, but the ceiling is way higher.

Dealing with it: The timing of the card makes it hard to avoid. After all, you probably want Broods to move into your location at some point. Luckily there isn’t too much other damage coming at players from treacheries, so as long as they can avoid being mauled by Broods or Beast Thralls, they should be able to soak this.

What it does: Attracting Attention makes each Brood in play move one location towards the player. The card then surges.

My take: Has the potential of having multiple Broods all move into you at the same time which is certainly troublesome. That being said, it can also be a helpful card, getting the Broods into the position where you are waiting for them.

Threat level: Depends on the number of Broods on the table.

Dealing with it: If you find yourself ganged up on by multiple Broods, evasion might be your only way out of it without taking a whole lot of damage and horror. If necessary, other players might want to come and help with that. Their semi-random movement (even when exhausted from the evasion) hopefully leads to them going in different directions afterwards.

What it does: The player either needs to take 2 horror or spawn a new Brood. That Brood enters play at a random location. This card has Peril, so other players do not get to factor into the choice and are also not allowed to cancel or otherwise mess with this card.

My take: This card is massively dependent on the context of what else is happening in the game. When drawn early, it can double the danger coming from the Broods and be a massive pain. On the other hand, it’s the only way aside from the agenda flip to spawn more Broods. Since your goal is killing those, you might actually end up with no Brood on the board and actively hoping to draw this card so you can get on with the scenario.
Due to the reshuffling of the encounter deck, it can happen that no Broods are set aside anymore when you draw The Creature’s Tracks. If that happens, it turns into a straight up testless 2 horror treachery. This can be quite dangerous due to Rotting Remains and Eager for Death also being in the deck.

Threat level: Low. Even if it can be slightly dangerous sometimes, it does advance the player’s ability to fulfill the scenario goals. Once you run out of Broods to spawn, this card’s stock goes up dramatically.

Dealing with it: If you aren’t planning on just killing one Brood and getting out, you will want to spawn the Brood here. It can be a bit inconvenient in the short term if you now have multiples on the board, but that’s preferrable to twiddling thumbs with nothing to do later.

Return to Undimensioned and Unseen

My take on the modified scenario: Return To Undimensioned and Unseen replaces the Broods themselves with individual variants that add some variety to the enemies that are central to the scenario. All of these variants are upgrades for the Broods, adding either additional movements, more health or even Retaliate. This makes the scenario quite a bit harder, even though their damage or horror is reduced by one. Especially the Retaliate can be a real problem on these enemies, forcing players to spend extra clues to make sure they will only fail to the tentacle.
The Striking Fear set is replaced by Erratic Fear, and for once i do think this is a good switch. It removes Frozen in Fear from the deck, a card that this scenario really doesn’t need. It also swaps out the horror from Rotting Remains for some damage from Idle Hands and Violent Commands. This balances out the encounter deck a lot between horror and damage sources, making it a lot less overly punishing for low sanity investigators who are suffering enough already from also likely having low willpower.
Return to Undimensioned and Unseen is a step up from the original version, but in the end the core mechanics are unchanged and it’s still a scenario i actively don’t like to play.

What it does: Imperceptible Creature attaches to a Brood in play and removes one clue from that enemy. The Brood also gains Elite. The card then surges.

My take: As a Surge card with a relevant effect, this is something you’d rather not pull from the deck. The removal of the clue is annoying, it’s difficult enough to get them on there in the first place. The Elite trait is added to plug some loopholes that allowed killing the Broods in creative ways, for example through Waylay or Mid Wipe.

Threat level: Low to Mid. Undoes a clue, then surges straight into the next encounter card.

Dealing with it: Overspending clues in anticipation of this is not worth it. In fact, this card is a reason to have at least one Brood without a clue on it around, so you can attach this card on it. If the card can not remove a clue, it loses most of its impact.
The presence of this card doesn’t really mean that the non-Elite tech cards are no longer good in this scenario. They still can do some work against Broods that don’t have this attached, of course.
If you designated one of your Broods as a “dump” for Towering Beast cards, that one can take one of these as well.

Surge

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