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Post by Zejety on Dec 19, 2018 23:40:51 GMT 1
Pandemic Legacy S2: Finally got around to playing our December game! Against our expectations, we managed to beat it on the first try. Yay! We all agreed that we'd preferred season 1 but I am glad we've played this one, too. Arkham Horror 3rd edition: Got to give this a try and liked it quite a bit. I haven't played the LCG yet but this appeared to be a blend of the LCG, Eldritch Horror, and Pandemic. Ran a bit long because the host hadn't read the rules but overall enjoyable. Twilight Imperium: I am blessed! We'll already be playing again this Saturday! Only a few factions left that nobody has played yet. I think I'll try the Winnu.
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Post by Plum on Dec 20, 2018 10:56:36 GMT 1
We also finished Pandemic Legacy S2 last weekend - we started it back in January, so it felt appropriate to finish it in December We also managed to finish it on the first try, having just the right combination of character abilities to make it a relatively straight-forward process. It got a bit dicey when hollow men turned up in exactly the wrong city and our plague counter was only one click away from disaster so the last few cards drawn were stressful, but we got away with it for the win! We just squeaked into the second scoring bracket (700+) so were pretty happy with our performance {End game spoilers...} Oh my god, WE are the faded. This didn't seem to shock my friends, but I did not see this twist coming at all and it did a great job of tying season 2 back to season 1!
We failed the Plan by the slimmest of margins - we ticked three of the steps and had all of the red cards required for the final step when a bad infection step double plagued us for a loss. Rolling into December though we had almost everything in place. First turn my character went and connected Lake Baikal (we'd already got all of the transport networks in place having set up sea links to most of east asia from Kolkutta). Next player spent his turn moving in and finding out what was required. Oh boy - a guaranteed death if we didn't win and incredibly slow movement down to Joburg.
We decided my character was the best placed (she could fish cards out of the discard which would make getting particular colours easier), so the third player joined her and gave her the cards she'd need to move as far as possible. Fourth player dealt with plague and tried to keep a lid on things to buy us time.
I grabbed the cure and immediately began waddling back towards safety, stopping in a bunkered Shanghai. One player was elected my Herald, responsible for connecting roads and sea lanes to give me the easiest, safest journey. One player camped in Utopia since that was getting hit almost every turn and would lose us the game if left unattended, and our final player dealt with the world at large.
With easy access to cards, my character spent the next two turns making her way to Joburg, her Herald having arrived the turn before and set up the research station for the win! It got close when a Hollow Man spawned directly on her path in Dar el Salaam (she now had two scars - we didn't know if the next one would be a skull), so a player had to divert their entire turn to moving him. That in turn meant that two cities got hit with plague, pushing us to critical and meaning that the last couple of cards drawn from the infection deck had a chance of losing us the game! Fortunately we got away with it and our last infection step was uneventful, before my character stepped into Johannesburg and then exploded, raining vaccine down on the happy citizens. God bless you Charlie Blackwood, you will be remembered!
A couple of points of note from our campaign! We never moved away from our initial four characters - having upgraded them over time, it just never seemed worth starting fresh and unskilled characters. We had the Administrator (teleport players around), the Instructor (moving cards around), the Farmer (good at generating cubes) and the Radio Operator (maybe? moves supply cubes around between players). Once they had two or three more abilities, bringing in a new character just didn't seem worthwhile.
We ended the game with four fallen cities, having spent most of our remaining points lifting fallen cities up. We totally failed one month (I forget which, but it was quite early - maybe April-ish), failed the first attempt at several months and succeeded first time and half of the months. We typically ran with 2 events and most frequently chose One Quiet Night.
Oh my god, WE were the faded!!
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Post by Zejety on Dec 20, 2018 11:38:56 GMT 1
{Pandemic Legacy S2 end game spoilers} I feel you on the "not using new characters", though we've used more than four. One later addition was super good for us though, the captain. Biggest MvP was Khaleesi (this is the near future after all ) who could eventually build Supply Centers for 3 cards, trade player cards with same-colored ones from the discard, and perform 1 free drive/ferry action. We've had a similiarly decked out character who did that stuff for exploration. The previously mentioned captain was our supply specialist while the others worked on objectives. He was crazy mobile and could place supply cubes in adjacent locations. Points wise, we had also failed one month completely and 1-2 first games. Ended up with the 2nd highest score. It turned out we did cheat a little in the later games though, misinterpreting a rule in our favor. Maybe this is balanced by the fact that we didn't make use of the fact that you choose characters after the rest of the setup in the first half of the campaign.
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Post by Star Slayer on Dec 20, 2018 21:13:08 GMT 1
I skipped Gloomhaven and The 7th Continent because I got Kingdom Death Monster, but now I am very temptedy by Tainted Grail:
While it is also a story-based campaign-driven game, its mechanics are very different from KDM. While KDM is very dice-based (sometimes to a fault - stupid random event tables), TG is almost entirely dice-less. With both combat and diplomatic conflicts being resolved in a deck-building card combo sort of way. It has also far less focus on fightig monsters and more on exploring a mysterious realm. So while it would eat into the time available to play KDM, it would offer quite a different experience. I have to admit that its more the art and the dark twist on the Arthurian legends that draws me in.
...
As for KDM itself, we beat the core campaign on our second try! While we couldn't beat the first final boss after two dozen years in our first playthrough (even after using a special item to turn back time twice to go for a total of three tries), we not only butchered it in our second playthrough, but we even beat the second final boss after thirty years on the first try! Though that one was a real nail-biter and it got really close. Knowledge from our first playthrough really helped us make informed longterm strategic choices that mostly payed out in the end. Even though the game kept throwing wrenches into our works. I was close to scrapping this playthrough after two miserable first years and start over, but I got outvoted by the other two players. And I am so glad they we kept going. While this settlement kept dancing on the edge of failure, this allowed us to make lots of small comebacks which felt amazing. We never got above 12 population (15 would have made us a society, something we easily reached in our first playthrough) and even fell as low as 2! Luckily those were a man and a woman, so we could repopulate before getting the 0 population game over.
I recently started a third playtrough of the core campaign (this time with the fan-made Community Edition included) with a different group of friends. It is interesting how different they approach this narrative strategy game: First group: Oh, it is a narrative STRATEGY game. Let's optimize our every move. Second group: Oh, it is a NARRATIVE strategy game. Let's play in a way that creates a cool story.
Also, we are usually 4 players now, while we were only 2-3 per session with the old group. Which means there is more discussion and individual years take longer. A problem that I have (and that does sometimes annoy some of the other players) is that I slip into dominant alpha player syndrome, since it is the third playthrough for me, but the first for all the others from this group. While I went into the game blind and unspoiled at first and still try to not spoil myself if possible, I have seen like 90% of the core campaign by now. It is hard to put this knowledge away. Plus, I sometimes try to steer them into different directions simply because I want to do stuff differently then in my two previous playthroughs and I also want to see the balance changes that the Community Edition introduced in action.
Overall, I have played over 60 lantern years of KDM now. Which combine to over a hundred hours of gameplay. Yet I still feel kinda noobish in many regards. Plus, we've only played the core campaign so far and haven't touched any of the two campaigns which came with two expansions (Dragon King and Suntalker).
(Edit: That is an interesting way to embed that link.)
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Jude
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Post by Jude on Dec 21, 2018 1:18:55 GMT 1
I don't need that game but it looks really nice.
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Post by Plum on Dec 21, 2018 11:18:16 GMT 1
I have still yet to play KDM - it's very much on my to-do list should I ever find myself with a spare few hundred hours...
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Post by Star Slayer on Dec 21, 2018 16:50:01 GMT 1
It's roughly 2 hours per lantern year (full round) on average. First few years go quicker, later years with longer hunts and more complex fights can go longer. People of the Lanter (core set campaign) is 30 years, People of the Stars (Dragon King expansion) and People of the Sun (Sunstalker expansion) are 25 years each. So that's "far" less than a few hundred hours. If you make in on the first try.
Didn't you say a friend or someone from your board game group has the game? Maybe you can participate when they start a new campaign. At least to get a feel for the game. In our games, we had players jump in and out a bit, depending on scheduling and interest. Both groups consist of 5 people, including myself. But we are 2-4 players each session. So dropping out during a campaign should be fine. In case it turns out to be too much of a time commitment.
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Post by Zejety on Dec 22, 2018 20:07:35 GMT 1
Twilight Imperium ended up as a fourth player game today. It's still TI, but it's easily the worst player count. I played the Winnu and thought they were very underwhelming. A lot of other things went against me but the race certainly didn't help. I think they'd be mildly better in a 5p pr 6p game though. The winner now has a 4-game winning streak, which is insane at TI's player counts. This was a very close game though. Never had no stragglers before.
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Post by lemmingrad on Dec 29, 2018 18:44:05 GMT 1
riteofseeking.com/2018/12/27/rites-of-glory-knives-to-meet-you-january-2019/?fbclid=IwAR2XzD8-3DHDdpgvWu1G2EQiJn-ys8QcaRq9ddWT0zm0f7kN2EBTqJ9EVrASo this blogger who’s become known to write satire articles on Arkham decided to write up this challenge of solo investigator doing the first scenario, but needs to have 2 of the knives listed equipped for points. At first I had sane idea, but over the months I’ve been quite chummy with the guy and he directly messaged me he wanted to do this challenge as a seeker... specifically Ursula Downs. Not the first investigator I would have chosen but I gave it a shot. Just say coming up with the deck alone was a headache. I played it, and wrote down a log. arkhamdb.com/deck/view/279094I managed to f*cking pull it off. It was a ton of unlucky rolls when I overcommitted and lucky rolls when I was desperate. The highlight of my day is apparently the blogger was having some depressingly lonely times over the holiday, so me chatting with him brightened his mood.
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Post by Plum on Dec 30, 2018 1:28:59 GMT 1
Zejety is there a subset of races that you think would make the 4-player game more fun? It would be really nice if a four player, 3 hour game was possible and worthwhile. lemmingrad I just read through your play log and now I really want to go back to our play through and get it going again! Will you be doing more single character plays, or are they too high variance?
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Post by lemmingrad on Dec 30, 2018 7:58:45 GMT 1
Well, now that I got a true taste of True Solo as the community calls it, they’re not as terrifying as they appear. Of course some investigators do better than other, Wendy Adams being the queen I’m told. Also if I were to do it more serious, I’d not be playing an Ursula running around with dual knives, lol.
I did do the same challenge with William Yorick. He scored higher, especially since I got greedy and score the absolute last possible Glory, then killed the Ghoul Priest using the Survival Knife which has a counter attack reaction trigger.
But yeah, the main thing you have to be aware of with true solo, is your investigator needs to be accountable at doing a bit of everything as consistently as possible.
And the game balance leans on: - More Investigators means Mythos phases can spiral into chaos. You can cover more ground with more investigators, but more bad stuff is drawn each round.
- Less investigators means action economy is extremely stretched, the more actions required to complete a scenario, the harder it is solo. This is especially true for The Unspeakable Oath and The Boundary Beyond, which tends to be solo players least liked scenarios because of how many actions are required to complete what needs to be done. This also means less room for weird decks.
So personally, 2-3 players is a good sweet spot. Also the social aspect is ripe for comedy.
You can also do Two-Handed mode: One Player, Two Investigators. It’s very taxing on the brain, but good for those who want to play the most content with the least time commitment. Any more than two investigators, any scenario that is grindy like A Phantom of Truth Conviction route, can really tire you out.
Otherwise, as far as the challenge goes, next up is doing it with Sefina Rousseau, because she has many ways to deal damage that aren’t assets. Also has the potential to cancel every Ancient Evil (adds Doom, therefore denying you a turn, so Ward of Protection would buy you more turns.)
But ultimately, I am feeling the top investigator is a Zoey Samara or Marie Lambeau with perfect draws.
EDIT: I reformatted my arkhamdb description. It's a lot more pleasant to read.
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Post by Zejety on Jan 6, 2019 17:54:29 GMT 1
Zejety is there a subset of races that you think would make the 4-player game more fun? It would be really nice if a four player, 3 hour game was possible and worthwhile. Good question! My problems with 4p are not really about faction balance, but this is still an interesting excersize. Here's what sets 4p apart from other player counts: - Every player picks 2 strategy cards
- Therefore, all strategy cards get picked ebvery round (this is my biggest gripe)
- There's a lot of galaxy and planets per player (the galaxy is the same size as in 6p)
Ignoring general balance, the factions that benefit the most from these changes are those with abilities that trigger when certain strategic actions are used and those that get even more out of the rich galaxy.
Therefore, I think the following factions gain the most from a 4p setup:
- Universities of Jol-Nar (want others to pick Technology)
- Xxcha Kingdom (want Diplomacy to get picked; can expand onto more neutral planets with their ability)
- Clans of Saar (get a lot of trade goods from taking control of that many planets)
- Nekro Virus (after a slow start, it'll have an easy time picking fights because nobody can defend the width of their borders)
I'd avoid those. And like I've said earlier, I'd recommend not to pick the Winnu because having to rush to MR makes you miss out on the richness of the galaxy.
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Jude
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Posts: 111
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Post by Jude on Jan 26, 2019 3:09:40 GMT 1
Instead of junking up the shoutbox I figured I should make a proper post. Plum, hopefully you'll be able to find someone playing a match to get an idea of how it plays. Since the open beta just started a week ago there is probably more people than usual checking it out, or coming back to the game after being away awhile, etc. Here is the link to the rulebook and beta files if you want to skim them. I found the game when I was looking for something to play that wasn't Warhammer Fantasy scale. My favorite GW game was Necromunda so I was looking for a smaller scale game. I feel like it was some of the fluff and artwork that initially got me interested. What I've really grown to appreciate about it is Wyrd's commitment to trying to actually make it a solid competitive game and keep the tournament scene lively.
I was at the game store the other day and saw they had whole Necromunda section now. (It's actually where the Malifaux stuff used to be) so we'll see how many people start playing it. GW has been releasing stuff like crazy the last couple of years. I wonder if they will keep supporting it all or just see what stays popular and let the rest die off.
Also I'm going to play Gloomhaven again tomorrow. Probably try to get 3 more missions done. Hoping to get lucky on some of the road/city cards to get our reputation up. We lost a couple last time and are at 4 now. It would just be nice to get to 10 to unlock something since most of our retirements are still a long way off.
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Post by Plum on Jan 26, 2019 16:02:03 GMT 1
Yeah that's my main worry - so much good stuff out right now and more coming, a small fish might get lost in the churn
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Post by lemmingrad on Feb 16, 2019 16:26:24 GMT 1
So, Arkham stuff since the last post:
Did the prologue and 1 scenario of The Circle Undone with my cousin as myself as Rita Young and cousin as Diana Stanley.
Prologue: Well the rulebook is not kidding when it tells you you’re gonna die. The doomed characters you play have premade hands and play areas, so the game is a puzzle to figure out how to get as many clues as you can before the scenario kills you. Didn’t help I picked the prologue character based on her having survivor cards only to realize they only have 1 intellect, which both meant even reducing a location shroud with flashlight, I was telling 1 int vs 1 shroud. Also the new mechanic of Haunted, the retaliate of Investigate, so you fail to investigate, bad stuff happens like, oh, drop a clue. My cousin ended with 4 clues and I, 1 clue. The scenario had 12, so yeah. On the otherhand, my character survived longer and what I wrote in the campaign log for her fate, I think it’ll mean something in the long run.
Scenario 1: Well the big gimmick of this scenario is brutal. My cousin also got too cushy with Mystics being able to power through all tests with their willpower, and thus was thrown off when he finds out the hard way Diana’s willpower is not consistent (she starts with 1, and gains 1 each time she cancels or ignores a card or game effect.)
My Rita also got beat up pretty badly by horror, 2 willpower and 5 sanity makes her very fragile on that end, and there is unavoidable horror.
The big gimmick of the map though, spoiler, is that it forces your investigators to be separated and unable to move to each other’s location. Made worse as advancing the act also forces enemies on top of you too. And there’s this theme of witches milling the deck, so like Dunwich Legacy with Beyond the Veil, bad stuff happens when it draws out.
Ultimately we did make it to the last act, but my cousin didn’t realize there was going to be an Act 4 so he made reckless decisions to get the last clues discovered and we ended up surrounded by enemies, with no weapons, and the act decided to add another gimmicks which severely reduced the clock on my Rita’s life. Still, I think we did ok, but my cousin is so used to winning every scenario, so he didn’t think so.
Taught a new friend Arkham, so did the tutorial campaign with him. Decided to have him try out Joe Diamond while I tried out Preston Fairmount, mostly cause got another Arkham campaign to start tommorrow, and one of those friends expressed curiosity in trying Preston (also I figure he might like him because he has a terrible habit of hoarding money.)
Joe’s hunch deck is amusing. He has a separate 10 plus his weakness deck, of Insight events, which every investigator phase, he reveals the top card and can play it for 2 less resources. So a really good card for it, appropriately enough, is On the Hunch. 0 cost, no action and technically doesn’t even cost a card either, to discover a clue hasslefree, it’s a no brainer. My only flaw with building his deck, was not including enough economy cards, which for Joe would only be Dr. Milan Christopher and Emergency Cache. So might tweak it to also have Teamwork, so Preston can give him a loan.
Preston is definitely, interesting. So a lvl 0 deck, he has to sololy rely on his survivor fail by 2 cards to get any clue gathering done. Otherwise for combat and evasion, he can buy otherwise expensive cards, because when you in practicality have 5 resources a turn, that opens a lot of options. He’s hard to hoard money with but you definitely can find stuff to for him to pay for. Then levelled up, he starts to do serious work with Streetwise. I had to take care of most of the problems, and actually had to go broke every turn, which is not a place you wanna be during the mythos phase, not being able to pay for a solution to pass Willpower tests.
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Post by lemmingrad on Feb 22, 2019 5:57:30 GMT 1
So finally got back to Gloomhaven with the intent of retiring characters as soon as possible. I just needed to slay a Sun, Flame and Frost demon for my Secret Class quest, and sadly we are far past the point where the main questline where all of the show up on the same scenario. So narrowed down to 2 scenarios, 71 and 84. First one, 71, we as it should did by the skin of our teeth. Thank goodness our Scoundrel and my Secret Class ignore scenario effects. They almost didn’t leave a Sun Demon left for me to kill. 84 we reduced to lvl 1, cause screw it, and still had to make it out with 3 hp left.
So we went from only 1 unlocked after 25 scenarios, to 3 more after 35. Music Note (My vacationing Tinkerer finally retires), Triforce (my secret class quest) and Two-Mini Class (my cousin’s Sun quest.)
I’ll be playing Music Note next game and my cousin will play Two-Mini Class. We’ll be aiming to get 3 swamps to unlock the Cthulhu face, I am hearing that Cthulhu Face and Music Note are the most OP combo.
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Post by Plum on Feb 22, 2019 15:16:28 GMT 1
Two Minis was so much fun for me, I really loved that character! Music Note never appealed to me but one of our group played one brilliantly and it made a huge difference. Yeah, combining him with Cthulhu would be pretty crazy against big groups of enemies, but you'd still want a high damage dealer for those missions where you have a small number of giant monsters. Fortunately two minis deals excellent damage and is pretty great in those situations!
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Post by lemmingrad on Mar 1, 2019 20:46:24 GMT 1
www.thingiverse.com/thing:2734104Got my first base printed at the library. Figured I’d experiment with this, cause it may be less work on me than keeping track on an app. That and status effects.
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Post by Plum on Mar 4, 2019 11:39:35 GMT 1
Ohh that's very cool! We've pretty much switched over to digital tracking for monsters, but I do like a neat physical solution We've played a bunch more Arkham Horror, diving into the Forgotten Age arc. I'm playing Explorer Lady and my bf is Leo Toughguy and so far it's been a bit mixed. Explorer Lady is amazing at gathering clues but utterly hopeless at combat. She can do a decent job of evading but often the jungle missions are full of hunters and she quickly gets overwhelmed if she doesn't stay with Leo Toughguy at all times. She does have some killer combos and amazing cards but if she doesn't get them, she doesn't last long - one game we'll absolutely smash through, taking no hits at all, the next I'll be dead by turn three. I've finally managed to upgrade her to have some nice weaponry so she can actually kill things (acid bombs and relic bow), so hopefully that will make things easier. Our Dungeon of the Mad Mage campaign has finally reached the second floor. It's a little weird that it's so strictly paced - you must complete every encounter on the first floor to gain enough xp to hit level 2, at which point you can move on to the next floor. I'm hoping this is just the first floors though, almost like a tutorial to ease you into things, and that lower floors will start to open up and be less restrictive.
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Post by lemmingrad on Mar 11, 2019 21:23:52 GMT 1
Yeah, acidic ichor and ornate bow makes enemy management with Ursula doable, otherwise it’s about using as much movement cards as you can to run, grab all the clues you can cause you’re a seeker, then move on. Also with her access to relics, you can have fun with cards like Golden Pocket Watch. Leo will have issues later when the agility tests get nastier, but that’s what “You Handle This One!” is for.
In not Arkham news, bought Quacks of Quelinberg.
Now back to Arkham:
Did Scenario 2 of the Circle Undone with myself as Rita and my cousin as Diana.
So, you’d think, with Track Shoes which is a 3 agility test to see if you get a free move after a move,and Rita with 5+1 from track shoes, you’d think I’d more often see successes than fails. Well, probability keeps throwing me -4s and autofail, lol.
Anyway, we did it... thought it was easy breezy... then realized I forgot to add an encounter set on the act change, particularly the unkillable boss monsters,which my cousin in the prologue had very intimate experience with with Gavriella (in the prologue, you’re ideally suppose to play her as tanking all the hits to grab clues.)
So we redid it, but now that we know what clues do for Act 2, now we can bank enough clues in Act 1, to completely bypass Act 2 immediately, and also not have to worry about the fate of Twilight Cultists except the house leader. So despite the unkillable boss and many hunter spectres, it was pretty smooth sailing.
That said, Rita’s signature weakness, The Hoods, really annoys me, cause I typically draw them early before I get a weapon out.
Also running a 4p The Path to Carcosa with myself as Diana (so I built towards going down to 3 sanity as quick as possible so she can use Desperation cards and keep myself alive with her cancels. It is a knife’s edge, but otherwise not actually that bad), Preston, Joe and a latecomer Minh joining us at Scenario 3.
My friend who has a terrible habit of hoarding money, I think I found his spirit animal. Most of the community uses Preston as, spend hard to win, but very few can go into the mindset of, hoard money to powerup cards, use survivor cards in the meantime to keep tempo. Just say, once he got around 30 resources, we had to rethink how to represent his money.
My Diana otherwise has to babysit Preston, and so far, he hasn’t taken a single point of horror, despite the 1 willpower. My Diana is usually a wreck by the end of the scenario.
Scenario 3, well, this is the first time I ever seen Echos of the Past snowball amazingly bad. Our Joe didn’t help me take out the Seekers of Carcosa early, so they generated doom far too quickly, to the point that Skulls = -5. So yeah, not the best intro experience for our new Minh player.
We at least got a smooth run on Unspeakable Oath, even with our team getting split up due to enemies spawning in the middle of the asylum, but Preston basically solo’d the 2nd and 3rd act, while Joe and Minh barely manage to start a fire in the kitchen. Preston also did all this while wearing a straightjacket the whole time.
And finally, met a stranger who lives in my city who was looking to play Arkham with. So we started a Dunwich Legacy with Joe and Finn. 2 scenarios, failed the scenarios (hooray for willpower checks with our 2 and 1), but getting 6 xp from Dunwich is a lot. My new friend got to experience the PTSD experience that is Whipporwhills. Which I’m totally not ready to relive when they get reused in a future scenario for The Circle Undone.
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Post by Plum on Mar 12, 2019 10:20:57 GMT 1
Speaking of Relics, I'm not leaning into the Relic stuff with Ursula at all. Her starting relics were meh (remove a bad token from the bag until you draw the autofail) - I ended up ditching them to lean harder into the evasion and clue gathering and haven't missed them at all. I've just picked up the Ornate Bow, which gives me a solid way of dealing with annoying snakes, but none of the other relics seem worth the xp and resource cost. I've also ditched all of the cards that interact with relics and tomes, again leaning harder into the investigation side of the seeker.
But her thing is that she can take relics from any of the decks - I feel like I must be massively undervaluing them :/
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Post by lemmingrad on Mar 12, 2019 15:39:27 GMT 1
The thing about relics, is they don’t typically synergize with other cards, but they have decent to good effects on their own. The noteworthy ones are Golden Pocket Watch, Groteque Statue (avoid autofails), Jewel of Aureolus, Charon’s Obol, Pnakotic Manuscripts, Disc of Itzamna, Ancient Stone or everyone’s favourite op card, Key of Ys. Out of those, the first two have the most impact as well as being the best non-seeker options. Well and Charon’s Obol if you’re gutsy.
Eli Holowitz particularly is pretty baller with relics, especially if she hits the Ornate Bow, freeing up Ursula’s hands for other things. Or even just holding onto the Cthonian Stone(mostly a placeholder, but in 3-4 player games, it’s very helpful to seal an Elder Thing) or Tooth of Etzli (be able to wear 2 of them) at lvl 0. But some do go crazy and have double Relic Hunter for more accessory slots. But yeah, lvl 0 Relic Ursula is a bit underwhelming, it’s the higher level ones that get interesting.
But otherwise, she’s a Seeker, so Higher Education and Milan with Magnifying glass, Acidic Ichor and Guiding Stones (great to combo with her bonus investigate) always a solid seeker build, just with the added perk she gets more out of her Move, especially with Pathfinder, than other investigators. Relic Ursula is mostly an alternative from the cookie cutter Seeker.
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Post by Plum on Mar 12, 2019 17:03:02 GMT 1
I am indeed getting lots of use out of David Milan, Magnifying Glass, Pathfinder and the card that gives +2 to your first test in a location. Along with the card that lets you scoop up extra clues when investigating, she is a beast at efficient clue gathering. Things start to fall apart when hunters lock onto her, but hopefully her new toys will help with that. I was undervaluing the grotesque statue as I was thinking of it as a way to improve a skill test, rather than avoid specific tokens - I might have to look at that again, and somehow I hadn't seen the Key of Ys at all. We definitely have the Carcosa set, so I'll check for it. I currently have three horror trauma, so a relic that lets me soak horror AND makes me stronger each time seems like a great deal. Assuming I can afford the 5xp for it...
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Post by lemmingrad on Mar 12, 2019 17:37:27 GMT 1
Well, Elder Sign Amulet (also a relic target for Eli) is the general “I got a lot of horror trauma” horror soak. Ancient Stone: Minds in Harmony is also an option, which even can be used to heal the Key of Ys if you’re lacking other soaks.
Oh, and one advice about Key of Ys, with a slight spoiler, don’t get it when your next scenario is City of Archives... along with anything else with the unique item “ * “ symbol.
But yeah, stuff like Grotesque Statue is best as digging for specific tokens, which is why it’s one of the best cards for Jim. Which reminds me I still haven’t played a fully committed token manipulation deck yet.
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Post by Plum on Mar 17, 2019 23:54:06 GMT 1
lemmingrad Wise words! Both Grotesque Statue and Key of Ys let us pull out two clutch wins at the end of Forgotten Age, where it went right down the wire - last action on the last turn. I used GS and drew the insta-fail and the -5, which *would* have been a fail if not for a loaded Key of Ys {Spoiler} We parleyed with both Alexandro and Ichtaca, but refused both offers so had to tank our way through them both, plus the shadow monster. Leo went insane but managed to distract the big boys just long enough for Ursula to find the third location. With twoelite boss hunters about to attack her, she had Alexandro sitting on her and just three actions to clear three clues and pass the artifact check. Deduction let her pick up two clues (GS saved the day as she'd have been forced to drop a clue without it), she grabbed the third - Alexandro had made two opportunity attacks while she was investigating which had powered up the Key of Ys and that proved crucial. The final test needed every point of the Key of Ys so if Alexandro hadn't been there and hit exactly twice, we'd have failed! So close!
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Post by lemmingrad on Mar 29, 2019 4:32:13 GMT 1
Congrats! But yeah, tomorrow, will continue my 4p Team of 4 Guardians Kill Everything in The Forgotten Age (its as terrible as it sounds.) I do plan on trying to take the team towards the secret 9th scenario.
My cousin and I continued our The Circle Undone, The Secret Name as run as Diana and Rita. Ho boy does the scenario actually make Swarm of Rats an actual threat. The community apparently finds this scenario really hard, but I imagine most don’t run Mystic, Survivor duos, because frankly imo, that combo has so many ways to control the encounter deck (to make up the lack of consistent raw power of seekers and guardians)
That said, Rita’s 5 sanity is an issue, and I had to live with only 1 sanity left and only Diana keeping me from being defeated. Made especially concerning when the encounter deck has “boss attacks you regardless of location” testless cards. But otherwise, evasion tank Rita is very useful for this scenario.
I also came to realize I now know enough people with Arkham collections, I can actually organize a Labyrinths of Lunacy, the 3-12 player scenario. Reading over the rulebook, I might settle at just 3 teams of 2, cause rounds don’t end until all teams finish, so prefer to keep time management to an ease. Skimming over the cards, it seems like a pretty cool scenario.
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Post by lemmingrad on Apr 1, 2019 23:45:31 GMT 1
4 Guardians attempt to kill everything in The Forgotten Age: Part 3: Threads of Fate.
Mark Harrigan upon hearing the unfortunate death of Leo Anderson in the Eztli temple, vowed to help our investigators and joins to seek revenegence.
We chose to forge our own path, the group doesn’t know yet that I want to “kill the past” enter the gungeon style.
We immediately focused on finding the relic, it’s all that matter. After (spending what felt like 10 rounds) parleying Harlan, turns out he went crazy. So after Zoey made him “Eat Lead!” which btw, drew an autofail and -2, thank you Eat Lead)with her BAR, we were disappointed the act deck says he merely “broke out of the trance with a dizzying headache.” Yeah right.
Also many Brotherhood Cultists and Nightgaunts fell to that BAR, made sillier that Mark placed a Hiding Spot, and we held that Hiding Spot for almost the entire scenario. Which made things awkward when we decided to go after Alejandro next, Henry Deveau (after what felt like 4 rounds of parleying) also ended up being an enemy to fight. Zoey killed him with a machete with the assistance of Carolyn evade tanking (yes, I had to get lucky and draw a 0.) Elsewhere, Mark breaks down a locked door on the other side of Arkham... just to have another one drawn.
Meanwhile, Roland grabbed clues. He also drew the first autofail on a deduction play, because of course he does. We cleared 2 locations for Victory 1, before Carolyn and Roland died to treacheries (that now makes Roland 2 physical, 1 mental and Carolyn 2 physical, 2 mental. Yikes.)
Knowing we will not get anywhere progressing Ithaca’s act deck, Mark resigns, then Zoey double delve too deep, survived two willpower checks and resigned.
End VP score: 11 xp (2 locations, 2 bosses, 2 delves, 3 act 1s completed and 2 xp for forging our own path.)
Now gotta decide how to spend that xp... might have my Carolyn take Stick to the Plan and 3xp to remove poison.
Other News:
Quacks of Quelinberg:
First time played since I played the German version, now translated into English. Was a big hit with my group, with one girl having anxiety attacks and one guy making it a strat to claim as many rubies as possible to sate his smaug dragon sickness.
Pandemic Legacy Season 2:
Yellow team completes November, managing to stabilize after 6 out of 8 incidents. Without spoiling too much, our designated recon character managed to pull out 3 of the necessary ones all in one round, and we connected all of Asia (Ho Chi Minh city, the “precious stone of the sea because pearl is cliche” ), so we went from 36 cities connected to the grid to 43.
We still haven’t had time to visit the lost haven on the far east. We will make a joke to name it like “Hobbiton Movie Set.”
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Post by Plum on Apr 2, 2019 15:02:40 GMT 1
That sounds equal parts intense and frustrating! I think we picked up 8xp in that scenario, which was our best result ever (with two players) - having 11xp to spend would be a delicious luxury My bf and I went to visit some friends for a night of varied gaming, starting with the tutorial to Mechs and Minions... which then led into the first mission of Mechs and Minions... and then the second... and the third! Basically we abandoned our whole evening and just kept playing M&M and having a great time with it. I wasn't entirely sure it would be a hit as while I love programming games (I'm a programmer, go figure), I wasn't so sure that they would. And while they did struggle a little with it, M&M makes failure so damn entertaining that it really didn't matter. It's a co-op game so a player that messes up their sequence doesn't fall behind as such, they just spend a turn flailing around randomly while everyone laughs at them. Plus the more damage you take, the less skill actually matters and, crucially, the less likely you are to suffer from taking more damage. It's just really smart design in a beautifully put together package.
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Post by Zejety on Apr 4, 2019 0:46:56 GMT 1
Soooo I've traveled to NYC for DRB chatcon and got to play a bunch of games that were new to me! Ra is a (deceptively) simple auction game with an interesting push-your luck element. Not sure how replayable it would be for me. A Feast for Odin is my first Rosenberg worker placement game. It sure was overwhelming and I'm glad that Fraa and MT coached us, especially in the early game. I honestly don't feel like I've learned much about the game during that first play. I've barely explored the single path to victory that supported my initial occupation. Fog of Love is even better than I anticipated. The way it mixes theme and mechanics is incredible. I expected that it would require more buy-in from the players, but the theme really emerges all on its own! It's a shame this is hard to come buy at a reasonable price in Germany. We played a manipulative but fostering internet celebrity and a similiarly insincere farmer girl with an odd fashion sense. But despite the guy doing some pretty nasty things, they ultimately found happiness in eachothers' support. We also played the published version of CPi's Witch Hunt, the game that originally brought me to the Sirlin forums! It's been almost a decade since I've played this, and meatspace games are VERY different from the cold analysis of PbP play. A great game that made me excited to play a social deduction game again!
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Post by Plum on Apr 4, 2019 9:27:37 GMT 1
Ohhh I love Ra, it's one of my favourite games to play with newcomers to our game club. It's pretty simple to pick up the major rules, smart enough with the auction and value chit mechanics that you feel like you're making meaningful decisions and the push-your-luck element means that new players still have a chance of getting lucky. Plus it gets the whole table laughing together. I have a set of printed playmats that make figuring out the sets and scoring much easier so that complexity is not usually a problem. The only issue that occasionally crops up is that sometimes a new player will spend their tokens too quickly, then sit out and watch for the rest of the round, but we warn them not to spend too quickly and it's a rare problem.
Love Feast for Odin too and I'm looking forward to picking up the Norwegians expansion, which apparently mixes up a lot of the existing strategies. I usually find myself drifting towards a raiding strategy (if only to stop someone else storming ahead with their own raiding strategy), so it'll be nice to have more options
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