The Waking Nightmare AAR

 

Leo was alarmed at all his mates dying

Bar a last minute character change (our Guardian switched from Ursula to Leo Anderson) we started a new Dream Eaters campaign today. I will try a new structure for these covering Scenario theme, Investigator Notes and then card of the game , card disaster sections.

Scenario Theme

I liked it. The hospital setup was interesting and the 'falling down the stairs' when entering the basement on the spider web covered bannisters was particularly amusing. Having to handle the orderlies (and possibly their corrupted brethren) was also nicely thematic as was the swarm on the Spiders. Due to luckyish card draws  we never ended up with to much to handle, spider wise, until the very last turn where all of a sudden we had two corrupted orderlies and two big spiders on us and then we could just advance the act, take the opportunity attacks and ignore them.

The scenario does not have a multitude of locations and those that are there are interesting plus I really liked the infestation mechanic which made for some interesting choices.

Progress

We did well.. We finished just as the third agenda started (and only hit the third agenda because we wanted a couple of extra victory points) and all the nasties started arriving. In the end we obtained a satisfying seven victory points and weren't really threatened. Most of this was down to luck. The infestation bag managed to draw almost all the tombstones continually so infestation levels were down. When Luke 'fell' the stairs the first time he managed to fall into Carters location and bar one turn where Luke managed three auto fail tokens in a row the group coped with everything throw at them. 

Investigator Notes

Everyone did their job! Which is a euphemism for 'no-one was card starved of key cards'. Mandy had some difficulties with the cost of her cards (as expected) but still managed to be a clue machine - an early @@@@@ followed by a Fingerprint kit really helped though. Everyone pulled their weight clue wise even Leo pulled of some impressive clue gains with useful events. Leo failed to get many companions out and those that did arrive seemed to be discarded or die with depressing regularity. On the other hand once drawing 'Glimpse of the Underworld' he did not fail one skill test until the end of the game! Luke showcased his power by disappearing and reappearing all over the place (his ability is really strong….). Finally Stella (armed with a sledgehammer) was a competent spider killer and used her own (fail and get another action) ability to good use. The team appears nicely balanced actually.

Card of the Game

In a scenario where everything went well this is hard to select as lots of cards did their job. I will go for Stella's spider squisher extraordinaire and her sledgehammer just as it prevented the group having to refocus on killing things a couple of turns which kept momentum and thus helped success.

Enemy of the Game

Nothing was really scary, to be honest,  as those encounter cards that did occur were nicely separated. At one point Mandy drew a swarm of spiders and Leo managed to kill them all without engaging them or hurting Mandy (those spiders had alert and retaliate as well so this could have gone badly wrong).In the very last mythos draw Leo had a (now) corrupted orderly on him and drew a 'Grey Weaver' in a location with 'Sickening Webs' and with agenda three in play so could not leave and the Grey Weaver was a 5/5/4 with retaliate and alert. Even with his trusty survival knife killing that would be a big 'ask' especially as we only needed to do it to gain its solitary victory point. Therefore for this scenario that can be the Enemy of the game.

Dream Eaters Deck Prep - Mandy Thompson

Mandy contemplating the task ahead.

The group is trying 'the Dream Eaters' next. A campaign only one of us has undertaken before so it will be nice and fresh but also decks wont be honed correctly to deal with the campaign. We will do both sections of the campaign switching investigators for each branch.

Initially we will start with the Investigators outside the dream (so the B stream). The group for this consists of a Guardian (Daniela Reyes), Survivor (Stella Clark),Mystic (Luke Robinson) which means I have to run a Seeker again so have plumbed for Many Thompson. It's an interesting mix up for what the team is doing. Mandy obviously wants to study what happens to the dreamers, Stella has just volunteered to help as has Daniela who is strong enough to provide physical assistance. Luke though should presumably have gone into the Dreamer as he is 'The Dreamer'. Perhaps has is nervous? Anyway I shall cover the dreamers in the next post mainly as this is just concerned with my Mandy deck.

I have gone for a Survivor sub class and a 40 strong deck as follows

Survivor Cards

3* Fortuitous Discovery
2 * Winging It
2 * Lucky
2 * Resourceful
1 * Look What I found

Survivor has a really nice line in mitigating skill test failure. Look what I found (with 5 book Mandy) is perhaps not as continually useful but will counter unlucky fails which will occur. Only 1 though. Resourceful allows the re-use of any of the above cards, Lucky is too well known as its strengths. 'Winging It' helps make investigations easy plus is continually recycleable so will appear more and more as the scenarios lengthen. Finally Fortuitous Discovery is similar to Winging it. Presumably you have to discard the first to get +1 book and +1 clue (on success) then +2 and +2 clues on the second. This can also recycle via Resourceful.

Seeker Cards

2 * Dr Elli Horowitz - Less for safety than to fire another search (with Mandy early this switches to a 'search the top 12 cards) looking for either the Tooth of Eztli (or perhaps a Astounding Revelation). It also allows Mandy to have two Teeth in play (one on her one on Dr Elli) allowing +2 brain and +2 speed pushing her to 5 brain and 5 evade..

2 * Tooth of Eztli - combines well with Dr Elli and makes Mandy strong in multiple stats

1 * Occult Lexicon - Puts 'Blood Rite' in play which allows resource gain or damage through three copies..

2* Hawk Eye folding camera - Mandy is a clue machine so it should be easy to improve this and with three clues gained at different locations this will give her another +1 sanity +1 books and +1 brain. It is also not unique so two could be in play..

2 * Mr Rook - Has a search Mandy can improve. He is also damage protection

2 * Fingerprint Kit - Expensive but increases books and multiplies clue return

2 * Inquiring Mind - Lots of ? tokens

2 * Deduction - Multiple clues from successfully investigating

2 * Shortcut - free fast play movement

2 * No Stone Unturned - Allows any investigator to search and that investigator can use Mandy to increase the search size or cards returned. Basically allows Mandy to help other members of the team who are in that oh so common, 'I cant fight as I haven't drawn any of my weapons/spells etc yet'.

2 * Curiosity Mandy carries lots of cards so this will often fire some of the larger pumps. Bar auto fails Mandy should find very few investigations difficult.

2 * Eureka -  More card search which can help other investigators who (if at the same location) can also use Mandy - much like another No Stone Unturned.

2 * I've got a plan - No Investigator can silo themselves in a group so everyone should have something they can use in a emergency to protect themselves or help in unexpected areas

1 * Mind over matter - Like 'I've got a plan' but probably more for the emergency evade potential.

1 * Research Librarian - Mainly there to solely search for the Occult Lexicon.

1 * Emergency Cache - An expensive deck needs resources

2 * Crack the Case - As with the previous except it can potentially give more than the Cache and is a fast play. This is why there is two of this and one of the Cache..

Default Cards

For Basic Weakness I drew the amusingly appropriate (for this campaign) Narcolepsy which also marries well with Mandy's late night researches. 

Since Mandy is running a deck of 40 she gets two Occult Evidence added. When found in a search this gives a clue from the location (if any) but even if no clues or not found in a search its still a 1 ? card so not useless.

Her default treachery is 'Shocking Discovery' which is a potentially looping Weakness in that if drawn normally it gets shuffled back in and you get an encounter draw instead (yuk). In preference it needs to be found be searching where it cancels the search, draws the encounter card but then gets discarded. Nicely thematic for someone researching dangerous Mystic topics..

Generally 'Mind Over Matter' and probably 'Research Librarian' would be the first to change for better cards. Others would need replacing with cards that do the same but better. I am quite happy with the deck with its main weakness being its cost as its expensive and every Seekers favourite companion Dr Milan Christopher is not there (Elli is just too helpful). The clue gathering potential is enormous and once tooled up there is very little that she couldn't handle in Brains/Books/Speed. Strength for fighting it very poor but when isn't a Seeker weak in that?

Now it is an Arkham campaign so she will no doubt find herself stuck in un-investigateable locations or up against huge enemies without any succour but oh the potential. I'm looking forward to playing her.

Carcossa 2021 Norman Withers Seeker Deck

 For the next campaign I will be running the Seeker with the impressive beard - Norman Withers (book version as the campaign standard will be arriving with the new campaign this year).

Apart from the default extras - 

Vengeful Hound 

So specifically stops Norman's strengths but not hard to take down, for anyone else in the party..Good artwork.

Split the Angle 

His personal card is of average utility. It's good as a pump but, at the significant cost of an action, can both forewarn of the top encounter deck card (so it can be given to the person best able to handle it) and even discarded if it is that bad.

His own special ability is to always have the next personal deck card revealed that can be played as if in hand at one less cost! So he is efficient at getting through cards and has some resource advantages. The random weakness I pulled was 'Day of Reckoning' which seems to remove the elder sign from the chaos bag and locks it until the Agenda flips.

For the deck I decided to reinforce these tendencies alongside the usual Seeker tricks to attempt to make him a better clue machine.

Neutral

Unexpected Courage 

Just a way to help pass those must pass tests. Distinct Jurassic World vibe about the art.

Emergency Cache

Which again needs no real explanation. Though the version shown above is the experienced with an extra card draw as well. Woops.

Mystic Cards

Here I went for cheap helper cards. Firstly 

Deny Existence  

which should allow me to mitigate any really nasty impacts of encounter cards (so hopefully less 'fail by 4 so lose 4 health and die possibilities).

Voice of Ra  

So 'always' a 1 resource gain for zero cost but with the possibility of up to six more if lucky on the draw. I suspect it will tend to be a 3-5 draw usually.

Seeker Cards

Allies - Packing two here 

Dr Milan Christopher w

the always useful (and expensive) though practically a staple for all seeker decks

Mr Rook 

- who rather disconcertingly looms like a younger Michael Gove. Anyway I like Rook because he has more soakability with 2 in each but he allows three times search for a card on a 'fast' action. Now ok there is always the risk of multiple weaknesses but sometimes you can time these. 

Assets - Only four taken 

Magnifying Glass 

which I like as a starter card especially as it’s a fast play, though it is a strong candidate for early replacement with a card from victory points. (Sorry image of the experienced version)

Medical Texts 

as an emergency damage repair, most likely for me. 

Fingerprint kit 

Not so sure about this. I like the extra clues but 4 cost means its another potential early victory point replacement.

Events - Five of these were taken. 

Mind over matter 

After Dr Milan the next 'staple' of Seeker decks. Only an emergency card though as even with a successful attack it would mostly only do one damage.

I've got a plan 

This is far better than the previous for fights and is also a common seeker card mainly as it does between two and four damage for the attack and will, due to the Seekers primary role, often get to the higher totals.

No Stone Unturned

Reinforcement of the deck control theme plus it helps other investigators.

Shortcut

 

I like having extra movement in decks and this has the added advantage of being  a fast play and one that can push other investigators.

No Stone Unturned

Follows the deck control theme and allows assistance for myself or another investigator who really needs an extra card.

Skills - Two of these were utilised. 

Eureka  

Seemingly featuring Dr Milan though that looks less 'Eureka' than 'get out of my house'. Anyway I like for the search possibility which reinforces the decks card draw/control focus.

Inquiring Mind

Three ? multi purpose pumps is always good and it will be useable 7 times out of 10.

Weaknesses

Looking at it there are a few areas where the deck needs strengthening. I would like better allies to act as damage/madness soaks as I am still weak in health. Another way of doing a lot of damage fast would be nice (but as the team has two combat capable fighty types and a probable fighty useful Mystic) not so necessary.

A marginal weakness lies in movement skills as I value that highly. So looking forward cards I would consider buying with experience are

To improve movement

Pathfinder - my favourite movement for Seekers (I think) mainly because it can be used potentially multiple times (though Shortcut is both fast and cheaper and in the default deck)

Esoteric Atlas-  a bit like Pathfinder but moves further (needs locations 2 apart) and can be used 4 times for the same cost.

 

Defensive improvements

Disc of Itzamna - Discards non-elites spawning at the location

Expose Weakness - very nice draw plus enemy fight drop (with test pass)

Clue enhancement

Deciphered Reality - Great card and at 5 cost it needs to be. Potentially allowing many, many clues to be discovered. This would help Norman move from an average clue finder to a potentially excellent clue finder. Allowing I get enough victory points to make it purchasable.

Deduction - I like this for the 2 book pump and the extra one clue and possibly two clues (that should be doable for a packed out seeker)

Other

Higher Education - useful as a general pump to both book and mind. That looks like Sean Connery to me!

Cryptic Research - fast play 3 card draw for zero cost for any chosen investigator at my location? Useful as a team play card,

Of those above I would probably look at the Disc first then Pathfinder and Deduction. After that it depends greatly on the strengths and weaknesses the team shows as the campaign rolls on. Looking forward to testing the deck out.

Finally for those on ArkhamDB here is the direct deck link.

https://arkhamdb.com/decklist/view/32764/norman-withers-deck-controller-1.0

The Devourer Below NOTZ Reprise

 

This could have been a tale of how a gang of investigators thwarted the presence of a great evil…But wont be. This scenario went down hill so fast my tea did not get too cool down. The biggest plus point was that Wendy managed to draw and get Lita out (and lots here will know why that might matter. It wasn't all bad though as in the first two turns we actually managed (between us) to get eight clues! That was it though it then sucked rim. I am not quite sure where to start so let's run through the investigators starting with my lovely Agnes.

Only an average starting hand though having to discard two of them didn't help (scenario start restriction due to not finishing before midnight last scenario). No tools for fighting at all and even though I ended up in the location which required willpower to investigate I failed the first test with minus 4. Next turn I drew an encounter card that required cards to be discarded or horror/damage is taken. I lost that test by 4 and could only discard 3 cards so ended up on 2 damage and 1 sanity lost before really starting. A ghoul then hit me to give another damage and the next turn encounter draw was grasping hands which (yes) I failed by 3 (tentacle draw so -5!) being knocked out…again…

Next up Roland. Roland looked like he was ready to go and just as two three enemies spawned (including a Wizard, Acolyte and irritating monster thing he managed to get Frozen in Fear alongside his weakness (fight/move/evade actions cost 2) whilst being in the location where you have to test books to leave. This required careful planning but thanks to Daisy's pumps Roland did manage to eventually get out (after two turns) where he equipped his BAR Rifle and took a plus 4 shot against a monster and drew auto fail wasting tons of ammo. Next round he did take out the Wizard but was perilously low on health and then drew rotting remains which he failed by a three going insane and also being knocked out.

Wendy spent a lot of the early game running round evading things until she got stuck in the location which requires fists to investigate. So couldn't. She was also steadily losing health even with multiple friends in tow. She did save the day though by drawing Lita just in time to accidentally trip her into Umordeths maw (We didn’t even get past act 1 - that first turn seven clues was a high point as firstly Agnes went down dropping it to five and then Roland went down dropping it again). 

Daisy actually had the most secure day of all the investigators keeping a decent health/sanity throughout. Having both Agnes and Roland unable to deal with the multiple monsters turning up meant that she also spent a lot of time staying in a single location tooling up.  Her ability to pump a stat by +2 (due to a book asset) was key to even getting as far as we did though.

Conclusion - This was hard. We did get out without total defeat but the draws made continued a tradition of being crap. Next up we are going to switch to Carcossa. I will be running Norman Withers the Seeker (he looks good, from the books), we will also have Guardian Zoe the knife fanatic, Achele the Mystic and '' the Rogue so an interesting group. I will do a preparatory campaign post on the starting deck prior to the campaign start. Just so I can make guesses as to 'usefulness' that will no doubt be proved totally wrong once playing.

Enemy of the Game

Yithian Observer - These kept turning up and proving to be hard to kill. Thinking about it loads of ghouls and acolytes kept turning up so the fight pressure was enormous.

Card of the Game

Lita Chandler - for when everything sucks and you just have to sacrifice someone to save the world.

The Midnight Masks - NOTZ Reprise

 

Creepy masks were the rage in Arkham that year

The Midnight Masks is not an easy scenario. The encounter deck packs multiple methods of distracting you either via multiple enemies or ways to remove clues/assets/life/sanity or even to move the Investigator from where they need to be to somewhere they probably do not. Even with those the other part of the deck is just designed to make things harder to progress. It can be most unpleasant..

As we start with four players the game starts with three acolytes with doom which means a quick and bloody start though until the encounter deck recycles it does reduce the amount of enemies who may turn up. That is indeed how the game started for our valiant band. Another decent starting hand meant that Agnes was tooled up with shrivelling and ready to go and one evil doer fell to her hand (mind?) fast. Roland. Wendy took out the second whilst Roland started tooling and travelling to the third. Daisy meanwhile started hoovering clues. By turn two we were acolyte clear and had enough clues to pop a cultist - which happened to be Herman Collins who spawned right where Agnes was. Rather than discard four (useful) cards I decided to zap him instead and bar an initial 'fail' token (these were extremely prevalent in our play this scenario) the next two were enough and we were one cultist down.

Fortunately enough as I was then picked up and dropped in the central location whilst taking one horror and one damage a journey I repeated around four times more due to 'On Wings of Darkness'- this game proving that the monster in question was obviously pretending to be a Uber driver with a very focused idea of where the journey should end.

Things started to get in an unpleasant groove now as just as we would look like we could do something then three monsters would drop and make it much harder. All players were having to fight and the encounter deck was just brutal. We were progressing though. Agnes took out Wolf Man Drew and the Masked Hunter was 'just' taken out by Roland (Roland using his funky new BAR Rifle after Wendy handily evaded the Hunter allowing him to equip )

Whilst Agnes was being repeatedly picked up and dropped (must have come from the bar work .. boom boom) Wendy kept getting Crypt Chills which must have been the games way of saying 'homelessness is bad'  fortunately she had lots of 'friends' and ensured they took most of the damage.

Roland was already close to both madness and death and the arrival of his weakness (Cover Up) didn't help things. 

Daisy meanwhile was performing magnificently  getting both clues and fighting until another of the many 'auto fails' was on an encounter card 'False Lead' making her put all four clues back on the location she was sitting on. FFS.

We still staggered on. Wendy managed to evade Ruth Turner (I WAS going to discard a stray cat to evade Ruth but was picked up by another  Uber ) The next mythos phase I had to discard a clue or take two damage. I had no clue and only one damage left so Agnes was wiped from the scenario just as two Hunting Nightgaunts arrived.

My comrades were up to the task though. With suspiciously good timing Roland engaged and killed an acolyte with his fists ('just' on with a -3) allowing Daisy to run to Northside and 'just' Parley Victoria Devereux before the Agenda ticked over and it was past midnight.

Conclusion - After the tightness of the initial scenario the second gets lots of movement in and the always present aggressive clock. It certainly sets the bar for how nasty the game can be.

Monster of the Game 

On Wings of Darkness - repeatedly got in Agnes way and were a total nuisance. Without those Agnes would probably have lived to the end and we might even have got all the cultists before stopping. Boo hiss

Worse event of the Scenario

Daisy drawing false lead  the umpteenth auto fail and having to put all 4 clues she had gained back on the location.

Card of the Scenario

Roland's BAR which helped take out the night hunter, acolyte with lots of doom and a hunting nightgaunt 

The Gathering - NOTZ Reprise

Lita 'not shouting yet'

Back to playing and it has been missed. As a change from previous groups my new team is a four person group so it will be interesting to see how a different max player count makes to the scenarios and if it impacts play or immersion in any way. As with previous AARs (After Action Reports) this will be less fiction based and more on game play and approaches taken to the scenario.

Team Organisation

No hard rules were really set for this but mostly all the decks were base set compatible (I think a few cards from out of set were used but not many). The teams characters were Agnes (me, I do love Agnes and wonder if her shrivelling spell was learnt dealing with scum bags trying it on at her place of work), Wendy (played by an experienced player), Daisy (everyone's favourite librarian) and finally Roland. So all in all the group was nicely balanced.

The Scenario

Wendy was the group leader and for the first time it made complete thematic sense why a) the house was a tip b) was totally filled with random weirdoes shouting a lot, who Wendy did not know. Basically it was an empty house all the local homeless were taking over.. So we started thematically, at least until both Dr Milan Christopher and a beat cop turned out to actually also be in the room with no doors. Saying that trying to logically explain occurrences in game is never easy - after all why spend 75 % of the time trying and failing to hit things with fists until 'suddenly' realising that you had a baseball bat or 'gun' in your pocket that might be more efficient.

Anyway in the early running both Daisy and Roland did their jobs well and rapidly started hoovering clues. Daisy the old fashioned way and Roland by dint of hacking various creatures to death with his machete. We shot through the first act but then hit a traditional Arkham speed bump. Roland suddenly found he was 'trapped by fear' (possibly of the repercussions of killing so many things with a 'beat cop' standing next to him) and was then unable to get out of that for two whole turns and when out of the trap then was hit by a weakness which took out another two actions. This took the main fighter out of the action. Fortunately Agnes, she of the gimlet look, was well prepared to help as she had an early Shrivelling and all four charges were rapidly used pulling various nasties off of Wendy and Daisy. Her 'one, two' of damaging a creature, letting it attack her, taking horror and then giving one damage back for that point of horror worked nicely. Meanwhile as most of the group huddled in the cellar it became shrouded by fog pushing it to a nasty six shroud. It was starting to look like the beginnings of one of those slow motion Arkham train wrecks but things suddenly started resolving. Just as Roland freed up in time to kill a monster, Daisy cleared the shroud and hoovered several clues with Agnes and Wendy each helping on the clue front the Agenda shifted again (after no less than three Dooms were drawn in the mythos phase) and suddenly we were in the last agenda the turn before we shifted to the last act. 

The Ghoul Priest is a most unpleasant opponent in a four investigator game as he has twenty health. As a counter he was slightly less 'dangerous' as the group has enough 'weaker fighter' characters to engage then evade him (Wendy did a sterling job here) so rather perversely he spent less time doing actual damage. Anyway. Daisy wandered to the parlour to 'get' Miss Angry chops 'Lita'  and bring her back to assist in damage and the rest of the group started trying to wear the Ghoul Priest down. In the first turn the group (well Roland mainly) pinned six damage on him but the double doom tokens (one normal, one for a ghoul in the hallway) was very rapidly pushing the agenda forward. When we tied that to another Doom we now got to what was obviously going to be the last turn before defeat. So we had to do at least fourteen damage in one turn…

We started with the obvious damage dealer. Roland thought he could get ten if lucky which would leave only four for the rest of us to handle. Unfortunately Arkham is rarely that kind and he only succeeded twice so did six damage. He finished by using a fast action to get rid of the beat cop doing a further damage. So the priest was now reeling having taken thirteen damage. Daisy stepped up to the plate next and managed three (two from a clever 'card switch to 'books' attack and one from discarding a lantern). The Priest was now at sixteen. Between us Agnes and Wendy needed to do four. The issue was that neither of us had any weapons to help. I had used the only shrivelling I drew early and my baseball bat had 'broken' a round earlier killing a ghoul. Wendy had nothing at all. 

I therefore went next. I had a fight of two and the Priest has a fight of four. I did have one 'fist' pump I could use in hand pushing me to three and one 'lucky' which would push me to five - one down is not good odds on standard  even with three actions so I drew a card to see if anything would help and 'luckily' I drew another 'lucky'. That was much better as it essentially put me on seven. I then used another action to get a second resource to pay for the luckys and drew getting a -2 - with both luckys needed I passed by one and did a further two damage. The Priest was now on eighteen. All was on plucky little Wendy.

Like me Wendy had no fighting gear available and no force pumps bar Lita so was on three basic versus four. It would need +1 or the elder sign to succeed which is worse odds than I had. She also had some rats attacking her but she had enough to soak up the attack of opportunity so ignored them. She drew a card and got nothing useful then drew a second card and also drew a 'lucky'. Better but this now meant a -1 or better would be needed. She pulled from the bag a token that failed ( I cannot remember which) but had her own amulet in play so was able to return it and draw again getting a -1 so with the lucky got just enough to do a further two damage killing the Priest.  We had in the nick of time managed to sneak victory from the claws (and bone mask in this case) of defeat..

Post Game

Since it was actually someone else's house plus Wendy had no real possessions she was remarkably happy to let the house burn down. The team lives to fight on again.

Wendy was strangely unconcerned about her doss house burning down

We gained seven experience each so now get to enhance the decks. I tend to go for efficiency (with Mystics) to make the deck run faster and also went out of set as there are limited useful upgrades base wise so I am looking to replace the baseball bats with Spirit Athame's (lovely assets, they make my spells better and give me a one off fight of four per turn). The other upgrade was harder to pick and I was seriously considering either the spell recharge or something to handle treachery's/doom better but in the end went for Word of Command which will replace the Acolyte (I don’t like the extra doom her use causes). This allows me a much better chance to hit one of both Shrivelling's which the Athame would then enhance. Since Word of Command is also a spell that also helps if Agnes's medallion is in player so lots of cards synchronising with other cards which I really like.

Conclusions

Something struck me in game this time and that is the skill set that make's the game perform best. It Is possible to play the game 'logically' where you do the things you expect to do. For example Daisy spends three actions getting clues and expects Roland to kill anything that arrives but though this can work it often doesn't because Arkham is forever throwing speed bumps at various Investigators. At various points to succeed Investigators absolutely need to be able to move out of their comfort zone and non-combat investigators will need the ability to fight (not all the time just at key points) or combat experts might need to parley/get clues or move something. Part of this is mindset and part is the combination of both deck building and knowing your deck and how it can operate. It reminds me a bit of a quote concerning one of my favourite authors (Proust) which I will now hack to relate to the game

'the true skill in Arkham lies in a player's ability to use their deck cards, many, many deck cards, and to manipulate them with the full dexterity of a three-card monte dealer' 1

The best players seem to have the ability to look at a game problem and work out very out of the box solutions to the problems which would flummox a more 'by expectation' player and deck. If you get several players with this skill then chances of success can drastically increase.

Traditional Monster of the Scenario

I would have to for the Ghoul Priest which is perhaps unsurprising. It wasn't that dangerous to us but its huge health and high fight stats made it hard to kill and an issue that almost cost the scenario.

Card of the game

The winner here is probably 'lucky' as it was both fortuitous and all three used copies were absolutely needed.

1 Just for reference the original quote was The grace of French lies in an author’s ability to use pronouns, many, many pronouns, and to manipulate them with the full dexterity of a three-card monte dealer '

And was from Nybooks review of several new versions of Proust's masterpiece by Professor Aciman

DeathOfAPlayGroup

[BLOG NOTE, this was written in 2018 but I did not post at the time as I was wary of offending. Time has passed now and the relevant people have moved on]

A month or so back one of my Arkham playgroups 'died'. Technically 'was assassinated' might be a more valid term but as it may still be lurching on without me who can tell. Since  venting online is a tradition as old as the internet itself (so what, 30 years?) I felt it would be therapeutic to discuss why. Feel free to ignore if you are after more Arkham specific content though.

Throughout the following (no doubt long and unnaturally rambling) post there is one key thing to keep in mind. The first is that I have very little actual free time where I am free to pursue my primary hobby of 'games' . Counted out after work, family commitments etc and I probably have around ten hours a week free time. This is not a lot and is a big reason for the group fail.

Anyway this story begins at the beginning of the year. At that point my primary hobby was actually Legend of the Five Rings LCG. I was not particularly good at this hobby mainly because I had no time to practice and secondly because the time I did have was spent running the ratings for the online league I was being continually squelched in. My 'second' live game hobby was Arkham Horror and I played with a family group consisting of my older brother (lives in New Zealand) henceforth to be known as 'Player One' and younger (London though moved to California over summer) - 'Player Two'. We played over whereby.com so not being close geographically was not a major issue.

Anyway around the New Year I hit a crisis point in L5R that had nothing to do with Arkham. The monthly change over was a horribly busy time as all the results for the last month had to be entered (by hand) and then the groups organised for the next month. This coincided with the death of my wife's grandmother. When I should have been looking after my wife more I was spending all spare time desperately trying to sort the league out. Now this is all on me as opposed to the game but when I recognised this I did something I quite commonly do when something becomes an issue and this was to violently push away the thing I had decided was causing difficulty. I resigned from being a league admin and dropped from the league and game.  I decided that Arkham would be my number one game as being co-operative it did not need the time L5R required and I could relax more with it.

Happy with this decision I looked forward to Arkham games. The problem was they started to not happen. My older brother could only play (his) Saturday morning , Sunday Morning (my Friday evening , Saturday evening) but then went through a period of not playing at all because he was volunteering as a nights watchman or doing this, doing that and for a two month period we went through something like two games.

So from having almost every second of my free time filled I went to having nothing at all and I am too mercurial to let that stand so I started a second Arkham Group. I also re-started L5R without so much league work (I wrote a couple of applications to vastly reduce the overhead of the ratings which I continued running eventually writing a display site so I did not even have to post on the blog the results ).

This then caused one of the groups fault lines as the second group turned out to be brilliant if not outstanding. Both the other players were truly excellent at the game. As opposed to group one we stormed through the scenarios (bar the first campaign all the reports on this blog were written about the second group). Anyway as spring approached the first groups games started to increase in frequency again so I ended playing (usually) 1 game every two weeks with group one and 1 game every week with group two. Arkham was therefore taking around  4.5 hours of my spare time weekly allowing for approaching three hours a game.

Therefore I was also very busy again.

This is the situational background. I now have to go into specifics about playing methodology. To be frank group one was less decent at the game because, usually, my older brother was not playing the actual game -  mainly because he was, how shall I put it, unwilling to sacrifice himself for the group. To give some actual examples: In our Carcossa Campaign he played Mark Harrigan the Guardian. Now the Guardians classes primary raison d'etre is to be a meat shield to protect the clue gatherers who then do the work of solving the scenario - and yes investigators should help out in other areas but they do have fairly formed primary roles. 

That is not what would happen when group one played. In our games Player One (Mark) would spend the first few turns tooling up with all manner of weapons/assets so he could fight and do his job but then some horrific nasty would arrive and Player One would appear to take one look and seem to think, 'hmm that looks nasty..lots of sharp teeth, limbs that could crack a bone. If I took that on there is a chance I might get hurt!', so would then announce ,' tell you what. I have just seen a little old man over there (or a swarm of rats). If he fell over he might 'hide' a clue. I am just going to leave this location - move over there and deal with that. You deal with this. Bye!

And off Player One would go leaving the Seeker and Survivor to try to cope with the big nasty on own own. We would fail and die .. a lot.... In one famed occasion Player One drew an encounter card of some variety of unpleasant hunter and as party leader he had a choice of whether to send it towards himself or the Seeker. He chose the Seeker. 'A distinct unwillingness to put himself in any risk at all for the party' should be written on all his characters many graves.

This was not a major issue (only to the extent it made the Scenarios more challenging) as  it just gave an interesting spin on the scenario - plus  it does not matter if you actually fail in Arkham. At one point I even deliberately retired my Survivor and took on Agnes as the group needed  a character who could fight or at least support fight as a method of mitigating 'Mr No Fight'.

Now came the breaking moment.

Around the summer we started Forgotten Age. Things looked bad even before we started. My older brother took Ursula Downs (great! -  I always want to see a seeker in a three person group and a seeker supports my older brothers play style of 'utter refusal to fight or go near anything dangerous' so this was a relief. He probably matched more Rogue or Survivor mentally but Seeker would do fine). My younger brother decided on Calvin Wright. 'For fun'.  This looked worse as as far as I could see Calvin sucks worse than a lemonade tester at the national lemon testing convention. The problem is that he appears utterly useless until he takes damage but once he gets at a level where his stats are high enough to help then he is so close to death that one unlucky card kills him. Therefore his 'sweet' point is probably as a 3-3-3-3 which are  the same stats that Jenny starts with. Then there was myself. I went for Finn as evading looked good for the campaign. I had also played a seeker, guardian, survivor (turning to mystic to help do the guardians job) so wanted to try something new. 

This meant the group had no (real) designated combat person. Perhaps we could take a different path so we continued.

Things went badly from the very first scenario. In one of the first encounter draws I gained the card that gave one mental trauma if you do not successfully explore and both other players drew pit vipers. Moving first and being unfamiliar with my new character I attempted to get the explore out of the way -  succeeded and moved away. Ursula (Player One) then evaded successfully and also moved and investigated. That left the 0-0-0-0 Calvin who was utterly unable to do anything to the snake and he was most pissed off with the pair of us for moving. Now I had forgotten about the 'free' evade the character had and did not expect the weakest snakes in the set to cause a problem for the others and since Calvin needs damage/trauma to improve his stats then why not get some from the snake?

Calvin next turn then had both snakes as he could not leave and no one else was there and so generated some attacks of opportunity to increase his stats before deciding to kill one of the vengeance loaded snakes before finally evading and leaving. He was at 5-5-5-5 ! at this point and killed off a guardian before a single encounter card draw killed him.

This left the remaining two players with an uphill battle as we still had the *3 investigator costs but only 2 investigators to work with. We managed to flip the act to three but then decided with only two turns left (and lots of doom adding cards available) that we needed to bug out and resign.

Let's map out the board before we made our bug out attempt.

We had the camp. Next to it was a location with a pit viper and another snake. The other location had two other monsters (one with retaliate due to the vengeance and the other with alert). Then a location joining to both that contained me and two more large monsters (engaged with me). Then finally another location linked to the last that had Ursula and a monster with hunter. Ursula's turn was in play and she announced she was moving to me. I stated that might be unsafe as I would be moving but she was ok with that. Then on my turn I evaded both my monsters moving to one of the next locations and (finally remembering the ability) evaded the monster there. Now the encounter deck rolled through. I drew 'Curse of Yig' which amused Ursula as the health loss would kill me. I then quick played 'You handle this one' and gave it to Ursula instead. This did not appear to please but since I would die when I attempted to move this was apparently acceptable. Unfortunately for that players mental state I then immediately played Elusive as a fast action, disengaged both enemies and moved to the resign location.  This infuriated Player One who said he had a card that could push me to the camp and how dare I move on my own. This rant went on a while before on the following turn he announced that he was going to ensure I was punished by his next actions. He then deliberately pathfindered twice and resigned in an attempt to drag all the monsters with him on top of me putting four monsters on me (more than I could evade)` (fast move actions so no Attacks of Opportunity but the monsters follow). Unfortunately for his cunning plan I then simply resigned.

Still unhappy Ursula and the group now went into the scenario resolution. We went to the 'who would be lookout' and after reading the responses (Player One didn't like to be surprised so would read the 'results' before deciding on the action...) Player One then decided I would be as punishment for not being killed by player action in the fame. Now we had a character in the group  who 'needs' to start with trauma and damage but rather than ensure he was semi usable he decided to deliberately weaken a player who had low stats so wanted to avoid that as much as possible. 

Now I was distinctly also unhappy.  The problem, to me, is that Arkham is a co-op game. If you want something to happen you can suggest it but you cannot order it. If you don’t suggest it then , to be frank, it's your fault if something else happens. If you do and its ignored then that’s the game. The end result is the completion of the scenario and hopefully beating the campaign. What the game is not is 'Arkham battle royale' where players compete to defeat the other players to allow them to lose to the campaign. 

This was compounded by an unfortunate family trait of rubbing things in. Player One has a tendency to crow about faults in direct proportion to those he shows. So as every single character he plays is unwilling to sacrifice themselves for the group so therefore any slight excuse he has to call someone a coward will be used to the full during the game and every day for the week after in whatever forum is being used. Anyway I found it distinctly irritating to be insulted out of game for in game actions that did not deserve the character they were given by someone who did exactly what he was calling in someone else but had not been called (until this post). If you remember my start point which was that I have limited spare time - spending any of it to get insulted or play a non-co-operative co-operative game seemed like a waste of that limited time especially as I had a very good group that played the game co-operatively so I quit the group.