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.