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. 

Investigator Wanted

 

(Painting copyright ganzelart.com)

Investigator wanted! To look into the unexplained and mysterious. Self defence ability or a mind open to challenging interpretations a must…

So. I am looking at starting up a new campaign group to run through whatever campaigns take our fancy. We will probably start with Night of the Zealot as a test campaign and then move on. A single extra person is needed to make a group of three (four is fine though if multiples want in) and unless local, which is admittedly unlikely, play will be through the free browser voice app 'Whereby'. Since this method of play requires only one player to 'run' the acts/agendas/locations it is not strictly necessary for a player to possess all the relevant scenario packs.

The group is to play in one of the following slots UK time (so currently BST)

Tuesday evening around 7pm-9pm

Friday evening around 7pm-9pm

Saturday afternoon to evening  so anytime between 3pm-9pm

From weekly to biweekly again dependant on player preference. Hopefully to clear a scenario a session though that might not always be possible.

Requirements

-Internet/phone connection good enough to handle voice

-The player to have enough cards to build their own investigator deck

-A player who understands the Cthulhu mythos is all about potentially cracking eggs to resolve the mystery successfully- and that in some cases that egg is the investigators own head.  I have played with 'my investigator never does anything unless they have a 95% chance of success' and it makes succeeding soooo much harder. Especially if that player happens to be playing the Guardian. 

That's it! Anyway please get in touch if interested or if any questions leap to mind.

This could be you (also gandzelart.com)

The Path to Carcossa - Black Stars Rise

Well it is getting near the end now. Our valiant trio have travelled to Mont Saint Michael to potentially sacrifice all to save the entire planet. We are quite the well honed machine now. Except Min. Min started as the quite 'paranoid, schizophrenic, manic depressive' as she drew almost all her weaknesses turn after turn for the first few turns and essentially spent all her time working on the 'inner' Min and probably through several mother and father issues as well. This left Jenny and Agnes having to do the dog work in the early stages but this was not a major problem as this is one of the few where doom can assist. We basically organised to generate the most doom possible so we could find out what (and where) we had to go as quickly as possible. I had drawn both shrivelling and rite of seeking (buwahahaahah) though after an auto fail on an investigate I also had to use time warp to ensure we did not drop behind plan. At one point my personal weakness put up so I happily played it to add doom to our preferred agenda (now that is not a frequent occurrence).

We absolutely blasted through the C pile getting to 3c surprisingly quickly only to discover it was the wrong path and we should actually have tried a. One nice point that Craig pointed out was how thematic the Outer Walls and tower were. If you were on the tower and doom went on one of the agenda piles then you would go a little madder seeing Carcosa approaching whereas if you were at the sea wall you would take damage as it was literally battered to pieces also by Carcoassa.

It was when we were all at the tower that one of my favourite moments occurred. I had engaged an acolyte and in the previous enemy phase a Rift Seeker turned up. First action next turn Jenny parleyed the creature, added doom to both agendas which caused the creature to leave. The doom caused us all to take one horror which allowed me to kill the acolyte with one zap from Agnes impressive head.

Anyway Minh had gotten over her 'issues' and was not clue gathering so we gained the nine needed to open up the chapel. I evaded a Spawn of Hali that was sitting on the broken steps and we moved across. We had already found the guide and were almost at getting a key when the agenda flipped (thank you wizard of the order for services rendered in moving the agendas quickly) and revealed that we had to go to the Chapel. Now a Beast of Alderabran was sitting 'on' it and we had a Tidal Terror approaching slowly through the town. The Wizard was still gaining doom and the 3c agenda had three so we had both time and combat issues. I personally had Silver Acolyte issues but used my Shrivelling and drew a skull which was just enough to do the two damage and add a horror to me doing a further mental trauma allowing a further (deadly) damage on the Silver Acolyte (here is where I blow raspberries in all evil acolytes general directions)

The final play will gain the play of the game designations and goes to the team.

Play of the Game

Jenny moved into the Chapel and evaded the Beast of Alderabran (Key of Ys made her real fast) then stole a clue before doing two damage to the creature (Leo de Luca in play). This allowed Minh to pathfinder to a shortcut to get there then throw two successful strange solutions in its face killing it. I could then attach my Athame, move in and use Rite of Seeking to gain two clues. During the enemy phase I blocked my unpleasant card with Ward of Protection and we then cleared all the clues. I say 'we' as Minh managed five on her own.

Monster of the Game

Hmmm. Nothing really killed here and as in the entire campaign we really lucked out in having killed all the theatre members as we avoided another Grade A nasty turning up and complicating things in an unpleasant style. Technically the Beast was the strongest but that was dealt with easily….So this scenarios monster will be the Rift Seeker just for being thematic and looking cool

Conclusion

Another nicely designed scenario. I also loved the way some of the encounter cards become more dangerous as Carcossa comes closer causing damage from debris (or to the mind) or breaking your items (discarding cards whipped away by the wind! Or shattered by a rock). The fact either agenda path could be correct is hilarious and allows for many possibilities.

The Path to Carcosa - The Pallid Mask

The Catacombs! I loved this scenario the first time I played it and our group just managed to survive by the skin our teeth. Now to return with our tooled up and remarkably undamaged group.

We had the ideal start with the secret passageway in play and an easy entrance to the tombs but then hit repeated road blocks. My start was decent (Shrivelling and an Athame being the highlights) though for once Leo did not show up to chaperone Jenny. Perhaps he was scared of confined places? Or skulls.. 

Someone has way too much time on their hands

The decent cards did not help as the scenario then buggered up our catacombs draw with always  at least one slot taken up and gradually we had all the horror of two long corridors with neither connecting and when a final 'above' would have joined the two we instead got a 'below' so they didn't.  This created difficulties....

Another thing I like about the scenario is that it dangles lots of Victory Points in front of you but then gives you lots of ways to subvert and speed up (docents and location revealers). If you chase the vp then you may be at risk of failure but if you use the 'shortcuts' you could miss out on lots of vp. As it stood we relied a lot on the shortcuts to allow Agnes to progress along the northern corridor while Minh and Jenny became progressively more embroiled in the southern which ratcheted up the urgency nicely.

I think the group would have been screwed though especially when Minh and Jenny finally exposed two of the final five locations in the southern path and neither were the key ones. This meant that Agnes (who was standing next to the last unexposed three in the northern corridor) was certainly next to the key locations but sucked at getting clues so would have difficulty getting them all. With the Specter of Death sweeping merrily around as well it looked like it would be a long night. Though as a plus we did not have Haruko their to complicate matters further.

I suddenly wonder how all the King in Yellow monsters from the U.S stage show managed to get to Paris? Admittedly in this run through they all were burnt to death on Jenny 'I murder multiple people on a whim' Barnes but still. Wouldn't the ship staff (or air ship/hostess as I doubt mass plane travel was common) notice the tail or the 'eating other passengers instead of a steam cooked plasticy meal'..Enquiring minds need to know.

But things did manage to start to swing round. I managed to draw 'Drawn to the Flame'  which gained two clues then Jenny pulled a blinder. She used Elusive to move straight to my location and opened up a catacomb, which naturally enough was not the key location. I then luckily gained a third clue on a 2 shroud location (with two 'books') by drawing a zero (I had the actual lucky in hand so could have coped with worse) so we opened a second and it was the key chamber. At this point we had enough clues between us to advance the act immediately and not too fight the stranger. This led to us all needing to be in the blocked passageway which , by a process of elimination, must have been the final unrevealed location. The problem here was that Minh was stuck in the south wing with two docents,coprse dweller and two poltergeists close by (with two locations doing damage on leaving) and the Specter of Death  steadily approaching.

Jenny though was having none of it and used a second Elusive to shift back to the location next to Minh where she talked a poltergeist to death then moved next door to engage a docent. This allowed Minh to talk her own poltergeist to death. Another well organised turn had Minh killing another docent while jenny finished off the Corpse Dweller (nice concept of an average monster turning into something much nastier)

I am fairly sure that is an unusual look in Paris and quite probably elsewere. Except perhaps Chernobyl

While this was going up Agnes had drawn Rite of Seeking so was now merrily getting many clues and opening the blocked passage. She's a waitress, she probably has had to clear a lot of blocked passageways at the café.

Ahem. Anyway while Agnes kicked her heels in the end location now came the charge. Jenny moved to evade the Specter of Death and moved two locations on (thanks Leo) before Minh ran even further past. Another two turns and we completed.

I think I prefer the 'killing the stranger' ending to this one which was a bit weird but nothing like as exciting as running through the flooding catacombs. Be that as it may we had finished with no trauma (though we were all fairly beaten up) but only one expereince (from a Delve to Deep from Jenny) this is our worst ever experience total.

Play of the Game

Jenny must get it from her zippy movement skills in freeing up Minh otherwise this would have resulted in our first defeated investigator.

Honourable mentions include Agnes playing 'Ward of Protection' to stop an encounter card that would have changed the docent Minh was engaged  with into something much nastier (as the only humanoid present) and falso or both Minh and Jenny who early in the scenario when Agnes was in a narrow tunnel with the 'Pit Below' attached but could not move to the new catacombs location and we did not want to wast time moving backwards. Minh moved first and gained enough clues to open a southern location allowing Jenny to move in and parley with the docent allowing the location next to me to be displayed and thus the group to progress and not tread water.

Basically it was a solid team effort.

Monster of the Game

Though it did not do any damage 'Specter of Death' gets the award for being cool. Tough little SOB. If we were all organised and in the same location we might have been able to take it out but seperated there was no chance its clever ' do an attack if you fail an evade' ties really nicely into the fact that most of the time you are furiously running around the catacombs as opposed to fighting..

The Path to Carcosa - A Phantom of Truth

Ah, Paris, after regaling each other with stories concerning scary caricature drawers outside Notre Dame we started. Jenny and Agnes seemed to have decent starts I had hard mulliganed for Shrivelling and managed to get one along with two time warps! And holy rosary. With the extra cash from having interviewed Jordan (why extra cash did we pickpocket him? Or was it that expensive 'leaving' the train station - perhaps those damned caricature artists 'charged' too much and we would otherwise have been caught in a tourist trap. Jenny meanwhile managed her fifth scenario on the trot with Leo in the opening hand. You have to hand it to him. He was paired with her in the book and is obviously smitten as he never leaves her side even when she frequently causes people to shoot at him and monsters to stab him. That's love. Or infatuation. Admittedly she does seem a catch if a little 'out there'.

Minh had a reasonable start with Doctor Milan turning up early (never did that for me when I was a seeker. ) But as a negative used her backpack and suddenly realised she must have forgot to pack it.

This was all needed though as early encounter draws were unpleasant. I picked up two damage from failing one test (and did the same later on so was dangerous close to passing out) and also drew a screeching byakhee. Since I was nicely tooled up and it had a victory point this made the group happy as I zapped it quickly. An early Arcane Initiate was put out that drew another Shrivelling and the clue search spell just before I accidentally pushed her into a different byakhee so the doom would not prevent the agenda from advancing , 'thanks for the spells, byeeeeeeee - splat'

Not the screeching but a Byakhee with great art all the same

We rapidly shifted past the first act which drew our version of the Organist. Since we were convinced of the evil we had the 'cannot damage does 3 mental trauma whilst hunting twice' version but this is not a major issue for a party of three. The key is to either have one person who is good at evading sitting close to him OR split the party into different locations and essentially play 'organist tennis' sending him backwards and forwards without getting to anyone. As it stood we went for the first option as Jenny was ready for him and had bought a Key of Ys out which she 'accidentally' charged by saying Hastur twice. Woops. This did allow how to lead him round like a small dog after a treat and the ever present loyal (slightly bleeding) Leo with his extra action really helped in this process. This allowed Minh to spend quality time trying to get rid of the King in Yellow (Jenny always finds Leo, Minh seems to have an affinity for her weakness) and Agnes could wander round zapping people's heads with shrivelling and even getting some clues.

This meant we rolled relatively easily to the end without getting too many  difficulties and finding the rather messy house of Monsieur Ingram.  Due to the zapping of both victory pointed Byakhees and the clearing for four VP locations we also pulled in a tidy 6 xp.

Monster of the Game

Anything that was not called 'the Organist' has its head shrivelled so the winner here is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the Organist!

Since he cannot be hurt he is possibly the toughest creature we have had to face (at least this version) and I just like the concept.

Most innovative way to charge the Key of Ys (alternately the 'play of the game')

Nothing earth shattering and I was considering things as mundane as Agnes engaging a byakee from Jenny to allow her to go do 'stuff' or Minh hilariously spending four or so cards to get the 6 pips needed to remove her weakness - and then failing by one. But have decided Jenny gets this for the amusing method of charging the Key of Ys just be repeating Hastur several times. That's the last time though no matter how many times she may repeat this in the next few scenarios.

Hmm mentioning this dude when holding the infamous Key of Ys can prove riskily useful.

The Path to Carcosa - The Unspeakable Oath

Not the nicest asylum when we left it

A classic! This is such a great scenario. We started positively due to our great result in scenario two with each of us having an extra 'courage' card providing an extra two sanity and instantly did the Scooby Doo and split to rush through as many locations as possible. My starting hand was disappointing as for once I did not have anything combat worthy with no Shrivelling! I did have Rite of Seeking and Uncage the Soul which meant I could at least assist in finding clues though I felt strangely defenceless moving about.

Setup before we decided where to start

Clues did start piling in as I used the spell as my last action (to avoid the potential negatives and by turn two actually had the most clues (4) in the team. I was steadily clearing the mess hall mainly as I could grab two an action so would only have to discard one card.

Then disaster as my card draw for turn two was the ffing Silver Acolyte  - someone who (at that point) I had no (decent) chance at killing or evading and no cards in hand to help.  Luckily Minh was tooled up and she was able to move across, throw acid in its face killing it then grab a clue. Beyond the emotional bruising caused by needing to be rescued by the book worm (as opposed to 'assisted') and the fact that if I had not needed rescuing then we would have advanced the act by the end of turn two as it was we had eight clues at that point and the agenda moved instead.

Agnes felt unusually vulnerable. Plus she didn't have any pointy sticks like this lucky child.

Jenny merrily robbed the keys from the Ward Sister and disappeared down into the basement to start hunting for Daniel. Minh meanwhile was starting to collect an almost continuous range of Whispers and other terrors that were seriously impacting her ability to clear the garden and yard or do anything much at all.  I in the meantime I had cleared the Kitchen by the devious approach of using Delve to Deep to get the two clues then cancelling the encounter card with Ward of Protection before setting a fire there .I also drew  Aquinnah experienced who then cost me all of my money (and made me regret discarding an Emergency Cache in the mess hall earlier).

Dressed like that it is hard to see how anyone would forget her. 

This proved lucky as Jenny found Daniel in room two and he promptly turned into a monster (spoiler! I love the acts. If you read them you might think picking up the clasp of Black Onyx would be a good idea but if you did then you would not be playing this act. That is so devious and clever. Well played Mr Matt the designer) and was herself unusually badly tooled for action beyond her ever present Leo (who has turned up close to the start every scenario so far - he was her ally in her book though so its thematic as well as helpful).  Jenny then drew a fanatic in the encounter phase so had two nasty enemies she would have problems killing. Not an issue though as she evaded and left the location.

Daniel, pre 'wtf'

Next turn Agnes the non combat heroine stepped up to the plate with what may actually be an illegal play. She moved in and was promptly engaged by both (receiving and giving 1 damage to the fanatic). She then spent two to attach her Athame drawing two attacks of opportunity. I then added one horror for each to Acqunnnah who dealt both their damage to each other killing both. All I took was the one horror from Daniel. Which I put on my courage card as my ability would not hurt as they were both dead. It is potentially illegal as it might be that the attacks are not simultaneous but even had we not played it that way I could have used the fanatic to kill daniel then only needed one more to kill the fanatic and then had the Athame in play so I will claim the glory and shove the rules query under the carpet with a vigorous broom.

The situation just prior to finding Daniel (who was in the next cell to the one Jenny was currently in. The yellow paper indicates a shortcut on the location added by Minh.

We now had to get out and needed another two 'events' to assist. Jenny grabbed the third and Minh (just) managed the fourth. As the encounter deck merrily kept restocking her whispers/terrors she also drew her weakness and then drew another whisper that prevented using cards at all.

This was the situation when things changed and we had the joy of an auto monster being drawn from the encounter deck. Fortunately (as will be seen) it took 2/3rds of the encounter deck to even find one though the one found was an Asylum Gorger and was not only nasty but also landed on no-combat Agnes in the Basement. Sweet. Not having any chance of standing and fighting I moved back to the Wings being followed by the (fortunately for me) Attack of Opportunity less monster. At the end of the turn though I did have to suck up a 3/3 attack where I dropped one of each damage type on the now dead (defeated) Aquinnah meaning I was left with four of each and was looking a bit of a  risk. A bad encounter card could have sent me over the edge but I drew Filth and Decay so was able to drop 'Fight or Flight' in the next turn and evade it ,with an impressive seven evade, before using the handy shortcut to get me to the garden on time and resign. Minh also hopped out quickly but Jenny was after experience. She moved to the garden and used Delve to Deep to gain an XP.The encounter card was a minorish monster but had another XP should Jenny kill it. Which she did. 

Someday Jenny will be the earphones and 'Delve' will cause the cat to arrive

So we survived the asylum and gained 7 xp (I had not spent the three from the last scenario so would have 10 to play with!

Play of the Game

Agnes gets it for the Aquinnah in the face defence. Even when she is not tooled for combat she still rules

Agnes looked great in leather. Plus it was easy to wipe the blood off. 

Monster of the Game

Though Daniel gets honourable mention here for just being thematic and repulsive the more dangerous monster was the  Asylum Gorger  which almost succeeded in defeating valiant Agnes.

The Path to Carcosa - Echoes of the Past

Sis,

The ‘party’ was as bad as I said it would be. These people are seriously warped and have many eager denizens trying to assist them. We ended doing something you only read about concerning deep down south and those horrible KKK people. To put it another way we ensured none of the evil would be able to move out. We are moving to the Historical Society next. Minh should be most at home though Jenny and I will stick out like sore thumbs.  The odds of bumping into more low lives seem strangely high. Considering my work brought me into contact with plenty of other low lives I should be used to it.

Our intrepid trio now has to enter that infamous den of librarians – the Arkham Historical Society. This is a perfect control scenario. If the group can keep down the many cultists and deal with them quickly then the agenda deck is almost entirely under their control. In a group of three this would normally need at least two of the investigators to be capable of dealing with a cultist on their own with the last doing most of the clue work.

Setup and raring to go

As we started with three we had two Cultists already in play on the upper floor and if we left them to their own devices they would soak up enough doom to flip the agenda in 3 turns. I therefore took a faster start attaching a shrivelling and moving straight up to the 3^rd floor lobby first turn. My compatriots started on their own gear and the clues. Our first encounter draw was fairly innocuous though an acolyte turned up generating a further auto-doom. This was not a worry as yet as Agnes was able to erase the first cultist with a  strength shrivelling. Meanwhile Minh (Minh!) moved up to the 1^st floor to kill the Acolyte and failed.

Pressure carried on ramping up as I drew my weakness (a Silver Acolyte) and at the same time someone else drew a fanatic that went to the same location. I was now facing two enemies and would be highly unlikely to be able to shift across the 3^rd floor to deal with the other cultist who was now on 4 doom (due to The Kings Edict turning up and buggering up all our calculations).

We could still handle things as long as nothing disastrous went wrong with the next turn.  On my encounter card I cancelled with…erm.. and took a horror which  allowed me to do 1 damage to the silver acolyte bringing him within one zap Shrivelling range, Agnes then zapped the two enemies in location reducing pressure and drew out her Spirit Athame (so one attack would be 9! Strength). Minh cleared her enemy and both Jenny wiped out a further acolyte.

The next encounter draw brought us very close to the edge as an extra doom was added meaning the 3^rd floor Seeker would need to die this turn to keep the agenda from advancing and preventing the discard pile recycling. I though was two locations away and it is aloof so the best I could do would be to engage and deal a single damage in the enemy phase. This would not be good enough. Minh was 3 locations away (with pathfinder) so would have been able to get there but was restricted by her Shadows draw. We then pulled off a nice team ‘save’ that really shows how great the game can be. Minh was the driver though as she spent two actions clearing her whispers (I guess it must have been the ‘you can only move one location’ or something along those lines). She then used a fast action pathfinder to move to the 2^nd floor lobby then her last action to move to the 3^rd floor lobby. She then used another fast action to drop the shortcut on the 3^rd floor lobby. This allowed me to move to the 3^rd floor lobby, fast action use the shortcut to move to the other room and engage and zap the cultist with a 9 strength shrivelling. Those were all used but the cultist died and the agenda was saved.

That was the key risk point and we were in complete control after that. Jenny switchbladed a Hunter of the King to death and we rapidly pushed forward to clear the hidden library and win out. We did consider whether we should delay finishing to draw the big monster at the end to get a further two experience but it was late at this point so we called it a day. Minh and Agnes both collected three experience and Jenny pulled 5 (Charons Obal). Next up the wonderful asylum scenario.

Play of the Game

Has top go to Minh’s use of pathfinder and shortcut to allow the group to get where it otherwise could not and zap a doom laden cultist.

Minh takes the 'hollywood transfor' and removes her glasses and turns into a babe!

Monster of the Game

We never got to the huge nasties so this goes between the doom cultists who were both one shotted by Agnes and the Hunter of the King. It can go to the second as Agnes was out of spells at this point and in the end Minh chucked acid in its face causing it to disintegrate on the carpet. You don’t mess with the girls.