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Okay! Maybe we'll check out new characters then.
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Jun 19, 2021 22:36
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Golden Bee posted:New Roland adventure dropped. Parallel Roland looks like he has a lot of the same stuff Lily is going to have. But not getting the big heavy guardian weapons means having a heavy deck of level two and three tactics, which is interesting. https://twitter.com/FFGames/status/1405964236015247367?s=19 I've thought about running Pagnes a few times, but I worked with Sefina or Diana instead; it's a similar play style. Proland actually has more restrictions on deckbuilding than it seems, like you get Elusive and that might be it as far as good off-class cards. My favorite permanent is his extra ally slot. Don't need to assign them damage if you can roll with two Beat Cops. You can activate level 2 Beat Cops still, right? "Assigning" damage just counts for when you're dealt damage?
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Jun 19, 2021 23:59
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They can’t take your damage, they can take their own. And there are a lot of fun tactics in survivor.
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Jun 20, 2021 03:41
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LifeLynx posted:
You get Delve, Drawn to the Flame, and the Survivor tactics some of which are pretty good (on top of some more possibly niche things like Sure Gamble or Sneak Attack). It's definitely a restriction on his deckbuilding, but I don't think it's that terrible. On top of which a lot of the effects he gains are very powerful, especially for things that start in play always. I think he's probably a straight upgrade over the regular version. Also his new pistol is really really good.
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Jun 20, 2021 21:11
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It’s a pistol you can build around, especially with some of the guardian upgrades.
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Jun 20, 2021 21:45
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I splurged on Aurbits Chaos tokens + new coin capsules that arn't amazon bargain poo poo. I'll give a trip report soon. I don't even want to think about how much more money I've spent on this game (TC boards and tokens, binders, and now aurbits!) than the actual expansions!
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Jun 20, 2021 22:08
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jeeves posted:I splurged on Aurbits Chaos tokens + new coin capsules that arn't amazon bargain poo poo. I'll give a trip report soon. I love my Burger Tokens. I have Keyforge ones I can repurpose as curse/bless/snow if I need to, also.
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Jun 20, 2021 23:42
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LifeLynx posted:I love my Burger Tokens. I have Keyforge ones I can repurpose as curse/bless/snow if I need to, also. Burger Tokens just don’t jive for me, even if I love dem simplistic clear deck boxes that they sell. I’ve always loved the design of Aurbit’s Netrunner tokens, but something about the feel of the edges always threw me off. I’m sure if I had never grown up on TC’s Netrunner tokens I’d think different. However aurbits chaos tokens + plastic coin capsules seem like the best of all worlds for my small gripes above. I’ll give an update when they all arrive in a few days.
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Jun 21, 2021 00:12
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Here's the Tarot deck from RtTCU : https://imgur.com/gallery/wedpUFC Pretty cool art. 
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Jun 22, 2021 00:06
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Most of these are OK, but spending four bucks to always get one seems random. You might get plus one to a stat you never need to use or extra money in a cheap deck.
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Jun 22, 2021 00:44
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Been theorycrafting good pairings to do two-handed solo. I think I'm going to try Dunwich again with Sefina and P-Roland. They both can find clues and fight, and I'm liking P-Roland's ability to play Practice Makes Perfect and find a fight or investigate skill. Except he can't play Deduction, which sucks. For directives I'm thinking: Due Diligence (and flip it if I ever lock in combat with something that has over 4 HP), Leave No Doubt (+3 sanity for not moving more than twice means I can potentially tank one or two Cover Up trauma and be fine), and Consult Experts (I'll likely have to add horror soak, but he can get along fine with not putting damage on allies).
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Jun 22, 2021 19:55
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Don’t forget to pack the car that lets you re-shuffle your deck as Sef, maybe even two copies. She has two reasons to avoid milling her deck in Dunwich. Personally, I think parallel Roland front, regular back would be a pretty good combo. Beefy guardian weapons pay off in almost every scenario (and for the one they don’t, mind blank does the rest.)
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Jun 22, 2021 21:00
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Golden Bee posted:Don’t forget to pack the car that lets you re-shuffle your deck as Sef, maybe even two copies. She has two reasons to avoid milling her deck in Dunwich. Good call, I forgot to add that. My deck is mostly events with a few assets, and I'll need to get the permanent that gives me an extra accessory slot so I can have both Holy Rosary and Crystallizer of Dreams. Tarot Card Sefina is something I really want to try in Return to TCU when I get it. I was going to do that with Roland, but I think I underestimate big weapons. But with Sefina and Roland both being able to deal damage reliably, maybe I don't need BFGs?
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Jun 22, 2021 21:32
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The plus of having one person on kills is that you can completely eliminate an enemy problem on their turn. Having two skill checks to pass instead of one can make things awkward. Plus, marksmanship can pay off as early as you can take it, there are a lot of enemies that spawn inconveniently in 1b, three, four, on the mountain…
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Jun 22, 2021 21:47
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My FLGS restocked a few things so I just splurged and finished my last incomplete cycle with Black Stars Rise and Dim Carcosa, and also grabbed all five of the Investigator premise decks! Been waiting for months.
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Jun 22, 2021 23:40
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I finally completed Dream Eaters yesterday. Now all I need is 5 packs of Innsmouth Conspiracy and War of the Outer Gods to be complete. The new distribution model seems a lot better imo. If they bring out the previous cycles in the new format I will even consider buying another copy of the player cards so I can facilitate 4 players better.
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Jun 23, 2021 09:19
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There's also a Revised Edition of the base set which should be announced soon. There's been a few leaked product page photos floating about and it seems like the only change is alternative art for some cards (the campaign appears to be the same) but everyone is expecting it to have a full set of player cards this time.
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Jun 24, 2021 00:17
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So uh. What's the best way to find out when ffg restocks? I need to finish carcosa
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Jun 24, 2021 13:36
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Jarvisi posted:So uh. What's the best way to find out when ffg restocks? I need to finish carcosa Check stackhamhorror.com and their official Discord: https://discord.gg/Rsfr9zm7Xj It seems a bunch of Canadian stores have been getting Carcosa packs in stock, and shipping is about the cost of another pack, so it's not terrible. The fact that they're arriving in Canada must mean they're getting held up somewhere in the supply chain, so maybe they'll be in the US soon.
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Jun 24, 2021 15:38
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Small revision to the core box: https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2021/6/24/revision-to-horror/ Just swapping in some later expansion cards for the game alongside art changes and card packaging changes.
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Jun 24, 2021 16:26
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It's like... amazing to me that Asmodee didn't mandate that they include unique cards/upgrades that come in that Revised set only. Like if you have a full playset of Core2x + Dunwich already, you don't need to buy that Revised set at all. Esp since the new investigator card art... kinda sucks. It's a loving small miracle that this is true. On another note, I bought the Dark Horse Comics "Art of Keyforge" hardcover on a whim and the quality is amazing. They are releasing a similar "art of arkham" soon and I would 100% recommend it based off of the Keyforge release.
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Jun 25, 2021 06:42
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 Every other investigator was made younger, and all those years went to Wendy.
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Jun 25, 2021 13:02
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If you post the full thing, it’s a full body shot, proving she’s 8. Her previous illustration could’ve been a teenager, since it’s just head and shoulders. Someone said new Roland looks kind of like Mr. Bean.
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Jun 25, 2021 15:33
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Is Wendy supposed to be an actual young kid? It's never mentioned exactly, I figured she was an older homeless teenager at minimum... who, uh... owns a multi-level house in the nice part of town, with a fully furnished study. And sometimes her uncle Leo or the local college football star comes over to hang out.
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Jun 25, 2021 16:46
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She’s an urchin. So…urchin age. And she should have access to a house, because of her backstory. The question is what Akachi is up to, or Preston/Jenny?
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Jun 25, 2021 16:49
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LifeLynx posted:Check stackhamhorror.com and their official Discord: https://discord.gg/Rsfr9zm7Xj It seems a bunch of Canadian stores have been getting Carcosa packs in stock, and shipping is about the cost of another pack, so it's not terrible. The fact that they're arriving in Canada must mean they're getting held up somewhere in the supply chain, so maybe they'll be in the US soon. Dude, thank you so much for this link. I was able to complete my Carcosa set! Now the only series I don't have is the Innsmouth Conspiracy, which I own none of so far. (Think it came out during the pandemic and I missed it.) Thank you, thank you, thank you.
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Jun 26, 2021 02:35
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I'm looking at buying in on this game - are there any guides on how to get in to this, rules everyone fucks up, that kind of thing? What do I buy other than like presumably three core sets. and how solo-able is it?
Impermanent fucked around with this message at 07:24 on Jun 27, 2021 |
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Jun 27, 2021 07:19
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FFG has just announced a revised core set for October which will have a full playset plus some bonus cards taken from later expansions, so if you're not in a rush I'd suggest waiting for that. https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2021/6/24/revision-to-horror/
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Jun 27, 2021 07:27
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Ripley posted:FFG has just announced a revised core set for October which will have a full playset plus some bonus cards taken from later expansions, so if you're not in a rush I'd suggest waiting for that. oh thanks that's great to know. Yeah maybe I'll find a digital version somewhere I can preview to see how all of this hangs together first.
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Jun 27, 2021 07:30
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This game is brutal as gently caress in both its difficulty and also its buy-in cost if you go crazy and go full expansions! The new revised core set is prob the way to go but will probably be something like 60-80bux, so you can prob find the older core set for cheap if you want to just try it. Just know that the intro campaign’s finale is like the one of the worst scenario in the game for being stupid hard for no reason, so I’d recommend picking up the one-off / standalone expansion of Hotel Excelisor to get a better feel of the game.
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Jun 27, 2021 07:48
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jeeves posted:This game is brutal as gently caress in both its difficulty and also its buy-in cost if you go crazy and go full expansions! $60 MSRP, yeah - it's listed on the Asmodee store for preorder.
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Jun 27, 2021 07:55
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Impermanent posted:oh thanks that's great to know. Yeah maybe I'll find a digital version somewhere I can preview to see how all of this hangs together first. Tabletop Simulator has a pretty good implementation that's worth checking out as a starting point.
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Jun 27, 2021 08:20
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Two OG cores gets you a compete playset and can often be had for less than the likely MRSP of the new set, plus you can sell the extra encounter cards if you don’t want them. That said, there’s nothing that absolutely needs two copies from the core, especially if you pick up a complete cycle or some investigator packs.
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Jun 27, 2021 09:05
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My grand experiment to turn Sister Mary into a fighter for a two-handed run of The Innsmouth Conspiracy on Hard is now complete. At some point while writing this post it turned into a bit of an essay so I'm going to split it into two, with the first containing a breakdown of the starting decks and the second the actual campaign report and card upgrade commentary. If you want the short version of the whole thing it's up on ArkhamDB here, and if you want the TLDR version it's basically this : first scenario = nightmare, afterwards = a bit rough in places, but more or less ok? If, however, you want the exhaustively long version, then read on! Sister Mary and Minh Thi Phan in The Innsmouth Conspiracy Part One : The Decks At the outset I'll say that Sister Mary's design doesn't lend itself to being a fighter, so playing her in that way added to the challenge I set myself. My goal for this campaign, and the context for which everything in this post should be understood, was to create a pair of decks that could reasonably be expected to complete the campaign and achieve a successful outcome in an Ironman run on Hard. I hadn't played any TIC before this so the first step was to experience each scenario at least once to understand its mechanics and to inform my deckbuilding. I usually do this on Standard but this time I decided I'd do it on Hard, so I spent a huge amount of time repeating the first two scenarios, mostly iterating on Mary's deck because getting through that first scenario consistently turned out to be a huge challenge. I initially paired Mary up with Wendy but I eventually swapped her out for Minh, because as efficient as Wendy is at grabbing clues a Seeker is simply better, and the key to reliably passing the first scenario turned out to be to make it shorter, which, yeah, is kind of a universal solution for any problem in this game. Minh also had the ability to help Mary pass her combat skill tests, and since I wanted to try out Bless token tech it was important to have someone who had access to Keep Faith. I also wanted to try out the Holy Spear because I'm very fond of big weapons and I typically play a Guardian in multiplayer games. So, the complete set of parameters for this exercise was thus : 1) Play on Hard. 2) Use Mary as the main enemy handler (or fighter). 3) Use Bless effects. 4) Use the Holy Spear. 5) Get a successful Ironman finish. So, how do you tell if you've made a good deck? If your goals include the successful completion of the campaign then it's not enough to say that any deck which can achieve that is a good deck, because the random elements in this game ensure that even the best decks will sometimes lose. And since those random elements are a fundamental part of the game you might then define the best deck as being the one that has the highest chance to achieve the best possible resolution and XP outcome from each scenario and the campaign as a whole. Given the mathematical complexity of this game, though, and the staggering amount of player card combinations that could make up any single deck, the only way to find that theoretical best deck would be to create an advanced computer simulation capable of playing the game and then run it a few million times. And while you might then discover the technically best deck, would you really want to play it? Deckbuilding in AH, as in other card games, is a highly creative and rewarding process where you evaluate options and synergies and piece together a satisfying and, to some extent, personal, solution to the challenges presented by the game. All of which is to say I've always enjoyed optimization and min/maxing in games, but never to the complete exclusion of other elements. And in AH's case, one of its best elements (and the one that sets it apart from similar games) is its focus on narrative. A big part of my enjoyment from playing this game comes from the kind of sandbox-style, emergent gameplay situations that arise when the narrative intersects with the mechanics, and this aspect is also present in the deckbuilding. When I was researching deck ideas on ArkhamDB I found a Minh deck which used a bunch of tomes and Act of Desperation; you would literally throw books at your enemies. Designing a deck around that kind of interaction and having it still be able to function effectively is something I really appreciate, and while I've never thought about creating a strongly themed deck like that I'm always mindful of the narrative aspect of certain cards or combinations and, all else being equal, that will occasionally influence my decision to choose one card over another. So, have I created a pair of good decks? I think my Minh deck could handle its own anywhere, and my Mary deck, well the most I'll say is it's about as good as it could be given the constraints I was working with, one of which was time. Iteration goes hand-in-hand with optimization and is a big part of achieving success on Hard, but at some point you just have to run with what you've got and hope for the best. I mean, sure, given unlimited time or superhuman coding skills I could probably come up with the perfect deck, but since I had neither of those things I instead brought to bear the two greatest assets I did possess for this task : my gamer's intuition, keenly honed over a lifetime of definitely well-spent time playing games of all types, and a rudimentary understanding of probability. Here's Mary's deck : Sister Mary in Innsmouth (Hard) Taboo List (2020-10-15) Assets 1 x Robes of Endless Night (Jacqueline Fine) 2 x Olive McBride (Heart of the Elders) 2 x Enchanted Blade (The Secret Name) 2 x .35 Winchester (Dark Side of the Moon) 1 x Guardian Angel (The Innsmouth Conspiracy) 2 x Rite of Sanctification (The Innsmouth Conspiracy) 1 x Sword Cane (The Innsmouth Conspiracy) Events 2 x Glory (Nathaniel Cho) 1 x Stand Together (Nathaniel Cho) 2 x Ward of Protection (Core Set) 1 x Prepared for the Worst (Blood on the Altar) 2 x Scene of the Crime (Threads of Fate) 2 x Deny Existence(The Circle Undone) 2 x Spectral Razor (Dark Side of the Moon) Skills 2 x Vicious Blow (Core Set) 2 x Overpower (Core Set) 2 x Take the Initiative (The Boundary Beyond) 2 x Daring (The Search for Kadath) Treacheries 1 x The 13th Vision (The Circle Undone) 1 x Crisis of Faith (The Innsmouth Conspiracy) Here are my rules for deckbuilding : 1) Don't choose cards that shore up your investigator's weaknesses. Instead, choose cards which enhance what they're already good at. 2) The majority of the deck should consist of two copies of any one card, for consistency, but leave up to four slots for 'flex' picks - single copies of cards which are situationally useful. 3) Unless you're playing solo, specialize! Focus on either fighting, investigating, or supporting, and don't try to mix all three. As you can probably tell, we've violated rule #1 something fierce, and that's because Sister Mary has a Combat of 3 and 5HP, which is fine if she was in a support role but as a fighter it's downright appalling. And the first scenario in this campaign features an awful lot of enemies, like, I don't think I can remember another starting scenario that has more, so a lot of the choices here were made specifically for The Pit of Despair. The other thing to note is that based upon the Hard token bag you don't want to take any test at less than +3 if you can possibly help it. There are some minor spoilers ahead. Mulligan : Weapon (.35 Winchester > Enchanted Blade) > Prepared for the Worst (if no weapon) > Olive McBride > Rite of Sanctification/Stand Together. .35 Winchester x 2 : The Winchester is our main weapon and to be honest a Level 0 weapon that can do three damage is very strong, but it has serious consistency issues without Olive McBride and doesn't become truly good until you can spend some XP on Favor of the Sun. It feels bad to play the gun if you get it in your opening hand without Olive, but you should do it anyway because if enemies start spawning during the first Mythos phase you are guaranteed to fall behind without it. Enchanted Blade x 2 : The Blade's primary purpose is to conserve ammo if you can play it before the Winchester, and then later when you run out of ammo it's your fallback. I tried a few different weapon combinations like Blessed Blade (atrocious) or the .45 Automatic, but the +2 Combat is crucial, and it has a tiny bit of flexibility such that you can swipe the Swarm of Rats at +3 without using a charge. Spectral Razor x 2 : Mary has a 4 in Willpower and this puts it to good use when you need to kill a tough enemy and/or can't afford to take a risk on the Winchester (even with Olive out). Really solid. Take the Initiative x 2, Overpower x 2, Daring x 2 : These are our main skill boosters for Combat tests, though Take the Initiative pulls double-duty on treacheries. Mary's 3 in Agility allows her to test at +3 on a lot of the campaign's Agility treacheries (though the token bag gets nastier later, of course). Daring works with Willpower attacks, too, which was briefly relevant when I was experimenting with Shrivelling. Rite of Sanctification x 2 : An excellent economy card and one of the best things Mary has going for her since she adds two tokens to the bag at the start of the game so you can play it on the first turn. Minh can use it, too, so the tokens never stay sealed for long, but I only ever sealed two or three at a time. One token isn't worth the opportunity cost and more than three means it will probably restrict your other Bless stuff too much. Stand Together x 1 : Another economy card I ran two-of for most of my testing, but I dropped it back to one because I needed the flex slot and it's probably better as a one-of anyway. Depending upon how the campaign goes, we might upgrade this to Stand Together (3). Vicious Blow x 2 : A Guardian staple, but I actually had it out of the deck for a long time. Its value in saving on actions (and tests) can't be denied, though. It can be used for Spectral Razor and, later, Radiant Smite attacks, too. Scene of the Crime x 2 : We can spare two slots for testless clue-grabbing but I went back and forth on this a lot, initially assuming that Mary would be so inefficient at killing that I wouldn't be able to afford wasting an action on it. But since it turns out you only get one good shot with the Winchester per turn anyway you can generally afford to play this in the first scenario, and in the second there are even a few opportunities to set it up by tanking one of the weak enemies like the Initiate of Dagon for a turn. It performed pretty well over the course of the campaign, as it usually does. Sometimes it sat in hand for a long time, but the times when it was useful it made a big impact. Olive McBride x 2 : I tried to make the deck without this card but it just doesn't work. I was skeptical of the odds when I first tried it and after some initial bad pulls I took it out for a long time, but there's just no getting around it. I'm not sure how Bless tokens affect her overall success rate but I believe generally speaking she makes tests on Hard more difficult to pass so I never used her for the regular ones. However, for meeting requirements that look for specific tokens she greatly increases the odds, and my feeling was that if you had around 5/10 Bless tokens in the bag then you had around a 70% chance to trigger the gun (and about the same to pass the test if you started at +3). Ward of Protection x 2 : This is here purely for two treacheries : Deep One Assault and Fractured Consciousness. A monster that never spawns is one less you have to get down on your knees and pray to the god of gunpowder to save you from, and preventing an almost guaranteed two damage hit on Mary is an extremely good way to extend her life. Deny Existence x 2 : If there's a card with a 100% pick rate on ArkhamDB Sister Mary decks then this would be it, and for good reason. Crisis of Faith is one hell of a nasty weakness if you can't mitigate it right away. Prepared for the Worst x 1 : I ran two for a long time but drawing the second one was always... the worst. With five weapons in the deck you already have a good chance of opening with one, and if not then it will almost always hit something. Yes, it is crucial that you find the Winchester in particular, but you don't need it immediately at the start of the game so two copies felt like overkill. Later we'll put it on Stick to the Plan so it'll always effectively be in our opening hand. Glory x 2 : This is some Pit of Despair tech so it'll get replaced for the next scenario, but basically when you have to frequently commit to pass Combat tests you need to restock your hand as efficiently as possible, and this is a good way of doing that because there's no shortage of targets to meet its condition. I found it amusing every time I used it after killing Rats. Such glory. Sword Cane x 1 : A late addition, and it's there because being able to evade at 4 is occasionally useful when The Amalgam appears. Also, due to the high variance in location layout for the first scenario you can end up in a long game where you've played both Blades before your guns, so having a final backup weapon is also occasionally useful. Dreams of R'lyeh can be a problem because we don't waste resources trying to remove it, so there could be a better option here. Robes of Endless Night x 1 : Another late addition, swapped in for Hallowed Mirror (more on that later) because I really needed just a bit more soak and of all the possible candidates this seemed like the best option as it could also provide a bit of economy. There were so many times when the scenario ran long that 1-2 more points of soak would've made all the difference, so I feel like this slot is correct even if this particular card may not be. Many other cards were tried. Here are a few of the more notable ones : Shrivelling x 2 : I thought this could replace Enchanted Blade while providing the same kind of ammo conservation for the Winchester, because unlike the Blade, I could equip this at the same time as the gun. When I was testing this I also put Guts and Steadfast into the deck because of its lack of built-in stat boosting, but that really sent the deck in the wrong direction. But hey, it was great for killing those Rats. Guard Dog x 2 : Testless damage! Health soak! What's not to like? Well, for one thing, it's not really testless damage if you use it for soak, and while the efficiency in killing things through Attacks of Opportunity was pretty beneficial in the first part of the scenario, once The Amalgam appears you really need to be able to shoot it because you just don't know how many times it's going to come back. And you can't shoot it effectively without Olive McBride. Hand of Fate x 1 : I had this in the deck initially while I was still evaluating Bless token generators. Cancelling an attack is kind of like soak, but it's expensive and feels bad to use when you will only get two tokens from it, which is the case for every enemy in the first scenario. This card could have a place in a Support Mary, but probably only as a one-of. Dynamite Blast x 1 : I put this into almost all of my Guardian decks, for flavour as much as value. I think it's great but it is very expensive and it was a poor fit for this deck's curve. Later on we will definitely grab one of the XP versions. Hallowed Mirror x 1 : Out of all the cards in the game that heal this is one of the very few playable ones. I ran it for a long time, only taking it out for my last 5-6 iterations, and I feel like it was the right choice. The problem with it is that it costs actions. Yes, it cycles, but drawing a Soothing Melody when you really needed X, and then spending another action to get that X proved too costly in the long run. It really wasn't obvious to me what was going wrong in all the games that ran late, but swapping this card out along with another key decision I made for Minh's deck (stay tuned) felt like the final piece of a puzzle slotting into place. It really hammers home the point that in this game which is built upon compounding difficulty each turn, actions spent on bringing the game to a premature end are so much more valuable than actions which simply draw it out longer. In other words, damage not taken is better than damage healed, especially if you had to use an action to do the healing. I still think the Mirror is a good card, just not in this deck. Before I get into Minh's deck I just want to take a moment to mention how much I love the theme of this game and how much I appreciate one such aspect of its design that doesn't get mentioned much. And that is, the card names! I don't play Seeker very often, but browsing through my collection for ideas on what to include I was struck by how well the names of a lot of the cards reflected the core design of the class and the people it represents. If Survivors are your everyman types scraping by through pure luck then Seekers are definitely your gifted few, or they're at least possessed of some exceptional human traits, as reflected by cards like Eidetic Memory or, and this is my personal favourite card in the game, Deciphered Reality. That name, along with the art and the powerful mechanical effect, is highly evocative not only of the Seeker identity but of the Arkham universe's mythos as a whole; it inhabits our own world but remains just out of view for all except those with the determination or talent to step beyond the veil. Here's Minh's deck : Minh Thi Phan in Innsmouth (Hard) Assets 2 x Magnifying Glass (Core Set) 2 x Dr. Milan Christopher(Core Set) 1 x Analytical Mind (The Path to Carcosa) 1 x The King in Yellow (The Path to Carcosa) 1 x Grisly Totem (The Secret Name) 1 x Dream Diary (The Search for Kadath) Events 2 x Mind over Matter (Core Set) 2 x Shortcut (The Dunwich Legacy) 2 x "I've got a plan!" (The Miskatonic Museum) 2 x No Stone Unturned (The Path to Carcosa) 2 x Winging It (The Depths of Yoth) 2 x Keep Faith (The Innsmouth Conspiracy) Skills 2 x Deduction (Core Set) 2 x Perception (Core Set) 2 x Unexpected Courage (Core Set) 2 x Inquiring Mind (Undimensioned and Unseen) 2 x Resourceful (The Path to Carcosa) 2 x Eureka! (The Pallid Mask) Treachery 1 x Psychosis (Core Set) So this is what I imagine a fairly standard Seeker deck looks like (based upon my copious browsing on ArkhamDB) but there are a couple of insights I'm going to claim as my own. Well, one : No Stone Unturned. This deck was a bit different when I first swapped to Minh; I went with a Scavenging build for two reasons : one of the core campaign sets featured hand and asset disruption and Dream Diary was absolutely critical to my plans for the deck, and also because I thought it would be good to cycle spare Magnifying Glasses, not least because The King in Yellow takes a hand slot so it could bump them without warning. I also had Strange Solution x 1 in it for the Wild icon, again because I thought it would be good to cycle it and I didn't have a lot of other Wilds to help Mary at that stage. That version of the deck was alright, but this one is a lot better. Mulligan : Analytical Mind > No Stone Unturned > Dr Milan Christopher > Dream Diary (this shoots to the top once it's upgraded). Dream Diary x 1 : This might as well be Minh's signature card. I cannot overstate how amazing it is to play the upgraded version of it on the first turn of every scenario, which is why I've included... No Stone Unturned x 2, Eureka! x 2 : These are our primary card searchers, and they make sense when you consider Minh's deck has not one but two extraordinarily impactful cards in Dream Diary and Analytical Mind. Games with one or both in play feel very, very different to those without them. We'll be upgrading NSU fairly early in the campaign, and it's never wasted because Mary can use it too. Grisly Totem x 1 : This is a distant third in terms of impactful one-ofs, but it's still always a welcome draw and we'll try to upgrade it if we get some spare XP later on. Inquiring Mind x 2, Unexpected Courage x 2 : Wild icons galore! Both are very handy for when The King in Yellow shows up, but they'll get pitched early to guarantee an investigate action if necessary. They're also our best options for helping Mary line up a shot, but in practice I didn't use them for that very often. Dr. Milan Christopher x 2 : The only economy card you'll ever need. Magnifying Glass x 2 : There have been a bunch of other Seeker assets that provide an investigation boost since the core set but I think this one fits best here. A fairly common early turn was to play Milan and one of these and start investigating at 6. Keep Faith x 2 : This is our main Bless token generator and was great in the first half of the campaign, but with some of Mary's later upgrades it actually really dropped off in usefulness. I found that to be pretty curious, but I'll save those comments for my overall impressions of Bless tech in the campaign report. Resourceful x 2 : Right now it really only hits Keep Faith (note that it's not optional so you shouldn't play it if you only have Winging It in your discard pile) but in the second scenario it will begin recurring Sharp Vision, and that is what I like to call Pure Value. Winging It x 2 : Whenever I flicked through my storage box and saw this thing I would shake my head and wonder how it could ever be playable, because in a vacuum and when only considering the Survivor lineup a -1 Shroud effect seemed pitiful to me. After playing it with an investigator that never fails an investigate action, however, I now understand its true value (and my own stupidity). This is honestly one of the best cards in the deck and performed incredibly well at all stages of the campaign. Deduction x 2, Perception x 2 : I'm sure I don't need to elaborate on these. Minh loves skills, and these are both great, if unexciting. Mind over Matter x 2 : Very useful throughout the campaign. Minh could boost her Intellect high enough to pass anything (which actually makes the upgraded version kind of a downgrade) and I most often used these to evade in a pinch or bust open a Locked Door (something a Guardian should ordinarily have no problem with, but alas, Mary). They were also great for those times you get caught in the Undertow, but they weren't really worth using on most of the Mythos phase treacheries that only hit for one point. "I've got a plan!" x 2 : A late addition, and much like how we could afford two slots in Mary's deck for clue-grabbing, we can afford two slots in Minh's for monster killing. In my past dabbling with the Seeker class I always found this card to be really awkward to play, mostly because I could never boost my Intellect high enough to make it reliable. Minh doesn't have that problem, though, and they were surprisingly effective at taking some of the burden off Mary at opportune times (so kind of like a mirror to Scene of the Crime). Shortcut x 2 : Another late addition, and this is where it all came together. The Pit of Despair was finally solved. I shouldn't get ahead of myself too much because I only ran through it a few times before proceeding with the rest of the campaign, but in a scenario with very high variance in possible location layouts, just having a couple of these proved remarkably effective at stabilizing the entire game. I guess it's true what they say : Intellect is the only stat that actually wins the game, so the less Minh was impeded, the sooner we were out of there. As before, a few cards didn't make the cut... Take Heart x 2 : This was in my first few revisions and it's a great card but it just simply doesn't work if there are Bless tokens in the deck. Lucky! x 2 : A deck that can take Lucky but doesn't? As I mentioned before, Minh basically doesn't fail investigate actions, or at least she was rarely short of resources so badly that she had to take significant risks, and failing any other actions in the game never felt particularly problematic, at least when taken on an individual basis. This campaign was unusual in that it didn't have any agenda or scenario cards with difficult tests on them or I might've considered it, and I know it can potentially save you from committing other cards but it has no icons and it does have a small cost, so in practice I found it sat in my hand most of the time. Beloved x 2 : Looks great on paper, but in practice it's kind of awkward without a Bless token guarantee effect like Favor of the Sun. You either commit it and hope for the best (a fairly incorrect way to play Arkham Horror, I feel) or you commit it with enough other cards to pass the test anyway, in which case why did you bother? It's also effectively eclipsed by Ancient Covenant if you're running Favor of the Sun, but I wasn't planning on running either in Minh's deck. The Truth Beckons x 1 : At first glance it looks like binder fodder but I actually had some really good experiences with it in The Pit of Despair because as I've mentioned, the location layout is highly variable. It was also pretty decent in the second scenario, but over the many, many playthroughs I went through I found it would sit in my hand a bit too long to keep justifying its slot. There were times when I was kind of holding it back for more value... just a bit more value, which might have contributed to how it felt, but I eventually dropped it and never looked back. I do see how it could be useful again in some of the later scenarios, and it's kind of cool how they design campaign-specific cards every now and then. And that's it for the decks. On to the campaign! Kalko fucked around with this message at 01:21 on Jun 29, 2021 |
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Jun 27, 2021 13:25
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Sister Mary and Minh Thi Phan in The Innsmouth Conspiracy Part 2 : The Campaign So for each scenario I'll mention some impressions, some plays, and then the strategy I came up with, followed by the resolution and card upgrades purchased. As I've already mentioned, I played the first two scenarios an awful lot, the third one a few times, but beyond that my only experience was the single test run I took before starting the Ironman challenge. I also didn't actually play through the final scenario in my dry run, but I did peek at a few of the locations to get the gist of it. There are major spoilers ahead. I was going to use tags but then most of this post would be unreadable. Here we go... Scenario One : The Pit of Despair Appropriate title. I've said a lot about this one already so I'll skip right to the strategy : pray. Ah, just kidding... mostly. I don't think I've come across a starting scenario with such high all-round variance since my adventures with Nathaniel and Trish in Return to The Untamed Wilds. And much like that scenario, this one features a bunch of locations with a completely random layout and one big dude you don't want to draw before the obligatory shuffle-the-discard-pile-into-the-encounter-deck step. There's a lot of chip damage here, from the encounter deck, the token bag, and from the Deep One enemies that hit you when you engage them. It's really a race against time, which, yeah, it always is, but it ties in pretty well to the theme with the whole rising waters thing. At the same time, there's a strong incentive to stay as long as possible and use all of the keys, because their effects will benefit you for the rest of the game. The actual strategy I settled on consisted of a few key points : 1) Get the red key at all costs, because it means Mary can get Thomas Dawson in the second scenario, greatly aiding our efforts there. 2) Don't waste any actions on superfluous investigates, which means don't try to clear the Underground River for the VP. It's a trap! 3) Not really scenario-specific, but my other main objective was to complete the task for Dream Diary so that we can upgrade it immediately. I didn't list it as an important mulligan in the deck section because I found Minh would almost always cycle her deck during this scenario and it was fairly trivial to unlock it. Also, it's not a great idea to waste actions drawing your Essence of the Dream after that first time, but I did do it on occasion. After the red key, the purple was next most important because it eliminates one of the tokens which can spawn The Amalgam. And speaking of that, I learned pretty quickly to always take Minh's turn before Mary's if she was tanking him because killing him and then having him suddenly reappear on top of her felt super bad (Mary was the Lead Investigator). Towards the end I tried to get a bit creative with this, choosing to evade him every now and then instead of just killing him, but that really came down to what felt like it would work in the moment. One thing's for sure, every time I tried the ol' slip-a-roo evade idea on the Deep One Bull it ended in unmitigated disaster. You might think you can manage that Forced ability, but trust me, you can't. He must die. In most of my test runs I got four XP from finishing this scenario, but in the proper run I actually came out with five because two of my starting locations were Underground River (so I broke my #2 rule) and I got a pretty favourable location layout when the act advanced. Resolution 1. 1VP. Three keys used. Memories recovered : A decision to stick together. A meeting with Thomas Dawson. A battle with a horrifying devil. An encounter with a secret cult. 5XP. Upgrades Mary : 4XP spent, 1XP left. Ward of Protection x 2 -> Radiant Smite x 2 Glory x 2 -> Favor of the Sun x 2 Minh : 5XP spent, 0XP left. Dream Diary : Dreams of an Explorer (3) Shortcut x 2 -> Sharp Vision x 2 Radiant Smite x 2 : This is a very powerful attack and even with only two copies it dramatically increases Mary's offensive potential. Excellent card. Favor of the Sun x 2 : An auto-include which makes the .35 Winchester a reliable weapon, at least for one shot per turn. Dream Diary : Dreams of an Explorer (3) x 1 : Minh is now a powerhouse, as long as we can find this early each game. Sharp Vision x 2 : Exactly the kind of card Minh likes. We now have six ways to grab two clues with one action. Scenario Two : The Vanishing of Elina Harper This is one of the most memorable scenarios in the game and a great take on the 'search around town' mission that seems to pop up in every campaign. The pressure is really off Mary here as most of the early enemies aren't very threatening, so she can afford to stock up on Spectral Razors and Radiant Smites for the later part. This is the most interesting scenario in the campaign when it comes to strategy, so I'll get right to it. I have ten runs recorded in my notes. Small sample size and all, but in all of them I took Minh to the Innsmouth Harbour right away and took 2-3 peeks at the top card of the leads deck before doing my first draw. However, I tried two different strategies : 1) Draw three each time, which meant I would do about three actual draws per game. 2) Draw one, then one, then three for as many times as possible afterwards (or two if it was the final draw). In seven attempts with the #1 strategy I advanced to the final act every time. In three attempts with the #2 strategy I advanced to the final act zero times. In every case, I never found both the suspect and the hideout so the Angry Mob always spawned, and I only narrowed down the list of suspects or hideouts to one twice (I was mostly working with a 50% chance on one or both of them). Make of this what you will! Other general strategy bits : I tried to keep the Innsmouth Troublemaker locked down until the discard shuffle if one spawned early, and I always spawned locations instead of suspects when possible to get the VP and because it was a lot easier for Minh to scoop up clues than it was to do any of the parley actions. Resolution 3. Othera Gilman at the New Church Green. 4VP (three locations plus the Winged One) Upgrades Mary : 5XP spent, 0XP left. Sword Cane x 1 -> Dynamite Blast (3) x 1 Robes of Endless Night x 1 -> Physical Training (2) x 1 Minh : 4XP spent, 0XP left. Unexpected Courage x 2 -> Unrelenting x 2 Deduction (2) (2) x 1 Dynamite Blast (3) x 1 : Testless damage is great, and fast testless damage is even better! Physical Training (2) x 1 : I became a believer in this card after my Nathaniel run in RtTFA. It costs zero, it has good icons, but its actual function is to let you pass those critical Combat tests on Hard. As resource hungry as Guardians often are there are times, often late in a game, when you will have excess resources but not enough cards in hand to commit to pass a test, so I think this makes for a good one-of. It's situationally very good. Unrelenting x 2 : This will be Minh's only real Bless token payoff, and it's a good one. It's great for keeping the tokens in the bag on tests where you won't need them (basically every investigate action) and the card draw feeds more skills into her hands. Deduction (2) x 1 : We'll be upgrading our Deductions this campaign, but not our Perceptions. There are enough 4+ clue locations in 2-player to justify it, and at worst it still gives you two clues for passing the test. Scenario Three : In Too Deep I really liked this one. Taking a more-or-less linear path that gets progressively harder as you go, the feeling of being, well, in too deep, it's a different enough experience from the regular kind of scenario to feel fresh and it makes me glad for the future of the game that haven't even come close to running out of new ideas when it comes to encounter design. I played it through twice before my Ironman run, and both times I was able to get five keys and a bunch of VP. This time, though, Minh had a really bad opening hand and took a while to get up to speed... Strategy-wise, I took it fairly slowly, making sure to visit every VP and key location as by this point I was confident in Minh's ability to scoop the clues. Mary was kind of just along for the ride until the half-way point when things became interesting. Having bagged the Innsmouth Shoggoth on both my previous attempts there was no way I was going to let him live this time, but getting it done required a LOT of thinking; you know those times when you're playing through the scenario at a steady pace and most of your actions don't require much thought, but then suddenly a huge decision tree takes root and grows before your very eyes, spreading its leaves in all directions like in some time-lapse video? That happened, but I got through it thanks to my trusty Dynamite Blast (3) and my decision to abandon the keys and just stick it out for the VP. Mary rode the bus back and forth dealing with threats while Minh plodded along clearing out the last couple of locations. I actually forgot to go back and use the black key to get the Jailbreak memory; by the time I realized it was too late a conga line of deep sea monsters was bringing up the rear, making it a no-go. For one brief but terrifying moment Minh was in danger of being Pulled Back, but we managed to avoid drawing the one token that would have sealed her fate. Resolution 1. Memories recovered : A deal with Joe Sargent. 6VP + 2XP. 8XP banked due to scenario requirement. Scenario Four : Devil Reef Ah, a fishing expedition. Another thematic win and our first introduction to the Vehicle rules for this campaign. This is the first scenario where I only played it through once beforehand, and I think it must've been a pretty charmed run because I managed to get all three relics, thanks in large part to very favourable Underwater Cavern placements which allowed me to avoid the sea monster. This time, I wasn't so lucky because the first two islands I visited had all of the dud locations, and then Minh had an absolutely catastrophic auto-fail draw on a huge commit for The King in Yellow. To give you an idea of how badly it was going, by the time the agenda advanced and the sea monster appeared Minh had only discovered a single clue. So, we were pretty far behind, which meant we had to start taking some risks. Which meant Sister Mary was going to have to slay The Terror of Devil Reef. "Christ, that's a big one!" I kind of knew I would have to do it so I was already taking stock of my options, and the turn before the agenda advanced I drew a Radiant Smite, so now I was feeling confident. But then immediately after it appeared, Mary drew Psychic Pull and it nailed the Smite from a hand of six cards. So we were back to risky-but-doable territory. Mary was standing on the island ready for it and laid into it, tanking its damage for a turn with a spare Deny Existence. Minh was down in the tunnels, and on the following turn there would be just enough actions (if no tests were failed) for her to come up with enough clues to hit it with a 4-point "I've got a plan!" if it was required. So I had a backup plan, but in the event it wasn't needed and Mary finished it off herself. After that, there were only enough actions left to claim either the Awakened Mantle or the Headdress of Y'ha-nthlei and I chose the Mantle because I figured it would be a nice bit of soak for Mary's deck. We spent too much time at sea, so the tide grew stronger. But hey, the Terror of Devil Reef was dead. That's not nothing, right? Resolution 1. Memories recovered : Discovery of an unholy mantle. 4VP + 2XP + 8XP (banked) -> 14XP Upgrades Mary : 14XP spent, 0XP left. Stick to the Plan x 1 Olive McBride x 2 -> Nephthys x 2 Minh : 10XP spent, 4XP left. No Stone Unturned (5) (5) x 2 Stick to the Plan x 1 : Is there any Guardian that doesn't want this? Maybe Carolyn? I always purchase it, and I always stick the same three things under it : Prepared for the Worst, Ever Vigilant, and Dynamite Blast. Nephthys x 2 : If all of our previous Bless effects were build-up, then this is the payoff! Outstanding card, and it even works with Favor of the Sun because its tokens are resolved as if they were revealed from the chaos bag. From now on, every Bless token drawn by either Mary or Minh will end up sealed on Nephthys. No Stone Unturned (5) x 2 : Not going to lie, it's an expensive upgrade in a class that has no shortage of big, flashy upgrades to spend XP on, but I think for this deck it's absolutely the right choice. This will go a long way towards ensuring consistency for Minh's most important cards. We're banking the rest of the XP for a new card I've had my eye on... Scenario Five : Horror in High Gear We're in a car! We're hurtling along a treacherous cliffside road at breakneck speed! There are guys in bigger cars chasing us! This is top-down design at its finest - something AH does extremely well in general - and when I first read the text on Cliffside Road it immediately brought to mind Devil's Luck, because who could survive such a fall except... a Survivor? Based on my previous run and how Minh's deck had been performing so far I thought I had a good chance of making it through without having to stop the car, so that was going to be my strategy. In the event, I had to stop twice, and the first stop came right after the first Mythos phase because we drew a Pursuing Motorcar and a Hit Van. That's nine HP worth of enemies. Oh, and we were at the aforementioned Cliffside Road. An on-demand Dynamite Blast (3) was half the solution to that problem, and the other half was for Mary to stop the car and get out so that I could have the Motorcar hit only her. A quick Deny Existence on the four damage, a boosted regular attack and one Spectral Razor later and we were back on the road the following turn. The next stop came when the agenda advanced. I was curious as to what would happen since The Terror of Devil Reef was dead (fantastic bit of narrative flair when it's alive, by the way) and it turned out to be not so bad; the car stopped automatically, which was actually extremely fortunate because we had a Malfunction a couple of turns ago, we had two more enemies on our tail and we had just arrived at the 6-clue Cliffside Road, which, given the situation, I wasn't confident in being able to clear before we would've been forced to move again. The final stretch was pretty hairy when Minh was defeated by horror from the encounter deck. With more enemies close behind that I had no way to deal with and three cards left in the road deck I took a gamble and used the car's ability to draw an encounter card and move ahead, and I flipped over... Falcon Point Approach! We made it! Along the way we cleared every VP location we passed through, and also every intersection so I was never at risk of having to take the Long Way Around. Minh's a pretty good navigator! Resolution 1. 7VP (six locations plus the Winged One). Minh defeated by horror. +1 MT. Upgrades Mary : 6XP spent, 1XP left. Enchanted Blade x 1 -> Holy Spear x 1 Stand Together x 1 -> Ever Vigilant x 1 Minh : 14XP spent, 0XP left. Ancestral Knowledge x 1 (adding Unexpected Courage x 2, Shortcut x 2, Logical Reasoning x 1) Grisly Totem (3) x 1 Deduction (2) x 1 Holy Spear x 1 : Finally, a weapon you can believe in. I wasn't sure what to expect from it but when I put it into play for the first time early in the next scenario it was immediately obvious that it entirely obsoleted every other weapon in the deck. I didn't play another .35 Winchester or Enchanted Blade for the remainder of the campaign, and it also effectively obsoleted Favor of the Sun. I'll talk more about this at the end when I discuss my overall impression of Bless effects. Ever Vigilant x 1 : A staple in my decks, and as mentioned before it goes under SttP. Ancestral Knowledge x 1 : A new card and one which has Minh's name written all over it. I possibly should have purchased it sooner but I felt the NSU upgrades were more important. The hard part was figuring out which five cards to add to the deck. I went with Unexpected Courage x 2 because it was a good skill, Shortcut x 2 because it had proven useful earlier, and Logical Reasoning x 1 because I now had mental trauma to consider and I knew our old friend Frozen in Fear was about to make an appearance. I'm open to suggestions here about what might have been better, because although I had been planning to take this card for a while I hadn't actually given much thought to what the deck needed for the rest of the campaign. Grisly Totem (3) x 1 : A solid upgrade. More draw effects means more consistency. Scenario Six : A Light in the Fog This is one of those scenarios where it really helps to have played it before because trying to deal with Oceiros Marsh on the fly made for a pretty awkward test run. In the proper run we didn't get captured at all, and we were pretty far ahead this time so we were able to complete the objectives fairly comfortably. As far as strategy goes, I think you're probably just relying on being able to scoop enough clues to use the location peek abilities to save actions. I didn't waste resources trying to kill Oceiros the first time, and when he returned we were ready for him with Dynamite and Minh's 4-point "I've got a plan!" I remember The Moon Room was on the bottom floor and the Pump Room on the one above, and Minh sat there for a turn operating the pump while Mary got into position for a clean exit. I briefly thought about having Mary resign immediately, but it would take Minh two turns to reach the exit so in the end I had her stay, but not at the exit itself because I knew, I just knew, if she sat there for a turn waiting I was guaranteed to draw a Rising Tides and it would screw everything up. Resolution 1. 6VP. 6XP banked due to scenario requirement. Memories recovered : A conversation with Mr Moore. Lifecycle of a Deep One. Scenario Seven : The Lair of Dagon Now this is an interesting one, strategy-wise, and out of all of the later scenarios it probably would've benefited the most from a few more replays, but as it was I failed pretty badly on my test run so I didn't see what happened in the later part of it. I did get a better feel for it in the proper run but I swear I must've missed something because when you get to the tunnels they're only connected to the entrance and not each other, and it felt like that was really a lot of actions to have to spend exploring the place on top of everything else that had already happened. In hindsight I think it's supposed to be that way because it seems like everything in this scenario is designed to slow you down. The bag filling up with Curse tokens, the dreaded Stone Barrier, and all of the weak cultist enemies which spawn some distance way so they need to be chased. Speaking of which, it made me wish I had "Get over here!" in my deck, and then later I realized this place would've been perfect for Righteous Hunt, a card I'd been thinking of trying but just couldn't justify before now. Mary was able to pick off all the cultists before they ever caused the agenda to advance prematurely, but Minh had another critical failure on a huge The King in Yellow commit and the Stone Barriers really slowed me down (I should have used the red key on one of them instead of on the Y'ha-nthlei Statue). I was just starting to explore the tunnels when the final agenda was about to advance so on that last turn we made our way back to the entrance and resigned. Shame about Dagon waking up. Resolution 3. 4VP. Upgrades Mary : 11XP spent, 0XP left. Enchanted Blade x 1 -> Holy Spear x 1 .35 Winchester x 1 -> Hallow x 1 .35 Winchester x 1 -> Enchant Weapon x 1 Minh : 10XP spent, 0XP left. Shortcut x 2 -> Cryptic Research x 2 "I've got a plan!" x 1 -> Fortune or Fate x 1 Hallow x 1 : Final scenario upgrades are always interesting to consider. I wasn't too sure of what to expect so I went with something that should be universally useful : doom removal. Enchant Weapon x 1 : Mary was already used to only doing one big attack per turn, so why not continue in that vein with an upgrade that works particularly well on a weapon that never runs out of ammo? This is a pretty solid card as a one-of in this deck and I can see it being great in a support focused deck. Cryptic Research x 2 : There are so many powerful and expensive Seeker upgrades that I wasn't sure what to pick, so I went with the basics. More draw adds consistency to both decks, and I did actually use this on Mary to find her a Holy Spear on the first turn of the final scenario after her Prepared for the Worst whiffed. Fortune or Fate x 1 : Did somebody say final scenario? Time to break out the exile cards! I am actually a big believer in early exile cards for Survivors, but Seeker/Survivors don't have the same luxury of XP to spare. I wanted to try Stroke of Luck x 2 but then I would've had to pass on Cryptic Research, so this was the next best option in my mind. Scenario Eight : Into the Maelstrom As final scenarios go, this one was pretty cool. I remember TDL, TFA, and TCU's final scenarios all tried to evoke otherworldly settings unbound by time and space, and while technically Y'ha-nthlei was exactly that kind of place too, it felt a lot more like these locations inhabited some real, tangible, physical space. Maybe it was because of all the water references and the flooding mechanics. Whatever the reason, I liked the theme, and I also enjoyed being chased around by a giant un-killable Ancient One as soon as we entered its domain, though it was a bit alarming before I got to grips with the mechanics. We began with three of the four keys needed to advance the act and we found the fourth at the second location we uncovered so I decided not to linger and got straight into the final part. The regular enemies weren't too hard to deal with, but I do like how every final scenario in this game always focuses on the doom mechanic, often ramping it up to a seemingly overwhelming degree. The encounter deck had a really nasty surprise in the form of Treacherous Depths, which ArkhamDB doesn't seem to have up yet. Suffice to say, it nailed Mary's Diving Suit and Guardian Angel on the second turn after arriving in the city. And Psychic Pull never failed to disappoint by again nailing the best cards every time it appeared. The strategy here was pretty straightforward : Minh held onto all the keys (I did give one to Mary after she hit a convenient Scene of the Crime) and she also ran around scooping up all the clues needed to lower the flood levels. Mary kept Dagon busy the whole time and we flushed him and his missus down the drain one turn before the agenda would have advanced and woken her up! The investigators win the campaign! That final scenario seemed pretty manageable, to be honest. In fact, maybe it was easy. A little... too easy? After reading through the epilogue I glanced at Flashback 14 and confirmed my suspicions : yes, there was something to look forward to in a future replay, and it didn't look easy at all. But for now I'm satisfied that I completed all the goals I set out to with this run. Total memories recovered : 8/14. Final Thoughts on... Bless Tokens The Bless and Curse tokens are a good addition, and well-integrated into the game with some powerful card effects. I haven't really touched the Curse tokens yet, but what I found interesting about the Bless card effects I used was how they interacted with each other. The Level 0 cards mostly focus on simply adding them to the bag, and you draw them and it makes your roll better, but once you start getting into some of the higher level cards which start sealing them and using them for specific purposes like Nephthys, what you find is that you don't really draw them naturally anymore so they more or less stop affecting your rolls (Favor of the Sun notwithstanding, of course). When I started using the Holy Spear most of the Bless tokens in the bag sat on it or on Nephthys, often for several turns in a row, so Keep Faith wasn't really useful anymore. There may have been other spenders I wasn't using, but this is the reason I took Hallow for the final scenario. When I was trying to evaluate it earlier in the campaign I was skeptical that you'd be able to play it reliably because the tokens would be popping off all the time, but when they're all sealed on cards in play it suddenly becomes a very safe bet. Of course, if you strip away all of your sealed tokens for a Hallow you then can't use Nephthys or the Spear's big attack until you restock again. At that point, cards like Keep Faith become useful once more, though, so there's this dynamic of generating and consuming Bless tokens which has a fair amount of depth to it, and I imagine it could get pretty interesting in 3-4 player games when there are that many more potential generators in play. Minh Thi Phan Let's be honest, this run succeeded mostly because Minh is a very strong Seeker. I like her skill-focused design, in fact I like how much depth there is to all of the investigators such that different cards gain or lose value depending upon who you're playing, and I also would wager that in a 4-player game she's probably the best Seeker to bring, assuming you only want to bring one (and also assuming Mandy is off the table for still being broken). Sister Mary Mary may not be a born fighter, but most of the time she was up to the task of bringing down whatever enemy was in front of her. It was the times when there were 2-3 enemies either engaged or about to be engaged with us that I realized her real weakness was in not being able to deal consistent damage. The Holy Spear went a long way towards fixing that issue, and I wonder if it might not have been a better idea to spend my first 5XP on it. I'm so used to playing other Guardians who don't usually purchase their big guns until late in the campaign that I didn't consider that might not be the best course here. But if you're going to spend early XP on a big weapon, is the Spear really the best one? Why not a Flamethrower? I'm not ready to say one is definitely better than the other just yet (for Mary), but I will say that having a strong weapon that doesn't use ammo is a new experience for me (I've never actually taken the Timeworn Brand) and as I mentioned earlier, Enchant Weapon, and perhaps other upgrades, gain value when you don't have to consider ammo. And for all of Mary's inadequacies as a fighter, she does have some real strengths. Her very high sanity made it so that there was never a point in the entire campaign (except for some dire Pit of Despair test runs) where I was concerned about her taking horror damage. In fact, on treacheries which dealt one or even two points I routinely didn't bother trying to pass them. I will say, though, it felt like TIC dealt out more HP than SP damage on average. I do think Mary would be a lot of fun to play in a support role, and there's a handful of other Bless card effects I didn't even touch which seem like they would fit that role much better. The Game I love this game but I tend to only play it in binge sessions a few times a year, and this was one of them. When played on Hard it delivers a very challenging and rewarding experience, and I'm honestly kind of surprised at how well the amount of damage dealt by a scenario always seems to be calibrated so perfectly, such that with careful play you can expect to last to the natural conclusion of the game, at least most of the time. It's a really well designed game and I'm glad it's becoming more popular by the year so it's very unlikely FFG will terminate it anytime soon. I might do a run through The Circle Undone in the near future just to refresh my memory of it, because I should have a copy of RtTCU arriving soon. Once I play through that, though, I probably won't pick the game up again until Edge of the Earth releases later in the year. But I will continue to follow it online, and I'll always be looking forward to my next session. Kalko fucked around with this message at 07:33 on Dec 14, 2021 |
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Jun 27, 2021 13:26
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We got the Holy Spirit super early on for our Blessed guardian, It makes a difference. At worst, it’s the neutral(5) club. When we need it, it’s an auto kill.
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Jun 27, 2021 16:52
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Kalko posted:Campaign Stuff, thoughts, etc Really great writeup, was fun to read. And look forward to reading another if/when you do Return to Circle Undone. So a few thoughts. Most everything I say is from the perspective of 4 player, usually hard, and basically taboo list (one of our players doesn't use it, but he also tends to make more thematic decks so it's not like he's just abusing all the taboo'd things). The Bless/Curse mechanic...after playing with it more I'm souring on it a bit. In larger games, you kinda need buy in from the whole group. The bless stuff I don't think outside of some survivor combos really keeps up power level wise with the commitment needed. I also think there's really not enough stand alone cards that are useful (especially for bless)-it's definitely a build around thing. With that, Sister Mary has really underperformed in our games (we've tried her a couple of times). She suffers in that she's a Guardian who's not particularly good at fighting which is not a good place to be. She ends up feeling like Diana, but worse. As for big weapons, in 4 player games I'm of the opinion that you have two real choices: Timeworn Brand, or Flamethrower. If you want to use ammo, Flamethrower's just superior. If you don't want to mess with ammo (which is a real consideration) or are not a guardian, it's Timeworn Brand. That said, I could see how in two player that you'd prefer to just get Flamethrower since ammo is much less of a concern. Minh is obviously great. Also I agree that the initial scenario in Innsmouth is quite a shock if you're not prepared. --- Speaking of which, we started another run through Innsmouth yesterday. Our team was Alt-Roland, Daisy, Mateo, and me playing Alt-Skids. Now I had wanted to try Alt-Skids for awhile, when I saw him I though he had a chance to be extremely powerful. KPC_Mammon had posted a deck in the thread before that was similar in nature to a lot of what I had thought of doing (with a few key differences I'll get to). His deck was built to be the fight half of a duo (as well as taking a few stand alone trips), which is a bit different from my role (as well as the player count) but I wanted to point his deck out because I think it's a very good take on Skids. Of course, the deck here has 29 xp, so starting from 0 would take some reverse engineering. KPC_Mammon posted:The Skids build looked something like this: So this is what I ended up with actually playing: https://arkhamdb.com/deck/view/1486232 Obviously a lot of that is similar. A couple things I made specific concessions to Innsmouth: Lonnie and the Leather Jacket for repeatable soak. I also went with a sole backstab/pilfer to be able to help out with some burst damage/clue gathering when necessary. Now, this deck for the first scenario isn't amazing but is workable depending on other characters. You can do a bit of clueing with Pilfer and the flashlights, your damage isn't great but you can do evade things to help with handling monsters, you can chip in to help pass some encounter card/location tests, etc. You're fairly resilient with Lonnie and the Jacket (while also getting an ok fight of 4, there were some times I did just end up punching some enemies). If I were redoing it, I'd likely throw in a Mauser for one of the flashlights, and an Act of Desperation for one of Manual Dex/Quick Thinking/Watch This. If you don't mind wasting an xp on Adaptable, you could also cut either the Practice Makes Perfects or the Daredevils and add a couple other cards that make you a bit more useful to start. So as I mentioned, the first scenario in Innsmouth can be a bit rough unprepared. Also, I was a bit worried about how the deck would function at 0xp, and also at some reasonable low xp threshholds-many decks that are absolutely amazing and can handle tons of stuff at 20-30+ xp will have rough build paths to make it there. So I did some quick goldfishing/running solo through the first parts of night of the zealot just to see if it would be workable. And I also did it after spending a few xp on upgrades (the things I thought were initially key were the shotgun, the 2 myriad cards, the upgraded daredevils, and also double double). Still felt really powerful, but that's still quite a bit of XP, and it wasn't quite as consistent as I liked. One of the cards I hadn't really looked at (and why I wanted to credit KPC_Mammon) was Daredevil. I saw it in his deck, and thought it was a great idea. That said, when I was doing my test runs, I found that the deck seemed to actually run a lot smoother without upgrading the daredevil-you want to be milling your deck to use scrounges (also having the benefit of being able to scrounge a daredevil back), as well as being able to recycle quicker to get three aces back in to do the whole cycle again. So after the first scenario we ended up with 6 xp. My intended upgrades were gonna be Easy Mark and Three Aces in for the non-daredevil skill cards, and Shotgun for the Backstab. Of course, that's actually 7 xp (as I forgot the guardian shotgun is 4 I believe, the rogue one is 5). So I just made the myriad card upgrades and...yikes. With that 2xp the deck felt comically powerful. One of the dudes at our table said it reminded him of Ashcan Pete/Key of Ys level when we played using that way back before the taboo list was a thing (and as an aside, we basically soft-banned Key after that). In practice it was way more effective than I anticipated. I'd daresay it's got to be close to the most powerful thing you can do with a 2xp deck. Although some weaknesses would make it unplayable; the much-maligned Doomed would basically ensure you'd be defeated somewhere around turn 7 or 8. Also while I enjoyed it (what little I got to play), unless your group really enjoys high-powered things I'm not sure it's fitting. We actually decided to restart (our Mateo player and Daisy didn't like their decks, and everyone was somewhat bored watching me solitaire my way around). So as a proof of concept it's definitely interesting, and I'm sure some people who are better at the game and/or deckbuilding could itinerate it more and have some better upgrade lines (my upgrade path was likely gonna be double double, eucatastrophe, relic hunter, charisma, chuck fergus, and then probably lucky (3) or shotgun maybe thrown in there if we needed more damage ).
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Jun 27, 2021 19:26
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I really enjoy the detailed write-ups of your campaigns, they are a lot of fun.
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Jun 27, 2021 19:31
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Thanks, you wouldn't believe how time-consuming it was to write all that, so I'm glad it's appreciated, but it helps me catalogue my own thoughts about the game, too. Kind of a personal debrief, I guess. If RtTCU arrives within the next few weeks I'll be on leave so I'll probably do another write-up.alansmithee posted:The Bless/Curse mechanic...after playing with it more I'm souring on it a bit. In larger games, you kinda need buy in from the whole group. The bless stuff I don't think outside of some survivor combos really keeps up power level wise with the commitment needed. I also think there's really not enough stand alone cards that are useful (especially for bless)-it's definitely a build around thing. Yeah, I can definitely see how if only 1-2 people are using Bless tech in a 4-player game it would totally fall flat. Thinking about the cards some more, I wish there was another effect or two like Hallow, but cheaper, which lets you consume sealed tokens. It seems like A Watchful Peace is the only other one, but Minh wasn't able to take it. Mary was the first build-around investigator I've really tried, and while I still think Bless/Curse stuff was a great addition to the game I'm glad it's compartmentalized the way it is instead of being an evergreen kind of mechanic (which I'm sure it was never intended to be in the first place).
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Jun 28, 2021 01:46
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Four player opens up some fun techniques with the encounter deck. Like using first watch to draw one encounter during a phase instead of four. Maybe I’ve posted this before, but I’ve always wanted to go through the Internet conspiracy with four people who all have handcuffs. Diana with the curse spells that knock enemies out of the way to prevent then coming back.
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Jun 28, 2021 02:58
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