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I beat Scarlet keys today, with Amanda and Joe Diamond, staying mostly in the northern hemisphere. And it’s interesting that you can read more than any other campaign and still get to the ending wondering a lot of what actually happened! Great scenario designs tho, some new fun things, with fortune or Folly as the best part.
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Dec 21, 2022 10:58
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| # ? Jun 3, 2024 10:45 |
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I only just received my Scarlet Keys box and I'm procrastinating over starting it. The more I think about it, the more my plan to have Flex Kymani with Carson as fighter-bodyguard for a Cluever Charlie Kane just doesn't make sense. I'll be drawing twice as many encounter cards for the pair and I just don't think Carson can handle it. It's probably better to just go mainly Fighter for Kymani with Charlie as the Cluever. I was considering Flex Kymani and Flex Amina, but there hasn't really been much discussion of her compared to everyone else. Has anyone tried her out? How does her Sickle and Dowsing Rod stand up compared to regular Mystic spells? Nephthys fucked around with this message at 15:35 on Dec 21, 2022 |
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Dec 21, 2022 15:31
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I don’t really understand the viability of flex characters outside of a three player party. I’ve never played a two flex campaign, but it seems like they’d hit a stat scaling wall around halfway through.
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Dec 21, 2022 15:50
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Anonymous Robot posted:I don’t really understand the viability of flex characters outside of a three player party. I’ve never played a two flex campaign, but it seems like they’d hit a stat scaling wall around halfway through. Mystics generally flex really well since they just use Willpower for everything as long as they have spell charges. Amina is the exception which is why I'm a bit dubious about her. It depends on the investigator though. Joe Diamond is obviously built for it, Calvin's stats just naturally get boosted enough to handle it, Finn and Kymani can do it with lockpicks/thieves kits and all the rogue fight events and assets, Stella can just fail forward through anything. I really like having two flex characters because they can split up and just do their own things generally. I only play on normal though because gently caress hard.
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Dec 21, 2022 16:21
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I've never had any issues playing flex characters in 2 player even if my partner specialized, we never play the higher difficulty levels though.
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Dec 21, 2022 17:00
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If your goal is to use your secondary stat exclusively to do two things, you’ll run into problems. But some characters are made to be flexible, Winnifred wants to use multiple skill cards a round and has a +6 card you’re going to see a few times, as well as low use items like the lock picks and Mauser. Amanda can vacuum up clues with deduction 2, then use mind over matter 2 and vicious blow 2 to lay the whooping down on the boss. If you need her to use dexterity for a turn, get her up to six with Promise of power. Dodge until you succeed. The real savior of the last scenario was Dr. Maleson(2), because our clue acceleration was fine but there are some encounter effects you just don’t want to do over and over and over.
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Dec 21, 2022 17:07
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Anonymous Robot posted:I don’t really understand the viability of flex characters outside of a three player party. I’ve never played a two flex campaign, but it seems like they’d hit a stat scaling wall around halfway through. Flex doesn't mean you're 50/50 clues/enemies. Depending on colour access you're still going to be better at certain things than others with each investigator, so you end up being like 70/30 and 40/60 or 60/40 and 50/50 or something like that. You should give 2x flex a try, you gain a lot of tempo from both investigators being able to deal with poo poo like boss enemies or powering through clues in case no enemies show up. Mystics are easy to make flex, but you can also go for example Joe Diamond + Tony Morgan with Seeker offclass.
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Dec 21, 2022 18:34
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Joe Diamond is fun as hell.
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Dec 21, 2022 18:58
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Anonymous Robot posted:Joe Diamond is fun as hell. I’m still learning the game, and Joseph Diamond was a prof I took a mess of archaeology courses with so this is endlessly amusing. Rule clarification question : there’s no rule against having two of the same assets, is there? I know you can have two non-uniques per deck, but in play the other day I was in a situation where I had two knives. That’s gotta be fine (if not optimal), right? Also gently caress Dark Young. They suck. Do not be in a situation where you’re debating if having a second knife might help you fight one. It doesn’t.
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Dec 21, 2022 20:48
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You can have 2 copies of any card in your deck, including uniques. You can only have 1 unique card in play, multiples of non-unique cards are fine.
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Dec 21, 2022 20:49
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Just wanted to give people a heads up that foundry gameroom still has a holiday sale on all their arkham stuff, some of it is like 65% off I picked up a bunch of investigator starters for like 7 bucks each just to have more duplicates for deckbuilding, it's a very nice sale
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Dec 30, 2022 19:54
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Got pretty turbofucked on the first scenario of Path to Carcosa, though ultimately we turned out fine. I had been plagued with a dead hand throughout the game. Guts x2, defiance, ward of protection. All good cards but none of them actually do any work. So I used a location trait that let me spend two actions to draw three cards, then used my third action moving onto a new location (dumb idea.) The revealed location forces the investigator to search the encounter deck for two hidden cards and add them to hand. I drew a card that doesn’t let the investigator play any events and takes two actions to discard, and a card that doesn’t let the investigator commit any cards and also takes two actions to discard. Then, at upkeep, I drew my weakness, drawing the sign, which immediately reduces max hand size to three, and because it happens at upkeep, forces you to discard down on the spot. It also takes two actions to discard. Hidden cards also can’t be discarded by any means other than their card text, and I didn’t have time for that, so I spent the rest of the game with a 1 card hand, assets only. Anonymous Robot fucked around with this message at 19:16 on Jan 3, 2023 |
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Jan 3, 2023 19:08
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Questions for Path to Carcosa: We just played through The Last King, and The agenda deck refers to an “agenda 2b” card that I couldn’t find for the life of me. Luckily I never had to resolve that because we got out before all the sickening realities got drawn, but am I missing something? Is there some hidden agenda 2b somewhere or did I misplace a card? Potentially related, I saw that this scenario has a resolutions 2 and 3, but the only way to end the scenario that I could discover was to either be defeated or resign. Did I run the scenario wrong somehow, or is there something less obvious in store in the campaign?
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Jan 8, 2023 01:30
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Every agenda has an A front and a B back.
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Jan 8, 2023 02:05
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Anonymous Robot posted:Questions for Path to Carcosa: Putting into separate spoilers just in case you just wanna know the answer to your questions separately, the agenda thing is, Agenda 2B would be the other side of Agenda 2A which you'd resolve when you flip it if you go to pull a sickening reality card and they're all gone. The other resolutions are doing that gets Resolution 3, resolution 2 is just everyone getting KO'd I think. So you just got the best ending and the reward is the more folks you interview/clues you get, the more XP you get. There is weird stuff in the campaign though for sure. Like, if you flip the act deck for that same scenario for example, which the game never tells you to do.
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Jan 8, 2023 02:05
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thebardyspoon posted:
Lol yeah I did that out of habit. Forgot all about the reverse agenda being the “b” side. I got it twisted because multiple Return to Circle scenarios have two or more versions of various agenda cards.
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Jan 8, 2023 02:08
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I have just picked up this game and gotten pretty obsessed with it over the last few weeks. My friend and I are going to take on Carcosa with Jenny Barnes and Akachi - we're both relatively new to this game, but good at card games. Us both being flex looking for a lot of set up has me kind of nervous - and I'm skeptical about Jenny in general, but hopefully we can make it work. If you were playing with those two two-handed, which would you assume leaned more towards fighting and which towards clues?
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Jan 12, 2023 19:11
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In general, Mystic has ready access to a solid damage vector in Shriveling. Rogue has to work a little harder to compete, and depending on your card pool, may not even be able to.
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Jan 12, 2023 19:20
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Stagger_Lee posted:I have just picked up this game and gotten pretty obsessed with it over the last few weeks. I guess you have the Core set, Dunwich since you have Jenny and then Carcosa right for player cards? If you have more sets it only makes it even easier cause every set broadens options but just assuming you have that I think it'll be fine anyway. I reckon you could do both as flex and be fine if you use some of Jenny's out of class access on some cards from the other classes that do the job early in the campaign so for example some clue boosting stuff or some weapons/prepared for the worst from guardian to more reliably get your weapons. Then have Akachi with the spells you have access to that do clue gathering and fighting. You'd probably want to have flashlights in both early on as well cause those are just like, fine shroud reducers that can be replaced with better stuff later (if you have Scarlet Keys, the upgraded flashlight seems legit to me). I think if I was making them dedicated to one or the other, Akachi would be the fighter but you'd probably want to have at least 4/6 copies of damage dealing asset spells and/or ways to find them or recur them if you have less than the higher number, I think those are in the starter, Dunwich and then the mystic starter pack with Jacqueline has another good basic set. If you have Edge of the Earth that has some XP costing spells as well that'd do the job after scenario 1. It's kinda the same situation with the clue gathering spells so ultimately you might have to make up the difference with event spells or like, the magic knife I'm blanking on the name of to make up the numbers and do what you need. Jenny I'd make the clue gatherer just cause she can grab good stuff from the other classes early on and low level seeker stuff is quite nice, then she can get lockpicks to supplement what she has there. Pack some sanity restoratives and sanity tanking/soak in the decks for sure. thebardyspoon fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Jan 12, 2023 |
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Jan 12, 2023 19:41
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Thanks, that all makes sense. Yeah, we're playing with a limited "cards through Carcosa" pool. We're aware of the taboo list but we're ignoring it given that we're new and not having access to everything. Given the advice, I'm thinking something along the lines of this, then, for Jenny: https://arkhamdb.com/deck/view/2665918
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Jan 12, 2023 20:54
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With Jenny, I would consider switching Machete for Fire Axe. I have some fond memories of Axe Murderer Preston.
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Jan 12, 2023 21:03
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Nephthys posted:With Jenny, I would consider switching Machete for Fire Axe. I have some fond memories of Axe Murderer Preston. Would you consider Dark Horse if your plan was Fire Axe?
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Jan 12, 2023 21:06
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Stagger_Lee posted:Would you consider Dark Horse if your plan was Fire Axe? It's a natural synergy, yep. I did the same thing with Lola going through Carcosa and it worked. You'd have to drop either Mag Glass or Physical Training, it's your call if Fire Axe is better than Machete + Phys Training. Kind of the same basic idea right, pump her stats with money to where you can fight. The thing with Jenny is that you're always fighting against her stats, trying to boost them up to the point where she can compete with other investigators. With Mag Glass or Dark Horse she's still only at 4 Int, basically the minimum to investigate imo. If you aren't running taboo, get some xp and just grab Key of Ys asap. It's what I did when I ran Lola through Carcosa.
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Jan 12, 2023 21:18
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Fire axe is a decent shout, gives you two swings at +2 with the second doing +1 damage if you've spent all your cash, lets you kill 3 health stuff or super kill health 2 stuff by spending all the cash on the first swing. Dark horse could be interesting as well with that, the stats would be downright respectable once you were set up but you'd be committing to that quite hard with your 5 out of class access cards. I reckon you might find your hand filled with stuff that takes up hand slots since your signature takes up 2 and then you have 7 other cards that take up a hand once you play them so maybe a couple events instead of the derringer and one of the flashlights? Something else to dump cash on as well. Slightly specific to the campaign advice that you can read if you want or not, I'd recommend you use both copies of fine clothes you have in Carcosa, they're pretty useful for the first few scenarios, after that feel free to replace them. If Akachi has nothing else for the body slot she can use the other copy if you're both flexing or Jenny can have them both just so you're very likely to get them out and in play.
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Jan 12, 2023 21:24
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Thanks everyone for their help. Only half-related hypothetical: If I gave Akachi my Liquid Courage with Teamwork, and she used Spirit-Speaker on it, whose hand would it go to?
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Jan 12, 2023 22:29
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Stagger_Lee posted:Thanks everyone for their help. Only half-related hypothetical: If I gave Akachi my Liquid Courage with Teamwork, and she used Spirit-Speaker on it, whose hand would it go to? Pretty sure the owner's.
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Jan 13, 2023 06:19
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Stagger_Lee posted:Thanks everyone for their help. Only half-related hypothetical: If I gave Akachi my Liquid Courage with Teamwork, and she used Spirit-Speaker on it, whose hand would it go to? It would go back to the owner's hand if it was a legal interaction, though in this particular case it isn't. Liquid Courage uses supplies, Spirit-Speaker works only on assets that use charges. It's an easy thing to mix up since chances are you'll be using resource tokens to keep track of all 'ammo' types, but quite a lot of 'refill' cards only interact with one specific type of resource.
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Jan 13, 2023 06:36
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Thanks, yeah, I was reading something else last night that made me realize in retrospect. I was reading "charges" as a generic term that encompassed all of the various terms used for limited use items, but it's just another one of them. Too bad! Using the Spirit-Speaker for endless slugs of bourbon would be pretty cool.
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Jan 13, 2023 15:02
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Akechi explaining to Jenny that no, it's not that kind of spirits. Started a Scarlet Keys campaign, with Darrell, Jacqueline, and Kymani as the enemy-handler, which I'm sure is going to be spicy later on. I'm Darrell, and I can already tell that I'm going to love both the evidence gathering and the reduce-to-0 gimmick, I'm hype as hell for this.
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Jan 13, 2023 16:42
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They usually make the campaign to suit the characters, and with no main fighter in the bunch, this campaign doesn’t truly require one. Did a grant version with Amanda and custom Joe. (Instead of his gun which doesn’t really scale, he gets a practiced skill that does damage, draws cards/shuffle itself into his deck, or puts insights back into his insights deck.)
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Jan 13, 2023 20:32
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Darrel is super fun but he seems a bit too strong. I was doing a true survivor/gumption carcosa run 2 handed and I was basically guaranteed to take 2-3 testless clues on every investigation. Although I guess the problem here is the survivor recursion package
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Jan 13, 2023 21:13
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Has anyone played Barkham and, if so, how much XP did you use to build your decks?
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Jan 13, 2023 23:28
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Curtain Call came out okay, with 5 vp and no lasting harm to either Jenny or Akachi. It was a close thing, though. We had a rough string of -3+s, and Jenny was forced to discard her Physical Training, which made all of the 4-fight monsters in the scenario difficult to get up for and caused her to end up with a pile of resources she had no way to spend. Ended up using every charge of Liquid Courage, which I was not expecting to happen. The comment that I had too many hand items was correct. I thought the scenario was pitched much higher than the intro scenarios to Dunwich - very few low shroud or fight target numbers, aside from the stray rats. Took Adaptable and Streetwise, so I should be able to at least consistently Clue a little next time.
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Jan 14, 2023 03:01
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DeceasedHorse posted:Has anyone played Barkham and, if so, how much XP did you use to build your decks? 9XP was fine, you could probably do it at zero .
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Jan 14, 2023 06:40
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Stagger_Lee posted:Curtain Call came out okay, with 5 vp and no lasting harm to either Jenny or Akachi. It was a close thing, though. We had a rough string of -3+s, and Jenny was forced to discard her Physical Training, which made all of the 4-fight monsters in the scenario difficult to get up for and caused her to end up with a pile of resources she had no way to spend. Ended up using every charge of Liquid Courage, which I was not expecting to happen. The comment that I had too many hand items was correct. I thought the scenario was pitched much higher than the intro scenarios to Dunwich - very few low shroud or fight target numbers, aside from the stray rats. If you are Adaptable and going to a dinner party, you should bring some Fine Clothes.
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Jan 14, 2023 14:15
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Goddamn Scarlet Keys ramps up real loving hard doesn't it? The modifiers/effects on the tokens and the amount of them you get feel a lot harsher than TFA, Carcosa or Dunwich have done. I'm playing as Lily and Darrel, Darrel has been a beast if I can get the evidence train rolling. Lily started off feeling rough but getting Brand of Cthugha, level 2 beat cops and 2 Runic Axes got her rolling. I've gotten On The Hunt to fish out enemies directly, bypassing concealed but haven't had it in hand yet at all. With the symbol situation, quite wishing I'd gone for Wish Eater as well. General spoilers below. I'd done pretty well in the first 3 scenarios I did and was quite enjoying it although the scenarios feel pretty simple. Then I hit Dancing Mad and I was literally one time unit late to get the early half of the campaign version of it I think. First 4 turns of the scenario I just can't do anything cause I keep drawing symbols that are either -3 and hollow any committed cards if you fail or -4 and drop an extra decoy if you fail, I have 4 tablets, 2 skull and 3 cultists now (one of those got added because I failed Dancing Mad so hard so 1 less of those was there). Some of those -4s went off on the treacheries that hollow an asset if you fail so I just lost 2 big assets real early before I got any use out of them and just flailed hard for what felt like ages as a result. I had to resign and get out with a single XP cause I was on the verge of dying before even getting to act 3, bit annoying cause I'd gotten intel on the dude in that scenario that I assume would have come in real clutch if I'd gotten a little further. Then I did what felt like it was gonna be a real good sidequest thing cause it had put a poo poo weakness in my deck and the reward from that was not the most useful. Now I've gone into Shades of Suffering late campaign time wise and that is a scenario name I've heard a lot and not in a positive way so I'm expecting it to go similarly badly to Dancing Mad. Wrapped it up for the night there but it's left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth so far, I'm hoping some of the scenarios I haven't done yet are real bangers and I have time to do at least one other one before the finale after I finish Shades. thebardyspoon fucked around with this message at 01:28 on Jan 16, 2023 |
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Jan 16, 2023 01:26
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Their solution to how to ramp up challenge for a non-linear campaign went too far in the difficult direction, but it's their first time. I expect it'll be smoother next time.
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Jan 16, 2023 03:50
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I haven't played the campaigns between Forgotten Age and Scarlet Keys yet, generally people seem to reckon Forgotten Age was the peak in terms of difficulty and then the others since went down a bit or are at least more manageable. I'm curious to see if that turns out to be the case for us (I'm playing Scarlet Keys solo, two handed though cause I was impatient so I'll be going through them in a slightly different order) either way it does feel very brutal. Even on easy it looks like all that does is take away the initial -3 and -4 modifiers and give you an extra 0 and a +1 , so I'd still have a bunch of -3s and -4s from the symbols anyway.LifeLynx posted:Their solution to how to ramp up challenge for a non-linear campaign went too far in the difficult direction, but it's their first time. I expect it'll be smoother next time. I don't think non linearity is going to be the default for every campaign going forward. Supposedly the new lead designer has said that the next campaign will be "the Majora's Mask to Scarlet Keys Ocarina of Time" which to me says a lot smaller in scale and more familiar or intimate (obviously what comes to mind when someone thinks of Majoras Mask or makes a comparison to it is subjective as hell, a lot of people would probably think time stuff as well of course). Edge of the Earth and Scarlet Keys were very globe trotting, big, exploring focused campaigns so the next one being in one relatively smaller location like a small town or village, or even a mansion that you return to and it changes over time would be pretty cool. It makes sense to me to switch them up style wise as well since they're obviously designing way in advance of the previous one coming out, they can't know it's gonna hit or be a bit of a miss so you wouldn't want to fully commit to a single style overly I'd think.
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Jan 16, 2023 12:40
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To me, the Majora’s Mask comment implies they’re re-utilizing a lot of the Scarlet Keys assets to do something different.
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Jan 16, 2023 14:50
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| # ? Jun 3, 2024 10:45 |
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I could see that if this was a thing being turned around super quick and also not a physical card game. The only reason that works with videogames and specifically in context with Majora's Mask though is cause they had a deadline and could reuse assets in a reasonable way/venue and then used the time lopp mechanic to give it more of a unique hook. I don't think you can reuse assets in a card game when the main thing they are selling is the new cards ultimately and they can't make something that relies on you having Scarlet Keys cause the expansions are sold separately with none of them relying on another. They'd can't really do a new box and have half the cards in it just be locations or monster encounter sets from the Scarlet Keys afterall. Unless I'm misunderstanding what you mean by "re-utilizing assets"? Obviously they can use the core set stuff but nothing else. However, that is a good example of my point, them saying Majora's Mask can definitely mean many things to many people, your take on it hadn't even crossed my mind. It'll be interesting to see what it does mean. The only other things they've talked about are some kind of festival or feast type thing which makes me think of a folky festival in the woods and maybe the Black Goat of the Woods/Shub-Niggurath as the ancient one. The thing about Majora's Mask to me was you really got to know the characters, where they were, you were trying to fix their personal lives and such. That's what I mean by familiar or intimate. Even each of the dungeons was pretty inexorably linked to the life of one of the heroes who had tried to go into them and failed, then you turned them into masks. Very melancholy and creepy tonally as well. thebardyspoon fucked around with this message at 15:39 on Jan 16, 2023 |
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Jan 16, 2023 15:27
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