2nd Scenario Completed!

PharaohEye wrote:I didn't even bother trying to get Allies, the rolling -3 Will Checks to keep them was too much of a risky waste of time.

Yeah, we came to that same decision. We kept getting location encounters that gave us Allies, but always with a character that was at 1 or 2 Will at the time. Figures. Those cards always ended up being a fancy way of saying "Nothing happens..."

Started replaying the scenario last night (only about half-way done, due to after-work tiredness), but we are doing much better than our initial run through. No one has gone insane yet, and we're keeping it down to 2 open gates at a time. Even managed to seal a couple with Clues. I think we learned a few lessons from the first go around.

Just posted our next score. Talk about maddness. We got a good handle on things then RUMER time. We defeated 2. One cost us 2 gate trophies. I thought Daryle was going to have to sacrifice himself to end the game. He was in the Abyse with an elder sign 1 sanity and 1 stamina. Joe was also in a gate but only had 4 clues. Then right before we come out NODEN'S FAVOR baby! Quite the exciting game. Score was 23.

over 10 hours later I win! huzzah? 40 points, sealed 6, drew 5 rumors passed 3 (Oh it was classic, using Jacqueline to discard the third rumor of the day which was the graveyard thing only to have Good Work Undone follow it), left the terrible experiment running and caught the Black Man

Redecorated Arkham Asylum since it was my home sweet home. I got stuck in LiTaS for awhile with a couple investigators, I'll just say 7-8 players good luck!!! The number of times I was on the edge of losing were uncountable, only phenomenal luck countered the bad luck and viscous sanity loss, like randomly visiting the Unvisited Isle with Pete and snagging Lagrasse, which was the turning point of the game, just took a long time to turn it around. Kudos to those skilled players out there that navigate this challenge!

We played again today and quite happy with our 20 points considering it was just the two of us, and we both survived to fight another day!

::laughter:: it's pretty crazy with eight investigators, 'ey nijay? ::shudder:: Losing 3 sanity with all investigators in one turn ;'D fun.

I have to admit, the second scenario was not as difficult as I had thought the first three times I played it. My team was: Monterey Jack, Harvey Walters, Mandy Thompson, and Kate Winthrop. Although MJ did have some problems with going insane on a couple of occasions, it wasn't that big of a deal, since I got him a bank loan early to insta-heal his mind and get him back in the swing of things quickly.

As for the others, they had enough sanity to shrug off the losses until they sealed/closed gates. Harvey especially, since he has his 'strong mind' ability, was perfect for this scenario.

Of course, my luck can't last forever. Here's wishing everyone else the same amount of luck.

That's an odd group Kaz, are you not using expansion investigators until the expansions are added in?

Eh... Depending on the scenario, I might upgrade them. I figured I'd kick it old school and see how well they fare in this summer league.

And I wouldn't necessarily consider my team 'odd'. Monterey was chosen to be my 'tank' because he already starts with two weapons in hand, and he has his unique item ability, which is a plus. As I said before, Harvey Walter's strong mind ability made him a no-brainer choice. Kate Winthrop's flux stabilizer was a nice addition, since I would park her on one of the "hot spots" until other gates were closed/sealed. And what's a horror game without the chesty "Daphne" type character. Mandy Thompson's special ability helped with some of the more horrific rolls I've come across.

Hmmm... If I were to pick four characters from the original set, I'd get Mandy (gamebreaker, of course), Darrell (also great for abusing game dynamics), Joe Diamond (the true tank, starts off with a 45 automatic, two common items, 3 clue tokens, and eight bucks, plus he has great movement, decent fight/will, and double clue token uses, heh heh heh, he's so broken). Fourth character would be a tough choice, I think I'd either go for Jenny or Pete, probably Jenny actually, while Pete's a little better as a fighter (and can occasionally abuse game dynamics with Scrounge, Jenny has waaaay more cash (pity about not starting with 3 clue tokens though).

Yeah, Mandy, Jenny, Darrell, and Joe would've been my four :') Mandy and Joe, means you can start off almost ready to seal two gates, and Darrell and Jenny means you'll be rolling in cash (and will be able to get good equipment and elder signs/old journals/kings in yellows, whatever you need, really).

We're playing with Mandy and Joe and it seems to be working out quite well, probably because they start with so many clue tokens and with two people, Mandy's reroll is used effectively every turn.

Heh... If I were doing a two player game I'd either go with Mandy and Joe or Mandy and Daisy :'\ it'd be a tough choice.

We played scenario 2 tonight. It was fairly tough and everone avoided Allies like the plague. It got close but we bested Nyarly on 9 doom tokens. Still only managed to get 1 more point than we did with the first scenario though which was dissapointing.

avi_dreader wrote:Heh... If I were doing a two player game I'd either go with Mandy and Joe or Mandy and Daisy :'\ it'd be a tough choice.

I played with Daisy for the first time the other day. The shrivelling spell in each hand, oh yeah. Of course then all the monsters were magic resistant....

avi_dreader wrote:Hmmm... If I were to pick four characters from the original set, I'd get Mandy (gamebreaker, of course), Darrell (also great for abusing game dynamics), Joe Diamond (the true tank, starts off with a 45 automatic, two common items, 3 clue tokens, and eight bucks, plus he has great movement, decent fight/will, and double clue token uses, heh heh heh, he's so broken). Fourth character would be a tough choice, I think I'd either go for Jenny or Pete, probably Jenny actually, while Pete's a little better as a fighter (and can occasionally abuse game dynamics with Scrounge, Jenny has waaaay more cash (pity about not starting with 3 clue tokens though).

Yeah, Mandy, Jenny, Darrell, and Joe would've been my four :') Mandy and Joe, means you can start off almost ready to seal two gates, and Darrell and Jenny means you'll be rolling in cash (and will be able to get good equipment and elder signs/old journals/kings in yellows, whatever you need, really).

Right on. But I'll still stick with my crew until they get devoured. So long as they survive to fight another day, I'm a happy guy.

Played my 2nd scenario yesterday (Dexter's Midnight Runners : Dexter Drake and Mandy Thompson)

Mandy got silver twilight membership on turn 2. went into a gate, sealed it, went back to silver twilight, and got kicked out for not having enough money. then a Dhole moved into French Hills, so Mandy stays at the silver twilight, is asked if she wants to re-join, doesn't have the money and is shown the door (and the Dhole).

Dexter went around like a killing machine with the Lamp of Al-Hazred and collected enough monster trophies to try for an ally at Ma's Moarding house. it was worth the 2 clues he used on will (-3) checks to grab a hold of Prof Armitage, just before the terror ctrack started going crazy.

Both Dexter and Mandy had 2 trips to the asylum due to low sanity (paying for full treatment), thanks to the amount of cultists (endless) and later, maniacs (who became endless due to terror track).

Terror track got to 10, there were 10 monsters on the streets, and Nyarlathotep lumbers into view starting a 6 turn battle in which poor Mandy gets devoured, and Dexter finally triumphs over Nyarly, thanks mostly to Prof. Armitages ability to ignore magical resistance.

Dexter is looking for a new "Eileen" for the next scenario.

(for those that don't get it, the group name is based on "Dexys Midnight Runners", who had a hit with "Come on Eileen")

::blink blink:: Garzini, if I were you I'd replay that scenario ;'D

My team played this scenario this past weekend, and we decided right from turn one that we were going to plan a Final battle. No bothering with sealing gates, no using elder signs, just close as many gates as we can and get each investigator as many clues as we could to take the big ugly down.

Daisy started with an elder sign and our first gate was, once again, The Witch House and a Witch?!?!? Seriously, how many times can this keep happening? Daisy rushes through the gate and comes back out and closes it. But not using elder signs?? This was going against everything I knew and I kept itching to use the thing. What a wierd feeling. No sooner than she gets the gate closed, another pops open on her and shes sucked right back in.

Meanwhile, after Leo's stroke of bad luck at the beginning of last game, he has amassed a small fortune of gate trophies and monsters. He was tearing through everything with an enchanted knife and the .45. It helped that he started with Tom Mountain (+2 Fight).

The only ally encountered was by Daisy and she failed her roll and got booted into the streets. The cultists, maniacs and Masks did appear but they were so spaced out that the sanity damage wasnt really a factor. Leo was in danger once but after getting the healing stone he was able to maintain and then restore fully without ever slowing down. Dasiy did happen to go insane once with only 3 items on her and again I had to question our methods when I discarded the Elder Sign instead of Shrivelling or whatever else she had. It was also made easier by the fact that Wilson stayed most of the game in the general store, spending all of our money on weapons. Many trades were attempted (as there was no real penalty for failing the attempt, we tried alot) and enough were made that we could get the job done. The last trade actually happened in the first round of the Final Battle to give Leo another .45 for a massive 10 dice vs the GOO. With the whip to re-roll one failed dice and Mandy's ability to re-roll the final battle was pretty easy. Each investigator had 5 clues and only 2 or 3 attacks from Nyarly actually landed. The kicker was that even Mandy with only 2 dice was rolling at least one success every round.

The key to this victory was strategy and timing. Our strategy made sense and we stuck to it, even when things began to fall apart a bit, but determination and some lucky draws made it work out in the end. There was one rumor out about halfway through the game that started brining up the terror track, but by the time the store closed, Wilson had pillaged almost everything we needed from there. The game was over just a few turns after that, the terrror track only reaching 4.

At one point, we stopped closing gates just so we could get a few more turns in from monster surges for preparation, taking an obvious gamble on the cultists, maniac, mask appearances. By then we had 2 healing stones and were not that concerned with the sanity loss.

The scary part was when the Doom track was at 8 or so and we knew we only had a few turns left, as we were closing gates as fast as they could open, and we still needed a few more weapons to round everyone out. Daisy had been in the OW so long that she had only the 1 clue she started with!! The last few turns for her were to rush around and get the 2 left on the board and a fortunate environment in Rivertown Street where she could pass a check and get 3 more, bringing her up to the 5 requirement we placed on ourselves. Not only that but our physical weapon hoarding had left a bunch of Immune baddies out, with only Leo and his enchanted knife and pal Mr. Mountain able to do anything about it. Some selective gate closings and Leo clearing the way, we even overcame even that small obstacle.

All in all the Doom track moved quickly and if we hadnt decided right from the beginning to take Nyarly on head-to-head, been able to keep the terror level down and cause a few monster surges by not closing a few key gates, I think this plan could have easily blown up in our faces. It was great to end it with everyone alive, a score of 23 and a feeling that we had executed our plan perfectly as a team.

So who here is going to try *my* scenario ;'D consider it a warmup ::laughter:: for Dunwich.

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/ffgforums/posts/list/10606.page

@Bravo McWilley ::facepalms:: okay... Hrm... First of all, you shouldn't have 2 healing stones in your deck (especially in a league game), what you apparently didn't know is that the extra cards that came with Dunwich (flesh wards, lanterns, and a healing stone, I think those were all) were all intended to replace the original versions (as was stated in the errata prior to Dunwich's release). Okay. On to strategy.

Considering your strategy, you should've used the elder signs. Here's why. Every time you use one, you lose one point. BUT, they remove one doom token. This gives you more time. And, of course, this now enables you to close (not seal) one more gate per elder sign (which balances out the score loss), BUT, it does more than balance :') it gives you more time to battle monsters before the GOO wakes up (so you would've been able to raise your score higher).

::shrug:: you also should've traded tokens in order to get legrasse, it would've paid off in that scenario (14 more potential captures means 4 more points, minimum).

That being said, I enjoyed reading your recap, it was very detailed.

Well that was Weird. I just finished my game and all in all it went fairly smoothly, least as soon as I got 3 of the high activity areas sealed it went smoothly.

First of all I should say that since my past games were "ruined" by getting too many elder signs (we got 3 in our last game without anyone fishing. I was so annoyed cause I had bought 3 great allies from Ma but never really got to use them). I wanted a genuine challenge so I removed all 4 elder signs before the game began and its a good thing I did cause I would have gotten all 4 of them by the end of the game. I know this because I cycled through the unique Item deck twice before the game was over (I'm glad I wasn't fighting Y'gorec or whoever that tome AO is, we prolly would have had to fight 5 of him by the time I was done

) The reason I went through so many unique items is that M Jack is much too big a risk to send to OW or go monster fighting. So I had him hang around the curiosity shoppe, asylum and Newspaper most of the game. He even got a retainer relatively early that he kept (and in fact still has) as well as a few charitable donations by Jenny when that trust fund built up. I think it's also worth noting that my team starts with 8 random unique items between the six of them, I completed a rumor that game each investigator a unique item and there were a few Mi-Gos

I at first thought that getting the Clue tokens necessary would be difficult but in the first few turns clue tokens literally rained down. I'd say about 80% of my encounters gave me some, many gave 3 or more. Kate had the most at one point with 18 a number I've only reached in the past with Coded message or Rex Murphy. A funny thing that happened to me was that I completed a rumor that gave each investigator 2 clue tokens and the very next card was another rumor that did the same thing. It was actually a card from CotDP that I had accidentally left in but it was still funny that it showed up then (No, I didn't resolve it).

Early on a lot of gates were opening out of control. When I got 3 high activity locations sealed it settled down and I had time to heal up and take a few turns to try and trade items Jack with his 3 will and 3 sanity always passed items bought the first chance he would get which was a fairly nice haul ranging from weapons and other things.

Now the really annoying thing is near the middle - end I was very well equipped but nothing was happening (About half the turns were gates on sealed locations rather than monster surges). The Mistress of pain Amanda Sharpe had 6 skills (remember how I told you I cycled though the Unique item deck twice? She got the Skill tome 3 times) including Lore +1 (great for reading the tomes) Marksman ship (while a nice backup don't believe I used this once) and 2 fight +1s and 2 will +1s maxing both her fight and will at 6. I never really got to take advantage of the +2 extra dice while fighting but she dual wielded enchanted knives for a +6 and had a shotgun for the magically immune.
However this paled in comparison to the Master of pain "Ashcan" Pete. On turn two he acquired Mr Legras and later on Senor Murphy also came aboard (and I don't mean the reporter) giving him a max will and fight of 7. Rather than Wielding a pair of girly knives Mr Pete dual wielded a pair of blades (cycled throught the deck twice, remember?) for a whopping +8. He also had a shotgun of his own (both shotgun were supplied by their dear friend Bob Jenkins, The Weapons Dealer) for the Magically immune. As everyone knows Mr Legrass has a Hunting permit so Mask and Cultist season officially started for Pete (WARNING: puns much worse than any I've tried to get away with so far follow). So first they bought 10 plagues upon their enemies till finally parting the red sea of their blood to victory. Then the monsters heard the fat lady singing as she was gunned down. Finally He-Who-Bit-Down-Too-Hard appeared but Pete was lazy so he had the Orange Listeners of the Cube (hmmmmm something doesn't sound right) help him. (Bad Puns Over)

I acquired a ton of fire power but I never had a challenge to use it on. The final mask monster only appeared cause I prolonged the game in hopes of him showing so I could murder him.

Ultimately I ended it when the AO was 1 away from being summoned having closed all 10 gates that had opened since then. Kate with her 5 gates is technically first citizen though Pete With his hordes of dead corpses could take that title from her.

For the final score do I instantly get 11 points from Nyethrotep or does it matter where the doom track and how close we was to being summoned?

You always get points equal to the GOOs MAX Doom for victories.

Errr, actually, it's Max Doom, minus current level of terror track. The scoring details are in the book ::shrug:: 1 per 3 monster trophies, 1 per gate, 1 per surviving investigator (I don't remember if there's a penalty for devoured or retired investigators) -1 per unpaid bankloan, -1 per elder sign usage.

No penalties for devoured investigators.

*edit*
I used to wonder if madness cards affected this (You only get points for surviving SANE investigators). But since there is no direct correlation between the ´language used for these two game effects beyond one of intuitively logical association, I've never allowed this to affect the score.

-1 penalty for retiring investigators as well as +1 bonus for completing tasks and missions is in the Dunwich book.

avi_dreader wrote:
okay... Hrm... First of all, you shouldn't have 2 healing stones in your deck (especially in a league game), what you apparently didn't know is that the extra cards that came with Dunwich (flesh wards, lanterns, and a healing stone, I think those were all) were all intended to replace the original versions (as was stated in the errata prior to Dunwich's release).

Oh man, now that you mention it, I remember that. I checked the errata and see what you are talking about. I will make sure to trash those old card first thing! Ehh...figures, I knew we had to get something wrong.

The only thing that would have made a difference would have been the 2nd healing stone. Daisy ended up with 4 flesh wards but never used any of them and didnt have to toss anything out when she did have them. That second heal stone was actually never used. The first one was handed off to Leo who used his like every turn, but the second one was not used. Still, I may have to go back and play this one again now. This should be in the dunwhich book correct?

Also, thanks for the tip about the elder signs. I never thought of it that way. Plus I was figuring that in this scenario sanity was a precious commodity and I really didnt want to lower it by using them. We dont really play to maximize the score anyway, its more about having fun and pulling off a victory. We are happy that we not only won but won by how we planned it. I know its League play but Im not really gunning for first place anyway, so that doesnt really matter. But I will keep it in mind when we replay it, maybe to try for a higher score.

I didnt undserstand the quote "you also should've traded tokens in order to get legrasse, it would've paid off in that scenario (14 more potential captures means 4 more points, minimum)." How is this possible? Isnt an ally chosen at random when you buy them? maybe this is something else we are doing wrong? Plus it costs 2 gates or ten toughness monsters for an ally, and then you would have had to make the -3 will check just to keep him, seems like a big risk for only a 2 point gain. (4 points you quoted - the 2 points for buying him)

TheBigShow wrote:We played scenario 2 tonight. It was fairly tough and everone avoided Allies like the plague. It got close but we bested Nyarly on 9 doom tokens. Still only managed to get 1 more point than we did with the first scenario though which was dissapointing.

Just double checked our score before sending it off and we had miscalculated. We beat scenario 1's score by 4 points!