So last night's game was remarkable for my group for a couple of reasons. First, the new expansion was a lot more fun that I thought it would be. I chose Daniella Morales, while we had the Painter, Agatha the Parapsychologist and one person chose Trash Scarbourough the spy. Only Trish was able to make use of her story card and wow did we all wish we had worked harder to get our rewards. She ended up with an ability where her focus made her far more formidable in all of her tests. We chose Antedilluviarum as out AO and got to work. In an odd quirk, we only drew one blue gate the entire game and killed off the cultist on the board quickly. After that, we tackled mysteries involving clues and mystic ruins encounters, spells and clue expenditures and one involving research encounters. Despite some delays and dropping to 5 on the Doom track due to a bad gate manager, we ended up winning with 2 doom remaining.
The other remarkable thing is that last night was the first 4 player game we ever played. It was like a different game. The monster spawns, gates and stuff really weren't affected so the game almost felt, if not easy, far more manageable with four versus our usual three. So much so, I am not sure I could go back to 3 player. All these posts I read people saying three was more challenging than four and until yesterday, I just never understood it.
So outside of some cool new cards, spells, items, etc, I was/am disappointed with the campaign concept. It is almost and afterthought, even down to the way it is presented in the manual. On top of this, I did feel like the previews really made this seem more involved and it really isn't. Especially if you don't play against Shude Mell and have some ruined cities pop up. I was hoping for a more organized campaign and not something somebody here or on BGG couldn't have come up with themselves with a little bit of effort and still likely made a better setup. It was also nice to win, as last game against Shude Mell (sp) was not pretty.