amikezor said:

Congrats on the third child ;'D I hope you enjoy sleepless nights for the next year (on the bright side, screaming babies help set the mood for Arkham nights).

Seriously though, congrats.

I hope you try the league again (again?) I really think you'll enjoy it if you play the whole thing through.

Thank you. I guess my next game will be scenario 2. I think I am willing to play all scenarios once. I lost the first one some time ago by just a bit :-)

amikezor said:

Wait, what? No... ;'D Bad idea. You should *not* be trying the second scenario without equipment carried over from the first scenario (it's *really* tough, probably the toughest of the first five). If you do do that. Pick at least a couple good items to pretend you carried over from the first scenario ;') or you're going to face near certain death.

Alright, I'll do that (2-3 cool items from the deck). What about drawing twice the number of objects for each investigator and choose from them?

amikezor said:

Julia's happy that her efforts are appreciated :-) And congrats for the little Amikezor arriving soon :-))

amikezor said:

Okay. A double draw sounds good (unless you're playing eight investigators or something).

well, no. it will be 3-5 investigators.

amikezor said:

Yeah... I guess. Just don't do it in future games ;'D I'm not playtesting them again.

Scenario 7. In coldest night of Arkham's history, a bunch of six investigators (Joe, Roland, Finn, Marie, Skids and Michael) tried to defeat the icy horde of Cultists asserved to Wendigo and Ithaqua. We had a *good* start, with Joe drawing grapple and the carabine rifle, and Michael able to exchange items very soon with his pals at Ma's. He obtained an Elephant gun and gave Marie a Crystal of the Elder Things ("let's do the gangster what the gangster should do"). Michael opened the dances, entering the Downtown streets and using the Elephant gun against the Cultist. 5 successes rolled, the Cultist was still alive, mocking Michael. Let's change weapon and dynamite the kid: mission completed. The second 6-toughness Cultist was killed by Joe during the following round. And the round after even the third was gone. Marie went immediately to the Magic shoppe, to complete her PS; after obtaining a Bless spell, she decided to help their friends, casting it immediately on Michael.

The game was very long (probably too long to keep correctly track of it); so, I'll write only some notes about the game. During the first rounds, everything was freezed by the Cultists ability of draining movement from investigators in adjacent areas. Thus it was *very* difficult moving toward gates or obtaining clues. The two cultist cutting in half the main board are a major problem, basically because they block almost everything. They are beatable, of course, but the main problem is that they drain time. And it's not a fact of the doom track advancing (this was the minor issue) but basically if you're not lucky (and I wasn't), you cannot enter a gate until after Mythos 3. I entered the first gate after MYTHOS 4. Which means that following the normal "OW procedure", you have a high risk of losing the game almost immediately because of too many gates open. I was able to seal the first gate on time only because I had a gate open beneath Skids feet at the Woods, and Finn using the Carcosan Page to send him a Find Gate. During several rounds, I played at the gate limit; an unlucky Mythos draw, or simply one more investigator in the team (or one less board in case I didn't use the Kingsport board) and I'd have lost the game (Ithaqua awakening in this kind of Scenario isn't properly a certain defeat, but almost). Thus I strongly advise you to raise for this Scenario the gate limit by one. I know it's quite a great change for the game balance, but larger parties can have *major* issues otherwise, especially in case for bad luck at dice rolling they are not able to kill immediately the three start-of-the-game cultists.

Anyway, it was fun. I really liked the cold atmosphere of the covered in ice streets and the biting, ill wind, forcing you to continuously fight for your life, losing stamina and sanity. I had activity on all boards, 2 gates in Innsmouth, 2 in Dunwich and a lot of activity in Arkham. Some bad luck (Finn in the Dreamlands, with enough seals to seal made a curious encounter forcing him to go into another OW without returning in the Dreamlands; he went into the Abyss, and obviously no gates to the Abyss were open, so he marched through the Abyss only to go LiTaS; again bad luck at rollign for closign gates; and again bad luck with Skids spending 3 stamina to immediately return to Arkham from Leng, only to fail his evade check during movement and being splatted on the ground by a Cthonian; and even a greater bad luck, Michael drew a card at the Northpoint Lighthouse, instructing him to roll a die and enter, on a success, in any OW 2nd area, being LiTaS on a failure. I was so desperate I rolled, and I got it! So I immediately entered the 2nd area of Lost Carcosa, had an encounter forcing me to return to Arkham, then a monster surge and a Nightgaunt appearing under MIchael's feet. He had something like 11 dice to kill the Nightgaunt, and he scored zero successes, so instead of killing the monster and then closing the gate, pushing down the number of open gates, he entered Lost Carcosa again ::laughter:: and many other similar episodes)

As global judgement on the Scenario, I can say it was very good and challanging (both because of the Scenario per se, and because of the curious bad luck had during some encounters); the whole game was breathtaking, basically because I had tons of problems with the gate limit, playing several rounds with the idea that another gate would have awakened the AO, and the last rounds were even more emotionally reach because the doom track hit 10 when I had only 4 seals of the board. A great final rush and a couple of monster surges forced the doom track to stay still, giving me the chance for a 6-seals win. A great game, I'm very happy about it :-)

Monsters to carry over to the next Scenario: Rat-thing (2x), Gug (1x), Y'thian (1x)

Julia said:

After reading your account of the scenario, there's no way I'm going to raise the gate limit :'D If a 7-8 player team goes up against it, well, that's their problem ;') (but seriously, they'd probably just have to go after the first one or two gates without sealing). And, well, if bad luck crushes them in the first several turns, then, they'll just need to restart their game ;'D I think the trick to handling that scenario properly is going after the cultists immediately... And then going into damage control mode.

I enjoyed reading the recap. I'm glad you enjoyed the scenario. Personally, when I play it, I think I'm just going to use Joe, Finn, Michael, and Marie (maybe Jenny too). Then again... Roland is nice... Hmmm... I like controlling only four investigators though.

On second thought, you're probably right (since the cultists freeze movement towards gates behind them for two turns minimum). I'll make it so that if an investigator passes an evade check against one of them, they can immediately go to the nearest gate of their choice (that should cut transit times down a bit, I don't think it's too potentially exploitable, and they'll still slow down everyone else if someone tries to jump past them with clue tokens, plus the time spent closing a gate without enough clues is time wasted... :') Yes, I believe I can live with that).

So. You liked Arkham in ice ;'D good. I think the scenario will actually be a lot more interesting with weaker characters who can't just kill the Cultists in the first couple turns (I'm looking forward to trying this with three or four weak characters in the distant future).

Uhhh... Heh... You're going to lose those Rat-thing trophies, ;'D (you might just want to replace them with a couple random monsters if you don't want to start off two investigators with no trophies, normally I'd say tough, but, heh, that scenario is going to be scary I think).

It seems like I'll need to post scenario nine either this weekend or next week (depending on if I really get internet on Friday or not). :'D you may be wondering, what might be more horrid than scenario eight? Well, we'll see ;'D

Freezing cultists: yep, that's the point. No matter whether you can seal or simply close, the main point is that there is a high risk not to have enough time to enter & exit a gate before the gate limit is reached. Especially if the first Mythos boost activity on expansion boards. If the first gate is Independence square or The Woods, yeah, you can do it, but if it's somewhere else... yep, it's almost game over. Let's say that with a maximum of 5 investigators (6 if you play with the Kingsport board) the gate limit is 8 (7+1 for both Dunwich & Innsmouth boards in play) and it's doable but risky; for bigger parties... (yeah, you can argue that you should scale your team considering this point as part of the strategy, and this could be fine if it's a 1 or 2 player game; but take f.e. the party JJ played the first scenarios... no way)

Evade -> gate: yep, it sounds like a good idea :-) Cultists will stay on the board and continue to be a major pain, but at least you can send somebody inside a gate for closing one or two gates. Otherwise you could go for 2 cultists on the main board and one at Silent Hill. So you can freeze the whole Dunwich board (which can be a catastrophe, but could also be a lot of fun) and investigators can have some more liberty of action on the main board (reducing the luck factor a bit)

Good luck with the black sheep party ;-) I have the awkward idea of playing a game with the 4 lowest ranked investigators in Tibs' statistics against Rhan Tegoth ::laughter::

Have you added a line to that Scenario during nighttime, Avi? I'm pretty sure I never read the sentence "discard Rat-thing trophies" before... uhm... would you mind if I'm going to keep some other trophies? I have a small list of the ones I'd like to keep

As for other scenarios... I'll probably be able to play Scenario 8 in a couple of weeks, so no rush at all :-) In case you have a little time, go with the witch :-P

Julia said:

Ah, but my point about the eight player teams is that JJ's team couldn't manage to beat the first scenario ;'D (no offense JJ, if you're reading).

I could probably pull it of.

Yep. I definitely added the Rat-Thing line last night :') That was the sound of Avi, creeping, creeping in the walls in the night. It was an oversight not including it (the intent was that Rat-Things would be impossible to take as trophies, I forgot about the carry over trophy aspect of the second part of the scenarios). Hrm... Take whatever trophies you want, provided you think it's a somewhat legitimate exchange considering how your previous game.

I think I'll make it so that investigators can only "teleport" to a gate in the main board of Arkham actually. I don't think they should be getting free train rides. It completely violates the feel of the scenario if they do.

So, I've found a loophole and you've closed it ::laughter:: Sounds like you wanted to avoid again something like the Dark Druid removed from a game by a gate being closed ::laughter:: Okay, I'm gonna find something else to carry over... let's see... I had a Star spawn, a Chtnonian, a Y'thian and a Gug that were interesting. I'm gonna go with those, if it's ok for you.

(and... my bad, I should have played Scenario 8 *immediately* after beating Scenario 7 ::laughter:

I got the point about JJ and Scenario 1. As for the Scenario 7 changes... don't know. The more I think about it, the more I think it is very difficult but worth of trying as it is. Dunno. It should be worth of a little playtesting. You can leave everything as it is, and move the cultist in the Downtown street to the Southside street?

Scenario nine is posted. I'll probably post scenario ten within the next week.

Julia said:

I've forgotten, did we agree that the changes were ultimately a good idea or a bad idea? Regardless, I think it'll work well with the new changes. I think I'll add another cultist though, make the non-stationary cultists endless, and have cultists go to The Woods instead of the outskirts :') there. That should preserve some of the original madness without breaking the game for large teams ;'D

Avi_dreader said:

I'm strongly tempted to say "leave it as it is"...

Julia said:

Unfortunately I don't remember what the is was ;') Anyway, don't be so resistant to change (I guarantee you, the new design will still create that awful lockdown feel and arguably make it even worse because it will return later in the game).

I should probably start going back and checking out the scenarios again. Had a week off from work, which I why I've been so prevalent this past week, and the scenario 9 looked interesting (I did a Shudde M'ell scenario for my in-house campaign a few years back). But I still worry about scenarios that are meant to be meta-gamed, since that is what turned off the players the last time around (your name is still said in hushed whispers, considering how many times we tried the Dracula/Death scenario without effect.

Also fun to see my name still come up in design.

JerusalemJones said:

I'm still kind of sad that your team couldn't beat Dracula and Death. It really wasn't a very difficult scenario. Compared to, ahem... All of the rest. I'm still perplexed by the team's failure to win. It's not a significantly harder AO than say, Yog Sothoth or Cthulhu. And it's loads easier than something like Atlach. Wendy starts with a Curse Shield, Mary basically has a curse shield, and once you get her mission passed, she can basically get easy blessings for everyone (and easy curse discards for everyone). The doom tracks were long. The investigators were strong. Bleh. I refuse to accept responsibility for that scenario defeating you guys twice ;') now, if you'd been complaining about scenario two, I'd commiserate (it was stressful as hell designing and beating it).

You could call it "meta-gaming," but I don't view Arkham as an RPG, I view it as a strategy game, and you're supposed to understand and manipulate game structure to succeed at strategy games. It's just, well, gaming. If people want to get through the scenarios I designed, they'll *have* to play Arkham like a strategy game. It's just not going to happen otherwise. Although I guess I could design an easy mode for players who want to RP through it. It would be unbalanced as all hell, but oh well, let me know if you'd be interested, I'm sure I could write up a game tweak in a minute or so.

Hrm... All investigators begin the game blessed in the first part of each scenario (this will cause Mary's Personal Story to auto-pass also), and all players can carry over an item in between scenarios, not just four players. It's really going to take out the gloom and doom and stress and struggle I wanted these scenarios to produce though. And it won't really require players to push their understanding of game structure and strategy to a higher level to beat the scenarios.

Anyhoo, even if your group can't play through it, I expect you at least to solo your way through it :') or just go through it with a close friend or two or three. Six investigators can get by any scenario.

I'm also kind of amused that I traumatized a gameshop across the country ;'D but I assure you, that was not my intent.

Avi_dreader said:

Yep, I got the point. And do not worry about my resistancies (?), it's a long story ::laughter:: Anyway, as someone wiser than me once said, "change is the source of all", so, let's change :-) The only important thing is that the oppressive mood is preserved, and I do not have any doubt that you'll succeed in this task :-)

Scenario 9 seems to be fun. It's quite a lot of time I don't play a game against Shuddle

Julia said:

Heh... I'm kind of nervously excited about scenario nine. Beware the trembling earth! It's kind of ironic that I posted it right before the Japan quake... I guarantee you a fun game vs Shudde. Well, no guarantee actually, but with the extended doom track (Marie) you should be able to manage things. Provided you don't let the board surge too much ;'D

Actually, I believe we tried this scenario 4 times before quitting It took us 5 times to beat the first scenrio of the second FFG league - you know, the one where you had to close a number of gates equal to # of investigators +4, which was the same length of the Doom Track, so we knew we had to game the South Church for sunday mass. But we weren't willing to have Wendy's player be a monster sink. We came really, really close the second of third time, but the fourth was so brutal we just surrendered to the AOs. lol

JerusalemJones said:

You didn't have to visit the church, you could have just shopped for Elder Signs. Y'know, if you really couldn't manage the first scenario, and you didn't want to play it the way it was designed to be played (by the way, alternate solutions are Migo brain case, the patrol wagon, just staying out of dracula's way, and setting aside a human sacrifice— and I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't something I'd forgotten about), you could have just skipped it and started the next scenario with a few choice items (or drawn your random items out of a larger item pool, perhaps three times as many).

Avi_dreader said:

Yep, I noticed, but didn't want to say anything for respect... anyway, 85% in a few hours I'll be playing Scenario 8. At the moment, I'm more scared by Scenario 8 rather than Scenario 9. Those Rat things ARE an annoying pest. Well, I suppose I should move quickly and constantly. Let's see!

(it's kind of a busy period, until next thursday; I'll try to post a report, anyway)

Julia said:

It'll be interesting to see if you can fight your way past the rat swarm :'D (I have confidence you can, but the real question is will it happen on your first or second try, you're still undefeated, yeah?)

Also, clarification for scenario 8:

Drawing a Cultist Rat-Thing will trigger Rlim Shaikorth's ability.

Scenario 8 is probably tougher than scenario 9 ;') scenario 9 is supposed to be a bit of a breather before the last three scenarios in this set ;'D Scenario 10 is pretty crazy, I don't exactly remember scenario 11, but I remember it's somewhat tough and quite strange... Should definitely be beatable, but it will require major strategy adjustments. And scenario 12... Dread scenario 12 that wakes me up in the middle of the night screaming...