Schmiegel said:

;.( Well, I say you still should take the win whether or not you're right about the ruling! A 13 hour game deserves a win! But... I guess you're going for it again? Good luck!

P.S. Why don't you try assassinating the witch immediately and then getting rid of the red corruption immediately with Wither's and find gate? You don't even have to seal the gate he closes, you could just do it for the assassination's sake.

Another one posted. Six left :') I'll post this one and the last one on the main boards (relatively) soon. But if you want to see it sooner, check the league site. The next scenario should also be posted soon. How soon, I'm not sure, but within a week at the latest.

Avi_dreader said:

It's a little different from the one I played. It's nice to see some Madnesses coming :-)

Julia said:

I like to think of myself as being in a constant state of madness ;') but yes, there will be some more in the game.

Madness... That reminds me :'D I'm kind of excited about posting the next scenario.

Avi_dreader said:

::laughter:: by modifying in thids way the DH you screw a lot the board. According to your original design, it was kinda easy to move without having to face the Horror. Now, this comes with a price. Interesting :-)

Can't wait to see the new one :-) Tomorrow exam at the University, maybe this Sunday it's finally Arkham time again :-)

Julia said:

Oh, well, unfortunately it's not too exciting ;') the really mind warping scenarios in this set are the last two. ;'D ;'DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD.

Alright, I give you my 80% promise I'll have the scenario up for you by the weekend :')

Avi_dreader said:

Lovable, thx! And yeah, I remember you saying 23 and 24 were noteworthy. But I suppose I have to beat 19 to 22 first!

Yes, I did play scenario #3 again Thursday night. Another loss. I couldn't see taking the previous attempt as a win when I, well....lost, just because it took 13 hours. But thanks for the sentiment, Avi, all the same. It's not that big of a deal to me, to win, at this point, or not. (I mean to the extent I have to claim a win when I lost). I never won scenario #2, and still moved on. By the way, I occasionally see you or Julia make references to this as a "league". Are you just using that term in the general sense?

This time, the scenario took me around 11 hours, for those scoring at home. There were four sealed gates at the time the game ended. It appeared the game would end considerably sooner, but Jacqueline Fine came into a lot of clues and was able to use "Precognition" several times to extend the game at the end. (Not to mention that she avoided being devoured, unlike several others..).

I won't attempt any kind of linear sort of narrative here, because (1) it's much too long and (2) I don't recall it all that clearly anymore. Some highlights:

I did actually "assassinate" the witch very early on, with Carolyn Fern, who deployed a shotgun for the act. (That weapon would have made a nice keeper.) In turn, that kept the corruption card count down for a good part of the game. Later, another witch manifested, as a second gate opened at The Witch House. So the corruption card count spiked again from that point on. That was a helpful maneuver and a good suggestion, but I had actually already done it before reading your post, Avi. Obvious enough even for me to get it, I suppose. (By the way, the team was comprised of Mary, Jackie, Norman, Wendy and Carolyn again this time.)

Somewhat later, Carolyn had journeyed to Innsmouth, where three gates eventually would open. About the time she got there, martial law was declared, which made matters far more difficult for her. At one point, she was actually jailed. That Innsmouth jail is hardly a sanctuary. On her one turn in there, she was moved to Sawbone Alley and compelled to draw three Innsmouth Look cards. She survived that indignity.

It would have been better to send Wendy up there but she got caught up with some other duties, besides which the scene in Innsmouth required a more mature individual with some weaponry and the plan was to get Wendy up there ASAP, as well.

One interesting aspect of the corruption card mechanic, as well as the exhibit item mechanic, is the possibility that either can have highly positive effects as well as negative. The investigators were able to take advantage of the corruption card allowing (requiring) a monster in the outskirts to be exchanged with a monster on the board to bring Barnabus Jones onto the board and get a Cultist dispatched to the outskirts. While carefully avoiding arrest, Carolyn was able to splatter Barnabus into oblivion with her shotgun and get a doom token removed...but soon after that a devourfest ensued, with Carolyn being the first claimed by the Black Man. At least she no longer had to worry about the perils of Innsmouth.

In the space of four turns, Carolyn, Norman and Mary were all devoured in encounters with the Black Man gone bad. In the fourth of those four turns, Jacqueline also encountered the Black Man, but barely managed to survive, which would extend the game for a couple of hours. They were replaced by Zoey, Dexter and Bill Yorick.

In one of the game's more subdued moments, Wendy had to give up her elder sign during an exhibit encounter, when she ran into a madman on the street who forced her to give up one common item and one unique item in exhange for an exhibit item.

Odd fact : In three games of scenario #3 totaling some 32 hours of play, not a single Rat-Thing has seen the light of day of the board (or come out of its hole), despite the Walpurgis Night. Brown Jenkin is said to be infuriated and in a particularly foul mood, but that's ok....because he always appears to be infuriated and in a foul mood. That's his job.

Lastly (I think, but no guarantees..) I had an interesting situation present itself on the game's final turn. Due to Hecate's special ability of forcing investigators who are driven insane to first have an encounter in Yuggoth, if the Lore check is failed, Dexter Drake had such an encounter after a near-death experience at The Unvisited Isle drove him mad (he had drowned but come back to life).

It was a true Yuggoth encounter, in this case (as opposed to an "Other"), and it was the one where he had to immediately fight Shub-Niggurath. All well and good, with one problem: While the penalty for losing was to be devoured, the reward for winning was that the gate to Yuggoth could be sealed and then taken as a trophy. That would have been spectacular, except that there was NO GATE OPEN TO YUGGOTH. The encounter had taken place as a result of Hecate's special ability, and not due to Dexter legitimately entering an open gate from Arkham to Yuggoth...

Since the doom track was on 12 anyway, I decided to put this battle off until the end of the mythos phase, just to see if the game was going to end either way. (There were only four sealed gates.) Sure enough, it did end, as consecutive gates opened to the Black Cave and nothing could stop it.

Here is how I was going to handle this dilemma: At this time, there were three open gates on the board, all in Innsmouth. Bill Yorick was already at Falcon Point, preparing to depart for Devil's Reef, to enter the gate there. Wendy had sent a boat to the River Docks (the rails were washed out by an environment card, but that was the quickest transport anyway..). As soon as she finished her business at Falcon Point, Wendy was going to enter the gate at Marsh Refinery with her five clues. That was already planned. The only remaining gate was at Esoteric Order of Dagon. So I was going to remove that gate, whatever it was (unknown) and replace it with a Yuggoth gate. Then, if Dexter had defeated the Shubster, he would have sealed that gate as his reward..

Your thoughts?

Schmiegel,

I don't know whether I appreciate more your sense of humour or your endurance. You weren't that close this time either; there is possibly something you could refine in order to master your strategy in the ultimate way. I don't see major flaws in your gaming experience; I'm only curious about the length of your games. I've never spent more than 3 hours playing an Avi's game (if you're too slow, you're dead), while you have an average of almost 11 hours / game. If you were a boxeur, I'd be scared of going on the long distance with you! ::smiling::

A couple of notes: Barnabas Marsh, not Barnabus Jones. I think he's linked to Silas' family in some way (but I'm not familiar with this story, so I'm not sure about it). And... yeah, the League. Technically, Avi created a League following the tide of the first two official Leagues FFG had run some years ago, with two principal aims:

a) create something unique for Advanced Players; the official Leagues weren't that good, and they weren't that advanced; basically, the person in charge for designing Scenarios didn't have a huge grasp of the game mechanics (besides, the second League was a disaster under many point of views; not to mention something personal: my last scores were *never* uploaded nor taken into consideration, even if submitted one month before the deadline. This means technically mine was the second best team of the League, but none but me knows this ::sgrunting:

b) using some custom creations made by friends and forumites during the years, since many of them are really good (Hecate, in my opinion, is much more interesting as AO than many *official* ones. I'll choose her over Rhan Tegoth every time) and they deserved a proper frame to be appreciated by the others.

Clearly, there isn't a prize for winning, and Scenario points are not scored; the idea is that everyone able to finish the series of 24 Scenarios is a winner. At the beginning some other people seemed to be interested in playing; by fate, or choice, or other reasons, not everyone attended the game. Basically, I'm the one who went the furthest in the League (at the moment I passed Scenario 18, and I don't have any Scenario back to recover) and then... other people playing are just at the initial Scenarios. You're the only one who tried Scenario 3. I think Hugues won Scenario 1, and tried Scenario 2. Jerusalem Jones tried a couple of times Scenario 1, but wasn't able to pass it and possibly someone else played Scenario 1 as well.

As a side note, Hugues is translating all this stuff into French :-)

Julia,

Thanks for the info! Why am I not surprised that the "Official Leagues" weren't as good as Avi's design..? It seems like FFG never quite sees things through to their optimum conclusion (I liked your post the other day in a different part of the AH forum, about the missing FAQ I guess..* it was very well stated and I totally agree.) In some respects, they are really good, which you already covered. But it's predictable that their league would come up short.. You're correct, they have some fabulous game designers, so at the end of the day the world is a far better place with FFG in it. I guess they set the bar so high with many of their creations in terms of games that it's too difficult to maintain that level of excellence across the board.

*especially the comment about AH being a "universe in a box".....how right on, that's perfect!

Actually the way I bumbled into Avi's series of scenarios was via some scenarios FFG designed for the most recent Arkham Nights weekend. (And I didn't realize I had blundered into a league for "advanced" players...oops. Maybe by the time I'm done, I'll be approaching "semi-advanced".) Somebody that had attended that weekend event posted them on the forum and I played all three, but didn't find them all that intriguing. In the process I looked further for some fan-created ones and found Avi's. His are indeed WAY better. Not that it's necessarily a "competition", but I just want to state agreement on that score. I do find it irritating that they didn't even post your final score. Maybe somebody quit their job at FFG at that point that was in charge of that and they couldn't find another minion to pick it up, so just dropped it... A strange way to do business. But it fits the pattern all too well. The company has some very strong points, but, man.....

Last night I opened up Mansions of Madness to play a game with my wife. But we couldn't set up any of the five scenarios because they had included the wrong punchboards and I was missing Cave 1, Cave 2 (probably with Hallway 3 and Hallway 4 on the back..) and the Gallery/Backyard, plus several smaller parts, of course. So we couldn't even play. It was a Christmas present and of course quite disappointing. I know that kind of thing "can happen", but it seems like it's been one thing after another with that game. And that was the first time things reached the point where Christian Petersen actually felt moved to make a public apology about a game, at least that I can recall.

There have been other things that were similarly flawed, such as the Descent Quest Compendium. At least with that they issued an elaborate FAQ, which was appreciated! With Sea of Blood....well, it's a brilliant concept. But that was so screwed up in certain respects that I assume they took the position that hopefully nobody would notice, it was just too big of a mess to even attempt a cleanup. I don't know what else to think about that one. No FAQ (to speak of) no comment, but at least a version 2.0 of Descent somewhere out there on the horizon. Maybe. Or did we hallucinate that?

Oh yeah...I was talking about Arkham Horror. You don't have to worry, I'm not a boxer. Thanks for the correction about the wrong Barnabus. That felt wrong when I wrote it but I was too lazy to get out the game and seek out the monster token to verify. Guess I was thinking of Barnaby Jones. (Before your time...never mind.)

Guess that's it. Always interesting to get your thoughts. I'm going to work on that Descent thing soon and reply.

Schmiegel,

thank you for your heartfelt reply. Regarding custom creations vs official creations and the role of Avi... not so sure you followed the whole FAQ thing over the years, but probably you won't be surprised by the fact that FFG asked Avi, Brian and Tibs to help while gathering questions for FAQ and proofreading the Supposed to Be Given Answers to those FAQs. I think it's kinda normal under a certain point of view: game designers should be supposed to work almost full time on new stuff rather than playing hundreds of games to check out all possibly odd combinations of items and so on. But I'd like to see their work recognized in the proper way, and their efforts see the light. Besides, you'd probably have noticed that the wording on MH cards is very good, and different from the usual Arkham wording (like: do this; if this card is in play, then do this other too; if three boards are in and the xy effect is running on, then...). If you cross-check the credits, you'll notice Brian be named. I think (and it's a mere speculation) that for the renewed and more precise wording we should deeply thank Brian. But anyway, this is a good sign. If only they could finish the FAQs...

Just to add a personal note: if at a certain point Tibs or Avi would suggest to play in a way different from the one suggested by the designers, I'd go with our forumites, being certain of a better balance of the game (this is a hidden answer to some events happened some time ago, when some friends asked rules clarifications to the designers, but the official answers they received were a complete non-sense)

Thanks for backing me off on the League results :-) You almost hit the point: the guy who was running the League was moved from an office to another one, and his new duties (IIRC) were completely different. So basically, the League was abandoned, even if nothing official was ever said (something not very professional, I'm afraid). Anyway, I won the latest French League, and I'm intentioned in winning even the upcoming one, as a kind of compensation :-)

I'm sorry for the Mansions unpleasant surprise. Sadly, this game was afflicted by huge problems. On the positive side, being you American, you should be reached very soon by the replacements FFG customer care would send you for sure (they are terrific! It's the best customer service I've always had). Let me know how it goes.

As for the Descent compendium... I have it, but I haven't played any of the Quests by now (at the moment, I'm afraid I won't be able to play Descent for a while, at least until March; too long the games for the free time I have now). Anyway, I'm aware of the problems Sea of Blood had by skimming thorugh the Descent forum. Especially the questions regarding Captain Bones. I can't believe how they didn't realize these things (as, in the same way, I can't get how they couldn't think of the possibility of a moving gate entering a vortex... the funny thing is that as soon as we had a preview of the Lurker gates ALL people in the forum noticed this and started wondering . So, what the hell? A game designer HAS TO notice this IMMEDIATELY. It's not the interaction of a spell + a skill + some character's special ability under a certain Mythos card from a forgotten expansion. It's one of the basic dynamics of the game, for God's sake!)

As for Descent 2.0... at the moment, I'm supporting the IDEA. But before buying the game... I want to read carefully the rules. And think about them a lot. I don't want to fix the game *again*. Besides, I have enough Scenarios from the first edition to play for the next ten years, I think :-)

Barnaby Jones: you are right, never heard of it. I had to wiki it, and after founding it, I'm rather sure I've never ever seen an episode in my life. Was it good? I suppose so!

I always forget the names of stuff and have to wiki for them.

Have you thought about starting with Zoey this scenario? She does start with 4 clues and a cross after all, plus she can punch through resistances and immunities.

I have thought about that, yes. It's tempting. The only question is, who would she replace, Wendy or Carolyn? I am heavily biased toward playing with Wendy. Two games back, she sealed 3 of the 5 gates that were sealed, and she pretty much has the run of Innsmouth, which is big. Carolyn's sanity ability is great, of course, so it's somewhat of a tough call, but I can't see playing without Wendy.. Zoey is usually the first investigator in "off the bench". I might elevate her to the varsity next time, I kind of like the idea.

Schmiegel said:

Oh, I'd definitely pick Zoey over Carolyn. Sure, she'll make spell casting a bit more difficult, but who cares? You don't win the game by casting spells, you win the game by getting clues and clue equivalent items as quickly as possible, then surviving the journey through the Other Worlds. Here's the thing about spellcasting, if there's ever something you absolutely *need* to use, say, alchemic process (and this is basically the only constant sanity sucking item you should have, except possibly the Necronomicon), you can shop while using it and if your sanity drops low enough, either take a madness, or probably a bit better if you can afford the time, move to the asylum and pay two dollars :') Starting with a character with 4 clues as opposed to 1 clue is a *big* deal.

Wendy's a top notch investigator, none of the others in the first pool come even close to her.

It's nice having extra sanity, but you can win without extra sanity (you just draw a madness card and move on). Plus Carolyn is slow (3 speed). The only thing you'd have to watch out for if you swap her out is not having enough money (although you can make money at the newspaper pretty easily, especially if you spend a few investigators' first turn or two or three there at the beginning of the game, obviously not the sealers).

Julia said:

I feel like a small boy looking in awe as the sand cookies he baked a year and a half ago is actually being eaten. "You...you ate that?" It's an equal amount of pride and shame. For all my sins, these Heralds have never been play tested. Well, until now I guess. Cool.

Ok, here goes..

The Haunter of the Dark:

I might have been somewhat naive while writing the text; what I try to say is "look, don't even think about having the Haunter anywhere but on the board". The design idea is to have the investigators be on the constant move (by barring them all the time) at the same time as they must keep their Evade high (or fight a neverending creature). Does this gimmick work at all? I think Haunter must be redesigned for the new CotDP but the Patrol Markers don´t really go with the Haunter so I don't know if I get around to it.

The Bloated Woman:

Oh, I'm sloppy. What I mean (and I clearly miss the mark here) is that if a clue token is removed by the "Things are not as they seem" AND Bloated Woman is not on the board, place the Bloated Woman on that spot. But it's reasonable to assume that she appears during gate appearances as well, I just missed that in my head when writing the text. The intention is that unstable locations should blink with its clue token eye (that is, the location toggles between 0 and 1 clue tokens). What differs between the haunter and the bloated woman is that the laters presence is not necessary for the herald to work properly (I hope) - clue drain, unique item drain and an uncertain end game should be bad enough. Is it? This Avatar is the one I believe the strongest in.

Rovdjuret,

thanks for clarifying these points. At the moment, I don't get exactly your specifications; sadly, I played only once with those Heralds (both of them were very good), and I added some observations because of the League. Not so sure you followed the whole thing, so I'll catch up the most important points here:

a) Avi created a League for Advanced Players using tons of custom materials (to good to be forgotten)

b) some people started the League with me, some others joined later; at the moment, no one but me passed Scenario 3; I've to try Scenario 19 next Sunday. This means I basically playtested the whole League, giving Avi feedback on the different games in order to fix / correct potential problems

c) after playtesting and fixing with Avi, I create the Eon files for each of the Scenarios; these Eons are then translated into French by Hugues

So, if you have any change / upgrade / modification to do on any of your Heralds (I think Avi used three of your creations: The Haunter of the Dark, The Bloated Woman and The Black Man), fix this with Avi, so that I can work on defnitive version of the Scenario!

Julia said:

Julia ;.( It's so not going to happen this week. Life surprises.

Julia said:

Hi Rovdjuret, it's always pleasant to see you in the forums again. As you're clearly aware by now, some of your stuff was very well liked, despite, well, remaining a bit buggy ;') If you do alter the Bloated Woman, I'm still going to keep the scenario so it functions in the harder way (I'll alter the scenario text).

rovdjuret said:

I'm a bit of a foodie, and I must say, BEST SAND EVAR!

Avi_dreader said:

Good or bad surprises?

But anyway. If you've dropped me some e-mails after January, the 9th, they got lost as well.

Julia said:

Good surprises ;') but, something unscheduled happened (freeing up a couple hours for me, so I just posted 19).

As for the email... Whaaaa? Time to get gmail, Julia. (And yes, I sent you five short messages). Also, five more scenarios :'D only five. FIVE! ;'D

Avi_dreader said:

I'm reading... finally... The Creature in the Clouds.

I played only one game against it, and I've lost. But at that time I was a noob.

TIME FOR REVEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEENGE

::pulling the trigger of her shotgun::

As for the e-mail... dunno... Thelric dropped me an e-mail a couple of days ago, and it arrived with no problems... but yours and Schmiegel's disappeared somewhere in the cyberspace... Need to find an alternate address.......

Also.. may I play with the revised Hastur? The original one is a boring mess...

Julia said:

Hah, you wish :'P you're not getting those free clues that easily. You can however play with the Miskatonic act cards too if you really have a death wish ;')