Morning,

My Arkham group are due to start a blind playthrough of The Forgotten Age next Friday. We're currently looking at a group consisting of Ursula Downs (me), Sefina Rousseau, Yorrick/Silas and possibly a try-not-to-make-checks Roland Banks (though this may end up becoming a Carolyn deck).

I suspect we'll be playing on Standard, as we've all heard about how difficult TFA is.

Any general advice for the campaign so far, preferably avoiding spoilers?

Cheers.

Hi @dysartes ,

I'll try to help, but I suspect general advice without spoilers will be tricky. But, here goes:

- take your time looking at the new rules of the Forgotten Age and checking what their ramifications will be. In particular Alert & Vengeance mean that evading enemies might come at greater risk, and killing enemies at greater cost. Have that in mind so you can make decent judgements about lines of play

- look at the chaos bag you'll be handling. It's a different spread from previous chaos bags, so knowing the odds and knowing what's decent to try for is good.

- agility has some uses in this campaign - not to an excessive degree, and certainly not as much as some people first felt - so a cheeky 2x manual dexterity doesn't necessarily hurt

- oh, on hurt: prepare to get hurt. This campaign wants to hurt you. Roll with it. You can handle it!

Does any of that help? I hope so!

@dysartes I'll add some more.

• You can't take everything from the provisions list. Take what you think you'll need.
• Understand the Explore action and Exploration Deck:

Quote

Explore

Some abilities in this campaign are identified with an Explore action designator. Such abilities are generally used to find new locations to put into play, and are initiated using the “activate” action. Explore abilities instruct you to draw the top card of the “exploration deck,” which is a separate deck that is constructed during the setup of some scenarios. This deck consists of several single-sided locations and treachery cards.

• Each Explore ability indicates a particular type of location that you are seeking to draw. If a location of that type is drawn, it is put into play, and you move to that location. This is considered a “successful” exploration.
• If any other location is drawn, place it next to the exploration deck, and draw the next card from the exploration deck. Repeat this process until a location of the indicated type is drawn, or a treachery is drawn. After this action has ended, shuffle each location next to the exploration deck back into the exploration deck.
• If a treachery card is drawn, it is resolved as normal. If it is discarded, place it in the encounter discard pile as you would normally. There is no discard pile for the exploration deck. This is considered an “unsuccessful” exploration.
• As a single-sided location is put into play from the exploration deck, place clues on that location equal to its clue value.

• The second bullet point killed me. I assumed that no location was put into play and turns were subsequently wasted. You will always find a treachery or a location you can go to (assuming that the deck isn't empty). I can't remember if I knew that you automatically move as well.
• There has been a fair amount of discussing the 2 new basic weaknesses and whether or not people will add them to their pools. One is very interesting, the other is terrifying as it will eventually kill the player outright, although there are things that can be done to halt it (in advance). I don't think either are for first-time players, but that choice is yours.

Pretty much everything @zooeyglass and I are listing here is from the first 2 pages of the new campaign. This one hits the ground running. I have really enjoyed the scenarios I have played so far; it's a good one. Enjoy!

Another point as far as new mechanics. There is a designation on cards that is basically a counterpoint to Victory points on cards. Just as Victory points get you XP, Vengeance points make you record a tick mark on "Yig's fury" on the campaign log. Having too many of these tick marks can have negative repercussions later in the campaign - thus making it more advisable to Evade enemies with Vengeance points as opposed to killing them in the long run. There will also be creatures and locations that may have both Victory and Vengeance points, leaving you with the decision of whether those extra XP are worth pissing off Yig.

Supplies: Some supplies will help you navigate certain scenarios, other supplies will prevent trauma and/or penalties in the interludes. I guarantee you will obtain trauma during the interludes at some point - this can be a very rough campaign in this respect. As said above, you won't be able to cover all your bases here, so take your best guess and live with the consequences. Anything more specific would be too spoilery IMHO.

Nothing much to add other than, if you’re a perfectionist player and don’t like ‘losing’ scenarios, strap yourself in! My play group have done very well on our blind play throughs of the first two campaigns, but we’ve only just hit evens on our successful resolutions/no resolution ratio! That can be a bit dispiriting when you’re often failing to reach a decent resolution, but stick with it. As @zooeyglass says, you WILL get hurt! But stick with it, it’s worth it in the long run!

Well, this is definitely sounds like my initial plan of taking Charon's Obol on Ursula would be a mistake.

Thanks for the advice

I would say if you go in... planning to lose, and getting lots of trauma and death. Then you should be just fine:) Blind playthroughs in this campaign are rough, replays are a little easier, but the first initial run can be really tough.

So you can go into it, expecting to slowly die, then you probably won't get frustrated with it! Just kind of plan on replaying it, because it is really fun (I think). Even my first play through I had a blast with.

I found my 2nd and 3rd times through it were much better (deathwise), I was able to plan and handle things better. Especially The Boundary Beyond, just go into that expecting to get your &#^$ handed to you.

Those are my thoughts, hopefully not too spoilery, just trying to set your expectations, because a lot of players get really frustrated with this campaign and it's difficultly level.

On 9/28/2018 at 6:30 PM, dysartes said:

Well, this is definitely sounds like my initial plan of taking Charon's Obol on Ursula would be a mistake.

Thanks for the advice

I took Charon’s Obol on Sefina for my blind play through of Forgotten Age.

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I’m really enjoying playing Akachi in my blind play through of Forgotten Age!

23 hours ago, monorico said:

I found my 2nd and 3rd times through it were much better (deathwise), I was able to plan and handle things better. Especially The Boundary Beyond, just go into that expecting to get your &#^$ handed to you.

For Boundary Beyond I got lucky and was able to pull a "Sleight of Hand"/"Chicago Typewriter" combo and finish the final phase of the scenario on the same turn it triggered.

Bit of a "Say Hello to my little friend!!" moment

19 hours ago, General Zodd said:

I took Charon’s Obol on Sefina for my blind play through of Forgotten Age.

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I’m really enjoying playing Akachi in my blind play through of Forgotten Age!

Almost the same here, but replace "Sefina" with "Leo", "Akachi" with "Ursula", and "enjoying" with "flipping the table and quitting".

5 hours ago, CSerpent said:

Almost the same here, but replace "Sefina" with "Leo", "Akachi" with "Ursula", and "enjoying" with "flipping the table and quitting".

I hear you! I’ve actually turned a corner with my enjoyment of FA. The first game was close, and with the odd token pull in our favour we would have been successful. The second was a massive punch in the face, which seemed overly harsh. The third was a nice, much needed break! The fourth was again punishingly hard, to the point of not really enjoying it (coincidentally, where I lost Sefina). But since then, it’s felt a lot more fun! Difficult, but challenging rather than face smashing. Who knows what the Depths of Yoth will bring, however...

2 minutes ago, General Zodd said:

I hear you! I’ve actually turned a corner with my enjoyment of FA. The first game was close, and with the odd token pull in our favour we would have been successful. The second was a massive punch in the face, which seemed overly harsh. The third was a nice, much needed break! The fourth was again punishingly hard, to the point of not really enjoying it (coincidentally, where I lost Sefina). But since then, it’s felt a lot more fun! Difficult, but challenging rather than face smashing. Who knows what the Depths of Yoth will bring, however...

I was going solo, so Ursula was starting Heart of the Elders with no supplies or XP. That was no fun. I'm now continuing a solo Calvin that I started right after I started the Leo one. Not sure how much better that will go, but he should at least get to Heart.

On ‎10‎/‎5‎/‎2018 at 5:40 PM, CSerpent said:

I was going solo, so Ursula was starting Heart of the Elders with no supplies or XP. That was no fun. I'm now continuing a solo Calvin that I started right after I started the Leo one. Not sure how much better that will go, but he should at least get to Heart.

I've been running Leo & Ursula. Those 2 really were made for this campaign. Ursula is great at moving forward, discovering clues, and evading monsters. Leo follows behind and swashbuckles the monsters as they come. A seeker with Evasion. Weird. Also, with her relic deckbuilding options, The Chthonian Stone is unmatched.

5 hours ago, Duciris said:

I've been running Leo & Ursula. Those 2 really were made for this campaign. Ursula is great at moving forward, discovering clues, and evading monsters. Leo follows behind and swashbuckles the monsters as they come. A seeker with Evasion. Weird. Also, with her relic deckbuilding options, The Chthonian Stone is unmatched.

I was using Charisma Leo, with Ichtaca, Mitch Brown, a Beat Cop and a Guard Dog all out in play, feeling very smug about my board state! But I’d already lost a bit of damage across my investigator card and my allies.

Then we had two Arrows from the Trees in the same mythos phase... I wasn’t feeling as smug about myself after that...

So while you’re correct, there’s at least one encounter set that really doesn’t reward you for playing Leo to his full!

29 minutes ago, General Zodd said:

I was using Charisma Leo, with Ichtaca, Mitch Brown, a Beat Cop and a Guard Dog all out in play, feeling very smug about my board state! But I’d already lost a bit of damage across my investigator card and my allies.

Then we had two Arrows from the Trees  in the same mythos phase... I wasn’t feeling as smug about myself after that...

So while you’re correct, there’s at least one encounter set that really doesn’t reward you for playing Leo to his full!

Oof. I was running Leo with Leo ( De Luca ) rather than Ichtaca. I'd use Beat Cop (2) until he only had 1 health remaining, then Calling in Favors to put him back into my hand, possibly put someone else in, and then put him back into play the subsequent round with the triggered ability. I also found Trusted to be a boon for soak. Smug indeed.

Arrows from the Trees would be most disquieting.

I and, I think, many others went into the blind run thinking we wouldn't be fighting much. Not true -- unless you're really good at evasion, don't skimp on the weapons.

16 hours ago, CSerpent said:

I and, I think, many others went into the blind run thinking we wouldn't be fighting much. Not true -- unless you're really good at evasion, don't skimp on the weapons.

Hi, I'm my group's Finn. Everything this poster says is true. Not every enemy has Vengeance, and there are some scenarios where the keyword doesn't show up at all. There are, however, all sorts of enemies that you do not want to live . Evasion is great, and you shouldn't skimp on it here, but if I didn't have Adaptable to respec myself for combat, I don't know what we'd be doing now.

Agility is unusually good in this campaign and so is speed, action effective characters like Ashcan, Ursula. Finn, Wendy, Skids will find some advantages here.

The campaign has a new mechanic explained on the first page of the booklet, exploration. The later in the round you do this action the more dangerous it becomes.

Forgotten age deals slightly more damage than usual, especially if your agility is low, stay healthy, bring tanks and/or healing.

Make sure your clue game is on point. There is no Carcosa dinner party esque scenario so go nuts with classical investigation tools (Fine clothes might still actually pay off though).

This campaign is rife with 3hp enemies, plan your combat accordingly.