We just played through the Witching Hour. We played this once before and it went ok, this time though, we had a situation come up. I can't, for the life of me, figure out what we did wrong -if anything. It appears this scenario can be unbeatable.


We have a 2 player game We put two Witch Haunted Woods locations in front of each of us.

Player 1 Overgrown Barn (2 clues) and The Lonely Tree (2 clues)
Player 2 Tainted Well (2 clues) and Abandoned Mine (2 clues)

We acquired some clues and advanced to Act-2 (spending 4 clues) We each put an Arkham Woods location in to play and moved there

Player 1: Quiet Glade (0 clues)
Player 2: Cliffside (2 clues)

We acquired some more clues and spent 2 of them to advance to Act-3.

Problem: Advancing to Act-4 requires 6 clues. All the locations taken together have a total of 10 clues, we have already spent 6 to get this far. There are only 4 clues left on the board. In other words, there aren't enough clues to get to act-4. It's not possible to advance.

So.... we can do nothing except wait around until we are defeated? Have I committed an error? Where?

No error on your part, instead the error is on FFG's part.

It was discussed in this thread in this forum and a question was sent in that Matt answered (see this post). For those too lazy to click through, the key part of the answer is:

Quote

For now, I believe the best way to handle this is to revise the setup so that the players put a total of 5 Witch-Haunted Woods locations into play during setup, instead of 4 (as evenly as possible in front of the investigators, with any excess in front of the lead investigator). This should ensure that there are always at least 6 clues per investigator among just the Witch-Haunted Woods locations, regardless of what other locations emerge later in the scenario.

thanks, i didnt check back that far.

Just a note, I think that this situation only occurs on 1 or 2 player games. In theory, I don't think you should have any issues on 3+.

you will not see it in 3+. Also it only comes up in 2 players because of Quiet Glade. If Quiet Glade (along with all 2 clue locations) wasn't drawn in the above scenario they wouldn't have seen an issue. You guys just got unlucky and pulled the broken scenario. Quiet Glade is the only 0 clue location in the pool.

The breakdown goes like this:

To finish the scenario you need 6 clues per gator.

First Layout - 4 locations from a pool of 7 possible

4 locations - 1 per gator
3 locations - 2 per gator

Second layout - 1 location per gator out of 6 possible

5 locations - 1 per gator

1 location - 0 clues

So the lowest number of clues for a 1 player game is 4 clues total (draw all four 1-clue locations at the start and the quiet glade 0-clue location at the midpoint) and can get only 5 clues if you draw three of the 1 clues at start and also the zero clue regular Arkham woods location. So it's fairly unlikely, but not unheard of. If you only draw the 1-clue locations at the start, there's no way to win the one player game.

For a 2-player game, it's far less likely as you have to draw only the 1-clue locations at the start and someone has to draw the 0 clue location at the midway point. VERY unlikely but still possible.

Once you hit three players, you are guaranteed 4 clues at the start and as there is only one 0-clue location, you will get at least 2 clues per gator out of the midpoint location draw.

As stated above, the official temporary fix is to lay out 5 locations at the start from the witch haunted woods locations.