In the version of 'Blood Ties' where the keeper wins by moving Zombies to the Furnace Room altar it appears to be impossible to stop him winning.

There is absolutely no way to open the doors to that room, and monsters can pass freely through them. All the keeper need do is spawn a zombie in the crypt and move it into the furnace room, for 10 threat total, and 6 turns later he's won the game. The players can't possible win in 9 turns (in a 4 player game) and always certainly won't be able to stop the zombie getting there (for a start they won't know they need to)

What am I missing here?

Any chance of some official advice?

ChiddlerNZ said:

What do you mean "for 10 Threat total"?

EDIT: Oh, I see what you mean; for a cost of 10 Threat total.

if i remeber correct you need at least 2 turns as a keeper to spawn 1 zombie.
the first turn u spawn the corps and the 2nd to turn the corps into a zombie, u can only do one of these 2 actions once per turn!

so it would take you at least 6 turns to spawn the 3 zombies and another 5 to move them to the altar.

I worked out what was wrong with that scenario

When setting up the map I swapped the positions of 2 rooms. The sealed doors and the altar were not supposed to be in the same location!

In that scenario the sealed doors NEVER open (its only in one of the other scenarios on the same map where revealing the condition pops the locks)

The sealed room exists purely to annoy the investigators by forcing them to take the long way around.

Having said that the scenario is still extremely hard to win if the keeper does what I said and spawns zombies in the crypt, sends them straight to the altar and reveals the objective ASAP.

I played it out solo twice last night with 2 investigators, and although you can get one in the way to try to slow the zombies down the other has to keep following clues, and if a zombie gets into cave – which is still locked, just not sealed, you can’t touch it until the last key is found.

I also misread the ‘Creatures of the night’ card that moves the zombies – it can only be used once per turn, so best the keeper can vs 2 players is to raise 2 zombies on turn 2 , and get them to the altar on turn 9. With 3 players he can move the turn he spawns them and get there a turn earlier, with 4 players he can save a turn and get a third zombie there as well, which gives the players another turn less turn to stop him (as 2x3=6)

I suspect 3 players have the best chance. You can get 2 fighters between the zombies and their goal while the third guy runs around avoiding Mi-Go and collecting clues – but its unwinnable with 1 investigator and almost so with 2.

You can definitely use that card multiple times a turn - nothing on it says 1 zombie or corpse at a time.

If the Keeper can only spawn 1 zombie or place 1 corpse per turn then he'll end up collecting a lot of unused threat in a 4 player game!

hence in a 4 player game the keeper starts with 2 threat, gains 4 more on his first turn and 4 on his second, at which point he can seed the crypt with 3 corpses, spawn 3 zombies and move them out into the first cave - a total cost of 10 threat

I see nothing on the card that stops that.

If the players don't know about it; I agree -- they are doomed. To be fixed, the card needs to probably limit the conditions in which the objective can be revealed instead of allowing revelation at any time. It does seem to be a problem as it is written.

SPOILER

It's not unstoppable, I think the optimal choices for the keeper are story choices 2B, 3B, 4B, and 5B.

Consider a solo game: I believe that it require 34 moves to win. Joe Diamond only would get 4 moves in many of the turns, 3 in the rest. I think he needs 10 turns to win. It would take the keeper 11 turns to win, so Joe could even lose a turn to some random Mythos card (which the keeper probably can't play any Mythos until turn 7 or 8) and still pull it out of the fire. Nothing here requires Joe to know anything special about the map other than he needs to guess right about the clues and keep moving without stopping.

Once you get to two investigators, you'd need some foreknowledge of this possibility.

In a two-player game, I'd probably use Pete and Joe. Once the cave is open, Pete's guitar will buy you a lot of time, and probably give you another 3 turns for Joe to do his thing.

Once you get to three or more investigators, finding the Elder Sign is a must-do, but its fairly out in the open.

In a three or four player game, story choices 5B and 2B are crucial or the whole thing falls pretty flat. I think the investigators still have a fighting chance, especially if they know where to get the Elder sign. Again, Pete's guitar buys you the time to get the Elder Sign to the Chasm. Burning up skill tokens to fuel the Lore checks (or just use a higher Lore investigator) for the Elder Sign success.That buys you the time to torch the Crypt and finish off the zombies. Once Cave 1 is unlocked, the Elder sign goes there and you've all but won.

It would be better if the altar room wasn't locked, and its contents were instead hidden by an obstacle - at least then zombies couldn't hide in the altar room, but I don't think there's anything thematically suitable thats unused.

on the card it says perform 1 (one) of the following, not both, not as much as u want .... one - why would they write one if you could still do it as often as you want?

and as i played it i didnt have that big of a problem with the "unuesed" thread - you can still set the whole place on fire or use it on mythos cards.

I believe you can play all the cards as often as you like except the ones that say you can't.

The rules are unclear, but "Creature of the Night" says 'once per game round' , none of the other Keeper Action Cards say that, which must surely mean that card is an exception and all other cards can be played as often as you can afford them.

if you can't play Raise Dead more than once a turn you get a pretty miserable zombie horde

Oh - and the errata says Dark Ritual can also be only used once per turn - if that was true of all cards, no correction would be needed

Yup - read up on it all over the net - you can definitely use action cards multiple times in a turn unless it says you can't,so in a 4 player game with an initial 2 threat you can spawn 2 complete zombies on your first turn with that card.

Tigan said:

the reason is says 'one of the following', by the way is to make it clear each single play of the card does just 1 thing. This means you can't spawn zombies in a burning room as the fire destroys the corpse the moment you place it. If you could do both on a single play of the card the fire wouldn't work.

i.e. Play card - 1 threat - place corpse

Play card again - 2 threat - convert to zombie

You might even wish to do something else between the 2 actions

Well okay, thats just how i thought the card is supposed to work.

u got the passive (spawn a corps where a humanoid dies) that u can use always
and the active where u can choose 1 of these 2 options once per turn.

and it worked well in the game we played (at least it wasnt a 6 turns instant win for the keeper)