For my first game with Miskatonic Horror I wanted to use Nyarlathotep and the Dark Pharoah Herald. We also used our usual three big box expansions and the new CotDP.
We drew six Investigators and picked four, and wound up with Bob, Mark, Lily, and WENDY! My brother was absolutely thrilled to get Wendy, since as long as she had her Elder Sign she was immune to the Blood Boiling Curse and could thus collect Exhibit Items from the Ancient Whispers token without fear. As was very thematically appropriate for the Crawling Chaos, however, the game was continually one step ahead of my bro. Four times he ended his move on the AW token, and each time he was unable to procure an Exhibit Item! One of the encounters, however, did gain him the Anointed Benefit. Finally he gave up and got two Clue tokens at Independence Square.
A new Other World counter cursed Lily, however, and when the Mythos card which revives Monster trophies came up Bob reslew a Zombie and picked up the Book of the Dead, which now allows you to claim Endless monsters and return monster trophies you spend to the box instead of the cup if you wish. So now two of our Investigators were Cursed and were losing a Stamina a turn. With a bad Encounter that cost two Stamina this eventually led to Lily hitting 0 Stamina and failing her Personal Story. Her Injury was the new Dizzy Spells, which delays her whenever she fails a Skill check during an Encounter. Bob similarly took an Injury. Eventually Lily was able to roll a 1 and discard the Curse, and thanks to Wendy's Anointed Benefit, Bob was able to as well!
We were sealing as fast as we could, but the situation was rapidly spinning out of control. Three gates opened in Dunwich and at one point we had a Moon Beast, the Dark Pharoah Mask, the Beast Mask, a Witch, two Shoggoths and a Proto-Shoggoth all in that little town. That was in addition to the God of the Bloody Tongue and Bloated Woman Masks on the main board! With those four Masks out and the DP Herald, Nyralathotep would have been unbeatable had he awakened, and he was at nine Doom tokens. Bob sealed the Devil's Hopyard gate, but the Shoggoth drove him mad and the Insanity card he got was one of the new ones that matched his Injury. With only one Injury and one Madness card, Bob was Devoured, giving rise to Agnes.
Lily used the Mi-Go Brain Case to hit the Esoteric Order gate and try for our sixth seal, but she was failed a trivial encounter check in her first OW encounter and was delayed. When she did emerge one of our seals blew and she was arrested by the Innsmouth cops before she could seal. Fortunately she was able to free herself immediately, and she and Agnes both got into gates as soon as possible.
In the meantime, Wendy had been Injured and after using her Elder Sign collected a couple of the Exhibit Items that the River Levees burst Mythos card had deposited on the board. The Blood Boiling curse actually eneded up killing her, when her Injury turned out to the twin to the one she already had. Exit Wendy, enter Hank.
A Greater Banishment allowed us to dispose of the Shoggoths and Proto from Dunwich, but the Dunwich Horror had already awoken and the Terror Track was steadily climbing. As Agnes and Lily struggled to get through the Other Worlds, we had the Terror Track at 10, two Rifts open and the Dunwich Horror out. Believe it or not, we were actually about to seal the fifth and sixth gates when the Dunwich Horror awoke Nyralathotep.
Mark was Blessed, and the rest of us had decent items. Only one Mask was still out, the Bloated Woman, but her presence gave Nyarathotep an extra minus one on the combat check and an extra Doom token, which would prove vital.
We were hacking Nyralathotep down until around the fourth turn, when Nyarlathotep unleashed his most deadly Sinister Plot, Tricked, taking away all but one of each Investigator's Clue tokens. Hank and Mark soon perished, but Lily and Agnes fought on. A certain new battle condition essentially linked the two in a way which would kill Agnes if Lily died, but my luck with Lily's Lore rolls held out until we got to Catching our Breath, when Angnes was able to gain enough Stamina so that Lily's death wouldn't kill her.
Then Lily did die and Agnes, with her six dice, had Nyarlathotep down to one Doom token. He drew the first Red card and got Sinister Plot. It was "Join Me!" Nyralathotep offered my brother the chance to join him and rule by his side, thus winning the game. But the Ancient One was so weak, so close to being defeated! Never has the choice been so stark, so difficult! My brother has never liked the idea of giving in to evil and so he renounced Nyarlathotep's offer, deciding it was probably a bluff anyway.
The next turn he drew a terrifically fitting card to follow his refusal, the Red Battle Event card "You will share Arkham's Fate!", which brought the Crawling Chaos back up to seven Doom tokens. Since it was a Battle Event my brother drew another Red card and the End of Everything came to pass . . .
So close! So very, very close! If Lily's Injury hadn't delayed her, she could have sealed the last gate before our sixth seal burst. If we hadn't rolled a four for the Dunwich Horror we would have had a chance to seal both gates. If Lily hadn't been knocked unconscious by the Curse and encounter, her passing of her Personal Story would have netted us victory against Nyarlathotep. If the one Mask hadn't still been on the board, we would have won. And even with all of that, we were only four successes from victory!
It was a great game, a most enjoyable nail-biter right up until the end. I was impressed with the Mistkatonic cards I saw, but a word of warning: so far I've come across two Miskatonic Mythos cards that are stunningly nasty! The one from this game was Weather Environment: Snow Drifts. While it is in play, each Investigator must stop and end his movement when he enters a street space