I played my first run through of RotR today, and while it was fun for the players, it kinda dragged for me - the bad guy - so I know I was doing it wrong.

I have a couple of questions: First, those darn hands. Every corpse is supposed to get two but there are only six in the box and I couldn't find any way of recycling them. From what I could find in the rules the ones given at set-up are all you get for the game. They can't be killed and don't cause horror checks (WT*? A witch makes you wig out but a severed, ambulatory hand doesn't worry you?) and are really easy to avoid. What was I doing wrong?

Also my fireproof boss zombie was insta-killed by a result from the combat deck. Since that was the only time I got seriously engaged in combat it was a bit of a downer to say the least. Should boss monsters be insta-killable?

I found that the only avenue open to me, given that monsters could only move 1 square a time in this scenario, was to set the house on fire, but I ran out of fire tokens. Is the token mix a hard limit on what can be played (I said not and used stand-in tokens).

So, what was I doing wrong? Oh yeah, I had three players besides me, so three threat a turn.

Hmm, seems odd you only got to combat properly once. Raise Dead + corpses you start with = zombies. Not to mention when they kill a zombie, thanks to RD, a corpse marker is placed, ready for another zombie. Crawling Hands are very expensive and tricky to use, you really need to have them in place a turn before at where the investigator will end up and then maybe use their grab "attack". If paired with a corpse marker, you can Stun an investigator, Raise Dead to make a zombie and attack the Stunned investigator.

Knowing the path is also key in overcoming the slowness of Creature of the Night. IIRC, investigators will need to backtrack through Morgue/Secret Passage if they go after the Clues, so focus on getting the zombies and hands to these rooms, that way they are within one move at most from an investigator when they are moving through them.

Well there's one mistake - I didn't put corpse markers on the dead zombies.

I got into combat about four times but each time is was a walkover for the good guys. The expense of walking hands to the targets meant that I couldn't get multiples onto a character - the only way stunning a character is anything but a minor inconvenience in my experience.

To be honest I ran out of Zombies. One character had the camera which caused a problem as it calls for removing one from the pool, leaving only three for my use. This made seeding the path with them problematical, not to mention causing a crisis when the named zombie boils out of the corners in time, because there weren't any not engaged.

This brings up something I wondered about: If the reanimator scenarios are supposed to be a zombie-fest, why weren't the new monsters in the set more Zombies? With six in the mix the scenario could really swing.

As I say I almost had them when I set fires in every room I could. Unfortunately, although I had them all on the ropes one of them solved the Alchemy puzzle for the win.

But I'm still mad about the Big Bad Zombie falling in round two to a lame insta-kill.

Stun still limits the character by taking away a Move, but more importantly IMO, the -2 to checks can make a difference between a success and failure (don't think it is doable in RotR, but when you get Darkness + Stun, investigators are in a world of hurt combat-wise).

I got a lucky break in my so far one game of RotR, Event II I think it is that forces a test by each investigator and failure means draw Side Effect, one investigator failed and I drew Evil Twin, adding a Maniac to my mix. I did kill one investigator and Michael McGlen then dropped his Tommy Gun while trying to kill Herbert West, allowing West to make good his escape. Here I had a Crawling Hand perfectly placed, waiting for Michael, so I managed to Stun him, which meant he wasn't able to keep up with West and was left unable to get LOS. I didn't both with Pyromaniac, actually I don't think I've bothered with it in Blood Ties either. The flaming zombie in my game barely got into the fight, since the path for the investigators was Operating Room - Control Room - Study - Quarantine Room (IIRC). Flamer reached the action when the investigators were making their way into the QR for the last Clue, but then Herbert was off and running and the flamer was left behind as the investigators tried to catch up to West.

IIRC boss monsters are immune to insta-kill effects. If this isn't in the rules, then try looking in the FAQ.