Prepping for the Apocalypse - Running Avi's Fan League

[therabidbanana 16]

After months of hassling, my wife finally found a way to get me to take a vacation. Her diabolical plan - an Arkham Staycation. We'll spend a long weekend taking in the sights at Innsmouth and wandering the streets of Kingsport. We might even check out a few Egyptian exhibits or hike around in the Backwoods Country of Dunwich. 

 

As the plan came together, the stars aligned and our goal became more clear. I stumbled upon Avi's incredible set of scenarios thanks to Julia's signature, and we randomly found a store with all the expansions we were missing ready to buy. All that's left to do is print out the scenarios and get the alcohol and snack food stocked up for the oncoming storm next Thursday.

 

We don't plan on finishing in one long weekend of course - but we hope to get a decent amount of headway. As we play along I'll be posting our results here for the other curious and/or insane denizens of Arkham to follow along. If we don't survive the ordeal, tell our friends we died doing what we loved - cranking the terror level to 11 and making dark pacts with evil beings. 

[Borealian 81]

You are either very brave or very... uh, unconcerned for your sanity. Best of luck. It was nice knowing you.

 

(Is totally jealous even though I'm currently running the 2nd FFG-league)

[Julia 2,776]

Hey, happy you're ready!!!! G'd luck with that, and if you have any questions about rules and stuff, just ask! Otherwise, if you fancy to do so, we'll certainly enjoy your reports and impressions about the different scenarios! Enjoy the Staycation!

[Julia 2,776]

(holy cow, the previous one was my 7000th post on these boards...)

[Borealian 81]

Hrrruhhuhuhumm!

 

"For She's a jolly good fellow, for She's a jolly good fellow,

 

for she's a jolly good fe-e-llow!

 

And so say all of us!"

 

*Tootles party horn*

[Julia 2,776]

LOL, thanks Philip

[therabidbanana 16]

I think we're all ready to go - got all the heralds/AOs printed out for the first half. Just to confirm - the expansion setup is all in except:

- Lurker mythos

- Miskatonic mythos

- Miskatonic Act cards?

- Ancient Whispers from revised CotDP

- Kingsport - except as directed

Does that about sum it up? I pulled these from another thread - not sure if I got everything right.

[Julia 2,776]

Yup, sounds almost correct! Technically, you shouldn't be playing with anything from Lurker; I played tho with the small cards (but no Relationship, since Avi said me to do so) and with the new gates in, so, this part here is up to you.

 

Good luck!

[therabidbanana 16]

Ah - we've already decided for our normal games that keeping up with personal stories AND relationships between two characters for each of us is too much of a hassle, so good to know we can ignore the relationships.

 

Now I'm torn about the gates - if they're not supposed to be in then I could justify taking them out... but I'd hate to take the easy way out.   We'll leave them in to start and see how badly the moving gates mess things up.

[Julia 2,776]

It's more of a problem of the double gates in Yog scenarios and devouring / doom gates than moving; I'd suggest to keep both sets of gates in the gate stack, just to relieve a little bit of tension, but really, it's up to you!

[therabidbanana 16]

So it turns out we vastly underestimated the amount of Whiskey cards we'd need to stock up on to handle the soul-crushing weight of these scenarios. As we come back to the real world to restock, I have a bit of time to report on our progress so far. We're up to Scenario 4 and will be starting it today. 

 

 

Scenario 1: Sin and Death

 

We started this scenario as we normally start others - randomly select 2 investigators, keep one. The draws were Norman/Diana and Norman/Zoey. Forgetting Norman started with Find Gate, we both decided to skip Norman. We might have swapped Diana out, looking back at it. 

 

Initial setup was okay - Sister Mary started with Endurance and Zoey started with marksman, both of which proved extremely useful with so many vampires on the board, and William started with Will + 1, which made him a pretty solid fighter even with all the harder horror checks on the board. William also started with a Gladius and Molotov.

 

Started out okay - Mary made her way out and faced the cultist vampire, scratch one undead, while William stayed to get a blessing to work on two personal stories. The next turn William went head to head with Dracula and sent him back to the Graveyard but we got stuck with a double doomer rumor - Tattered King. The doom track started accelerating very quickly and we needed to start scrambling, but Diana got pinned in the Curiositie Shoppe. A gate had opened in Dunwich and then another double doomer came out in turn 4.

 

Dracula was blocking a gate over in the Woods, but William sent him back again allowing Mary to get through our first gate. It was seeming like too little two late when 4 more gates opened, but we started getting people through gates and hoping for the best. After turn 10 we got our chance - the doom track stalled with Act I, a monster surge in Innsmouth, then Act II. The second act turned out very useful for Mary, who had picked up the Miskatonic Performer skill. We got Zoey through the Innsmouth gate and had a couple of people in reserve waiting for the next Gate to open, but luckily we had a few more surges and managed to get a close win at turn 14.

 

Impressions: Janus's double evade power along with Death's horror check modifiers made us think twice about trying to get anywhere, and Dracula's ability to hit unstable locations kept things interesting. Luckily we only ended up with a single person getting cursed toward the end - I'm not looking forward to facing that danger again in Scenario 4.

 

Scenario 2: Exodus Earth

 

This one was a pain. It took us four tries and started to get pretty frustrating. Starting in such a hole from Glaaki's first three servants was hard to dig out of.

 

We tried the first two times with the same team, just throwing Jacqueline in the mix as an afterthought. The mythos deck was incredibly unkind and we did not have much chance to take advantage of Jacqueline's ability. In fact we forgot about her so much the second game we didn't notice her sliders missing until the second turn.

 

We ended the day feeling pretty defeated, but after regrouping and reviewing other threads on the league we got a few ideas to try the next day.

 

We replaced Zoey and Diana with Wendy and Norman the first time (so Mary, William, Norman, Wendy, and Jacqueline as our team). We'd never played with Wendy - her special ability was incredibly useful for keeping things under control, and her speed made her effective for getting stuff where it was needed. I definitely think we'll be keeping her if she comes up in random draws in the future. We also funneled more clues to Jacqueline for her special ability. 

 

The third game ended with just bad luck, but had gone much smoother than the previous two. Our first mythos card was a +1 terror, so we lost the starting common items we had - a shotgun, flamethrower and a tommy gun. While that was pretty demoralizing, we started to get into the groove and were well on our way to two seals on the board when suddenly William was devoured in R'lyeh at turn 6, putting us immediately in an unexpected final combat that we just forfeited, given our lack of any equipment.

 

Norman was pretty useless because he kept getting pinned behind monsters and unable to get anywhere to do anything useful, so we swapped back in Zoey to replace him and ran it again. We used Wendy several times to keep monsters distracted while people started working on closing gates - something very useful especially in Dunwich. While we ended up with a couple setbacks keeping us from getting all the seals we wanted (including Amnesia for Zoey in the first turn through the gate she was going to seal) the mythos deck stalled at just the right moment to give us an early close win.

 

Not taking any chances when we saw the opportunity come up, we had Wendy run in with two Gladiuses (Gladii?) to kill the final monsters that had surged out of Lost Carcosa - ensuring William would get a second shot with the one die he had to roll, but luckily we didn't need it. We were laughing about how we spent most of the game making Wendy play peekabo with monsters and run around with sharp things and guns, a theme we carried on to scenario 3...

 

Scenario 3: Rivalries of the Gods

 

There were a ton of different rules to keep track of here - I think we forgot to do a Lore -1 check to avoid Yuggoth at one point before visiting Arkham Asylum. We replaced Zoey with Norman - he was much more useful with the corruptions deck being played so heavily. 

 

We were quick to close the Witch House so that we could move freely without constant will checks, and a lucky early mythos card took the corrupting Witch off the board (I think this was okay - the rules only specified circle gates didn't suck them back in). Things went pretty smoothly after the gate closed. Norman's starting spells included Alchemical Process, so we were frequenting the Curiositie Shoppe and happened upon the Mi-go brain case. Wendy did happen upon Joining the Winning Team while shopping as well. We joked briefly about having the little girl turn to darkness and betray us all, but weren't sure that was in spirit of actually winning the scenario. 

 

We were slow getting seals on the board - took us until the 11th turn for our first one, but with Jacqueline's gift we were able to keep the doom track reasonably under control, and Wendy was able to distract monsters in the streets of Dunwich until we could take care of them (anything to avoid the Terror Track Luck Checks, which came close a few times to devouring someone, stealing cluses from a few of our earlier attempts at sealing).

 

Wendy held onto her elder sign long enough for a Personal story pass, just one turn before she was set to use it. She ran to buy another Elder sign, as the doom track had accelerated and we needed a last seal that it looked like was going to take too long to get - everybody was short on clues.

 

Suddenly our luck changed - William had a chance to swap places with the Mi-go case straight to the Science Building (a Hound had attacked just the turn before), cashing in a gate, giving him enough clues to immediately jump back through and get our final seal. But before he could make his way to the gate, Wendy also hit paydirt at just the right moment, and rushed an elder sign to Mary, who had been holding open a gate because she couldn't seal and we couldn't afford it reopening. We got our sixth seal at 11 doom. 

 

We're carrying on two Gladiuses, Alchemical Process and the Mi-go brain case (so useful) for the fourth scenario. Time go shopping at the general store for a few more Whiskey cards and get back to it. 

Edited April 20, 2015 by therabidbanana

[Avi_dreader 64]

The intention behind scenario three is that the Witch be basically treated as a spawn monster and that players would have to confront it or evade it and deal with the corruption consequences.  Cards removing it from the board was an oversight.  YBasically you ran against the herald without the most of the scenario intact.  You're welcome to replay it if you'd like, or just skip it and go ahead.  If you handled scenario two (the **** test), you can handle scenario three (it's much easier).  Still...  It undermines a lot of the functionality of the scenario if you take the witch off the board without confrontation.

[Avi_dreader 64]

Also, these games really aren't intended for randomly drawn investigators.  Quite a few of them were intended to work almost as puzzles (they become a lot harder without the right investigator or investigators chosen and skills/items used).  You're welcome to play your way if you'd like, but if you really want a challenge, play your way on hard mode ;')

Edited April 19, 2015 by Avi_dreader

[therabidbanana 16]

The intention behind scenario three is that the Witch be basically treated as a spawn monster and that players would have to confront it or evade it and deal with the corruption consequences.  Cards removing it from the board was an oversight.  YBasically you ran against the herald without the most of the scenario intact.  You're welcome to replay it if you'd like, or just skip it and go ahead.  If you handled scenario two (the **** test), you can handle scenario three (it's much easier).  Still...  It undermines a lot of the functionality of the scenario if you take the witch off the board without confrontation.

 

Yeah - it definitely seemed like an oversight that the Witch could be pulled off the board - but after being put through the ringer by scenario two I wasn't going to give up any advantage the rules/mythos offered up.   We'll probably try it again at some point so we feel like we did it right, but for now we'll just carry on. 

 

 

Also, these games really aren't intended for randomly drawn investigators.  Quite a few of them were intended to work almost as puzzles (they become a lot harder without the right investigator or investigators chosen and skills/items used).  You're welcome to play your way if you'd like, but if you really want a challenge, play your way on hard mode ;')

 

Yeah, we definitely got that point drilled into our heads after trying it a few times that way on scenario two. We'll be choosing to our advantage as we carry on through the scenarios. 

[Avi_dreader 64]

 

The intention behind scenario three is that the Witch be basically treated as a spawn monster and that players would have to confront it or evade it and deal with the corruption consequences.  Cards removing it from the board was an oversight.  YBasically you ran against the herald without the most of the scenario intact.  You're welcome to replay it if you'd like, or just skip it and go ahead.  If you handled scenario two (the **** test), you can handle scenario three (it's much easier).  Still...  It undermines a lot of the functionality of the scenario if you take the witch off the board without confrontation.

 

Yeah - it definitely seemed like an oversight that the Witch could be pulled off the board - but after being put through the ringer by scenario two I wasn't going to give up any advantage the rules/mythos offered up.   We'll probably try it again at some point so we feel like we did it right, but for now we'll just carry on. 

 

 

Also, these games really aren't intended for randomly drawn investigators.  Quite a few of them were intended to work almost as puzzles (they become a lot harder without the right investigator or investigators chosen and skills/items used).  You're welcome to play your way if you'd like, but if you really want a challenge, play your way on hard mode ;')

 

Yeah, we definitely got that point drilled into our heads after trying it a few times that way on scenario two. We'll be choosing to our advantage as we carry on through the scenarios. 

 

Ha...  Did you realize that scenario two was specifically designed for Wendy use?  Besides just being an excellent overall investigator, she IIRC is required to delay one of the servants from hitting a vortex and really screwing over all your investigators.  She's also quite useful in scenario one for messing up Dracula movement, but it's not necessary to use her that way.  Plus it's also good to choose investigators who don't get their starting equipment too messed up by the servants (initially— prior to playtesting, the servants were randomly selected and placed in their locations ::laughter:: that did not go well).

Well, good luck.  Scenario two is one of the nastiest scenarios.  I found it very difficult and stressful when I played through it my first time (since any misplays can be catastrophic).  If you were able to bludgeon through it, you should be able to get through anything.  Although some of the puzzle ones function differently.

By the way, if there are any scenarios you really enjoy, it might be fun for you to go back and replay them with a selected or partially random team from the full group of investigators (minus patrice of course).  It probably won't be as balanced, but I'm sure it'd still be fun.

Also, you're right, Join the Winning Team should be on the banned cards list.  

Edited April 19, 2015 by Avi_dreader

[therabidbanana 16]

Our weekend has come to a close with 4 scenarios down and a single attempt against the Darkness. We half considered resetting for another attempt, but didn't want to get sucked into playing until midnight trying to beat it. What follows are the reports for those last two games:

 

 

Scenario 4: The Moonlight Plague

 

The rules for werewolf movement were definitely not as clear as I'd like here. Our starting team was Mary, William, Jacqueline, Wendy, and Norman. We started with William because he was carrying over the Migo brain case from Scenario 3, and it was not clear how we should resolve the initial movement. I'm not sure we did it right. The points we're working with:

 

1) William, Sister Mary, and a Cultist start in South Church

2) Sister Mary starts with Lycanthropy, so moves as a werewolf with the initial black crescent movement

3) Scenario rules - treat werewolf movement as two separate movements

4) Scenario clarification - werewolves, including investigators with lycanthropy, do not deal damage to each other while moving

5) Scenario rules - werewolves (including werewolf investigators) deal 4 damage when on the same space as an investigator

6) Scenario rules - werewolves (including werewolf investigators/cultists - that part is unsaid, but I assume yes?) deal their damage when leaving spaces with investigators

7) Herald - if an investigator is damaged by a werewolf, give them a lycanthropy token and move them as a werewolf during mythos movement (does this happen only the _next_ mythos, or immediately?)

 

So the confusion arises in point 6 combined with point 7 - after dealing 4 points damage, and moving away, does another 2 points of damage happen (due to point 5), or since they're now a werewolf because of the initial damage, do they just also join the movements that turn (because of point 7)? We started by moving Mary, for no other reason than because it was fun to treat her as the enemy for once and move her first. The way we figured it resolved was: 

 

1) She does 4 damage to William, being on the same space as an investigator - he is now a werewolf.

2) She leaves South Church, but does not deal more damage because William is now also infected and starts moving as a Werewolf this turn (this part is where it gets unclear)?

3) Cultist and William also move as Werewolves, but everyone else is far away, so no other issues.

 

I wonder if we should have considered William unconscious for the first round (4 damage from Mary and 4 from the cultist/werewolf) and then had him move as a werewolf only from that point on?

 

In any case, this scenario was definitely kind of fun in that it got us to start think of each other in terms of infection. At one point I was almost happy Sister Mary got lost in time and space (/sent back to South Church) from an outer world encounter because we'd jumped her in the same gate as uninfected Wendy and I was worried that the next mythos was going to kill Wendy. The paranoia from infected investigators definitely was there, which I think was the point - it just wasn't clear exactly how we should resolve our uneasy meetup at any given location if a Moon was drawn, for the same reasons I mentioned with William.

 

The game itself went pretty smoothly. We didn't even bother killing most of the cultist/werewolves, with them being elusive it seemed reasonable to just run past them and focus on being in safe locations/outer worlds as much as possible. We probably got pretty lucky with our mythos draws, but the cultist werewolves only got two moves the entire game, which made them just a slight nuisance more than anything else. They caught Jacqueline unawares in the Graveyard once - the only victim of a random werewolf attack, right after she had got a seal down.

 

The game started with no notable equipment outside what we chose to carry on - Alchemical Process, 2 Gladius of Carcosa, and the Mi-go Brain Case. Mary was our first player and got cursed immediately by Death, but moved to South Church and managed to get back her blessing due to a lucky encounter draw. We had both Jacqueline and Wendy shopping during the first turn and happened upon a second elder sign, so we were feeling pretty solid at that point. In the second turn she got a quick pass on her personal story because Norman visited the Science Building and someone blessed him. From there curses from Death seemed less menacing and the movement of werewolves was pretty quiet, so we went about our business. We shopped and got Jackie through her first gate on turn 4. She had an encounter forcing her to roll for all her spells to keep them. She only lost Alchemical Process, but in the same turn Norman got an interesting encounter in Witch House that let him duplicate any spell he was carrying - we obviously chose Find Gate and suddenly found ourselves with two copies.

 

We tried to pass off the extra Find Gate + Elder Sign to Mary on the 5th turn in the Unvisited Isle using Wendy - there were two clue tokens there to give Mary 5 to seal - a Find Gate would be perfect to prep her for the Outer World. Tensions were high hoping we weren't going to end up with her going all werewolf when we did the handoff, but they got even higher when Mary drew "A gate and a monster appear", drawing them both through the gate (a first for us I think - we've never had an encounter pull two investigators through a gate at the same time).  Luckily (?) Mary got lost in time in space with her first encounter in Yuggoth, dropping her back at South Church and keeping her from infecting Wendy. 

 

By the time Wendy got back she was able to use her Elder sign while still having passed her personal story, so we decided to risk it, even though that meant losing her curse cover. It drove her insane, which just put her closer to the Curiousitie Shoppe to spend it. Four gates were left, and at that moment Norman and Mary jumped through the last two gates ready to seal. Norman missed his Find Gate roll, but they got back through the next turn. Unfortunately by the time they returned a gate burst had dropped us back to 5 seals on the board. It was turn turn 11 with 7 doom on the track, and Wendy had hit up a Gate Box in her shopping that we probably couldn't find time to use, but we got a few people through gates ready to seal or at very least close, and Jacqueline had the other elder sign we'd bought earlier with Find Gate that Mary was supposed to use. The 13th turn put our sixth seal on the board and we called it a game, with only three of our investigators catching lycanthropy. 

 

We carried on Gate Box, two Glaidius and the Mi-Go Brain Case for scenario 5.

 

Scenario 5: Darkness Dawning

 

This one was cruel mainly because victory was so close and taken away with some bad rolls. We knew we had to keep Zoey out fighting and everyone else cowering in terror, but with the Mi-go Brain Case and the Gate Box carried over, and two Gladiuses for Zoey, it seem like we had a pretty solid leg up. . So we had started with the team was the same as before, but swapping Zoey out for Norman (so the team was William, Mary, Zoey, Wendy and Jacqueline). We were feeling even better when Zoey's initial unique item draw was the Carcosan Page, and Jacqueline started with both Call Friend and Plumb the Void spells. "How lucky is that?" we said - basically you couldn't ask for a better starting setup to try and orchestrate a close win.

 

We went about trying for the close win - William started by spending his trophies for blessings to pass his blessing and Mary's - didn't want to risk having to fight a Shogguth or Yithian at +4 toughness when his turn came about. He also had Serpent People, which we were a bit less worried about. (The Lich King Herald wording implied a fight with an existing trophy happened for the first player each turn while night was in effect - is this right?). We were stressed about having Zoey carry around all of the weapons _and_ the Carcosan Page, so we ran Wendy by her to pick it up.

 

Unfortunately by the third turn, it was becoming obvious that Wendy was going to die a horrible death being driven insane by the Necronomicon and there was nothing we could do about it, so we unloaded everything else to Jacqueline during turn 3. This suspicion turned out to be correct because Wendy was devoured on turn 4, catching Schizophrenia twice. The same turn, William got a lucky Psychic from the Historical Society, which we quickly used to move extra skills to cover Zoey - William's marksman moved to Zoey to help make her a killing machine. 

 

We replaced Wendy with Norman when she was devoured. He ended up drawing a second copy of Find Gate randomly when he started, which seemed to round out everything and make it more likely we were going to get a close win. We started throwing people through gates at that point - the doom track was at 6 at turn 4, and we were hoping to get everything closed and finished off by turn 8. Mary and Jacqueline jumped through at turn 4, William was through at turn 5 and Jacqueline called Norman into Another Time with Call Friend, expecting to use the Gate Box. Norman jumped back quickly with Find Gate, and Mary and Jacqueline jumped back through at the same time. William was a turn behind, but also came through. We were one gate short, but Zoey jumped through the same turn others were set to close so that we could ship her Find Gate with the Carcosan Page. 

 

Zoey jumped back through and ran Find Gate next turn with the Gate Box, as we wanted. Everything was ready to go - Zoey, Mary and Jacqueline were all ready to close at the same time and we were about to finish the game - but unfortunately, the dice did not agree with us. Even with 5 clue tokens, Jackie was not able to close the the R'lyeh gate, even with everyone else closing and leaving just a single clue token.

 

Having Zoey jump through and Wendy devoured, several monsters had ended up jumping into vortexes in Dunwich that turn, and we ended up losing a few useful things - the Mi-go Brain Case and Find Gate were both removed because an all monster movement happened at just the wrong time (Next Act Begins). Even though we had prepped for the eventuality of Glaaki, we were caught off-gaurd because we ended up with two spell Glaaki's in a row (this is right, isn't it? the scenario implies a random Glaaki effect every time terror goes up - allowing for repeats, even during the same turn?). We tried so hard and were just one gate away from a close win, but couldn't pull it off because Jacqueline had 6 dice she coulnd't close with. After that point, the game went downhill. 

 

Jackie tried to close again, but it was too late. Another gate opened in Gardner's Place and we needed to get someone through. Jacqueline closed right before the starting Wraith swooped down and killed her. Unfortunately after that close she ended up in Saint Mary's Hospital, shortly afterwards she ended up fighting off a Shan. Our only chance at that point with only one seal on the board and 12 doom was to jump multiple through a gate and try to close quick, but Jacqueline got Devoured by the Shan the 12th turn with the Gate Box and the other Find Gate in her possession, basically making that possibility impossible.

 

I think this will be doable the next time we try if we draw Madnesses a little better for Wendy and put a few more seals on the board thanks to the Gate Box +  Police Wagon (seems you can buy this with two of Zoey's cultists, which is basically the only way to get William to move?). 

[Julia 2,776]

I hope you're having  good time playing those Scenario 2 and 5 clearly are the most brutal in the segment (which is just a warm up, some of the next scenarios are more challening), so that it's more or less normal having a stop there.

 

(I'll leave the rules questions to Avi, since he's following the thread)

[Borealian 81]

So it turns out we vastly underestimated the amount of Whiskey cards we'd need to stock up on to handle the soul-crushing weight of these scenarios.

 

Houserule: Have a whisky irl instead! It might sound like it makes the game easier. In the case of these scenarios, I'm not so sure it does.

[Avi_dreader 64]

Part of the problem with scenario 4 is the herald is unclear.  However, as a co-designer, I'd say the intent (or at least my intent) was that the herald would mirror werewolf infection somewhat.  So during the initial injury, the victim is not recognized as a werewolf.  It would only be during the next night movement.  I'm surprised you didn't just cycle Yorrick out.  Having two infected investigator's a huge handicap on that scenario.  I basically won it by trying to quarantine infected investigators as much as possible.  Scenario 1 and 4 are my favorites of the first segment.  I especially like them on hard mode.

Edited April 20, 2015 by Avi_dreader

[Avi_dreader 64]

Scenario five:  Yes, the first player must fight (or evade) a random monster trophy of his or hers every turn at night. 

Yes, you can get hit by two or three of the same Glaaki effects simultaneously if your luck is bad enough.

I honestly didn't find scenario 5 nearly as hard as scenario 2...  Then again, I went for a sealing victory on it.

Sounds like Jacqueline took quite the beating that game :')

[Julia 2,776]

Agreed on the difficulty of Scenario 5... someone here won by closing in 6 turns... *trolling innocently*

[Avi_dreader 64]

Agreed on the difficulty of Scenario 5... someone here won by closing in 6 turns... *trolling innocently*

Am I the only one here who almost never goes for closing victories?

[Julia 2,776]

LOL, it happened, I didn't search for it (i.e., I sealed the first gates and then I want by closing just because the same gate kept on surging)

[therabidbanana 16]

Generally we go for the seals, but sometimes it seems worth the risk to try from the outset for the close win. With all the equipment to have multiple people in the same gate and jump out wherever, and even call in reinforcements and share the gate box between everyone, it seemed doable. Our optimism didn't pay off unfortunately, but the odds were definitely in our favor for a quick win by the 7th turn. Seems often when we do go for it we fail spectacularly after a near miss like that though, so you'd think we'd have learned our lesson.

Back to scenario 4 - Now that I understand that William should not be a werewolf that turn - the new question is how does that situation resolve - maybe we shouldn't have had it to begin with, but what should it play out like for the purposes of the scenario (in case we replay it - I think we might for fun)?

Say Mary moves first - does she do 4 points to William then move out to the street (is this move intended to do 2 more damage if it happens, or was that scenario rule intended more so werewolves hit and run doing 4 damage to people they pass)? If so, is she in French Hills streets (two movements) or Southside streets (first stalker movement stays on William)? Since they're all elusive - my understanding is that they should ignore investigators completely anyway for movement, right?

If William survives Mary's move, then he definitely is mauled to unconsciousness by the second cultist werewolf I imagine.

[Avi_dreader 64]

Generally we go for the seals, but sometimes it seems worth the risk to try from the outset for the close win. With all the equipment to have multiple people in the same gate and jump out wherever, and even call in reinforcements and share the gate box between everyone, it seemed doable. Our optimism didn't pay off unfortunately, but the odds were definitely in our favor for a quick win by the 7th turn. Seems often when we do go for it we fail spectacularly after a near miss like that though, so you'd think we'd have learned our lesson.

Back to scenario 4 - Now that I understand that William should not be a werewolf that turn - the new question is how does that situation resolve - maybe we shouldn't have had it to begin with, but what should it play out like for the purposes of the scenario (in case we replay it - I think we might for fun)?

Say Mary moves first - does she do 4 points to William then move out to the street (is this move intended to do 2 more damage if it happens, or was that scenario rule intended more so werewolves hit and run doing 4 damage to people they pass)? If so, is she in French Hills streets (two movements) or Southside streets (first stalker movement stays on William)? Since they're all elusive - my understanding is that they should ignore investigators completely anyway for movement, right?

If William survives Mary's move, then he definitely is mauled to unconsciousness by the second cultist werewolf I imagine.

IIRC, she'd knock William out if you chose to use him as an investigator.  I vaguely remember thinking that using Yorrick in that scenario would be a very bad idea.

It's been a long time since I've looked at the components, just read it carefully and the answer should be there between the herald and the scenario instructions.

Edited April 25, 2015 by Avi_dreader