*Spoilers* Brutalized by the Essex County Express *Spoilers*

[StormyWaters 124]

So my 3 person group ran Essex County Express last night and got horribly trounced.  One player managed to draw the squid face token 5 times requiring him to discard like crazy.  I hung around too long and we got 2 events which added doom in the Mythos phase, meaning the car behind me and the car poor Daisy was on were sucked into the void.  Jenny and Ashcan tried their best to soldier on but the second to last car had 9 clues on it so shortly after that they were also pulverized.  This left us losing the 3 story assets we had earned and a fresh weakness all around.  Yikes!

[MrCee 22]

And the fun is just beginning.

[Starbreaker1 75]

Essex is IMO by far the most difficult scenario yet.  Especially in 4 players if you don't draw good train cars it is very difficult.  My 4 player group only the clue gatherer got thru it, and then only because myself and another went first in the current car to get the last of the clues so Daisy could move on.  Even as difficult as it is, still it is one of my favorite scenarios.

[Meretrix 98]

My first encounter card I spawned a monstrosity in the train car ahead of me. "I will stay here and get prepared. I have time, what could go wrong??  Shortest scenario yet.

[platonicked 0]

Ah but did you steal luggage...

[mwmcintyre 271]

14 hours ago, Meretrix said:

My first encounter card I spawned a monstrosity in the train car ahead of me. "I will stay here and get prepared. I have time, what could go wrong??  Shortest scenario yet.

You said to yourself "What could go wrong?" That's what went wrong.

 

[awp832 447]

I had one game in Essex County Express where Zoey's second turn she drew Smite the Wicked (Cultist) and then shortly thereafter hit by 2 Mysterious Chanting.  Each time there was no "overkill" on the agenda, making us eat 5 doom.  Things did not end well.

Edited June 8, 2017 by awp832

[StormyWaters 124]

It's funny because I heard so many reports of this being an easy scenario.  The punishment for failure was really rough.

[awp832 447]

IMO it is a *swingy* scenario.   Success or failure depends a lot on the first couple of turns, specifically which cars you draw as your first 2-3 cars and if you are able to deal with what is inside.  

[django042 13]

I like the scenario, it's a good indicator if your deck is too slow to build up and if the player actually knows what he' doing (ok, sometimes RNG is a *****).

Depending on the encounter deck, scenarios get more difficult the more players you are. This IS one of those. Especially encounter cards that add doom are more likely to be drawn with more players.

Dynamite is pretty useful to kill cultists, without enterting their location or activation "On Enter" triggers.

[Soakman 987]

In my first play, a cultist spawned in the car behind me and my two friends and then there were two dooms added to it. I volunteered as tribute to  go back and clear the cultist as I was hitting very hard that game. Of course after I moved, the last person during mythos drew Ancient Evils and WHooooOoOOOooOOosh.... there I went.

Things went badly after that because there were just too many clues to clear with 2 people at that point as we were still close-ish to the beginning. :/ Still very fun scenario though.

Edited June 20, 2017 by Soakman

[GravyAnecdote 20]

I look forward to replaying this one. I tried it last night with solo Ashcan Pete and breezed through it in 20 minutes, taking zero damage. Therefore, based on one play with one investigator, I classed Essex County as "ridiculously simple." Then i took to the internet and discovered other people's experiences. Can't wait to try it again with different investigators and decks.

[Assussanni 528]

The Essex County Express definitely had the most climactic finish of our two-player games so far. Zoey got sucked into the sky just before making it into the engine car due to Ancient Evils and Smite the Wicked spawning a Cultist, leaving Daisy all alone. The final clue was grabbed from the engine car with the last action of the final turn; turns out that librarians are super-good at operating trains.

The other closest finishes we've had have been Midnight Masks - failing to get the sixth cultist by one turn - and The House Always Wins played as the second scenario - we just managed to get all the clues and get out with our last actions on the last turn, but we were nowhere near rescuing Peter Clover.

[C2K 246]

Completed it on hard with 4 people only losing 1 investigator to sanity damage.  The key was strong investigating and continuing to move forward.  Having rex murphy in our team kept us moving forward every turn.  

Edited June 27, 2017 by C2K

[Buhallin 4,563]

We finished it today with a couple of tense moments, but no lost investigators at all.  We knew we had to move fast, and did.

IMHO it's a scenario that can expose not only deck weakness, but team weakness.  We run Daisy, Roland, Zoey, and Jenny.  It's a very balanced team, with 3 able to reliably gather clues and everyone able to fight at least a little.  Encyclopedia was clutch - it let even Zoey investigate reliably, and gave the extra boost when we got stuck behind Arcane Barriers.  We were also perfectly willing to stick cultists in train cars that were about to get sucked into the void, and Zoey had one of those amusingly indirect Smitings.

<MINOR SPOILER>

Is there any punishment for stealing the luggage?  I couldn't find any, and it doesn't tell you to record it in your campaign log so I assume it's just meaningless text to scare you into not doing it?

[General Zodd 459]

18 minutes ago, Buhallin said:

<MINOR SPOILER>

Is there any punishment for stealing the luggage?  I couldn't find any, and it doesn't tell you to record it in your campaign log so I assume it's just meaningless text to scare you into not doing it?

None! I can only assume the owner of the luggage was already sucked into the void... I liked that there were no consequences, it mixes things up a bit more.

[Buhallin 4,563]

1 minute ago, General Zodd said:

None! I can only assume the owner of the luggage was already sucked into the void... I liked that there were no consequences, it mixes things up a bit more.

Agreed - it's definitely clever of them to make it LOOK like there will be.

[C2K 246]

The luggage thing adds some immersion to the frantic scenario, especially if you are using a rogue or survivor character.

[Matrim 533]

just finished my first playing. 2 of us forged into the carriages while our jenny decided to stay in the first carriage to gear up to deal with the damage she could see she would take in the next carriage. You all know what happened to her next. I found it hilarious myself.

 

my rex managed to get to the engine car but was so injured he was killed by cards drawn on entry.

 

that left my son who was playing Pete. He was a bit downhearted as there were 2 monster things in the car waiting for him and duke had been wiped by the card that says discard an asset (duke was his only asset). He went for it by chucking dynamite next door before moving across and evading the two. Turns then went evade, evade, get clue (interspersed with hitting weaker monsters and evading) and he got the last clue just in time.

 

I've loved the dunwich scenarios so far ...

[Duciris 1,347]

5 hours ago, Matrim said:

just finished my first playing. 2 of us forged into the carriages while our jenny decided to stay in the first carriage to gear up to deal with the damage she could see she would take in the next carriage. You all know what happened to her next. I found it hilarious myself.

 

that left my son who was playing Pete. He was a bit downhearted as there were 2 monster things in the car waiting for him and duke had been wiped by the card that says discard an asset (duke was his only asset). He went for it by chucking dynamite next door before moving across and evading the two. Turns then went evade, evade, get clue (interspersed with hitting weaker monsters and evading) and he got the last clue just in time.

Both of those events are so cool.  What got me to play Red Dead Redemption was the miscellaneous stories that my coworkers were telling each other.  They were never about the major plot points or story missions, they were about the little interactions with random NPCs and the like.  I love hearing (well, reading I guess) stories about how other investigators navigated Arkham, in addition to their successes or failures.