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The Gathering: Part 2
Right, this house isn't going to investigate itself.
Round 3
Another doom, and more encounter cards. Starting with Wendy, we've got...
Hoo boy. This might be the most notorious card in the game, and with good reason. Adding a doom effectively means we've lost an entire round of play. That doom token also brings us to 3, enough to advance the agenda.
When the agenda is advanced, we first remove all doom from play. This includes all the tokens on the agenda card, but if any player cards or monsters had doom tokens on them, we'd remove those as well. Next, we'll flip over the top card and see what's on the back:
As we can see, the agenda deck doesn't play nice. Neither cost is particularly high, but Wendy's already taken 2 horror from her weakness and we've still got a ways to go. Let's have each player discard a random card instead.
With the first agenda done, we move on to the second agenda card:
7 doom is a much higher threshold; hopefully we'll have things wrapped up before we reach that point. There are three agenda cards in this scenario, and we can be sure the last one won't be pretty.
Finally, Roland hasn't drawn his encounter card yet, so we've gotta take care of that.
Not great - Roland's Willpower stat is only 3, and he doesn't have any cards to commit to this test. Can only hope for a good chaos token here.
Not perfect, but we'll take it. Roland fails the test, but only by one, so he takes 1 horror.
Right, let's get to investigating. We still need to collect at least four more clues to advance the act, so we'll have Roland go first and see if he can clean up the Cellar.
quote:
> Roland spends one supply to activate Flashlight and investigate.
We don't have any cards with Intellect skill icons to commit to this test, so we're going in just 1 ahead. Still, this is Easy difficulty, so not many tokens will cause us to fail-
Spoke too soon. I was wondering when this would show up! Meet the bane of every Arkham player's existence, the dreaded auto-fail. No matter how well-prepared you are, how high your skill, how many cards you commit, there's always a chance you draw this token. As the name says, you pull this token, you fail the skill test, period. And if your final skill matters, like with those Rotting Remains, it's treated as a zero.
Failing this test wouldn't be a big deal since we're only investigating, but it did cost us one of our Flashlight uses, so now we won't have enough to clear out the Cellar. We'll have to worry about that later, Roland's got two more actions.
quote:
> Roland spends one supply to activate Flashlight and investigate. Chaos token is a 0. Success!
One clue down, one to go. The Flashlight is out of juice, so let's replace it with something else. Even though Roland's hands are full, you can still play an asset with a hand slot - just choose something to discard first.
quote:
> Roland plays Machete, discarding Flashlight from play.
The Machete is another weapon, and unlike our gun, it doesn't have any ammo, so we're free to whack away with this thing as much as we like. (I should note that we're playing using the most recent Taboo list - for a while this card was modified to cost XP, but that's no longer the case as of the current revision).
Over to Wendy, who could come down and try to pick up that last clue, but her time is probably better spent checking out the other location we haven't visited yet.
quote:
>> Wendy moves to the Attic.
Another bit of horror, but Wendy's doing all right still. Thankfully this room is much easier to investigate, with a measly shroud of 1. However, thanks to Frozen in Fear Wendy had to spend two actions getting here, leaving her just one to investigate with.
quote:
> Wendy investigates.
Another special token! Let's have another look at the scenario reference card to see what it means.
No Ghouls here means this is a -0 token, so Wendy succeeds and picks up a clue. Now, let's take another shot at that treachery card.
Not again! Well, Wendy could use her special ability, discarding a card to re-draw a token. However, her next turn will probably just be investigating to get those three clues, so we don't need to worry about that just yet. We'll take the card from Rabbit's Foot and end the turn.
With the round over, we take our upkeep.
Round 4
One doom gets added, and Wendy draws...
Our first enemy! And it's a doozy. Let's cover what it does, from top to bottom.
At the top of the card are three triangles. The left is its Combat stat, the right is its Agility stat, and in the middle is its health. This thing is a tank - it's hard to hit and harder to kill, but pretty easy to get away from. We're also told that it spawns in the Attic. Normally, when an enemy is drawn, it will immediately engage with the investigator who drew it. In the case of the Flesh-Eater, however, it shows up in a specific location - the Attic, in this case. If Wendy had still been in the Hallway, we would have just put the monster up there and she'd have been fine. In this case, however, she happens to be in that location already, so it'll engage with her now.
This monster also has "Victory 1" - we've seen this on locations, and now it's showing up on monsters. If we can manage to take this thing down, it'll be worth an extra Victory point at the end of the scenario.
The last thing to point out are the damage and horror icons. These mean that whenever this monster attacks, it deals one damage and two horror to whichever investigator it's engaged with. Thankfully it won't attack until the Enemy Phase, so we have a bit of time to deal with it before then. However, Wendy's going to have to do something about it right away, or else she's going to be in real trouble.
Here's the player reference card, which lists all the actions an investigator can take. We've covered most of these already, though we haven't discussed fighting or evading yet. What's more important is what it says at the bottom: if Wendy takes any actions other than fighting or evading (or parley/resign, which aren't available right now), the monster will immediately attack her. Ignoring this thing is not an option.
Well Wendy's card was big and scary; let's check out Roland's:
Markedly less so! Swarm of Rats is another enemy, but this one's a joke; with just 1 Combat and 1 health, a stiff breeze can take this thing out. The "Hunter" keyword means that it would come after us if left on its own, but we have no interest in leaving this alive.
Let's have Roland go first; he'll need to take out these Rats and make his way up to help Wendy.
quote:
> Roland activates Machete.
First, let's kill this enemy. We could frankly just punch this to death, but let's show off our weapon. The Machete has an activated ability, which would normally give the Rats an attack of opportunity. However, this ability causes Roland to take a Fight action, so he gets by. A basic fight action is a test of the investigator's Combat stat against the enemy's, but weapons like the Machete will let the investigator take an improved action.
Our base Fight is a 4, and Machete improves that to a 5. Out of the chaos bag comes...
a Skull, which here is a -0. A successful Fight action deals 1 damage to the enemy, and this is where the other part of the Machete's ability kicks in. Since the Rats are the only enemy Roland is engaged with, they take an extra point of damage. Overkill in this case, but most monsters are beefier than that.
Furthermore, since Roland just defeated an enemy, his special ability kicks in, letting him grab that last clue from the Cellar for free! That precious VP is all ours.
Roland's last two actions are spent moving to the Attic. He takes a horror by moving in, but we want to kill that Flesh-Eater and he's well-equipped to do it.
Now to Wendy. She'd love to evade the ghoul and start looking for clues. However, Frozen in Fear means she'd have to spend two actions just to evade it, taking up nearly her entire turn. Thankfully, she's got just the partner for the job.
Her cat jumps in, letting her automatically evade the monster. It's a free ability, and since it doesn't involve taking an action or doing a skill test, Frozen in Fear doesn't apply here. When an enemy is evaded, it disengages from the investigator and exhausts, moving from the investigator's threat area back to the location.
This thing won't be bothering us for a little while. And that's not all - Wendy also played Pickpocketing earlier, which lets her draw a card after she evades an enemy. Well, she just evaded, so hello free card!
And goodbye resources. Paranoia is Wendy's randomly-picked basic weakness, and as weaknesses go it's not too bad. Losing all your resources can be scary, but as long as you know it's a possibility you can play around it. Here, we only lost two, so it didn't hit very hard. That's also the last weakness in her deck, so we're free to draw cards with abandon, at least until we run out and need to reshuffle.
Now that Wendy's freed up, we could pick up a few clues, but let's pick on that ghoul first.
quote:
> Wendy plays Emergency Cache and gains 3 resources.
> Wendy plays Sneak Attack.
Wendy is awful at fighting, but fantastic at sneaking, so this just makes sense. Rather than doing a skill test, we just deal an easy 2 damage to the ghoul that we exhausted earlier. Not enough to kill it, but now Roland should have an easier job of that next round.
With one action remaining, let's go for a clue.
quote:
> Wendy investigates. Chaos token is a 0. Success!
And once again we test Frozen in Fear.
Another special token, the Cultist this time. Looking back at the reference card, we see that this is a -1, with a penalty of taking a horror if we fail. Thankfully, Wendy's Willpower is 4, so with the -1 we succeed at the skill test and finally ditch this card.
In the Enemy Phase, the Flesh-Eater would normally attack, but since it's still exhausted it doesn't get to do anything.
Finally in Upkeep, in addition to readying all exhausted player cards, we also ready all the monsters. Now that the Flesh-Eater is ready, it will immediately re-engage with one of the investigators, and since there are two in the room, we get to choose who it will engage. Let's have it go for Roland, who can hopefully take it down and get out of there next round.
Round 5
Doom's at 2/7, and we have another round of treacheries. Wendy draws...
Another new card. Dissonant Voices doesn't involve any tests - for this round Wendy can't play asset or event cards, and it wears off by itself at the end the round. Pretty glad we didn't have that one last round, or we couldn't have done that Sneak Attack!
Roland's card we've seen before. Neither player has any cards with Agility icons to contribute to this test, so we're going in down by one. Luckily the chaos token is a 0, so we only take 1 damage.
We'll have Roland take his turn first, so he can kill this ghoul and get back to the Hallway.
quote:
> Roland activates Machete. Fights Flesh-Eater. Wendy commits Leather Coat.
When taking a skill test, you're not limited to just the active player being the one to commit cards. Each other investigator at the same location may commit up to one card to a skill test, if they want. Here, Wendy has a Leather Coat that she's discarding.
As an asset it's not bad, costing nothing to play and letting Wendy place up to two of the damage that she takes onto the coat, protecting her from harm. However, she's still at 7 health so we're not really worried about her being defeated, and she can't play the asset this round anyway. Instead, she commits it to Roland's test for the Combat icon, bringing his total skill up to 6 against the Flesh-Eater's 4.
And he draws a +1! The Flesh-Eater is defeated, and rather than discard it, we add it to the Victory Display (basically, it's set off to the side so we remember to add it to our victory point total at the end of the scenario). Also, since we defeated an enemy, we gather one of the two remaining clues for free!
Now, Roland could try to pick up that last remaining clue. However, since Wendy can't play cards this round, let's let her grab it, and instead we'll get ready to advance the act.
quote:
> Roland moves to the Hallway.
> Roland plays Beat Cop.
Another ally, and this one's a good'n. For starters, he gives Roland a passive +1 boost to his Combat, making him even better at fighting. He also has two health and sanity, so he can take a hit or two in Roland's place. In a pinch, we can also toss the Beat Cop to deal an automatic 1 damage to anything at our location, without costing us an action. Well worth the price of admission.
Wendy's going to grab that clue and join up with Roland.
quote:
> Wendy investigates. Chaos token is a skull. Success!
> Wendy moves to the Hallway.
> Wendy draws a card.
Moving on to Upkeep, each player draws a card and gains a resource. Dissonant Voices goes away, and now we have a choice - we can spend six of our clues and advance the act, or we can wait and try to draw some more cards and play some more assets. In some situations you're racing against the clock and need to push as hard as you can go. Here, we're well ahead of target and could easily stall for a round or two. That said, let's not push our luck - we're decently equipped, and every round spent is a chance for treacheries to whittle down our health and sanity. We'll spend the clues and advance now.
quote:
Investigators spend 6 clues. Advance to Act 2b!
Uh...
...No take-backs?