Our Pathfinder Society playgroup just finished up Adventure #2, "Secrets Below the Sands" for Season 3, "Seasons of Plundered Tombs".
Like the regular Mummy's Mask box adventures, and the first adventure of the Pathfinder Society Season #3, all these scenarios were both dripping in theme and had a lot of variety.
3-2A: "Raid on the Warehouse" - This was my first foray with the Defensive Stance card and the Seige deck and it really took us awhile to figure out how to play it well and get our party through to the end. The fact that you can't/don't collect any boons during play to help you out really makes it tricky. It was very tense and came down to the final card of the Blessings deck. A great start to the second Adventure.
3-2B: "Desert's Fury" - One less location than usual, but all characters start buried in location decks, unable to move or engage banes until they are "found". I suppose this could have been difficult if everyone had been buried deep, but one person got out early and then was able to go help find everyone else, so this scenario did not turn out to be very challenging unlike the first one. But it still get an "A" for theme of being lost in a sandstorm.
3-2C: "Elemental Excavation" - Another thematic adventure where every monster that wasn't Elemental or Electrical was an Undead monster immune to poison. Not great news for our Olenjak player! This one worked much better thematically than the previous scenario and was interesting how we could use the few Electrical/Elemental monsters that turned up to our advantage.
3-2D: "Into the Sky Pyramid" - The most typical PACG "Find and trap the Villain" scenario of the five, you couldn't beat monsters by too much or you would lose boons from locations. The villain and henchmen were pretty tough so this was an OK scenario. I DO love the fact that where you used to have 4 of 5 "Find Villain" scenarios with one "odd" one in each Adventure, nowadays, there is so much more variety that you almost WELCOME a standard PACG mission type! :)
3-2E: "Maybe You Saw This Coming" - Not quite as tough as the first adventure, thematically and playing it, this was my favorite scenario of the bunch because of how it plays. Everyone starts in the same location and moves from one to the next (Like "Chains of Silver" in Adventure Deck 2 in the main Mummy's Mask game). In this case though, the locations are crumbling out from under you as you try to escape the collapsing temple before you get crushed.
It reminded me of all those old movies like Raiders of the Lost Ark or the Brendan Fraser Mummy movies, so it was a blast to play. Another very well-paced scenario as well, as this one also came down to the final card draws of the Blessings deck with nerves on edge.
OVERALL: The first and fifth scenarios of this Adventure are the best and probably the two most fun Pathfinder Society missions I've played, but I think Adventure 1 was a little more consistent in challenge than Adventure 2 was. BOTH get full marks for how well they are integrating thematic content with game play.
Dave
(based on 1 rating)
