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I was feeling in the Christmas spirit when a user on BoardGameGeek lamented that he might not see all the locations when playing solo or in a small group. So I custom-wrote a scenario just for him, and other solo players who want to make sure they see every location. If you play every scenario in sets 1-3 and this one, you'll be able to visit every location we've released so far.
The Cult of the Dragon
Villain: Black Fang
Henchmen: Skinsaw Cultists
Locations:
1. Apothecary
1. Deeper Dungeons
1. Junk Beach
1. Nettlemaze
1. Prison
1. Sandpoint Cathedral
1. The Old Light
1. The Rusty Dragon
You may only play this scenario with one character.
Build all 8 location decks without henchmen or the villain, then put five random cards from each deck facedown next to this scenario and deal the henchmen and villain into the locations as normal.
Increase the difficulty of checks to defeat Black Fang by the number of closed locations.
Reward: Draw a random non-Basic blessing from the box.
If you'd like to try that out, go right ahead. Let me know what you think!
Mike
I for one will be trying this out. Not only will it let me see a few locations I haven't seen yet, but I love the scenarios in RotR that change up the basic mechanics of a scenario.
Thanks, Mike! A couple questions. When, in the order of the sets, should this be played? After set 3? Also, I'm planning on putting this on a scenario card, for my personal use. Do you mind if I add it as a download on BGG, for others to use, or would you prefer I not?
Mike, is the Adventure number for this path, 0 or 3 (or something else... maybe e?)?
The adventure number is 3. It doesn't fit into the sequence, so play it whenever you like.
There are a couple of laid out versions in the BGG thread.
Ok. So here are my results.
I was Harsk with 2 skill feats in dexterity and 1 in wisdom. Power feat to make hand size 6. (Other feats didn't come into play, but were power feat to examine bottom card, card feat for blessing, card feat for ally.)
Harsk finally vanquished Black Fang with 2 turns remaining, and 3 cards left in his deck.
The Prison and The Rusty Dragon were not kind to Harsk's poor Charisma. Fortunately he found a Potion of Glibness along the way and used it to close the Rusty Dragon. Had to close the Prison be getting Black Fang to flee there.
He encountered Black Fang 3 times total, starting after 6 locations were close.
The last battle was fairly fortunate. Harsk had a Blessing of Sarenrae to help with the "Before the Enouncter" constitution check (not that he would totally need it, but I had two blessing in hand as you will see). Then for the combat he revealed Deathbane Light Crossbow + 1, discarded a Dagger + 1 he'd found on the way, recharged an Archer Ally, banished a Blast Stone he'd picked up, and the blessing discard pile had a Blessing of Lamashtu on the top, so he buried his Blessing of the Gods to treat it as the top of the discard pile. Plus his 2 skill feats in dexterity, plus his ranged + 3.
So the final dice assembly was 4d8 + 3d4 + 6. Of course Black Fang was a 21 combat check at this point, but he was no problem for Harsk.
Very fun.
Tried it out with Lini (+3 Wisdom, +2 Animal help, 4 animals, Cure x2/Augury/Inflict/Holy Light/Aid, Staff of Minor Healing/Medallion) and the cards for AP2. This was really easy to do in time:
* 8 cards in the deck have extra explores (4 rechargeable) plus I found
an ally
* I was constantly curing to move my good recharged cards back into my deck and blessings out of the discard pile
* Augury is really powerful when there are 5 cards in a deck (also found a Spyglass)
* I knew Black Fang was on top of Sandpoint Cathedral for half the game
* I found a potion that would protect me against Black Fang's acid attack as a backup to my medallion (but neither were required)
I did at one point have a horrible roll that left me with a Cure in the discard pile (along with Holy Light) and one on the bottom of the deck. I buried my Toad in a hole to play it safe.
I probably should have fought Black Fang more times to try to get good blessings. I did manage to close a location with Blessing of Zorangel left in it :(
There are a couple of laid out versions in the BGG thread.
Thanks for the new scenario Mike! It was fun to play through and mostly I was impressed that you took the time to create a custom scenario for us! Keep up the great work!
You're welcome!
I don't know how I missed the original post back in December, but I just today printed the cards that Matthew Scott posted on BGG. Can't wait to get home and run this scenario. Thank you Mike!
I've been wondering if this could be playable with a larger group, simply by changing the number of cards in each location to (4 + number of players). Any thoughts on that?
There is only 1 way to find out! Lets try it and see. I'll see if I can give it a shot in the next few days. Anyone else up for some "semi-play testing"?
You wouldn't need a 10th card, because locations have 9 cards + a henchman or villain, which always makes 10. In this scenario, originally you are removing 5 non-henchman/villain cards, leaving you with 4 non-henchman/villain cards + 1 henchman/villain, or 5 cards total.
You build the locations with the 9 cards listed on the location. For 1 character, you remove 5 of them, leaving you with 4. Then each location gets a henchman or villain. So now they are up to 5.
For each additional character you take 1 less card out of each location. So for 2 character you remove 4 cards and leave 5, for 3 characters you remove 3 cards and leave 6, for 4 characters you remove 2 cards and leave 7, for 5 characters you remove 1 card and leave 8, and for 6 characters you remove 0 cards and leave 9. Then you add in the henchmen and villain.
I think Mike's "4 + number of players" was meant to be taken as that is how many cards are in the location when you start playing the scenarios, not as how many cards to use in the locations before adding the henchmen/villain.
Do you think it is unbalanced as in "too hard" to complete with only 30 blessings?
But isn't the mechanic with 6 characters essentially the same as "Them Ogres Ain't Right"? Its just that henchman increase Mammy Graul while closed locations increase Black Fang, but the end result is essentially the same. And this doesn't have Black Fang being undefeated the first time you would defeat him. It would be possible to close 2 locations, face him and end the game.
The one player version was great because Black Fang was going to be a +7 the last time you fought him (even if it was also the first time you fought him). And every time before the last time he kept eating your blessing deck.
I think to keep the flavor of this, you actually keep the location decks the same size and add additional locations for each character. So locations = 7 + characters. At 6 characters that would be 13 locations. That would be crazy awesome to try. If you encountered him in the first location and no one temporarily closed any other location, you just lost almost half the blessing deck. You would definitely have to spread out. And the first time he did escape, you'd have to close all the locations you knew he couldn't be in so that he couldn't steal anymore turns from you. That would be epic.
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But isn't the mechanic with 6 characters essentially the same as "Them Ogres Ain't Right"? Its just that henchman increase Mammy Graul while closed locations increase Black Fang, but the end result is essentially the same. And this doesn't have Black Fang being undefeated the first time you would defeat him. It would be possible to close 2 locations, face him and end the game.
The one player version was great because Black Fang was going to be a +7 the last time you fought him (even if it was also the first time you fought him). And every time before the last time he kept eating your blessing deck.
I think to keep the flavor of this, you actually keep the location decks the same size and add additional locations for each character. So locations = 7 + characters. At 6 characters that would be 13 locations. That would be crazy awesome to try. If you encountered him in the first location and no one temporarily closed any other location, you just lost almost half the blessing deck. You would definitely have to spread out. And the first time he did escape, you'd have to close all the locations you knew he couldn't be in so that he couldn't steal anymore turns from you. That would be epic.
Just to be sure, you remember that if you defeat the villain, the extra blessings come from the box and not the blessing deck, right?
Regardless, I agree that part of the fun of the scenario is that you can't temporarily close locations (Or at least, not enough to matter). I think a Battle at the Dam-like power like "Locations can't be temporarily closed" with the deck scaling Mike suggested might be a good way to capture the feeling of the single player scenario. It might be too hard with a large party, though.
Oh right. Its been a long night for me too. Obviously if you didn't defeat him would eat half your deck. Otherwise he's actually giving you blessing galore, which would help with the large party because they would equate to additional explorations which would save you turns on the blessing deck.
'Sokay. I should have been clearer. Strike the first sentence of the powers and replace the second with:
Build all 8 location decks without henchmen or the villain. Put a number of random cards from each deck equal to 6 minus the number of characters facedown next to this scenario, and deal the henchmen and villain into the locations as normal.
Hey Mike. I think the flavor of this scenario is the ratio of locations to characters. It will still be different enough with a smaller group, but as you get closer to 6 characters this sort of just becomes Them Ogres Ain't Right (some slight differences).
I'd like to try this out by adding additional locations, 1 for each additional character. If I were to do this for experimental purposes with a group of 3 or 4 characters, would you suggest any particular unofficial additional locations for me to try?
Or alternatively I suppose you could rule that locations could not be temporarily closed, though that might be really hard with a large party.
I'm not trying to mess with your scenario. I enjoyed it very much with 1 character. Just mostly thinking out loud. If you don't want to change it, I'm fine with that too. It is your creation after all.
Thanks.
Oh, I was just noodling on it. If it loses its specialness as it tries to become more versatile, then that shouldn't happen.
Alternate between adding a card to each location and adding a location for each character added?
or you could alter it so that black fang is consider to have closed x-1 locations automatically, where x is the number of players. Would make his harder automatically, but then you wouldn't have to deal with altering the (new and already altered) deck size of the scenario. Also, if you're feeling particularly mean, you could use the river serpent thing from "here comes the flood" (if memory serves he's called black maggia) or him. (you would probably want to be lower level, however, as he is a henchmen and not a villain).