This scenario seemed surprisingly easy. Please tell me if I played it incorrectly.
The scenario instructions say:
After you add henchmen to the location decks, divide each deck in half to create two decks for each location card. Treat each as a separate location. When you close a location, banish both of its location decks. You win the scenario when all locations are closed.
So I have two stacks of 5 cards for each location card. When a stack of 5 is depleted, that's an empty location, and I can attempt to close it.
So to win this scenario, a party of 4 only needs to go through at most 30 cards. This eases the pressure of the blessing timer quite considerably.
I read it as you needed to do the close checks twice for each location card -- since both halves are separate locations you have e.g. 12 locations in a 4p game. Closing one location banishes the other location deck but does not actually close that location, so you need to head to the other half and succeed at the close check there too. At least, that's how I read it :)
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I read it the same as skizzerz. Nowhere does it say you close the second stack of that location, only that you banish the cards.
Obviously banishing half the cards still makes it easier, but you also have twice as many locations to close. Any requirements that were hard to meet? Now you do that twice.
Really? Tanis, is this correct? I banish the cards, but now I have an empty spot on the table I have to remember is a location that isn't closed yet? (I suppose I could turn the location card sideways to indicate one of two locations is closed.)
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elcoderdude, in my opinion you are correct. The instructions say to banish both location decks when you close the location. You get to close the location when you either empty a location of all of its cards, where either deck counts as a separate location attached to the location card, or find and defeat the henchman.
I understand the confusion as they should define main vs. side locations.
Also, how do you determine where you go for Gozreh's Flow's random location drop? Do closed locations count as two locations for Gozreh's Flow?
I also thought it was easy, and would have thought so even if I had to close each location twice.
I'm okay with this, since we needed to replenish some 4s anyway.
Yes, closed locations would still be locations for Gozreh's flow, closing it doesn't suddenly change its location-ness. So you could move to either half of a location card (you could even move to the other half of Gozreh's flow). For our 6p game we just rolled a d6 and a d8, on an even number for the d6 we'd take the d8 as-is and for an odd number we'd take the d8+8 to get a number from 1-16, rerolling if necessary if we hit the location we were at.
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elcoderdude, in my opinion you are correct. The instructions say to banish both location decks when you close the location. You get to close the location when you either empty a location of all of its cards, where either deck counts as a separate location attached to the location card, or find and defeat the henchman.
I understand the confusion as they should define main vs. side locations.
A location doesn't auto close because it's empty. You still have to go to that location and, after your explore step, attempt once per turn to make the closing requirement until you pass. The cards are banished, but it specifically says each stack is its own location, meaning each one needs to be closed.
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Our tables just ran this scenario last night. We went with the consensus here, but it didn't feel satisfying.
I suspect we weren't supposed to banish the other half-location's cards when we emptied the first one. We managed to complete the scenario without encountering a henchman even once.
After you add henchmen to the location decks, divide each deck in half to create two decks for each location card. Treat each as a separate location. When you close a location, banish both of its location decks. You win the scenario when all locations are closed.
You are supposed to banish the other half's location cards. It does say that specifically. When we played this, we went under the assumption when one half was closed, it closed both halves. And it did seem easy that way. And we did have 5 players/14 locations. It was a mess.
So did we ever get an answer whether when you close one half, both halves close the location? Or do we have to close all the locations whether there are cards or not?
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Out of curiosity, because I haven't seen it in a post here and definitely don't see it in the scenario text -- what is even giving people the idea in the first place that the second half closes? The scenario explicitly says they are treated as separate locations, and we all know that just because a location is empty doesn't mean it auto closes. Where is anyone even interpreting that a location is suddenly autoclosing?
I think that it is probably that people sort of feel that location is used in two ways, in one instance referring to the deck, and in another referring to one of the places you can go in the game. But on closer reading it is not.
After you add henchmen to the location decks, divide each deck in half to create two decks for each location card. Treat each as a separate location. When you close a location, banish both of its location decks. You win the scenario when all locations are closed.
"When you close a location, banish both of its location decks." That is the confusion inducing part. You are told at one point to treat them as separate locations, but that sentence then sort of treats them as the same location. (i.e. If they were treated as separate locations, then no location would really have two location decks.) Something like "When you close a location, banish the location deck at that location and the second copy of the same location" would probably have been clearer.
So you have locations and location-decks. After you do the normal build, you split the location-decks. And when you close a location you banish the location-deck at that location and banish the location-deck at the other instance of the same location, but only the location you actually closed is closed. The other instance is now an open location with an empty location-deck.
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And even though it doesn't say that the second location is closed, we (implicitly) thought "why banish the cards if the second location isn't closed with the first". And we treated it that way.
I understand that maybe the design is to do the close checks twice, and banishing both sets of cards is helping the timer, but a little "official " guidance wouldn't be bad here.
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I agree that as written right now, either defeating a henchman or emptying one of the half-stacks gives you a chance to close the location, and if successful, empties the other "clone" location. But it is still open and needs to be closed to win.
However, this method feels clunky in play and ultimately leads to a fairly unexciting scenario. We never faced a henchman once due to just luckily picking the stack without one, and then having to spend your following turn to go to the newly-emptied neighboring location to close it felt bland.
I like the concept that was being sought out, but until clarification comes out on the proper way to handle it, it feels like a very drab endingto an otherwise intense string of scenarios.
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Our group just played this Saturday, also having 5 players/14 sub-locations, and we closed all 14 individually. We fought several Henchmen, but it was still relatively easy compared to the other level 4 scenarios. However - for us this was a good thing! It took us 2 tries when we played 4A to succeed. The same for 4C and the success was accomplished on our very last turn. It was nice to have something lighter & less stressful after that! :)
My group will be hitting this scenario next week and was thinking this sounded to easy as well. Has there ever been an official ruling how we should handle this?
Skizzerz just ran an online session of this scenario which I participated in. He said we had to close both location halves separately - and I did not recall that this was never officially answered (despite having started the thread - I'm getting old.) This plays well IMO.
I strongly recommend playing it skizzerz's way. He and Andrew have the better argument here in any case - the instructions say banish the cards from the other half when the first half closes, but do not explicitly say that the other half closes.
My guess is that the point of banishing both halves is to make the time manageable. Closing both locations at once is too easy, but simply closing one location and not affecting the other half at all could be too much of a time challenge. (I do recommend turning the location card sideways when it represents a single, empty, unclosed location.)