[ACG][OutPost I]Hawkmoon269's Season of Plundered Tombs Table 3 (Inactive)

Game Master Hawkmoon269

Should we know what the top three cards at the Caravanesi are?

They are known from the Shrieking Plant Estra dealt with.

God's sakes...

So, I spent about 45 minutes writing my post, making my rolls, writing my flavour, even copying it all to clipboard... and my power went out for well over an hour. So I've lost it all.

Also, I know my rolls, but I'll just re-do my turn as best I can without letting that bother me. Since my rolls SHOULD be saved, from what I know of this forum system, you're going to see me get a bit upset. Bleah.

I've got my turn written (and backed up), sorry again for the delay. I had another power outage.

I'm just writing my flavor now, but I request a blessing. I need to pass a difficulty 7 Charisma check to close this location, and I'm rolling a 1d10.

Posted, thanks Gronk! Couldn't have done it without you. Sorry for the delay on everything, but the turn went well (despite another 4 "2" rolls and a "1" roll on 9d10s).

Please remember to discard your blessings as needed, and keep the location power I've opened up in mind or closing it first would have been a waste. :P

Yay! (Although, clearly I shouldn't post too early in the morning either.)

Yewstance:
Sorry, I'm going to hold on the Codex and Black Spot, since they're both rechargeable. Plus I want to hold on to the Codex in case I need it to banish at the Caravanserai, since I wouldn't want to lose the Item 1 I hope to acquire next turn!

Not a problem at all with holding onto your cards. They're yours anyway, and I'd just be burying them for an explore in most cases!

Gronk; If you're remaining at the Oasis to explore again, don't be afraid to ask the team for blessing assistance on tough banes (or boons you really want). The current blessing adds 2 dice to noncombat Wisdom (which also means Divine and Survival for you) checks, so that also might be worth considering.

Being a bit conservative here, hanging onto Blessing for moment, heading to work, will have game tonight after work so no guarantees on posting.

Sorry team. I didn't look at the top blessing until later in my turn, after I had already rolled that first check. And so I didn't realize I could have revealed my Blessing of the Gods to copy Blessing of Wadjet for a "free" 1d4 until too late. Which cost us an Item 1. :(
I guess I need to check more carefully before I roll no matter what time of day.

Kinda disappointed by missing the staff, but I'm sure there'll be other boons to grab and trade at end-of-scenario. Blessing of Wadjet aside, bad luck on your roll there, though!

Still, I'm a little nervous. We've just passed the 1/4 mark of our blessings deck/timer, and we've closed one location and failed to close the Warehouse. There's no villain or temp-closing here, and still the Alchemical laboratory to go, so hypothetically up to 47 explorations left to make (or at minimum 14 left, if Aspis Analysis is on top of every deck it could be).

You can retcon that. The 1d4 would have at least given you a 1, which would have been enough. It would have cost you nothing to do it (just revealing a card). So, let's just say you picked it up.

I'm a little mixed on that. It seems like a misplay (as opposed to simply misreading a card), much like skipping an optional location power or scenario rule. In a face-to-face game, I'd have been reluctant to let someone take that back.

But on the other hand, I doubt it would have occurred in a face-to-face game, where convention dictates that the current player should flip over the blessings pile (and thus immediately read the blessing on top). Combined with a very poor roll to begin with, and the fact that we're a bit behind on this scenario due to the lack of villain, I'm happy for EmpTyger to pick it up in place of the last card he drew on resetting his hand (easy enough, just delete it from the Hand column).

As an aside, I'm apparently blind, and didn't notice that we don't actually have an extra location like I assumed; it's just a 5 starting location scenario + Alchemical Laboratory, which is far more reasonable for a 1-2 scenario. That gives me a lot more confidence.

I think, as a group, we should be more and more conscious of our turns and misplays moving forward, though. We've all (except Eclipse) made mistakes and we've barely started the scenario, and we shouldn't be getting bailed out like this. :P

Yeah, it has a lot to do with the format. It is much easier to miss what blessing is on top because you aren't flipping it yourself, I am. And here, it can get lost in the text. And at a face to face table someone surely would have pointed out the "free" d4 you could add because everyone wants good deck upgrades.

Note that the Caravanserai only has henchmen and boons remaining. I
I'm thinking that Qualzar, who is armored up and has an attack spell in hand, might head to the Warehouse or Oasis on his next turn?

Hawkmoon:
Thanks so much for taking pity! :) Just as it took some getting use to going from physical to iPhone play, learning PbP has its own things to get used to.

Yewstance:
I'm not worrying quite just yet. Assuming an average of 2 explorations/turn, that's 44 explorations, which is almost your worst-case scenario. Granted, my experiences with the dice roller haven't triggered as much pessimism as yours have. :)

Well, its an easy one to adjust. If you'd noticed the Blessing of Wadjet there is no reason you wouldn't have been revealing your Blessing of the Gods for every boon you encountered.

I'm pessimistic to begin with. It makes me decent at games like this (often) because I'm risk-averse and analytical enough to see them in advance.

But you're right, the odds aren't that bad (though the fewest turns we end with 1 or 0 explorations - both of which we've done already, if you count failing to defeat your first bane and ending your turn - the better). Anyway, the Caravanserai being largely toothless seems a good opportunity for people to dump unneeded weapons at the Warehouse first if they're moving off it in the following turn.

I appreciate the courtesy from our GM.

This is only my third game of it, after all, and I'm still not comfortable with things and have been needing coaching along the way.

...and no, it's not one of those things that just 'happens'.

Idk, I feel like I have had to have made a mistake by now. I know I have for sure with Nyctessa in my other game...lol.

My bane on Skizza is remembering my jam checks on firearms.

Edit: I have the Matchlock Hackbut and the Wheellock Pistol now meaning I can help at combat anywhere. 1d4 at my location and 1d6 at another.

I'll be taking my turn in the next two hours or so. I plan to move to the Warehouse and help Skizza clear it out with a few aggressive explorations. I won't be able to dig to the bottom (as far as I know), but if somehow dig through all 5 cards (seems impossible, but whatever) then I can actually close the location with ease off the back of Honaire.

I doubt you have much use of that spell, or that Crowbar, in your hand, Skizza. I'll happily take one or the other off your hands at the start of your next turn. Either way, I'll most likely just end up burying them for my "bonus exploration" power, so you don't even necessarily need to pass me the spell (though that would give me a bit more versatility during my turns).

EDIT: Oh, and before I take my turn, Skizza, don't forget you can use the Warehouses end-of-turn effect if you'd like. By recharging one or more of your weapons or the Crowbar, you may redraw allies or blessings that allow us to explore faster, if you're so inclined. A better deal than the optional end-of-turn discard, at least.

Oh crap. I always forget about that. Yeah, I will do that and give you the spell at the beginning of the next turn.

I have my turn completed, but because Skizza's decision to recharge cards or not may be impacted by information from my turn, I'll refrain from posting for now in case Skizza wants to use the Warehouse effect as we just discussed.

It would have happened before your reset/redraw, but that doesn't matter as long as you don't try to recharge anything that you only drew at the end of your turn (which wouldn't be a legal target). If you're going to pass on the Warehouse's effect, let me know and I'll post my turn.

Sorry about that. It is posted. A meh trade but more of a reason to I don't mind using up my weapons to help ensure no combats have us discarding cards.

My turn's posted. By the way, Skizza, I don't know the text of Alchemical Cartridges, but if I recall it correctly it might be worth just Displaying it as soon as you can every time you draw it.

I don't think it ever has to leave your Displayed section unless you use some other ammunition cards (which you don't have) or you use it for its ability. In fact, I'm not certain you can use it for its ability when you need to unless you've Displayed it in advance. So Displaying it as soon as you draw it means you've emptied a card slot in your hand to draw something better, and have it on-tap for when you need it.

...Unless I'm misremembering the text, of course! (oh, and Skizza needs to make a roll to avoid fire damage. Sorry.)

Otherwise:

Wei Ji:
I've noticed that your Deck Handler for Gronk still has the power feat checked, and not your skill feat (attribute), so you may want to fix that.

Everyone:
Feel free to use my blessings whenever you see fit. No need to wait for me, but obviously try to save my Sign of the Thrush for an Ally, unless it's an emergency. I'll be drawing my Cure next turn for certain if I dump every card in my hand but Honaire.

P.S. I had good luck with my rolls this turn, hoorah!

Yeah, I always forget to display it. I have to remember to start doing it. You are correct it has to be displayed before the combat.

(Tiny flavour complaint. I wrote the flavour such that there was no 'Fire Hydra', just a hallucination, with the fire damage caused by Estra accidentally setting off an explosion. Not an actual issue, though.)

(Sorry for my unnecessarily wordy flavour texts, and long turns in general.)

Ah bugger. I should have paid more attention. I have been super scatter brained lately which is why my posts have started to have less flavor.

In the process of separating from the military (finally!) and using my benefits to go to school full time overseas. They are trying to bury me in paperwork and I am working on my visa for study in Japan. It will be worth it but, jeez!, it is exhausting. Sorry for the small rant just wanted to give a heads up as I usually like to RP it up.

I will chalk this one up to Skizza suffering from a multitude of head injuries.

Hey, no worries. Congratulations! Sounds like an exciting time!

Any update from Wei Ji? I posted my turn about 24 hours ago. I hope his migraine has passed.

The game wasn't updated when I went to work this morning, and I can't seem to find the turn order so was waiting for it to be posted/or for my turn to pop up.

Posting in a bit.

Unfortunately, completely wiped out from work, so sorry for 'chess notation turn'.

Just so you know, you can reveal the Amulet of Mighty Fists for a bonus 1d4 to your combat check. In fact, you can reveal it for its ability, then discard it to your own effect to replace your Strength die with a d10.

Also, you had +3, not +2 for your roll. +2 for Melee, and +1 for your Strength skill feat from the last scenario. So that combat check could have/should have been 2d10+1d4+3, not 2d10+2.

Also, whilst I'm happy to use blessings (as I said; feel free to use them, and I'm going to be emptying my hand anyway)... strategically, I feel it would have been preferable to use the one in your own hand. When you end your turn, you redraw up to your hand size, whilst another 2 turns are going to pass before I redraw, so in the meantime we have less resources to spend than we otherwise would.

Using your own cards/blessings for explorations or die bonuses during your own turn is usually valuable, because it lets you do more with the finite time we have to complete a scenario and those cards are being replenished (almost) immediately. The only downside to pushing this too far is if you run out of cards and die, but we have Cure spells (and recharge checks for those) for that, and you still have 10 cards in your deck.

To be clear; Good work on defeating that henchmen. It's such a nasty one to fail, and so I'm all for using a Blessing, whether you're fighting him with Viper Strike or whether you're fighting him with your fists/amulet. I just don't think the Blessing of Horus is strong enough to have been left to gather dust in your hand, leaving more cards in your deck (including 3 more blessings) un-drawn and, thus, unused.

Also, you could have buried any card from your hand to add a die (1d10) to the check, as per the "When Permanently Closed" effect of the Smoking Den, if that would have been preferable.

Wei Ji:
How would you feel about using your cure on me? I'm not wounded, per se, but I do have 5 nice cards in my discard: 3 blessings and 2 allies. Also it would be nice to shuffle the Elemental Treaty up so I can recast it by the time we're ready for the Dilapidated Plaza.

That's why it says to use it in the notes section. Go for it. Sorry for missing the window.

Not sure what the "window" is, but thanks for the cure! :)

There's a 'window' of one hour for editing posts.

Hm. Nasty barrier. I think the first thing we've come across to punish you for exceeding a certain roll (which I know is supposedly a significant mechanic in Mummy's Mask). The henchmen it summons Curses you no matter what, unless you beat it with a Charisma check or evade it, so be careful.

Ideally, Qualzar triggers the Second Law. By evading the summoned henchmen with his power, it's completely negated.

EDIT: Ah shoot, it applies to everyone at a location. And even the henchmen of this scenario are barriers. Chances are good one or more of us are getting cursed with vulnerability (or banishing a card in their hand instead) this scenario, but we can cross that bridge when we need to.

Keep in mind. If the card you banish from your hand is a basic card from your class deck, you can easily get it back after the scenario when you rebuild your deck.

True. I had assumed as such, but thank you for the clarification!

You can use Dexterity, Stealth, Charisma, or Diplomacy to evade that henchman per the scenario rules.

Shoot, I forgot about that, you're right! It's a Human! Excellent catch.

Damn it all! My luck's returned to bloody normal. 93% odds (okay, lower than that because I would have had to have rerolled on a success); didn't seem worth a blessing. Also, my choice of cards led to better odds than if I'd have rolled Wisdom and used Telempathic Projection for 2d10 instead (which would have been 85% odds).

Bah. Much like the poison blade trap in scenario 1, there's just this 1 problematic set B barrier for us, it seems. Now I need to think on how I'm going to handle healing myself back up, and whether I temporarily give up Honaire....

Worse than a wasted turn there, given that I just lost my hand and even buried a spell. And I guess it turned out to be a good thing that Gronk used my blessing, since it would've been discarded to damage anyway. Oh, I've got armor in my hand, but keep in mind my Curse may mean I won't be able to use it.

How does the Blessing of Horus work if played on someone else's turn, specifically the "Discard this card to move, then you may explore your location. You may not use this power during an encounter." bit? My idea is, if Gronk hands that off to Estra, could Estra use it to move to the safer Caravanserai before the very real possibility of incoming Voices of the Spires at the Oasis?

Yewstance:
In any case, I think Estra should just doublecure herself. Gronk and Qualzar are healthy, and Skizza seems in okay shape for now.

Wei Ji:
Up to you if you want to stick around the Oasis or not, but if you're still here on my turn I'd like to pass off the Speak with Dead to you to cast at the first opportunity, so that we could get some help with Wisdom checks here at the Oasis. But if you'd rather move somewhere else, that's fine too. I can always use the Staff of Anubis with a divine spell, so the card isn't clogging up my hand.

I'm not worried about Voices of the Spire. I'll just use a Charisma check, and if I fail I'll just bury the Padded Armor to ignore damage. The Curse doesn't affect me - I'm already cursed!

Don't worry about area-of-effect damage. Doing more than 1d4 damage is next to impossible, but I'll doublecure myself if that's a major concern. The blessing would allow me to move, I imagine, but it wouldn't let me explore. You guys should do the heavy lifting until I recover Honaire if I use him to heal, and refill my deck.

I'd like to hear some point of feedback. Especially since I mentioned to Gronk he should have used a blessing on that exact barrier before, was I wrong to rely on 1d4+2d6+1 without an additional blessing, especially given my luck? As I said, 93.06% chance of success...

Anyway. Don't hand me anything; especially since you need a Liquid or Divine card to close this location! I'm going to wait and hope that the Oasis is closed before my turn so I get to recharge the powerful Twitch Tonic, THEN use Cure, or Honaire+Cure. If I take any kind of damage before my next turn, please pause to let me heal myself before exploring further.

EDIT: Players feel free to use my only blessing in hand to defeat a henchmen or close a location if needed and give me notice so I can heal myself (so 4 damage from a 1d4 doesn't literally kill me after expending a blessing).

How does the Blessing of Horus work if played on someone else's turn, specifically the "Discard this card to move, then you may explore your location. You may not use this power during an encounter." bit? My idea is, if Gronk hands that off to Estra, could Estra use it to move to the safer Caravanserai before the very real possibility of incoming Voices of the Spires at the Oasis?

You can only explore on your own turn and in your own explore step. When it isn't your turn you can use Blessing of Horus to move, but not explore (after all, the explore part is optional).

Yewstance:

[...] I'd like to hear some point of feedback. Especially since I mentioned to Gronk he should have used a blessing on that exact barrier before, was I wrong to rely on 1d4+2d6+1 without an additional blessing, especially given my luck? As I said, 93.06% chance of success... [...]

Well, I do have to first mention that I've been realizing that you and I have very different playstyles! I tend to overvalue recharging cards and undervalue burying cards and am more accepting of risking failure, whereas I think you tend toward the opposite. Which is not to say that one playstyle is better or worse than another; on the contrary, I think that a party is stronger when it comprises diverse playstyles.

But having said all that: I would also used the blessing if I were in Gronk's situation, and I wouldn't have if I were in yours.
And for what it's worth, for the situation that I was in, on my first turn of the first scenario with the Poison Blade Trap: I decided not to ask for a blessing to be discarded for a 1d10 + 2 Knowledge 7 check that risked 1d4 damage.

(As an aside: One of the reasons I chose the Sorcerer class deck for my first PACG OP was because in the iPhone game, I enjoyed playing Seoni the most. Her abilities to gain an emergency spell or emergency +1 suited my playstyle, as did her autorecharging spells. Whereas I found playing, say, Amiri more challenging. So, I'm not sure how well I would do compared to either you or Wei Ji at playing with either Estra or Gronk, because of how those characters need to choose to discard and bury cards! And that's also why I was so nervous in my previous post about how low Estra's current life is.)

For the record, I buried the spell not primarily for the Dexterity bonus, but for the free exploration. I'm used to 6-player parties, so I'm somewhat obsessive about exploring as many times as possible in a given turn, 2 times out of 3 (or so). Furthermore, Telempathic Projection is such a weak spell I'm kind of annoyed to have it. Adding 1d10 to non-combat Wisdom or Charisma checks is reluctantly 'fine'... the fact that it only works on my checks against cards I encounter makes it god-awful, since it can't help for location-closing checks or even spell recharge checks, and I'm up to the mercy of ever personally seeing a Barrier or Item where it does anything at all. It compares very unfavourably to the Osirian History Guide item, for example, which automatically recharges to help in arguably even more situations, and can help anyone at my location... normally I expect spells to be somewhat stronger than auto-recharging items, since spells have stricter requirements to use and recharge.

I'd also like to point out something else, that I would have had to have used someone else's blessing to have it recharged. The only blessing in my hand (at the time) was a Sign of the Thrush, whilst a Blessing of the Gods (mimicking a Blessing of the Elements) would have been needed. I would be even more reluctant to spend someone else's resource on an already extremely likely check, when more turns have to pass (and blessings from the blessings deck) before that card is restocked.

But yes, the blessing is far more valuable if I was using my Wisdom check. I could have passed on burying a card, then did the check with Wisdom+Projection+Sage for 2d10+1d6 for a 96.67% chance, but I'd be wasting up to 2 potential extra explorations (1 from Sage, 1 from using my bury-power), and failure would be disastrous (I'd lose Honaire to damage on a fail, since I'd only have 3 cards left to discard).

There'd be no point in burying a card to encounter to use a Wisdom check to defeat, unless I wanted to offload the Acid Jet (unwise, because I could use that to close the location and/or fight), since the only other options are Honaire (NO) and Sign of the Thrush (I can explore with it anyway...).

I really thought it all through, and I thought I played the odds safely, and still... gah. That annoys me. :/

Regarding playstyles; I'm happy to bury cards, or even just discard at the end-of-turn in many situations. By and large, every deck is going to have 'stronger' and 'weaker' cards, even if it's just as a consequence of what the current scenario or locations are. Burying too many cards shrinks your deck, which has the risk of death (a risk I've basically never suffered from, again a consequence of 6-player parties) associated... but it also actually improves the quality of your hand and drawn cards by removing sub-optimal ones.

It also lets you cycle through cards faster if you can recharge them, most notably cycling through Cures. Someone who can consistently recharge a cure-based effect, and recharge other cards to 'stack' the cure higher, are basically unkillable, and can happily spend multiple blessings/allies on exploration after exploration every turn. Skull and Shackles Damiel (Alchemist) comes to mind, but he just shuffles his own Potions of Healing back.

In my case, it's mostly just "I can keep casting my Cures thicker and faster with a smaller deck size, and redraw them... whilst this Bury effect lets me turn any old chaff into a free explore (with upside)". In the case of Telempathic Projection, again, removing it means I'll see Osirian History Guide (a straight-up better card, almost) more frequently. Admittedly, Projection has become *somewhat* better since I can use Charisma to evade certain checks in this scenario, but it's still such a weak spell to me.

Yewstance:
I want to emphasize this morning that my intention with my post last night wasn’t to criticize your (or anyone’s!) decisions. Rather, my point is that we do make different decisions- and that’s a good thing!
So when I say “this is what I would have done” =/= “this is the best play”
Also, just because something didn’t work this time- or just because you’ve hit an improbable streak of it not working- doesn’t mean that it wasn’t the correct decision for you to make.

Like with the poison trap last scenario. Our respective strategies didn’t work, and we kept getting hit by it. But we cured up our cards, kept playing, overcame the setbacks, eventually won, and, (I believe?) in the end had fun.

You joked earlier how the number 1 rule is “read the card”. I like to joke that the number 0 rile is “it’s a game; everyone should be having fun”. I wouldn’t want your frustration with low rolls to lead to your not having fun!

...worked late last night, had no bandwidth to parse ACG, getting ready for work this monring and likewise little bandwidth.

Will hopefully post tonight when home (approx. ten hours)

The dice can often be so cruel! I don't think anyone can fault you for chancing a role over 90%. I know I would have reacted the same.

Sorry, EmpTyger. I wasn't inferring that you were criticizing me (and I greatly enjoyed reading your perspective). Also, I'm having a ton of fun with Outpost, and I'm grateful to everyone.

I was, however, frustrated, and it led me having a poorer perspective/control of my inner monologue (and in turn, choice of words in posts) than I would have liked.