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We were playing through Skull and Shackles 5-1 last night ("An Unforgivable Act") and something felt wrong about what happened. Here's the situation, tell me if we did something wrong. This is a 4-player game, 6 locations.
...
We spent a decent amount of time after the game strategizing about how to prevent this the next time, and I think we will either...

Update on our next try, things went better, but not a lot!

Location 1: First Villain/Henchman encountered is the VILLAIN! The Diva is defeated but undefeated and there goes 3 blessings off the deck. She is now somewhere in locations 1,2,3 or 4.

Location 6: Finally close it, it has CONAN. One down!

Location 5: Close this with a Sentinel Devil (last card in the stack, grumble), and then we realize what we had missed ALL ALONG... the Safe House! Once you close this location you can just banish a card (not a small payment, but still) to evade the Villain and avoid her moving-around shenanigans. Can't believe we didn't notice that before.

Location 1: We find the Villain here again, but this time we are smart enough to duck into the Safe House. Now we know where she is!

Location 2, 3, 4 we spend a good deal of actions digging through these dangerous locations and finally defeat Harley Quinn! There are three blessing left in the deck.

Location 1: We find the Diva, temp close 3 and 4 and win the game with 2 blessings left on the timer.

TOUGH scenario for us, glad to have it over with.

As far as you can tell, did we do everything right? When you defeat a villain but the rules consider them undefeated, you do not close the location? Do the random blessings for distribution come from the blessing deck?

Hi there folks-

We were playing through Skull and Shackles 5-1 last night ("An Unforgivable Act") and something felt wrong about what happened. Here's the situation, tell me if we did something wrong. This is a 4-player game, 6 locations.

3 Sentinel Devil Henchmen
2 Named Henchmen (can't remember the names, we will go with "Conan" and "Harley Quinn")
1 Villain "The Diva"

Special rule goes like this: If "The Diva" would be defeated, check to see if "Conan" and "Harley Quinn" have been defeated. If they have not, "The Diva" is undefeated.

Location #1 is the first to be closed, encountering and defeating a Sentinel Devil

Location #5 is the next to be closed, defeating "Conan"

Location #2 is next, encountered and defeated Sentinel Devil

At Location #4, we encounter "The Diva". #6 is then temp-closed, leaving only #3 open during the Villain battle (and of course #4, the villain's location)

We "defeat" the villain, but of course, we haven't found Harley Quinn yet, so she is "undefeated. We take the top card of the blessings deck, shuffle it together with the villain and split them between #3 and #4.

#6 is the next deck closed, it contains a Sentinel Devil.

So at this point we know that either
1) The villain is back in #4
2) The villain and Harley Quinn are both in #3.

Using the Farglass, we discover the Villain in location #3, second card down. This means that Harley Quinn is also in location #3.

We close location #4.

Here's the question:
Hasn't this created a situation wherein the team has to keep encountering the villain, "undefeating" her and shuffling her back into the location afterwards until such time as Harley Quinn ends up *above* the villain so that she can be defeated first?

That's what happened, and we ran out of time. I couldn't find anything wrong with the rules of all this, but it seemed pretty brutal.

We spent a decent amount of time after the game strategizing about how to prevent this the next time, and I think we will either
a) Empty a non-start-of-turn-penalty location and leave it open as a planned "trap" for the villain (50/50 shot)

or
b) Perm close 2 locations, and then temp close every time to make sure the villain stays put in her current location until we can close her in. The problem with this is that the Check-To-Close in this scenario are downright nasty (*banish 2 blessings?- ouch!)

Thanks-
Tim (aka Wu Shen the nearly-dead-rogue)

HuckmanT wrote:

That's our team, which is now entering "The Free Captain's Regatta" tonight.

Good luck with the Regatta! My fiancee and I just beat that one last night, on our second try.

We beat it on our first try! Got all 8 to the top with 5 blessings left in the deck. It was a cool scenario and we got thrown a few curveballs (Storm). We got very lucky and never encountered a single Hurricane Winds. We did push all 4 of our characters to the brink of death on explores, though. By the end we were captaining the Wormwood with 7 loot on board! Loved it.

We are running S&S with this team, and it's working very well. We've had a few close calls (*TOLL OF THE BELL I'M LOOKING AT YOU*), but it's a very versatile team:

SEONI (SORCERER Class Deck): Our primary damage-dealer. She's also got quite a few nice utility spells for getting us out of trouble (Good Omen, Rage, Dimensional Portal).

ZARLOVA (CLERIC Class Deck): Our Healer/Dealer who is currently running with only one Heal spell and two Swipes (along with some other Divine Attack for top-deck cycling). She keeps 2 Blessing of Abadars and one Find Traps spell for all the barrier problems.

TONTELIZI (FIGHTER Class Deck): Support/Melee fighter - Tontelizi hangs around with Seoni a lot (because he can see up her skirt, we think). He has been our Toolbox (carrying around Astrolabs and Mogmurch and other "help folks at your location" cards since it melds well with his special ability. His ability to cycle Polearms is wicked cool.

WU SHEN (ROGUE Class Deck): Scout, Traps/Barriers expert, Potion-mistress. Wu Shen excels with Finesse Swashbuckling weapons and can handle herself very well when alone at a location (except against Undead, grumble). She is typically used to scout out Barrier-heavy locations with a few Master Lockpicks, Heartbreak Hinsin (Ally) and an Onyx of Constitution. Her ability to nearly always pass CON checks has been beyond awesome.

That's our team, which is now entering "The Free Captain's Regatta" tonight.

My wife and I already play so much Pathfinder that I can't imagine playtesting could possibly *increase* our playtime. SIGN US UP. What do I need to do to get on the mailing list for that.

We have a subscription to the Adventure path and currently own all released material for the game, including Class Decks (which we incorporate into our Skull and Shackles campaign). We are playing through both a RotR and S/S campaign on two different tables in the house.

My email is tpfiscus at gmail dot com

Thanks, Vic and Mike!