Just finished my final Scenario in this Adventure during organized play last week. At first I was going to give it four stars, but then I realized I didn't really have any real complaints about any of the scenarios in this Adventure (one minor nitpick at the end).
All in all, I was really impressed by the storyline and how all the Scenario tied into the storyline and all the details of each Scenario (locations, special conditions, etc) tied into the Scenario.
3-1A: Ambush at Burning Cape - Good introduction with a standard "Find and corner the Villain" format with a couple tweaks. Closing a location gets you some ranged damage and Gnolls are really hard to get rid of. :)
3-1B: This One Time at Aspis Camp - This is the Scenario in our playing group that everyone loved to hate. :) That is, there was talk about "Oh, THAT scenario" when it was ever brought up, but it was the one that generated the best stories and recollections, so probably my favorite of the five. (And the title turned out to be very appropriate and meta as in "This one time I played 'This one time at Aspis Camp'". :) )
3-1C: Up for a Swim? - Maybe the toughest one? It's the only one I played where we failed the first attempt. The combination of the Acid Pool and the Adventure special condition of Acid Damage causing curses AND the water thematically making certain checks and moving harder was something to think about to overcome.
3-1D: Under Pressure - AKA the Chasing the Spells. Maybe the best special mechanics of the five scenarios with everyone chasing around the Elemental Treaties to try to avoid the extra elemental damage this scenario inflicted. A bit more movement than the usual "Find a spot and camp 'til you close" strategies.
3-1E: Trails to the Sky - probably my second favorite for the same reason as Aspis Camp. Everyone starting with a random Curse had everyone grumbling, but figuring out how to deal with them and still beat the Scenario made it really challenging and fun.
All these Scenarios and the story I felt were just as good and thematic as the whole Mummy's Mask base set has felt to me so far. Some good challenges, some new Scenario special mechanics that always made sense in the context of the Scenario. If the rest of this Season is this good, it will be great.
And oh yeah? My minor nitpick? The images for the proxy villains and henchmen. Since they're just images and not actual printed cards that have to be supplied it would have been nice to put extra copies of the henchmen proxies on the sheet for those of us who would print them out and sleeve them over the proxy cards instead of having to refer back to the reference page every time you encounter one of them. Even if you can't put them all on the page, at least fill up the six empty spaces on the one page so if I want to print Aspis Agent cards to slip in sleeves, I don't have to print out five pages where 2/3 of the page is blank. Maybe I'd only have to print two pages.
But that's really a minor complaint and only about presentation and not game play.
Dave
