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Our group just started Adventure 3 last night, and man. That was rough.
You see, our local group has no wizards in it, or anyone with a great Intelligence. So the Cryptic Runes in combination with Munarei was hard.
Thankfully, both tables were able to succeed, but just barely. Lots of blessings and other resources were used to win. That was quite the challenge, but everyone had a great time and were on the edge of their seats.
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Awesome. My test playthroughs were largely similar. Bruising, but fun.
Tried it tonight with only 3 out of 4 regulars (Vika, Arabundi and Siwar).
We were rather unlucky: we were able to close only two locations before we met with Munarei for the first time, and he was at the bottom of his deck with no one able to temporarily close their own location, so he escaped in one the remaining two locations (Sharkfin Reef and Seaside Warehouse). Arabundi managed to find and defeat the Cryptic Runes at Sharkfin Reef, but he didn't have an ally in his hand, and so was unable to close it.
It came down to Arabundi and Vika at the Warehouse, and Siwar and her many allies she could turn to bait to temporarily close Sharkfin Reef. Fate seemed to enjoy toying with us, as Arabundi found the canny naga on the very last turn, but he had nothing to boost his intelligence, so we had to declare forfeit. Looks like we'll have to try again next week!
Party (Agna, Meliski, Radillo) made it through fine. Wizard + Masterwork Tools made short work of 2 of the Cryptic Runes. :P That and a lot of scouting, once again netted us 3 Item 3s and a Weapon 3.
(It definitely was _supposed_ to be hard, it's just that I totally enjoyed the benefits of being a decent barrier buster _and_ having Masterwork Tools.)
The Wrecker's extra text doesn't activate if there aren't any other characters at your location. Is this intended?
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The Wrecker's extra text doesn't activate if there aren't any other characters at your location. Is this intended?
The ability says, "a random other character summons and encounters..." It doesn't say "at your location" anywhere in the power, so it doesn't matter if the other characters are at your location or not. Giles Halmis is on a mission, and defeat is the only thing that will stop him from going after all of your friends.
Er whoops, I don't have the Adventure 3 Deck text (I tend to memorize these things ahead of time) so I read it and most other ones say "at your location" so I mentally substituted that. I'll remember that the next time.
(It actually mattered little because both Meliski and I were ready to murderize Giles at the time anyway. It could have gone wrong, but would have only delayed our win by a turn or 3 because we had the villain and the other henchman set up by the time we saw the Wrecker, and the Wrecker itself was on the top too. Yeah, scouting is OP)
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We were hit by a long streak of bad luck in the past few weeks (Munarei and the runes all in the bottom 3 cards of each deck; rolling appalingly low on crucial checks multiple times; the warriors getting all the runes while the spellcasters were getting clobbered without any spells in their hand; etc.), which means we managed to succeed on our fifth (!) attempt tonight while there were only two of us: Siwar and Vika.
Since we're both support characters, we both stayed in the same location throughout the scenario. We started off at Widowmaker Isle. Vika found Munarei early on, and barely managed to defeat him thanks to a blessing from Siwar. Only three locations to go!
We then moved to the Seaside Warehouse. We managed to find a blessing of Achaekek about midway through, so we knew Munarei wasn't there. We decided to stay anyways to get all the cards that were waiting for us once we had closed the location (the blessing of Achaekek would be especially good for Vika if she had to face off against Munarei again). Siwar found and deciphered the cryptic runes, but didn't have anything left for the Dexterity/Disable check, and so we had no choice but to go through the deck. Fortunately, Siwar drew her burglar just in time to close out the Warehouse.
We then moved to Jasperleaf's Apothecary. We were very lucky to find the cryptic runes fairly quickly, and Siwar had her lightning bolt to deal with the shimerae, so we managed to close another location. We now knew Munarei was hiding at the Beach.
Again we were lucky. Siwar stumbled into Vakarla in her second round there, which meant Vika would be handling Giles (thank the gods Vika's an half-elf!), while Siwar would be facing off against the illusionist in an arcane duel with the full power of Achaekek behind her (Siwar chose the Arcane check and used the blessing of Achaekek from the Warehouse). Everything went off without a hitch, which left Munarei by his lonesome at the Beach, and about 6 rounds for us to prepare. We didn't actually need them, since both of us drew the perfect cards: the topaz of strength and a blessing of the gods for Vika, and the ruby of charisma and the "old salt" ally for Siwar. Siwar went ahead since she had the greatest chance of success (2d12+5 with her Knowledge skill, ruby and old salt, plus the blessing from Vika), and she finally broke our losing streak!
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My group of 3 with Radillo/Kyra/Valeros crushed this in less than 10 turns, getting very lucky to have the wizard find two runes. We all happened to be spread over the remaining locations when the naga showed up, and really had no problems. Got a great selection of deck upgrades too, for our 1st deck 3 game! (and proceeded to run the rest of adventure 3 last week also with no problems, aside from not getting to actually FIGHT the bosses.)
I lost this scenario with two different groups, before beating it with one (the other groups tries again Wednesday).
Our Vika/Arabundi/Amaryllis/Meleski group struggled with this scenario. Both Amaryllis and Vika have d4 intelligence (I'm wondering how coriolis' Vika beat Munarei with just one blessing...obviously a two-dice blessing, but still, a good roll). Vika at Sharksfin Reef(sp?) tried to defeat a ship for the Pirate Hunting barrier and rolled 3 1s on 3 d8s. Then, the next turn, rolled 2 1s on 2 d8s. Our luck was like that.
Still, in the end we had a shot at Munarei with a player covering every other open location. To close, Arabundi needed a 2 on a d6 after Amaryllis played Good Omen on him -- and rolled a 1. No matter -- Vikas 4 d4s weren't enough to beat Munarei anyway (8).
Soloing my Harsk/Jirelle/Meliski group, we failed as well. We had tough henchman/villain placement, and we held back on using blessings to explore because we'd need them for the intelligence checks. Ran out of time without seeing Munarei once.
The second try with the same group went entirely differently. All the cards fell into place. The henchman was on top of Sharksfin Reef. Everyone's barrier-busting cards came into their hands. Best of all, Jirelle (d4 intelligence) had her Emerald of Dexterity when she faced Munarei in the final showdown.
I'm hoping my group of four has similar luck -- but I'm worried. Those barriers can kill you.
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Well, we decided to replay this one so that two of our players could catch up …
So it started off slow but after the second round (5 players) we had two locations closed.
Sadly Harsk failed in combat early and he was sulking for a good portion of the scenario. But his scouting ability proved very valuable especially when he added the Farglass to his deck. Munarei was found early and escaped to one of two locations. We ground our way through the locations. Eventually discovering where Munarei escaped to. So we started to post up at the two locations left. Coordinated who would attempt the check. Everyone reseting their hands to help bless and help. The Wu Shen decides to be greedy and explore the other location. Cryptic Runes. And with three players at the location, he needed to succeed at the check else everyone would take damage. All of the sudden our plans are thrown out the window in order to save Wu Shen and the others. ARRRGH! The next two players drew up but weren't as lucky getting cards. Harsk moved from his closed location to the villain's. Couldn't examine because he moved first. Flipped the card … and (unexpectedly) … Munarei. The luck gods smiled on Harsk as he managed to make his check.
We need to curb the rogue's streak for greed. It has gotten us in trouble a few times including one where we failed because of it. This was nearly the second time.
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As a "thank you" for Agna being so good at damaging ships, we've been given a mission to go find something called Alahazra's Wheel...wait...Alazara...Jalapeño...Jalhazar's Wheel. It's a very fancy ship's steering thingy. Even though it didn't help the last guy who had it (since their ship sank) we're gonna go find it.
So Agna, Flenta, Zarlova, Heggal, and I loaded up our fancy new damage-resistant ship and headed off to search for information about the wheel. Naturally, this involved lots of blowing up sharks, plants, and ourselves as someone had hidden these rune-covered rocks across the isles.
We also ran into a half-orc lady and her friend who hates humans. Why he wanted to pick on Heggal and then me we'll never know, but I showed him why you don't pick on halflings by freezing him but good! Take that mean guy!
Thanks to the Tengu, my fancy new telescope (on loan), and Agna's animal friends we knew that the bad guy was hiding with the Cannibals, so we worked on clearing out potential hiding spots elsewhere. It took a while, but finally we were left with only the Cannibals and the Apothecary. I was all ready to fight Mr. Munarei with my fancy new spell we'd found, but (gasp!) he didn't want to fight. He wanted a battle of wits!
I started telling this classic halfling riddle, but I kept forgetting stuff and going back, and after about 10 minutes he was pushing me out the door with his notes about where to find the Wheel. Aww, and I was just getting to the good part!
On to the next adventure!
-=-=-=-=-=-
We'd scouted the villain early on, but we used up a lot of turns looking for Cryptic Runes. By the time we had the board under control and were ready to face Munarei we'd totally forgotten that he's not a fight, so Amaryllis waded in with her d4 Int. Thankfully, Black Spot isn't restricted to combat checks and her friends had Blessings, so she ended up with a chance (3d4 vs 7: 9!). We should have been OK even if she failed (we'd temp closed the only other open location) but it was a funny moment.
Otherwise it went pretty well. Between Agna, the Tengu Rookery, and the Loot cards we knew what was coming much of the time so people could avoid problems and try things they're good at. We still ended up flushing a bunch of Deck 3 boons, unfortunately. Our loot haul had only a Spell 3 and a Spell 2. (Amaryllis and Heggal, respectively.)
I feel bad because I totally tried to skip Zarlova's turn once. I'd gotten too excited after we helped Agna pick up that Spell 3 (it was an Arcane combat spell and she was nice enough to hold onto it so she could pass it off to me on her next turn). Sorry! :(
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I played this last night with my Jirelle and a pregen Kyra.
It came down to the final blessing* with 3 cards left in the location deck.
Kyra cast her Augury looking for monster and put the boss on top.
With a blessing from each character she rolled 3d4 and got a 10!
*I swear this happens in about 50% of my games. Either I'm crappy at this or the game is well-designed. I like to believe it's the latter.
*I swear this happens in about 50% of my games. Either I'm crappy at this or the game is well-designed. I like to believe it's the latter.
Me too. :)
I'm necroing the thread for posterity, in case someone comes up with an official answer to what seems currently to be a a bug with the scenario -which oddly hasn't been brought up anywhere earlier in the thread.
Current scenario says: "If Giles Halmis is undefeated,a random other character who has not encountered him this turn summons and encounters him.
If Giles Halmis is defeated, or if all other characters have encountered him this turn, banish him. Then continue your encounter with Vakarla the Wrecker."
The above obviously doesn't address the case where Giles is EVADED - which by current RAW would not summon more copies of him and could therefore block the active character from proceeding with his Vakarla encounter (ex. Character A encounters Vakarla, character B summons and evades Giles - but there's also a Character C who has not -and will not- encountered Giles. So Giles will never be encountered by all characters besides char. A, nor will he be defeated.)
The two possible intents are:
"If Giles Halmis is undefeated or evaded..."
OR
"If Giled Halmis is defeated, evaded, or if all other characters have encountered him..."
Hopefully, at some point, someone official can stumble upon this and give an answer.
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Current scenario says: "If Giles Halmis is undefeated,a random other character who has not encountered him this turn summons and encounters him.
If Giles Halmis is defeated, or if all other characters have encountered him this turn, banish him. Then continue your encounter with Vakarla the Wrecker."
"If A, then B. If C, then D. Then continue your encounter"
I'd say that no A or C means no B or D. Just continue your encounter as instructed.