The villain in Red Rum is a nightmare for most characters in the game. If you aren't a strength based melee character he can put you in a deep hole that you can't get out of.
Mike Selinker's Afghanistan rule dictates that no adventure can use any locations other than the locations included in that adventure and the base set.
The reasoning is, soldiers playing the game may have just one adventure deck and the base set.
I come from a military family, but still I think this is a bad policy. It's not hard to replace a location if you don't have it. I don't think the game should be nerfed for 99% of players to benefit 1%.
I appreciate your point Joshua but I lost my only weapon to his text, however with various support from Oloch, Feiya, Harsk, Alahazra, Mirianne plus the remaining cards in my hand, we were able to put plenty on the table even with a BotG on the discard pile.
I appreciate a solo magic user could be in trouble here but multiple groups should be able to take this guy down without to much problem.
Still don't think that the villain catching out an unwary spell caster or an unprepared weapon based character makes this scenario difficult.
It was a big let-down for us.
gk
Out of curiosity, who is Mirianne? You group has a ton of support and, yes, Red Rum is a fairly easy scenario. I think it has more to do with how strong the characters become (I think S&S characters + S&S boons makes a party stronger over all than their RotR counterparts), then scenario weakness.
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Mike Selinker's Afghanistan rule dictates that no adventure can use any locations other than the locations included in that adventure and the base set.
The reasoning is, soldiers playing the game may have just one adventure deck and the base set.
I come from a military family, but still I think this is a bad policy. It's not hard to replace a location if you don't have it. I don't think the game should be nerfed for 99% of players to benefit 1%.
It can be difficult to do it in a balanced manner depending on the scenario. As for "nerfing", newer locations really aren't any more powerful the majority of the time except in their own adventure where they occasionally provide thematic buffs to enemies. The Afghanistan rule 99 times out of 100 isn't going to change anything difficulty wise. The creators of the game doing something nice for our soldiers isn't really going to affect you much.
As for "nerfing", newer locations really aren't any more powerful the majority of the time except in their own adventure where they occasionally provide thematic buffs to enemies. The Afghanistan rule 99 times out of 100 isn't going to change anything difficulty wise.
I disagree. Clearly the closing checks are harder in later adventures. The closing checks in the base set of Runelords tend to be 6 or 7. By deck 5 the checks are 12 or 14.
While not increasing in difficulty in as uniform a manner as closing checks, the location powers tend to be more difficult to deal with in later adventures. If you compare the RotR deck 5 locations with the base set locations, for example, the deck 5 locations are less likely to help you -- and even when they do help you, are a mixed blessing (like increasing your hand size by 2).
This is as it should be. Shouldn't the later adventures be more difficult?
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Ah yes. The perennial "Zees game, eet eez too eazeee!" post.
A particular group with whom I play PACG whips out this line frequently, and almost always in jest and in reference to people coming on these boards with this complaint.
It's interesting that the people who think it's "too eazeee" come here to complain, and get a lot of affirming comments, but those who come on here to say they found a scenario challenging often get told "you're doing it wrong."
Different groups will have different experiences. I would like to think that there is a "bell curve" of perceived or real / measured difficulty with any given scenario. Some people will have lots of lucky rolls and easy random cards in the decks; others will have challenging random draws and poor rolls. Most are probably in the middle. Skill obviously plays a role, too.
It's hard to know which factors combine to leave ten cards in the blessings deck (an experience which could very well be at the extreme end of the bell curve). In addition, anecdotal evidence is, in my view, a bit of an oxymoron. Thus, in my view, the jury's still out and always will be - until, that is, the computerized PACG game (hypothetically, mind you) tracks everyone's play experience(s) and reports it back to Lone Shark for analysis. Real verification on the "too eazeee" front will otherwise be impossible.
RotR we liked.
S&S, some of the tweaks make sense. For example, having to fight a hammerhead shark at the start of each turn (Shark Island) as opposed to a Bandit (Guard tower) - introduces an element of scaling, avoids evasion, generally stops the check from becoming pointless by the time you get a few adventures in.
Other than that, S&S has had too many elements where the difficulty gets stupid - Toll of the Bell is basically just a random shuffle. we're currently playing Bizaree Love triangle with 6 characters- that's FIVE locations with no villain or henchman. First play-through we didn't see a single villain before the time ran out, second time we saw one twice, but sign of the others. That's with Damiel boosting Ranzak for umpteen explorations per turn.
If this scenario really is easy, it'll be a nice break from the tedium of things like Toll of the Bell and Bizarre Love Triangle...
RotR we liked.
S&S, some of the tweaks make sense. For example, having to fight a hammerhead shark at the start of each turn (Shark Island) as opposed to a Bandit (Guard tower) - introduces an element of scaling, avoids evasion, generally stops the check from becoming pointless by the time you get a few adventures in.
Other than that, S&S has had too many elements where the difficulty gets stupid - Toll of the Bell is basically just a random shuffle. we're currently playing Bizaree Love triangle with 6 characters- that's FIVE locations with no villain or henchman. First play-through we didn't see a single villain before the time ran out, second time we saw one twice, but sign of the others. That's with Damiel boosting Ranzak for umpteen explorations per turn.
If this scenario really is easy, it'll be a nice break from the tedium of things like Toll of the Bell and Bizarre Love Triangle...
Ouch. Just to be sure, you've seen the FAQ for Bizarre Love Triangle, right?
Those each took me two attempts for my 4 player group. BLT might have taken 3, but I'm not 100% sure. And when we did win it, it was on the last turn on only due to an Ambush. Our strategy was to have Merisiel evade the first villain she found. Then we worked to force the other villains into that location by spreading out to the other locations. Not sure it was the best strategy since, as I said we won on the last turn.
One thing I did like from deck 4, we played The Ruins of Sumitha last night. I think it was the Hall of Champions were you add 1d4+1 weapons, and the weapon you displayed to the location after closing it, and you get 1d6 added to your check to acquire weapons. We also dropped the Letter of Marque there was it was closed and chose weapons so we could utilize that effect to it's full ability.
Really, easy scenarios in deck 4 are just great opportunities to play Letter of Marque. And who doesn't want that?
Perhaps locations should be like veterans, their base number modified by the current adventure deck number?
Perhaps locations should be like veterans, their base number modified by the current adventure deck number?
Some S&S locations are like that.
I tend to agree that Red Rum feels oddly out of place. I like the idea of reusing old cards, and giving veteran to all the early Henchmen helps, but by the time you get this far, the scaling really isn't keeping up. It's possible Henchman should have double-scaling as a rule. However, that would make Shark Island quite the terror, so I'm not sure of that.
I believe that the developers felt that, since you collected very little loot during the scenario, they needed to have a somewhat easier henchman here, or you'd be at a death risk (which I think is a valid point). The bigger problem than the Henchmen or the locations used is that the scenario didn't really do anything interesting. When you have a scenario like this, where there's a negligible reward and low threat of death, it really has to make it feel different.
I know I've brought it up so many times before, but "Here Comes the Flood" was a perfect execution of this kind of scenario. The henchman weren't that threatening (I think they were 14 in Adventure 3. Not as bad as this, but still below the curve), and you didn't really get any reward beyond what you'd normally get for playing anyway. However, it changed the way the game was played, and that was enough of a reward that you wouldn't notice the other issues. S&S has an issue where it's craziest scenarios are also it's most difficult (Pilk, BLT, Rum Punch), so it's hard to really appreciate them.
For Red Rum, I'm inclined to support MightJim. There were so many harrowing and frustrating scenarios before it, I appreciate a nice rest scenario. The reward is still eye-roll worthy, though.
I decided to double veteran bonus to banes after reading this thread
Just finished off the Island of Empty Eyes adventures and sure enough made it harder but still quite manageable
And yes Shark island is nasty, which is seemingly as one would expect :)