I REALLY miss Alahazra
She made things so simple in terms of selecting where to explore. This whole blundering into the unknown thing is just so...so...barbaric!
Look into Adowyn. Woof Friend Displays to scout top card of the location and you can take him back and do it again by recharging a card (similar cost as Alhazara, but a little weaker?)
My Adowyn has a Carbuncle (recharge to explore, shuffle into a random location if you encounter a monster), Detect Demon, and a Fortune Teller (reveal at end of your move step, declare boon/bane, encounter the top card if you guessed right) and she gets many free(-ish, she still has to recharge a card to get Woof Friend back) explores per turn.
You gotta take care of your horse. You'll notice his Lancer role has a power that can help with that.
Explosive runes wiped my hand. So I meant the horse got discarded, not banished. Apologies for confusion!
I REALLY miss Alahazra
She made things so simple in terms of selecting where to explore. This whole blundering into the unknown thing is just so...so...barbaric!
Look into Adowyn. Woof Friend Displays to scout top card of the location and you can take him back and do it again by recharging a card (similar cost as Alhazara, but a little weaker?)
My Adowyn has a Carbuncle (recharge to explore, shuffle into a random location if you encounter a monster), Detect Demon, and a Fortune Teller (reveal at end of your move step, declare boon/bane, encounter the top card if you guessed right) and she gets many free(-ish, she still has to recharge a card to get Woof Friend back) explores per turn.
I think Adowyn may actually be the mot powerful starting character we have seen thus far. Her combination of scouting, deck cycling, evasion and hitting power is amazing.
I seem to roll a lot of 1s and 2s on her d12, but yeah. I'm not going to blame my bad luck on B deck combat rolls on her. I've never used her evasion power (I'm sure a couple times I've forgotten, but sometimes with stuff like Demonic Horde you really can't anyway--for Arboreal Blight next time I might just take the risk and do it), but she's really well rounded. Nothing she can't deal with.
Except Rallying Cry. :D When we encounter that barrier now we check to make sure it's even possible for me to get my card before my wife draws Kyra's.
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Except Rallying Cry. :D When we encounter that barrier now we check to make sure it's even possible for me to get my card before my wife draws Kyra's.
Our group contains Harsk. He is not a fan of Rallying Cry
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I'm going to agree with Raynair on this one. Our gaming group of 4 has been through RotR and SS multiple times with a wide variety of parties and so I feel we have a pretty good grasp of the game. We tried the first Wrath adventure tonight and just got blown away. Had someone die after taking their second turn (I'm sure turning up 2 Demon Hordes before it got back around to him didn't help.)
We chalked it up to bad luck and tried some new characters and just barely made it through. I didn't feel that rush of accomplishment I usually feel when squeezing a win by a narrow margin. I just felt glad it was over. First time I've played this game and realized I was actually not having fun.
I've laughed off bad luck, bad rolls, bad location/bane combos in the other sets but wrath just keeps kicking you while you are down.
I'm going to shelf the game for the weekend and come back to it next time our group gets together but our first impression was that the difficulty got cranked up a little too much right out of the gate. I'm guessing the epic powers will help combat the epic face-stomping your average delivers to you, but we haven't got there yet!
Our group are fairly hardcore gamers but so far, wrath has been a little much for us. I'm sad because pathfinder is pretty much the reason we all get together to game.
Sounds good! And I am going to pick a party (of 2) without any healers. Hopefully the game is difficult enough then...
PS. Or will this be a big mistake?
Except Rallying Cry. :D When we encounter that barrier now we check to make sure it's even possible for me to get my card before my wife draws Kyra's.
My group does it the other way - the people who are most likely to get it go first, so we know if it's worth Blessing those who go last and get them all.
Cause adding a bunch of allies to the group is totally worth a blessing or two.
My group does it the other way - the people who are most likely to get it go first, so we know if it's worth Blessing those who go last and get them all.
Cause adding a bunch of allies to the group is totally worth a blessing or two.
Being less hyperbolic about it, we do always DRAW the cards, but mostly that's followed by Adowyn falling face down in the dirt in front of a Recruit or... Hireling? Porter? Valet? The elf guy. Those two cards are the ones we pull like almost every time (sometimes two Recruits at once). If Kyra hit something cool, I'm sure we'd go through the effort of blessing--giving Adowyn an astonishing TWO d4s... oh boy! :D Y'know, having played Damiel all through S&S, I'm kind of just used to it. Allies? Those are for the birds (or literally are birds, perhaps, since that's all I can acquire without help).
(Oh, Retainer!)
Our group contains Harsk. He is not a fan of Rallying Cry
Oh I'm a FAN of it. Any barrier that banishes itself with no negative penalty is okay by me. :D :D :D :D
Lost our Location +2 run of AP1's 4th Scenario on time, but we probably wouldn't have if Kyra hadn't whiffed her early villain encounter by 1 and cost us four turns. Deck management was super tight, mostly due to the Abattoir stacking Carrion Demons and Cambrions (two in a row!) At one point Adowyn was sitting on an empty deck. Also, we got to put "Operation: Sapling Skirt" into effect, Adowyn painlessly evaded her Arboreal Blight encounter, and we both held our breath as we rolled the d20.
But, after all that, the most harrowing part of the scenario was clearing out the Abattoir, after having dealt with every monster in it to find that the three remaining cards were weapons, the bottom of which was the Demonbane Light Crossbow +1, which I didn't even know existed, but now crave in an almost paraphiliac way. D:
Kyra got the Quarterstaff of Vaulting, ordinarily out of her reach with its Strength 9 to acquire, thanks to the Mongrel Village's power, though. And also some sort of maybe-okay spellcasting shield that she's keeping for the moment. It wasn't a total loss!
Is the Radiance loot weapon supposed to have the Slashing trait like a longsword?
Darn it. Yes, it should.
Crowe's been pretty challenging to play so far. His hand cycles poorly due to starting with 5 weapons and 2 spells he has to banish to cast. If he could actually pick up boons I could use his bury ability a little more freely but with 4 blessings and 0 (1 now that I spent a card feat) allies he has few explores.
Once I complete AD1 and am able to get the Arcane Skill for him with his power feat and a Life Drain and scale, I think things will start to go better for him.
We played our first couple of games today and had 3 people dying in two scenarios. One of them (Balazar) not even having the time to play her first turn in the Elven Dark Forest (lost her full hand twice to stupid trees)!
There was a little bit of bad luck involved but not that much. End up behing very frustrating both for veteran players and new kids on the block. Especially as we didn't really found what we could have done better.
Typical group (Alain, Kyra, Enora and Balazar) lacks curing capabilities (only one cure and if you miss the recharge roll your pretty much dead). Average check for monsters was 11-13 which was below 50% chance for pretty much all of us but Alain in most cases. Worse, you could easily lose all your hand on a just "less than average" roll.
I was thrilled by the idea that Mike was raising the difficulty a bit from S&S but it seems that at the same time scenario is harder, monsters are harder and characters are not better - even maybe worse. I'm sure the whole thing has been playtested a lot and balanced many times but still I feel like I'm missing something in terms of pure fun. Typical RPG doesn't kill you on day one.
Hopefully we are not moving towards a pure strategic "MTG-puzzle-like" thing (don't get me wrong, the "puzzling non standard wining conditions" of some scenarios where fun because they involved thinking a little ahead, but I had the feeling that once understood, you still had a good chance of a tricky win) or to a "too bad you didn't draw that card on your first turn... well then you might as well restart the whole scenario" because that would spoil a lot of the family fun.
Anyway, don't want to jump into conclusions, we will try again tomorrow, but I'm currently not at excited as I was when we started RoR or S&S.
As someone wrote above, the average game used to be won by a narrow margin. I hope this time it won't be lost by a narrow margin. What I mean is there are coop games that are intended to be a puzzle, where it's good to try 3-4 times before succeeding (just nailed The Captain is Dead in Insane mode and Space Alert in Deep Red mode), and others that are more role-play oriented where you are not supposed to adjust difficulty but just to follow the life of your character, even if you face sometimes tricky situations. I'll watch closely if we are still on the right side of the road.
IMHO
I see a lot of people having trouble with 3/4 party groups. Has anyone played 2 player or 5/6 and noticed similar results with difficulty and such? I ask because I mainly play with just me and the fiance.
Frencois, how did Balazar's player lose her hand twice before going? You only draw up at the end of your turn, not each turn. Maybe I am not understanding your situation. Also, Balazar will always power Padrig by putting a card from hand on top of the deck, so that is one card not lost to a hand wipe.
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I see a lot of people having trouble with 3/4 party groups. Has anyone played 2 player or 5/6 and noticed similar results with difficulty and such? I ask because I mainly play with just me and the fiance.
The difficulty seems to get much increase much more significantly with larger parties than it did in either S&S or RotR.
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Frencois, how did Balazar's player lose her hand twice before going? You only draw up at the end of your turn, not each turn. Maybe I am not understanding your situation. Also, Balazar will always power Padrig by putting a card from hand on top of the deck, so that is one card not lost to a hand wipe.
I was wondering that as well. Maybe he meant since she didn't have cards in hand she didn't do anything on her actual turn except draw at the end?
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It's especially surprising since Balazar has a decent chance to defeat a tree with Padrig (especially if he's at risk of losing a blessing anyways), and can also store away 2 cards into his deck when making the combat checks. And discard spells to draw random monsters, to add more dice.
Bad luck is bad luck, though.
Frencois, how did Balazar's player lose her hand twice before going? You only draw up at the end of your turn, not each turn. Maybe I am not understanding your situation. Also, Balazar will always power Padrig by putting a card from hand on top of the deck, so that is one card not lost to a hand wipe.I was wondering that as well. Maybe he meant since she didn't have cards in hand she didn't do anything on her actual turn except draw at the end?
Sorry I wasn't clear. Indeed that's what I meant: Balazar end up starting twice her turn with 0 or 1 card in hand.
Even with 1 card in hand the best she could do was get Padrig to fight for d6+d10+2 for an average of 11 against monsters with 12 or 13 checks to defeat.And even with someone else playing one blessing (if there was one left which wasn't the case since we use them to ensure closing locations early and were "lucky" enough to run into one henchman on the first turn, it's only +d6) this is far from ensuring good chance of success.
The difference with previous AP is that you end up using a lot of cards during someone else turn.
Not sure the situation would have been much better with one spell more in hand. Ok you can discard it to draw a monster and then what? Can you recharge that spell in that situation? What will that monster really change?
in RoR and S&S we had the feeling that the first 3-4 scenarios were there to help understand how your character behaves (on purpose I'm not saying "how it works") and equip it. Kind of cool tutorial and background for the character. Maybe I miss that.
So I'm just trying to find what to change to not disappoint my players next time they come home.
Typical group (Alain, Kyra, Enora and Balazar) lacks curing capabilities (only one cure and if you miss the recharge roll your pretty much dead). Average check for monsters was 11-13 which was below 50% chance for pretty much all of us but Alain in most cases. Worse, you could easily lose all your hand on a just "less than average" roll.
Wrath is punishing, especially in the starting scenarios with high bane counts. Its also less forgiving of imbalanced team compositions and the out of turn combats are lethal for offensive caster. I think you would be better off you substituted Adowyn for either Enora or Balazar (and possibly pack an additional cure on Kyra).
Wrath is punishing, especially in the starting scenarios with high bane counts. Its also less forgiving of imbalanced team compositions and the out of turn combats are lethal for offensive caster. I think you would be better off you substituted Adowyn for either Enora or Balazar (and possibly pack an additional cure on Kyra).
Nothing says Balazar can't start with Cures. He'll have to banish them, but so what, he banishes Attack trait spells. And as I found while running the demo, Enora is quite adapt at acquiring a Cure, should one come up.
I only played WotR Kyra in the Season of the Righteous with the Cleric class deck, which meant I had to start with 3 cures. After upgrading my spells a bit, I found myself thinking that two Cures was a little low, and that I'd want my first card feat in Spells to maybe get that third Cure back in. Don't forget her minor healing power, though. If you've got a Cure in your discard pile, keep choosing yourself and hopefully you'll get lucky and get it back.
I finished the b scenarios last night. I ran a party of 4: Imrijka, Valeros (CD), Seoni, and Zarlova. I lost two of the scenarios on time. I also had 2 characters die on the last scenario. Ironically, the two WotR characters perished while the two class deck characters made it out ok.
I don't know how I feel about the increased difficulty. I probably could have made it through that last scenario without anyone dying by playing a bit more conservatively at the end, but I had already failed the scenario once and didn't feel like playing it again.
I wonder if the increase in character death is by design or is an by product of the banes being tuned for characters with Myhtic Paths and better boons.
Nothing says Balazar can't start with Cures.
You don't have any in your initial deck as per the rulebook... So by the book you need to acquire them. Which is far from easy with your wisdom....
Anyway we had better luck on our next attempt so I will hold my thoughts on any first thoughts (if that means anything).
Nothing says Balazar can't start with Cures.
You don't have any in your initial deck as per the rulebook... So by the book you need to acquire them. Which is far from easy with your wisdom....
Anyway we had better luck on our next attempt so I will hold my thoughts on any first thoughts (if that means anything).
Cures are Basic cards, and thusly perfectly good starting deck cards for any caster.
Note that the "Suggested" decks in the rulebook are only suggested in order to let you get started quickly and let you have decks for all of the characters at the same time. Accordingly, you'll almost always find that finetuning a starting deck with different Basic cards will be slightly better for your playstyle.
You don't have any in your initial deck as per the rulebook... So by the book you need to acquire them. Which is far from easy with your wisdom....
Nothing says Balazar can't start with Cures.
The deck lists in the back of the rulebook are only suggestions. Per the rules when constructing your character deck for the first time you can have any boons with the basic trait. So Balazar can in fact start with cures if he wants.
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Nothing says Balazar can't start with Cures.
You don't have any in your initial deck as per the rulebook... So by the book you need to acquire them. Which is far from easy with your wisdom....
Anyway we had better luck on our next attempt so I will hold my thoughts on any first thoughts (if that means anything).
As stated a few times, those deck lists are suggestions, for people that don't want to try to build their own decks, which is also a method listed in the rules. Use any Basic B/C cards (only for the types and counts in your deck of course) to build a character starting the adventure path. While the suggested decks are great for learning the game and saving time, I've found that it's very easy to build better decks if you have experience with the game.
Nothing says Balazar can't start with Cures.
You don't have any in your initial deck as per the rulebook... So by the book you need to acquire them. Which is far from easy with your wisdom....
Anyway we had better luck on our next attempt so I will hold my thoughts on any first thoughts (if that means anything).
I played this way for RotR, even though it is just a suggested start, it makes the basic cards a lot more fun to encounter during the base adventure. It also ups the challenge a bit and some of the base cards would never see play otherwise.
I also chose to play with the starging decks in S&S and RotR, because it made the game more challenging, and their was more of a sense of developing characters in the early scenarios. That being said, with the intrinsic difficulty of Wrath, I am have been much happier constructing the starting decks.
We play the same way. We start with the suggested deck list despite knowing we have the ability to make our own. It makes for a better start for us as we get excited for even Basic cards we haven't encountered. Being able to read the cards at the start sort of takes away some of our excitement for those cards, especially the ones not listed in any of our starting decks.
But when I do get my copy of Wrath, maybe that would change. We'll see.
I played this way for RotR, even though it is just a suggested start, it makes the basic cards a lot more fun to encounter during the base adventure. It also ups the challenge a bit and some of the base cards would never see play otherwise.
Nothing says Balazar can't start with Cures.
You don't have any in your initial deck as per the rulebook... So by the book you need to acquire them. Which is far from easy with your wisdom....
Anyway we had better luck on our next attempt so I will hold my thoughts on any first thoughts (if that means anything).
Fully agree. We always start with the suggested deck and not an "already optimized basic" deck. That way it's nice when you run into better basic boons in early scenarios.
And I stopped playing MTG when it becames more of an expert deck building game where all was done before the game than a real game. Don't want PACG to be that way.
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My husband and I played the first three B scenarios this weekend. First he played the Shaman and I the Arcanist; the first B scenario went really well. Then he switched to the Hunter (having played the first scenario with her by himself) and we did The Wardstone Patrol. (Side note: I found it really cute how the Adventure B stuff was from PFS.) It wasn't too bad? Except that A) my quest to murder Sir Ilivan failed and B) I died. Dice betrayed me on a combat earlier on, and then I had to take on a creature that was made undead... and was also immune to the backup spell I had. Sadness.
The third adventure went okay - I switched out a few of my spells when I rebuilt to not have as much mental/poison (okay, I kept a Dazzle because I want to keep saying "Give 'em the ol' razzle dazzle" when I play it). Immunities are definitely played up here for spellcasters, which makes sense when fighting demons yet is still annoying.
Overall, I do think this is harder than the other two. I actually have done much S&S outside of the Organized Play, so maybe the game box itself is harder. But I think we still need to get a feel for this one as we play. I know we've already done some stuff wrong with cohorts and a few other things forgotten, but we'll get there. :) I have a feeling that Adventure 1 might have a different tone when you can use the mythic things.
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My husband and I played the first three B scenarios this weekend. First he played the Shaman and I the Arcanist; the first B scenario went really well. Then he switched to the Hunter (having played the first scenario with her by himself) and we did The Wardstone Patrol. (Side note: I found it really cute how the Adventure B stuff was from PFS.) It wasn't too bad? Except that A) my quest to murder Sir Ilivan failed and B) I died. Dice betrayed me on a combat earlier on, and then I had to take on a creature that was made undead... and was also immune to the backup spell I had. Sadness.
The third adventure went okay - I switched out a few of my spells when I rebuilt to not have as much mental/poison (okay, I kept a Dazzle because I want to keep saying "Give 'em the ol' razzle dazzle" when I play it). Immunities are definitely played up here for spellcasters, which makes sense when fighting demons yet is still annoying.
Overall, I do think this is harder than the other two. I actually have done much S&S outside of the Organized Play, so maybe the game box itself is harder. But I think we still need to get a feel for this one as we play. I know we've already done some stuff wrong with cohorts and a few other things forgotten, but we'll get there. :) I have a feeling that Adventure 1 might have a different tone when you can use the mythic things.
Adventure 2. Mythic is a reward for finishing adventure 1. :)
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(okay, I kept a Dazzle because I want to keep saying "Give 'em the ol' razzle dazzle" when I play it).
This post just earned itself a favorite.
Made it through the second scenario after chasing down the villain. Had our first encounter with the Arboreal Blight, and that's just awful. I wasn't getting the bit about it doing damage before and after the combat.
We moved on to scenario three, did a quick close of the armory- two sickles in the deck, and drew a third to close it :/ Then we got another Arboreal Blight. The one in scenario two we handled okay, this time, we all blew it, including the drawer missing the check by 1. Among other set backs, we decided the deck ran out, reset out decks, and put the box on the shelf for another night.
Interesting thing I noted - you can't run out the blessings deck in AD1 scenario 1. There will always be a card there, even if it's just the big bad guy blowing up at a random location every turn (then immediately returning to the blessings deck).
Interesting, so this scenario could only end in a win or in a TPK, the latter probably resulting from a stalemate where the surviving characters are unable to corner and/or vanquish the villain, while Khorramzadeh blasts a random location each turn.
Made it through the second scenario after chasing down the villain. Had our first encounter with the Arboreal Blight, and that's just awful. I wasn't getting the bit about it doing damage before and after the combat.
We didn't get the true pain of Arobreal Blight until we had to encounter it at the Great Hall, which makes you summon the Servitor Demon before you encounter a villain or henchman, and it doesn't say nothing about only villains or henchman FROM the location deck. Flubbed my Fiendish Tree kill on the first one, so it went back into the deck and we ended up having to deal with it twice. Encountering a Sloth Demon beforehand was fine for Adowyn, she can just recharge a card, but when Kyra came over that was a big expenditure of her resources. Thankfully, she had a shield to deal with the combat damage, but you still gotta use two spells to deal with the Sloth Demon and the Fiendish Tree.
Then, as it turns out, the villain was in that location. And what's the villain do? Oh, is it summon a Sloth Demon? So now Kyra has to encounter Sloth Demon > Sloth Demon > Villain. Each of the Sloth Demons forcing her to discard a card, meaning she needs a perfect hand of 2 sacrificial cards and 3 spells to deal with the encounters (or 1 weapon and 2 spells, but pffft). Suffice to say, she lost.
But there's only one other location open, we can still try!
Villain gets shuffled back into same location, Kyra encounters her again, same plays out, game over. D: D: D: D:
I'm not gonna cry too much, I think the onslaught of bad luck was precipitated by Kyra drawing the Demonbane Light Crossbrow when she closed the Shrine of Imomomedar. Good trade for a failed scenario, I'd say (or Adowyn would, anyway).
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I see a lot of people having trouble with 3/4 party groups. Has anyone played 2 player or 5/6 and noticed similar results with difficulty and such? I ask because I mainly play with just me and the fiance.
We played with 5 the other night and it was quite difficult. We were unable to win the second scenario due to two arboreal traps, which pretty much wiped me (as Balazar) and our shaman out. After the third trap, all I could do was try not to get killed. Then the third arboreal trap sprung. I barely survived.
Ultimately we ran out of time. On the last blessing card, the big bad was cornered and defeated but, unfortunately, other players forgot to make their checks to temporarily close locations before the fight. Since they forgot (and I really wanted to win), I had them roll. All they needed to do was roll a survival or fortitude 8 check. Both the Hunter and Bloodrager confidently stated they had +modifiers to each skill and it should not be a problem.
The Hunter rolled a 3.
The Bloodrager rolled a 2.
I didn't cry. I wouldn't give the game the satisfaction!
Made it through the second scenario after chasing down the villain. Had our first encounter with the Arboreal Blight, and that's just awful. I wasn't getting the bit about it doing damage before and after the combat.We didn't get the true pain of Arobreal Blight until we had to encounter it at the Great Hall, which makes you summon the Servitor Demon before you encounter a villain or henchman, and it doesn't say nothing about only villains or henchman FROM the location deck. Flubbed my Fiendish Tree kill on the first one, so it went back into the deck and we ended up having to deal with it twice. Encountering a Sloth Demon beforehand was fine for Adowyn, she can just recharge a card, but when Kyra came over that was a big expenditure of her resources. Thankfully, she had a shield to deal with the combat damage, but you still gotta use two spells to deal with the Sloth Demon and the Fiendish Tree.
Then, as it turns out, the villain was in that location. And what's the villain do? Oh, is it summon a Sloth Demon? So now Kyra has to encounter Sloth Demon > Sloth Demon > Villain. Each of the Sloth Demons forcing her to discard a card, meaning she needs a perfect hand of 2 sacrificial cards and 3 spells to deal with the encounters (or 1 weapon and 2 spells, but pffft). Suffice to say, she lost.
But there's only one other location open, we can still try!
Villain gets shuffled back into same location, Kyra encounters her again, same plays out, game over. D: D: D: D:
I'm not gonna cry too much, I think the onslaught of bad luck was precipitated by Kyra drawing the Demonbane Light Crossbrow when she closed the Shrine of Imomomedar. Good trade for a failed scenario, I'd say (or Adowyn would, anyway).
Ouch. I've got Seelah and Kyra paired up, and I'm loving Kyra's passive heal, when I can use it. My friend has Bal and Imrijka.
Which reminds me of another bad result. Imrijka was in the Wounded Lands, where you can fight a monster instead of the regular check to acquire a boon. First exploration, finds scale armor, decides to fight the monster to trigger his free explore chance. He draws a Mongrel Ranger, which does 1d4-1 damage before combat... and rolls a 4. He does win the fight, then rolls a 1 for his chance to explore.
It's going to be a long time out before my full group gets to Wrath (in deck 4 on Runelords, and planning on S&S after). That's going to be Alain, Crowe, Shardra, Enora, Adowyn, and I'm not sure who are sixth will be. I feel it may take some work to get them going, but they'll be a strong group down the road.
Just got mine in the mail. Holy crap, there's flavor text on regular monsters now! Yay! Also, the name text for monsters is black now instead of white. Interesting.
I also noticed every single weapon has either the basic or elite trait, even the magic ones. This is a pretty good change, since we'll stop getting repeating base set/set 1 weapons once we can banish elites. The only exception is the heavy crossbow, which probably doesn't have the elite trait because its RotRL version doesn't either (which I think it should, but it's probably more trouble to change than it's worth).
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Interesting thing I noted - you can't run out the blessings deck in AD1 scenario 1. There will always be a card there, even if it's just the big bad guy blowing up at a random location every turn (then immediately returning to the blessings deck).Interesting, so this scenario could only end in a win or in a TPK, the latter probably resulting from a stalemate where the surviving characters are unable to corner and/or vanquish the villain, while Khorramzadeh blasts a random location each turn.
Not precisely. There is no "normal" villain, and you get to close locations by encountering (not defeating) henchmen, without fulfilling the closing requirements.
So it could end in a TPK but it's a lot less likely than you think.
After some of the roughness of the B scenarios the first two scenarios of AD1 are actually pretty easy.
We didn't get the true pain of Arobreal Blight until we had to encounter it at the Great Hall, which makes you summon the Servitor Demon before you encounter a villain or henchman, and it doesn't say nothing about only villains or henchman FROM the location deck.
Ouch. But I think you made that harder on yourself than you needed too.
Summoned cards cannot cause other cards to be summoned.
The Arobreal Blight summons henchmen right? Those summoned henchmen can't trigger the Great Hall's power.
Though that is an epic story.
Haha, so obvious! Wouldn't have saved us from the 2x Sloth Demons before the villain, but it would've been nice to dodge those extra encounters before the trees. We'll keep it in mind for next time. Would rather err on the side of too many encounters than too few.
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I see a lot of people having trouble with 3/4 party groups. Has anyone played 2 player or 5/6 and noticed similar results with difficulty and such? I ask because I mainly play with just me and the fiance.We played with 5 the other night and it was quite difficult. We were unable to win the second scenario due to two arboreal traps, which pretty much wiped me (as Balazar) and our shaman out. After the third trap, all I could do was try not to get killed. Then the third arboreal trap sprung. I barely survived.
Ultimately we ran out of time. On the last blessing card, the big bad was cornered and defeated but, unfortunately, other players forgot to make their checks to temporarily close locations before the fight. Since they forgot (and I really wanted to win), I had them roll. All they needed to do was roll a survival or fortitude 8 check. Both the Hunter and Bloodrager confidently stated they had +modifiers to each skill and it should not be a problem.
The Hunter rolled a 3.
The Bloodrager rolled a 2.I didn't cry. I wouldn't give the game the satisfaction!
This story sounds very familiar to me. I started a run Monday night with three other players; we had Kyra (me), Enora, Alain and Imrijka. The Godless Ones went fairly smoothly, although I did note with some discomfort that, for a fairly easy scenario, we finished with a blessings deck that was pretty light. Nonetheless, we pressed on.
The Elven Entanglement didn't start out great, but it didn't really start out terrible either. We only ran into the Arboreal Blight once, and Kyra was the only one who failed to defeat the tree; moreover, there were a few bits and pieces of damage reduction floating around, including Kyra's Potion of Beast Skin that took almost all the sting out of the encounter. We failed the first try on two of the three Traps, but didn't fail the corresponding Con/Fort checks afterward, so it mostly just cost us time.
Eventually, we got down to three open locations, one of which was the Dark Forest, where we knew the villain was. My Kyra was sitting on one of the other locations, Alain had ridden Donaghan to the second, and we sent Imrijka to chase down the villain. There was only one turn left on the clock, but Dark Forest meant that Imrika's two guaranteed explores would see at least 3, maybe 4, of the 5 cards left in the location. We had good odds.
And the plan almost worked. Imrijka found the villain on her second explore. Alain closed his location. I had to make a Wisdom 8 check, but a blessing meant I was rolling 2d12. (Odds of success: 81.56%, approximately.)
The dice came up 1, 2.
And that was that. Imrijka blew the bad guy away, but he had somewhere to run and we had no way to dig him out of the almost-full location where he ran to with just that one turn.
We decided we'd had enough at that point.
I feel your pain. I find it odd that those B scenarios can go south very quickly, given that they are the first experience a lot of players will have with the game.
My current group is on the last scenario of deck 1, and I can attest to them being a bit easier than the B scenarios. Though whether that was due to random luck or not, I can't say.
Got my AD2 in the mail yesterday. Without going into detail, I can say this much: LOVING the variety of "looks" that the scenarios are throwing at us; and the AD reward has me excited (if perhaps a touch apprehensive) for what we'll see in AD3.
One of the boons may end up with its own mini strategy guide within the next couple weeks, because it does something that is literally OUT THERE. And yes, the word "literally" is being used properly here.
Weapons are kinda meh; the spells are interesting though certainly light on combat upgrades; suffice to say you might not be eager to RFG those +2d4 attack spells.
Also, love the barriers, especially the barrier henchmen.
One of the boons may end up with its own mini strategy guide within the next couple weeks, because it does something that is literally OUT THERE. And yes, the word "literally" is being used properly here.
I love that you used no nouns and yet I know exactly what card this is.
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Aside from Sweet Dragon Costume being the best goblin promo to date, I can't get over the new Support card. One of the first times in the game we've spoilered ourselves on future scenarios/henchmen just because we're like "what the heck do we do with this thing?" Consider my mild disappointment at the lack of a persistent Support card like Ships completely erased!
(and, between that and Mythic Paths, also gone is my salt at being stiffed out of a Skill Feat during AP0 and AP1 :D)
Heavily looking forward to the rest of this deck!