RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32
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I'm running my solo Enora through Season of the Runelords. I did 2-2B tonight, and this scenario is very tough solo. The gimmick is that you move boons around and roll a d6 every time you see one, trying to collect at least 4 of a type in one location so you can close it.
In a solo game, the only boon type of which there are even 4 in the entire scenario is Item.
I was able to win with just three blessings left, by emptying two locations while piling all the boons on the third. I closed the two empty locations normally, then underwent possibly my most frustrating attempt to roll a 4 on a d6 ever. I went through about 7 or 8 turns of flip a boon, fight a bandit, roll a d6, spend extra explores, fight more bandits, roll more d6s. Eventually I rolled a 4 and won.
Winning was gratifying but I'm not sure this scenario is supposed to be this tough solo. There are only 3 weapons, 2? armors, 2 spells, 3 allies, and 0 blessings to work with so you have to win on items.
As you add more players, you get to experience the boon game far more on this one, yep.
In an extraordinarily rare look at my review / test notes:
2B is potentially maddening for very small groups, particularly solo who can _only_ get 4+ Items
(3 weapons, 2 armors, 2 spells, 5 items - 3 at the junk beach - 3 allies, 0 blessings)
Start at shadow clock, 9 blessings to defeat banes and shuffle boons all into junk beach, then close. Repeat at the not-beach, then another 12 blessings to get 1 in 6 on a boon isn't too bad.
And that pretty much matches your experience :)
I was looking forward to getting two 2 upgrades on this one but even with 5 players we ended up with "just" one 2 armor, two 1 allies, and a 1 weapon. As there are six adventure 1 scenarios, we're all set on 1 boons. So I don't think anyone took anything. Such a wide array of boons, all laid out on the table, and mostly crap. :/
Of course, my boyfriend beat up a barrier (or monster) that allowed him to add an item to his hand, so he acquired a 2 Item (which is what I want). However, the boons in the final location deck REPLACE the standard deck upgrade, so we ruled that his two (!) acquired boons were not included in that (as they weren't in the last location).
Anyway, I relatively enjoyed this one, what with bandits being kind of nice and all that. Myrtle only lost once (?) I think. So she banished recharged her Lab Coat to reduce all damage to 0.
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RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32
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Adventure 2.2 in general ended up very light on upgrades for me...I think I took 3 total over all the scenarios, and that includes this one. And one of those was a 1 card I still wanted. I'll be going into adventure 2.3 with very few AD 2 boons.
I'm noticing that since I'm playing solo with a character who is missing two entire card types - Enora has no weapon or armor slots - that often I'm left with no viable upgrade choices.
Our team of three did pretty well, all things considered.
We would have done better, I think, if we hadn't misread the "shuffle it into another open location deck instead" as "random open location". Caught that about 9 turns in. Oops. ;)
Our strategy was what Keith hinted at -> to move the stuff out of the low-count locations into the high-count ones. So digging Shadow Clock and moving all of its boons, for instance.
We should Not have done the same with the Warrens, tho, as we were also throwing monsters all over the place - one per explore no matter what was encountered. That should have been our last location to explore, when it would have taken one boon encounter and one correct d6 roll to be done. Oops, again.
But we did really well on the upgrades, grabbing an Item 2, Spell 2, and Weapon 2, among other things.
Iceman:
My group of 3 did the same thing, reading it as "random," although we went through the ENTIRE scenario before we saw our error (d'oh).
Although we did hit up Warrens last and closed it quite quickly. Had two blessings in the blessings deck... cut it pretty close.
My group of 5 failed the first time, won the second. The second time we just sent everything to one location and closed the others by emptying them.
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My group of 5 failed the first time, won the second. The second time we just sent everything to one location and closed the others by emptying them.
That's what our group did. We sent everything to the warrens after we realized that the bandits were "encountering a monster" and would thus create way too many monsters at other locations. Then we closed everything else by emptying them, and then we matched 4 at the warrens.
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So, yeah, WAY easier if you don't have to put boons in random other locations. Also a big fan of being able to use the same cards for deck upgrades as someone else. We both got an Item 2 and an Ally 2. Hooray!
We also played with moving boons to a random open location. We actually had no problems, though, since I mostly cowered in the corner while the dream team of Selim "I heal my extra explore cards every time anyone at this location encounters a Bandit" and Reta "I discard and then bury trash cards to explore after a fight, which is nearly always because the boons are Bandits" annihilated things.
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So, yeah, WAY easier if you don't have to put boons in random other locations. Also a big fan of being able to use the same cards for deck upgrades as someone else. We both got an Item 2 and an Ally 2. Hooray!We also played with moving boons to a random open location. We actually had no problems, though, since I mostly cowered in the corner while the dream team of Selim "I heal my extra explore cards every time anyone at this location encounters a Bandit" and Reta "I discard and then bury trash cards to explore after a fight, which is nearly always because the boons are Bandits" annihilated things.
What scaredy cat were you playing?
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What scaredy cat were you playing?So, yeah, WAY easier if you don't have to put boons in random other locations. Also a big fan of being able to use the same cards for deck upgrades as someone else. We both got an Item 2 and an Ally 2. Hooray!We also played with moving boons to a random open location. We actually had no problems, though, since I mostly cowered in the corner while the dream team of Selim "I heal my extra explore cards every time anyone at this location encounters a Bandit" and Reta "I discard and then bury trash cards to explore after a fight, which is nearly always because the boons are Bandits" annihilated things.
Mother Myrtle. There was no way I could survive encountering the 5-7 bandits per round that those two would have thrown at me, but neither did I necessarily want to throw the boons back at them (since we thought we had to do it randomly).
What scaredy cat were you playing?Mother Myrtle. There was no way I could survive encountering the 5-7 bandits per round that those two would have thrown at me, but neither did I necessarily want to throw the boons back at them (since we thought we had to do it randomly).
Oh geez this one's rough for Myrtle. I mean, they're all rough for Myrtle, but this one especially so.
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Oh geez this one's rough for Myrtle. I mean, they're all rough for Myrtle, but this one especially so.What scaredy cat were you playing?Mother Myrtle. There was no way I could survive encountering the 5-7 bandits per round that those two would have thrown at me, but neither did I necessarily want to throw the boons back at them (since we thought we had to do it randomly).
I've actually usually been the second most alive (hard to compete with Selim's auto-heal perma-near-max mostly, but there was one time he failed two really easy combat checks with a mercenary in a row and got pretty low), but that's mainly because once Reta has buried enough things, she's always simultaneously low and hard for me to heal. I've had to hold onto both cures all this time and basically not take spell upgrades, and I'm starting to get really concerned about my ability to recharge things with my Int since I'm putting everything into Wisdom (will almost certainly take the role card that lowers that base from 7 to 5, just for that one ability). I've found that the ability to use my failed-recharge alchemy cards as a grab bag secondary hand via Alchemist's Kit has been essential when something unexpected happens and an ally triggers a fight when I have nothing to attack with. Also that stained glass golem is ridiculously good; it's saved me from failing checks several times every game. Of course, the other alchs have access to both cards too.
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My Darago was, in fact, playing with Mother Myrtle. She just kinda got used to the idea that she would take damage now and again. Since you get to examine the deck after the first Bandit-victory, there's no real need to defeat bandits after that, so much as control how much damage you take. Stuff will pile up on the Warrens either way. She kept her heals and healing potion cycling, and was never in horrible danger.
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My Darago was, in fact, playing with Mother Myrtle. She just kinda got used to the idea that she would take damage now and again. Since you get to examine the deck after the first Bandit-victory, there's no real need to defeat bandits after that, so much as control how much damage you take. Stuff will pile up on the Warrens either way. She kept her heals and healing potion cycling, and was never in horrible danger.
Ah, get down to no cards and then just use the one explore, figuring somebody else will kill it? That would definitely work safely and eke out another explore, but in my case, the others already explored enough between them to where if I explored as well, I would be forcing Selim to recharge a blessing or ally to the Bandit recharge ability (which he could use to take an equivalent explore and then immediately heal), so I figured better to be elsewhere with blessings in hand in case something went wrong.
Bard class deck and Inquisitor class deck have Dagger +1. Alchemist class deck has the Corrosive Dagger +1.