Fangwood gravestones

[wkover]

Just a funny observation.

In my PACG groups, Fangwood Thieves has killed as many characters as in all other previous Adventure Paths combined. Here's the rundown...

Pre-Fangwood deaths:

Skull and Shackles: Mogmurch dies in final scenario because Alahazra does too much scouting and not enough healing.

Tapestry's Tides, scenario 1C: Seoni and Lirianne die to a structural damage barrage.

(We technically had one other death in Wrath of the Righteous, but that character got a mythic revival - so they ultimately survived.)

Fangwood deaths:

Deaths #1 and #2:

FT 1-A: The dreaded "3" is rolled. Comes with Ablaze (damage), Wounded (losing cards from deck), and Elementals (AYA damage and fire immunity).

Mogmurch immediately loses to an elemental (fire immunity!), takes a ton of damage, and gets wounded. Ablaze finishes him off.

Reta takes a few hits from barriers and elementals, then Ablaze finishes her off.

Death #3:

FT-1B (siege scenario): Raz can't handle the barrier and BYA/AYA monster damage, and passes away valiantly. (Note: The same guy who played Reta in 1A also played Raz in 1B - two consecutive deaths!)

Morals of the story:

- Don't play Mogmurch

- Scenarios that can do damage every turn are dangerous, particularly for level 1 characters

- Don't ever roll a 3!

Anyone else have similar deadly luck?

[Matsu Kurisu]

Urk, that sounds nasty.
I am looking forward to the day that OrgPlay decks are ALL new cards

[FindleInClev]

So funny story- at Origins, we played and there the siege scenario was actually marked as 'A'! I think all but one of our 6 wiped out in it dead. Total disaster. A couple days later we were having dinner at the bar next to where Mike and gang do their 'Origins at Night' podcast, but it would be a bit later. But they started to setup, and Mike saw us there and came over very nice and concerned and said they would be moving some of the gear around but he would make sure they didn't do anything around us, and not to be worried about it.

And I said "Mike, we played Fangwood A yesterday, and I don't think there's anything you could do to us that would be worse."

He immediately apologized said that was a mistake, the scenarios got mixed out of order, etc. But I told him that was fine, we played 'B' and that worked out well - which is what I assume is 'A' now. And even though A was a nightmare we commented that there were a couple completely new people at the table, and they had a great time regardless how it turned out. I do know the volunteer running the PACG stuff said later that she stopped running the siege all together, because everyone was getting completely destroyed. Unless someone asked for it, she was just using the non-siege scenario.

But that was a great moment at the Con, and it was as usual a great time.

[eddiephlash]

The one Fanwood scenario I took over running during Gen Con had an Imrijka death. I know there were several other deaths as well throughout the con.

[redeux]

I played 5 sessions of Fangwood, of which my SO joined me for 3. No losses or deaths in our games. I did play 5B-1A twice, though we rolled 5 (Goblin Marauder, Poisoned, and Confusing), and 6 (Wights, Frightened, Withering).

Both times i played 5B-1A we had no healing in the party, so I can see Ablaze being troublesome with bad rolls.

I do think part of my tables' successes were due to some players having characters that weren't fresh tier 1's. In fact I think most of the players didn't have fresh tier 1 characters when we did 5B-1A.

[Keith Richmond]

Based on the above, I'll look at other options for updating the Elemental roll for 1A to be a little more survivable. I was not told it was particularly deadly by the team at GenCon, Origins, or PaizoCon (the only scenario called out at Gen Con was 6-1C which has a different than normal wrinkle that I think was tripping people up, so I gave some advice to give those tables if they come up), but it's a little rough to throw at newbies.

Are people really dying to the siege, though? I mean, nothing forces you to explore and you have enough turns that you don't really need to discard allies or blessings to work through the siege deck. I've checked in on people playing that scenario many times and never seen a death and the tables largely felt like they could succeed without any particular effort, modulo maybe one tough barrier for the group.

I even made Tyler test the siege twice, and he didn't die either time, and Tyler is really an excellent barometer for if a scenario is too deadly (I'll admit, my own play style is insufficiently reckless).

[wkover]

Keith Richmond wrote:

Are people really dying to the siege, though? I mean, nothing forces you to explore and you have enough turns that you don't really need to discard allies or blessings to work through the siege deck.

I don't have a ton of data on the siege scenario, but I can share a few observations:

- The scenario encourages people to team up (location cards are only lost if a bane is undefeated and not avenged), and there are numerous barriers and monsters that affect all local characters (scourges, damage, etc.). No joke, at a neighboring table one player had 4-5 scourges simultaneously. Yikes.

- Certain scourges are rough. For example, if a player becomes Frightened on turn 1 or turn 2, they don't have many options. They could effectively bow out of the siege and never explore, but who wants to do that? Also, it used to be that you could safely end the game by choosing not to explore and running out the blessings deck. If the Wounded scourge is in play, that may not be possible.

Note: It's easier to get rid of scourges in regular (non-OP) games than in OP games, as there are specific cards for doing that (e.g., Balmberry).

- Under the one-blessing limit, barriers can be particularly challenging. And the siege deck has a lot of barriers.

- Under the one-blessing limit, examining/scouting locations is better than ever. I've played the siege scenario 3 times, and our games were partly successful because we always had at least one scouting character (Zadim, Ramexes, etc.). We routinely skipped turns so that the most appropriate character could deal with the upcoming deadly bane. Without that advantage, we might have been in trouble. I'd hope that the siege scenario is survivable without scouting, but I wouldn't know. :)

Anyway, I'm sure that others will chime in with their own experiences. Thanks for listening...

[zeroth_hour2]

Keith Richmond wrote:

Tyler is really an excellent barometer for if a scenario is too deadly

Lol. I still remember the Open he died in.

[eddiephlash]

It's the scourges. Getting hit early can severely limit your options for the rest of the scenario. Having something like the Trader from MM that you can visit before scenarios might help mitigate the lack of curse removal in class decks, as would people using more Ultimate decks and Core/Curse replacement.

[wkover]

Just a note that the Core scourges aren't curses (are they?), so curse removal doesn't help. Ultimate Wilderness does have Balmberry Bush, which removes scourges - but that's a level 4 card.

For the siege, it would be nice to have a "field medic" removal option for the nastier scourges. Something like:

You may bury 2 (random?) cards to banish a scourge from a local character.

[zeroth_hour2]

wkover wrote:

Just a note that the Core scourges aren't curses (are they?), so curse removal doesn't help. Ultimate Wilderness does have Balmberry Bush, which removes scourges - but that's a level 4 card.

For the siege, it would be nice to have a "field medic" removal option for the nastier scourges. Something like:

You may bury 2 (random?) cards to banish a scourge from a local character.

They don't have the Curse trait, so they are not Scourges. Restorative Touch _does_ (both UM and Core versions) - but that's also Level 3.

[ayryq]

We lost (badly) in scenario four in this one. (Playing at home, Core cards only, Kyra, Seelah, Mersiel, Lem.) The problem for us was the closing of each location.

The first two locations require the player who just fought the Henchman to then encounter the danger (delaying the closing is not practical, and not helpful either as these are some of the most bane-filled locations in the box).

Then the storybook rule requires a random character to encounter the danger upon moving. Of course, we're all pretty spent having helped the unfortunate character who found the Henchman. And, of course, the danger Drake came up pretty often; both it and Inferno Trap have a BA check affecting local characters, which is everyone in this scenario.

Three of the four of us made it to the last location (limping and bleeding...) but with just three hours left.

We beat the first three barely (rolled a 1 for the first scenario, Drained/Unhallowed) but the final one thrashed us.

[zeroth_hour2]

I meant above that they are not Curses.

We played 1A and 1B the last two weeks, and I found 1A survivable despite getting the dreaded Ablaze Wounded combo. But we had a ton of healing (Grazzle + 2 other characters with Cure)

1B was a standard siege scenario but we also got through it with only 1 bane undefeated - I was Core Harsk and scouted the siege deck a lot which helped. 1B isn't hard with 3 players, but siege scenarios in general get much harder with more players I believe.