Because Crises and Events had risen both the Influence and Fear levels for the campaign, Finnegan suggested possibly doing another Deliverance or Hunt Journey... but I pointed out that it was right back where it was at the beginning of the campaign... so it was decided to continue on with the original plan of doing a Savenge Journey...
(Of course, it is suggested, when starting the campaign, to start with a Hunt Journey, to immediately start bringing down the Influence level! Ha!)
As with the previous game, Amanda played Qulathis the Exile and Cleona Zeitengale and Finnegan played Dagnai Holdenstock and Octren Glimscry. I played all the hostiles and kind of kept the game moving forward.
Because of the previous game's Extraction Event - where the Adamant was forced to land and do repairs - this adventure was played with the nightfall token in the Night position - the entire game was played after nightfall, and the hostiles would be considerably stronger!!
This was a somewhat larger map to play on.. Which didn't seem so bad. There was room to maneuver and get away to recover and take a breather...?
The Hostiles were alerted to the scavengers arrival, and were marching towards the drop zone before any of our heroes left it. The ulfenwatch fell in behind Watch Captain Halgrim.
Octren Glimscry was the first to encounter them...
Glimscry called out; "Ah, we meet again Captain Halgrim... my how quickly your masters have reconstituted your decrepit bones! You must be good and obedient little LAPDOG!"
Glimscry shot back a Gravesand Tincture and shuddered... "Now let me look into your cold, dead, empty eye sockets!" and unleashed his Hollow Stare... and the Watch Captain, once again, crumbled to dust...
(the tincture damages Glirmscry, but the rest of his attacks deal WAY MORE damage for the rest of the round!)
Qulathis the Exile rapidly caught up to the strange old man and started shooting down Ulfenwatch.
Dagnai joined them and took down another... but in their haste to chase down the Ulfenwatch and claim the first treasures... they'd left Cleona Zeitengalem at the drop zone still adjusting her equipment.
She was quickly overwhelmed by swarms of bats that savagely attacked her!
Qualthis came back to help...
Octrem Glimscry was the first to explore a Mysterious Object...
And THAT is where things started to go downhill...
The search triggered a CRISIS
The Crisis involved a Gnawbone Stray showing up on the board and began a horrid yowling...
...in the furthest corner from the Heroes!
While the undead cat meowled away, all of the Heroes were Fatigued and could not recovered until it was removed! FAtigued meant all Activation Dice rolled by the heroes instantly turned into ONES upon their activation... which meant NO running and NO special actions of any kind!! (other than with Destiny Dice!)
The injured Zeitengale was chased down by swarms of Corpse Rats and further damaged and infected by their bite!
Unfortunately, the Stray stood right by the lynchgat that was also furthest from the heroes, and therefore the one where all reinforcements were arriving - so the Heroes would have to fight through any reinforcements that arrived, until they could get close enough that another was further away...
They were first attacked by Bats and Zombies... which aren't so bad... except that zombies, at night time, ARE pretty nasty - they move twice as fast and do nearly double the damage and hit way better!
... and then one of the Vyrkos Blood-Born vampires showed up as reinforcements...
it was quicly followed by more Zombies...
Qylathis and Dagnair fought off the feral vampire...
Octren finally showed up to give aid.
and the beat down the zombies
But other reinforcements arrived - including a Kosargi Nightguard and chased down Cleona...
Qlathis made it to the Gnawbone Stray and put it out of their misery...
By now Cleona had four Grievous Wounds and was hanging on by a thread - only able to use Destiny Dice... and there were a few rounds were there was only one, on NO Destiny Dice!
Octren came to help her.
Qulathis decided to try and quickly run around on her own and grab treasures... She found some Realmstone, but as she approached the next Mysterious Object location, she found her path blocked by Deadwalker Zombies... and their master; Gorslav the Gravekeeper!
While Gorslave the Gravekeeper is on the table, all Deadwalker Zombies almost always activate TWICE - once on their own activation card, and again as part of Gorslav's activation.
(Did I mention that Zombies are WAY MORE DEADLY at night!?)
So Qulathis quickly ran back to help the others try to deal with the Ulfenwatch and Kosargi Nightguard, before the Zombies and Gorslav could catch up...
The ulfenwatch were easy enough to deal with... but the Kosargi Nightguard turned out to be a LOT tougher than the others they faced (Holdenstock hit it three times with his axe, rolling crits - which should have dealt nine damage, which would have just about killed it... but it reduced all three attacks by two, taking only a total of three... )
Then Zombies just started popping up all over the place... and dealing damage to everyone faster than they could recover...
And then Gorslav caught up...
The Kosargi Nightguard his Holdenstock with a crit, dealing SIX damage, which Holdenstock was not able to save against... which took him out of action!
(in the confusion of the melee, however, the critically injured Holdestock was able to sneakily crawl away into a dark corner and then escape while no one was looking!)
Gorslav pushed through and finally took down Cleona... a Zombie struck down Octren Glimscry...
Qulathis decided there was zero chance of success and decided to make for the extraction point.. but she was too weak an injured (three Grievous injuries) to do much other than stagger away from the combat...
The Deadwalker Zombies easily caught up to her and took her down...
(While all were busy pursuing her, the injured Glimscry dragged away the unconcious Cleona Zeitengale!)
Somehow
Wow.... so our first UNSUCESSFUL Journey! There had been a Crisis in amongst all the action that had been successfully dealt with and dropped BOTH Fear and Influence during the game, so when they rose again at the end, they were pretty much back where they started...
Checking for survival, luckily ALL the characters survived the ordeal!
However, when we rolled for an extraction event, the Adamant was forced to land and make more repairs again! So, once again, the NEXT game would START after nightfall - when all the Hostiles are super deadly!
Most disappointing was the fact that this group of heroes did not gain experience and make it to Level One!? I'd really, REALLY hoped (and, honestly, kind of expected!) that ALL the characters would be at Level One and we could attempt the first Decapitation Journey - going after one of Radukar's Lieutenants - and be able to pick out a team from all eight of the heroes...
We did discuss the possibility of just doing a Decapitation Journey anyway, with the first four characters we'd played with... but for a number of reasons, decided just to do another one of the basic Journeys with this crew and (hopefully) get them all up to Level One... There were other reasons for this (partly because we had a limited window in which to play on Thursday, and I wasn't entirely sure we'd be able to get all the way through a Decapitation Journey in that time (there are two parts to each, which are, themselves, probably going to take as long as a regular mission...)
Everyone had been feeling that the first five Journeys had seemed... a little on the easy side... (with the exception of the first Deliverance Journey - but that was because I'd done a number of things WRONG, which had made that a LOT harder). I assured the others that with each level, they'll get considerably harder! The game starts off easy - so players have a chance to learn the game before it gets super deadly...
This mission there were just a BUNCH of things that all wend wrong at the same time... Starting the game after nightfall (all the hostiles were nasty right from the get-go, rather than only getting really nasty near the end). The crisis that reduced them all to Fatigued... and could not recover (normally fatigued reduces all your activation dice to ones for a round, then you recover... and often it's only something affecting ONE character... but this was ALL of them... and they were fatigued for multiple rounds...) and then they couldn't get TO the Gnawbone Stray to resolve that crisis, because there were so many hostiles that blocked their way... then the Kosargi Nightguard AND Gorslav AND SO MANY Zombies all showed up at once... yeah... Kind of a "Perfect Storm" situation!
Hopefully, going forward, everyone will all be a little more cautious and a little less cocky and inclined to go charging off on their own! The Journey was a wake up call. It can seem like it's all going so easily... until it isn't and things very quickly snowball out of control!
Still good fun! Looking forward to playing again tomorrow... or... later today...?
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