Wednesday, Amanda, Finnegan and I returned to Ulfenkarn for another adventure in the Cursed City!
In the past week, I'd finished up Qulathis the Exile and Dagnai Holdenstock and later (like, earlier on Wednesday!) Octren Glimscry and Cleona Zeitengale! So we were able to try them out.
I ran them through another Hunt Journey...
The mission area was fairly compact and had only three Mysterious Objects and thus would only have three hostile groups at a time.
The Hunt missions require that the players kill TEN champions. Two of the first three Hostile groups were Deadwalker Zombies - the only Hostile group that DOESN'T have champions (a champion is, generally, a miniature that's a bit different and has one more wound than the regular members of a Hostile Group - or a bigger badder single opponent - like Watch Captain Halgrim, or one of the Korsagi Nightguards or Vyrkos Blood-Born vampires!
Dagnai Holdenstock tore off to slay some Ulfenwatch and claim the first treasure!
He kind of needed the help of the venerable Octren Glimscry to finish them off, though...
He may LOOK like a doddering old fool, but that wizard is NASTY!!
Qlathis went off in the other direction hunting some Deadwalker Zombies.
With the Zombies cleared out of the way, Cleona Zeitengale was able to get to one of the Mysterious Objects, and drew the first Crisis the team had to deal with that evening...
Cleona hear cries from a house down a nearby alley - the occupants were fighting off a horde of Deadwalker Zombies... As with most Crises, there is always an option to either help out or turn away. Helping out almost always provides a benefit, ignoring the plight of the common people almost always ends with dire results (often the Fear or Influence levels rising!). In the end Cleona helped fight off the Zombies and was successful, but took a bit of damage in the process... but succeeding rewarded her with two points of inspiration and that was enough extra to flip her over onto her Inspired side !
By this point, Amanda decided she was too cold in the Game Room and went to steal my SQUIG MEGA HOODY again... seriously, she's getting far more use out of it than ME!
Cleona also tried out and area effect attack she had, which can be pretty nasty, if you happen to have a large group of hostiles all bunched up and no friendlies too close!
Octren and Dagnai battling off more Skeletons!
Qulathis searched another Mysterious Object and found a very handy healing potion of sorts!
The she turned around to try and murder some rats...
And was not successful... but Dagnai was nearby and cleaved through them with his axe...
I wondered if Dagnai might be a primarily long-range fighter and be useless in Melee - like Golnir Coalbeard from Shadows Over Hammerhal... this was not the case... Holdenstock is an absolute butcher with that axe of his!
Octren fighting off some Bats...
Finally one of the Kosargi Nightguard lumbered into the area... it took Octren and Cleona and Qulathis all working together to take it down!
And then it was quiet for a bit...
Eventually some more rats showed up and were quickly dispatched.
Dagnai chopped down a few more Zombies...
Qulathis shot down an Ulfenwatch Sergeant as they were arriving...
The two other with him charged her, though...
and then one of the Vyrkos showed up!
Octren and Cleona took it down...
Holdenstock rushed in to finish off the Ulfenwatch...
And with that, ten Champions were taken out, so Octren went to the extraction zone and signalled The Adamant - Holdenstocks airship - to extract them!
As they were trying to get out, a few Zombies and Ulfenwatch threatened to overrun them as they made for the extraction point...
But our heroes were able to make their getaway!
During the Extraction Event the Adamant was in position to let loose a broadside at one of the towers of the Ebon Citadel on it's way out and blasted a big hole in it - reducing the Influence levels further!
So all four of the new characters gained experience and there was even enough Realmstone collected that they were able to buy an upgrade for... Qulathis...? I think?
We talked afterwards of perhaps playing THREE games next week. The first two would be a Deliverance Journey and a Scavenge Journey on Tuesday and Wednesday (Xmas and Xmas Eve) to bring this new crew up to First Level, and then from the eight Heroes, pick four to go on the first Decapitation Journey - to take out on of the Rulers of Ulfenkarn!
This is going to take a LONG time to get through... I think I calculated that IF you just picked four of the heroes to play and ran them through the minimum number of adventures - three to gain each level and then the decapitation journey(s) for each level... and ALL of those journeys were successful and NO ONE ever died... it would take 17 sessions.. If we were to do six missions, to bring everyone up to the next level before doing a decapitation journey it would be a minimum of 32 missions (again, if nothing went wrong and all missions were successful). I've read of some people taking 40+ missions to play through the campaign. If only playing ONE game a week... that could be a good part of a YEAR to get through the campaign!
One ONE hand... that's a LOT of play value for this one game.
One the OTHER hand... that's a BIG COMMITMENT to the game and I wonder if we'll get through it all before we all get bored and want to move on to other things..
Only got eight games out of Shadows over Hammerhal... and when we first finished it up, I kind of felt like... THAT'S IT!?! But looking back maybe it wasn't so bad...? Eight 1.5 to 2 hour sessions means the game COULD be played through in a marathon gaming weekend! Which might be fun, if some friends from out of town gathered for a weekend of gaming (could NOT do that with Cursed City!)
I feel like there has to be a happy medium
I know there are house rules people have posted on Board Game Geek to "speed things up" a bit.. but I haven't looked at them yet. Could be something to look into, I guess.
The family seems committed to play though this so... AND then we have Night Wars to play through after... (AND there were a few scenarios in White Dwarf magazines a while back that could be played - though a BUNCH of Ghouls of the Flesh-Eater Courts are required to play...)
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