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Mining for Horrors (A Shadows of Brimstone Topic)

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11 Oct 2016 07:49 #235895 by Egg Shen
Just an FYI, but FFP is having a sale at their online store for Halloween.

Looks like they have the buy 2 get 1 supplement free deal. Just figured I'd mention it. Seems like it is going on until the end of the week.

flyingfrogproductions.mybigcommerce.com/
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17 Oct 2016 10:39 - 17 Oct 2016 10:41 #236313 by JEM
I finally relented and ordered four packs of artifacts. If I hadn't already sprung for the Growing Dread pack I could have 2+1'd it with the fourth and also got the new gear as well. Such is life.

Another Friday, another adventure in Brimstone, but before that, a solo level 1 game on Thursday as a kind of prologue, mostly to test out the missions. Now, I've played Brimstone pure solo before (one character- US Marshal one time, fan-made Occultist another couple) and it's been a little tougher than the two player game, but doable. Trederra, it turns out, not so much.

Now, there's this weird thing going on with some of these missions, much like in Cynder, in that they can be won without fighting anything, in the first handful of turns, just purely depending on token draws. The mission I tested starts you in Trederra, and you essentially just have to move the posse marker five times (ie reveal five new tiles) and have no enemies on board. Due to corridors, quiet rooms and some effect I forget that gave two bumps of the posse marker, it was almost mission accomplished without doing anything but walk around. The marker moved to the fifth spot but the token spawned an attack- a Trederran Battle Group. In this case consisting of a Mutant Lieutenant, three legionnaires and a grenadier. The legionnaires didn't do a great deal, trying to snipe from the back of the tile, but they didn't need to. Even the grenadier was only half effective because he closed into melee, which neutralized his thermal charges. None of that mattered, because the lieutenant was brutal (not game "Brutal" but just really bloody tough), with no elite abilities he was already up at 18 health and rolling eight attack dice a turn. Two revive tokens made no difference, it was a grisly scene of slaughter and the Frontier Doc fell fast. Game over.

So, it looked like Trederra would bring a good challenge to the Friday group, which consisted of the four from last time, plus Rancher Fred returning. Mother O'Malley'O'Connel'O'Carrol'O'Reilly'O'Brian'O'Sullivan being still absent. I didn't want to risk the game being just "Explore five tiles and win" so I went with the always reliable "Find a clue to get the gate to the otherworld, find two clues after that to get the big boss fight" mission that works for every world.

We found the gate in the first room, though we had to fight three hell vermin and run through the map tile hitting for damage each turn with an environment effect. +2 movement helps a lot with that. The first couple of tiles in Trederra were quiet, even with the group magpie Rancher wanting to scavenge every tile and poke the Dread deck. That was soon to change. The next room we encountered, we triggered an attack from a group of Assault-capable legionnaires. This meant that instead of hanging back, they would run into melee (which still shooting) thus doubling their attacks. The gunslinger used most of his deadeye shots to overcome their increased health, the marshal almost fell, but we did the strategic level-up on her so she recovered full hit points and gained her ability to fire two shots. Thus empowered she was able to take down three of the already wounded enemies.

After catching our breath we looked at the two exits we took the rightward path. This revealed a minefield that would have been a nightmare to cross, along with a double row of radioactive map squares (you take a corruption hit each time you step on one). One of the group decided to take the optional encounter challenge (strength, and he has 7) needing fives to succeed. What could go wrong? A fistful of fours and threes with no grit to re-roll. This failure spawned a super-mutant with 36 health and 18 attack dice, which almost wrecked the rancher in one round. Some canny escape rolls and re-targeting to a dodgier target (me) helped to soak that, and I was able to spend my lucky charm to ignore the damage. We chose not to deal with the minefield and headed the other way. This triggered the Epic Fight on an unexploded nuclear bomb tile. This tile is kind of fun- each round if there are players on it, you take three radiation tokens and drop them on the tile from 12" up. If they land on the tile, they add to the squares rad levels. If they bounce off, everyone takes corruption hits from the winds blowing radiation around.

We rolled our epic and it was a Night Terror (no doubt lost) plus two threats. The threats we pulled were a Battle Group- with 5/6 players this is a Lieutenant, TWELVE legionnaires and three grenadiers, and as that wasn't enough, we were also ambushed by seven trench spiders (Trederra flavour of void spiders) before the fight began, thanks to the patrol tokens. Each time you fail a Hold Back the Darkness roll, you add a token. You have to roll higher than the no. players in the posse+no. markers on 2d6 (or 3d6 discarding the lowest if you have a "scout" player which we do). We had to roll 11 or 12 and it wasn't to be.

Ouch.

The spiders got to go first and they were in ambush. There was a lot of chatter while I was trying to read out the abilities so I just set up the spiders. "What do they do?" "We'll find out soon." What they do is 2 damage plus an additional for each corruption point you have. The rancher took three hits for 21 damage and managed to armour about half of them. It was a toss-up between which of us, between me and him, would fall first, because whoever did, would be the one to get the free revive and no injuries.

After the spiders attacked, the posse started to take action. First round we lob in some dynamite. Mine doesn't kill anything, but softens up some legionnaires so the next stick is able to clear a couple of them. That left four wounded. There was a lot of table talk about what to prioritize for targets. Most of us felt the Lieutenant was the higher threat, as he added +1 die and +1 damage to all trederran enemy attacks. Fred the rancher didn't want to give up his option for repeat shots after killing, and the lieutenant's 40 hit points seemed too much to him, so he focused on the spiders. I think it was a mistake, because that LT was adding about 12 dice with +1 damage each round. The Trederran LTs also have this deck of cards, "Battlefield Orders" which you draw each turn (on a 3+ d6 roll) and, if the card icon(s) match the LT type, you enact the card. First card was "heal all Trederrans" so those soft targets were no longer so soft.

Many dice were rolled, both I and the rancher were knocked out twice (I was able to drag him off the tile with all the enemies before I got sniped). I was lucky, in that I got the revive, and also my injury was just a concussion. The rancher suffered a slashed leg and broken arm (neither of which actually affect his shooting) but of course if you roll the same injury twice, you die. I also rolled two tail mutations, barbed for +1 combat, and grasping for +1 hand! This reduced my resistance to corruption by almost half, though. The bandida rolled great on melee crits to wipe out two grenadiers in one turn, the marshal took out the other. The gunslinger pumped endless rounds into the LT and then it was just mop-up time on the remaining legionnaires. All our tokens were spent, all our "once per adventure" abilities popped and two of us knocked down but Victory was ours*.

After a bit of horse-trading (no eating this time, phew!) in town, I scored a Trederran gas mask (roll to avoid corruption points) and a straight-razor (I forget what it does exactly). I donated all my cash to the gunslinger so he could get some doodad that would let him fire the plasma-arc three times per round, which should be pretty epic against crowds.

It was an epic adventure, and we didn't finish everything until maybe 1am but everyone had a great time. Trederra might be the best other-world of all available to date.

*so here's the dirty secret. After the excitement had died down, I noticed that I'd failed to account for one of the legionnaires elite abilities, and they should have had almost double the health. Shhhh, don't tell anyone, but we should probably have had a TPK from that.
Last edit: 17 Oct 2016 10:41 by JEM.
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24 Oct 2016 11:45 - 24 Oct 2016 11:45 #236783 by JEM
On Friday we had a full six players, the old posse and new player coming together for the first time. We went with the mission, "Overload" in which the posse starts in the frozen streets of Targa, and must find the engineering room to shut down the boilers before they meltdown and destroy the whole area. As always, the penalty for failure is not death per-se, but rather waking up injured outside the mines with a mild sense of being goosed.

As the adventure started, I realized that Lili Von Shtupp had three tails, because that's the kind of game this is. One bitey, one handsy, and one spiky. We kicked a fair amount of ass* and it looked like it would be a very fast romp, but we did spawn an additional ambush attack in the final room. Lili has a good cunning score and shut down two boilers, while Mother O'etcetc just kicked the lever on the third with her brute strength.

We had to dig for some errata post-game, because the gunslinger was chaining hit effects with the plasma arc (a gun which translates one hit to two hits on target plus an additional on each adjacent). Turns out there's an errata for that specific situation. Going forward we'll fix that, because the gunslinger has been clearing house with the trash mobs.

Because that didn't take so long we decided to do a town mission after traveling. For some reason we chose a large town, and my horse got eaten (again!) by a doppelganger. The nun suffered a permanent sanity loss from some crashed horror train. Also we rolled some event that changed the town to a small one, so we could have avoided a bunch of that drama.

The town mission was "Overrun" which is the same as the Cynder mission where you set up on the board and monsters come in from the sides. Like the cynder mission, not enough monsters were spawning. It's a 1/2 chance to put a token on each of the four spawn points to begin the game, then an additional 1/3 chance each round to add another. Whenever you have two tokens on a spawn point, you remove them and spawn an enemy. I think we need to change this to guaranteed spawns at all points to begin, then 1/2 chance during the game (it's less than 1/2 chance to spawn even then- because you have to generate two tokens, so it's 1/4).

So we are at the point where we need to start house-ruling some stuff (and policing some other stuff) to be sure we get a challenge from enemies. We all hit level five, so we'll see if the Brutal sides of the monster sheets help.

My character almost died, because she had six mutations and I rolled a duplicate (which kills you). She has an item that allows to roll twice and choose, so untimely demise was averted. On the visit to the Doc's Office I rolled a 12 (you roll 2d6 each time you visit a location in town, to see what event occurs as you arrive there). This result is Medical Miracles, or something like that, and you can roll for each injury and mutation to get rid of them. I chose to roll for all (giving up the bonuses) and So Lili has a few scars but a clean bill of health, and no more tentacles for now.

Saturday was a bonus Brimstone adventure, because I'd left the game in my trunk. My friend who plays the gunslinger on Fridays wanted to revisit the Indian Scout (who was retired after losing permanent health down to 4 and being glow in the dark). I chose the Frontier Doctor (a new character class released around GenCon this year). We were joined by a couple other characters for the adventure.

Level one adventures are a different beast, because nobody has been able to load out their character to min-max potentials. We had a good scrap with hellbats and tentacles, joined by a void sorcerer in ambush. He was casting some weak/ineffective spells for the most part (one does damage for corruption and mutations you have- perilous for our level five posse, but nothing to our clean level ones). The big fight was a Goliath, a slasher and hellbats. We were then also ambushed on a double 1 roll at the start of a turn by another five tentacles. Also during this fight, all enemies rolled two additional dice against us, due to a "Darkness" card we drew. The suicide dynamite gambit came into effect again- I targeted our US Marshal and threw it at him, reckoning that the damage would not kill him, but would clear a bunch of trash mobs around him. It bounced twice (like blood bowl hehe) but close enough to kill four bats.

I had to use all my bandages (+3 to the D6 for healing thanks to the doc's skill) and pop my personal item to heal all damage once per adventure, but we did it, some of us down to 2-3 hit points. Good times at low levels without a lot of artifacts and items to power up the characters.
Last edit: 24 Oct 2016 11:45 by JEM.
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07 Nov 2016 09:02 #237588 by JEM
Brimstone Friday, and a return to the original adventure map, the Swamps of Jargono. Only four of us made it- we were expecting five but one called in being stuck at work. Four is the ideal number of adventurers so in that sense it all worked out. We were doing the basic "go in and find clues" mission, but we were pulling a lot of non-clue exploration tokens without any gear or skills to switch them around.

The brutal enemies turned out to be well named when our gunslinger was rolling 24 dice for armour saves on wounds. Still, each fight is over usually in one, perhaps two turns, so it's less a war of attrition than a hardcore game of Rochambeau. We used up a lot of bandages and whisky to keep ahead of the injuries and sanity loss, and our gunslinger's pistol fused to his hand when he mutated from a monster's attack. The biggest problem was time, as we were pushing the Darkness track hard, especially as we didn't find the end room until we were in the final sector of the depth track (the most difficult for rolling to Hold Back the Darkness).

Our final boss was a harbinger with a horde of spiders and stranglers. Lucky for us they didn't go on ambush, and lucky for us the gunslinger had pulled a Scroll of Flames earlier in the adventure. By casting it we were able to drop the harbinger with 8d6 wounds, mop up the spiders and stranglers and just win the game, as we were one step from the darkness escaping. We rolled that HBtD roll for giggles after we won, and it was a fail, so it came down to the final turn and a truly lucky artifact pull to win the day. Glorious!

We traveled to a small plague town. I bought the Tools of Science from the Doc's Office so I can roll more dice on attacks now, and I also joined the outlaw gang at the Smuggler's Den, which allowed me to go rob a train for $1300 while the US Marshal was shopping for hats.
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21 Nov 2016 08:54 - 21 Nov 2016 09:03 #238846 by JEM
On Friday, five of the gang found ourselves pinned down in the trenches of Trederra. The mission was to acquire some thermal charges from a group of grenadiers, and then assault the positions of two artillery guns that were shelling the area that the gate home was in.

Things started off well when the first map tile encounter triggered acid rain, which remains for the whole adventure, and causes one hit every turn. We found the grenadiers in the next room, and they proved tough to beat without +damage weapons. They're immune to dynamite, immune to critical hits, and have a defense of 5, so if you're rolling a D6, only a 6 will wound them. Fortunately I was rolling more dice now since I got the Tools Of Science, which increased my number of dice from four to six, and the fire whip uses a D8 for damage which is great. Even so, we were not able to drop the grenadiers before the Trederra special rules about patrols showing up as ambushes triggered, and we had six legionnaires to defeat- one of which was using a radio to call in even more reinforcements.

We did finally clear all those out, assisted by some pretty jammy rolls on the Hold Back The Darkness roll (failures at which can trigger more ambushes in the trenches). We pushed on to locate the first of the two Big Guns. It was protected by a Void Magus, no doubt on some sinister trans-dimensional mission of evil, along with six legionnaires protected by a force field generator, and six mutants who were each just itching to run in and kill us all with their 8 attack dice. Those guys have 20 hit points and 0 defense, but they have "endurance" which means they can only take 4 wounds maximum per hit, so you need 5 hits minimum to drop them. Part of what was thwarting us was that the map tile was small, and the gun blocks movement and LoS in the centre four squares. This may well have kept us alive longer though, as the legionnaires prefer not to get into melee combat if they can avoid it. The mutants were doing enough damage; "Go ahead and roll 24 armor saves" I told the Gunslinger. We managed to push through some mutants and get around them (we were choked up in the corridor) but that also meant the legionnaires could fire volleys from their trench carbines at a couple of us. I got KO'd until I remembered I had an item that could ignore damage once per adventure.

Things looked bad, then they got worse, as a full trederran battle company showed up- a Lieutenant along with more grenadiers and, because we did not have all six legionnaire models available off the board to spawn a full set, three of those were added and all of them got an elite upgrade.

At that point we decided to run with our tails between our legs rather than stay and suffer the inevitable injuries. The Space Nazis kicked our asses.

Last edit: 21 Nov 2016 09:03 by JEM.
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21 Dec 2016 23:16 - 21 Dec 2016 23:17 #241149 by SebastianBludd
The three of us (me and my two sons) finally got another session in tonight and I'm frustrated to the point of banning certain enemies until we're higher level. We played the first Jargono mission and had a TPK in 90 min. Our party are all Level 2: my son is an Outlaw, my other son is the Prospector and I'm the Orphan. The first fight was against Void Spiders and Hungry Dead so that wasn't too bad, but the second one hit us with an ambush by Hellbats, a Slasher and 6 Undead Outlaws.

The Prospector killed the Slasher in one hit and most of the Hellbats went down in our first activation, but the Undead Outlaws are just brutal. Their ranged attacks are 4 dice that do 2 damage per hit, hitting on 4+. The worst is that they have 5 HP and a defense of 4(!). The first turn ambush kept us from closing with them on the first turn (they have to pass a 4+ Escape roll to move away from an adjacent hero and attack from range; their melee attack is not nearly as bad as their guns) and we just got chewed up. The battle went like crap: my orphan is melee only and only has Combat 2, the Outlaw can choose either to throw 3 dice and hope for crits or 6 dice and hope for good damage rolls (neither was very forthcoming), and the Prospector completely whiffed on 3 d8's two turns in a row.

We only killed two before we were all down. It was the fourth room and since the failure condition for the mission references the swamps - we didn't even make it out of the mine! - I waived the failure penalty. The Outlaw got the "no lasting effects" injury roll, the Prospector got a concussion (-1 Initiative and -1 die on all skill tests until the next mission), but the Orphan ended up with a mangled hand (-1 hand, two-handed weapons can still be used but can no longer get crits).

Some of the newer enemies (Trun Hunters, for example, whose Defense scales with the party) aren't so bad, but some of them go beyond bad luck (Ambushes during a fight, stuff like that) and just seem unfair to the point where you can't scratch them and it ceases to be fun (all of the Outlaws, probably some of the other enemies we haven't played with yet). Also, at this point I'm very nearly ready to ditch the orphan, especially with the Wave 1.5 enemies mixed into the threat decks. He's underpowered and he just keeps getting beaten down in these missions (the previous mission was the one where we used all our resources to barely banish the Undead Gunslinger before fleeing from Beli'al). Especially since I have the kick-ass Jargono Native begging me to use him...
Last edit: 21 Dec 2016 23:17 by SebastianBludd.
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03 Jan 2017 15:50 - 03 Jan 2017 15:51 #241733 by SebastianBludd
Yesterday marked the forced retirement of the Orphan Will Munny, and his replacement by Frontier Doc "Copper" and Jargono Native "Vu'Tek". Copper took the Field Research starting ability so he could more quickly level to catch up with the Prospector (Ellsworth) and Outlaw (Cactus Jack), and Vu'Tek took Pit Fighter because I want him to go down the Gladiator upgrade path. It also dovetails nicely with his Personal Item: Tribal Tattoos: +1 Strength, you always get Defense rolls, even against damage that normally ignores Defense. My younger son decided to join me and my other son, so during this session I controlled Copper and Vu'Tek, eldest was Cactus Jack and youngest was Ellsworth. The town stay - immediately following our disasterous defeat at the hands of some Undead Outlaws - was short due to Copper and Vu'Tek having no money, so we took another crack at Swamps of Death Mission 4.

Our first Map Tile drawn was a room with an Attack exploration token and we were up against 6 Scourge Rats and one Rats Nest. The rats have an Initiative of 8, plus they gain +1 Combat for each adjacent rat, so they're most dangerous on the first turn. Vu'Tek and Copper killed a rat apiece but Cactus Jack took out most of the rest by himself. The nest spawned two more rats but it didn't make a difference and the fight was soon over.

The next tile was also a room, and it contained a Slasher, 4 Hellbats, and a Gate to Jargono (but no Clue on the exploration token, so we still needed two once in Jargono). The Hellbats and Slasher were no problem and we went through the Gate to our first Jargono Map Tile: the enormous Boneyard Lake room that usually takes 3-4 turns to traverse. The exploration token was a Clue, 1x Encounter and 1x Growing Dread cards, and we then used a rule that I've always forgotten to mention, if not outright forgotten: you can cancel a Growing Dread card at any time if all Heroes spend one Grit. My sons know they're bad news and they unanimously and enthusiastically agreed to cancel it sight-unseen (it was "Move the Darkness 1 step"). As for the Encounter, we got one that lets each Hero draw up to 3 Loot cards where each Hero takes a Corruption Hit for each card drawn by every Hero.

Unfortunately I misread it, so we each drew three cards and only took 3 Hits each. We got some good stuff, including a Hatchet for Doc Copper where he can spend a Dark Stone to add 3 damage to a Hit, so the next time we play each Hero is going to roll for 9 additional Hits. There will be some mutations for sure.

We failed a Hold Back the Darkness while trying to get to the door and we spent Grit again to cancel the Growing Dread card (Take D6 Horror Hits where any losses are permanent) and the next room had a Clue and thus it became the Objective room with an Epic Threat. We topdecked two(!) Burrowers and discarded them and the third card was a Harbinger and a Threat Card, which ended up being 5 Serpentmen from the Shadow Something-or-other Tribe that made them +1 Initiative, +2 Move, and they always attack from Ambush. Since Serpentmen already move through other models and change targets each turn I didn't know what "Attack from Ambush" meant, so I gave them a +2 Initiative bonus for the entire Fight since they were already attacking before any of our Heroes, anyway.

The Serpentmen are 2 Defense but 4 Defense if you're adjacent, but the Outlaw, our only ranged attacker, was stuck next to one for his first turn and couldn't even move without being adjacent to one. We got a few wounds one a couple of them but were unable to put any down before the Harbinger swooped over and attacked Ellsworth. The Harbinger was throwing 4 Combat dice thanks to the "+1 Combat for Demon Enemies" Darkness Card we'd pulled back in the mines, but he whiffed on his attack roll. Unfortunately, his free end-of-turn ability was to attack all adjacent Heroes with D6 combat hits, and my eldest rolled a 6 for 24 damage on Ellsworth and Vu'Tek. Ellsworth saved most of his but Vu'Tek only had 11 Health and even with his shield he had to use his Fine Cigar to cancel all the damage.

On our next turn we flailed around and killed one Serpentmen Warrior, leaving 4 up. The Harbinger targeted Doc Copper but Copper used his Ancient Coin to fully heal before the attack and the Harbinger only hit him twice for 8 damage, most of which Copper saved. At the end of the turn the Harbinger spawned 2 Hellbats and things were looking a little more dire. We also failed the Hold Back the Darkness roll, hitting a Darkness Space, but we had a stone tablet that lets us cancel one Darkness Card per Adventure so we were able to avoid an Ambush Attack from two Peril dice worth of Hungry Dead. Our next turn started (the Serpentmen never really hit any of us all that hard and at this point there were only three left), and that's when Cactus Jack went off.

He needed to make a 5+ Escape test to step back from a Serpentmen Warrior and using the reroll granted by his Bandana, he made it. Jack's chosen Level 2 upgrade was "Guns Blazing" which allows him to treat any rolled 6's while firing Outlaw Pistols as two Hits rather than Crits, which is great for dual wielding. On six dice he rolled three regular Hits and two 6's, for seven Hits total. His first three Hits each took out a wounded Serpentmen Warrior (which were now at 2 Defense at Range) and his next two killed both Hellbats, leaving the Harbinger.

And then the Harbinger's end-of-turn ability was the "attack all adjacent Heroes" again, and he hit for 24 damage, again, knocking out both Ellsworth and Vu'Tech. The Harbinger targeted Cactus Jack and mostly missed, and on the next turn Doc Copper used some Dark Stone to boost the damage from his Tribal Hatchet to finish him off. We rolled a 3 on our end of mission reward, meaning that we'd found a wellspring that auto-heals an Injury/Madness or grants a permanent +1 Health boost. Copper and Jack took the health boost and, after making sure we didn't roll snake eyes on the Injury chart (AKA instant death), Ellsworth and Vu'Tek healed their Injuries.

We went to town and got a few things (no Blacksmith in town so no way to get any of the best upgrades) and next we might head to Targa.
Last edit: 03 Jan 2017 15:51 by SebastianBludd.
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03 Jan 2017 16:19 #241736 by JEM
Sounds like a grand day out for all involved! Makes me look forward to playing this with my group again soon.

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05 Jan 2017 12:13 #241860 by SebastianBludd
A couple nights ago we decided to play the fourth City of the Ancients mission, which is exactly the same as the fourth Swamps of Death mission we just finished: Start out in the Mines, the first Clue token opens a gate to Jargono/Targa, find the second Clue token and defeat an Epic Threat. First order of business, however, was to have every Hero roll for 9 Corruption Hits from the Encounter I misread last session. Cactus Jack the Outlaw got an Extra Head: +1 Initiative and you can wear two Hat Items, but can't Activate on a roll Move of 6 due to the two heads arguing about where to go. Since Jack rolls two dice for movement, this was a pretty good Mutation to get. Vu'Tek the Jargono Native got Fangs: 1 Combat Free Attack, D8 damage, take 1 Corruption Hit if a Void enemy is wounded, and Copper the Frontier Doc got Tentacle Moustache: Town Items cost $10 Less ($10 min.) due to the intimidation factor. The only bad one was Ellsworth the Prospector who got Nose Fallen Off: -1 to Town Location Event rolls (min. 2).

The mission itself was bizarre. Our first token had a Clue and an Encounter, we went through the Gate to Targa, and then our next three tokens were events before we found the final Clue and faced an Epic Threat for our only Fight of the mission. Then it got weirder when our Epic Threat was a Goliath + Threat, and the Threat turned out to be a Damaged Guardian. The Goliath is fine, but the Damaged Guardian is one of my favorite enemies now. The Damaged version starts out already wounded (15 wounds for a four Hero posse) and the Guardian, Damaged or not, loses one Combat per 10 full wounds, he was down to 3 Combat at the beginning of the Fight. The kids were excited and insisted I take a picture before the Fight began:



Cactus Jack threw his Gunpowder Keg and missed, so he Grit rerolled the D8 to get a more favorable bounce direction, hitting both the Goliath and Guardian while causing Vu'Tek to take a couple Hits from falling debris. Vu'Tek then rushed up to the Guardian in hopes of getting a good amount of damage in (he did a little) while using his damage canceling Item (Cigar) if need be. By this time Ellsworth had mutated again and had Void Plague, causing Heroes adjacent to him at the end of his turn to take D3 wounds without Defense. The Goliath got close, swung at everybody (he hits every Hero within 3 spaces with his tentacles) and got two Hits, but Vu'Tek used an ability to make him reroll and it was a miss. Then Copper opened his Specimen Jar (which now had 8 markers on it, 6 of which he'd hoarded from the previous mission) to wallop the Goliath for 12 wounds and put him down. By now the Guardian was down to 2 Combat and it wasn't long before he was finished off.

Last night were Travel and the Town visit and they were rough. We wanted to go to a Large Town to increase the odds of drawing a Blacksmith for forging some upgrades, but we ended up with six Travel Hazards for our efforts. We got Dark Stone Convoy (+$25 per Dark Stone sold in Town this visit), Cactus Jack found some money in a Wrecked Train, no one got anything from Sleeping Under the Stars, Jack and Copper each rescued a small child from a Burning Homestead (i.e., they rolled a 6) to get D6x25 XP plus 1 Health and 1 Sanity. Vu'Tek rescued a "regular" person (he rolled a 4 to land in the 2-5 range) for 20 XP so we joked that he came out with some grumpy old lady that no one liked anyway. ;)

The worst two events were Mutant Warlord (pass a Lore test and take D3 permanent wounds if failed, or pay D6x$50 to pass through is territory) where we each paid $100, and Void Storm that destroyed two Town Locations.

To make matters worse, Jack rolled up a Plague Town which is one of the worst Specialty Towns you can get. If a Hero rolls a seven on a Location Event, then they have to roll a D6 on a special Plague chart. On our first day in Town both Vu'Tek and Copper rolled a seven. Vu'Tek took 4 wounds from his roll, and Copper rolled a 1(!) and got an Injury: Slashed Leg = -1 Move (min. 1). Vu'Tek sold some Dark Stone and got a Slasher bounty at the Frontier Outpost and Ellsworth bought three Dark Stone inlays (reroll one To Hit die per attack with the weapon to which it's attached); one for his Pick Axe and one for each of Jack's Outlaw pistols. That's at a total cost of 9 Dark Stone and $2,100; Ellsworth is a money collecting beast. Copper went to the General Store and got Hair Grease for everyone and a Scout's Hat for $600 to gain the Keyword: Scout, and to get +1 Move to offset his Injury. Jack went to the Gambling Hall and crapped out at the Devil's Wheel before buying three Fine Cigar tokens (discard to gain 3+ armor for this turn). I made sure to play it straight and have everyone transfer money and Dark Stone before we actually went to the locations so that we'd legitimately get screwed by a price increase instead of saying, "Well, actually I gave you $50 extra dollars to cover the higher price."

At this point we're doing okay, but the way Ellsworth collects Dark Stone (he sold 6 shards in Town and still has 5 in his Tomb Chest) his next purchase needs to be a Dark Stone buckle so he doesn't die from double Mutation. Copper was at 4 Combat with the Black Fang Hatchet (not a "Tribal" Hatchet like I said earlier) and Vu'Tek was at 2 Combat, so I had them switch weapons and Dark Stone so Copper's at 3 Combat with the Dark Stone Blade (crits on 5 or 6) and Vu'Tek is at 3 Combat with the Black Fang Hatchet with Copper's 4 Dark Stone for increasing its Damage.

Next I think we'll be going back to Targa one more time and we'll see how we do if we actually get in multiple Fights this time. Copper is within 500 XP of Jack despite having played two fewer missions, but Vu'Tek is lagging at only 470 XP. I'm saving Copper's leveling up to use as a free Revive since we don't get Revive tokens with four players (yeah, it's gamey bullshit but I don't mind when I'm playing with my kids) and even though Vu'Tek's Starting Upgrade doesn't work the the Ferocity Character Upgrade track, I might still have him take the Jumping Attack Upgrade when he levels (add +1 damage to a Combat Hit per unused Movement point) to synergize with the Black Fang Hatchet so he can really start dishing out the melee damage.
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06 Jan 2017 07:44 #241884 by JEM
It's always cool when the big monster comes out. Two at the same time is great!

Something I caught from your last post but I wasn't sure until you said it again in this one- in the fourth mission, we've always played it to three clue icons, not two. The mission says "second clue in [otherworld]" which I always took to mean the second after finding the gate, otherwise it would just say "second clue." Food for thought, we usually run down to the wire on darkness track on those missions.

Plague town can be alright- it always has a Doc's Office, and I forget right now but I think you get the chance of something good if you use your day to help treat the sick.
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06 Jan 2017 09:54 #241893 by SebastianBludd

JEM wrote: Something I caught from your last post but I wasn't sure until you said it again in this one- in the fourth mission, we've always played it to three clue icons, not two. The mission says "second clue in [otherworld]" which I always took to mean the second after finding the gate, otherwise it would just say "second clue."


Oh yeah, I'm sure I misread it. That's a rule I don't mind getting wrong (though I'm going to play it correctly going forward) because going way past bedtime is always a danger with this game so an earlier ending isn't so bad. Of course I could just leave the game set up and finish it the next day, but that's no fun. ;)

I think I still haven't achieved a 100% clean mission where I don't forget something; I usually just hope that it's something minor (a few Terror Horror Hits) and not major (the wrong number of Corruption Hits from an Encounter Card). I was happy that I remembered all of the Horror Hits from the Guardian and Goliath, as well as the unblockable wounds from ending our turns adjacent to the Void Plague-infested Prospector.

We probably could have chanced another day in Town but I don't know the Daily Event deck that well yet, and between the uncertainty of what we'd draw, coupled with how badly the Doc and Native got knocked around (and factoring in that I made sure we got all of our important business taken care of on the first day), I figured one day in the Plague Town was enough.

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06 Jan 2017 13:49 #241909 by JEM
I think I have run that mission that way (2 clues max) for time reasons. I've also discarded the third passageway in a row because three passages is bullshit. Our group has a hell of a time remembering start of round effects like horror hits (my group has a hell of a time remembering anything to be fair). We like the mining town (I think) because you can buy the Sifting Pan there which makes scavenging much less traumatic.

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09 Jan 2017 12:55 #242081 by SebastianBludd
Yesterday we easily completed the Targa mission where you have to shut down the boilers in the Engineering Room before they explode. It's a very fun mission thematically and mechanically; shutting down the boilers is more interesting than it should be even though it's just passing a skill test. But none of the enemies during the mission were a problem, and that's mainly because Cactus Jack the Outlaw is now officially overpowered, if not broken. With his Scafford Hat (+1 Initiative per Mutation, Max +3) he's at Initiative 8, and with the Dark Stone Inlays in his two Outlaw Pistols he's rolling 6 Ranged To Hit per Turn and rerolling two of them.

He's about to get worse because after the mission he leveled up to Level 3 and took the Gunfighter skill which allows him to reroll one To HIt per Outlaw Pistol fired, so he'll be rolling 6 dice and rerolling 4 of them. The Doc and Prospector each also got to Level 3 and are lagging almost 1,000 XP behind the Outlaw, and Vu'Tek is languishing at Level 2 and is nowhere near Level 3.

We rolled a Plague Town again so the Doc and Prospector went to the Doc's Office to try and get healed. It cost $650 total, but the Prospector was healed of his Void Plague (finally!) and his Nose Fallen Off, and the Doc healed his Slashed Leg. We drew a Street Market and, coupled with a Dark Stone Convoy Travel Hazard, sold all of our Dark Stone - plus several Items which included a $1,200 set of Outlaw Armor - for over $5,000. We got a Wild Horse for the Doc (Scout only: gain 15 XP when Traveling, cancel & redraw one Daily Event per Town stay), Tribal Armor for the Outlaw (Armor 6+, once per Turn reroll any number of dice for an Armor Roll), Merchant's Apron for the Prospector (sell Gear/Artifacts for +10% of their listed price, and Recover 1 Grit), a Trederran Helmet for the Jargono Native (-1 damage from Explosives, Immune to Stunning, +1 Max Corruption), and, my favorite Item that we got yesterday, a Swamp Slug mount for Vu'Tek (Traveler/Tribal only: gain 15 XP when Traveling, may reroll one of the dice when rolling for a Travel Hazard). I wish I had a picture of Vu'Tek with his tentacle moustache and fangs, wearing a WWI-style Trederran Helmet and riding a Swamp Slug between towns... Anyway, we still have a little over $5,000 collectively, and with the Prospector's Level 3 upgrade (Greedy: spend 1 Grit to discard and redraw any number of Loot cards) we stand to do even better.

Based on how well his Outlaw is doing I told my son that all Enemies are on the table now, so no more throwing back Bel'ial, the Burrower, or even the Undead Outlaws/Gunslinger. I think our next mission will be one of those that came with the Serpentmen Deluxe Enemy Pack. We'll see how that goes.
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10 Jan 2017 10:54 #242164 by SebastianBludd
I think I've finally got an electronic character sheet and PDF editor I'm happy with. My character sheet is a modified black and white, low-ink version to which I've added form fields - using the free online editor, pdfescape.com - so information can be typed directly in. It's very good, but the only niggle was that I really wanted hand, weight and Dark Stone icons so I could assess characters' equipment, encumbrance and Corruption potential at a glance. After a lot of research and trial-and-error with different freeware programs I settled on PDF X-Change Viewer. It not only flawlessly handles copying/pasting images - including on or in form fields - but it can also add text boxes and other annotations. Below is my current character sheet for Frontier Doc Copper:



I captured the icon images and when I pasted them in all I had to do was space over in the form field to make room. I left some fields blank - like XP, Gold and Corruption - but I used the text box feature to add a note under his Strength to record his encumbrance and a note under his Max Grit to record the situational Max Grit bonus conferred by his Gold Teeth item. I did something similar for the Prospector where I added a text box under his Dark Stone total where I can record how much Dark Stone he has in his Tomb Chest.

Anyway, here is a link to my Dropbox folder that has the character sheet PDF with form fields, all the icons (one hand, two hands, Dark Stone and anvil), and the install package for PDF X-Change Viewer.

I also think my next step is going to be to keep a sheet of blank address labels at the table so I can use them to paste over items that we sell or lose. Whiteout really isn't an option since we record everything in pencil but we're getting so many items that we can't afford to lose space on the sheet by just crossing things out.
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16 Jan 2017 11:26 #242475 by SebastianBludd
A couple days ago I decided we'd do both of the missions that came with the Serpentmen enemy pack and then be done with Jargono for a while. We did the first mission which is to go into the mines, locate a gate to Jargono, and find and rescue a kidnapped townsfolk woman before she can be sacrificed by a Serpentmen Grand Shaman. Every time the Darkness marker moves you have to roll 3D6 and if the total is less than the position of the Darkness marker you fail to stop the sacrifice and lose the mission. The only thing the Heroes can do is collectively spend 1 Grit per Hero in the posse to reroll ONE of the dice should you fail the roll, but the Hold Back the Darkness roll is made at a -1 penalty for the duration of the mission.

I suspended my "no three exploration tokens without a Clue in a row" house rule since I felt that would neutralize whatever tension there is in the mission. We rolled badly on the HBtD rolls but still managed to find the objective in Jargono with probably a turn or two to spare since the Darkness marker was at around 10. We were able to mitigate our bad luck to a degree because at this point we had a LOT of game manipulation tools at our disposal: two Old Maps (cancel and redraw a Map or Encounter Card, lose it on D6 roll of 1-2), the Lantern that lets you reroll a HBtD roll for 2 collective Grit and a Stone Tablet (cancel a Darkness Card). Unfortunately, the map tile before the objective room had the Encounter where every space takes an additional space to move through, slowing us down further when we really couldn't afford it.

The Epic Threat was a Serpentmen Grand Shaman with the Tribal Tattoos Juju Trinket (he gains the Tough ability and this Trinket cannot be canceled by a critical hit, which was about the worst one we could have drawn), and 6 Serpentmen. The Shaman cast a spell that was a storm that, if you failed your save, bounces you around 3 times using the dynamite template. The Prospector made it, but no one else did. Fortunately, the Jargono Native was bounced into the objective room, right next to the Shaman. On his activation he used 3 Dark Stone to add enough damage to his hatchet and take out the Shaman. I've seen on BGG where people think that spending more than one Dark Stone on the hatchet is too overpowered, but since Dark Stone is hard to come by (and the fact that the Native is still way behind in XP) we allowed it.

We cleared most of the Serpentmen but the Darkness kept moving and we kept barely making the sacrifice roll. Finally we were down to one Serpentman and we failed the HBtD roll again, moving the Darkness to 13. We rolled a 6, 1, and 3; so we spent two Grit to reroll the one, getting a five. Dispatching the final Serpentman was a formality and we won, netting 25XP and $200 apiece for our efforts. The Prospector got the best items of the Adventure: a coat that gives him +2 Health and, essentially, Corruption Armor 5+ and a Swamp Parasite that, while making him take an extra Wound on a Defense roll of 1, gives him +2 Initiative. He's now at Initiative 6 and with Speed of Greed enabled he's Initiative 12.

We then went to a small Town (it was going to be a medium but we elected not to try and ford a raging river, thus ending our Travel and sending us to a small Town) but we didn't have enough Dark Stone for any good forgings at the Blacksmith. We tried for some Items at the Smuggler's Den and got the event that adds two items, for a total of five. A Trophy Shield from Jargono (2 anvils, Armor 4+, -1 Agility) was purchased for the Native, as was a pair of Traveling Boots (+1 Agility, may automatically add 6 to your Move instead of rolling when using Grit to add to your Move) to not only negate his new shield's Agility penalty, but to synergize with his Jumping Attack ability where unused Move can be spent on extra damage. The Prospector bought a bunch of side bag tokens for the party at 50% off but otherwise we saved our money for when we have more dark stone for forgings.

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