Due to sicknesses and kids needing to be places on game nights, it’s been awhile since we last played Frosthaven. Let’s not even talk about the Saturday night games…
We’d found the outpost of Frosthaven to be a ruined mess after months of attacks by the Algox, a horned and violent snow tribe. The Frosthaven mayor admitted that they had accidentally desecrated an Algox holy site, but the Algox were way overreacting and everyone was super sorry about it. They asked us to go wipe out the Algox with a frontal attack, or sneak in through the back and scout out the enemy before committing to any more violence.
We chose the back way and met up with a shaman from the tribe that held the mountain; turns out the tribe attacking the outpost itself were no friends to the shaman’s tribe. We helped her get deeper into the mountain.
That brings us to Heart of Ice. If we’d chosen to do the frontal assault, we would have entered this map a different way. In our route, we found ourselves facing two elite Algox guards who were pretty darn surprised to see us. Their attention was split between us and a phalanx of archers that were shooting at both them and us.
We took advantage of the distracted guards to slaughter them. We were moving fast, and it was all I could do to both kill an archer and grab its loot (on the same turn, to make my scenario goal) as the Bonedancer, Doomscroller and Blink Blade were tearing up the enemies.
We’d decided to up the scenario level, but even with the tankier enemies, we were at the door to the inner chamber in almost no time.
There were sounds of fighting easily heard through the door. We threw it open; a magic-spewing Algox Snow Dancer and a brutish Algox Frozen Fist (both potential player classes) were locked in battle. The Snow Dancer found herself caught between the Fist and us. She immediately began laying down AEs. I sped out the door to grab the treasure chest, throwing ranged attacks as I went. The others filed in and went to work on the Snow Dancer.
The scenario rules said that we had to do more than half the damage on any of the two chieftains who died, or lose the scenario. Since Snow Dancer was closer, we opted to go full force on her to try and out-damage the Fist.
I grabbed the chest and came up and around the huge crystal pillar in the room and took some potshots at the Fist from the back, but I wasn’t able to get back in range to the Dancer before the rest of the team took her down.
The Frozen Fist — Chief Eddal — was surprised at our help, given it was his tribe that had been attacking Frosthaven. Nevertheless, after talking with us for awhile and over the objections of his lieutenants, he agreed to a temporary truce, one that could become permanent if we would just clear out the remnants of the Snow Dancer’s tribe (who we’d befriended in the previous scenario — some friends we turned out to be). The chieftain said we could return to Frosthaven and prepare ourselves; his tribe would keep the Dancer tribe penned up until we returned.
The scenario was a bit confusing; the text made it seem like there’d be a lot more enemies. We couldn’t open the inner door before clearing all the enemies in the first room, but the text implied there were a lot more enemies who paused to watch the fight between the two chieftains — there were no other mobs. I guess they were “implied” mobs.
It was super nice of the chieftain to give us a break. We returned to Frosthaven and built a logging camp. I made a Horn of Summoning from a blueprint in the treasure chest. Doom Scroller made a restoration potion. Not sure if we crafted anything else. A city event had us receive a package meant for a dead guard; we had the option to either pass it along to the guard’s friends, or take it ourselves. We opted to keep it. It contained letters from their family, cookies, a warm sweater, and five gold that we distributed amongst ourselves.
The Frosthaven mayor gave us two new side quest missions; one against some crab people, and one against some robot enemies. Drew, the Blink Blade player, got a little excited — doing both those missions would probably meet his retirement goals, and so we decided to take on both those side missions before returning to the snowy mountain and affirming our alliance with Chief Eddal’s people. One with a new party member. And, since we let Eddal live, he is now available to choose as a new class. It’s possible that when we return, the Frozen Fist will be a member of our party.
That will definitely go over well both with his tribe and back at Frosthaven…
I didn’t know I would need a three hex ice pillar for this scenario; Malifaux to the rescue here! I just used some of Rasputina’s. I finally had painted the Algox in time for the game, but now it looks like I have an army of crab people to paint for next time. It just never ends.
