Wow, clickbaity intro. Did it work?
It’s been well more than a month since the last time we were able to get together for a friendly game of Frosthaven. We’re reaching the end of several personal quests, and the retirement of three characters within two games. Tonight’s was the Deathshaper’s last game before she finished her adventuring days and stepped out of the shadows.
Pylon Problems is the second in the Pinter Droman “make a shortcut through the frozen mountains” arc. Several weeks ago, we defended Droman’s construction crew as they made their first excavations in the mountains; today, we’re midway through the tunnel, and Droman’s crew has set up a number of massive pylons to keep the tunnel from collapsing.
The local Algox tribe has a problem with this. We only scared them away temporarily last time, and now they’re back, and in greater numbers. Our job this time is to protect the pylons. If all are destroyed, the tunnel collapses and the scenario is lost. Each one that is destroyed sets the construction crew back as they must replace them, extending the third scenario in the arc back that number of weeks.
Enemies spawn around each of the pylons, with reinforcements arriving in waves at turns 5 and 8. If we and at least one pylon survive through turn 10, we win. When pylons are destroyed, they damage everything adjacent to them, which helped quite a lot to make the enemies easier to take down, albeit at the cost of a precious pylon to do so.
There’s no way we could protect all the pylons; the best we could manage would be two. We chose to fight through to the room on the right and defend that pylon as best we could.
- Banner Spear (me) — I was mostly focused on tanking and buffing. I couldn’t use many of my AEs as the pylons were considered enemies, and so I would be damaging them. And, of course, I could not heal them either. I handed out heals and regen to myself and the party, kept myself shielded, and used my courage banner to give everyone a little extra defense.
- Bone Shaper — I can’t overstate how useful the skeleton summons are for not only doing some damage and taking hits, but also just funneling enemies where we need them to be. And that ghoul is definitely a friend indeed.
- Deathwalker — as usual, she spent her first few turns setting up her shadows for a few devastating hits. She always makes an impact on the battlefield.
- Blink Blade — He used his fast/slow movement tactically to do insane damage and then (usually) dance away before he could take damage. Unfortunately, a lot of the enemies did retaliation damage, and so he was the focus of much of the healing.
We finished the scenario with the board still pretty filled with enemies, as the elite guards that spawned were extremely tanky and we weren’t able to kill them quickly. Only two pylons remained, which meant six weeks until the third chapter in the Pinter Droman arc. Since we were hoping this would lead to ancient machinery sites for the Blink Blades personal quest, this is a disappointment, and we may have to take another look at the scenario map and go a different way.
Since we had to use a conveyance — climbing gear — to get to the scenario, that became the Deathwalker’s fifth conveyance-using scenario and, having met the demands of her personal quest, she retired. Her PQ had her open an envelope that gave us a new building, the Town Hall, which unlocks challenges — optional cards that can alter a scenario in certain ways, usually making it harder. Her next character has to complete twelve challenges to win. We can take on one challenge per scenario per Town Hall level; it starts at level one, and so we will be optionally taking on one additional challenge each scenario.
Our unlocked classes are Fist, Kelp and Trap; we also have the unplayed starter classes of Drifter and Geminate from which to choose. Deathwalker chose Inox Drifter for her next character.
My Banner Spear and Kasul’s Bone Shaper both will retire after the next scenario. Assuming we don’t unlock any new classes in the next scenario, Kasul will retire the Bone Shaper to play Kelp, and I will retire Banner Spear to play Trap. I will be spoiling those classes thoroughly once we begin to play them. Me, I have to paint all these minis.
We thought Blink Blade would retire first, but we’re still looking for those Robotic Boltthrowers. That’s on me to find the shortest path, since Pinter Droman’s mountain shortcut just isn’t going fast enough for us.
