When we last played, we’d just entered the ancient spired and killed us some machines. But the spire still held other mysteries; what was the purpose of all these machines — these machines carrying human, Algox and animal parts?
Well, we still don’t know. Not exactly. But we do know more.
Our crew:
Drifter: Jack-of-all-Trades, acts as tank, damage and healing.
Crashing Tide: Alternates setup turns and effective turns
Trapper: Makes and manipulates traps
And introducing for the first time:
Infuser: We’re still trying to get a handle on her.
And I mean that. I really don’t know what their deal is. I’m glad I’m not playing them. The Infuser puts elements into the air, then uses them to make infusions; spending elements to power up certain cards. Some of the cards are persistent; you can just keep spending elements and keep making them do things.
Me, I’m playing the Trapper. And the Trapper just does traps.
We weren’t really prepared for what we were to face. And I really mean that literally; I’d entirely forgotten to paint the Infuser mini; still haven’t finished painting Crashing Tide; and we couldn’t find our skeleton minis and just ended up using rats for proxies, and ice demons for the Living Spirits, and an earth golem for the Living Doom, the boss of the scenario, and the reason that we picked this scenario above all the others.
I, as the Trapper, have to kill ten specific mobs as my personal quest. And the Living Doom is one of those mobs. The boss has 20 health at the level we were playing (health was HxC/2 — health of the normal version of this mob — 10 — times the number of characters — 4 — divided by two). I have a special axe that I have to use to kill my prey, and that adds three damage and shield piercing to any attack against a name on my list.
It’s a simple task. And of course I fouled it up, right from the start.
The scenario goal was simply to kill everything. The scenario effect was to start everyone off poisoned; inconvenient when the enemies start just steps away. I’d chosen, as my one starting perk, the ability to ignore scenario effects. Our challenge was to not use any bag slot items; usually potions and the like.
The Infuser opened up the game by filling two of the empty spaces in front of us with obstacles; so that’s something she can do. I helpfully continued the theme by filling up the remaining spaces with traps, thinking the Living Bones cum Rats would walk into them, but they declined, choosing to stay where they were. So, nobody got to move. We spent the first several turns pretty much trapped in our starting hexes. After this, the Infuser made no more obstacles, and I discussed with people where I could put my traps without inconveniencing them too much.
Traps are fun, especially when we got to the second room where already existing obstacles and traps made plenty of fun choke points. Me, I was largely dragging a trap behind me, merging it with traps I passed that hadn’t been triggered by a mob. My plan: toss it at the boss and kill it in one hit.
By the time we got to the boss, my trap had 17 damage showing, plus 3 from the axe, and drew +1 on my encounter deck, which was lucky. Not sure what I would have done if I’d drawn a curse1. Someone else had already slightly damaged it, but it was fine. 21 points of damage, plus piercing for any shields, would have killed it even at full health.
Because of our delayed start — partially because of me — most of us were low on cards at the end. The scenario requires us to kill all the mobs, not just the boss.
We barely made it. I did make some lesser traps to help clean up the rest of the Living Bones. The other characters helped out now and then đ
We had no time to go back to the outpost and spend our loot, however, as the scenario ended with a chain to the next scenario — the top of the spire, where we will find the actual literal boss of this dungeon and the meaning of the blood red beam of power. So no road event no time, no outpost event this time, no retirements — we have to confront the boss.
I guess I’d better get to painting.
- Curses, in the Haven games, is an automatic miss. My precious 17 damage trap would be instantly gone. âŠī¸
