A long, long time ago, we were looking for more robotic enemies to kill in order to let the Blink Blade retire. I could have gone through all the scenarios and made a path to the machine arc, but I had this idea that I wouldn’t need to spoil myself for future scenarios if I just listed the scenarios we had unlocked, and asked ChatGPT to find me the swiftest way toward machine destruction.
It confidently suggested we continue with the recently unlocked mountain pass arc, where a tinker named Pinter Droman was dynamiting a pass through the Icespear Mountains that surround Frosthaven. This is a multipart arc, with weeks of necessary waiting behind each one. But, I was assured, ancient machine civilizations lay at the other end.
That right there should have given me pause. Wait… we were building a pass from the verdant south, through the mountains, to Frosthaven. Where would a lost machine civilization even be?
Well, that whole arc dragged on. Kasul also started playing a character that also needed machines to retire, so he did the hard work of looking at the scenarios and finding the ones we needed. We played the machine arc from start to end and both his Crashing Tide and my son’s Blink Blade retired before we got to the final Mountain Pass mission.
The pass is complete. Yay! We’re invited to watch the first caravan cross the path. Yay! Where we and the caravan are attacked by an Algox militia. Boo!
Trapper (Level 4): Make traps, yo. Played by me.
Drifter (level 4?): Tank, damage, heals
Infuser (level 4): My son is just figuring out now what this class does.
Frozen Fist (level 3?): This is the new class, taking over from Crashing Tide
I don’t hate my paint job for this mini. It looks more like the reference art than I’m usually able to manage. Gray base for the body and blue for the hands, brown for the armor. I then dry brushed an off-white paint on the body a couple of times until Kasul, who was to play this, said it was enough. For my Malifaux models, I’ve continued and made the fur whiter. Dry brushed red on the armor, painted the white ice bits on the hands, and used a simple wash on the white primer for the fingers and horns. I did the sash in red then touched it up with a paint pen.
Anyway: the scenario.
We started on the right side of the battlefield. Caravan carriages (that Kasul printed and I painted) arrive, one per turn, on the left, and trundle three spaces at a time along the road. If they meet an obstacle or enemy, they push it out of the way. If they meet a player, they do damage. Carriages are allies to us and enemies to the Algox. This means the Algox will attack them if they come in range and none of us are closer.
We lose if all the carriages are destroyed. We win if at least one makes it through, with commensurate rewards depending on how many make it. (We managed to save two).
The scenario is fairly straightforward. We did have an issue with one mob who positioned itself right on the road, attacking the wagons as they neared. I (Trapper) did my usual 1-2 combo of building traps in one turn, then throwing them or pulling mobs into them the next. I think my largest single hit was 12 damage. I’m getting decent with the class, but I’d love a more active role. It is what it is.
Frozen Fist went up a side and tanked a bunch of stuff while the Drifter and Infuser helped winnow them down; Drifter came over and helped me with the other side. There were so many mobs, and two more mob spawns during the scenario, that we weren’t able to keep the wagons whole. Once one was saved and the scenario technically won, we did focus more on looting and killing the remnants than guarding the wagons. So, we saved only two. But if we’d looked at the rewards earlier, we’d have seen that saving three of the wagons would have given us 10 xp each, which is significant.
If we had to do it all over again, we’d have saved that third one.
The scenario was easier than it looked, with a broad win condition. I’d be shocked if anyone ever actually lost this scenario, but we definitely could have done better. My son, I think, just now started figuring out how to play the Infuser, so I hope things will improve. He had several moves where he just… moved, and that was it. Even if he couldn’t attack, to my mind he could be setting up infusions and getting more powerful.
My scenario goal was to end the scenario with no more than three cards across my hand and discard pile. I was taking regular short rests to lose cards, but I would have needed one more short rest than I ended up taking in order to meet that goal. It’s just that with the Trapper, I’m setting up these multi-turn combos, and I needed all my cards to pull them off.
Infuser’s goal was to always end their turn next to an obstacle or a wall. I knew he’d missed it when he asked if a trap was considered an obstacle. Drifter’s was to never leave a room with loot in it; this was easy for her as this was a one-room scenario. Not sure what Frozen Fist’s was, but Kasul said he didn’t make it.
The road event leading up to the scenario had us deciding whether or not to try and remove a sword we found embedded in ice, as night fell. I voted to mark it and come back later to retrieve it; the others voted to try and melt it out and forget the darkness. Well, they broke it and we had to start the next scenario two cards down. But the broken sword can be used to apply some nice conditions once per scenario. I think the Infuser ended up with it.
The next scenario has, I think, some machines in it and other mobs. It’s pretty big, so we’ll see how that plays out. Because of real life stuff, we probably won’t be playing again for a few weeks.
