Hey everybody,
After beginning once again to follow the campaign of the Dunwich Legacy last week, it’s time for part two of my adventures, as I head for the seedy gambling den of the Clover Club, on the trail of Dr Francis Morgan!
This was a really enjoyable scenario, I have to say! It starts out with the investigators trying to get into the exclusive Clover Club, which is fronted by the La Bella Luna restaurant. When you’re in there, it’s all a bit tense but nothing bad really happens until you deal the first Criminal enemy damage – it’s really evocative of being in the gambling den and trying not to draw attention, scoping things out while all the time being scrutinized by the criminal underbelly. I’ve never really had that sort of feeling before, where you play a game and it almost plays out like a film in your mind’s eye, you know?
For example, one of the locations is the bar, where you can “have a drink” to gain two clues. Importantly, none of the locations in the club offer you clues at first, but you gain them through taking actions other than simply investigating. Roland walked up to the bar and took a drink, so he was able to get two clues but it’s going to come back later on, I’m sure of it – however, it really felt like he’s been looking around and has found nothing, so has heavily sat down on a stool and ordered a Manhatten or something.
Anyway!
Things didn’t stay calm for long, of course, and as soon as it became inevitable, I had Roland shoot the Pit Boss and another of the mobsters, and all hell seemed to break loose as a result! Roland was definitely playing more true to form in this one, I think – he has been something of the investigating investigator so far, while Akachi was actually able to deal more significant damage with ease, due to using her willpower attribute to fight thanks to spells such as Wither and Shrivelling. Here, however, Roland was able to perform as I had expected, shooting everything in his path and healing Akachi when it was needed most. Indeed, the tactic of almost leaving her to just take damage while she went around gathering clues, then Roland healing her up for her to keep going, worked out quite nicely!
When it was needed most, however, Akachi was also no slouch in combat, having really great stats across the board. She finished off the Conglomeration of Spheres enemy (after the hilarity of Roland shooting it almost to death), and proved instrumental in gaining the trust of Peter Clover himself. It was an epic struggle in the end, although I completely didn’t realise that there was another exit to the Club, and allowed the agenda deck to tick down without fully exploring the locations, meaning that I was forced into the fourth resolution – the club pretty much explodes, and we’re dragged from the rubble by the police!
Campaign Log
Naturally, the O’Bannion gang has a bone to pick with the investigators, and unfortunately, Dr Francis Morgan was kidnapped. Each of my guys has suffered 1 physical trauma because of the club collapsing on top of them, which I’ll come to shortly, and due to this catastrophe, the investigators were unconscious for several hours. However, we have each gained 4 XP and an additional 1 XP from the experience!
Interlude: Armitage’s Fate
The Dunwich Legacy campaign also includes a little story piece in the back, where the story is determined by the outcome of the previous two games. Now, as I had been unconscious underneath the rubble, Dr Henry Armitage was kidnapped! That’s now three academics that I have proven unable to rescue. Some record here, huh? However, we were able to glean some information from his notes, which has given us a bonus 2 XP, so my investigators now have 11 XP each to spend on upgrading cards in their decks!
Some more thoughts
I really liked this scenario! I think we see a glimmer here of how stilted some of the scenarios are, in order for them to tell a story that has a logical progression into one of the four prepared resolutions, but once you’re over the amount of stuff that you need to do during setup, it plays beautifully. Despite the fact that they both suffered physical trauma, I’m quite excited to see where this could go – during campaign play, trauma basically lowers your maximum health or sanity (the game refers to “taking damage”, whereas all the other Arkham Files games refer to “losing health/sanity”, and so I think of it this way). Last time, I took Ursula and Jenny all the way through the eight scenarios, but I’m intrigued by the possibility that I might lose one of these investigators…
I’ve not yet given much thought about upgrading my decks, but I am hoping very soon to buy a second core set (finally!) which would be a very useful purchase for making the decks more consistent. I find that, even with four full cycles of cards to choose from, I do have some limited choice with card pool, and so noticed today that both investigators were drawing some fairly chaff cards. It would be much better if I could get that consistency that would allow for every draw to have much more impact. So that will be interesting.
I’m considering trying out one of the standalone scenarios next, but playing it as a part of this campaign, so we’ll see how that goes! In my next campaign blog, though, I’ll be sure to detail the upgrades that I bought – stay tuned!
spalanz.com 
Is this easy to pick up? Wife and i have stumbled upon a few boardgames we seem to like a lot
I’d say so, yes! The core set has got three scenarios to play through which basically introduce how the game works really well, then things really pick up in the Dunwich Legacy to be very interesting. I think a lot of the enjoyment comes from the theme with this one, though, as it can sometimes feel very clunky if you’re not enjoying the story aspect to it. Lots of cardboard bits to fiddle about with, and such. I think you need to approach it on the understanding that it’s going to be a fairly big commitment too, as the core set alone isn’t the sort of thing that you’d play multiple times. But if you’re into it, then it’s really one of the best card games out there!!
We picked up marvel champions the card game a week ago, and by the sound of it, it sounds like there are a lot of similarities between the two
I’ve not had anything to do with Marvel Champions, but looking through the FFG page, it does look very similar, yeah! I suppose there are some changes, such as that in AH you’re not always clear on what your end goal is, and each time you play and make different decisions, you can have a very different outcome. Not sure if it’s the same in MC, but it’s something that I really like about this game!!