Tag: The Dunwich Legacy

Hey everybody,
I am loving the Dunwich Legacy campaign at the moment, and today I want to talk about a couple of scenarios from the centre of the scenario: Blood on the Altar, and Undimensioned & Unseen. Both of these scenarios take place firmly in Dunwich village, and I can remember vividly the feeling of being back in the Dunwich Horror expansion for Arkham Horror, back when I played them for the first time in summer 2019!

Blood on the Altar sees the investigators trying to find those kidnapped folks from the earlier scenarios, exploring the environs of Dunwich in an effort to find the Hidden Chamber where they are thought to be held. This is represented by the Chamber card and the Key to said chamber being shuffled into some random cards from the encounter deck, and being placed beneath the locations: once those locations have been fully explored, you can flip the card underneath.

In possibly my fastest game to date, my first discovery was the key, and my second was the chamber itself! When revealed, the abomination Silas Bishop is spawned there, but with Roland Banks pretty tooled up for the job, he was able to dispatch him in fairly short order. Destroying Silas Bishop, I was able to rescue all of those kidnapped folks, after all!

Campaign Log
The investigators put Silas Bishop out of his misery. We also gained 4VP in total.

In the same manner as the deluxe box, there is then an interlude, where the rescued chaps then have a bit of screen time, as we all regroup and come up with a plan to deal with the supernatural terrors plaguing the Dunwich landscape.

Dr Henry Armitage survived the Dunwich Legacy
Professor Warren Rice survived the Dunwich Legacy
Dr Francis Morgan survived the Dunwich Legacy
Zebulon Whateley survived the Dunwich Legacy
Earl Sawyer survived the Dunwich Legacy

Each of these fine folks helps with the attributes of the investigators. Roland has gained the help of Professor Rice, Dr Morgan and Earl Sawyer, while Akachi has the help of Dr Armitage and Zebulon Whateley, as well as Armitage’s Powder of Ibn-Ghazi.

After a quick pit-stop to swap out some more cards, both of our intrepid heroes have run down their experience by trading for some (hopefully!) useful cards in their decks!

Undimensioned and Unseen is a great adventure, and quite possibly my favourite from the campaign so far. Basically, the game begins with a number of “Brood of Yog-Sothoth” enemies in play based on the number of folks who were rescued in the last scenario – in my case, five folks were rescued, so we start with the minimum of two. The encounter deck has got some more enemies, but it has quite a few attachments to make these Brood enemies tougher in different ways.

Furthermore, you can only defeat them with scenario-specific Esoteric Formula cards, which come into play when the Act deck has advanced by spending clues at a specific location – the ruins of the Whateley farm. Akachi was beginning the game with the Powder in play, though, which has a number of uses based on the number of rescued folks, too. This Powder allows you to exhaust a Brood enemy at your location, avoiding its attack for the turn.

The Brood monsters are fought with Willpower, not Strength, and the Esoteric Formula allows for a bonus to that attribute if you can place a clue on the monster. You do this through exploring the locations, but the Agenda deck will force the Brood to move to a random location each turn. It’s just incredible, the way the scenario plays out!

However, I had Akachi on my side – with base 5 Willpower, it wasn’t a huge task for her to overcome the combat check of 6+ to defeat these enemies, once the Formula was discovered.

I must say, though, that it was exhausting! Akachi managed to single-handedly defeat three of these things, two of them had attachments that increased their health to 4, meaning that she couldn’t dispatch them in a single turn – it was quite the nail-biter! Meanwhile, Roland was just chundering around like a spare wheel – he did some work when more regular enemies came out of the encounter deck, for sure, but on the whole, this scenario was all about Akachi. What a hero!

Campaign Log
No Brood escaped into the wild, a fact that I’m quite pleased with, and we each gained 3VP for the experience.

I’m having an absolute blast playing through this campaign once again, in case it wasn’t completely obvious! As I near the end of the campaign, though, I do find myself thinking about moving on to the next one in release order, Path to Carcosa, which is widely agreed to be the best campaign to date. I wonder, could it beat my beloved Dunwich? Time will tell – until then, though, I need to make my way to the next scenario, Where Doom Awaits!

Hey everybody,
I’m on scenario four of the Dunwich Legacy campaign!

This one was a lot of fun. It’s quite different from any of the previous scenarios in the game up to this point – the premise is that the investigators are on the train from Arkham to Dunwich, when a rift opens in the sky, and the train cars begin to get sucked into the beyond! The investigators must move to the front of the train to attempt to get the engine moving forward again. It’s not so easy as moving from location to location with each action, however, as each train car must be fully investigated before moving on to the next one.

As I said, it was a lot of fun, this one. When it was first released, I was a bit baffled: a Lovecraftian adventure centred around a train? However, the storyline of the rift in the sky, and the mechanics of moving forward from one side to another, while battling the emerging monstrosities, somehow works really well! Additionally, there are passengers that you must deal with, and you can either choose to rescue them or leave them to their fate, causing you to lose sanity if they are sucked into the rift! See, when the agenda deck advances, the leftmost train car is removed from the game, as it is sucked into the beyond!

I mean, there are more enjoyable scenarios in this campaign, from my memory of playing last year, but this was definitely a good one, regardless!

Campaign Log
Not a lot to say on this one, really. Got 3VP, and did a couple of upgrades to Akachi’s deck after picking up some more mythos packs for my collection. I took a break for the Dream-Eaters cycle, as I hadn’t been playing the game so it had fallen a bit out of favour. Well, it’s time to catch up now, for sure!

Hey everybody,
Tuesdays have always been game days here at spalanz.com and, while I might not always be able to fulfill that with today’s crazy world, I thought I’d still take some time today to talk about the latest game in my Dunwich Legacy campaign, and have some reflections on the campaign system for Arkham Horror LCG as well. Let’s go!

So I played the third scenario in the campaign at the weekend, and had a blast as I went round the Miskatonic Museum, searching the darkened exhibit halls for a copy of the dreaded Necronomicon. The campaign is set in the months following the events of The Dunwich Horror, for those who don’t know, and the investigators are following up on some of the worries of Dr Henry Armitage, the librarian at Miskatonic University. As readers of the original story will know, Wilbur Whateley attempted to steal a copy of the book from the library, and was injured in the process – the game takes this and further expounds that the University’s copy of the Necronomicon was then sent to the curator of the Miskatonic Museum for safekeeping.

This scenario was not perhaps as immersive as the last, as there were a few more game-mechanics involved to simulate wandering the darkened halls of the exhibits. As we moved through the museum, the only monster in the entire encounter deck is the Hunting Horror, which never really dies but goes back to “the void” when defeated, from whence it can strike once more. As it turned out, I had some very good set-up draws for Roland, and he was perfectly equipped to dispatch it each time it turned up, meaning it wasn’t so much a threat as simply an annoyance. But I suppose, that might be the point.

Akachi was therefore left to do a lot of the investigating, which didn’t always work well despite having Alyssa Graham out from the start, giving her +1 to her intellect. As such, the game was a little slow. The object of the scenario is to fully investigate the Restricted Area of the museum, which is one of the many Exhibit Hall location cards that forms part of that separate deck. We ended up finding it fairly quickly, as it happens, and so a couple of card effects allowed both investigators to clear the location of clues very easily.

Akachi has taken possession of the book – in my head, it makes sense from a thematic sense, not just because she needs all the intellect help that she can get. As a Mystic, she would doubtless be attracted to preserving the tome, even if she isn’t going to use it herself – Roland, as a Federal Agent, would perhaps not be interested in keeping the book but rather turning it in (or worse!) Anyway.

Campaign Log
The investigators took custody of the Necronomicon, but sadly that does mean that we have given in to the temptation of power – we’ve added a cursed token to the pool (more shortly), but we have each gained 3 XP!

Now, I have never thought twice about the Chaos bag since I set up my very first game of Arkham Horror LCG almost four years ago. As it turns out, I’ve been playing the Dunwich Legacy campaign, both last year and in this most recent run through, with five additional negative counters! What kind of masochist am I?! I’m playing on Easy mode, because I’m overwhelmingly into the story rather than being brutalised by the encounter deck, but even so! What a fool. So I’ve sorted the bag out now, which is a good thing!

I’ve also been making some upgrades to the decks! In campaign mode, you can upgrade or swap out cards at the cost of experience points earned through each game. Cards have an experience cost denoted by the pips that they have in a crescent underneath the card’s resource cost, in the top-left corner. I’ve managed to get quite a bit of experience for my investigators so far, so it’s time to kit them out anew!

Akachi has upgraded copies of Shrivelling and Alchemical Transmutation to higher-level copies – cards will often have a better version for a higher experience cost, allowing you to hit harder or whatever. If you upgrade cards like this, the experience cost is only equal to the difference between the copies – a 3-cost card upgraded to a 5-cost card will only cost 2 experience, for example. However, you can also swap out a card for a completely different one, which I’ve done in a couple of instances, as well.

Roland’s deck, however, felt a bit more difficult to upgrade. Akachi had a clear path, really – upgrading her spells to better copies of those spells, while keeping the majority of her supporting cards the same. For Roland, there weren’t a great deal of cards for him to upgrade to. However, I’ve come across a couple of gems that are definitely worth mentioning. The above Keen Eye is a Permanent card, which doesn’t have a resource cost in the top left: it starts the game in play, and can never be discarded. It costs 3 experience to purchase, however, so it’s not something you’re going to play with in your very first game! However, if he has the resources to play it, it can be very strong! I’ve also gone for the Guardian tarot card that came out during the Circle Undone cycle, giving him +1 strength.

These cards are pretty neat, as they are a new type of slot (so don’t take up a hand or body slot, etc). While Roland might not be one for reading the Necronomicon, I can totally see him being the sort of superstitious type who might well be carrying a tarot card with him.

I really like the deckbuilding in Arkham Horror LCG now. When I first started playing, I was a little bit dismayed that I couldn’t find viable cards to include in my strategies, but I think that was probably my inexperience with the game showing – thinking about what you want your investigator to do usually makes your decisions quite easy. For Roland, I wanted him to fulfill the roles of fighter, healer and investigator, which he is quite well-equipped for, having access to a lot of healing cards as a Guardian while also being able to tap into the Seeker cards for investigation. Akachi, on the other hand, was initially a bit more complicated to build for, until looking properly into the Mystic possibilities, I turned up a lot of ways of using Willpower for other tests (such as fight or investigate actions). With a massive Willpower attribute to start with, along with myriad ways of increasing her attribute there, she is again quite straightforward. Of course, the Mystic class does have a lot of tricks that you can use, which can make it less than simply straightforward…

I’m really enjoying myself with this game though, and I’m looking forward to playing through all of the scenarios on offer!

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!

Hey everybody,
After a long time flirting with this game, I think I have finally taken the plunge to go all-in with the Arkham Horror LCG, and have been playing it quite a bit in recent weeks as I attempt to once more get to grips with things. Last summer, I managed to get myself through the entire Dunwich Legacy campaign, but only chronicled the start of that adventure here on the blog –  The Dunwich Horror is my favourite Lovecraft story, though, and I feel that the campaign deserves another run-through, so I’ve decided to tackle it once again, and will be coming back here regularly to talk about my plays! That is, at least, the plan!

Dr Armitage is worried his colleague Professor Warren Rice, might be in trouble, so he has asked for your help in finding his friend. He seems unreasonably nervous about his colleague’s disappearance considering Professor Rice has only been “missing” for a matter of hours…

Much like last time, I’ve started with Extracurricular Activity, as we try to find out what’s been happening with Dr Armitage’s colleagues. It was a lot of fun to get into this scenario, I have to say – I’ve played The Gathering so many times, it’s a very nice change to have what I suppose is a “proper” game, as things get underway and we can see what the game has got to offer. I’d made up new decks for Roland Banks and Akachi Onyele recently, so set out with this pair and thoroughly enjoyed myself!

I’m very pleased to say that I didn’t remember the scenario all that much as I was playing it, so I wasn’t able to “game” it as I thought might be possible in these sorts of circumstances. Looking at my blog from last year, I turned out rescuing the professor, but the students didn’t make it out so well. This time, however, due to a combination of events in the encounter deck and a random path of exploration that turned up a lot of clues, I found myself in the dormitories and rescuing the students, leaving the experiment in the alchemy labs.

Interestingly, I didn’t have a great deal of enemies come out of the encounter deck, so the game did feel quite relaxed, although the treachery cards that I drew were just horrible (more in a bit!) Of course, I’m not an expert at this game yet, so I did still need to consult the rulebook at times, but I think it went quite smoothly overall! I think the worst part, for me, was a string of failed investigate checks – both investigators had an entire turn where nothing happened because all the checks were failed!

Campaign Log
So: Professor Warren was kidnapped, but the students were rescued. I managed to accrue 4 victory points, so both of my investigators have got some XP to play with, although I think I might play another scenario before I start looking to upgrade the decks.

Some thoughts
I find these decks curious to play. Akachi is built as quite a powerhouse, if I can get the right pieces of her deck into play. Something I noticed with the core set play-throughs is that she was a bit useless until the deck “comes online”, but once she was there, I kept drawing cards that felt redundant. This time, however, it was a slightly different story as I was getting some pieces that I needed, but I was also getting a lot of good stuff overall, which made it feel like she was a real player. Roland, by contrast, had some real bum draws, and wasn’t getting very far with either the investigation or combat. I drew Pushed into the Beyond for him rather a lot, also, which discarded anything useful that I managed to play! I do often find this with playing card games, that I will usually find myself just accumulating resources with nothing to spend them on – not sure if I need to give the Roland deck a tweak, but then I’m not really sure what I need to put in there!

Both signature weaknesses were drawn for the investigators, and both were overcome, which I was very pleased about.

It was a lot of fun though – stay tuned for scenario two, coming soon!