Fury of Dracula session - with house rules

As I mentioned in my last post about Fury of Dracula we were a bit frustrated with the core rules, and having found a list of really good thematic house rules we ran another session - and liked the changes.

It made for a more interesting game. You can read the changes HERE and adding to them we also used the rule that "Evasion" only allows Dracula to jump two cities away (pretty much like Wolf form).

Evasion is such a crappy rule in the core rules, it adds nothing and in essence only resets the game - making it twice as long. The new Evasion rule removed that element. Anders who played Dracula played very skillfully, but the rest of us who played the Hunters had a great time chasing and cornering him time and time again. It was a much more exciting and tense game than if we had not used the house rules.

As such I can really recommend them for anyone who seeks to spice things up.

Our session ended with a victory for Dracula, but it had been a very hard struggle up to the very end. The reason the hunters failed was mainly due to the lack of proper items to take on Dracula himself.

Fury of Dracula session and variant house rules

My boardgame group played Fury of Dracula the other day, we had not played it for a while. I winded up playing Dracula and we had a really good time and the game was a blast up until the end when the game pretty much messed up a few things that got us all thinking.

Fury of Dracula has a few things that bothers us, and it seem to be quite universal when checking the FoD forums on BoardGameGeek;

Evasion: Dracula's ability to just magically teleport from one location on the board to any other location on the board has always been a bit of a "WTF", though this card is very rare so it doesn't happen much.

Hypnosis: This card seems ridiculously powerful, and there is another card just like this as well which I forget the name of at the moment. It forces Dracula to both reveal his current location which is extremely powerful on its own, but also forces him to tell his next destination.

In our session Hypnosis was mixed with another card which instantly allowed all Hunters to magically teleport to Draculas location one by one, somehow, after which he was quickly defeated as the first character wore him down and the remaining characters finished him off.

Playing as Dracula should be difficult, but in our session it was plain ridiculous how impotent Draculas event cards were as every single one was countered and neutralized by the Hunters. The game is a lot of fun, but it became obvious that we needed some house rules to nerf some of the powerful cards on both sides. And there are some great tips and house rules on BoardGameGeek which we will try in our next session, they all seem logical and thematic.

The following are written by Chris Wood over at BGG in this thread LINK


Hypnosis:
1. The two hunters involved in hypnosis must be in the same area (city or sea).
2. The hunter performing the hypnosis would be the one playing the card. The bitten hunter would be the subject.
3. The hunter who was hypnotized cannot move that turn. If they have already moved beforehand, then this rule is ignored.
4. Hypnosis effects are automatic; meaning no dice roll for their effectiveness.
5. A Dracula die is rolled if it is night. 1-3 the hypnotized hunter loses 2 hearts (due to the dark connection). 4-6 no harm.
6. Dracula's current location and encounter is revealed, along with any new vampires and their location. Dracula's future move is not revealed.

Dracula gets +1 to combat rolls at night. It's been working very well; it balances out the fact that minions get a +1 to combat rolls in Eastern Europe and Drac's night powers are moot if the die rolls are not good.

Sense of Emergency: Now gives you the ability to travel three spaces on roads. The card is merely discarded, no loss of hearts. Sense of emergency cards cannot be cumulative during the same turn. Also, the same ability in resolve is used identically.
This gives the hunters quite a lot of mobility without them turning into munchkins. During playtesting, it did end the game for us, where a hunter used this ability to stake Drac after we had cornered him. It was useful at the right moment, speeding towards the location to deliver the deathblow. Combined with fast horse it becomes more similar to the original ability, but still has respectable limits; it becomes more logical than the hunter's ability to teleport.

Feeding gives you back 2 blood

Dark Call, in addition to its regular powers, will cause all bitten hunters to lose 1 heart. Dark call is now night only. (always wondered how he could summon the forces of the night when it was day)
The dark call variant makes me think of LOTR, when Sauron called to the ring and it physically hurt Frodo. This power was especially scary when played in this way.

Rage: Now gives a +1 to the combat roll for: Bite, Strength, and Claws.
The restriction still applies (no escaping) and the card's previous power, discarding an item card, is only available at night.

Castle Dracula:
Because of the dark arcane forces associated with Castle Dracula, Dracula gets the following abilities, in addition to the old bonuses:
1. Dracula can use Dark Call and Wolf Form at Castle Dracula at no blood cost. (Day/Night restrictions still apply)
2. Dracula cannot Feed at Castle Dracula.

Hospital:
1. While in the hospital, bitten hunters are immune from ally powers and Dracula event cards that affect bitten hunters.
2. When resupplying at the hospital and drawing an item card, the hunter can alternatively elect to draw one of these items from the item discard pile: Cross, Holy Water, Heavenly Host

Evasion Event Card: When activated, in addition to the normal rules, the hunter's resolve increases by 1.

Resting: Gives you back 1 heart if in a small city, two hearts in a large city or in the Hospital
....

Additionally there is another rule for Evasion which I think should be tested and which I hope we will try in our next session-  and that is: Evasion allows Dracula to jump to any location within 2 spaces of his current location. This will nerf the ability to magically move across the entire continent.
....

I think using the above rules will make the game better, and I'll report back after we have tried them out.

Descent 2nd ed: Campaign Interlude "The Shadow vault"

Time had come to play the campaign interlude scenario. After last session the error of having played one more Act 1 scenario led us to consider playing 5 act I and 5 act II scenarios but a warning from a reader of the blog made us change our minds. Instead we jumped to the Interlude (playing "The Shadow Vault").
Act II will also be one scenario shorter to balance up the one scenario longer Act I.

The Shadow Vault:

Players during this session

The Overlord: Me
Grisban the Thirsty: Johan
Tomble Burrowell: David
Avric Albright: Fredric

In this scenario the heroes have already found the treasure they are looking for, a valuable Shadow Rune artifact. However the Overlord is also looking for this magic Rune and intercepts the heroes just as they are filling their pockets in the treasure chamber of the Shadow Vault. The scenario here is for the heroes to escape the clutches of the Overlord by making a very long trek down the entire board, the Overlord has to intercept them, steal the Shadow Rune and escape off the exit halfway down the map.

The long haul for the heroes is balanced by the fact that some minions cannot be activated before the heroes reach a certain point on the map (the Shadow Dragon) and the Ettin has to walk all the way from the halfway entry/exit point before it can reach up with the main fight. The Shadow Vault is attacked by Baron Zachareth and Goblin Archers.

Despite the partially weak opposition the heroes ran into trouble, as the Overlord had learned how to make the most out of his Goblin archer minions - simply attacking and retreating to maintain a distance between themselves and the hero characters. The large cave became a choke point and the fragile Tomble Burrowell who was carrying the Shadow Rune became the prime target for the monsters as soon as he showed himself. With a particularly fortunate chain of attacks and actions Tomble was knocked unconscious and his dropped Shadow Rune was picked up by a nearby Goblin archer.

As the heroes failed to kill this Goblin it soon made off with the stolen treasure and began running towards the exit while the rest of the Goblin archers and Baron Zachareth stalled the heroes with great success. By the time the heroes had slain the remaining Goblin archers and killed Baron Zachareth (who just respawned by the exit area) their path of pursuit was blocked by both the Shadow Dragon and the Ettin who had just arrived from the his long walk.

Unfortunately for the heroes they just could not fight their way past both monsters in time to catch up with the running Goblin archer carrying the Shadow Rune and soon saw themselves defeated as the rune left with Baron Zacareth through the exit area. The Overlord had boosted his inventory with another artifact.

Regardless of whether the scenario was won or lost, every player received another XP, bringing the XP level of both the heroes and the Overlord up to 5. The heroes also bought the following items as part of ending the Act I arc of the campaign: Iron Battle Axe, Heavy Cloak, Iron Shield

Campaign summary so far:

Prologue: Victory for the heroes

ACT I
Scenario 1 A Fat Goblin: Victory for the Overlord
Scenario 2 Castle Daerion: Victory for the heroes
Scenario 3 A Cardinal's plight: Victory for the heroes
Scenario 4 The Masquerade ball: Victory for the Overlord

Interlude The Shadow Vault: Victory for the Overlord

Overlord 5XP (1 Unused XP)
Widow Tarha 5XP (1 Unused XP)
Avric Albright 5XP --> Upgraded with Armor of Faith
Tomble Burrowell 5XP ---> Upgraded with Caltrops
Grisban the Thirsty 5XP --> (1 Unused XP)

The hero shared item pool now consists of:

Chainmail
Steel broadsword
Crossbow
Iron Battle Axe
Heavy Cloak
Iron Shield
Staff of light (artifact)

Overlord items
Bones of Woe (artifact)
Shadow Rune (artifact)

The Overlord has the following upgraded cards at his disposal:
Dark Resillience, Explosive Runes, Wicked Laughter, Unholy Ritual - and also owns the "Bones of Woe" and the "Shadow Rune" artifacts.

Lords of Waterdeep exciting session

Played Lords of Waterdeep again this weekend,  it was a very interesting session due to the strategies used. The game provided some never before encountered plot quests which proved to be extremely useful.

I started out with the lord which only gives bonus points for buildings by the end of the game, so I was hovering over the Builders Hall location throughout the game - but also had to focus on quickly picking and finishing high end quests rewarding the player with around 20 victory points apiece. About halfway into the game I completed a great plot quest which allowed me to once per turn assign an agent to an already occupied area. This proved to be extremely useful several turns in a row, and especially during the endgame turns.

David managed to complete a plot quest which gave him victory points for using intrigue cards (which he was doing all the time) and also additional points for completing certain quest types. To tell the truth I was frustrated as hell when he kept cashing in a steady stream of victory points for "nothing", so be on the lookout for that plot quest and be sure to grab it as soon as it appears!

David also managed to use the mandatory quest on me during the last turn when I was down to just two agents - just as I was about to collect some resources and finish a 20VP quest!  I think this is where the game showed the depth of the mechanics as I almost pulled off a chaing of well executed actions which were a hair away from allowing me to finish my high end quest - unfortunately I was too consumed with trying to crack the possibility of beating both the mandatory quest and my intended quest to realize I could just finish 1 quest per action and I would only be able to finish my high end quest after using my very last agent - and that agent had to  finish the mandatory quest... crap....

I still ended up winning by a very slim margin, mainly thanks to having cashed in 30VP on buildings and a few VP for left over resources. I really love this game.

Arkham Horror session and Arkham companion app

We dusted off Arkham Horror this Wednesday, it had been over a year since it had been played last time - mainly due to the setup time, playing area requirements and everything else that increased with the involvement of the expansions. This time however I had been tipped about  the free "Arkham Companion" app for tablets/smartphones - and downloaded it for my Android tablet before the game.

It's a great tool, which allows you to save a lot of table space and hassle by providing you with digital versions of Location and Other World cards. What's even more great is that the companion app features all the released expansions for Arkham Horror and you can sort the content of your game accordingly. For instance, I marked "Arkham Horror" and "Innsmouth Horror" for our game and would thus have all the necessary locations related to the core game and the expansion.

The only thing really missing was the Mythos deck- if that too somehow got incorporated it would be fantastic. The way the app works is that you simply click on the locations or other world location deck - picking the appropriate one depending on where your character is located on the board. The app will then shuffle and give you a new card each time you click on that location. The cards provided are the exact same that can be found in the game. I really liked this app and how it saved a lot of table space for us, so I highly recommend it!

As for the game itself, we played Arkham+Innsmouth horror with Azathoth, 4 players. It was a good thing we had Anders with us since Daniel and me had not played  Arkham for over a year and had forgotten half the rules - and David had not played Arkham Horror at all.

We didn't use any of the Heralds from Innsmouth as we thought the myriad of other components was enough to keep us busy in this first game after a long hiatus. We had access to all the extra stuff from Innsmouth, Dunwich, King in Yellow and Lurker at the Threshold - meaning we played with personal "relationship cards", "the insanity/injury deck" and "personal stories" as well as the full array of characters that can be found in those expansions.

Azathoth himself is not that much of a pain in the ass to play with since he does not add any real effects to the game but rather instant kills everyone when he appears and has the game end a automatic defeat. The game however proved very difficult, absurdly so if I have to be honest. First half of the game we got our asses handed to us by strong monsters apearing with gate markers combined with very poor combat results and at least twice did investigators end up having to spend their clue tokens in Other world locations not to get killed which meant that gates never got sealed (think we sealed a total of one gate!). We also lost investigators to "Lost in time and Space" at least 4-5 times which set up back greatly and made things increasingly difficult as the game progressed.

So the game ended a defeat for the investigators.

Lords of Waterdeep session pics

Introduced the game to two new players who had not played it before, David and Pär down at the club. And I think it's proof of a game being genuinely good and well made when different types of people and player groups really like and enjoy something. That's the case with Lords of Waterdeep, the comment was that it was very easy to learn the rules but that it offered a lot of thinking and hard choices during the game.

The three of us had a great game which ended with very close end results. The winner was just a few points ahead of the two other players who both shared 2nd place.

It was interesting to see the Intrigue cards being used extensively, Pär played probably 10 Intrigue cards during the early half of the game and kept going for the areas on the map which allow you to pick up Intrigue cards instead of resources. It gave him an edge early on. David on the other hand got the "Lieutenant" quest early on and managed to fulfill it which meant he had an extra agent in the first half of the game - which too proved very valuable.

I built the palace which brought the ambassador meeple into play, which proved to be a very dangerous combination with David's lieutenant so I ended up tearing the building down and replacing it with another building using an intrigue card during the endgame to prevent David making a rush for all resources.

The game was a blast!