Shadows of Brimstone - Swamps of Death Sessions

Recently our posse (9 year-old Level 3 Preacher Father Thoth, 6 year-old Level 2 Sheriff Venkman, and me, the Level 2 Indian Scout White Feather) decided to tackle Mission 4: Rescue Mission. It's pretty simple; all you have to do is rescue one of the townsfolk who's been kidnapped by a monster and taken into the mines. You have to roll for one of 3 different people it can be and we got the farmer's son.

During previous missions we'd had some disagreements between the boys regarding which of them would draw Threat/Map/Encounter/etc. cards, so for this session I decided to assign them decks for which they'd be responsible. Father Thoth was in charge of drawing Mine Artifact, Darkness, Growing Dread, Mine Map, and Encounter cards, and Venkman would draw Threat cards, roll for enemy Elite Abilities, and place and reveal Exploration Tokens. I handled the Gear, Loot, and Scavenge decks as well as placing monsters and administering the fights, money, and XP.

With everyone's responsibilities settled we delved into the mine. White Feather easily made it to the edge of the Mine Entrance with his +3 Move ("Fast" Ability + Leveling roll + Adventure Boots) and looked through the door, Thoth was a couple spaces back, and Venkman rolled a "1" and decided he'd rather have the Grit than the extra move. Venkman revealed an Encounter (Attack), so he drew a Medium Threat (for 3 players) that called for 2 Low Threats. They were a Slasher, a Night Terror, and 3 Void Spiders.

Since we were now a Level 3 party (thanks to Thoth), every enemy would now get an Elite Ability. Venkman rolled for each enemy type and the Night Terrors' Terror (2) was upgraded to Unspeakable Terror (2), the Slasher's Fear (2) was upgraded to Terror (2), and the Spiders' To Hit of 4+ improved to 3+. Not too bad, all things considered.

The Spiders activated first and attacked each of us, doing a few wounds. I moved so I could be adjacent to and attack 2 of them during my activation (I didn't roll for my Escape test since I thought I could move as long as I remained next to the Spider targeting me but I've since learned I have to roll a successful Escape test to leave the space I'm in, regardless of adjacency) and I killed them both. Venkman killed the other Spider before the Slasher activated and attacked Thoth, and then the Night Terror activated and advanced. Thoth had chosen the Holy Strength upgrade after attaining Level 3 and he used it to good effect to slam the Slasher with 5 wounds before using all of his Faith to heal 3 of his wounds. During the next turn I landed a critical hit with my Shotgun to finish off the Slasher, Venkman landed one Hit and one Critical hit to deal 7 wounds to the Night Terror, and Thoth finished it off with a Hit and a Critical Hit.

The Loot was pretty mundane except for the character-changing Artifact that Venkman acquired: it was the Orb of Ro'Kal and it gives your attacks +1 damage per Corruption point you have, but it gives you a Corruption Hit for every enemy you kill. This did not bode well for Venkman, especially if we happened to encounter any more enemy swarms.

The next tile was the Track Stop room and I used White Feather's once-per-Adventure ability to discard the next Exploration Token (Encounter x2), and the next one drawn was an Encounter and a Clue. The Encounter was a Cunning 5+ test for one player (our choice), we chose Venkman to take it (Cunning 4), he passed, and as a result of passing it he gained the Encounter card which he could turn in for a benefit to the posse later in the mission. White Feather discovered another room and it had a Growing Dread, an Encounter, and a Clue. The Encounter was an attack and it turned out to be 9 Zombies and 2 Corpse Piles. The Zombies' Elite Ability was that heroes on the same Map Tile as a Zombie or Corpse Pile are -1 on their To Hit rolls (ouch), and the Corpse Piles' Elite Ability was that they had 10 HP instead of 6 HP.

White Feather killed a Zombie with his Shotgun, Venkman killed 2 (and gained 2 Corruption due to that Orb), and Thoth killed one with his Smite Judgment. The Zombies advanced and did very little damage, and on our next turn I killed another Zombie, Venkman killed one (and gained another Corruption), and Thoth cast Cleansing Fire to try and hit the 2 Corpse Piles. He was successful and rolled an 11 for damage (someone kindly pointed out that he needs to roll damage separately for each affected enemy but I didn't know that at the time of this session), landing 9 wounds on each Corpse Pile for a total of 110(!) XP. White Feather looked on in barely-concealed disgust and envy.

I then failed a Holding Back the Darkness roll and triggered a Darkness card that turned out to be an Ambush of 7 more Zombies. I completely missed on my next attack roll but due to the Ambush Venkman was finally able to put his Cavalry Saber to use. He killed 1 Zombie with the Saber (another Corruption point gained, putting him at 4 and 1 away from mutating) and rolled 1 Hit and 2 Critical Hits with his gun, killing 3 more (and avoiding a mutation by saving all 3 of the ensuing Corruption Hits). Thoth's hot rolling continued and with the help of Holy Strike he rolled 2 Critical Hits and healed 3 wounds from White Feather.

On our next turn White Feather was finally able to contribute by rolling 2 Critical Hits and killing 2 Zombies, but Venkman's luck finally ran out (sort of). He killed an adjacent Zombie with his Saber and failed his Corruption save. Fortunately for him, he rolled for the "Fangs" Mutation that allows him to make one free combat 1 attack per turn, using the D8. After resolving his Mutation roll he dealt the final wound to each Corpse Pile with his gun before Thoth finished off the final two Zombies. White Feather discovered another room (the Excavation Chamber) and Venkman revealed 2 Encounters on the Exploration Token. The first was the Prospector encounter (Venkman passed both tests), and the second was...what's this? "Mangled Remains"? Mangled Remains says that if you're looking for someone, your posse has just discovered all that remains of them. The mission is considered to be a success and you can either immediately go back to town with the news, or you can press on and try to complete the mission and exact a measure of revenge.

We were in great shape and I think we could have finished the mission easily, but 1) I also knew that our luck could take a 180 degree turn at any time and, more importantly 2) Venkman had that Orb and we didn't want to risk any further Corruption Hits. So it was with that anticlimactic encounter that we ended the mission.

Venkman rolled a Hellbat attack Travel Hazard (you have to roll for each piece of Dark Stone and Dark Stone-infused gear you own and if you roll a "1" you lose it) but the only thing lost was a single piece of Thoth's Dark Stone. Thoth went to the Frontier Outpost to roll for a Bounty but his bad luck at the Outpost continued as he rolled an event that destroyed it for the remainder of our stay. He didn't buy anything else because he's saving up for the Book of Armageddon. Venkman and White Feather went to the Blacksmith (and rolled the -$50 discount event!) where Venkman purchased some Dark Stone bullets and White Feather, at 3 Corruption, bought the Dark Stone Buckle (lets you roll twice on the Mutation chart and choose one of the results).

White Feather barely achieved Level 3 after getting the Mission reward. He chose the Battle Scout Ability (once per Adventure he gives the other heroes +2 Initiative for one turn and recovers 1 Grit) and rolled a +2 Health bump (finally!). Sheriff Venkman leveled up to 3 during the mission and chose the Man of Action ability (roll two dice for movement and choose one) to synergize with his Max Grit of 3. He also improved his Lore to 3 and his Health and Sanity to 16 each. Father Thoth didn't level up but he leads the posse with 550 XP and $2,360, Venkman has 315 XP and $885, and White Feather's bringing up the rear with 50 XP and $300.

Both boys did a good job catching some rules that their father missed. Venkman reminded me to keep checking the Posse Marker on the Depth Chart, and when there were only 2 Zombies left Thoth realized that we'd forgotten to roll for the Zombies' Fear Effect the entire Fight. Venkman is also getting more comfortable with the saving throws to prevent Health and Sanity damage.

Next up, Mission 5: Escape.

Next up for our posse (9 year-old Level 3 Preacher Father Thoth, 6 year-old Level 3 Sheriff Venkman, and me, the Level 3 Indian Scout White Feather) was Mission 5: Escape. The objective is simple – escape the mine – but there’s a twist: the posse is not allowed to quit the mission by running away, they have to play it through to the bitter end. The posse starts on a Cross Passage (which the Adventure book calls a “Cross Path” for some reason) and the further the posse is on the Depth Chart, the greater their chance to discover the Mine Entrance after a Clue is discovered. There’s also a chance of a big bad waiting for you at the Entrance if you have a bad HBtD (Hold Back the Darkness) roll.

The first tile we discovered was the Storage Room. It had a Clue and an Encounter and in this Adventure if the Exploration Token has a Clue, an additional Threat card is added. The Enemies were 8 Zombies and 2 Corpse Piles, and oddly enough, Venkman rolled the exact same Elite Abilities for this Threat card as he did last game: -1 for the Heroes To Hit HD (Hungry Dead) on the same tile as a Corpse Pile/HD and +4 Wounds for the Corpse Piles. Unfortunately, the Encounter was one of the worst in the deck, and it’s particularly bad when paired with HD (due to their low Move). It was A Crack in Space: Each Hero makes a Spirit 6+ test or else take D8 Sanity damage, ignoring Willpower. The worst part is that a Hero ending their move on this tile has to take the test again, meaning that you might have to subject your Hero to some horrendous Sanity damage to destroy the Corpse Piles at the far back of the room.

To make things worse, White Feather botched the HBtD roll and triggered a Darkness card that was an ambush by 3 Hellbats and 1 Slasher. Now White Feather and Venkman (with his Spirit of 1) were trapped on the tile affected by Crack in Space unless we could fight ourselves free of the ambush. Thankfully, the Elite abilities for the Hellbats (+2 HP) and Slasher (Heroes take 2 Horror Hits) weren’t too bad. White Feather landed a Critical Hit on the Slasher and rolled a 6 for Damage to kill it in one shot (I’m embarrassed to note that I don’t think I’ve EVER noticed their “Chiton Plating” ability that means their Critical Defense is 2 rather than 0; no wonder we always thought they were pushovers. Oops. At least we played the final group of Slashers correctly.) as well as killing the Hellbat targeting him. He passed the Crack in Space test, and killing the Slasher meant Venkman could step back off the affected tile and shoot.

Another advantage we discovered on Thoth’s activation was that the two Corpse Piles were within range of his Smite Judgment Sermon. So we spent the next few turns trying to whittle down the HD while Venkman kept casting Smite and Cleansing Fire to try and burn out the Corpse Piles from afar. It didn’t help that the Piles kept spawning HD (there were 10 on the board at one point), and rather than chance the HD gaining another Elite Ability (if we had to spawn one and none were available), Venkman took a chance and moved on to the Crack in Space tile so he could attack with his Cavalry Saber and Peacekeeper Pistol in the same turn. Miraculously, he passed Crack in Space with his Spirit of 1 before retreating on his next Activation. Once Thoth destroyed a Corpse Pile the tide turned rapidly and we finished off the HD as quickly as we could. This Fight had taken several turns to resolve (and about 35 minutes of real time) and already the Darkness Marker was fairly well advanced on the Depth Chart.

We backtracked and the next tile revealed was the Track Stop (I think). White Feather botched yet another of many HBtD and revealed a Growing Dread (which was immediately played per the Mission rules) that was 2 Horror Hits with D6 Wounds (ignoring Defense) per failed hit. The Encounter was an Attack by 6 Stranglers (Elite Ability = Heal 2 Wounds at the start of each turn). Due to their Elite Ability, White Feather spent a Grit on Savage Attack (1 Grit = +2 Combat once per turn) and waded into their midst, getting adjacent to three of them. He killed one with his Raptor Claw (1 Combat Free Attack once per Fight, 4-6 = Critical Hit) and the other two with his Tribal Hatchet. Venkman killed 2 more on his activation and Thoth easily finished off the straggler.

The next room had another attack, and this time it was 8 Void Spiders (Elite Ability = +2 Damage) and 4 Stranglers (+2 Combat against anyone carrying one or more Dark Stone, including Items). Venkman had taken a pummeling all game but he was able to heal quite a bit (his Silver Buckle Item = Heal 1 Sanity or Wound every time you kill an enemy) when he tore through the Void Spiders with some hot rolls. The final Strangler went down hard (due to our bad Damage and To Hit rolls), but the fight was relatively easy. After this Fight White Feather got one of the few pieces of non-Dark Stone, non-money Loot for this Mission: a plain Pistol. He passed it to Venkman to give him the option to dual-wield if he was in a spot where he couldn’t use his Saber.

The next Fight was after yet another failed HBtD roll where we were ambushed by 7 Hungry Dead triggered by a Darkness card. Their Elite Ability was that they were 3 Move and 3 Initiative, but the +1 Initiative for Undead Growing Darkness card was already in play, so combining those effects with their +2 Initiative bonus for the Ambush meant that for the first turn we would be facing 6(!) Initiative Hungry Dead. Venkman had earlier gained an Encounter card that confers a +3 Initiative bonus to the party when discarded, so he used it now so White Feather and Venkman could get first strike on the HD. It worked okay, but not great. White Feather killed the two adjacent to him, Venkman whiffed, and Thoth took a ton of damage from the 3 next to him. Thoth came within one failed Defense roll of going down, but on the next turn White Feather went over to help, Venkman took out his HD, and the Fight was over relatively quickly.

But now the Depth Chart was our primary adversary, and we were losing. The poor HBtD rolls continued, triggering Darkness and Growing Dread cards that kept sapping our Health/Sanity and advancing the Darkness Marker. This was also when we drew 3 passages in a row, and in White Feather’s hurry to find another Encounter Token with a Clue (we’d only found one so far) the other members of the posse took their first-ever Voices in the Dark Horror Hits.

The next room finally had a Clue and an Encounter. The Darkness was only 3 spaces away from escaping, so if we were going to succeed we needed to hit our roll to discover the Mine Entrance. We missed it. An automatic Threat was added due to the Clue (we forgot to add it after the Encounter caused an Attack but it didn’t end up mattering), but we failed the Encounter which triggered a one level-higher Threat. It was 3 Slashers and their Elite Ability was that they add +2 Damage to their already hefty D6 of base damage. We retreated a couple of steps to keep them away for one turn, but it didn’t make much of a difference. With their Chiton Plating it was hard to put wounds on them but Thoth more than pulled his weight with his Judgments. We had the final Slasher down to one or two Wounds remaining when (yet another ) failed HBtD revealed the final Growing Dread. It advanced the Darkness Marker the final space, the Darknes escaped, and we immediately lost the Mission.

The penalty for failing the Mission was to discard an Item with a value of at least $200 or suffer a stat penalty. I don’t even remember what the stat penalty was since it was so punitive that I never even considered it. Thoth discarded his awesome Poncho (+1 Health and +1 Sanity, plus ignore Weather effects), I got rid of my +2 Damage axe, and Venkman lost his Vicious Axe (+1 Initiative and +1 Damage, I think). Thoth gained another Mutation (Enlarged Arm - he can’t equip Clothing-Glove Items) this mission, plus 4 more Corruption. Venkman’s Corruption of 1 was unchanged, but White Feather took his final 2 points of Corruption and mutated. Thanks to his Dark Stone buckle he got to roll twice and choose one on the Mutation Table, and he picked Barbed Tail (+1 Combat but one less Corruption to Mutate) over Extra Head.

The mission took a long time due to bad Map Tile and Encounter Token pulls, but this game habitually runs long, anyway, and I’ve decided that unless we have the house to ourselves and can start at 6:30 PM or earlier (not including setup) this will be a game we only play on the weekend. I also had a forehead-slapping moment after the Mission where I realized that not only had we never applied the effects of Venkman’s Dark Stone Ammo, but he’d also never used his Bite mutation Free Attack (Combat 1 once per turn, uses the D8 to hit). I already know I need to give his character sheet extra attention to help him remember stats and abilities but I just dropped the ball this time.

Tonight we’re going to travel to town where I plan on selling some Dark Stone and I’m going to try and talk Thoth into doing the same, plus maybe a trip for him to the Church to heal some Corruption.

After that it’s Mission 6: Blow the Mine.

Great writeups.

A couple of questions:

-Do you find the levelling to be too quick? From reading other group's sessions, it seems a tad faster than I expected.

-Do you find the Indian Scout weak in comparison to other classes? I had my eye on him (and the Darkstone Shaman when he's released), but most people are saying he's very weak and not too fun to play.

It's starting to sound like there is a lot of stuff to keep track of. Character abilities, items, mutations, etc.

charlest wrote: -Do you find the levelling to be too quick? From reading other group's sessions, it seems a tad faster than I expected.

-Do you find the Indian Scout weak in comparison to other classes? I had my eye on him (and the Darkstone Shaman when he's released), but most people are saying he's very weak and not too fun to play.

It doesn't feel like we're leveling too fast but we're also only 5 missions in. I think mission length has a huge effect, that if you play several long missions in a row then the potential is there to amass a lot of XP quickly. I have a couple ideas for how to slow down XP gathering (if it proves to be a problem):

1. Shorten the missions. Remove some non-Clue Exploration Tokens from the stack (or the bag, we've switched to drawing ours). It might make the missions easier, but the rewards you get for completing a mission are dwarfed by the XP available in a Fight.

2. Increase the mission failure penalties. Some have mentioned halving any XP gained, but I think making someone lose an item would be a particularly nasty variant that would really slow people down.

The Indian Scout is hard to use well. Most of the Indian Scout's abilities and upgrades are situational and more about manipulating map tiles and card/token draws rather than damage production. The only reason I played him is because I thought he'd be interesting to play rather than being good, and my son insisted on playing the Preacher which was my first choice. Even though the Preacher is equivalent to a Mage, the Indian Scout seems to be more of a support character than the Preacher is. Upgrading to 4 Combat dice will help a lot, but most of his damage-enhancing abilities and equipment were hard-won and I think the Indian Scout can't bounce back from a bout of bad rolling as easily as some of the other character classes.