Epic dice fail and other things that go bump in the night

Border Board Games' Monstrous Hallowe'en Monster Game Extravaganza took place on Saturday, October 15.  This month's crowd included visitors Bob and Christine (?), Carlo and Kristin, Rob, Beth and I and newcomer and hopeful returnee Mike.

Earlier in the day gaming at the Lair saw Carlo lose not one but TWO games of King of Tokyo as Beth pulled victory out of thin air.  In each case Beth waited until the last throw of the dice to send his beloved Krakken back into the watery Abyss while her Donkey Kong reigned supreme.  Added with Carlo's failure to murder "wretches" in Letters from Whitechapel before being apprehended by Beth and Kristin, his gaming got off to a slow start.

Having moved to the village hall at the appointed time, we set up for what would be many of our's first exposure to the newest Lovecraftian themed game Elder Sign.  The game follows the model of the Fantasy Flight series featuring familiar heroes from Arkham Horror and Mansions of Madness.  Unlike the other two titles, Elder Sign is a much quicker game to both set up and play.

In many ways this is a great introduction to the worlds of Lovecraft and horror gaming.  It's relatively light and, as a co-op game, engages all players in the successes, or failures, of their peers.  In our first journey into the realms of terror and madness our adversary was Nyarlathotep, who was sometimes confused with the goatee-wearing evil version of Beth, Ynahteb.

It is hard to say if we were just lucky with our dice or lucky with our adventure locations, but we seemed to breeze through Nyarly with amazing speed.  Indeed, not a single investigator went screaming into hell that I can recall.  not so on our second attempt.  The second time round Shub Niggurath was our adversary and, despite having more doom tokens prior to awakening, our luck fell apart early on.

While in our first game we seemed to succeed on our first try probably 80 percent of the time, it often took three tries to resolve a single adventure with Shubby.  This slowed down our collective rate of equipment gathering (basically, item cards and spells provided bonus dice or "hold" spots to help accomplish tasks) and accelerated our loss of sanity and stamina.

Mike endured a particularly gruesome sequence of deaths staggering around battered and bleeding from one disaster to the next.  It goes to show that volunteering to take the sanity hit to start the game doesn't always make you a hero - sometimes you just become a victim.  In the first game Mike's character Jenny Barnes (the purple chick) could do no wrong.  In round two, no matter what he had, he could do no right.

In time, after many agonizing attempts and failures, Shubby awoke and promptly devoured Mike for the last time.  As we had accomplished so few tasks and his battle condition required sacrificing trophies, our ranks were quickly thinned until only four of the seven remained.  Beth's magician Dexter Drake and then Kate Winthrop did a little damage before he disappeared and Kristin's character the Fuller brush vendor Bob Jenkins, who bravely tried to stop the worst of the bleeding among the company, also spiralled into the Abyss.

It came down to Ashcan Pete (Bob) and Harvey Walters (me) facing a wounded but still ferocious elder thing.  Bob rolled well but, ultimately, his lack of trophies saw him devoured moments after Kate threw herself into the maws of evil.  Harvey Walters, the professor from Miskatonic University, stood alone as the guardian at the door.  Weirdly enough, he had gathered plenty of trophies and, despite not having many bonus dice to rely on, rolled well.  His power to convert terror (tentacles) into scrolls (knowledge) proved crucial as he banished the elder thing with only a single trophy remaining.

The final game of the night was a round of Last Night on Earth which pitted Mike, Rob, Beth and Bob against Carlo the zombie master.  Just as Carlo's dice went quiet earlier in the day, so too did his zombie dice once he had rolled for his starting zombie horde.  Perhaps his plan to sacrifice half their number to make them invulnerable in the first round wasn't the best choice after all.  With the objected being "Burn 'em Out", the heroes had to gather explosives and destroy three of the four zombie spawning pits.

The characters were Jake the Drifter (Bob), Father McFeely (Beth), Sheriff Mr. Anderson (Rob) and Johnny Popular (Mike).  In what can only be termed an incredible string of luck, the humans would quickly find a trove of explosives in the school.  While the gasoline wouldn't seem such a stretch, the twin packs of dynamite struck people as a little odd.  The humans enjoyed a lot of success fighting off the zombie attackers.  With pistols, baseball bats, fire extinguishers and fire axes, they blew through the seething mobs, quickly destroying half of Carlo's spawning pits.  Father McFeely eliminated a Taken Over marker that protected one of the spawning pits and promptly ran out to deal with it.

The lone high point for the zombie master came when Jake stood defiantly outside the Plant as Father Grabass went into the light less building.  His dynamite having already been used, Jake went down howling as the zombies overcame him.  Though he would emerge as a zombie hero, the Father's task was already done as Sally emerged inexplicably from the barn just in time to see the final spawning pit blow.

While the zombie action was resolving itself, Christine and Kristin had a rematch of King of Tokyo.  The results of that contest were not immediately known at press time.

Oh the insanity!

Last Saturday, Carlo brought his coveted game of Mansions of Madness down across the border to run a session with Homer and me. Mansions of Madness reminded me of a combination of Betrayal at House on the Hill and Arkham Horror except Mansions has the difference in that it has a GM or Keeper running the game.

Homer and I decided to each run two investigators. The rules of the game are quite simple so we found it not difficult to control to characters at the same time. I chose the Tommy Gun wielding brute, Michael and the brain, Kate. Homer chose his favorite Arkham character, the nun, and well balanced Jenny.

Like in Arkham, each character has stamina (health) and sanity as well as skill points. The skill points are similar to Arkham Horror's clue tokens where you can use them to help your die rolls. Although, unlike the clue tokens, the skill points are only for trying to help your die roll. In Mansions, you roll a d8. Low is good, high is bad.

The scenario Carlo chose was one involving the monastary. Our characters had received a letter from a friend, Marie, asking for help and that is what led us inside the monastary. I suppose we should have found something fishy when in the chapel there was a big hole in the floor with a ladder leading down into it. Big holes in chapel floors with ladders can never be good.

The objective of the game is unknown to the players until after some investigating, it is revealed. On each character's turn, s/he can move 2 spaces and do an action. Actions include: exploring a room, picking up an item, running (move one more space), using a special ability etc... Each turn, characters can go in any order they decide so the player order can change from turn to turn. Once the characters have made their moves and actions, the Keeper releases what evil he wishes.

Carlo as the Keeper was focusing on Michael the brute and tried successfully to make him insane. Michael seems to be able to go insane at the sight of himself in a mirror. His tommy gun proved to be useful only once. After that one initial success on causing damage to Roger the Shoggoth, Carlo played numerous cards on Michael that made him drop the gun, made the ammo low, and at some point, made Michael blind. We did eventually take down Roger the Shoggoth although he was followed by his friend the 2nd Shoggoth (he wasn't named as the first).

Luckily, or maybe not so much, it was Kate the brain who ended up finding all the of the clues that lead to revealing the objective. Kate's special ability is to make a luck roll once per game to try to get the objective revealed. Her luck is only two but she gets to add +2 to her roll for each clue that she has. Since she had 3 clues in possession, I only needed to roll an 8 or less to succeed. I rolled a 10 :/

Homer and I were chugging right along even with an insane Michael. We managed to figure all of the puzzles revealed to us and even opened some whoop ass on some dog like creature and Roger. Kate ended up finding the final clue which revealed that our objective was to carry a collapsed Marie out of the monastary. Kate was still doing quite well in stamina and sanity so it seemed entirely possible except the objective condition involved that all characters had to remain alive. It seemed our nun was going to be the thorn in our sides since she was down to one hit point left (and almost died earlier when Carlo played a broken leg card on her which said the next time she moved, she'd take a hit point of damage. Luckily Homer had a sedative that negated any trauma card played). But it wasn't the nun who was our ruin, it was that damn, insane Michael. Because he was insane, Carlo could play trauma cards on him at anytime and once the objective was revealed, Carlo played a card on Michael that made Michael die immeditately. And, so, evil triumphed over the monastary on that day. But next time, Carlo better watch out!