Michael, Bruce, Darryl and Phil got together for a great game of Gloomhaven. Michael used the Cragheart for his first game ever and pretty much aced it and learnt the rules in record time (as usual). This was a tough one with narrow corridors and lots of monsters. Things seemed to be going reasonably well as we reached the last door but lots of healing had been needed to overcome the poison and damage from the first two rooms. The summons (Cragheart’s skeleton from ring and Spellweaver’s ethereal aid) had a tough time keeping up. Though not entirely useless they were not so much use in the final room even with the Spellweaver resummoning to try and bring it closer to the action for the final room. Lots of good attacks from the Scoundrel, Spellweaver and Vermling backed up by the Cragheart made advancing and attacking quickly a success with healing support from the casters and self healing from some too.
The problem we had was that as soon as we opened the door all 5 ooze monsters took 2 hits and spawned a second ooze. They did this immediately and being at the far end of the room there was nothing at all we could do this time to stop them. Then on the next turn all 10 oozes healed 2 hit points (20 in total). So we had 10 fully healed ooze ready to fight after we cleared out the vermlings. Then even worse they had two ranged attacks each. This pretty much wiped out our heroic vermling Ratfiend (Darryl) who narrowly escaped exhaustion due to Stun from the Spellweavr and Muddle from the Cragheart. Then finally the Cragheart leapt forward with an amazing attack to finish off quite a few ooze already damaged by the spellweavers attack and we soon had things under control once more. Then it was a matter of grabbing the chest and finishing off the last couple of oozes thanks partly to the arrival of the summons at last. This was a very close call and would have been impossible without some good play from everyone I think after those oozes spawned.
Post game was very exciting as we were able to find a pattern for a new item and retire the spellweaver who had completed her goal of slaying 20 elite monsters. This also caused prosperity to rise to two unlocking the town records and the Vermling Beast Tyrant. This new character looks quite fun to play and will be a nice change from the Spellweaver. Different tactics will be required as all the Muddle and Stun from the Spellweaver had proved quite crucial in our last encounter. We are also close to unlocking the Sacred Oak envelope as well.
I went through the finished quests to tidy things up on our map and create a flow chart. It looks like our best bet to forward the main quest line is to go through the cistern for which we would need water breathing. Hail has already hinted at the Drake’s Nest which we have now discovered at last. The alternative could be some side quests including the Sulfur Mine we unlocked from a Treasure Map or going deeper into the sewers or visiting some shrines or an outside temple in the Dagger Forest.
Be interesting to see what the players decide and of course we still have a city event we can do plus explore the new store items. Ratfiend especially has done quite well with Treasure in the last scenario.
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