Arkham Chronicles S2E4: The Great Vault

Spoilers ahead, you've been warned.

Remember last time I mentioned the campaign was going well? I might have cursed myself. 😆 As you'll see below, things didn't go my way this time. The scenario is called The Grand Vault, and I'm uncertain if coming from the West or the East changes anything to it.

Before the scenario, I was asked to make a choice related to Marion's task. It's a bit more of backstory, you learned you've been kicked out of your last job and everyone there hates your gut. You have to choose between using Tillinghast resources to get your old job back (Minus 1 progress, but +1 to all your skills in the first agenda) or moving on with your life (plus 2 progress, but 1 mental trauma and you get a -1 penalty to all your skills during the first agenda). Advancing Marion's task has been hard work so far, I didn't like the idea of going back. Therefore, I chose the second option, and I'll deal with the mental trauma later.

Story

As the team continue its descent into the dome, they make their way to a central, large room divided into several vaults. There appears to be an active mechanism to flood and empty these vaults with water. Truly amazing that it still works! The area is probably vital, an artifact must be there, right? 😉

Gameplay

In setup, I was told to add an Elder Thing token to the chaos bag. I think we're past the point of being hopeful here. 😆 This is another moving location type of scenario. Locations are laid out in a 3 x 4 grid, with the central vault being locked until all other vaults are activated. Another bigger vault is located to the far right, currently inaccessible until at least 3 glyphs from this scenario have been translated. Now, I'm intrigued! 👀 You begin on a moving platform, and you have to move it around using clues, as any other location only becomes accessible by being adjacent to the platform. Exploring each minor vault can provide glyphs to decipher and an option to activate the area mechanism.

Performance

Arkham is a card game, sometimes you just have a bad draw. I was bogged down early on by drawing too many enemies, while Marion's wasn't equipped yet to deal with them. Some of them just plain suck.

Killing one of these can put more in play. Even if they enter exhausted, that's still a pain to deal with considering they are Hunters, it can be overwhelming fast. I opted to evade them rather than fight them, it seemed the sensible thing to do. Spending many actions early on these pests meant I simply ran out of time. There's so much to do in the scenario with translating the glyph to open the main vault, activating the locations to access the central vault, even if three of them started already active, and finally running back to the entrance to resign.

I managed to translate four glyphs, I know I missed at least one. I gathered our second artifact from the main vault, but was unable to discover what was hidden in the central vault. There was a hint on the location I could possibly eliminate The Inescapable permanently. Oh, well. 🤷

Marion was killed while being overwhelmed, but also because during one turn, I couldn't get out of a flooded location, that's 5 physical damages if you don't! That's one physical trauma, plus another one for running out of time and the mental one from the task choice. Yikes! The single physical trauma inflicted on Agatha feels light compared to this.

Speaking of Agatha, for the first time, I was able to play her signature card. It's strong, it makes you basically succeed automatically in a skill test if you play it well. I wasn't able to fully use her signature ability though, my discard pile was very thing since I spent the scenario short on resources.

5 XP earned and spent:

• Marion:
  • Grievous Wound ▶️Enchant Weapon
  • Survival Knife x2 ▶️Sweeping Kick x2. Midway through the campaign, the Knife has run out of usefulness. Time to replace it with an event better fitting to the deck. 1 resources for 2 damage is also a good deal.
• Agatha:
  • Oculus Mortuum ▶️ Lost Arcana
  • Correlate All Its Contents x2 ▶️Banish x2. This scenario showed me that if I can the upgraded Sixth Sense into play, I have fewer cards in place with charges, reducing Correlate usefulness. Between the Mortar and Lost Arcana, I also have multiple ways to help pay for Spells, which makes Insight events less interesting.