Arkham Chronicles S2E9: The final battle

This is part two of the last scenario of Drowned City, The Doom of Arkham. As usual, there will be spoilers below.

Story

In the first part, the city of Arkham was slowly flooding. There's a good reason for that, as Cthulhu finally shows his ugly face, emerging from the Miskatonic River, crushing the entirety of Rivertown under his massive weight. What can the team do?

If you have collected 5 artifacts, you have the option to attempt banishing the ancient god. Otherwise, you're going to rely on traditional means, aka a stiff kick to the face!

Gameplay

Before the scenario, I had to add yet another elder thing token to the chaos bag. You can divide the three main story allies, Ruby, Andy and Legrasse, between the investigators. They begin the scenario in play and do not take an Ally slot. The locations begin the scenario in the same flooded state they ended in the first part. Rivertown has the additional issue of being Ruined, an effect specific to the scenario. You learn during the scenario that if enough locations are Ruined, the city is considered destroyed, and you have lost.

Cthulhu is deployed at Rivertown, but his card is devoid of stats. More on this below. He will roam around flooding then ruining the city. The doom threshold is very low, each time you flip the Agenda, you check the losing conditions. If an investigator ends his turn at a fully flooded location, he takes one horror and damage. To help counter this, two more scenario locations are added to the city, the Western and Eastern Rooftops. They cannot be flooded, you can also attack enemies at adjacent locations from them.

Cthulhu is a multi-card enemy. When you are engaged with his main card on a location, you are considered engaged with his three parts, wings, head and claws. They don't have hit points at first and cannot be damaged. However, when you successfully fight or evade one of them, you can flip the card over. This part can now be damaged. The goal is to remove all three pieces of Cthulhu from the table.

Sounds simple, right? Well, think again. Advancing the Act actually means putting these pieces back on the board and starting the process again until Cthulhu's rage hits a threshold which forces him to retreat. That would be your "victory" condition. This rage starts at 1, or 2 if they are two or fewer investigators, and has to be raised to 5.

One last mechanic. In addition to the traditional Encounter deck, Cthulhu has its own deck. At the end of the enemy phase, you draw one. In other words, it allows him to act twice. Their danger level is based on what parts of the ancient god are still in play. Obviously, they are treachery cards and token effects that force you to draw additional cards. Phew, that's a lot! 😰

Performance

What do you think would happen when facing the most iconic and dangerous ancient god of this universe? 😅

Would it be possible to win the scenario? Maybe, I'm not sure. You probably would have to be very lucky. Does it really matter? Not the slightest! It's the final scenario of the campaign, it's freakin' Cthulhu, we should not win anyway.

With the number of traumas each of my investigators had, I had little chance of success. Before beginning the scenario, I thought I could play additional rounds after death to see if I would have survived if the investigators were at full health. Cumulating all Cthulhu attacks and scenario effects, each investigator can easily take 3 or more damage each round, this changed my mind and I simply accepted defeat. It wasn't only the damage, it was the lack of resources. Some of the Cthulhu cards take them away, reducing your already limited options to barely zero. I managed to wipe the three parts off the board once, raising the rage to 3, but I was far away from even doing it twice more, let alone even once more.

Both investigators were killed, the city of Arkham was razed, and I was left with the desire of playing the campaign again, foolishly thinking I can do better next time.