Arkham Chronicles S3E1: Dealing with a bad hand

Let's start this community challenge in Dunwich. I dread how badly my drafted Jim deck will perform. I also need to point out I usually play Arkham on Easy, but the challenge requires us to play on Standard. There's a mental adjustment for me to do as the probabilities of success are changed. Rather than having a high probability of success with 2 points over the target difficulty, it's now 3 points. It may not sound a lot different, but if you played the game, you understand how much a single point means.

Story

Our friend and former mentor, the head librarian of the Miskatonic University, Dr. Henry Armitage has contacted us requesting our assistance. His message was cryptic but still carried a sense of urgency. The team meets him in his home office, normally nicely tidied up, but now in total disarray: books everywhere, notes scattered on his desk, an empty bottle of wine lying on top of some. Clearly shaken, Armitage explains he's been looking for two of his colleagues for several days now: Dr. Francis Morgan, professor of architecture, and Warren Rice, professor of languages. He has a familiar feeling of dread about their disappearances, fearing they are in trouble. Armitage asked us to inquire about the whereabouts of his colleague, but doesn't clearly explain why he fears the worst. The team obliges; it's the least they can do for their old mentor.

We're already facing our first choice! The campaign asks us to choose which person we would like to track first. As per tradition, I went looking for Warren Rice at the Miskatonic University, the last place he was seen. He is also known to lose track of time, so he might simply be locked in his office, lost in his work. Whatever you choose here, you'll play the other scenario right after.

Gameplay

This is one of the first scenarios ever published; you can't expect deep and wild mechanics here. It's pretty straightforward: find clues quickly enough for your investigators to understand what is going on before the Big Bad spawns. The twist is some rooms are locked; you need to find the janitor in the second of three acts since he's the only one with the keys. He's added to the encounter deck; clues can be spent to discard cards until you reveal him, which puts him in play. Do it quickly enough, and the Big Bad spawns further from its target.

As part of the community challenge, teams need to choose one mission. That's how you score points, and it also sets who's the lead investigator for the scenario. These missions are based on the traits of your investigators. Available to me are Hunter missions for Zoey and Performer missions for Jim. Yes, I also had to pick one trait for each one before the campaign.

I chose the Hunter mission, which consists of killing the Big Bad as far away as possible from its target. The normal scenario can be resolved by either killing the Big Bad or by way of clues. Not feeling confident about my ability to get clues, I figured the violent route was better. The alternative would have been saving students and bringing them to an exit, all of which would require dedicated actions I could probably not afford with Jim. As an aside, some teams might have chosen to run a second mission for bonus points.

Performance

In the first turn of each scenario, as part of the community challenge, we have the option to use a legacy ability for each of our investigators. For Hunter Zoey, it's searching your deck for a weapon and playing it for free. However, there's a drawback. You need to add a Relentless Dark Young (with Elusive, no victory point) monster at the farthest location. If you don't kill him by the end of the scenario, you get a mental trauma and have to remove that weapon from your deck. I went for it. The locations for this scenario are all bunched together, and I need a weapon if I am to deal with the Big Bad.

This part went very well. Armed with her trusted Machete, Zoey dealt quickly with the Dark Young. He has the Elusive trait, which means he would get away if ready after being attacked, but a key draw of Stall for Time prevented this.

For Jim, it's about playing his trumpet to an audience for money. Draw tokens one by one, stop when you want, and if you're still in the positive compared to the total of all your stats, you get one money per token. Considering he's nulling the value of Skull Tokens, it seems like a good deal to me. It should only backfire if you draw the auto-fail. Still, I was reasonable and stopped after five tokens for five resources.

As for the scenario itself, it went better than I expected. Jim drew absolutely nothing to get clues; I had to do it the hard way by committing cards to his base 3 book stat. Plus the help of Zoey's trusty crowbar. I managed to get just enough clues to make it to Act 2, but there was no way I could find the janitor.

I took the wait-and-see approach, preparing for the boss fight. Furthermore, I even chose to accelerate the process by adding doom with encounter cards for extra personal benefits like drawing cards. Armed with her Machete and Dog, Zoey could dish out a lot of damage to the Boss quickly. I kept Razor for the occasion and added a few damage via the Occult Lexicon/Blood Rite discard combo. The boss didn't make it past the Science Lab, the second best location pointwise for the challenge. To get the better option, I would have needed to be much more efficient with clues, find the janitor, and unlock a secondary location.

7 points for the community challenge! And 3 XP to spend. The way it works with a draft is I have to draw five possible upgrades for the deck and choose from them. Some people prefer not to draw their XP spending, improving their decks slowly, but that's mandatory in this challenge. Let's see how it went.

Not the most inspiring choice, but I think I can get something out of Bruiser. I dropped Armageddon for it. I think it's too expensive; I would always prefer a weapon over it.

Oh geez, that's terrible. Nothing to help here. However, there's a gamble to take. By not spending all the XP, I get another random draw and might have better luck. I picked Protective Incantation as the less terrible option. It also had the added benefit of not burning any charges of Down the Rabbit Hole or Arcane Research. I dropped Power Word, I don't have time for its shenanigans.

I see a 0xp option. Don't mind if I do! It's a marginal upgrade for the deck; however, this allows me to continue my gamble.

Didn't we have three of the same choices? 😆 Upgrade to Rite of Seeking seemed appropriate. It doesn't improve our draw odds, but at least when it comes up, it'll be efficient!

We have not found Professor Rice but fought a huge experiment gone wrong in the Department of Alchemy. What the hell is going on? Stay tuned for the next episode!