Arkham Chronicles S3E3: Let's go to the museum

We're back in Arkham with the latest part of the community challenge, Hunters of the Mythos. After the last episode, Jim and Zoey went back to Dr. Armitage empty-handed. Professor Rice's and Dr. Morgan's whereabouts remain unknown. If you missed the last episode, you can read it here:

There is a short interlude in the Dunwich campaign after the second scenario. One possible resolution in The House of Always Win can leave the investigators unconscious for several hours. If this happens, Dr. Armitage has been kidnapped, but the investigators earn two bonus XP for reading his journal. Otherwise, one investigator may add the Dr. Armitage card to his deck.

It's not a particularly useful card in either deck. However, I've put in Jim's, reasoning he could always use the two wild icons.

Story

Dr. Armitage is finally ready to tell the truth to the investigators. A few months ago, a man named Wilbur Whateley came to the Orne Library looking for a Latin translation of a book called Necronomicon. Yes, that book. 😉 He already had an English translation but judged it to be insufficient for his work. Armitage turned him away since he seemed a bit shady.

Armitage, Rice and Warren later found the body of this man on the university grounds; he had come back to attempt to steal the book but was caught by a guard dog. Armitage's description of the corpse (semi-anthropomorphous, covered in fur, wearing greenish-gray tentacles) casts doubts on the exact nature of Whateley.

The good doctor, fearing the worst, handed the book to his friend, the curator of the Miskatonic Museum, to be held in the restricted area. He's now second-guessing himself and convinces the team to get the book back.

Mechanics

There are two main mechanics in the Miskatonic Museum scenario. The first one involves finding your way to the Restricted Halls. This idea will be reused several times throughout the history of this game: a deck of locations is built, and you need to spend clues to put them in play and find your objective. There are six exhibit locations in the museum; the Restricted Halls are seeded in the bottom three of the deck.

The encounter deck contains a single enemy that will re-enter the board multiple times because of encounter cards, agenda, or act effects. A card also gets attached to it and accumulates tokens in different ways to boost its stats.

Mission challenges

Here were my two options for the community challenge. The Performer's mission is thematically linked to his curiosity. Each time Jim would leave an exhibit hall, we would need to test either willpower(3) or book(4). On success, we add a counter to the location and proceed as normal. On failure, the location is shuffled back in the deck, and the investigator and enemy are moved back to the entrance. You score points based on the number of locations with a token at the end of the scenario. Considering Jim has issues getting clues, this doesn't seem like a viable option, as it raises the possibility of needing even more clues than the standard scenario.

The Hunter mission, as you have probably guessed, is linked to the single recurring enemy. You get points based on the number of hit points it had the last time he was in play. To help you push your limits, each location comes with a no-action-cost way to force the monster back into play. It could be very dangerous, but this mission sounds more doable, so I chose this one.

Performance

No trait legacy was used. Zoey had a good starting hand; there was no need to push it with another monster. Jim's money-making trick was not applicable here since no investigator can gain resources at the starting location of the scenario.

Drawing Rite of Seeking in my initial hand has advantages and disadvantages. On one hand, I could quickly advance the first act (it's required to get past the museum entrance); on the other hand, exhibit halls were more challenging to clear out of clues. The number of locations is limited, which means you have to gather clues from an exhibit hall to be able to add the next location from the exhibit deck. To add an extra challenge, there's this terrible card:

Jim drew this encounter twice and obviously either drew the auto-fail or the -4 token. 🙄 Luck wasn't on Zoey's side either. She kept missing her attack on the recurring monster, which meant she took way more damage than needed since the monster has Retaliate.

I guess karma has a way to balance things out. Zoey's weakness requires discarding encounter cards until an enemy is spawned, which cannot happen in this scenario. The Restricted Halls was the fourth card in the exhibit deck, which thankfully cut our search short. I missed one or two victory points by not clearing all exhibits, but I'll take that over defeat and trauma.

The final objective is to clear the Halls of all clues. The shroud is not high; it's only 3, but without a reliable tool, it was a slow process. I had to use a combo of Map the Area and Olive McBride to get it done. I completed the scenario while only in the second agenda out of three but didn't linger to get more XP or mission points since Zoey only had 2 health and 1 sanity left. The last time I killed the mission monster, it had 5 health. This translates into 4 points for the community challenge.

Completing the scenario means the team found the Necronomicon. In the resolution phase, you are presented with two choices: destroying or keeping the book. Both are valid choices for the campaign; both have their consequences. I chose to gamble a bit and add it to Jim's deck. Maybe it could help him investigate, especially if we ignore the Elder Sign token I was asked to add to the bag.

Draft

The team earned 3XP from this scenario; let's see how we can improve our odds.

What a lackluster choice! 🫤 Let's go with Blood Eclipse. Even without taking additional damage, that's still an attack with 5 base skill for 2 damage, and the skill icons could be useful. "Where's the party?" gets the boot. I don't think there's enough action space with this team to proactively add more enemies into play.

Alright, whose entity do I need to appeal to for getting any option to help Jim investigate? The only card that remotely fits into the deck is upgrading Spectral Razor since I don't play with doom or curse tokens. At least, it doesn't spend any xp.

Sigh. This is getting frustrating. While I liked drafting the initial deck, if I were running this on my own, I would tweak the upgrade rules. It's simply not fun to regularly be presented with options that simply do not improve the deck. However, for the moment, I'm sticking to the community challenge rules. Let's upgrade Azure Flame, whatever. The last XP point can't be spent, as new cards would cost at least two points.

Thanks for following along! If you've ever played the Dunwich campaign, you know the next scenario is aboard the train. If you haven't, well, you'll see, it's a fun ride. 😉