Arkham Chronicles S3E6: Brooding Mood

There are a few scenarios in Arkham that I often simply skip. The fifth one in Dunwich Legacy, Undimensioned and Unseen, is one of them. It is a rather frustrating scenario, and the only difference between a good and bad performance is the amount of starting doom in the next scenario. This downside can usually be dealt with more easily than trying to kill the Brood of Yog-Sothoth here; you'll see why down below. Alas, for the sake of the community challenge, I still shall try my best. Let's see how Zoey and Jim fared.

Story

After rescuing Dunwich citizens from being sacrificed to an unknown being, the team investigated the town. They found several texts all leading to one man: Seth Bishop. However, no one has seen Seth in the village since the horrors have appeared. Going back to his writings, the team found disturbing evidence that Seth has gone mad, talking about gathering the remains of his father and imbuing his essence into other beings. Before being able to find Seth, at least one of the horrors has been sighted near the village. It's time to get rid of them!

Mechanics

In the setup, each investigator gets a new random basic weakness, because why not? 😆 The main objective of this scenario is to deal with these enemies:

As you can see, they can only be damaged by a card named Esoteric Formula, which you have to find in the scenario. The formula allows you to fight with your willpower and provides a bonus for each clue on the Brood. The scenario has few effects to move clues on enemies, and one investigator begins with an item that allows such a thing too. It's a pain to deal with, especially as the Broods move to a random location at the end of the enemy phase, since there might be up to 4 of them in play if you didn't rescue any citizen from the sacrifice.

Over time, the scenario got marginally better as new cards provided ways to deal with these enemies based on the fact they are not Elite, clearly an oversight of early designs.

Mission challenges

The community challenge addresses the last point by making Brood an Elite enemy. To compensate, the scenario begins only with one in play, and you have to use a free action to add more. Two options were before me. The Performer mission merged all Broods into a mega entity with more health and added Retaliate and Alert. The goal is simply to slowly peel each individual part off until there's nothing left. Not gonna lie, it sounded very painful, so I went with the Hunter mission. In this version, the Broods flee two locations after an attack or being attacked. If they begin the enemy phase in the Village location, they escape and are removed from the game. More manageable? Maybe. 🤷

Performance

Crowbar has been the highlight of this campaign for Zoey. It's the only weapon she reliably draws within the first five or six rounds. No exception here, and it was made even worse by the fact she drew two weaknesses in that span. The crowbar is enough to deal with the annoying, weaker enemies in this scenario; it wasn't all bad. However, this was for nothing since Eager for Death reared its ugly head again and killed Zoey for the second consecutive scenario.

To continue the trend of bad draws, in the first five rounds, Jim drew thrice Frozen in Fear! Sure, he can get rid of them more easily than others, but it slowed him down just enough for it to be noticeable. Rite of Seeking was helpful again, allowing Jim to grab just enough clue before Zoey died to dispose of a single Brood. Two had already escaped by that point; therefore, I chose to resign with him and move on. While this sounds like a bad performance, killing a single Brood is roughly my average in the normal scenario.

2XP and 2 points in the challenge for killing one Brood. Please don't try to find me at the top of the leaderboards.

Draft

There is a bit of everything in there, but a second upgraded Vicious Blows seems the way to go this late in the campaign. Dropping Counterpunch, Zoey is tired of getting punched in the face.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Hum.. Maybe I could have gone with the Rosary for the potential extra 2 sanity soaks. 🤔

Why gather clues when you can punch everything in the face? 🤣 Let's upgrade Brand and hope for the best with the other xp.

It's not my typical card, let alone upgrade, but Defiance-2 seems like a nice way to succeed in a basic investigation. I think this could help Jim when he doesn't draw Rite. Oh yeah, it will happen; you can bet on it.

Thank you for keeping up with this weird season. Stay tuned for the last two episodes as the team finds new ways to die!