Arkham Chronicles S1E1: Welcome to Hemlock Vale

This will be your first and only warning: campaign spoilers can be found below. While I will try to avoid providing too many details, I have to reveal parts of the story or mechanics of the Hemlock Vale campaign for this tale to make sense.

What is not a spoiler though is how the campaign is structured. For the second release in a row, we have a non-linear campaign. The introduction tells the player they will have three days and three nights to figure out what is happening in the Vale. Players can choose the region to explore for each of these six segments with a few exceptions. The open-ended nature of the campaign also means some scenarios or cards will have different qualities depending on the day or the moment. Each day also begins a short exploration of the village, talking to the residents, hopefully gathering useful information along the way. This exploration phase is very short, non-confrontational and allows you to prepare for the next scenario by keeping a card a play and choosing your hand of cards. It's very nicely done.

For the first day, I took Hank and Kate to a scenario called The Silent Heath mainly because I didn't think I had done it in my previous runs. My memory was correct, go me! 😉 It's not a complex scenario, it boils down to finding three objects, bringing them back to a central point and resigning.

• Issue #1: Pesky insects that move to the victory pile after the attack, while many adverse scenario effects are based on the number of insects in the victory pile. Hank grumbles.
• Issue #2: Enemies that I wanted to kill could only be damaged by Spell, Relic or Science. Guess what I don't have in my decks?

Sure, when finally the Big Bad spawned, Hank was well-equipped, eager for exercise and wiped the floor with it, but he spent most of the scenario doing nothing. Well, actually, that's not right. Many scenario actions required spending clues as a group, that's what I used Hank for. This way, I could spend all my actions with Kate gathering the clues. That's a good reminder to any Arkham player: read everything carefully, pay attention to every detail!

Without reasons to spend his resources, as you can see in the image, Hank finished the scenario with far too many monies. He still managed to almost die. I guess I went too hard into taking damage to switch for his resolute side.

I didn't see any issue with Kate's deck. She can gather clues just fine, especially if you can have multiple tools in play quickly. I still find Chemistry set to be unreliable without means to alter the results of a skill check.

I completed the scenario with two out of three objectives, I preferred to resign before getting a trauma for failing.

This scenario netted 5XP. Here's the breakdown for each investigator.

• Hank:
  • Knife x2 ▶️Bangle of Jinxes x2 (2XP). An all-purpose +2 on skill checks seems useful, especially if we need to evade enemies rather than killing them. I was also looking back at the deck, all weapons are two-handed except these knives, it leads me to believe I will never have the chance to put them in play because of this.
  • Helping Hand ▶️Protective Gear (2XP). If I'm going hard on taking damage, maybe more soak is advisable. After one scenario, I'm also unconvinced by the frequency Helping Hand will be meaningful the way this deck is built.
  • I saved the last XP.
• Kate:
  • Emergency Cache ▶️Steady Handed (1XP). Resources might not be that big of a deal on second thought, I think I can drop one Cache in favor of a utility for the Chemistry Set. A clue can also be placed on Steady Handed since it's a Science asset.
  • Alchemical Distillation ▶️Fingerprint Kit (4xP). There's no way I would use Distillation over any other tool. While this card is interesting, I don't think it fits in this deck or in this campaign. Meanwhile, with the Kit, one action for three clues, yes, please!