Arkham Chronicles S1E2: Mulligan happens

I'll be honest with you, I play for fun, not to be annoyed in a game. This means I play Arkham on Easy or Standard, that's enough of a challenge for me, and if shit hits the fan, I allow myself second chances. I don't mean by that I ignore auto-fail token draw, I mean if a scenario fails badly within a few minutes, I reset the board and try again.

Your spoiler warning for this story.

This is what happened in the second scenario of this campaign. The game heavily hinted I should help Dr Marquez find her assistant, but I ignored it and went to explore the Hemlock House. This is an interesting scenario introducing a new type of card: enemy-location. Different mechanics in this scenario can flip your location on its enemy side, and you can now kill them rather than getting for the clues. Success is based on a combination of locations sealed using clues and enemy-locations sent to the Victory display by killing them. Yes, this means the house somewhat collapses when you do the latter! Pretty cool idea!

The scenario went poorly, both my investigators were killed within four rounds. I kept failing my skill checks and had a bad draw of treachery card. This is the type of situation I call for a mulligan. The game session was way too short, failing here could impact the limited pool experiment greatly, and therefore I simply reset the scenario and tried again. You may find this unacceptable, but I don't really care. The way I run my table has exactly zero impact on how you run yours; my fun isn't linked to yours. This should probably be a dedicated post down the road. 😉

The second attempt went better, but it was far than perfect. I had to rush the main objective as Kate was barely able to equip herself, thanks to a poor draw and some forced discard effects. She also almost ran out of sanity, I missed all the side objectives. On the plus side, Fingerprint Kit is already paying dividends. I killed a few enemy-locations with Hank, but they have plenty of hit points, making the process long and not necessarily optimal. 5 XP for this scenario.

Hank (with 1XP banked) :

• Helping Hand ▶️ Protective Gear (2XP).
• Long Shot x2 ▶️ Strong-Armed x2 (2X). This card produces the same effect (+1 damage), but has better skill symbols and offers the option of cancelling a token. This sounds like a very natural upgrade.
• Pushed to the Limit ▶️Katja Eastbank (2XP). I don't feel like I have an issue finding weapons, I can drop one Pushed. It's been the story of this card in all my decks so far. Nice in theory, not used that often in reality. Adding an ally will also help with soaking damage. Her ability isn't strong in my opinion, but could be useful to fish for a specific card.

Kate:

• Alchemical Distillation ➡️Fingerprint Kit (4XP). The kit is far too strong. 😎
• Working a Hunch ▶️Fine Tuning (1XP). While I don't think I'm resource constraint, I will always prefer putting a Tool or Science in play rather than using Working a Hunch. It's a good card, but maybe not in this deck. Fine Tuning feels like a very usable card for this deck. Double Fingerprint Kit in the same turn? Hell yeah!