Arkham Chronicles S1E5: When it rains, it pours

Welcome to day 3 in Hemlock Vale! Spoilers ahead.

The last day of our adventures started on the wrong foot. I'm not saying it's the last day because we're going to die, but it was in the marketing brochure, three days and three nights 😉 The prelude put Kate in a difficult situation, I probably turned left when I should have turned right; a weak asset in play and only two cards in hand to start the scenario. On top of this, I drew Quantum Paradox in the third round, which either continuously cost your sanity or the hand of cards I didn't have.

I went for a scenario called The Things from the Depths. It is set in a sinking bog. At the of any investigator turn, you put a sinkhole marker on your location, two markers in a two-players game. When there is a third marker, the location flips side, maybe triggering a bad effect, but mainly raising the shroud to gather clues to 5 or higher. The scenario develops a 3 x 3 grid, there's not a lot of room to escape dangerous monsters. This can be an issue since the Big Bad in this scenario is a hunter with 20 hit points, do a massive 2 health and 2 sanity damage.

There are multiple ways of ending the scenario, unfortunately none of them were achievable:

• The Big Bad had too many hit points. He would kill Hank before I could make a dent in it.
• You can kill a secondary target, but it is Aloof (in game term, it means it doesn't automatically engage, I have to take an action for it before any attack) and Elusive (it runs away after each hit).
• Clues can be used to order the secondary target to a specific spot in the bog, but I struggled to gather clues considering Kate precarious situation.

When this happens, I usually look for a way to resign, but there was no option for it. Alas, the suffering wasn't too long, the Agenda started with additional doom since this was the third day and I drew several enemies coming into play with doom. The group was defeated and earned a physical trauma for their trouble. Kate has now 3 physical traumas, which means she starts every scenario at half health. Yikes! ☹️

The 7 earned XP were spent as follows:

• Hank:
  • ⬆️Relic Hunter (3XP)
  • Heavy Furs ▶️Elder Sign Amulet (3XP). I rarely use this older card, but I'm looking for any option to help soak the high amount of damage we're seeing this late in the campaign. I'm also running out of ideas, to be honest.
  • The last point was saved.
• Kate:
  • Emergency Cache ▶️Surgical Kit (3XP). It's probably a long shot, but it's something to heal all these physical trauma.
  • Microscope ▶️Divinitation (4XP). I haven't used the microscope sucessfully yet. It's time to drop it for another way to gather clues. Tip for other Arkham players: this card says you MAY use your willpower, it's totally fine to still use your book stat with.