Geared Up

Geared Up

Of the six deck creation talents, this one feels the swingiest and therefore the weakest.

Having a first turn of Ever Vigilant, in theory, sounds amazing. And ANY number of assets? Holy cow!

...but two things give me pause.

One: if, even after your mulligan, you have very few assets in your hand, then this really is just a worse Ever Vigilant that you're FORCED to use. At least with Ever Vigilant, you can keep it in hand until you're able to slam down some assets.

Two: you lose your first turn. If that was going to be a turn of just putting down stuff, then I guess you've broken even, or even won out depending on if you have three or more items in hand (and, of course, the cash to pay for them). But if you're putting down only one or two assets, then that's a whole turn gone that you could have also used moving forward and potentially picking up clues. And that just feels... really, REALLY bad.

So I think personally I'm gonna reach for any of the other talents before this one. Maybe go for the Neutral one instead? That way you can spend the immediate XP on Ever Vigilant and just have that in your deck in Scenario 1.

supertoasty · 40
Agreed, this one looks garbage. The worst restriction is, that you can only play items. It doesn't help, that Ever Vigilant can be put on "Stick to the Plan", and will likely safe at least as much actions and resources, unless you fill up your deck with mediocre slotless stuff like "First Aid". Also, not every scenario grants the Guardian the traditional setup turn in the first round. I'm actually planning to take the neutral permanent for Nathaniel. To become a versatile Rabbit Hole Delver! I think, this might be a good combo for him. — Susumu · 381
Whoopsy. Mixed up "First Aid" with "Painkillers"/ "Smoking Pipe". — Susumu · 381
Question: If one of these 0XP Permanents are added to a deck, and no higher-XP version for the card exists, is there any way to intentionally remove or replace them from a deck later in a campaign? I could almost see this as a high-risk kickstart on the way to SttP + Ever Vigilant, but not at the cost of being stuck with it forever. — HanoverFist · 748
Afaik there is no way to voluntarily remove a Permanent. "Charon's Obol" will be temporarily removed before "City of Archives". And if Duke was a Permanent (he is not), he could be still sacrificed on the altar. But these are special rules dictated by the scenario setup or resolution. By yourself, you cannot remove them. Neither can you remove any other card, that does not count to your deck size, like weaknesses or story assets you might have choosen to add and then found less useful. — Susumu · 381
Is everyone just missing how good this can be with Backpack? You want to mulligan for your items/backpack. If you run a backpack you will probably play it at 2 cost in the opening turn just for the option to play another item as well. Now your backpack costs 1 as well as any item it draws. — BjoBro · 1
CAN be good with Backpack, right. But you won't find it in every game in your starting hand, even if you hard mulligan for it alone. (Mulligan away even weapons, which would be dumb anyway for most guardians.) Also Backpack does not fix the issues of this card, like that you still can't play other assets like talents and in particular allies. And lets say, you get your first Backpack, and attach the second Backpack and some Supply-event to it. You then have the choice to either discard the Supply, if you want to play the second Backpack, or not playing the second Backpack in your setup "turn" at all. — Susumu · 381
It is debatable, at best, that this card works with Backpack. This card does not say “One at a time,” so as currently worded you must play all items at once. It would need an errata to read like Ever Vigilant if you wanted to take advantage of Backpack and Shoffner’s. — Eudaimonea · 5
There is no errata needed. Not playing one at a time simply doesn't make as much sense. — Scythe · 1

Ancient Stone

Ancient Stone

With Return to Forgotten Age, this is a great Stone upgrade for Ursula Downs, especially if you can get Dr. Elli Horowitz to hold it for you. With one of the worst weaknesses in the game this Stone offers great protection, and if you are also running Veda Whitsley with Charisma, you have a lot of double-chances with the encounter deck during the mythos phase. Throw in Truth from Fiction at level 0 or 2 and maybe Astounding Revelation and you are in great shape.

Krysmopompas · 366
Astounding revelation requires some search effects. You can also add scavenging with versatile to your deck and recycle the empty stone — Django · 5162
I don't quite get, what makes her weakness so bad with "Return to Forgotten Age"? — Susumu · 381

The Enchanted Path

The Enchanted Path

Just played this scenario for the first time and we stayed on the path as instructed. Big mistake. Found out afterwards the designer assumed no one would listen to the instructions and everyone would leave the path. This was an enjoyable scenario that was ruined by a joke that has a huge negative impact on gameplay.

thericker3 · 6
Dreamlands is a disordered place. Don't trust so easily. — MrGoldbee · 1492
Such a genuine surprise that people would spend (15*the number of investigator) actions to place clues on an 8-shroud location and try to discover said clues. In addition to that, deliberately avoiding unrevealed locations on a blind run for potential victory points. — toastsushi · 74
@toast TDE could well be your first campaign, so you might not know that. Also in the design space of Arkham, it's entirely possible that an agenda flip or resolution would reward you for not exploring. But that's a design problem inherent to blind plays of Arkham, where it sometimes turns into a game of "guess the designer's intention". It can be a bad experience if you guess wrong. — suika · 9511
to be fair, the card Text strongly suggests that staying there is possibly not the right thing to do. — PowLee · 15
Ditto what @PowLee says. Also, in a 2-player game, after spending 30 actions (with no time to deal with enemies), and then finding 10 clues on a 8 shroud location? Sure, technically not impossible, but on your first playthrough without being prepared for this location? Highly likely you misplayed something. — Nenananas · 270
I'm afraid, my friend, that you'll not find much sympathy here. On the other hand, if you don't want the game to be mean to you, this is maybe not the best game for you? — SGPrometheus · 847
The card explicitly says "but you feel you are missing something"... It's an 8 shroud location that requires three actions per clue just to place the clues, that you need to collect a ton of clues from, that even tells you that you are missing something. It's obvious that you aren't intended to attempt this ridiculous task on scenario 1. You can only blame yourself for this one. — Soul_Turtle · 500
One can call it obvious, but that doesn't really make sense considering that Arkham is a game about narratives and using the information in the narrative to navigate scenarios. The scenario plays up that you shouldn't leave the path, it is heavily established early and Arkham is a game where certain choices have long term consequences. You can't say "I didn't expect anyone to listen to what I told them to do" as a game designer, especially because this is literally playing on real world myths and fairy tales and it feels very much like it is tempting you to leave the path, rather than it being legitimate. It violates the normal rules of "Establish, Payoff" pretty heavily, and the capstone of why this 'tehehe' wink and nod moment didn't work is that Arkham is a NARRATIVE game, and it stands to reason that having the narrative say one thing and the mechanics try to tell you to do another isn't going to work out for many players. It is a suuuuuuper common pain point in dream eater playthroughs for a reason. — dezzmont · 222
It is not “obvious”. My blind run of this campaign was in three player. I was Patrice and I had built a deck packed with skill icons. I suggested to my group that I generate the clues and commit what I had to their tests and we aced it. Naturally, we later discovered how damaging this was, but in previous campaigns, you were generally awarded something regardless of the path you chose. You can burn down your house and get Lita and trauma, or you can forgo Lita for the house in next scenario and bonus XP. That’s how an RPG should run. This dream eater scenario definitely breeches some player trust because they rightfully and conditionally assume a “pure” avoidance of the woods will grant them a story path (not unlike doubt/conviction or circle undone allegiances). — LaRoix · 1646
I really think it's pretty obvious. There isn't a scenario 1 in any other campaign in the entire game that presents even an optional challenge anywhere close to "spend 3*5*playercount actions, then investigate an 8 shroud location 5*playercount times". On a card that says "but you feel that you are missing something". Did you not get even the slightest meta sense of "the requirements to do this task seem really overtuned for the first scenario in a campaign, and the card says we're missing something, if we do this we won't even see half of the locations in the scenario, maybe we aren't supposed to be doing this?" I'm not sure how it could be any more obvious, besides being outright impossible. Though to counter the handful of people who actually stayed on the path despite all of this, it probably would have been smarter design to just make it impossible outright. — Soul_Turtle · 500
As for Arkham being a narrative game, staying on the path does tell a narrative: the investigators were too scared to leave the path and didn't experience anything in the whole scenario, hence they gained no experience. Terrible gameplay? Sure. But it certainly does tell a narrative where you made a choice that has long-term consequences. — Soul_Turtle · 500
Well MJ has said that there was an alarming number of people who did not stray from the path. In a blind run, there’s a human tendency to not really absorb all the text coming at you. I don’t think it should have been made impossible; I think the designers put this option in, they should have rewarded the players who don’t stray (like give them scenario advantages in the next two scenarios since they won’t have XP). My problem isn’t that there’s no story different, but that there’s no incentive to take the road less traveled, so to speak. — LaRoix · 1646

Trench Knife

Trench Knife

One under-appreciated aspect of this card is that it gives you some seriously good bonus against swarming enemies in the Dream-Eaters campaign, so it can work as a very cheap off-hand weapon alongside your primary extra-damage weapon.

snacc · 1020
I wouldn’t say it’s under appreciated. Most swarming enemies have very low combat values such that it’s better (as is always the case) to simply lay down the damage with something that hits harder and move on in a speedy fashion. — LaRoix · 1646

On the Trail

On the Trail

I feel like this is a stronger pick on the end than the one, since Seekers are gonna hoover up clues anyways and probably want to keep away from enemies depending on the build, whereas Guardians are going to appreciate the expedited move actions to get to the enemies, while also getting the added bonus of testless clues - especially for lower- Guardians.

Some stand out choices:

  • Roland Banks will always appreciate more clues, and will also take some move actions.
  • The quintessential fighters - Mark Harrigan, Zoey Samaras, and Nacho - are always gonna take the opportunity to get up close and personal with some baddies - especially Zoey, since it can help mitigate Smite the Wicked's "furthest location" clause.
  • Joe Diamond can stick this in the Hunch deck and play it for free - it's Insight traited.
supertoasty · 40
Feels like a wonderful match for Zoey like you say. Plus it's a Tactic, making it Stick To The Plan-able... she can ensure it's on-hand when Smite The Wicked pops. — HanoverFist · 748
I think, it's not good in the hunch deck. Unplayable, if there are no enemies on other locations. Useless, if you are surrounded by locations without a clue. This makes it too situational for the random turn, you'll see it. The Insight trait is much more relevant for Farsight (or possibly "Cryptic Grimoire"). With them, Joe would like to take this card for his main deck, as he sure has some cards, that are already fast in the hunch deck. — Susumu · 381
Ups, the trait is irrelevant for Farsight, it works with any event. Somehow I thought, it also asks for Insights. — Susumu · 381