Introduction

Kōhaku and his fellow investigators surveyed the snow-covered lands of Anchorage. Alaska was a detour on their journey through Asia and an unexpected one at that. However, if the stories about The Sable Glass proved true, this change of plans could prove to be very useful. While investigating the Holy Ancestor was still the cell’s special mission, there were still other things to attend to, and with business in Shanghai not going as expected, it made sense to look into those other matters. The cell was told that Alaska posed many danger, but the team felt confident as they headed out into the wilderness. Hopefully, that confidence would not prove to be misplaced.

On Thin Ice

Alright, time to start Scenario 2 of my campaign. We have 8 time marked so far, so we have to add 1 Doom to the Agenda. I’m glad we got here so early because I think this scenario is such a good one to succeed on, and it really can become a race against the clock. Obviously, every scenario can feel like that, but this one especially can turn into that because of how much there is to do to win and how much randomness is involved in getting it all done.

The team draws opening hands, and we got a few notable things happening. Kōhaku draws his Book of Living Myths, which is exciting because I haven’t gotten to play with that yet. There’s also a Faustian Bargain, which can be great to help my team get a good tableau of assets early. I am running some expensive decks, so this team economy is so important. My fighters are severely lacking damage in their opening hands, which is concerning. To be fair, Lily does have both Spectral Razors in hand, so we aren’t going to falter immediately. Still, I need to draw some more cards as soon as possible, just to make sure I’m not in trouble when enemies spawn.

And then, there’s Minh. Minh, through the power of the Arkham gods, drew all of her XP cards in her opening hand. This means that Minh has both level 2 Mariner’s Compasses. This means that, if everything works out, we’re going to eventually see Minh getting double clue investigates up to twice each turn. This is thrilling for me. Can’t wait to see how this plays out! Just got to hope as always that my combos don’t get hallowed. I have Minh go first because I know she’s just going to play both Compasses and start investigating, so she gets 2 clues right away.

Meanwhile, Lily has a very simple turn of playing an Emergency Cache and a Holy Rosary, and then draws a card. The card is level 4 Blessed Blade. Getting this card out so early is incredible for me, but we have to wait until the next round to play it.

Then, Kōhaku plays Faustian Bargain to give himself and Nathaniel a bit of extra money. Kōhaku gets his Book out and St. Hubert’s Key. We don’t have the explosive opening of Bless and Curse tokens getting shoved into the bag that we saw in London; however, that’s okay as the Statball strategy gets to begin! Nathaniel gets to play Tetsuo Mori, Safeguard, and Ancestral Token thanks to the extra resources from Kōhaku, and that’s the end of the opening.

I’m not going to describe every single round in detail (because I didn’t take as detailed notes once the game started going!) but Minh’s Dread Curse and Nathaniel’s Tommy Malloy both got drawn in upkeep, continuing what seems to be a trend of multiple investigators drawing weaknesses on the first upkeep. Thankfully, Lily was able to get Blessed Blade out and start using this as an opportunity to smack Tommy a little bit while also adding Bless tokens. Nathaniel was able to get the finishing blow to add even more Blesses with Ancestral Token. Eventually, he also drew into his level 3 Boxing Gloves which was a big relief since that’s such a core part of how the deck functions.

Kōhaku and Minh were able to run around and pick up every clue quite easily at the outset, and then we got to the first round of branching paths in this scenario. Meanwhile, a Coterie Agent would spawn here and there, but both times this happened, they were exposed on my first guess – which definitely helped the team a lot as it meant a lot of the cards which were concerned about decoys did hardly anything. Kōhaku and Minh then split off to different places but unfortunately, neither of them landed on the spot which leads to spawning the second set of branching paths. That meant this was going to take a little bit longer, but in the meantime they would try to discover some clues. Kōhaku didn’t have much success at the Frozen Lake, but on the Isolated Road, Minh was able to soak up clues quickly.

At this point, enemies started spawning all over the place. Lily was able to deal with the Aloof 3 health Paradigm Effacers thanks to the Spectral Razors she was holding. Meanwhile, an enemy spawned right on top of Minh while she was alone. Thankfully, it was no trouble as I committed my enormous Esoteric Method to the evasion test and succeeded. She then finished collecting what clues remained on the location and was able to run out. Having double Compass was already starting to pay off!

Eventually, I had Kōhaku abandon his investigation of Frozen Lake because the team had so many clues and we needed to move on to find this Condemned Gold Mine and advance the act. Slowly but surely Kōhaku made it to the Mountain Stream, and Living Ink made it into play. An investigation with Enraptured gave us another charge on Living Ink, which would keep Kōhaku’s stats running strong. Soon enough, Nathaniel, Lily and Kōhaku were all together on the Mountain Stream waiting for the next round, while Minh was independently running away from monsters and getting close to catching up with the rest of the team with 10 or so clues in tow.

During the next round, Kōhaku cleared off the Mountain Stream, allowing the next set of locations to spawn. He then picked one at random to move to, and we found the Condemned Gold Mine on the first try. This was fantastic because I was finally having good luck on these random location reveals. Since this was where I was supposed to land, I just camped out and gained some resources until Minh could show up.

When Minh finally arrived, my two cluevers had a grand total of 16 out of the 12 clues we needed to advance and only 5 doom on the Agenda. It’s also worth noting that Lily had played Ward of Protection against two copies of Cracking Ice by this point – minimizing that stacking Hazard treachery to the point of near irrelevance. We were zooming through the scenario quite well!

This then led to the Scenario Interlude. I decided to make a deal with Thorne because I am a big fan of Thorne in the story. I’d rather them be happy with us if I can help it! This gave us our fourth tablet in the campaign, which means we are going to start earning bonus experience with additional tablets in the future. That will be something to look forward to for sure. With Thorne and the Sable Glass under Kōhaku’s control, the team moved on to the Scouting Report portion of the scenario. I had 4 clues left over from spending my first haul. That would be enough to guarantee one Scouting Report. Still, I wanted to end with at least 3 Scouting Reports on the field. This is because if I use 3 Scouting Reports, plus the Sable Glass, that lets me look at 4 of the concealed cards for Void Chimera. I will either know which one it is immediately or it will be the one I didn’t look at. One way or the other, I’ll be able to find the Void Chimera with 100% accuracy this way.

The team then split up into duos to help cover the map quickly and get those Scouting Reports into play. I separated Minh and Kōhaku and then always made sure that a fighter was always with right there with one of them or only one location away. Lily and Kōhaku started out at The Forgotten Outpost, a 4 shroud Wilderness location. Lily actually helped with this as she got to play Drawn to the Flame to pick up 2 clues, drawing a treachery which wasn’t a problem for her to deal with at all. Kōhaku then picked up 2 more clues, and the Scouting Report there was easily completed.

Meanwhile, Minh moved to the more central Mountain Stream, taking Nathaniel with her via Safeguard. Minh was able to pay for a Scouting Report here with the excess clues and moved over to the last unrevealed Wilderness location which was the Hunting Lodge. Fortunately, she was able to persuade the hunter to not shoot her when the location revealed, thanks to her booming Intellect!

By the end of things, the pairings got shuffled around. Lily ended up protecting Minh in the Hunting Lodge while Nathaniel would accompany Kōhaku on the Forgotten Outpost. Around this time, Ikiaq also showed up for Kōhaku. This was perfect because it meant that if Nathaniel ever did draw his Unspeakable Oath, Ikiaq could just take it away from him, protecting his XP gain. Those two were for sure going to stay as close together as I could keep them after that because if there’s one thing I didn’t want, it was for Nathaniel to lose out on 2 XP.

Ultimately, the team set up the three Scouting Reports needed to guarantee finding the Void Chimera, and advanced to the next part – spawning the Void Chimera and its decoys. The three Scouting Reports all turned up decoys, which meant it could only be in one of two places – the Isolated Road or the Frozen Lake from the first row of spawned Wilderness locations. This meant backtracking was in order for sure, but we had lots of time to make this happen. However, the following Agenda turned out to be quite scary as two victory point enemies, Emissary of Yuggoth and Apocalyptic Presage were drawn. The Agenda also forced everyone to turn a card into a hallow. However, this ended up working out in our favour! Kōhaku activated Thorne’s ability to gain an action when a hallow is made, and moved to the connected Isolated Road. Even better, Nathaniel was able to follow him because of Safeguard.

With Kōhaku and Thorne now on the Isolated Road, it was time to use the Sable Glass. There was only one decoy here so it could be the Void Chimera. It was… not the Void Chimera. This meant for sure that the beast was at Frozen Lake – the location we abandoned investigating early on in the scenario. While it was frustrating that it was at the last place we visited, at least we knew with certainty that was where it was and we never risked flipping over a Void Chimera decoy.

With full knowledge of the situation, it was time for Kōhaku to bravely move over to the Frozen Lake and hunt down the beast once and for all. Kōhaku moved over to the location which held 2 concealed mini cards. One was for sure the Void Chimera, while the other was either the Emissary of Yuggoth or a decoy from Emissary of Yuggoth. Kōhaku was not about to let any of these outcomes deter him from exposing the truth! And so Kōhaku put all his brains into finally investigating the location he had abandoned so long ago, and he succeeded! And at long last, he exposed… the real Void Chimera!

This meant the Void Chimera and Kōhaku got dragged into the Outsiders’ Lair. With no actions left and a giant enemy on him, Kōhaku was guaranteed to get smacked. But at least he had managed to stay very healthy during the scenario. He had even used Drain Essence on a Paracausal Entity much earlier on in the scenario to both heal his damage and blow it up. So one smack from Void Chimera was not a threat at all.

With Kōhaku in peril from being left alone with the Void Chimera, it was of utmost importance for Nathaniel, Minh, and Lily to make it to their companion as fast as possible. Nathaniel and Minh both ended their turns on the Frozen Lake, one location away from Kōhaku. However, Lily was slowed down because she had to fight off the Apocalyptic Presage. Fortunately, this fight was extremely easy for her. Two swings from Blessed Blade level 4 plus an Explosive Ward for guaranteed damage easily killed it. This battle earned another victory point in the display for the team!

During the next Mythos phase, Kōhaku drew Matter Inversion which had to go onto Void Chimera as the only option. This was definitely threatening, as it gave it increased stats and retaliate. We definitely didn’t want any of that. But! If we successfully evade it, it will go away. Now there’s only one problem with this and it’s that my team can’t evade very well. This has been a notable problem this team has since deck construction. Nathaniel does have two copies of Sweeping Kick in hand, but it wouldn’t clear Matter Inversion because that’s an automatic evade, not a successful one. Unfortunately, this is a rare example where the distinction is enough to make that plan not work.

But, here’s the other thing to consider – my team is blessed like crazy because of Nathaniel’s Ancestral Token and Lily’s Blessed Blade 4. And now, it’s time to actually use that.

So the next round began, and Minh ran in to the Outsiders’ Lair, dragging Nathaniel behind her with Safeguard. Also, it’s worth calling out, this round 1 Safeguard that Nathaniel had went off SO MANY TIMES. I don’t know if I would have played it so early if it wasn’t for Kōhaku’s Faustian Bargain because I didn’t even fully register how many free actions Nathaniel would be getting from this. But yeah, this Safeguard was nuts this scenario for him.

Minh stands before the massive Void Chimera, and a very cool combo then starts. She starts an Evade action, and she commits Beloved. Meanwhile, Kōhaku finally triggers his Book of Living Myths to force a Blessed token pull. Minh then automatically succeeds the evasion, exhausting Void Chimera and removing Matter Inversion. See that? When your team is Blessed to a ridiculous degree, you can just do things that you typically would never be able to do!

Nathaniel then begins to smack the enemy again. He doesn’t have damage output to kill it this round, and we want to conserve our cards with that in mind. So we play a single One-Two Punch and get 4 damage, and then collect some resources until the next round. I still don’t want to draw too heavily because even with Ikiaq here, I still want to avoid drawing into Unspeakable Oath if possible.

While Void Chimera is exhausted, Kōhaku picks up 3 clues from the Outsiders’ Liar. Two of these clues were from a 12 skill value Read the Signs (Ikiaq + St. Hubert’s Key), which was very funny to watch. Lily then moved to the Frozen Lake and ran out of actions. In my mind, she was offering moral support from the lake on the other side of reality.

Another Mythos phase went by, and nothing particularly bad happened to anyone so now we were set up perfectly to kill the Void Chimera. Nathaniel opened with a Sweeping Kick to exhaust the Void Chimera and followed with a One Two Punch and another Sweeping Kick. Altogether, the Void Chimera had 12 damage out of 16 health on it. It’s very close to dead, but I am pretty sure with 5 clues left on the Lair, the team can get this victory point before killing it off.

So now it’s time for double Compass Minh to shine. One Compass gets used to collect two clues. And another Compass gets used, this time with Deduction committed. That’s five clues in two actions. The location is clear! At last, it’s time to wrap up the scenario. Lily walks in to the lair and a couple swings of the Blessed Blade end the Void Chimera. With that, it’s mission accomplished!

As the credits roll across the Alaskan wilderness and resolution 1 triggers, the team celebrates the gain of 5 XP and a successful new connection with Thorne!

MVP

While double Compass Minh earned so many clues this scenario & Kōhaku hunted down the Void Chimera like a madman, I ultimately have to give the MVP award to Lily! Blessed Blade 4 just absolutely was incredibly reliable and helpful the entire scenario. It really felt like once I had Blessed Blade out, I didn’t especially need any other cards in my play area, at all. While the final boss fight was mostly Nathaniel, she still single handedly killed the Apocalyptic Presage and wiped out most of the non-Elites. In addition, Lily successfully canceled 2 of the 4 copies of Cracking Ice, which meant that treachery never did anything ever. Finally, Lily was able to play Drawn to the Flame and collect 2 clues off a 4 shroud location, which proved to be very helpful flexibility from her. All in all, she was just very reliable this game, so I give her my MVP recognition for this scenario!

Conclusion

With that all done, the team advances 3 times and triggers Epsilon. This means in the future we haven’t seen the last of the Red Gloved Man. Tune in next time when we spend our XP, use our ticket to head back to Asia ,and play Shades of Suffering – a scenario I have never played before and will hopefully not do horrible at! Once again, thanks for reading!