Introduction

After an eventful and productive interlude of traveling, the cell found themselves taking a detour into Alexandria to help out on another mission. After meeting with The Claret Knight, the team decided to help defend The Light of Pharos. The Beast in a Cowl of Crimson seemed to be a threatening foe; however, the team had already faced the Red Gloved Man, the Void Chimera, and Tzu San Niang so far. Surely if their uncanny blessings continued, the Beast would be the next opponent to fall.

Dogs of War

So, I actually brought my laptop out here with me as I play this time so that I can get the best write up that I can! Hopefully this leads to a more detailed and enjoyable report. As the introduction said, the cell made a deal with the Claret Knight. We now are back to 4 Tablets and 0 Elder Things. (Sadly, no XP bonus because of our choice in Kathmandu.) We also have 2 Cultists because we are at Time 18. We are playing this scenario on Setup v.1, which sees us trying to defend The Claret Knight and the Key Locuses for as long as we can. I actually really love these defensive, “hold down the fort” scenarios in Arkham and I kind of wish there were more of them. I have played this one previously, so I am somewhat familiar with it. I don’t anticipate making too many mistakes, but you never know playing this game. Anyway, let’s get to opening hands.

Let’s check on our cluevers first. Kōhaku somehow draws Key of Solomon as his very first card, which is doubtlessly going to be nuts for us. He also has Gabriel & Alyssa in his opener. While it will be expensive to play all these cards, the benefits of doing so will be worth it for sure. Minh doesn’t have any of her Dark Horse package at all, but she does have Grisly Totem and her healing events. She may be playing support for a while. Thankfully, she can pick up some cantrip skills via Ancestral Knowledge, so hopefully she’ll be drawing through her deck quickly.

Next, our fighters don’t have a good start at all. Nathaniel might be able to pull off something good because he has Tempt Fate and Ancestral Token. That can help him start adding Blesses. Stick to the Plan has some fighting events and he has Radiant Smite in hand as well. He’ll be able to fight for a little bit, but as always we really want our Boxing Gloves. Lily has no weapons either, but she does have a Holy Rosary to perhaps add some Bless token as well. We’ll see if our investigators will be able to draw enough to get to their critical cards.

Lily opens with an Emergency Cache 2 to draw a card and gain resources. She draws a Ward of Protection, which makes me think the Drawn to the Flame in her hand may be worthwhile here. If she gets an enemy, her or Nathaniel can just kill it and if it’s a really bad treachery, we’ll just cancel it. She gets a Locus Pulse, which doesn’t really harm anyone at the moment. She puts down her level 2 Holy Rosary, and that’s it for her for now. Next, Nathaniel puts down his Ancestral Token, plays Tempt Fate, and starts drawing. Thankfully, he does get his Boxing Gloves, so that’ll go down at his next opportunity. The fighters wrap up their set up and it’s time for the cluevers to make something happen.

Kōhaku starts out by playing Key of Solomon, gaining a resource and putting out Gabriel. I decided not to get the extra action on him yet because I feel these bonus actions will be more powerful once my stats are all set up. Instead, I added another Bless token and healed Nathaniel’s trauma with Key of Solomon. This card already feels amazing. Meanwhile, Minh put out Grisly Totem and investigated with her Perception level 2. She picked up a clue, drew 2 cards, and played Dig Deep right after. After that first round, the assets are coming along for the team, but aside from Kōhaku, the cards we really want to see aren’t on the board yet.

After the Mythos phase, a bunch of scrawny enemies pop up across the board. This is kind of funny to me because Nathaniel has 2 “Get over here!”s and his Boxing Gloves ready to play. The problem is that’s going to cost more resources than he has available. Thankfully, we have an out. It’s time for play Crack the Case for the first time this campaign! But first, we have to see if she can clear the Compulsion she drew (by the way, she has gotten this treachery SO MANY TIMES this campaign, it’s ridiculous! I know I haven’t reported every time it’s happened, but trust me on this one). Minh passes it and plays Crack the Case to give Nathaniel three resources. Then, she moves over to Victoria College and draws a card.

Victoria College gives Minh the opportunity to look at 2 cards when she would draw 1 and choose one of the looked-at cards to take. The options are Grisly Totem (which she already has a copy of in play) or Dread Curse, her random basic weakness. I’m not about to miss an opportunity to add 5 Curses to the chaos bag at fast speed, so Dread Curse is what I’m drawing!

Nathaniel puts out his Boxing Gloves and takes out a Coterie Provacteur at a neighboring location with “Get over here!” I could use my second “Get over here!” on an Acolyte, but I decide to play it a little bit slowly and conserve this card. I have a feeling I might be able to get more use out of this later. But between Boxing Gloves and Overpower, I suddenly have a hand full of cards again. Meanwhile, Lily runs over to a Wizard of the Order at the Windsor Palace Hotel and blows it up with an Explosive Ward. Kōhaku joins her at the hotel soon after, with a bonus action gained, a card from Gabriel, and resources from Key of Solomon. He easily picks up 3 out of the 4 clues, and the game continues.

Unfortunately, the Acolyte does 1 damage to a Key Locus, but I figure it is likely fine in the long run. We do an uneventful upkeep (well, Minh got King in Yellow, but that’s about it) and continue to the next round!

The next round starts pretty simple with a Scarlet Beast spawning on top of Minh. Not to worry though, as this is the perfect opportunity for Nathaniel to finally use his Radiant Smite. It works out great and Nathaniel smacks the 4 fight, 4 health enemy in 1 hit! This lets him add more Blesses with Ancestral Token and draw a card with Boxing Gloves. Nathaniel has definitely super strong so far! After that, Lily runs across the map to pick off the Acolyte that Nathaniel left behind, Kōhaku’s bless and curse set up continues to absolutely pop off, and Minh clears King in Yellow with an enormous investigation using Deduction, Beloved, and Esoteric Method. Then, Minh clears her Compulsion because she doesn’t really have anything else she wants to do.

The next Mythos phase saw an Acolyte spawn with 3 doom in the middle of the map. This shouldn’t really be a problem. In fact, it’s a good opportunity for Lily to use the Enchanted Blade she finally drew. Lily plays the Enchanted Blade, moves to Qaitbay Citadel, and gives the Acolyte a good smack. As expected, the Acolyte is no match for Lily’s 7 total Combat, and the 3 doom is easily wiped off the map.

Kōhaku is sitting in The Bourse ready to start making stuff happen. He once again his busted opening of gaining an action, using Gabriel to draw a card, and using Key of Solomon to gain resources. Like I have to say, this is one of the most busted set ups I’ve seen in Arkham. The amount of economy Kōhaku gets for doing almost nothing with how much blurse support is on this team is just silly. His shenanigans are briefly thwarted by an autofail, but he does get to remove one doom from the board with his clues. Unfortunately, Minh fails at getting the last clue off of Victoria College, but I have her run to join Kōhaku at The Bourse anyway.

Meanwhile, my fighters don’t have much to do but I have them gather in the centre of the map just in case stuff happens later. I know that the Beast in a Cowl of Crimson is going to be released not long for now, so I want to be somewhat closer to that side of the map when it happens. Lily does manage to pop over to Zan’et el Settat, play Drawn to the Flame for 2 clues, and block the treachery drawn with Ward of Protection. Lily is now holding 4 clues which will hopefully be useful eventually.

During upkeep, Nathaniel draws his Unspeakable Oath. But it’s okay because Lily is here with him and he has On The Hunt to fish for an enemy. Using On The Hunt, he manages to pick up a tiny Acolyte. During her turn, Lily pitches in. She flips her combat Discipline over just to ensure this test goes off. She then engages the Acolyte off Nathaniel and evades it for him. She then tests her Distorted Reasoning and fails after drawing 3 curses and 1 bless, which hurts because it ruins the bag for Kōhaku. At least one curse left bodes well for Nathaniel clearing his weakness. After committing Daring and Toe to Toe, Nathaniel clears his Unspeakable Oath for the second time this campaign! He then easily knocks out the Acolyte, and with that our fighters are all done. Minh and Kōhaku clear off 2 more doom while sitting at the Bourse. There is only one doom left on a Key Locus, and everyone feels healthy and safe, so it seems the team is doing amazing work so far.

The next round saw Lily & Nathaniel once again clearing out enemies while Kōhaku and Minh continued to investigate the Bourse. Minh finally drew into some of her Dark Horse package, getting Dark Horse itself into play after clearing away 2 action treachery. Kōhaku also lost some actions due to a Compulsion, but still got some bonus economy from his blurse setup, gaining an extra action and healing Minh for 2 damage. Nathaniel cleared a 4 health enemy in 1 hit again with Toe to Toe and Vicious Blow, while Lily cleared a Coterie Provacoteur with her Enchanted Blade. She drew into her Blessed Blade while spending the charge and then immediately played it, so Lily now has two big swords out. We love this for her.

Our next round takes us to 6 doom which means The Beast in the Cowl of Crimson is going to actually do stuff now. Nathaniel has been stuck with Distorted Reasoning for several rounds now so he can’t run all the way over by himself. Instead he moves once and plays a Safeguard. That’s enough to allow Lily to drag Nathaniel over another location. Kōhaku manages to clear the last doom away after investigating The Bourse, and with nothing much left to do at this location Minh rushes over to join Nathaniel and Lily. Leaving Kōhaku alone is likely risky, but hopefully it’s a risk that pays off. The Beast moves to where the investigators are and smacks Nathaniel and the Key Locus very hard!

We are now at 7 out of 12 doom. Just a few more rounds and we’ll be all done. During Mythos another Wizard of the Order pops up so that’s another thing we got to deal with in addition to the Beast. Nathaniel has a plan though! He uses his Sweeping Kick to deal damage and automatically evade the Beast. He then moves to the Wizard and shifts The Shade Reaper to push it towards Lily, Minh and the Beast. The Wizard smacks the Beast via the Shade Reaper’s ability, putting us at 4 damage on the Beast. Lily then blows up the Wizard of the Order with an Explosive Ward and smacks the Beast twice with her Blessed Blade. Meanwhile, Minh starts picking up clues with her Mariner’s Compass (finally – this is the first time she’s done this since Anchorage), and Kōhaku hops across the map safely. Now everyone is shoved into the same little section of the map, ready to take down the Beast together.

As the team got to 8 Doom, Nathaniel had to leave the Beast behind to clean up small Acolytes. Minh was able to evade the Beast and do a huge heal on the Key Locus at the Corniche, restoring it to full health. Lily then smacked the exhausted Beast a few times, before stopping because clearing this off now was probably not the right timing. Kōhaku very ambitiously decided to try his hand at clearing clues off the Catacombs, a 5 shroud location. His Living Ink had expired, but he still had Alyssa and Ikiaq to make a super strong Read the Signs and pick up 2 clues. The 9th doom also proved to be very quiet with Nathaniel continuing his onslaught against the non-Elite enemies and Kōhaku being surprisingly effective and picking up clues off the 5 Shroud location. Minh evaded the Beast, again, and moved over to help Kōhaku pick up clues with her Compass. After that, only 2 clues remained on the location. Lily decided to take things slow by playing Inspector Flint and gaining a card and a resource. Refraining from skill tests allowed her to flip her Combat Discipline back up, finally, and with that it was time for doom number 10 out of 12.

Nathaniel finally knocked the Beast out which shoved it back to the Catacombs where all the cluevers were. Nathaniel moved over just to ensure they’d be safe. Minh helped Nathaniel heal some horror with Logical Reasoning for his trouble, while Kōhaku ended up having to fight against a Scarlet Beast because he had nothing else to do with his actions. He ended up landing 2 hits which was kind of unexpected. Sometimes I forget Kōhaku has 3 Combat, which is pretty good.

Now Lily has a bit of a problem because I failed to mention earlier that her Enchanted Blade has doom on it. I tried to draw to get another hand item in hopes of overwriting it and instead I drew 2 Burden of Destinys. We’ll try again next round and hopefully we get it. Otherwise, we’ll have to endure an extra round.

Lily continues to fail at finding a way to clear off her doom. Kōhaku gets the last clues on the Catacombs and then leaves. This leaves Minh alone with the Beast, and if it hits her she dies. Nathaniel decides to try to evade using the Willpower test on the Catacombs. Now there’s something important to note and it’s that Weeping Yurei is here. So, Nathaniel does pass this test, but he draws a Bless token and gets hit by Weeping Yurei. He also played Tempt Fate, which I probably shouldn’t have done, but it leads to me drawing Tommy. Honestly, playing Tempt Fate here may have been a catastrophically bad play but whatever. I guess that’s why it’s called Tempt Fate. I successfully evaded the Beast, but if Tommy hit me even once, I was dead. I attacked Tommy a bunch of times but I drew more Bless tokens which made the Weeping Yurei hit my two more times, which killed me that way. So Nathaniel was once again defeated. The thing here is that so long as I didn’t draw Tommy, I could have just left the location after the Willpower test was over, which would put me out of danger of the Weeping Yurei.

On the bright side, Minh was able to escape, and the team continued, hoping to have reached the end. Unfortunately, the next round saw both a 3 doom Acolyte spawning and Lily’s doomed assets still around. Things were looking bleak; I wasn’t sure how much longer we could reasonably stay alive here. Lily started by drawing a card and it was another Enchanted Blade. Finally!! She played it overwrite the doomed one and moved in to where the Beast was. This should allow Lily to clear her other doomed asset on the enemy turn, which was the Hunter’s Armor.

Meanwhile, Kōhaku and Minh would try their best to clear the Acolyte out. Sadly, they did not get it, but Kōhaku did take 1 damage which would be enough to try for a Drain Essence next round.

Another round came and went with the investigators still stuck in Alexandria on doom number 13. Thankfully nothing crazy happened during this Mythos phase. All we had to do was clear the Acolyte away. Kōhaku finally played his Drain Essence and was able to kill the Acolyte off. With that down, Minh ran over to help Lily, although her help wasn’t really necessary. All that was needed was for everyone to survive one round and everyone had enough health and sanity to do it. Lily ended up evading thanks to Promise of Power, and the Beast was once again not a threat to anyone.

As expected, everyone still up survived the round, and the scenario finally ended with all Key Locuses alive and the Beast added to the victory display. The team earned SIX victory points and we also add that the cell aided the knight and we haven’t seen the last of the Beast in the Cowl of Crimson. We also add 3 more time taking us to 21. Status report Zeta will trigger because we passed time 20, but I’ll resolve that next episode!

**I said earlier that I would probably forget a rule and I realize now that I did. I forgot to add The Red Gloved Man to the encounter deck. I don’t know how radically that would have changed the outcome, but I’m going to leave it as is.

MVP

It’s between Kōhaku and Lily for MVP but I have to give it to Kōhaku. Kōhaku’s blurse set up with Key of Solomon and Gabriel was absolutely nuts. Of course, it functioned well because of the huge bless and curse generation among the team, but boy did it ever function. Kōhaku was rolling in actions, cards, and resources for a good portion of the game, and his statline allowed him to pass tests easily. Thanks to this set up he was able to pick up a lot of clues off a 5 shroud location to help the team earn another victory point. He also cleared 3 of the 4 doom from the Key Locuses and he contributed more to eliminating enemies this game than ever before – crucially eliminating a 3 doom Acolyte on the final round. Overall, this scenario was a great Kōhaku showcase and I had so much fun playing him.

Conclusion

Well, another day, another pile of experience and another dead Nathaniel! Uhhhh, hopefully I figure out what to do different with my Nathaniel so that he can stop dying. In the meantime, everyone else seems to be doing pretty great. Up next, we got Constantinople and Dealings in the Dark. After that’s over, we’ll see if we want to close out the campaign or push for one or two more scenarios before the finale. Alright, thanks again for reading and I’ll see you next time!