Introduction

Having wandered around the world trying and failing to recover the Shade Reaper, the cell inadvertently meandered into Buenos Aires. Here, they discovered there was another mission that required their attention – one regarding a certain figure known as La Chica Roja. By this point their reputation proceeded them, and so the cell decided helping out would most likely be no trouble. After all, with the Shade Reaper confirmed lost, perhaps a mission where they could find another Key would be welcome.

Sanguine Shadows

Alright, so first things first, I got the scenario all set up. The location which was removed at the beginning was The Cabildo, so I’m going to describe the map this way. In the centre we have of course, Avenida de Mayo, and then my map has 2 locations to the north, 2 locations to the west, 1 location to the east, and 1 location to the south. Hopefully, this will help make visualizing where everything clearer as this goes on.

As far as starting things go, we actually have very, very good openers. Kōhaku has Living Ink and Seal of the Elders in hand, Nathaniel has his Boxing Gloves already, Minh has Eye of Truth on Ancestral Knowledge, and Lily has Blessed Blade. We got a lot of XP cards running around in these openers, so I’m feeling good so far.

Lily is going to start by playing Blessed Blade and moving to Palacio Errázuriz, which is to the west, since we have two locations there. She tries to expose, and we find La Chica Roja immediately. Oh, well, okay. This usually doesn’t happen to me but sure.

I then move Minh over to see if I can pass the Intellect parley on La Chica Roja. I draw a Perception off of Ancestral Knowledge, commit it, and also spend 2 resources on Higher Education. Altogether, this puts me at 12 v. 6 on this test. I reach into the bag, and I pull a 0! Minh draws 2 cards and we collect one target. Well, so far this has been really easy I guess. I put Madame Labranche into play and we continue. Nathaniel plays Boxing Gloves and moves to the other west location, Cementario de la Recoleta, which now has 2 concealed cards. He exposes a decoy. Lastly, Kōhaku moves to join Nathaniel and plays Living Ink and Gabriel Castillo.

During upkeep, Kōhaku draws Weeping Yurei. However, after a rather mild Mythos phase, Lily simply walks over, engages it, and blows it up with her Explosive Ward. I don’t want to risk this hitting people on Bless pulls, especially because we want to start blessing the bag soon. Nathaniel starts trying to expose things, reveals a decoy, and then moves to the north side of the map. Minh gets her Compass out and goes for a big Deduction investigation but draws an autofail. This is very sad! Kōhaku moves to the other north location next to Nathaniel and tries to expose and also autofails. Okay, well, I guess that sucks. But hopefully we are set up to expose most of what is left up by next round.

Next round also sucks as Nathaniel reveals another decoy and Kōhaku uses 4 actions to ultimately fail at exposing twice. Since I don’t think we’re going to successfully handle La Chica Roja in the time remaining, I’m going to just focus on cleaning up the map. Lily goes off to defeat a Bound Nightgaunt, which falls to two swings of her Blessed Blade. Minh’s Compass + Deduction investigate finally works on the second try, netting her four clues. I’m not sure what she’s going to do with these, but I figure it’s better to have them than not. By the end of this, I do know where La Chica Roja is because of a Calling Card trigger and of course, it’s the last place I would have chosen to look, but whatever.

La Chica Roja collects a target, and we reset to 4 doom on the agenda. We start with Kōhaku exposing something on Banco de la Provincia, to the east, and we find La Chica Roja immediately this time. Wow, our luck this scenario has been all over the place but I will take it. He tries to parley but fails, which is super awkward as he now gets attacked. Lily is able to move over though and quickly defeat La Chica Roja with her Blessed Blade. Working together, Nathaniel and Minh are able to deduce that La Chica Roja must now be at one of the two north locations – Catedral Metropolitana or Casa Rosada. Minh also gets to use her Eye of Truth to help get rid of her Knives in the Dark. This may feel like a bit overkill to use that card on this, but Knives in the Dark on Minh was the big reason I wasn’t using her to expose anything. With that gone, I can now make use of her to expose again.

During the next round, the fighters run off to Casa Rosada but have no luck finding anything. Kōhaku sadly loses his Living Ink and draws Amnesia which wipes his hand. I end up keeping Book of Psalms because truthfully I’m starting to worry about the team’s sanity a little bit. I get that out and use it on Kōhaku himself. Then Minh moves to Catedral Metropolitan and spends a clue to try this Agility test. I commit a ton of stuff to make this work and it pays off. I succeed by enough to get to look at all the cards here. In doing so, I learn exactly where La Chica Roja is. She is here, but the Coterie Envoy here will need to be dealt with first. That shouldn’t be too difficult do though, assuming nothing terrible happens in the next Mythos phase.

The Beast in a Cowl of Crimson spawns again, but it’s not going to hit anyone right away. We should be able to get our third target this round assuming no one messes up royally. Kōhaku moves to Nathaniel and heals him up. Minh camps out at the Catedral, blessing and cursing the bag enormously. Then Nathaniel is able to move, engage, and use Sweeping Kick to dispatch the Coterie Envoy.

Now, we really, really need Lily to succeed on 2 actions here in order to get this to work. She must successfully expose La Chica Roja on a 5 shroud, and then she must also defeat her (which is an easier test). First, Lily moves over. Then, I use my Agility discipline to do 3 different fight actions. For the first one, I use a basic attack and I have Nathaniel commit Daring with the Minh bonus wild to give me a total of 10 v. 5. I pass! La Chica Roja is revealed, and I still have two more actions available from my Agility discipline.

Unfortunately, I forgot that La Chica Roja has In Plain Sight attached to her, so this second test actually isn’t easier. But it’s no big deal, as I still have plenty of power to do it. I take the hit from her, and then I prepare to swing with my Blessed Blade. With commitments, I’m once again able to test 10 v. 5. I draw a Tablet, which cancels the effects of the skill cards, but it doesn’t matter because I’m still way ahead anyway. The team picks up its third target, and we continue to the scenario interlude!

There is one target on La Chica Roja, so….. uh, okay, I guess the scenario is over! That’s too bad. I was ready to do way more. That’s really unfortunate that I didn’t stop her that one time. I really think I could have prevented that if I tried harder. Oh well, I honestly didn’t know this scenario worked like that. Still, I guess this outcome is sort of a win?

I ended up collecting 4 XP because I collected 3 targets and got the 1 XP from the beginning of setup. I record that I haven’t seen the last of La Chica Roja, that La Chica Roja is the bearer of the Weeping Lady, and I gain 1 more time – not that it matters since we’re going to go to Tunguska next anyway.

MVP

The MVP is for sure Lily. Lily and Blessed Blade did so much work both in terms of exposing and defeating enemies. The final round of the game speaks for itself! So congratulations to Lily for winning the MVP recognition yet again.

Upgrades

Since that was so super fast, and we don’t have that much XP to spend anyway, I am just gonna speed run the upgrades.

Kōhaku is going to upgrade both of his Guts to level 2.

Nathaniel will replace one Tetsuo Mori with a Girish Kadakia.

Minh will replace one Dig Deep with a Cryptic Research.

Lily will replace Purified with Leadership level 2 (which spends an extra XP because of Rabbit Hole & 1 XP is left unspent but I’m not going to worry about that).

Conclusion

And that’s it! We now have the final decks. Next time, I’ll see you in Tunguska for the grand finale of Blessings of Asia!