Introduction

After getting knocked out, the cell awakens in Tunguska where they must stand trial before The Red Coterie. They hope that the aid they rendered to Red Coterie members so far will be enough to give them a good verdict, but they cannot be certain. Their only goal now is simple – survive whatever this is so that they may follow up on the last lead regarding the Holy Ancestor and finally put the mystery they had been pursuing for so long to rest.

Trial

Alright, it’s trial time!! Let’s see what kind of setup I get. Hopefully, I get something fun. I feel like I did pretty well on my scenarios, so I’m curious if I managed to trigger anything special.

Going through everything in order:

-The Claret Knight votes “nay”

-The Beast in a Cowl of Crimson abstains.

-Ece Şahin votes “nay”.

-Amaranth votes “yea” and is the bearer of the Last Blossom.

-Thorne votes “nay”.

-Aliki votes “yea”.

-Desi votes “yea” and is the bearer of The Mirroring Blade.

-Abarran abstains.

-The Red-Gloved Man remains eerily silent.

-La Chica Roja abstains.

-The Sanguine Watcher votes “yea”. We are currently at 4 yea and 3 nay.

-Tzu San Niang abstains.

-Tuwile votes “nay”.

Well, damn it, that means at the end of all of that, all we got was a tie, which means we still fail the trial. If I just didn’t do Buenos Aires at all, I would have been able to win this vote and attempt to join the Coterie. I guess we just can’t have things that are fun.

Congress of the Keys

I have everything set up and wow, this looks contentious. Let me try and describe what we got going on here as far as enemies go. The Red-Gloved Man is in the shadows with the Shade Reaper that we weren’t able to get back. Aliki (aloof), Amaranth (engaged with Minh), Desi (engaged with Lily), and The Sanguine Watcher (engaged with Nathaniel) are all here, and Amaranth has The Last Blossom and Desi has the Mirroring Blade.

Now as far as the Conspirators who like us, Kōhaku has The Claret Knight & The Light of Pharos; Nathaniel has Ece Şahin & The Twisted Antiprism; and Lily has Thorne & The Sable Glass. Minh has no keys at all.

Also, full disclosure – I tried playing this scenario earlier and I ended up rage-quitting because of an interaction with the Shade Reaper on The Red-Gloved Man and Key Change in the encounter deck. Essentially, the encounter deck was thinning due to treachery cards attaching to locations or entering the threat area, and my team was constantly slowed down due to Key Change triggering Shade Reaper. By my count, my team lost at least 20 actions due solely to Key Change shifting Shade Reaper. I was so frustrated by this that I ended up just going to bed and restarting the scenario the next day. But anyway, just full disclosure so you know that this is a mulligan of this scenario. I also didn’t take notes on this one because as I said, I was already annoyed playing this scenario. But, I did finish this time and I remember most of what happened so I’ll do my best to summarize everything even though it’s not my only attempt at the scenario.

So basically we have a big pile of dangerous enemies here in the Scarlet Halls that we have to deal with immediately so we don’t explode. Nathaniel has a juicy opportunity here. He has Tempt Fate and Radiant Smite, so I think that should be good enough to make something happen here. Let’s see how this goes. I have Nathaniel play Tempt Fate and Minh plays Keep Faith. This adds 7 Blesses and 3 Curses to the bag, which is more than enough to allow Nathaniel to pull of a big Radiant Smite. Somehow, this feels like an appropriate start to a campaign titled Blessings of Asia.

Now it’s time for Nathaniel’s big Radiant Smite against Desi. I actually decide to go for the Willpower version of this test because Kōhaku has level 2 Guts and I think that’s more than enough to secure this. The plan works out and Desi is taken down in 1 swing! Next I got to get rid of the Sanguine Watcher. I don’t think I have enough damage to kill him this round, so I just use a Sweeping Kick, which lands. The Sanguine Watcher is safely evaded, so he won’t be hitting us any time soon.

Next, I have Kōhaku set up to go for a big Ríástrad against Amaranth. He adds 3 Curses to the bag, just to make sure we can get as much as skill value as possible. With some help from the other investigators, Kōhaku passes the test and knocks Amaranth out in 1 hit!

On her turn, Lily uses Spectral Razor to engage Aliki and deals 2 damage to her. After missing one hit, she lands on her final one – eliminating Aliki as well. Minh then moves to another location, finding Congress Chamber and getting ready to investigate it.

The next round, Nathaniel finishes fighting the Sanguine Watcher and moves over to be ready to protect Minh. Kōhaku and Lily also pair up to look at another location, which turns out to be The Key Reliquary. Kōhaku gets his Skeleton Key out and attaches it to his location, which helps him get these clues quickly. On the other side, a Locked Door slows things down, but Nathaniel is able to clear it. The boxer then finds The Red-Gloved Man on the Congress Chamber, which is both good and bad. We can’t do much more but sit and get hit by him, but at least now we know where he is.

Eventually, Kōhaku and Lily are able to migrate over to where The Red-Gloved Man is, and Minh gets the last clues needed to get us to 8 clues. (Kōhaku of course retrieves his Skeleton Key before leaving – the bonus actions are HUGE for allowing him to make Skeleton Key work out.) At last, everyone is together with the 8 clues needed to advance the act, and we are able to move on the Tower climb part of the scenario with 1 doom on Agenda 2.

At this point, we have to build out our City of Remnants map. Nathaniel starts by exposing to the right and finding a new location. Lily has to handle some enemies, which thankfully she does with her Blessed Blade. The bag is full of Tablets that make her autofail against Outsiders, but we still are able to clear out the non-elites that spawn in. Kōhaku goes to the left and finds a difficult 4 shroud location, but we once again slap the Skeleton Key on it and get to work. Minh also slides over to help out.

Kōhaku and Minh continue picking up clues around the left side of the map, and Lily also ends up at a 2 shroud location by herself. With nothing else to do, she also attempts to pick up clues and ends up holding 2. Nathaniel gets stuck with an Apocalyptic Presage, which is an enormous 5 health enemy, but One-Two Punch and Vicious Blow level 2 are still able to knock it out in one action thanks to naturally dodging all the tablets. Nathaniel also has Girish Kadakia so I decide, like Lily, to also have him do some random investigates. Nathaniel also winds up picking up 2 clues, which is quite honestly big news for Nathaniel. I don’t know how many clues Nathaniel has picked up all campaign, but it is for sure a very low number.

Ultimately, everyone is hurting quite a bit and has a lot of hollowed cards due mainly to treacheries. But, thankfully, we have plenty of soak and healing going on so no one is really in any huge danger. Allies are taking a beating this game, with Ikiaq, Girish Kadakia, Li Flint, Ece, and Thorne all absorbing big blows. Madame Labranche also got one-shot by a treachery card. Key of Solomon, Logical Reasoning, and Lily’s Discipline are able to supply some healing, which helps too. Most of the team is maybe halfway close to being dead one way or another, but not immediately close to dead. I figure I’ll take it as we move on to the third act.

Kōhaku moves up to the Gravity-Defying Climb, spending everyone’s clues. Here, we have to sort through a total of 7 concealed mini-cards in order to expose the 3 City of Remnants mini cards in the right order. Kōhaku opens by slamming the Skeleton Key down, again, reducing the shroud here to 1, and then finding a decoy. Nathaniel also moves up and reveals the Middle City of Remnants and a decoy. At least we know where one thing is. Lily goes next, and she has Inspector Flint out. I figure this will help us out a lot as we’ll be able to check out an additional concealed card if we hit another decoy. Lily reveals the Left City of Remnants. Perfect because I know where the Middle one is! I got 3 choices left, and I just pick one at random – it’s the Right City of Remnants. Just like that I did it! Okay, well that was…. much faster than anticipated.

Minh is able to slide up to the very top of the tower, revealing the Memetic Nemesis. Not wanting to get smacked around by this thing, she ends up just moving back down.

We are now super, super close to winning, but we are on the last agenda. If we get a good couple rounds in at the top of the tower, we’ll be able to win, but that will require evading the Memetic Nemesis so my team doesn’t die. Thankfully, I have a way to do this.

Nathaniel moves up and uses a Sweeping Kick. I don’t really care about the damage on this being blocked – I just need to evade the enemy. It works, and the Memetic Nemesis is evaded. Kōhaku runs up and slams down the Skeleton Key AGAIN – the top of the tower now has a Shroud of 1, which means it’s going to be expose-a-palooza pretty soon. Kōhaku is able to expose the Memetic Nemesis, and we reshuffle everything around. If we can get this four more times we’ll win! Kōhaku goes again and…  he is able to do a 1 in 9 expose on the Memetic Nemesis! Wow, okay. Lily and Minh also move up and try to expose more but don’t have the same degree of luck. Still, we’re super close to winning. We just need to expose 3 more times!

After the next round, I feel like we might be able to win, but if we don’t get our exposes fast enough, I need Memetic Nemesis evaded so that it doesn’t hit everybody. I honestly think Minh is the most likely person to pass this test, due to Beloved and Bless tokens, so I am going to have her go last. Nathaniel fails to expose the Memetic Nemesis, as does Kōhaku. It does not look super great. But then Lily goes and she finds it! That’s 3. We just need two more. Lily goes for another expose (reminder that due to Kōhaku’s Skeleton Key we are passing on basic every token draw here except for an autofail) and….. she gets it immediately again!! That’s TWO 1 in 9 exposes on Memetic Nemesis for the team. Absolutely wild luck, but I’ll take it. Minh still has a full turn and Thorne’s Sable Glass is still untouched. Lily shifts the Sable Glass to reveal every concealed card for Minh. Minh does an investigate to reveal a card and easily beats the shroud of 1. She flips over the Memetic Nemesis and deals the last 3 damage.

With that, the Memetic Nemesis is defeated! Side note, we ended with 2 out of 7 doom on Agenda 3, so even if the scenario dragged on a little bit longer, we probably still would have won. The team had enough going for it that we could have lasted into the next round. But, winning here definitely feels great.

According to the campaign log, everyone lands somewhere, but since this is Blessings of Asia, I’m going to say everyone lands safely on a beach near Tokyo. As the cell stands to their feet on the shore, they note that the Outsiders were stopped, they each gain another 2 physical and mental trauma, and gain another 6 XP. Also, the cell was dismantled in the Epilogue because apparently we were too nice to the Red Coterie members. But anyway, the most important thing is that —

The investigators win the campaign!

Assorted Notes

These are just some observations that I didn’t get to fit in anywhere else.

-Lily played both Ward of Radiances and successfully blocked 1 doom going out each time.

-Nathaniel’s “Fool me once…” stopped an Ancient Evils.

-Nathaniel NEVER got Boxing Gloves the whole scenario and still won.

-Nathaniel’s Blessing of Isis never got played this scenario, meaning that this card never triggered the whole campaign. I still think it could be good in theory, so I’d give this build another try.

-Nathaniel did draw and hold his Unspeakable Oath for most of this scenario, but of course, the card doesn’t do anything when the campaign is about to be over.

-Kōhaku’s Drain Essence was able to help defeat Tommy Molloy very efficiently as it moved 2 damage directly from himself onto him. Very strong effect!

-Minh added loads of curses to the bag thanks to Esoteric Method & Deep Knowledge.

-Minh had the full Dark Horse & Mariner’s Compass package in play and this was by far the most useful during the City of Remnants map exploration phase of the scenario.

– Kōhaku had Ikiaq & St. Hubert’s Key out for 6 Will and 6 Intellect. Living Ink did last a bit longer than normal with Macabre Depiction & Enraptured but unfortunately it still got discarded.

-Lily’s Flurry of Blows got hollowed at the very end of the game, which was so disappointing. I’ll have to try again at making a Flurry of Blows Lily.

-Lily never drew Hunter’s Armor this scenario, aka my 9 XP card, which was very sad to see, but thankfully I still won anyway.

MVP

I think the final MVP of the game should be pretty obvious, but it’s Kōhaku. Kōhaku Skeleton Key’d FOUR locations, blew up Amaranth in one hit, and collected tons of clues. His Key of Solomon healing also helped keep Nathaniel alive. Overall though, if Kōhaku’s Skeleton Key was not there, I think we would have lost, and the only reason he was able to continuously attach and detach this card so much is because he was inhaling extra actions from all the bless and curse token generation. This one card dropped the shroud on Towering Vortex from a 6 to 1. It was as though Kōhaku basically gave everyone +5 Wild icons on nearly every test they performed on this location – just absolutely ridiculous.

Conclusion

The finale of this campaign didn’t go as smoothly as hoped, as my first Key Change – Shade Reaper scenario run will forever be burned in my memory as one of the most annoying Arkham experiences I’ve ever had. But ultimately, I did manage to restart with a clear head and get a win on the campaign fair and square. Overall, this campaign was super fun. I don’t know that I ended up with the best variants of everyone’s deck, but I did land on some really powerful things. This was my first time playing a heavy Bless and Curse synergy team and I would definitely want to do it again. Hopefully, you all enjoyed reading and following along with my campaign. Some time I’ll write up a closing story about this campaign’s team to wrap everything up! Thanks for reading and I’ll catch you all on my next adventure.