SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign. You may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one.
Right if any of my group 2 adventures are still reading then it’s on you if the following spoils your sense of wonder and surprise in our next session. I did warn you to stop reading.
I’ve updated my Checks Sheet with the hand written notes you may have noticed in the photos on the session 2 post mortem. Which has also been printed and added to my DM folder. The original aim of this sheet was to be a quick reference for various ability checks. So if anyone wants this as a pdf let me know and I’ll send them a copy.
My Updated Checks Sheet for D&D
I have also printed out the following since I was at the library already printing out the Checks Sheet.
Side view map of City of Arches A3
City of Arches Core Adventure Generator A4
Dyson Logos version of Caves of Chaos map A3
I held off the new location descriptions because in the next update there are some corrections coming apparently so I saved my money until then.
That’s all practical stuff for running the next session or prepping for it. But what about ideas for the next session?
I don’t know who or why yet. However in the next session the group will be learning from Adel that some-one has been collecting magical relics, beating her agents to them, and in some cases killing her agent.
Adel will have arranged some accommodation for the party within the Lower Reaches. Naturally the payment for this will be deducted from any reward she was going to give the party.
I still need to dig out my Pathfinder npc cards and find a suitable one for Adel.
Plus what are the adventurers going to do after they have long rested?
I have to say the following as I’d hate to have ruined the campaign for anyone.
SPOILER ALERT! The following post contains spoilers for the Rise of Fenris campaign for Scythe. If you haven’t played the expansion and wish to avoid any spoilers you may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one.
The morning started off with Ben sending me a text saying he was unlikely to make our session later.
As per normal (well for me) I arrived early and started to set up.
I know folks might find this hard to believe, but I actually enjoy setting up Scythe! It’s a breeze.
We were due to have Lizzy and Mark join us for the campaign but you can guess from how I started the sentence they were unable to. While setting up Lizzy messaged me that Mark seemed to have whatever she had mid week.
I just had an image in my head that I was going to end up with no one coming, and be sitting there looking like Billy no mates in front of the footy fans watching the lunchtime match (Everton vs Man U), and mothers having a kid free beverage.
While waiting for the appointed time between drinking my latte, eating my ham roll, and bagging the game pieces in Cryptid. I was checking my phone regularly for messages from Jeff and Shane.
There was a big sigh of relief when Jeff turned up. Followed by Shane.
Refreshments is place. It was time for …
Episode 3
Our faction/player board match ups for this episode were as follows after randomly drawing the player boards.
Saxony Empire/Agricultural (Black) – Jeff
Nordic Kingdoms/Engineering (Blue) – Shane
Rusviet Union/Innovative (Red) – Me
The factory deck and space were going to be different this episode.
For starters a character card for Vesna, daughter of Nicolas Tesla was added to the initial four cards. Then a further four cards were added, with the larger deck then being shuffled.
During this episode when we visited the factory tile we would get an encounter token. We would then shuffle the deck and reveal cards equal to the number of encounter tokens we had. If one of the cards was Vesna we’d keep the card. Otherwise if we didn’t have a factory card already we could keep one of the revealed cards.
It was the turn of the Rusviets to have an episode nerf. For this episode only (I’m assuming) the Township ability was replaced. I could no longer jump into the factory tile from a controlled village tile. However I could jump from a controlled village tile to an unoccupied one. Which was nearly as cool, and did allow me to get more than my share of encounter tokens.
Goals for the episode were to accumulate influence tokens, find Vesna, and win the game. I’m always forgetting to do that later one!
The story mission did have that “Save the cheerleader, save the world.” vibe to it.
I got off to a blazing start and had the objective for all my workers out on the map completed. It helped that my starting perk for this episode was an extra worker.
Then things slowed down for me, with Shane not long after also completing the same objective.
It transpired that using my faction ability to abuse the crap out of a factory card (damn game balancing errata) wasn’t our only miss play in the opening episodes. In episode 2 Jeff got most of his objective points from completing missions. He was drawing new ones, when he completed one. It had escaped me that he was doing this. I thought he was getting new ones from Encounter cards.
Shane queried his Engineering player board and it’s move action.
It looked like it did not have the slash between the move actions and the gain coins action. Shane was querying whether it should have one there. I said if it didn’t then it was a misprint. Otherwise that’d be an insanely power action.
As the photo of the Engineering player board above shows that it does indeed exist on the player board. It’s just very hard to see thanks to the gorgeous art work. A black line on a dark grey part of the image doesn’t make it the easiest thing to spot.
Naturally my three visits to the Factory failed to find Vesna. But it did get me three influence tokens, and a factory card. To add salt to the wound Jeff defeated my mech on the space, and then found Vesna on his first attempt.
I was too slow putting stars out. Although I did get the one for having the maximum bolster points. One I rarely get in games. I had been playing catch up on that front for most of the game.
So it came as little surprise Jeff triggered the end of the game. I was at least three maybe four turns away from being able to do the same. I’d only got four stars out.
The final scores were as follows:
As you can see Jeff won with a very comfortable margin.
So Jeff’s reward for finding Vesna was to change his faction! Saxony is no more. Jeff had the honour of opening box A to have the new plastic revealed to him. It looks pretty cool. However you will have to wait until we play episode 4 to see photos.
The rulebook very generously also allowed the rest of us to change our factions if we so wished. Shane and I both declined that offer.
We also got to draw more infrastructure mods. I bought the Construction mod. Which means I now have three mods to use each game. My other two being Cavalry and Automachines. Bloody shame I never used those two this episode. That might explain a little why I didn’t do as well. Failure to utilise all my resources.
The influence tokens also meant something this game other than card draw on the factory deck. For every two influence tokens (rounded up) you got to increase a setup bonus by one. I spent them wisely on popularity. So from now on I start each episode with an extra two popularity.
I ended this session with $16. Just enough to buy the perk at the start of episode four.
What a great game. Loved it. Loved the hunt for Vesna and the change to the factory deck. Wow! Getting the new faction. Can’t wait to see what that does in episode four.
Last night was another really well attended club night. Despite that thing that shall not be named hitting a couple of members and thus couldn’t attend. We even saw a couple of new members attend for the first time.
This will be a brief post as not much to say about the evening game wise. I played three games I’d played before. Enjoy the brevity. But don’t get used to it.
After splitting into three gaming tables, my first game of the evening was the amazing Libertalia Winds of Galecrest.
In our game of Libertalia there was a differing interruption of the hook ability on the calm side of the board. I’m surprised it hadn’t come up before in previous plays, and for the life of me couldn’t remember how we played it.
I wasn’t able to Google an answer at the table. However this morning I did find one on the Libertalia Facebook page. Shane you were right and I was wrong. It doesn’t return to hand. There that wasn’t easy to admit, but I can admit when I am wrong.
I still haven’t played this game at the higher player counts. Which is something I do want to do. I feel that reputation track position becomes even more important for making sure you get loot.
Libertalia Final Score
Our second game was the ever classic, and still my favourite version of Love Letter, Love Letter Batman.
Love Letter Batman Final Scores
My final game of the evening was the totally mean, but such such fun Survive Escape from Atlantis.
We even remembered the giant squids this time too! They were fun having out on the board, and look totally awesome.
Somehow I managed to get my three highest valued meeples to safety. I had no idea what meeple I had where during setup as I didn’t look at their values! The six I did get to safety could just as easily have been all the low values. This was a pure luck victory.
Survive Escape from Atlantis Final Scores
Let’s see what that “young” Jonathan took photos off last night.
SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign. You may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one.
At the moment the party are pretty battered. They need a long rest. But first they need to get out of the sewers. I think Tantalos Whitetail will have to give the party a parting gift of restoring some of their HP. After all there are shriekers, a gelatinous cube, and maybe some other unnamed creatures still in the sewers.
I have the Mot the Sporeling mini from MCDM (but needs to be cut and glued) that is a Sporeling Companion. I’m very tempted to introduce Mot to the party. An even bigger temptation is to run the gelatinous cube as a companion. I need to read the MCDM rules on companions first. Some light reading for the weekend.
When the party finally make it to Adel’s Emporium of Magical Relics the party need a new job from Adel after they have rested. I’ve got time to rewatch some Warehouse 13 episodes for inspiration. Failing that I do have the Lazy DM Companion Hunt for the Relic page, plus the City of Arches adventure generator pages to fall back on for inspiration.
Well that’s my brainstorming so far. Maybe I’ll get more inspired whilst at work!
Yesterday morning I tweeted how I was looking forward to playing my favourite game of all time (do I really have to say it? You all know what it is by now. Oh ok) Scythe, that evening. That’d I’d also be teaching it to two new players.
Indeed that was the plan made on Saturday at the end of D&D so that Mark and Lizzy could learn the game before joining the Rise of Fenris campaign this coming Saturday.
Reality, life, call it what you want had other ideas.
I arrived early to get Scythe setup. As usual I wanted to maximise play time for everyone by having it so that once everyone had arrived we could dive straight in.
There were no tables so I set up the ones I needed, plus the one I thought Jonathan and his Railways of the World players would need.
Brief aside before carrying on with the retelling of the events of last night.
As the photo below shows I now have the realistic tokens for Scythe. I know that’s a major shock. After all I have been vocal in my preference for the wooden tokens that come with the game. However these were the final upgrade I needed to make my copy of Scythe the equivalent of the Kickstarter Art Connoisseur Collector’s Edition.
What surprised me last night was how they grew on me last night as I was setting up, and taking the photos (below). I actually quite like them!
I just need to save up and get the metal mechs (I need four sets, which ain’t cheap) to have everything you can officially buy for it.
Right back to my ramblings.
Scythe Realistic Tokens
As I was setting up Scythe Jonathan arrived and not long after so did Shane.
With Scythe setup we just needed Mark and Lizzy to arrive.
However Shane asked if I had heard from them. Which I hadn’t. Apparently Lizzy was ill and wouldn’t be coming.
Bugger.
I asked Jonathan if he wanted another two players for Railways of the World.
After Jonathan started setting up for a five player game, and I had packed away Scythe, it transpired Mark was on his way.
“John got room for one more?”
While we waited for Mark to arrive there was banter and a brief discussion between Jeff and Jonathan about how best to setup the game so it didn’t go on all night.
Some cubes were removed from the board.
Once Mark arrived Jonathan explained the rules. For three of us this was our first time playing the game. Luckily there was no “it’s just like Agricola” moment.
I have to say despite nearly coming last, I really liked Railways of the World.
With three copies in the club now (Gav just bought a copy) I don’t feel a need to get my own. But if I want to play a railway themed game this is the one I’d play. It’s so much more fun than Ticket to Ride.
Railways of the World
I like the bidding for first player at the start of each turn.
Another thing I like a lot is the almost sandbox like approach it has to building tracks. You can literally build a track anywhere on the board. Ok it might cost you a fortune to do so depending on the terrain crossing.
The having to upgrade your trains to be able to move goods further along the built tracks is cool.
But there is the whole making connections and delivery engine you are building to push you up the income track, whilst trying to get as few bonds as possible. Obviously the two most experienced players had this off to a tee. Eventually I managed to break even and then make a small profit. But this whole core to the game is so much fun and can be very cut throat.
As the results show the three more experienced players finished top three, with Shane almost breaking into third place.
Final Scores
Still a great evening of gaming with great gamers!
Here they are Jonathan’s photos of the evening to end the post with.
SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign. You may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one.
Looks like I need to get back to the library earlier than planned to print out the new stuff from the update to the City of Arches I need in my DM folder to aid in the prep for the next session and the subsequent ones.
What’s new in the City of Arches pdf
Obviously the two pages that make up the adventure generator will be printed. This is a version of the Core Adventure Generator from the Lazy DM Companion geared towards the City of Arches.
The new side map is a must. To give you an idea what this looks like I’ve put a snippet below. I will need to create a relevant snippet for Mark to aid in his characters knowledge of the city.
Finally the new location descriptions will need to be printed out.
I’m glad this update has been released. It will be very helpful in preparing the next session.
After tying up the two Children of Ibraxus cult members that they had captured to the alter in the crypt entryway. Our party of adventurers headed off to find a safer place to have a short rest.
The party decided to rest by the arch in the Sunset Grove.
At the end of the break Quintus Harrowtoes disappeared through a door in the base of the arch.
The party followed after him, descending into the sewers below the City of Arches.
Quintus was moving too fast for them. All they heard as he disappeared was “this way”.
Jeb shouted very loudly to try and get Quintus to come back to them. But it was to no avail. Although it did seem to alert the inhabitants of the sewer to their presence down there.
Whilst looking for Quintus the party came across a web column dotted with cocoons in the middle of the central chamber that lead down to the lower level.
As the party descended down the spiral stairs Babs was attacked by a Giant Spider. Battle ensued, and the eventual defeat of the Giant Spider.
On the lower level the party ignored the fleeing swarm of rats to stumble upon the liar of a Giant Crocodile.
It was here they discovered the torso of Quintus amongst the remains of other prey moments before being attacked by said Giant Crocodile.
Things weren’t looking good for the party. They were most certainly looking at a very brief future. That is until the timely appearance of the wizard Tantalos Whitetail. Who sent the Giant Crocodile back to slumber in the depths of its lair.
After introductions and a brief admonishment about waking up the Giant Crocodile, Tantalos gave the party directions on how to find their way out of the sewers into the Lower Reaches.
And that’s where we left our party.
Post Mortem
SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following part of the post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign. You may want to avoid this part of the post and join me in a future one.
I’d like to say I was writing my session notes this morning whilst drinking my usual hot mug of caffeinated liquid. But I wasn’t. I was writing my session notes whilst my coffee sat next to me forgotten. It was so cold by the time I’d remembered.
My DM Notes
Once again my morning before the session sees me at the library printing stuff out. This time it was the following:
Sewer Lair map from Lazy DM Workbook A3 x 2
Location descriptions for Sewer Lair map from Lazy DM Workbook A4 2 pages
Secrets and Clues page from Lazy DM Companion A4
Points Crawl page from Lazy DM Companion A4
Annotated map of City of Arches A4
I’d printed a copy of the city map for Mark. His character grew up in the City of Arches. So they should know their way around. I also said Mark’s character should also know one area of the city really well. Mark was told not to share this map with the others.
I did two copies of the Sewer Lair because I wanted to annotate one with the notes for the session, and have the other to use whenever.
Being early to the session gave me time to finish off my notes for the session whilst sitting outside in the sunny but cool breeze weather. Which was basically coming up with the secrets and clues. Then when our venue was open I was able to get our play area set up.
My DM Prep
As you can see above the warning cards giving valuable advice to the players are back. They should be there every session. However that can only happen if you remember to take the index card box with them in to the session.
Today there was no nice A3 printed map for the players. No 3D terrain or battle map. Instead I was drawing sections of the map on small dry erase boards (see photo below). This seems to have worked ok.
Map drawn on dry erase boards
I could have killed the party today, it was very close. The Giant Crocodile was way too over powered for the party. Made more deadly I think because they were not recovered from the run in with the Giant Spider. Maybe I should have used a regular crocodile or two instead.
As you may have guessed from the rather dull dramatic retelling of the sessions story. I did indeed intervene to save the party by having an NPC turn up and rescue them.
I did try and warn the party that there was something dangerous ahead with the fleeing swarm of rats. But as you gathered that subtle warning was ignored.
Although the Giant Crocodile made story sense. At CR5 it was way way over powered for these none rested or healed level 2 characters.
The Party of Adventurers
I did hand out an inspiration token today. But not really as a reward for good roleplay etc. More to help counter none optimal decisions.
The Creature and NPC, and Monster cards really do work well for me. Having just what I need for the session plus some “favourites” that are campaign related to call upon does cut down on what I have to carry with me to a session. I’d love something like these for the Tomb of Beasts 2.
Right now to start working out how to get the party out of the sewer alive!
You know it’s the law that I have to say the following.
SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign. You may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one.
It only clicked yesterday that the players characters haven’t healed or had a long rest yet. So when levelling up they should not be increasing their current hit points to match their new maximum. So I reminded them of this today. Better late than never.
I think I’ve also settled on how session two will start. As the party are escorting the two cultist prisoners to the business establishment of their patron, they will be ambushed by other members of the Children of Ibraxus cult.
It will be a “you are are surrounded and out numbered. Handover your prisoners.”
From there who knows what will happen!
I’m leaning towards the party having to go into the sewers to locate a relic. The old urban legend about crocodiles/alligators living in the sewers of L.A. I feel like making that a real thing in the sewers of the City of Arches. Others creatures I’d like to use possibly are a swarm of rot grubs, and definitely a swarm of rats. I’m also feeling pulled towards using some oozes, maybe a cube of some sort.
I had the Creature and NPC Cards by Gale Force Nine arrive today. I have the cards they do that cover the Monster Manual. Which I like. They are handy to just have the relevant monster cards for the sessions encounters to hand without having to carry the Monster Manual with you. So now I can do the same with the creatures and NPCs.
As the bottom photo above shows the way I store them for use at a session is with some Ultra Pro 9 Pocket folder pages. Obviously these go in my DM folder with all my other notes.
Ok I know I usually do these posts at the start of a new month. But I have no gaming planned until Saturday. So I thought I’d get a head start and bore you with the stats for March now.
SPOILER ALERT! The following post contains spoilers for the Rise of Fenris campaign for Scythe. If you haven’t played the expansion and wish to avoid any spoilers you may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one.
Since coming out in 2018 the Rise of Fenris (RoF) has been sitting sealed in bubble wrap on my shelf waiting for today!
During that time I’ve managed to avoid any spoilers, and just as important resist opening it up.
I wanted to experience the campaign as it unfolded episode by episode revealing what ever surprises it held inside its box. You only get to do this once. It’s like watching a movie, or hearing a song for the very first time. You can never recapture that moment. No matter how hard you try.
Today Ben, Jeff, Shane and myself met up to start this journey together.
For this opening session of RoF we used the neoprene map. It truly is a lovely version of the game board. We were using the base game of Scythe plus the following expansions Invaders from Afar (nearly wrote Mars there), Encounters, and all the promo packs. For the first two episodes it is not recommended to play with the Wind Gambit expansion.
This meant all faction and player boards were in play when it came down to choosing our faction for the campaign.
Player boards were dealt out randomly to each player. Then starting with the highest numbered player board and going in descending order we drafted our faction board, avoiding any banned combinations. Which meant I chose first, followed by Jeff, then Shane, and finally Ben.
We had our factions for the campaign.
I thought on my drive over I had decided maybe I won’t chose Rusviet. But instead try another faction. Assuming no one else chose Rusviet that is. However without even thinking I went for my favourite faction. Somehow the familiar seemed right.
Having the lowest numbered player board meant that Ben would be first player in episode 1 of RoF. A bit of a curve ball for him as this would be his first time of playing the game! Which was also true for Shane. They were about to jump into the deep end of the pool, having only watched a tutorial online. Would they sink or swim? For sure their learning curve was going to be very steep, against two very competitive players.
Episode 1
This is how the factions and player boards matched up for the opening episode of the campaign.
Republic of Polania/Industrial (White) – Ben
Saxony Empire/Patriotic (Black) – Jeff
Nordic Kingdoms/Militant (Blue) – Shane
Rusviet Union/Mechanical (Red) – Me
Setup for episode 1 was as expected, just like a regular game of Scythe. Then it came to making the additions for this opening episode.
The first addition was to draw 1 random objective card from the deck and place it next to the Triumph Track. This was to be an extra objective all players could complete and place a star on.
Next was to punch some cardboard and add an influence token to each of the Triumph track categories plus the objective we had just added.
We also got to choose a free perk for this episode. After that they would cost us hard earned dollars to purchase at the start of each episode. The first hit is always free.
The “special rules” were simple. Be the first to place a star on a category or the added objective and claim the influence token.
Objectives for episode 1 were simple. Win the game, and collect influence tokens.
This first game was basically like any regular game of Scythe. With the only difference being we got these influence tokens that we had no idea what they were going to be used for.
Somehow I wasn’t the first to the Factory! Ben was. Yeah I know how did that happen? But I was second.
This was an unusual game, or it felt that way. We were all in the first section of the popularity track when it came to the final counting. No one had massive amounts of territory that they controlled. There was combat but not massive amounts. It felt we were all being very insular.
I did trigger the end of the game. On the road to doing so I had collected 5 influence tokens.
Not one of us completed the additional objective.
After the tallying of coins was done, and the dust settled Jeff had won.
Episode 1 Scores
We made a note of the money earnt. This was going to allow us to buy stuff in subsequent episodes.
Before we moved on we had one more thing to do. Using our influence tokens we had to vote on the direction of the next episode. Did we want to focus more on War (combat and interaction) or focus more on Peace (engine building and infrastructure).
I voted for peace. Which with my 5 tokens guaranteed that was the route we would be going down.
Episode 2
For episode 2 we got new player mats, which were drawn at random. Once again enforcing the banned pairings. Below are the new faction and player mat pairings.
Republic of Polania/Mechanical (White) – Ben
Saxony Empire/Innovative (Black) – Jeff
Nordic Kingdoms/Industrial (Blue) – Shane
Rusviet Union/Engineering (Red) – Me
The game board was reset. The influence tokens returned to the box.
The setup for episode 2 gave us a new Triumph track in the form of a Peace Triumph track overlay. Plus each of us got our matching faction alliance token. We also got the chance to purchase a perk for the episode for $15.
The episode goals were to obviously win the game and build structures.
This time I was the first to get to the Factory. Order to the universe was restored.
It would have been nice to have had the Polania faction ability. But Ben wouldn’t have it. All he saw was the money on the front of the tile, and that he got considerable less on that front than me. He didn’t see how powerful my faction ability was. So sadly I was limited to just one of the encounter cards options.
Initially Shane turned down my offer of an alliance also. His Nordic ability would be handy for my workers. He listened to Ben’s flawed money argument. But eventually he caved and an alliance was made. At just the right time for me as it gave me enough income to fuel my factions abuse of its power until near the very end.
The river walk for my workers did prove very handy allowing me to expand out and build my structures close to encounter spots.
As the final scores show this episode really really suited my faction. I was in the final section of the popularity track getting the maximum points multiplier.
I wasn’t expecting any combat to happen. It didn’t “gain” you anything. However in the later half of the game Ben and Jeff turned to the aggressive side and attacked Shane!
Episode 2 Scores
At the end of the episode we got to choose a free Infrastructure Mod, and the chance to buy other ones for $50 each. The number you got to choose from depended on how many structures you built during the game. You got to draw two initially plus an extra one for each structure you built. Which meant I was choosing from 6 mods.
“Remember, wealth earned in Episodes 1-7 is not used to determine the winner of the campaign, so spend it to improve your empire!” Rise of Fenris rulebook, page 19
How cool is the above? “The winner of the campaign is the winner of the final episode”. Love it.
I really loved these first two episodes. The additions weren’t overwhelming, they ease you into the campaign very gently. I can’t wait for our next session in two weeks time and see what surprises lie in wait for us. We haven’t even opened a box yet!
