Oh, but they're so easy (Touch of Evil)

Before I leave the town I try to write down the last two games of our Touch of Evil campaign.

First game was played against the Vampire, who we thought to be one of the easiest villains. And that it pretty much was, yet again. It seems like the design intent is for Vampire to drag the game on for so long that Remains in Play Mystery cards wear players down. Vampire has no rules of its own to haste Shadow Track, and its minion chart does that only on result of 1. And the effect isn't especially horrible.

Well, Frederic Léon and Abigail Sturn had gotten a sort of hunch that this wimpy and easy Villain was tormenting Shadowbrook. Or maybe the Vampire was just bored of its own meaningless existence and decided to come and kill itself right there and then.

During the extraordinarily long game Abigail Sturn got the Villain smashing event card again, the one that made 1's hit enemies too, and against any beast or vampire 1's were two hits. I actually felt pity for the Vampire.

Abigail has ability to use Cunning instead of Combat in battles, so she bought all possible Town items that added Cunning and were preferably Books (for her another ability).

Frederic Léon had some bad luck and spent quite some time being Knocked Out thanks to various minions.

Things actually got interesting when we were nearing the end. Lady Hanbrook had both Darkest Secret and Shadow Puppet secrets - meaning that she couldn't be singled out during Showdown, and Shadow Track would drop by one at the start of every Showdown Fight Round!

Also the Vampire's minions put some effort into their actions near the end of game, and one way or another Heroes were denied of starting a Showdown.

But, alas and woe and all that, Vampire could not hide forever, and was butchered up. Even the twisted bravery of Hanbrook could not save him/her/it.

Both Lady Hanbrook and Lord Hanbrook had the Darkest Secret, so I guess they were a sort of vampire aristocracy.

Game 2:

Well, then we played against the next easiest villain, Spectral Horseman. Heroes that were drawn were Argot Blackwell and Liliana, lost soul AKA Villain Killer.

I was expecting an easy and quick game because of the Horseman being the Villain and our Heroes were pretty good.

But sometimes fate is fickle...

Order of the Crimson Hand were pretty active in this game. Any time a Hero visited a Corner Location, a dice must be rolled to see if Crimson Hand attacks. Every time a Hero ended in same space with Militia, they rolled to see how badly the militia gunned them down. And all Town Items cost 2 extra Investigation points. And then some other cards were niceties such as whenever Event was drawn, a dice was rolled to see if Mystery Card was drawn instead, and any time 1 was rolled for movement a Mystery card was drawn no matter what.

All of that combined with invulnerable Barghest Hounds (Argot did kill about ten Barghest Hounds during game. However the only Barghest Hound token that was removed was because of March of Darkness to town square... damn those 4+'s!) made for a really tough game. I guess a lesson was learned here: Never underestimate your foe. Or at least it's minions. Or at least the Order of the Crimson Hand.

Heroes did manage to start a Showdown, though. Shadow Track was at 3 when they did so, and it proved out to be that two of Evil Elders were Shadow Puppets!

One of those Evil Elders (either Harbormaster or Mayor Carver) survived despite effective 4 Dice being wasted on him.

So... did we just lose two of the better heroes from our hero pool to arguably one of the easiest villains in the game? Yup, that we did.


Campaign record:

Dead villains: Bog Fiend, Vampire

Dead Heroes: Liliana, Argot Blackwell

Stashed investigation: 2