Undercity scenario 6

Should have written this right away.

But last Thursday I played scenario six from the Undercity campaign.

It was this scenario where two alchemists were being shanghai'd to exit space, and once either has been freed, a Cephalyx would appear.

We were a greedy with both Side Quest spaces since they were kind of easily reached. I had great trust in the alchemist wiping out both villain parties that had an alchemist in them. Well, the other group went down just fine... but then things started to happen.

The trollkin tank had been beating the Cephalyx for a few turns once the last group of alchemist transporters arrived right next to the very same space. My alchemist is there and lobs Cinder bomb on the group, but rolls damage poorly. Not that even a successful attack would have killed the trollkin scout in one go anyway. Now, I hadn't been listening the rules for such interactions too well... the attack caused the group to activate, so the trollkin scout threw an axe at the alchemist, killing him before he had time to make the rest of his attacks. This was bad, as gun mage had been incapacitated already, and Doorstop was almost demolished.

Hero trollkin (was his name Gadrek? Well, he's Gadrek now, to differentiate from scout villain) has something like three hit boxes remaining. Doorstop gets wrecked, so heroes are down to Pog and nearly dead Gadrek.

Gadrek takes free strikes from Cephalyx and a Drudge to attack trollkin scout, and thankfully kills him and frees the alchemist, before tons of surrounding villains enter the space.

There is this brief moment, when all of the heroes are in the same space, with dozen or so enemies nearby. Milo Boggs and gun mage had been crawling there. Kind of a cinematic occasion. Should've brought camera to take a picture.

Two villains enter the space, but they do something like one damage to Gadrek. But now he's at two remaining, so he dies if he fails two hazard rolls when he charged back to deal with the Cephalyx...

He passed both. And he killed the Drudge Thrall in one hit, so Cephalyx didn't have any sacrificial pawn targets. And with a last possible attack he killed the Cephalyx, winning scenario for Blackwater Irregulars.

This was, by far, the closest game. It could have easily been a loss. Well, even if Gadrek would have died against the Cephalyx, Pog might have still been able to win the game if he'd have survived against charges made by enemies before he'd activate. That would have been quite epic indeed. But victory took just about every resource we had at our disposal. Well, perhaps we didn't make the best choices all of the time and a cinder bomb manoeuvre backfiring didn't exactly help either.

The Side Quests had rather bad rewards this time around (some extra experience and a poisoned blade that Pog wasn't able to lift from the ground), so maybe they were a bit of an unnecessary risk. But hey. Risks. Uncertain rewards. What could be better?

Next game will be the final scenario of The Undercity Campaign.