Flammable Season (Touch of Evil)

As I was on my biannual visit to Kuhmo, I played some board games a little bit for the first time in this... year.

This visit saw a continuation of a Touch of Evil campaign game.

First game was against Delion Dryad.

Using the campaign rules we used one stashed investigation point and randomly picked two heroes and chose one of them. We got Heinrich Cartwright, the Drifter and Captain Hawkings.

These villains that have limited amount minion tokens with some guaranteed ways to spawn them are nasty when used with all three expansion boards. Good thing we had Captain Hawkings, who was able to send militias to chop some woods... some of them never came back from their assignment.

I don't think Shadow Track fell even once because we didn't have tokens to place Living Trees.

Living Trees also weren't particularly apt in rolling sixes - I believe they didn't cause any hero Knock Out's. Other kinds of Wolves and Deep Ones and ambushes in the night did that surely enough, but the dangerous spiral of being Knocked Out all the time, every time did not happen. Only a couple of turns were missed because of getting knocked out during Mystery Phase.

Corner Locations were merciful - only two or three cards that were drawn were strictly bad things or attacks or whatnot.

However, despite all of this it wasn't an easy game. Other causes made Shadow Track speed down towards Darkness. Heroes were quite tanky and had some equipment and both had Spirit + Cunning of eight or more, but beginning Showdown looked like risky business because there were zero "ignore all wounds" event cards in store for us, and neither hero was able to deal absurd amounts of damage.

Also, later in the game both heroes were badly injured most of the time, so we were waiting for the turn when both of us would be fully healed to start the showdown. That turn never came and we had no other option than to begin Showdown when Shadow Track was at "2".

Both flinged their torches at the Dryad during first round. Second round not much damage was dealt by either party. Third turn Captain Hawkings fell, and Heinrich Cartwright along with Widow Jessica the village elder were survivors of this alluring encounter. Maybe they started life together or something.

Game 2:

Next game was against The Scarecrow, which gave nice theme for this summer's touches of evil. Burn them all. With matchsticks and gasoline.

We picked random heroes, who were Valeria, the Eternal and Katarina, the Outlaw. Not too bad at all.

In this game we had to struggle against Shadow Track, as we picked up such Remains in Play cards as The Horror and later in the game Something Wicked. Also almost every single turn there was a murder. Crows started appearing all over the place. Pretty lousy Scarecrow if you ask me.

Throughout the game heroes were undergeared against difficulties they had to face, and there were next to no pick ups from corner locations. Well, actually heroes even couldn't visit corner locations all that much thanks to Order's Influences that made militias go mad, as well as a roadblock at Smuggler's Cove.

Katarina bought Sacred Chalice and got rid of The Horror and Order's Influence, and then Sacred Chalice expired.

Heroes had to start Showdown a little bit too early. Katarina had, what, five Fight dice and Valeria had four. Of course they were absurdly multiplied by ditching keyword Fire. Scarecrow had 14 fight dice at it's height.

But thanks to Katarina getting some 12 Fight Dice with a re-roll from event, damage was more than enough to burn the abomination that had set up it's lair at Icy Waters. "Nobody will suspect I hide in Icy Waters" thought the Scarecrow, I suppose, but a local fisherman was bewildered about a scarecrow that somebody had set up on an iceberg.

Widow Jessica and Lady Hanbrook both died during showdown, and as last act of defiance Scarecrow killed Katarina - just before dying.

Two victories. But still the campaign will take quite a while if we take a year and a half breaks in between the games...

Campaign statistics:

Villains defeated: Spectral Horseman, Vampire, Siren, Bog Fiend, Volgovian Nutcracker, Delion Dryad, Scarecrow
Villains still to be defeated: 12

Heroes dead: Argot Blackwell, Inspector Cooke, Isabella von Took & Liliana, Lost Soul
Heroes remaining: 20

Stashed investigation: 6