Kill-stealing the kill-stealer

 Visited some friends in Vaasa, which meant a round of Arkham Horror, 3rd edition.

Scenario was Silence of Tsathoggua.

Investigators we had were Jenny Barnes the dilettante, Wendy Adams the urchin, Mark Harrigan the soldier and Stella Clark, letter carrier.

Investigators had a smashing success in their first few turns. In fact, two clues were found in the very first round. Stella bought shotgun with money from Jenny, and deliverer Mark to fight some monsters. As expected, he removed those with zero effort.

Same could not be said about the dilettante, who rolled and re-rolled a total of nine dice, but scoring only a single point of damage to grasping fungus.

Really early there an anomaly emerged in Riverdown district, but investigators were able to normalize things in just one round, too. 

It all seemed... too easy. 

However... Jenny started getting spammed by Lore checks with her mighty lore of 1, and despite focusing and re-rolls other players managed to pick only one doom token from the board at a time. Letter carrier became Tainted. Harrigan was more than adept at beating down monsters, but then again, that's all that he did. And that did not count too much for the scenario victory, except for when he shot down the elite Dhole that had been experimented upon, almost wrecking Corpse Picker on the same turn. 

For the longest of time only one Clue token was on the scenario sheet, while doom tokens kept popping up in there. Even Jenny had managed to pick up clues and had two in her possession, but did not succeed in planting even one of them on scenario sheet after six dice worth of rolls. I sure felt useful with my character.

After the letter carrier punched a street kid, clues started dripping where they should, and a new wing was opened in the science building to test the found Mi-Go stuff. Unfortunately, a street was eaten off the city by a gigantic maw. So investigators were in a bit of a hurry.

And soon enough, Tsathoggua awakened as investigators were unable to stop the amount of doom spiraling out of control. 

What struck me as a bit odd was how easy it was to stop Tsathoggua from gobbling up the city - although we did have perfect investigator for that, Stella, who was able to add a success by spending a focus point. Which meant that converting clue tokens into stops cost only one clue from scenario sheet. 

Anyway, we were a bit unprepared as the awakening happened so unexpectedly. This left into drastic measures. Harrigan had the Mi-Go brain box thing, so Jenny gave Harrigan her determination to find Isabella as well as her glamorous dress. Next, Harrigan absorbed Wendy's talents and personality, and most importantly, a lucky cigar case.

So, two investigators were robbed of their personalities and Harrigan, in his new fancy dress and brandishing a shotgun, went to shoot Tsathoggua for a bit. 

A Dhole had spawned in the same district as science building, and Stella had enough health to survive for two rounds, so there was somewhat of a limit. However, first round of attacks dealt twelve damage in to Tsathoggua. That's an impressive number of wounds for seven dice worth of attacks. Combined with automatic damage from tokens on scenario sheet, this meant the big bad evil had just four health left after first attack. 

Robbed of her personality Jenny, as a final act of defiance, tried to kill steal Tsathoggua with Astral Projection. Well, that amounted only to one extra damage.

Next turn.

Before Harrigan activates, Jenny tries to kill-steal the beast again with Astral Projection. She had three re-rolls at her possession, so she just might do that! Alas, two extra damage was the best she could do.

But then Wendy, the other robbed investigator, announced she would intervene in my kill-steal attempt. And there it was, two extra successes. So, that just happened. Kill-stealer got kill-stealed.