Betrayal Legacy Game 4

Spoiler Warning: As this is a legacy game there are spoilers for its story.

This game went smoothly for the traitor which is interesting because the scenario actually can have a bad end for the traitor as well. The traitor wanted to imprison a Pukwudgie. The Pukwudgie was trying to lay down traps that would kill all the players as well as the traitor. The heroes were trying to gather evidence to put the traitor on trial and then attack the traitor to hang the him.

The pre-Haunt phase went fairly smoothly. There were 5 rounds before the Haunt was revealed because no more omen cards were left to draw. A good number of tiles were explored which in the end helped the traitor find the parts of the spell needed to imprison the Pukwudgie.

The heroes were hurt badly by the traps left by the Pukwudgie. Green who had survived from the prologue until this game was defeated by Pukwudgie in no small part due to damage from the fire trap.

Red the traitor started the haunt outside with Blue who had the Talisman of Chaos Red needed for a bonus to the imprison spell. Red was able to reach the 3 Outside tiles for the imprison spell, steal the Talisman from Blue to give him a great shot at imprisoning the monster, and then imprisoned the monster on the first try.

The heroes tried several times to stun the Pukwudgie to get evidence, but were unable to successfully stun him.

Liked the idea for the three-way scenario even though the heroes did very poorly. If Red was unsuccessful at imprisoning the Pukwudgie on that attempt there would have been a good chance the scenario would have ended the next turn with the monster winning due to heroes dying on traps. I probably should have had Red destroy one of the traps earlier, but I didn’t notice that early enough.

Betrayal Legacy Chapter 3

Disclaimer: There will be spoilers as this is a Legacy game.

Another very smooth victory for the heroes. Blue just can’t catch a break as Blue again is the only casualty of the House this round.

There was a very long pre-Haunt phase as everyone got in 4 moves before the Haunt was triggered from no Omen cards left to draw. The traitor in the game was the youngest player who was also Blue since he was the only non-survivor from the last game. Incidentally Green is the oldest as Green is still on his first character from the Prologue.

The dolls were not too big of a threat primarily because they did not cluster enough in time to become really dangerous. This time I think I played the monster movement better in getting the initial dolls into 2 groups of 3, but when that first group of 4 attacked they did very poorly on their roll and that was probably their most dangerous attack. Maybe I should have taken all 6 that spawned outside and just went for Green and maybe I would have had hurt Green more. However I was hoping to set up a large group in the Ground Floor after more dolls were summoned, but that didn’t happen.

Blue unfortunately from the pre-Haunt phase took a speed hit and started outside the house. Blue couldn’t quite make it to the Lullaby tile to summon more dolls. Blue was dispatched by the heroes on the second turn after the haunt by Purple and Red. Red finished him off with Ma’s Flintlock Pistol from the Hallway. Would have preferred Purple to do it in order to get another checkmark on the Sickle, but Blue had enough physical hits to survive that attack. Of course as Blue put Speed into critical instead of taking away from Might, Red had an easier roll against him.

From there I just had the dolls group and attack players in the activated rune tiles instead of trying to draw out the game. Green took a few hits, but in the end the Dolls were all eventually shredded by the Cat.

Seeing as this Haunt was another smooth game for the Heroes I again am curious to see how over playthroughs of this chapter went. Can see and agree with the criticism that some haunts can be quite imbalanced, but I’m enjoying the story being told so I’m still enjoying it so far.

Betrayal Legacy Chapter 2

Disclaimer: As this is a Legacy game there will be spoilers.

This was a fairly straightforward game for the heroes. There were two turns before the third omen card was required triggering the Haunt. The Haunt was triggered by Red in the Kitchen so the Haunt was the Binding. In the Binding a cult has taken up residence in the house and desires to awaken a monster. One of the non-Player inhabitants of the house is the cult leader and it is up to the heroes to uncover who the leader is and kill him. The traitor is a part of the cult with special powers that can add cultists to the board or sacrifice cultists on the board for mental damage, to heal, or to boost stats. As Red and Yellow were tied in lowest Sanity so Red ended up as the Betrayer via drawing of family crests.

Red unfortunately was stymied most of his turns by Blue the Combat Veteran. While Blue had lower than average Might, Blue used his experience from the War in order to resist attacks from Red and many cultists until Red finally got a critical blow in after boosting his Might by absorbing drawing power from a cultist to take Blue down in one shot. Meanwhile the cultists themselves were quite weak and most of the initial cultists placed on the board were swiftly dispatched by the heroes on their way to the inhabitant tiles.

Meanwhile the other players were searching around the house to uncover clues as to which of the two inhabitants of the house was the Cult Leader. Green and Purple began by struggling to uncover the first piece of clue for the Cook in the basement while Yellow was looking into clues outside. Blue did his part as well on the Upper floor while fighting off Red and numerous cultists. Beyond the initial failures of that first searches in the basement, the rest of the attempts to identify who was the cult leader went quite smoothly and pretty soon the Cook was uncovered as the Cult Leader.

In the end a Wolf hauled Yellow from the foggy Woods over to the Stables where Yellow drew upon his Savage rage to defeat the Cook in combat and end the haunt.

A notable event that came up during this game was that the shallow graves Green buried after the Prologue were found in the Blood Field. I take it either Green was lazy and buried the bodies there which caused the fields to have an obvious pool of blood in the middle or Green figured no one would notice more blood in an already bloody field. Either way there is now a Blood Swamp in the Blood Field which seems rather appropriate.

Taking a step back to discuss the game itself, I thought this one was really tilted towards the players. The cultists seemed fragile and their behavior was downright suicidal against players that would roll twice as many dice as they did. I probably should have tried to summon more cultists and charged into the other players instead of trying to boost my might. As it were since the heroes were all doing well on their knowledge checks the haunt ended really quickly.

Still the story is interesting so far and I do want to go watch how some of the online playthroughs of this chapter went so I can get a better idea of how this Haunt works.

Betrayal Legacy Game 1

NOTE: As is the nature of Legacy games, there will be spoilers. Probably should have posted a spoiler warning on the previous post as well.

Took advantage of the snow day to play through the first game of the Betrayal Legacy campaign.

The play before the haunt was really short as the outside Omen tile, the Hanging Tree, was uncovered by Yellow on the first turn and the second omen tile, the Kitchen, was uncovered by Blue on on his second turn.

Since the second revealed omen tile was the Kitchen, the haunt used was the Revenant. As Blue revealed the omen, Blue became the traitor. The remaining players had to pull apart the Revenant and then bury parts. Parts could be buried in a number of locations: the pond, secret passages, and the Creek. The heroes would win if the head of the monster were buried.

After the haunt started Red and Green explored the rest of the upper level and basement of the house while Blue explored the Ground Level and Yellow and Purple explored outside. Both heroes and the traitor wanted items before the confrontation started in earnest. I opted to move the monster toward the outside as Yellow was closer to the monster at the time. This basically made the Creek at the main confrontation location as the Pond was covered with fog making any attempts at fighting the monster, challenging the monster for parts, and preparing parts for burial more difficult.

The original plan was for Red and Green to confront Blue in the house while Yellow and Purple would try to confront the monster outside. While it seemed promising at first with Yellow stunning the monster and pulling a part off, both Yellow and Purple failed several tries to bury the part and when confronted by the monster were dispatched by some really lop-sided rolls.

Red confronted Blue and force him outside towards the monster with Green following. Green got a good attack on the monster to stun him giving Red an opportunity to pick up Pa’s Claw Hammer that Purple found, but unfortunately was unable to put to good use. From that point on the game hinged on whether Red could keep the monster stunned or not and the rolls favored the players. Red was able to keep the monster stunned so Red and Green began to pull parts off of the monster and fling them over to the Front Steps so that they could get at the head and try to bury it.

Blue tried to fight Red and Green alone, but even with a crossbow came out the worse for it after a series of attack rounds. Using the movement gained from Brooch of the Undead Blue tried to flee back to the kitchen to restore some lost might however Green used the Deed to the House to follow him and defeated Blue in the Kitchen.

The last round was just as the previous ones as Red succeeded on his attack with the Claw Hammer to keep the monster stunned. Then Red ripped the monster’s head off and then buried the head in the creek.

Not sure when I’ll get to game 2 as this game took a bit longer than I expected. Do want to see more of the story, but have events to catch up on in my mobile games.

Betrayal Legacy Prologue

Finally got around to playing the prologue. Was spoiled on the twist since I watched a YouTube video of the designer teaching the scenario nevertheless it was enjoyable. Played solo using all 5 players so it’s going to be difficult to get through any Haunts that require hidden information.

All tiles were revealed pretty quickly. Last tile to be revealed happened to be the one that started the haunt. Red had the early advantage with his heirloomed crossbow and was able to get the first kill on Yellow using it, but was taken down by Blue right afterwards who got a good attack roll in while Red rolled nothing on defense.

Green and Purple had been fighting each other in the fogged Woods to avoid becoming targets of Red’s crossbow. Blue had to go in as well to try to get an attack in to avoid Sanity loss due to the Haunt rules. Green was able to defeat Blue to take the crossbow. Then Green took advantage of having more sanity and speed to go back into the house and force Purple to either face death by the crossbow or death by sanity loss. After waiting it out one turn and taking 2 hits to sanity, Purple had no choice but to follow Green and was killed in the hallway with the crossbow.

Enjoyed the game. Took awhile to get used to the rules, but I was distracted with other things at the same time. Don’t think I made too many mistakes. Enjoyed adding the stickers and uncovering panels. Again the game is probably better when you are not soloing all the players.

Not sure when I’ll get to Game 1. Considering it took me months from when I got the game to get to the prologue, I wouldn’t expect it particularly soon.

Recent Boardgame Arrivals

Some recent arrivals from the GMT sale as well as some kickstarters coming in. Still haven’t gotten my order from CoolStuffInc yet.

Want to try Fort Sumter first as that is supposed to be fairly light, easy-to-learn, and not too long. After that the next on the list would be Chronicles of Crime. The rest are I’ll maybe get to them eventually.

500 Days of Fate Grand/Order NA

Congratulations to Fate Grand/Order North America for making it to 500 days. Been a player in the NA server since day 1. Almost broke the login streak several times, but was able to make it in every day so far. While I have not been playing as much as I used to, hopefully the NA server will continue to stay profitable enough for us to see some of the recent JP events.

First Post

This is a more of a test blog post to see how the new site looks while tweaking the themes and look and feel. I don’t have much of an eye for these things so it may not change much at all, but plain white is probably not a good idea.

Won’t be able to get to working on this blog until after I am done taking a Security+ certification exam to renew my certification in the near future, but the intent of this blog is to have a place to get some practice with writing After Action Reports (AARs) for board games and a place to share rolls or event progress in the mobile gacha games I have been playing (Fate Grand/Order, Azur Lane, etc). Creating the blog now so it stops being a distraction floating around in my head while I am trying to study.

A long time ago I read an essay shared by Dr. Gary North about the best way to learn a subject is to teach others. So the thought came to me that maybe I could try my hand at writing AARs and examples of play from board games as a way to first help me to actually get around to learning and playing some of the many board games that I have been collecting and in the process get some practice at writing and working with WordPress. If I can keep my attention at it long enough to be able to benefit others so much the better.

Given my track record with my previous blog don’t expect much out of this one as my attention span is limited and there are always more distractions. More likely will be screenshots from gacha games than board game entries simply because it’s a lot less work, but in the end it was the board game idea that pushed me over the edge as far as interest in blogging again and blogging seems to me a lot less work than entering the video/streaming arena. That said there’s still a lot to learn such as how to handle image hosting. I only have a limited amount of free image hosting with wordpress. Anyway those are things I should only worry about when it starts to seem like a problem. If I’m not sure I’ll even stick with this blog any reasonable length of time there should be plenty of it.

Until next time when I actually get around to working on this blog.