The following episode may contain spoilers for the game Frosthaven. Welcome, welcome to episode 75 of a Master's Degree in a Rolling Terribly, I'm your host Daddy and joining me this week, a man, something wishy, gaaas, say hi guys, it's like it create your own adventure, hi guys, so, I had something else there and when I was a little bit jump on, I checked my notes and I was like, oh that is so long winded and so, like, poorly put together, I must have just worked on up and put that together when we were planning on recording on Friday and I was like nah, guys wouldn't appreciate it if it's lazy and then I removed it all. I wouldn't appreciate it if it's lazy, so I just won't say anything, I do actually appreciate the meta joke there as well. I like the also the idea that there's potentially a time where you wake up in the morning and you dreamt about a really good one and you know how you do that kind of brain dump, chase a dream type thing when you wake up and everything just gets really wispy, you're like just frantically writing it down and then you didn't proofread it or check it, you just assumed that it was coherent and then you pull it out just as you're about to record and go like, oh I don't even know if some of those are words. I had Seinfeld had a whole episode on that where I think it was Jerry when he was sleeping, he woke up, he started laughing, he woke up and he's sleeping, he was laughing, he was like oh my god that's amazing, like a joke for his show and then he wrote something down and the whole episode is him like, I can't read this and everyone he shows it to, they say something completely different but it's not even like similar, they're just completely different sentences from like a really long sentence to just two words and it just, yeah it's just dumb. I don't remember that one, I'll never gonna do a rewatch of Seinfeld but... Oh, it sometimes used to be my go to sleep show, it was a good, because it was nine seasons so you never run out, that's a lot of sleeping, it's a lot of sleeping. On today's episode we're going to be covering the Amdirt podcast and the future of the Amdirt podcast, I know I've said this, we're going to interview ourselves from the future like Bill and Ted, that would be cool if we could, if Daddy and Gaz from the future could get in contact with us by whatever the social media platform is in the future, that can convert to us now. We'll do the time travel trick, right? If either me or you invent time travel come back to now, no we don't invent time travel so... Hypothetical, if I was there in front of you and Daddy from the future who looked like me as much as he could was there as well and we were both like, no, shoot him, would you know who to shoot? What's like Spider-Man Man? Yeah, kind of. Are you confident in that you could pick out which is me now? Without any clue? Probably. Okay, visually and then maybe if we talked. Okay, sure, like the older one would not be you, right? That's, yeah, I don't know what you look like in the future, like you could have a Mohawk again. I just want you to make the right choice, that's all. So I guess we'll have to wait. Well you won't know. I guess. I guess. You'll know if I make the right choice but you won't know if I make the wrong choice. It's too much. So yes, it'll be about the future. I know they'll say this a fair bit sometimes but my brain keeps updating the future. The future. You'll be catching up to the future and it becomes the past and now it's just confusing. It's just so confusing. I don't miss the time travel. No. I'm going to be covering scenario 121, Black Memories, which is something that I was excited to try, just based on people saying, hey, what's, you know, it appears in lists of, you know, memorable and favourite ones. We're going to cover a little bit of trial talk as we keep flowing through them and we're going to have a segment at the end, the ultimate gloom frost, jaws, scales, but haven't world championships. Yeah, it means that you said bot haven't. Well, I'll try to include all the Haven series games, buttons and bugs. So it's, it's, it's a thing. I look, I had a choice between two words. I know I picked. Yeah, that's true. That's for you. You picked correctly. That's right. So puzzle book is complete, which is very cool. I know. And I know you actually helped a lot towards the end, which is no, oh, I mean, a lot. I don't, I think a lot is like the dude that pointed out where the eggs are in the fridge when the person was making the cake, like that's more than I did. I'll take some. Yeah. You owned the fridge. So the book and posting it in the chat. Yeah. Yeah. So between the three of us, we got it done equally. Yeah. I love that. Equally. Yeah. So our good mate Mark, who is playing a kelp currently, he has been a lot of time during the weeks. I don't know how he fits the time in to do any of these sort of site activities in his heavy work schedule, but he did manage to finish the rest of the puzzle book. I think some of the last clues that we needed we have recently got. And ultimately, this has opened a scenario, I believe, and I'm not going to believe it or anything. So if you don't want to hear it, but it's opened up scenarios 62, which I know for a fact is at the end of all of the kind of main stories and storyline scenarios in just, just due to what I've seen online. So I know that it's kind of like, it's just unlocked the last, what do you call it? It's like a questlight, it's like the last trek through, um, yeah, pretty much. What I don't know is whether or not it is time gated or whether or not there are going to be extra positive requirements after it's completed, et cetera, as we head towards the end. That's a good point. It could be like the never-ending story, right? It's like, we wait ages to do this one and then we do it and it's like come back in 12 weeks and we're like, oh, that's awkward. Well, is it though? Because if we have no scenarios to do, don't we just keep doing outpost things? Like if we clear every other scenario and it's like, wait six weeks, what happens then? That's a very good point. Is that in the off? What happens if we can't wait six weeks? Because there's nothing to do. Maybe he'll tell us if we have to repeat like certain scenarios or cheat a little, right? Okay. So, uh, oh, yeah. Question on that though, right? Like I, I didn't know any of the numbers that I don't read about that. You, you were aware that was like the last kind of line of quests. I could be wrong. I actually could be wrong. I assume you're not, but like, let's just assume that like you are, right? Um, uh, a correct and that this is that, that line also, Mark was doing the puzzle book and you guys knew that that was the last page. It's interesting. Do you think that's a good thing that it's people are aware when they're coming towards the end because I read the last passage of what it was and it didn't scream out like, hey, you're almost there, right? Well, I mean, you know, I don't know how you will and maybe the next one or the one after it might, right? Like it could be like, oh, and that you go to fight the final boss. Uh, but what do you think about knowing that you are almost at the end? Um, in a situation, okay, let's use gloom heaven as an example. The storyline in gloom heaven was incredibly loose. And I think the majority of people can agree to that. So when you and I in our very first playthrough finished gloom heaven as three player, we didn't realize it was the last scenario. So that would suck if we had that this time, because it would feel a little bit weird, especially if let's just throw it out there, just in case it's not a good scenario. Yeah. Like if it's a boss that we just would like killing three rounds because we've got two of the biggest DPS classes that you're going around. Yeah. 100%. That would feel like last year. Yeah. So I would hope for some kind of sign posting, even if it's at the top. So you find that scenario and it's like, big warning. This is the end, by the way, once you've completed this or something along those lines. Now, it's not catastrophic because let's say you finish it. What's stopping a group from going back and finishing all the rest of the job postings and sites and areas and all of that? Probably not much unless the game tells you to burn every kind of piece of the game and tear it all up and send Isaac a photo of the burnt husk and he'll send you back something cool. So you give your campaign sheet to Glint and Glint loses it and then says, oh, you just have to start again. Oh, what are you for us having to suddenly just downgraded to a pile of shit? Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. That makes sense. So also it's going to be happening as Mark's also put together a script. He's working towards a almost like a video thing that we're going to go through together. Just his thought process between how he managed to solve a lot of the puzzles, which ones did he get hints for if he needed them, which from what I understand, he really didn't need any. He just spent a lot of time and he really enjoys puzzles, which I think we're lucky as a group to have that because I know a lot of people. They load the puzzle book and there's no one in their group that loves it. So therefore it just becomes this giant headache of a thing that unfortunately whether or not they like it, they kind of have to at least progress it. When are we going to talk about that? It's not about the puzzle book like puzzles, but about the puzzle book and it's placed in Frosthaven. We can talk about that on another episode. I think that's a good one. That's, yeah, that look forward to that one. Yeah. Okay. We'll talk about that next week because I don't know if I can fit it in today. Oh, no. Unless we go two hours. We can try that. Whoa. Yeah. We can bump it up to two and a half of people are okay. And so there was those requests for us just like hours of us rambling, but I don't think you really want that. Well, plus two difficulty means plus two hours. Yeah. Yeah. You guys wanted it. You get an extra hour for every day before it. Yeah. No, that's cool. We should probably collect our thoughts and have a chat about that in general. Maybe once we're done, the campaign might make more sense because we'll know how much of it impacted her. Yes. Now, the other thing is, like you said, the end of the campaign. So all good things will come to an end eventually. And now that I've seen what I assume is the final path, it does mean that there is some lifespan reduction. Well, God. Okay. That's happening to our frost saving campaign. What I'm saying is it's wrapping up. And we need to start thinking about the future and what we're going to be doing there. Now, the most straightforward thing would be to play Gloomhaven 2.0. All right. But hey, that'd be great. They should make that and release it really soon. Yeah. They should finish the art now. Two seconds. Right now. If they use AOR, would there be like a mess? Don't say that. Don't say that. Come on. Let's move on. Okay. So what do we do next? And this is probably really important. Now we wanted to be a board game podcast and one of the struggles of doing general board gaming is being able to get together and play a game enough that we can obviously talk about it. And to a degree, we can do that. But there's also probably an element of the way we've been running this as a campaign and covering the same game over and over again to this extent. Which kind of leads me to the question, what follows frosthaven? And I just had a brilliant idea. Oh, we do frosthaven again? Oh, that's no. I don't know if that's better or worse than my idea. I'll let you decide it. Yeah. Like lots of people have done that, like lots of people somehow managed to play three or four, but like yeah, legacy connect for I don't think that exists, but I'm sure you can make it. You just got to make sure that you don't just haul it, the connect for thing. Like what would you call it? Well, I don't know. It seems like it might be owned by a company, uh, connect for connect. Legacy for connect adjacent for things legacy for in a row. All right. A couple of the options that we do have moving forward, and I'm looking for a collective community sort of guidance here, we've gotten into these games that we own. So oats one to the do board is one that I have not even opened or unpacked and I've heard a lot of wonderful things about it. In terms of its length, we want obviously something that's going to probably cause when gloom heaven arrives, I would like to get that going almost immediately. So we don't want something that's going to take us. Yeah, it really depends on when gloom heaven arrives. And right now it's really hard to say, but yes. So you got earth's one. I don't know how long it lasts, but it looks fairly chunky and fairly big and I've heard some really wonderful things about the story, all the writing in there as well as the combat, which are two things that it's good to get right. We probably want something that's about six months, right? Cause six months gives us a chance to reevaluate and then hopefully 2.0 is three to six months away and we can always fill that space with something. If we go too far the other way you're right, I'd hate to get three quarters or towards the end of another campaign game and then have gloom heaven there and be like, Oh, this is awkward. We're just going to have to not finish it. Yeah. Or we're going to have to pull double duty. Oh, yeah, that's not going to happen. People may want that. Maybe. Tenara's adventures. So that's another option. This one I was very excited for, they're all in arrived. It looks absolutely like chock is huge. How big this thing is. And I've heard some things that make it sound like it's very, very nicely aligned with what gloom and frosthaven are kind of doing, but there's enough of a difference there to make it its own game. So I'd be curious about tenara's adventures. We got Tainted Grail, which is the Nemesis guys awakened realms. They've got Tainted Grail, which is a avolonian alternate history style RPG in a box with a lot more emphasis on the story and the writing apparently it's really, really well written and really well done and maybe more from an event point of view and making those sort of choices than a strategic scenario basher. Is that like an Avalon King Arthur Nemesis game? Something like that. Yeah. That sounds amazing. We don't even finish frosthaven. Yeah, okay. Yeah, we can do that. That sounds good. Sword and sorcery, it's another dungeon crawler. I toyed with it a little bit, got some really fun combat mechanics in there. I don't think it's going to fly necessarily from a podcast point of view, but I could be wrong. Madara, Bloodborne, which is the comedy or not, Duncan Crawl, and then of course Kingdom Death Monster, but that's a very naughty game and have played that a fair bit. And I don't know how much I'd be able to play that to be honest. But lastly, something came across my mind probably a few weeks back and it was whether or not we can organize either through TTS and it was like TTS still have it is Crimson Scales, which was the fan made expansion, a standalone expansion and it was now the team behind that, I believe, is the ones that did Rove and unfortunately they're the copy because I think they're up to their third, they were funding their third print run for Crimson Scales and then since Rove came out, I think they've decided to pull the plug on it, which means it's probably never coming out again. I didn't realize they were the Rove people. Yeah, that's why Rove is going to have a lot of the DNA of the Gloomhaven series. That's why a lot of people are excited for Rove. That's why they are excited for Rove. That's why. Yeah, I just thought it was just there was one particular person that was really excited for Rove that kept telling us why they're excited for Rove, but I get now why more than one person are. That's right. So Crimson Scales would be good. Now I had a look at the Frosthaven Cards website where I get all the card information and ability and all that kind of stuff for all the classes and they've got I think 11 or 14 or somewhere in between with the expansion characters. The idea of doing unboxings for all of those sounds incredibly exciting and incredibly tasty. I believe it's 66 scenarios and I believe it's also not necessarily like that's as a as a total. So you're not going to see all of them, which is a nice size. That is a one a week. That's probably where we want to land, right? That's about 50 odd, you know, yeah, it's a system we're familiar with. It's a system that our listeners will be familiar with even if they haven't played it necessarily. Yeah. So yeah, that's a good point and I had no interest at all in playing Crimson Scales more just from I'd heard of it, but not about it. And I was just like, I don't really need to. And then yeah, you brought up the card view thing the other day and I saw like they didn't even see any of the character abilities or cousins just like again saw that row of character classes and you clicked on one of them was like, we're going to play this now, right? Yeah. Like I just if not, I have to go and read them all. Well, I was tempted when we start to wrap up Frosthaven like almost just for the hell of it. I was going to do some unboxings with you each one, maybe do one a fortnight or something like that just even if we never played it just to do well. What have they done? What have they created? You know, how far can how far can some of the hardcore fans take, you know, a direction of a character and all of that? So that would be probably the one that makes the most sense now the hardest part is it's not really readily available. Doesn't exist. Doesn't exist. And I've considered doing it on tabletop simulator. The only problem with that is I would like to record a lot of the playthrough as I'm starting to get ready to play a record 2.0 for Gloomhaven. So a physical copy would have been ideal and we did have a look online. You guided me to a website called eBay, which looked pretty cool. Yeah, they had a nice just for those who aren't aware of where Australia is on the map, getting things here costs a lot of money and when the things are really big it costs even more. And then when you don't convert that number or when you do convert that number to Australian dollars, which I make believe it goes up even more. So the number was very high, very high. And I don't mind paying a fair bit for a game that's out of print. I've done it before, right? The problem with it was it wasn't like brand new ensuring from a store. It was from, here's a dude, here's my bed, here's a rough photo of what it looks like. And I'm just like. Yeah. And I don't think it had the expansion either, right? No, it didn't, no, trail, trail or trial, trail of ashes, I think. Ashes, yeah. So it wasn't, yeah, if it was everything and it was in good condition and mostly unplayed, right? Like then you could kind of go, yeah, and we can split the cost between the people playing as well to bring that down a bit, but it's still a very high number, like. Yeah. So we could make it through on two tiers that would just make it a different experience, which I'm sure we can do if we have no other option. The other option is, look, if you happen to know, and I'm just asking the listeners, if you happen to know of a store that has a copy somewhere or a friend or someone who doesn't want their copy anymore, we will buy it from them. And we will obviously pay for the shipping. This is just, this way we get to have a physical copy to actually play through, which just feels good instead of doing on TTS. I think TTS is a fantastic program for playing games. And I think if it wasn't for the fact that we were trying to make content for said game, it would just be a little bit clunky and a little bit maybe visually hard, but not sure. But yeah, if you know someone, if you just know someone who is a copy of it that they don't want anymore, I don't know what it's like from a reset point of view and how legacy it is compared to Gloomhaven, and whether or not we actually need a copy of Gloomhaven, which we're covered anyway. But yeah, just let me know. And we might be able to organize something, and that would be absolutely amazing. Yeah, it'd be exciting if you have any other ideas for games, let us know. Yeah, the other thing I was going to say, if people are like, they want Crimson Scale, but I'd love to see you guys play, you know, something like Earthsworn or something like that, then absolutely we can start looking into that. So at the end of the day, this is, I mean, it's our show and something that we love putting together, but it's also everyone else's show as well. So the other question, this raises, is how are we going to finish off our campaign? So we have a bunch of, we've got the one that we've just unlocked, and we've got a bunch of job postings. Now, do we play through every available scenario? No. Probably not, but at the same time, do we rush the end? No. Right. So what I want is just, and we will 100% listen, if you, I want people to let us know if there are must-do scenarios from available job postings and random-side ones and things like that, that are your favorite, they're ones you want to hear us play and talk about, let us know pretty much those, that list, and we may have to organize a poll or something, but hey, you can just DM or you can write it in that Discord or you can email me or whatever, and I'll immediately put that scenario on to the yes, we'll play this one list. Even if it's horrendous, from a, this will be hilarious point of view, go for it. What we don't necessarily want is to play the real, meh, shit, boring ones. Yeah. And don't spoil why, just a number. Like if there's a number you want us to play, just this San Daddy or me, the number is some way get it across to us so that we know that we can put that on the list of things we have to play. Okay. So yeah. And that way, yeah, we can sort of curate a remaining list as we start to wrap up. Sounds really sad, but as we start to wrap up the campaign. Yeah, I wouldn't even, like, I couldn't envision this moment of like, when we first started, of us almost being finished, it felt like it could go forever. A hundred percent. I just thought we'd be doing this for those of our lives, like, uh, so if you could just pump those games out a little bit fast, that we could just squeeze a little bit, squeeze a little bit more. All right. So yeah, that, that, that'll wrap up the, um, the dirt sheet there. And we will head off to our experience with scenario one, twenty one. So on the way, we actually had a road event and this was winter road event, forty eight. And this was, I think I remember this one, yeah, we got booked. We did get booked. Yeah. So we found a tome or we found a book and it was one of those situations where it was kind of like, do we read this, do we open this ourselves or do we return it to a certain librarian in Frosthaven and, uh, return it to them and see what happens. And we very, Gaz and I definitely wanted to return it to her. We don't want to mess around with, with magic in terms. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I don't want to do that. And what that did was it made us put a section event for when we go back to Frosthaven, which is pretty cool. So it's nice, easy, but it feels like it's progressing something. But it also gives us a pretty, pretty tasty choice because I don't know whether or not that would be a choice that a lot of people necessarily would make because, I mean, it's a book. There could be anything in there, Gaz. It could be anything. Pick our field. Good. Pick our field. That's right. Maybe we missed out on Garfield, maybe, uh, other way to 121, we'll do our previously for a statement courtesy of dwarf 74. So why are we here? Some of the guards had fallen under the influence of the cabin's inhabitant, a group of verminings led by a mind thief. She escaped and you set to destroy an emitted device she'd been working on. He asked for Captain Olmstead's help in tracking down the mind thief and he introduced you to his friend, a Valrat tracker and cartographer named Kefra. It took months, but Kefra returned with news. She'd found evidence of the mind thief in an old burial mound called the black barrow on the outskirts of gloomhaven. And to see that and to see the intro of the actual scenario, it was very cool. It's funny how something as tiny as that was as impactful as it was. Like this is a call, obviously it's a call back. It's the first scenario that everyone will play in gloomhaven and probably for the whole Haven series because it was literally when gloomhaven came out was the first scenario. There was nothing else. It was an alternative part. There was no practice zero scenario or anything like that. I love that idea and I kind of am hoping there's just a little bit more of that in some capacity. If not in this, obviously not 2.0 because 2.0 was suddenly like you're at the jagged shoals. Well, this looks oddly familiar even though it's a prequel. Whatever comes after that, any more callbacks? Yeah. I thought the same thing. I think that's what we talked about that anybody who is playing gloomhaven, well, technically not correct, but anyone who started a gloomhaven came and has to, because you could come in halfway through, right? Like that's the nature of the game, but it's going to be one that most people have done so it's kind of really cool that it's recognizable rather than it being like a side scenario or an abstract like kind of like weird one that there's a chance people wouldn't know or wouldn't remember without being very across the gloomhaven law. Yeah. I think that it's also one that a lot of people will have never experienced gloomhaven and frosthaven and all of that because of this scenario as in scenario one in gloomhaven, once people have wiped that many times on it, just going, what the hell is going on? Why is this so hard? Yeah. Well, when I played through and the digital campaign I ran, like this was the scenario one was in gloomhaven was the one that we would use to test a new character. So any time we retired a character and created a new one, we always did a run on the first one, the first scenario to just pick cards and then see how it played. So like I have done the first scenario like so many times. It's not funny. So yeah, it was kind of really, kind of really cool. Yeah. I have not. So that's basically the same. Yeah. Okay. So scenario one 21 black memories. This is designed by Richard Hammes. Do you know who Richard Ham is? The inventor of the Hammes image. He is. Well done. Yeah. The Hammes animal is only like 20 years old, by the way. So no, Richard Hammes is a content creator who's been around for an incredibly long time. And I used to watch his videos a long time ago to learn how a certain game played and felt. And his name is Rado, right? His channel is called Rado runs through. And what I love about Rado is that unlike, like back then we heard, um, dice down and we had tabletop with, we'll wait and all of that, he would hold a handicam or his firing or whatever and be like looking down at the board and his card choices and pointing and it would make people like a little bit ill because of all the movement motion sickness. And he would play a two player game to show you how it works. And he would always have his wife, but the wife wasn't there. So he referred to Jen and was always a bit of a joke. Just Jen exists to the she not exists kind of thing. And he would play against her just to show a round or two of the game. What I loved about his videos was definitely not the way he shot them. But what I loved about them was the way that he organically would talk about his decision making and say, Oh, I could do this, or I could do this. And he would stall a bit. And it was almost like he was like thinking. It wasn't like professionally edited. It was just really rough, but it gave the exact feel of what the game and what to expect. And I use that sometimes of as not so much how to play, but how does it work, just give me a rough show me what a round looks like. And I found that really, really useful. So yeah, Rowdo's channel has been huge. He's obviously worked a lot on his presentation. And I haven't watched that actually a lot of his stuff lately. But if he kept that style, it still works because it's uniquely his. And you'll either follow and watch a lot of his content or not. So no, it's really exciting to see someone that I'm familiar with from many, many years ago, design one of the scenario areas. And it will definitely decide how much I respect him, depending on how good the scenario is. So scenario, Golgaz, unknown at this time. Love our name. Yeah, great. What's really hard about unknown at this time is that we wanted to play on +2. Yeah, it's like, yeah, I think we went with the idea that we played +2 and it was an escape. And that's probably the hardest type of scenario objective, I guess, after there may be an escort quest. But yeah, the problem with the unknown at this time is whether or not we take our sweet time killing everything or any for it to turn into an escape one and we get booked. So in our effect, there is none. Once the combinations, we have, well, it says polar birds, seal automatons, vermling priests and vermling scouts, first room set up. So the very first tile from the black arrow, but no bandits. We have three vermling scouts and we have two priests, which block a very familiar door. Special rules, there's none at the moment, which we like. What are your thoughts on the lack of special rules for this scenario? It sounded like real easy, right, like no special rules, no like objectives. Nothing, let's just go. Let's just like play some cards and kill some vermlings. That's right. Pets, we brought two brand new pets. We brought our brand new drakes. We have dang on the spinning drake, which allows when popped all ranged attacks at poison. And colleague of the rending drake, all melee attacks at wound. Now, I thought of something really cool. When you have a certain group of pets, you should be able to combine them. So combined, they morph into drakeazoid. And if you burn both of them at the same time, along with the original effects, all attacks will have stun or something like that. All attacks instantly kill their targets, whether it's a monster or an ally. Yeah, that sounds good. Yeah, this doesn't sound broken at all. I just feel like there's like missed opportunity here to do some pretty balanced things. I mean, I know they weren't Pokemon and we've called them Pokemon, but they should be able to evolve them. Should be able to evolve them. It's just like, should they allow to be like the monsters? Should they, we allowed to face evolved monsters as well? Yeah, well, maybe I guess that's leveled up once. I don't know, that sounds, yeah, I mean, sure, but that sounds way more complicated. I just mean like upgrading them. They should be like, if you have a certain item, then you can upgrade them and then they get better. Yeah, like rare candy. Exactly, exactly like a rare candy or thunderstone, right? Yes. Our party is better above daddy on the level eight astral gas on the, on the, I pull a number out of my ass every week for you because I actually don't know, and I would try to log in here instead of walking all the way out to the computer out there. I don't know. I have to guess. So I'm going to say six. Got him. Good. Mark on level eight kelp and Phil on the level four, five bling plate. Yeah, there's a question mark there as well, I think. I don't know if he's five yet. Is he? I think he's still four. Yeah. Okay. He might be five now. Okay. Any changes to your deck at all that you can think of, one card, anything that you had to, I wanted to try. Yeah. I think I changed the things out and I put more DPS cards in there for some reason. I don't remember why, but I think maybe his Phil keeps going on about how he does not high enough level to have the really good cards, to have all the gear, to be like super ultra mega bling plate. So I was like, fine, I'll bring DPS cards instead of doing kind of weird, supporting things. I'll do more DPS. Sorry. I brought a couple of, a couple of cards that I hadn't brought before. Maybe I had and hadn't really used, but yeah, with the intention of doing that more. Yeah. Okay. I brought my new sword, which guys is actually named Sophia. So I have Cassandra, my level one sword or X sword, it's my X and we have Sophia, my shiny new blade. And this is a sword that burns like when I play it and it still benefits from all the extra buffs that I had, all the passive ones, but also whenever I play an infusion card, it gets the infusion effect instead of me, which is pretty cool. So we're going in with two swords today in a scenario where I don't know what we are doing. Section link, when the door is open, we read a thing and we are still playing on plus two. So that plus two also, because of our levels, it was automatically, automatically putting it at four, which meant that we were playing them at six all the monsters, all right. So we're playing at scenario level six, which gets me spicy with traps and hazards and all that kind of stuff and just general punching us in the face. Yeah, it also gets very spicy with vermling shamans that have how many shield? Five? I will cover that one second. Okay. No, let's cover it now. Mods are spotlight. We've got the vermlings. So Gloomhaven introduced us to the vermlings. This is really weird, right? It introduced us to the vermlings of the vermling scout and the vermling shaman, right? Jaws of the lion had vermling scouts and vermling raiders. And then in front of everyone, we had scouts and priests, which are as identical to shamans. Somewhere along the line, they just changed their name. Name. Yeah, which I thought was a bit interesting because I was like, are these both in the original? And then I was like, oh, no, they've got shamans. Wait, why are shamans different to, you know, okay. Oh, it wasn't. So vermling scouts, guys, what is their earliest initiative? Five? Funnily enough, it's 29. Oh, okay. Yeah, and that's also a reset, which is pretty cool. That's the one that does impair. So they've obviously added that. I haven't looked at the difference between the scouts from the previous ones, but impairs of frosthaven thing. So they've added that, which I thought was really interesting. Now, they got 29 and 35. They're both the reset cards, which is their lowest ones. I did. They're verming. I just thought they were super fast, which was real weird to actually see it. And then it goes 40, 53, 54, 69, 79, 92. They're loot. They've got a loot card, which is a really nice card to have for a resting point of view, but not good if you are in our group, because in our group, we don't loot anywhere near as much as other groups probably do. And yeah, 35, they basically do a move and loot, one, I believe, which is, yeah, it's fine. They're annoying. The rest of their cards, they're super basic. So verming scouts are way more basic than I realized, like they feel more basic than bandits. And I probably haven't looked at the bandits to make that comparison. But holy crap, I swear they're probably the most basic mob in the game, just from looking into it further. Yeah. But they've got a lot of improving attacks, right? And then a couple of poison thrown in there. It's a swarm thing. I think it's like a zerg thing. Just because of this heaps of them there, yeah, they've got some things with poison. They've got the impair. Like you let them get out of control. And if you remember 120, the scenario that we did before this, I don't even think that one had a spawn. I don't think it was going in them. It was just one chunk of them, yeah. Disgusting. But the unbelievably mere, right, just one on one, which is good for the game, it's good to have a mere kind of something you can mow down. But I think that what makes them scary is their friend. And this is where we will have a little chat about the Verling priest. And I brought this up and I copied their stat card over from the viewer, right, thing. It says that their shield for normal at level six is three and four at level, at elite. At least should have four, guess, four shields. So I went to Gloomhave and Secretariat on my computer while I was here writing and doing all of these, getting all this info, four shield, guess. I then got up and went to my play area and dug out the stat card that we never use. Four, guess. Then I went back to Xhaven, five, guess, and then I used Xhaven on my computer just to see if it was something wrong with that one. Five, guess. So unless this has been updated and we haven't actually downloaded the latest update, which we have been because Mark's been playing around with that whole DPS mod that we were adding, they should have four shield and we played on five. Okay. Cool. Well, and that was hard, like it was very difficult to get through five shields, like. Yeah. Yeah. So interesting. I became to know from somebody if they're supposed to have four or five. I'm pretty sure they're only supposed to have four because everything legit is pointing to it at four. I don't know if we had done something weird without Xhaven and whether or not we're the only ones experiencing this, but while I did my little test thing, yes, that is the only program that's or thing reference that was showing them having five shield. Did you go into the settings and click the box that says, give Vermling Priest plus one shield? I might have, but at the same time, Mark controls the mouse a lot. So if anything, if anyone did it, it was Mark. Okay. So that's really interesting because like five is a lot. Four is a lot. Four is heaps, right? And five is a heap is one more than heaps because at level six, they have the priests have five health at normal and eight at a lead, which at level six is really nothing obviously, but three and five shield. I mean, even three and four shield, like you said, is still a lot of shield to break through. And what I enjoyed about this was because of the issue was so high. Instead of like, well, we need to have Pierce or all of that, everyone kind of went into their bag of tricks. And we actually opened the communicated idea. So this is the first time we've done this, where it was kind of like, can we deal with these? Okay, I've got something to deal with it. You've got, okay, you've got one damage over there. We were applying a lot of wounds. I reckon we've got this instead of, well, we can't do this because we don't, I didn't pick a Pierce card or something like that. So I was really, I think it was the plus two difficulty that has raised the stakes of our importance of making sure we get it right, which is why we communicated as much as we did. Yeah. I mean, as well, the turns that we had, you were doing a, can I get through five shield turn? If the answer is no, then it was going into a scout, right? Like, so it was kind of picking the cards you had and the right timing of when to play them, even if it was only getting one damage to, right? Like one pure damage through, it's like, okay, well, I can chip that away. But yeah, it was very one or the other, like, yeah. And I think the last few weeks of taught us anything, so we're learning how to use brittle properly as well because we keep saying, like, with the high shields, that's okay, we'll just hit hard and we'll make sure it's brittle. And the ordering, every time we do it, we're like, oh, but the ordering, like, shield goes before the double. So yeah, it, I hit off a one, even though, you know, I get them really hard. And then it was the beginning of this scenario, you said the same thing, like, do you want me to brittle at dead? Did you have a strong attack? No, but don't forget the shields that eats at it, we're like, oh, yeah, it's a good learning part. It is. Uh, early initiative on the Verling Priest. Five. Eight. All right. Close. Yeah. The two eights do want to mobilize in the stun, which is actually pretty cool. That's gross. Yeah. Yeah. And both the 23s, they've got the 23s there, they're the heals and the reset cards. Is any of this sounding familiar, guys? It sounds a lot like the Elgox priests. It's identical. Oh, really? Yeah. Did the Elgox priest do a stun and a, uh, mobilizing the sum, not a stun. Um, mobilizing the sum. Okay. So still really bad. Yeah. Okay. I didn't realize this. So that's why I was like, Oh, did I just use the same deck? Is it the priest deck? Uh, yes. Oh, yes. That's probably that very good point, because we don't actually use the actual, um, monster decks. Um, we've done in X Haven. So that would make a lot of sense. Cause they, the, the imps and stuff do the same thing, don't they? Like there's some monsters that just share a deck that, like it's a type deck that they share and then they have, uh, obviously innate abilities. That would have a sense for the scouts then, because they, or maybe not, cause I'm thinking of the Elgox scouts, which I can't remember a lot, but they do have an impair. But I think they have an eight in pair. So I actually think they might, they may have their own, um, tech. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I think they might have their own team. Um, I think they might have their own team. Yeah. I think they might have their own team. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think they might have their own team. Yeah. I think they might have their own team. Yeah. Yeah. I think they might have their own team. Yeah. I think they might have their own team. Yeah. I think they might have their own team. I think they might have their own team. Yeah. I think they might have their own team. Yeah. I think they might have their own team. Yeah. I think they might have their own team. I think they might have their own team. I think they might have their own team. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I joked when I was, this is going to be a live reading of something I've written that I hasn't triggered a memory here. So let's see how this goes. I joked when I was putting these show notes together that, ooh, they copied like two cards from the Algox priest. That's a little lazy. Maybe they all went to the same priest university, which is why it's so similar. No. Identical. Great. Thanks. Thanks for that, Teddy. Um, we- Oh, past Teddy. We had some interesting insights. Oh, there is a future, Teddy. No, I just realized it. You are a future, Teddy. Oh. Yeah. I'm present, Teddy, reading up from past Teddy. Yeah, true. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. So from our tier lists, the scouts actually remained just outside the bin. Yeah. Okay. Yep. There are. Yeah. It's beautiful. That's fine. Yes. Uh, and the priest was like mid tier. Yeah. And Algox priest are like second tier. Yeah. For comparison. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe, I mean, it could just be a frequency thing, right? Like, if we had encountered- Well, this is the second time, right? Vermaline priests as often or in the places of Algox priests, maybe we rate them higher. Um, but I also think it's a party composition, um, because the arachan, there's been points. And we've talked about this with, with shields and living spirits and stuff like that. There's been points with our team makeup where we haven't really cared about that. Uh, and, you know, like four shields or five shields on an eight health creature is probably not that bad. Like, if you're running shackles, you're going to insta give any normal ones, right? So, you know, all through that period. So maybe they are slightly lower than the, uh, Algox priests in difficulty because Algox priest can at least survive that burst, even though they have slightly less shield. It means like pure damage isn't doing any more to them. Yeah. It's just like their weakness isn't exposed more. So yeah, it's a good point. Like I think it's something that, yeah, I, I just don't, I have a feeling now the remaining scenarios that we do, this is verminous, just verminous all the time because we've, this is literally the second time why make standies for something if they're only going to be in two scenarios. Oh, yeah. Maybe. And they should probably be catchable. I just reckon, um, I think they have tried to maybe steer away from anything that's sentient being captureable, um, for like slave purposes, but that's fair. I'm not sure. Well, can't they take off the clothes and they become just actual rats? No, they, they're just naked slaves. Okay. Stop. Stop. Yeah. All right. So let's go back to our scenario now. So it's a harder scenario or a harder difficulty in a scenario layer that we're familiar with, with an unknown goal. Yep. I love it. Let's start off with our good mate, Phil, Phil's trial, if anyone who doesn't want to hear trials right now, skip forward a little bit. Um, we remember we, we covered this last week regarding Phil's trial and it was very adamant that he was going to do this this time. He was very determined. We had all coached him and all of that. I, I just want to play something real quick that happened, uh, probably a couple of rounds into the actual thing. So, so does that make you a range tech, even though it's a melee attack? It takes you damage. Um, it does. Yes. Phil takes two damage. Fuck me! Fuck! This is not even my fucking turn! That's the problem. This is exactly the point that I was, I think I was making a fight. It's the fault. It's the fault. So, how to have an exciting night playing friends, games with friends? Yeah, you can't talk. I'm making, does it detract from me, haven't I? Oh! I'm just, I'm going to say this today. Yeah. So, that's kind of what we're dealing with, is the outbursts, uh, when he says it. And the, the funny thing is he didn't, that, that instance, right, I, I could have probably dug up a few. That instance, it wasn't even his turn. It was something else's turn, and he was just checking something with you. Yeah. He, he gave me a card and just said, does that turn into a ranged attack? I was like, Phil takes two damage. It's like, ah, I'm sorry for my turn. It's like exactly, exactly. So, it's very tricky. And I think, it's funny because I reckon he was hyper-focused on not saying it when it was his turn to talk about his actions, what he was targeting, what he was attacking, damaging, et cetera, et cetera. And then once it wasn't his turn, his guard drops right down. And he's like, well, I don't have to worry about it because I wouldn't say those words now. Um, and except when I point at this and, and, and, you know, ask you what this is. It's funny because all three words equally, it's not one that he keeps catching them out. It's all three of them keep catching them out, but like once, one instance of each word in different sentences, ah, it's just amazing. I just, ah, once, ah, we never saw the combo of him saying something like, okay, I attacked that one. Oh, no. Now I take true damage. Oh, no. [laughter] That's counting. It's just bang, bang, bang, bang dead. Yeah. It's like Anne feels dead. Yes. But we were, we were feeling good about his trial on this one because it didn't matter if he exhausted. Yes. We didn't have, we didn't have special rules that said he didn't, he wasn't allowed to. But we, but so at the moment we're feeling good about it. And so we, we think we'll get by through it, ah, with or without him alive. Yes. And when we, when the first room we were starting to enter clear mode, something I discovered with our particular party lineup is that all of us want to be seen like, correct me if I'm wrong. Do all of us want to be in melee range? No, I'm ranged. But the first thing you did was walk up to do something. You walked up to something. Ah, yeah. I have a, I have a stun. Yeah. Move next to it. Like I've got a couple of cards that are like range one, melee range, but no, most of my other things are a range. And Mark is, has zero range to, ah, yeah, so yeah, you're saying for melee. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I have a couple, but not Hapes. Yeah. Okay. It just seems like we've got a very, very chockers. Ah, I've only just now thought of it because Phil's jumped off the drifter, which he was ranging and then he was milling with and he did that transition. And now, because we've had a few instances of that have popped up again of, I'm going to go here, well, can you not go there can, and we're fighting over prime real estate, probably more than anyone that's Mark and I, because Mark, I want to be in between everything. And he wants to be in between everything so that he can sit there and rotate, stab everything. And without having to, you know, expand much movement while he's invisible. So he's not going to take, you know, all that damage. And it's just, it's made me look at it like we could really do with something that's going to have some kind of a range on it that doesn't necessarily feel like they might be getting in the way, like I think more of us rotate that feeling potentially. So yeah, we basically clear through this room. Now we, our group at this difficulty and with these classes and the cards that we're choosing, we seem to have a crazy amount of CC. Yeah. Between you and Mark, you both have stance. Is that right? Yes. You both have disarms. No, he has a disarm. I don't have a disarm. He's got disarms in his AMD as well, right? Yeah. Does he have stuns in his AMD? I don't know. Yeah. Probably it's his characters. I pay you. Why not? Yeah. And then I've obviously got my disarm. Yeah, we have a crazy amount of CC, which is amazing because we basically use them all on the priest to stop them healing and, well, not stop their healing, but just stop them because they also hit really hard. And with those attacks, we'll come those conditions that we don't want to receive. And then, yeah, we block scouts. That's the strat, basically. Blocked scouts, and then everyone started using their pure damage and retaliates and whatnot to actually bring down the priest, which don't have a crazy amount of health, which is why when they get their heal off, it's just a little bit shit, just a little bit shit. Cassandra, I can say quite comfortably has actually stayed alive during a couple of hits, which is -- it only took me to level eight to get that kind of RNG on her getting attacked, where her shield mattered. And that was wonderful. It was really good to see her progress and get better at the game as well alongside me because she's been really quite bad, not me, her. So it's a learning experience from all of us. Good question. We don't have any pets in the game that I've seen that scale with the characters level, right? No, I don't think so. Oh. Do you think? No. Do you think Cassandra should? Oh, sorry. I thought you meant pets from a random -- Oh, no, no, no, from a Pokemon. As in, sorry. Summons. Do you think Cassandra should? I mean, I guess one of the things that you've found is -- I don't know. I think maybe it would be an extra cool -- I guess she does scale a little bit based on the fact that she gets more bonuses when you do your infusions and stuff like that. So there is a -- If anything, yeah, she probably scales more than other pets ever will. Yeah. Well, yeah, yeah, probably. But I was just wondering about the HP and maybe not the output damage, but yeah. I don't know. If I felt in the shields, seems a lot of her -- like it seems to be a fair bit. She should be able to survive most unless it's like an ice speaker or something like that who's cleaving her up or a raining drake. She should be able to survive. Yeah, I had -- with my present, I had pets that had three health and they survived a lot longer than that. Correct. Yeah, okay. It's just every time without fail, it's a plus two or a crit or a plus one while it's got Piers on the attack, which it normally doesn't attack with Piers. It's just been -- Yeah, that's true. Bad luck. Comedy of errors. So dealing with shields, we're very proud of the boys. Another trial-talk section, let's do a little bit of a trial-talk. This is more about you -- oh, sorry, this is about Mark, because there was in this room where you kind of took all your tokens off and you started doing kelp shenanigans, stuff on your shards, where you blew up a mob who was relatively low on health. And Mark removed it from X7 as we do when things die and you then said, wait, how much health did it have? Which Mark deduced why you're questioning this had something to do with your battle goal. And he then asked you, is your battle goal the one where you have to do more damage than it has health via a number? I think it's four or something like that, to which you agree that it was. Yes, I said yes. Which then turned out was Mark's trial, which is very interesting and very amazing that he got it. It's called Trial of Inquisition during any scenario publicly guess another character's battle goal, the name or effect prior to its reveal. You may not guess more than once per character per scenario. You have passed this trial when you correctly guess a battle goal. I think this is probably one of the hardest ones in the game. It's probably one of the hardest ones to pass. I think it has zero impact on you, right? But this is where we were talking about the scaling of a couple of the ones Phil's had where it makes it hard, or even my one I had last week, again, I don't want to go over it because people might have skipped that. But it doesn't change the way you play. Like this one is just there that you have to keep trying at and having cracks at. But yeah, you could just be really unlucky, especially if people don't say stupid shit like I did. So yeah, yeah, I think this would be, I think this would be a lot of fun. I think it could be stressful like if no one's doing anything overly overly obvious, but at this point in the game, we've seen all the battle goals. So, and that's what we're going to sit there and deduce 60 battle goals worth of activity on one particular player, I can, that's where I'm like, it'll come down to you because some groups play with open battle goals where they're very open with what they're doing. That will make this relatively trivial. But then to do it like legit like that would be pretty brutal. Yeah, it's tricky because there's been so many, and we've talked about this, I think like ages ago, early in the campaign of the innuendo things that different groups do. And I think one of them that we've kind of taken is sometimes for saying for personal reasons, right? Like, you know, I can I can I kill that? It's like, okay, for personal reasons. And it's like, I mean, by the letter of the law, where it says, you know, let it discuss battle goals, that is against the kind of rules, right? Because you are communicating in some kind of weird fashion. But we have been probably not that harsh on it because it's never mattered, right? Like it doesn't make a difference whether somebody does or doesn't know your battle goal. So I guess like something like this popping in is really cool. But if your groups already in the habit of not being ultra conservative or secretive with their battle goals, then this problem's probably going to get done a bit quicker. Yeah. Yeah. So I like what it says on the card publicly, though, like, I love that they added that in. And I hope that that was an errata, like from when they had the trial and people were like, oh, I guess your battle goal and they're like, uh, they didn't like, yeah, in here. And you're like, Oh, and, uh, and they're like, Oh, shit, no, we're going to put publicly on there. Otherwise people are just cheating their way through this. Just treat a little. Just treat a little. No, I actually think that out of all the ones that I have seen so far, this may be one of my favorites. Um, so yeah, we opened the door, we go straight through. Let's see if it's the same corridor because it could be a completely different. Oh, no, it's the same one because remember we don't actually see the whole map layout when we are setting it up, it is hidden in an app. So it was cool to see the same layout and look up this, the traps, there's the traps in front of the door. They've obviously been upset that someone has removed those in the past and they've reset them up because what's behind this door is very important. We have three priests in the back, we have three scouts at the front who very quickly block up the corridor entrance. I think, oh, no, it's special rules, special rules in this room, uh, all the scouts start now. Now these new ones anyway, they will use the stat card of polar bears. Of course. So that means the scouts have twenty three health if they're normal and thirty six if they're elite. Now there wasn't any elite ones in here, but that's it's a bit of a gotcha bit of a gotcha right there. And that's where the obviously the polar bear kind of caught us off guard with the setup of you will expect to see some here. Well, I suppose they're, they're not wrong. Yeah, well, they, I think this was cool because it kind of, uh, was flavored in with all the mine thief stuff, like, because that's supposed to be the baddie that's doing all these things. And I thought that was a really cool way of going like, cause you're 100% correct. I think from a, a monster perspective, scouts are kind of bit meh and they're only really dangerous if there's lots of them and they're kind of, you can't focus them or it takes you enough time to get through them. So why not make them polar bears and they're way less squishy. Um, but also with that, if it's a stat card, it also comes with an immunity to stun and immobilize and the elites will become, um, mean to disarm as well. So it's another little thing in there, cause I'm almost certain that caught you out at once, uh, one time. Indeed. I think a couple of times, well, you've, you just mentioned before from our party, how much like CC we have, uh, and that is starting to mobilize and, uh, and disarm and they're like, turns out we thought of that and here, so everything a polar bear and, um, immediately makes it harder. Yep. Uh, they also have an eight wound, which polar bears do. So look, the DPS had fun in this particular scenario because it was literally like the scouts that didn't do a crazy amount of damage. They're just, uh, actually they have polar bears, that cause I'm not too sure what happened. I just know is everything died. It was a blink and, well, I think this was, this was Mark's first, uh, unleash, he didn't use his paws. No, he didn't pot for this city. No, he didn't pot for this, but he still went in there and did a lot of damage. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Cause I mean, this is it. No shields. No retaliate. Uh, but this is like the kelp and the bleep blades wet drain, right? Like big things with heaps of HP that they can just like lay into it. 100%. And it was. They absolutely laid into it. And then it came down to dealing with the priest again. Now I think, um, Phil, Phil discovered he had a pushcard, which is really cool. So he, we throw a priest into the, the trap, which is lovely, um, and gas also got to use a really cool card. I think he's new card where he gets to remove a trap. Pretty awesome. But that one, no, that's, no, no, no, that was, that's, that's like a little one card. Oh, is it? Yeah. I really, no, my really cool card, you've, uh, you've, you've glossed over some really important information. Yeah. Earlier when you said I killed the thing and did a lot of damage, that's with one of my new cards. So I've got a new card. The one that misses all the time. It has, I didn't realize it because it doesn't say it on the card, but it actually has a 66% chance to miss, um, when you use it. So I didn't factor that in. I didn't know. Uh, it's like, you know how some games have like that's, and then they have like hidden stats that you don't don't tell you about, but they really affect things. Yeah. This is one of those mischants. So it basically, you attack something and then you do damage to two things within range two of that, uh, minus two. So it's just as a, like a little bit less damage. So you want to try to hit the main target for as much as you can in the first, and that was how I split out some pure damage onto the priests because I was hitting a vermling scout. Um, and that's what was really specific with that with one of the turns was like, I need that to be alive, like don't kill that yet because I need to like bounce damage off that onto the priest. Yep. Um, and that's where the turn I did. And I hit it really hard. And so I heaped with damage bounce onto the priest and it's, it's pure damage when it bounces off. Um, and then I was like, I'm going to do this again. I'm going to hit one of these polar bears with a big fat hit and I'm going to bounce damage off onto these priests and everything else and just well, hey, hey, it's all coming together. Um, no, no, um, and spoilers for later on. I tried to do the same thing again, no, again, so, uh, that card in the bin, uh, just, you know, advantage guys. Well, that's the first one I did, the first one I did big damage. I gave myself advantage. I gave myself strength and for that turn, for that exact reason, because I'm like, if I miss or draw a red card, then this isn't going to do any, do much damage at all. So I better get a good draw on the, on the advantage. And you were lucky. Uh, maybe, I think I did, but it was the second card. Yeah. So it didn't matter, um, as much, but they tried the game tried so yeah, that's, that's my story. Yeah. So we go into the last room and we're expecting to see skeletons and sarcophagus and all that kind of stuff. And obviously it's like two puddle puddle things, right? And um, the special was basically to say, you know, when someone goes through, when the first player goes through one of these, we're going to have to read a thing. So I looked like I was going to be the first one to go in, but I stopped because I was, had a move too. So it wasn't me. And then Phil was like, that's okay. I'll go in first. And he went in first and I, you know, open the next section and it said important. Do not read this. Hand this to the person, you know, hand this rule, special rule box to the person who just went through first. And the second that happened, I was like, whoa. So I quickly cropped it. Didn't read a thing of it. Send it to Phil's phone. So he could go off server it as much as he wanted. And it was the first time anything like this has happened, apart from the event that Mark had where it was kind of like, it was a weird feeling because it was out of my control. And I'm not a control freak, but it was just kind of weird to not know what was going to happen. Um, and it was, you know, elsewhere. And anyway, we went in and the rest of us followed into the fog and we get transported to a new room that was not connected to the map. All right. So this room had nothing in it but these portals, which is different. And then we're left with a room with a steel automaton and two polo scouts. And the steel automaton is the mine thief in a power suit, 78 HP, but no shields. Rookie mistake. Rookie mistake. Yeah. You should have just chucked a retaliate one on that thing. Who builds a steel automaton without shields? Yeah. I know. I know. It's the half health air we read a thing. So it's got a phase kind of event thing. And before we get to do anything, Phil actually comes back onto the board and as we look across the table, his eyes are all like red and he's muttering to himself. Something about New Zealand and something about meat pies suck and he's turned, but we get to beat Phillip while we can't because he's immune to damage, but it would have been a nice idea if we could just, you know, like kelp, kelp just, just a little kelp versus putting it off or something like that. Yeah. That would have been amazing. The thing is there was a couple of turns where we did shift a bit of damage like an attack on to him. Like I got to draw a card and say that you, you know, he would have taken this damage. Yeah. Yeah. So we got to beating up the mine thief and look, I exhaust because I was running out of cards. So before I did that, I brought out Sophia. She got to fight alongside her sister Cassandra and they'll do me proud as I exhaust, putting all my hopes and dreams into the two, two claymores. Sophia just got booked by the scouts. Well, hopefully Cassandra is up. No, she's also taken a few hits from the mind that never mind. She got booked too. So look, it was cool about Lasset and it's really good that they can absorb the hits that you guys didn't necessarily have to take. And I think that is a job well done, good work girls. Mark starts blowing up the mine thief. Guys is supporting him. This is probably where your miss came out or something along those lines. And Phil is being a dick and attempting to hurt us with his rules, which we don't know what they are yet, but just sort of watching him and he's just explaining, you know, I can't do that. I can't do the stuff that you would normally do to play this game. So we're very, very interested in reading what they were at the end. Mark triggers the half health section event after using one ability. Like, well, okay, yeah, I guess granted he did play two cards, play two cards and use two items. And then we had a new section event. Choose to either focus on destroying the automaton or disabling the mind control device. And the boys wanted to kill the mind control device because we wanted to save the mind thief. That's true. That's true. So Mark killed the device with the next follow up term, basically. We teach the Verling's lesson, they go back to being cute mice instead of trying to fit in. And everyone is happy. Everyone? So happy in fact, we go in two morale. Yes, two juicy morale. Who wasn't happy with what the mind thief? Yeah, I guess, maybe, yeah, well, she ran away. Oh, yeah, yeah. But no, she didn't she accept that, Verling, we're never going to be seen at the same level as everyone else or she was going to, she was trying to have to fit them into society and that because we've got in there and done this, she's now like accepted the fact that they've, I don't know, got a position in the food chain and in society and then they're going to go back to being sad or something. Maybe. I think she realized that she didn't need my control people. That's fair. So she's learned the error of her ways, but yeah. Okay. Yeah, she released the grip on Phil when we had our trusty bling played back. What were your thoughts on Sonara 121? I thought it overall was really cool. I thought it was a cool idea. It was executed really cleanly and I don't think that it was bloated with rules that the like two kind of hide elements of it, which could have been like, you know, that kind of like mess with you, it's not a mess with your mind one, but they did it in a different way. It didn't mess with your hand or your card selection. Just like how they used it to mess with the monster type and kind of take you through it. I definitely think playing Gloomhaven before added an extra level of experience to it because you were like, oh, this is cool, this is the scenario. And then I think the end part was pretty cool. It's an interesting and maybe we can side discussion this. I think that the way it was structured was really cool. And it definitely kind of got a bit like the boss got blown out really quickly. Yeah. Well, I mean, the shield thing, right? And also you've got the, you've got the, not my thief, you've got the Blinkblade running around or whoever running around as well, potentially causing a nuisance and hitting fairly hard. I mean, it's, it's rough to actually have a DPS because it's a two pronged effect where you've got a DPS who is now dumping damage into you guys, but also you've got your missing half your major DPS to go into said boss. So it was probably intentional that they didn't over tune the last thing to make it somewhat, I guess doable. Yeah. Well, that's the difference because if I had gone down there and the way that it worked was playing your cards, like, you know, there, a lot of my cards require not prep, but they require an ordering of like, you've got to build a resource up to make the cards do lots of things. So it would have been like way less damage because you could just do it with no resources and just not accrue the resources. So yeah, it's, it's interesting. I liked that they didn't just basically turn Phil into a monster. And he had no choice on cards or anything like that. I like that they've, they've, because the idea of versing your teammates in, in a mind controlled style scenario is actually quite, probably fairly easy to write into a story or into a scenario. And I'm amazed that it's taken this long before we've seen an instance of it and it was done incredibly well because that special role box you could rewrite it for a different scenario and you could almost have weird scenarios where it's depending on the size of the group, I think that's probably the other thing because, oh, can you imagine playing that two people and 1,000 people are still in the game? Yeah. Yeah. Rip. Yeah, that's, that's brutal. Anyone played this with two people? Let us know how that went and whether or not it was fine and because there was a reason. But yeah, that sounds, that sounds kind of messy, especially if it's the DPS. Yeah. That's it. Imagine going in there with a support and DPS. I imagine going with like a banner spear and something else and then something else gets taken and you're like, oh, I now have no allies on the map, right? I've got to do this all myself. So yeah, it's a really good point actually and I didn't, I didn't think about that. Like I saw it, but I didn't, didn't break that down as you mentioned it, but it's a really clever way of changing the goals of one of the players, right? They still had agency, like so much agency because they could still pick cards. They were forced to move in as AI does, but they could still pick their cards. And I think from a pool or something like that, I don't even remember exactly how it worked, but that's a, it's a, it's a, you have now your own little puzzle to solve that is still going to be very impactful on the result. Yeah. Right. And it's not a, like you've got your own puzzle to solve, but you've got to solve it somewhere else. Right? Like is it, you could do this in a way where you put, he gets teleported to a different room and then there's a bunch of monsters, he has to fight them solo to break out of being my control or something like that. But that's just you play the game, but somewhere else. Yeah. That's a cool way of going like, hey, keep doing things, but you need to do them differently. Yeah. Right. You almost have to play, uh, ineffectively or inefficiently, which is an interesting flip of how, how it works. So yeah, it does sound like this has the opportunity to develop, uh, to, to create a lot of fun stories. Cause if you were to take 10 different groups through this scenario, it'd be very fascinating to see all the different ones, like which character out of the group, if it mess up any scene issues, whether, you know, just, I mean, that would be 10 people that didn't know this was going to happen. So, you know, that, that choice of who goes in is not something that people are going to think about other than when you open the door and you want to be the first one in that kind of surprise, right? So to rip that from everyone, very cool. And lastly, on this, I'll just say scenario is that actually have, uh, scenario goal that is unknown, that needs to happen more. And I know that it's not going to upset a lot of people that prefer to understand the whole layout of it, but that makes it feel more like a dungeon crawl because you literally have no idea what the goal is. So you're exploring the dungeon and piecing together what the goal is as you go, which I think just shone through, through this could have easily said when the mind thief dies, right? Well, yeah, this is it. I feel like we've had this conversation like very early on in the podcast where I might have said to you, is that like something like a scenario to was like destroy the ice wall. Yeah. Right. And I, I, maybe I brought this up. Should they be telling us this stuff, right? Because I don't know if there's a reason to have to. I don't know. I'd have to know more about it. But if you did keep that stuff secret until you opened the door to the thing that you need to destroy, I mean, does that mean, like people maybe don't take cars or they don't go about things a certain way? You know, I don't know. Maybe over the length of the scenarios, if it's often people might find that they aren't able to optimize, which then feels bad because you're like, I didn't really had to kill something at the end. So I didn't take X cards. I don't know. Yeah. It's an interesting, it's an interesting point though. And I think you're a hundred percent right. It made a massive difference to the scenario and it's such a small minor thing. Yeah. I think would be in the minority though. I think not so much from a everyone needs to know absolutely everything, but for that card choice, there's nothing in the, it's like when you weren't, people weren't prepared to save the priests in scenario to, or the priestess, and she runs out and gets booked, you know, keeping her alive and when people weren't set up, people don't like gotchas. They like to know what to prepare for, whereas I really like gotchas. So that's what I mean by I think that it'd be a minority thing. There is in the next haven, like not 2.0, but like if they make another game of this size, it's a different place. If there's a way of being more generic with the type of goal, so you might have something in there to be like, oh, it's a destroy objective scenario, or it's an escape scenario, or it's a escorts. Yeah. It's something like that where you have categories of so that it's generally known, but it can be hidden. I don't know if there's even any point doing that. If that's even worth that, because like people like us can just mostly ignore it, but yeah, it's an interesting idea. Yeah. Yeah. So Phil completed his trial. He must have taken maybe 8 damage over the whole thing, or maybe 10, or I don't know. At one stage, he was very low on life, and then he potted and then was very low on life again. We worked out that he'd only been attacked twice. So most of the damage he took in that scenario was from himself, and not just from his trial. There were a couple of times where he's played cards that do damage, yeah, which then triggers extra damage because he's like, oh, I need to take two damage. Oh, no. So he did most of the damage to himself, and the trial was 80% of that, so what are your thoughts on that? Did that trial as a whole? I think it's really cool, and it's a really good idea, but I think it's exactly the same thing we spoke about it last week in regards to it goes away from the other trials, which is secretive. This one's a secret. This one's really hard to police by yourself, and that kind of thing, so I like it, but I maybe, I don't know, maybe it just needs a tweak so that it becomes more a group one. Like you say what it is at the start, but there's some other stipulations around that. It's one of the few trials that could probably safely go public because there's no real, there's no real point in keeping it a secret, that particular one, right? You would encourage, if you keep it to yourself, you could just cheese it by no one will know unless you're literally recording it and you're going to go back and listen to the whole thing. That's the problem. It's a very, I think it's out of most of the ones we've seen. It's one of the hardest ones to police without other people being there, because like, you know, the ones that I've done, which are like, you know, around monster targeting and other things that interact and happen, you could miss a trigger or you could make a mistake, but that's you, like, there's really specific times when the thing applies. As we kind of learned with this from last week and this week, this was just all the time. Like it was a, and then most of the times when it was triggering was not when it was as he turned. It was just like in conversation about the game. So that's where it becomes tricky. Yeah. Mark's thoughts on scenario one to one, he said it was a nice throwback, a nice little trip down an altered memory lane, a polar twist and a massive surprise at the end could be super swingy, but it was good fun. I have stopped asking for Phil, Phil's because I keep forgetting, Mark sends his, when he gets home, Phil, I have to chase. So I think, and I'm wondering if he's annoyed by, when I have to ask him. So we'll just assume that he had a great time because he was my control, then it was fun. Yep. But the challenge, the trials crap. Is this Normi Sonaro? Yeah. I think so. It's funny. I think it's fine into the last room. Well, I don't even know if, yeah, he did say there was monster, there was focusing through that way. Yeah, maybe it's probably maybe not big enough to burn through and leave him behind. So it could be, it could be rough when it gets to the end, but it's not, it's not the best, it's not the worst. Can you imagine that? Well, with Phil kills Ormy? Ooh, that would be, yeah, yeah, that's, that's a fail in the coffin, isn't it? That's like, Orbi's Eden comes at another player. That would be, that would be terrible. Finally, on this scenario, what were your thoughts around saving the guards from scenario 120? And are you glad we took the plunge and rescued all of them? Yeah, because we got rewarded with the knowledge that we played it as it should have been, and would have got the hidden reward that they forgot to put in the game. Yeah, because we had this chat before we were setting it up. It's kind of like, do you think that, that some little purple box would be, you know, if you saved all the guards, of however many you saved, all of a sudden shuffle this many bluses into your deck, or they come in and, you know, respawn them or whatever. I mean, look, they could have done something. And if they had done that, kudos to the entire community for shutting up and not, like, talking about it when we were, like, ragging on it real bad, right, like, but I mean, that didn't happen. So you don't, but they 100% chance, so 100% should have had something else there. Community wise, this is just seen as one of the, one of the favorites that a lot of people have tried, which is pretty cool. It's funny because one of the, you know, Google links, what took us to a Reddit page, which took me back to the scenario 120 of, am I the, are we the only group that's annoyed by the fact that we kept the guards alive and, well, similar to us, similar to the change of heart? Someone else had the same problem. Oh, okay. They, they killed the dogs and tried to make it through the scenario, keeping the guards alive, expecting some kind of reward, just something, even a bucket, even morale. The Drake's we didn't use, because we just flat out for gosh, but I think it's fair to say that even at plus two, this felt easier than last week's. Yeah. Yeah. I definitely exhausted a little earlier than I thought, and that's something that I have, I will change for next week as I'm so focused on plowing through my infusions at the very beginning and getting them, because they've obviously, they enable me to do other stuff and beef up my sword and all that that I end up with weightless cards of the subsequent rounds. Yeah. DPS. So, filled in 28 damage. You and I did 40 each. It's not bad. I don't know what I was hitting. I know Cassandra definitely got a few licks in, and I think I got a lot of instances of what, retaliate one off, so that, that'd probably be it. And Mark finished on 97. Now, I believe his, his DPS chart was like, it was like he'd done 40 damage in around prior to even double potting or something like that. Yeah. Just before he did his big attack, I put a little line on the, on the damage thing, because I just wanted to see how much damage he would do from the scenario, right? Because he ran through his grim trophies and associated cards a couple of times. And then how much he would do with his grim trophies, whatever the other cards call double pot turn and turns out about the same. Yeah. So, yeah, about the same damage in the first like six rounds, seven rounds, as he did in one round. So. Yep. Absolutely. And not. And he, he pointed out when I was looking at that, and, and he's like, yeah, yeah. But remember, a lot of those attacks were against things with five shield. I was like, that they were. So you would have done even more damage, not on your potted turn. That just goes back into that. So yeah. But look, again, felt it was necessary. Like I still think if we have, he's on, I don't want to say fist because he was really pumping damage on that as well. But like something that seems like he had to work a bit harder to do, rather, the fist didn't just seem to go like, I'm going to have a turn and kill everything. It was more consistently like doing damage again, but he was, there was a sacrifice, right? Because if he was doing really good damage, if he was usually taking a bit, I feel like that was kind of needed again. Yeah. So if you have that, then I don't know if you and me are pushing through three polar bears, like, and then the boss, like, I mean, that's the other things where, yeah, well, I complain that it died so quickly, but I feel like if he doesn't do that, we lose a scenario. Oh, well, what if he was mind-controlled? If he was mind-controlled, then we're in trouble. Yeah. A lot of trouble. Like because not only would he kill us, but he'd been invisible while he did it. Yeah. Well, there's a world where he goes in first because he's invisible a lot of the time, because he's safely able to enter a room and not get absolutely wrecked. Except that he can't teleport down there and he hates using his legs. He does hate losing using his legs. That is true. That is taken. Oh, yep. I was just going to say, like, one of the common things that he says during a scenario when there's a room in a door is like, can someone open the door? Can someone open the door? The reason is that he wants to just teleport through the wall, right? He doesn't want to have to move to the door and like a clip. Like a clip. Leg plebs. Yeah, it's like, can you guys go with the legs? Can you go over onto that? That hex? It's got more legs than ours. It's actually taken about three, I fell to 27, you took 28, I took 49 and then healing mark healed for two, heal for six, guys, heal for seven, feel healed for seven. Up his face, the vermin's await our return to that. Was that, was that, did that happen again? No, no, no, no, no, no, we solved that last time. Right. We did solve that last time. I don't know anymore. I know that we had to go back for the session event that we literally just had the time to hand back to our librarian. So obviously I've left that notion there for last time. I'm certain we went back. We've solved the, we solved the family problem. Yeah, I think so too. We just lost all of our food or something. Yeah. Yeah. I can't remember what our, our post event was then. We didn't have one because we did a section event. We had to return the book to the librarian who has given us a tone of elements, which is very cool, but we do not resolve an outpost event this week. There was, this is the last segment I'm covering. Is there anything else you want to cover that we've done? No. Okay. There was a thread on Reddit recently about competitive gloom haven running two groups side by side, completing the same scenario kind of deal, right? And it made me think about, I think a long time ago, maybe on the board game, subreddit, there were people, I think there was a pandemic tournament. And it's like just tables and tables, tables of groups playing pandemic, but I think the deck was fixed as in the, the deck of starting cards for the, for the countries, right? For the locations that was fixed, at least just at the very beginning. And then by someone not playing the game. Yeah. Like every table was set up to be exactly the same. Yeah. Yep. Yep. And then that's how you play it competitively. So they were kind of like solve the game and puzzle, whoever can do it earlier, whoever can do it, you know, in the shortest amount of time with a shortest amount of turns or something like that. And I was like, that is a very, very cool. I, I like the idea that they've taken a cooperative game and given it a bit of a competitive spin, right? And this thread was talking about, you know, this group is so large, running side by side, but making maybe some friendly competition between the two. And it got me thinking about, you know, could that be done in the world of the Haven series, where you have the World Championship, Gloomhaven run scenario 14, you can choose whichever classes you want. There's going to be probably a meta around, which is the most effective group. But then occasionally we'll get some group that's discovered some other BS thing that they can do. We have a nice blanket rule over everyone's level five, has access to these, this range of items. And then of course you would take the attack, the attack deck for the monsters to make that exactly the same for everyone after it resets or the crit finally comes out, it will then remain random for between all the different groups and same thing for the abilities. But just seeing how groups can handle almost the puzzle aspect of it against other groups and who can work well, which groups can work well together, what are your thoughts on something like that? Would that be something you'd be interested in watching? It's almost like, do you remember World of Warcraft? They used to have mythic dungeon things where it's the same dungeon for everyone who ran it. But your timed is the how effectively you can clear it and it obviously got a lot of viewers and a lot of people that were interested in it. Could Glimhaven or even Frosthaven take a competitive side? And how would you make it even or how would you make it interesting? I think it would work fine, I don't know if I'd watch it but that's probably more just due to the length of the scenarios. But it would be an interesting thing, I'd be interested in the results and/or how it went, right? Like I'm not against it. I feel like the way you'd want to do it is, I don't know if you're talking about doing like a whole campaign or just picking scenarios, right? I think that would be cool, like you're picking a scenario and going like, okay, this is your scenario, you've got to do it. This is the tools you've given very much like those roguelike slather spire and equivalence of those where they go. This is the challenge for this week, right? And these are the tools that you get, go do whatever you want with them. So something like that would be cool and you probably want to give people options. So again, you pick a level and you might pick a group of items and say, you can pick four classes out of these characters, you know, you've got access to these items or this amount of money and these herbs and resources, make what you can and then go, right? And then you just need a way of measuring it like whether it'd probably be like who can finish it the quickest and then you might have a whole bunch of tiebreakers. But yeah, I think that would be cool from a like a community perspective, like, you know, and you might even be able to create new ones that are more focused towards that idea rather than the way the scenarios are currently, which are not necessarily designed all as puzzles to solve with specific pieces because there's a thing like once we've talked about this with balance, right, like Frosthaven, Gloomhaven are so hard for the devs to balance because you can go into any scenario with any combination and they can't be sure what you've got. Whereas this you would be able to 100% know exactly what people are going to have, right? So yeah, if you're making people level three, you know that here are all the level up to level three cards that we're picking to like put the classes in, they can't have anything that's not here. It's interesting, like, if they were to have, if you were to have a media who, because let's just, let's throw another curve ball in there. When you've got a scenario, let's say you're doing a scenario 55, change a heart, right? A terrible one, but people may want to spectate it from a playing point of view as opposed to a can they clear a point of view, but you have a set amount of like the same characters. Every table has the same characters, they can build it however they want, but everyone has the same characters. Would that make it, I have a feeling there's a world where I find that really interesting as well? So if you have every single group is met up with three people and you have a media player a snowflake and that's, I don't know, throw a drifter in there as well. Just seeing all the different people play out the snowflake and which cards they're bringing and what order and what they're going to use and the way they synergize with the rest of their party, I would find really fascinating. Potentially, yeah, like, I think both work. Yeah. I think the picking what everyone has to be and what's going to be in it becomes more like a puzzle that has a solution. And then it's about how quickly people can find that solution. Having more variance when it comes to choices, whether it be characters, levels, cards, whatever you're going to throw in there is more of a you can pick your poison to find what and it's almost people searching for the most optimized way of doing things and kind of almost like deck building in a way, because you kind of go like, Oh, well, we want to pick these cards and do that stuff. The only problem I could see with it is that it'd be super ripe for quarterbacking, right? There is absolutely no reason why there needs to be three or four people doing this because it's going to be one person saying, I need you guys all to be playing these cards because this is what we need to do now. Yeah, but you would know that going into it because you'd be practicing for, if it was on a competitive level, let's say the prize pool was a million and so far, I was like, yeah, sure, we'll throw a million in there as a prize pool, all of a sudden, it's like the greatest board game tournament ever and all of a sudden, everyone at home is like throwing their go set out and it's just like hardcore playing glimmer heaven first haven. Yeah, I can kind of, I forgot where I was going with that. I was talking about it being quarterbacked. Yeah, yeah, well, then you'd go in there going into team environment, right? It's like you're going to have a team leader, it's like in Dodo and other esports, you're going to have an IGL in game leader that would make all those decisions because as soon as two groups who are playing fairly similarly because they're both, you know, they're just playing the straightforward way of playing a certain character against certain monsters. As soon as that attack modified deck resets, if it happens at different timings, I love the fact that it'll throw everything out and you can have two, let's say snowflakes who have their snowball up and they've got their last charge on it and they're about to land a fat white wins and one team lands a plus one and the other team lands a null and all of a sudden, yeah, it's just be very, I don't know, maybe I'm into into the chaos of it all. Yeah, that's one of the problems with making something too competitive, or not too competitive, but making a really high price pool and competitiveness and I know that just from following various different card games over the years and other things that really serious players that are like super pro in these kind of things lean themselves towards games that have less random, right? So I think it was like maybe even when Hearthstone was really early and there was like avenues of like they can just be, you know, play a card and do damage to four random things. That can't usually happen in things like Magic the Gathering because it's, you know, it doesn't have the digital sense and I know there's a whole bunch of rules and things have changed over the years, but so they go for that. But then even then, I remember hearing a bunch of stuff that people were saying, if you're trying to make money out of Magic the Gathering, go play poker. Like, that's almost solved from a sense, right? Like there is, you know, so it's the more random you make it. I think the more open to chaos you have to be in the less competitive type people you might get, which is probably more from an entertainment perspective of what you're looking for. Yeah. Right. So yeah, I think it's interesting. Interesting thought. And that would be, you need to have, you know, I've seen space cards through the Twilight Imperium tournaments and there's usually like mods or admins or something running around between the tables just to make sure, you know, answer any rule questions and make sure that people are doing the right thing and reading out the agendas and all that kind of stuff. You'd need to have a dwarf on every table or dwarf will have a team like he's the head ref and he's got his team to say, I remember we've laminated the FAQ on every table, you know, make sure that and yeah, at the beginning, he's like, yep, you can't do that. No, you can do that. You can't do it without that. And then towards the end, he's like, yeah, sure, you just, you do whatever you do whatever. Yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah, sure. Okay. Whatever. 100%. And I think you'd have to only have dwarf. He'd have to be the only one there. And like in a tournament, when you have a judge call, you put your hand up and you're a judge, you do dwarf, right? And then he'd run over and help you. Yeah. And then you say, uh, can I complete this battle goal by using this item? He'd be like, you're kicked, you're, you're booted, right? I'm just out. So, and then someone else would be like, um, so can we add two more people? Can we play with six players? No. Six players tournament. Um, yeah. Okay. So if this tournament exists in any capacity, can you let us know? If it doesn't, and you'd like to set one up, can you set it up and then let us know? And if you need casters, I'll do the hype casting because it can be the analysts and we can sit there and, you know, we can cast the games. How exciting would that be? Yeah. That's it. With all our frost saving dollars, you better read the rule book. Uh, we will wrap it up there. Uh, join us next week as we yet again hit up a scenario. Um, maybe start the drip feed off the scenarios to do, remember. So remember, let us know if you know anyone that can, uh, that is willing to sell us a copy of Crimson Scales, or if you know where we can buy one, that's not the one listing on eBay, that little super dodgy. And let us know which scenarios you would like us to finish on our way through towards the end of our campaign. Yeah. And if you don't know if we've done it, and I'll just say it, I'll just give the number. If we've done it, we'll just be like, yeah, great call. We did it. Um, and you didn't listen to that episode. So go listen to it. Yeah. Uh, we haven't decided on Monday. So by the time this actually lands, you'll have about 12, 14 hours to give us something so that I can set it up. And yeah, if it looks cool, and if you, if it's terrible, uh, we will find you. And so we'll talk about that next week. I can just see the trolls just, just doing something with it. Oh, 100%. Uh, 100%. So they will get a rant. I have been your host, Eddie. I have been joined again by gas. And remember, when it comes to rolling terribly, it's all where there is. [laughter] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [BLANK_AUDIO]
