The following episode may contain spoilers for the game Frosthaven. Welcome, welcome to episode 74 of the Master's Degree and rolling terribly, I am your host Eddie. Joining me this week, a man who joined three other eager men, big mark feeling myself. In an exercise, impart taking, and our usual weekly activities, but with a harder session in mind as we feel the firmness of the challenges ahead of us and tackle the girth of an incredible increase in stats while we carefully control the safety of our play so that we don't get completely pounded over and over again. Gaaas! Say hi guys. Yes. Are they still user submitted ones or is this from your, for the ban of Daddy? I just, um, did both, I got inspiration from, uh, just a website that I recently clicked on. Yeah, very good, very good. Well, I, um, I was gonna say, I actually just noticed I am loving your hoodie. I think that's really cool. Oh, thanks. Oh, yeah. For people on audio, they're like, Oh, no, what's that, um, uh, just imagine a really cool hoodie. Yeah, it's really cool. And Daddy's wearing it. So. Oh, perfect. I think everyone's got the exact picture of what that looks like. Whatever they want to picture in their heads, they might have no idea what we look like. That happens, right? Like you listen to podcasts and you form a picture of what people look like in your head. Yeah. Like anything like what you think that they look like? I think someone mentioned that a while back in the, um, Frosthaven outpost where, uh, we put our first link to the video or something or, or it might have been a different video we did where we actually, you know, had, um, video content and someone was like, Oh, no, this is that bit where you actually, you know, have heard someone for a bit. And now you've seen what they look like. And it's kind of, kind of scary. Like, do I want to see this? Do I not want to see this? Is this going to ruin how I, you know, how I view these people? Yeah. I hope we have disappointed everyone. Oh, 100% we would have liked the fact that they still listening to us. They should be disappointed in themselves. Maybe they've just gone back to just listening. Yeah. That leads to YouTube and no, no, no, no, no, we're going to go back to this podcasting. Um, so we're going to start jump straight into this particular episode, which is pretty jam-packed. What? 14 minutes a banter. No, no, no form. We can't, we can't afford it today. We can't, we can't afford it most weeks, to be honest, because I do find by the end of it, we are kind of like, okay, cool. I'm going to cut that. I'm going to cut that. I'm going to cut that as, as I'm running through my show notes. So at least this time, I, we should be able to cover everything because it's pretty packed today. Get ready. On today's episode, we'll be discussing scenario one, three, three. Bolt. What do you think bolt means? Bolt like run fast or just like a, a nothing bolt or? Yeah. Probably the running fast one. Okay. That makes sense. Nothing. Based on what the scenario was about. What about a thunderbolt? Yeah. It could be that, but it wasn't. Well, because they probably would have written that word in there as well, right? Yeah. Yeah. Let's just try to be clever. Like I am with all of our titles. I mean, you know, kickstarter, you want to keep cost down. Maybe like, at the end of the day, the word thunder was just bumping prices up too much. So like, I don't know. It's just that actual weight. Yeah. Yeah. And that ink. Ink. Yeah. On the internet. Yeah. Well, the thunder. Well, it's printed, right? In scenario, the book. And then the other book. Oh, yeah. I'm sure it's like three or four times. So a day will come where it will no longer be printed and it will all be like VR and stuff. I don't know. Might know. We're going to be talking a little bit about trials again. I think this is going to be a thing that over the next, at least couple of weeks, we're going to be covering trials as they start to be completed. And a lot of them have been proven to be quite interesting. And I think they weren't a good discussion. And potentially, I don't know, a trial expansion, you may have to do the thing that you're doing with the challenge stick with the trial deck. Yep. We're going to be having a chat or a revisit about scenario difficulty, which is very exciting. And we've got another gaz quiz, but this one came from a listener or the idea came from a listener. I put it together. Which basically means if you want me to quiz gaz over absolutely anything, just send it to me or send me an idea or just send me the whole thing that I can just read, I'm happy to do it. And God seems to love it. I love being wrong a lot. Oh, well, I mean, that's, I practice it all the time. So I might as well, you know, put it out there on the internet. Yeah. Professional wrong person. Yeah. Well, that's it. It's rolling terribly and being wrong. That's right. Although we can't say that too much because we'll get sued. No. We don't always. Slightly wrong. It's wrong about everything. Just mostly wrong. What's going to happen if we're ever for some odd reason to end up on their podcast? Then we can be more wrong. That's wrong off. Wrong off. Yeah. All right. Off to scenario 133. Let's go. So do you remember our road event? Yeah. Do you remember our road event? Yeah. I remember we didn't do one. Yeah. That's what I was going to say too. Ditto. Ditto. Try to catch you out. So we did not have a road event because it was a false link. And unlike in the past towards the end of some of the false links that we came across, when we kind of did a little bit of a cheesy, let's just step out of the zone and step back into the zone. Yeah. Just to reset. And tick over, you know, calendar days for a certain banister who really needed to visit this. That's what I'm talking about. So on a side note, is there a question with that notice? Should there be some form of incentive for doing a false link? I think the incentive is you don't have to do an outpost event or another road event. Oh. Is that an incentive? I just see less of the game, right? Like skip some of the game depends if the event is one you've seen before. Maybe it's not that bad. That's true. So, yeah, I mean, but should there be another incentive, like you get something extra if you go in like kind of again, in a push your like sense, you're not getting some kind of bonus or no, I would put it as maybe the false link part in their A is for flavor because it's like you're going to the same location. So or an adjacent location, but be just to it's maybe a tension thing or a raising difficulty thing or it's a negative thing. And I think there's not too many. There's just a couple peppered throughout the actual like campaign. And it doesn't overstay except for that time where you thought it might have because it just conveniently kept happening, but in general, I don't think it overstays its welcome. I think that they have a place and maybe it's just seen as a negative thing because you don't get that luxury of looking at events and downtime and all of that kind of stuff. But at the same time, if you hate all of that, this is an advantage. So could it be any more subjective? No, I guess it's not depending on your situation and how much I hate the game, they are positive or negative. It's right. So we'll start off with our previously on Frosthaven. So basically what actually happened was last week, it's about going into that place to get that cat idol thing from the random pedestal. And we met into a skp collapsing in cave. And then Mulburn came out of the shadows and was like, hey, that's mine. And that led us into this scenario, which is why it was a false link. Mulburn was given a lot of attitude to the idol for some reason or to us or a mixture of both. And then he was all like, hey, don't give me a cheek and he started causing spells onto it or something. And it's kind of like, was this weird back and forth between a dude? And it's kind of like when you watch someone wrestle a dummy or an inanimate object, which I've been guilty of doing when I was a child, it's awkward because we're all standing there going, OK, this is weird upon what's going on. And he's like, no, you stupid cat idol and spells. And then he gets flung back and look, at the end, Mulburn doesn't make it. He loses to the idol and then it's kind of like, oh, I guess we'll continue now without the guy who sent us here with the weird idol into scenario 133, basically, which is funny because we were talking about this. We knew that we started the next scenario with the idol because we'd looked forward to the porcelain scenario, but we hadn't read the flavor. And we were kind of throwing out there, like, this doesn't make sense why if we got it and we just gave it to Mulburn made the comment, maybe we should read the flavor text because it's probably going to explain it. And it did. Yep. So well done. Designers of game. You thought of that. That's right. It worked. Tom Heath. So it's an R33 133, sorry, Bolt designed written Tom Heath. And yeah, the scenario is complete scenario goals, and I was complete with all characters have escaped. So it's a second escape for the chain. And at the end of that round, we will read a thing scenario fact there isn't any wants the combinations we have running, drinking, spitting drugs. So that's one of the reasons we came here is because literally the only reason pretty much. Yeah. Yeah, really. Yeah. So there is a week we picked here. We would have come here eventually as we chose to come here early so that we could finish a certain thing to then assist in a different thing. And we needed some dregs. And we were hoping to capture at least one of those. We have polar bears and we have forest teams as well. Our first room setup, we have a T-shaped tile. We have a door on each side, two in the middle. And then on the actual board itself, we have three forest teams, three renting dregs and two spitting dregs. I'm very excited to see the dregs again. And that was one of the, I know we were heading here knowing that they were here. But for something, I think dregs were in Gloomhaven. We haven't seen that many. We've seen a couple on like scenario 33 and I think the 69, the one that, yes, the forest one. And that was only renting dregs as well though. Yes. Rending dregs and forest. Yes, I think. Yeah. Yeah. They seem to make a good partnership, apparently. Virtual rules now to add on to the hardcore rules we had last week, if any character becomes exhausted, this scenario was lost because that is ongoing. We can still not be exhausted, but we still have the idle rules. But these times they were positive because I don't know if it's weakening or we're strongening. We're going to go with strongening. Yeah. Plus one. But whoever's holding the idle, put a token on and the token just doesn't do justice. We use the miniature, the same miniature we had for all me on the person's board. And apparently that's a good reminder that you have a vantage. And we... A terrible reminder. We need something bigger. But yes, if you have the idle, you get plus one to your movement and you get advantage, which is pretty good. And then you can still... Way better than negative one movement continuously stacking forever. Depends. Your build is centered around moving less and having... Wait, was that it? Move and... Do you have disadvantage on attacks? Oh, okay. Yeah. If it's moving less. Oh, maybe you got some kind of benefit? I don't know. Anyway. No, okay. I don't know. And this idle can be palmed around. So just during your turn, you can palm off to someone who's adjacent to you. Challenge cards. We started off with initiative. The initiative challenge card, which is like all players, increase all their character initiative values by 10, which now that we're going through the deck a second time, being a little bit more selective, and our absolute rush to nail through this unless someone gives us a really good incentive reason as to why we should be blowing through the challenge deck because going to surely isn't unless, you know, unless the world is rewritten. Yeah. In some way. I mean, it sounds like that's happening right now, somehow the call has been put out there. Yeah, but what's going to happen with that? Because I hear that multiple things are being written and we're going to get like a loop pinata worth of rewards when we complete this thing because adding all the different stories together and all the rewards. Yep. Blint's like, yeah, does this thing and then he does something else and hey, why not have that? Well, the thing about rewards guys is that the word reward is usually seen as a positive, but in Frosthaven, it could be either, right? So people can be like, your reward is everyone starts from level one or something stupid like that. Yeah, you gain negative morale. Correct. You gain negative whatever. At pets for the evening, we had Lunacy the Hound, which is the plus one to attacks targeting something adjacent to your ally. This is one we had last week and we have not used. So again, the pet and the rules are evolving and we are making sure that everyone gets used. Yeah. And we had Walk the Lightning Eels. I have a two damage to recover a card, a level one or an X card from your discard. A party's been up of daddy, me on the level seven astral gas. I don't know what level he is. I think five. There we go, shards. Mark on his level seven or eight kelp and Phil was on his blink blade for his second scenario. So it's a brand new blink blade. I believe it's around level four. Yeah. Now we have this last time. Our decks were built for the scenario. Did you make any changes or did you feel you needed to make any changes? I think so. I think I might have changed one card in around. I might have got rid of my attack loop card and then put something else in there. I'm not sure. Yeah. But I did keep most of my bigger movement cards. I'm pretty sure I kept the exact same thing just because last scenario was an escape scenario. So this one, escape, if it worked last time, it'll work this time, right? There is a section link when door one is open to read a thing. When door two is open to read a thing and when all characters occupying pressure plates, which is always vague because no, that's all it says. We don't know how many. We assume it's one read a thing. The other thing, Kaz, what did we do differently in this run than we have done in every other run we've ever done? Um, raise it if you could. That is right. How much did we raise the difficulty? Oh, we raised it one last week, right? That's true. Did we? But I think so. I can't remember. I have to listen to last week's episode. But yes, we raised it by two. Yeah. What was the thought process behind that? Uh, it makes it harder. Yes. Okay. Uh, we have been, I mean, look, we've been saying this for a while. Some of the scenarios have been a bit of on the easy side. Some really cool, designed ones, we feel like we just get going and then it's kind of done or we ran out of monsters or just, there isn't a massive challenge. It's like maybe a couple of small spikes of challenge, but so we, no one had suggested this, um, which is a shame on the community, especially the dwarf or 30 bill over this one, right? Uh, that we thought maybe we'll try out a higher difficulty. Um, so we bumped it up too, mostly because that seemed to be where it started raising more than just the hit points. Yeah, and there's also the, the bug play factor as well. And they, we've got these two STR DPS classes in the group. We've got me who's playing a bit more of a tank utility and you playing a bit more of a controller support. It feels like we've got the tools needed to maybe handle a, a tougher challenge. And the other thing is a lot about previous sessions, actual in person sessions, we're actually finishing a lot earlier than we have in the past, almost to the point where we're like, do we squeeze in a second scenario? Yeah. So it's kind of like, if we play this at a plus two, we can only see what it's like. And then we will most likely know fairly early if we can or cannot do this. And then we can run it back and lower it if we need to. Yep. Uh, before we jump into the scenario, I would like to have a little touch, uh, wrong word. I like to touch, no, I, I can't use the word touch with this. I'd like to have a little spotlight on, um, a monster spotlight on the drakes considering we've barely seen them. I know that there are, uh, OG monster from Bloomhaven and now they're, you know, in Frosthaven, they're probably heaps of them that we've just somehow avoided. And that we're probably going to run into about five or six scenarios in a row with just nothing but drakes to the point where we're absolutely sick of them. We're going to cover both of them in this little discussion because we've got raining drake and we have, uh, the spitting drake just quickly off the top of your head. Which one do you think is more for you personally? More dangerous. Uh, I think the rending drakes. So in my head before this scenario, uh, my, in my head, rending drakes, hit hard multiple times and go fairly quick, uh, spitting drakes, uh, do range attacks and have a stun, like a non-conditional stun, like just a card that says, hey, just stun something. Yes. So that, from my knowledge of them, that's usually the danger point and the stun thing seems to be easy enough to get around. Whereas I know the rending drakes have, um, uh, cards that do like two or even three attacks. That's right. Which can be quite brutal. They, um, both have innates on all their attacks and raining drakes out of the wound and, and spitting drakes are muddled. Was it a lost opportunity to give them poison or is that just gross? The spitting drakes? Yeah. Yeah. I feel that that would be gross. Instead of muddle. Well, yeah. Or instead of muddle. But, uh, I think that black imps have, uh, poison innate, right? So they're probably trying to make them a bit different. Yeah, but chaos demons have innate, uh, muddle. Yeah. I don't know. I'm just, I'm sorry. I'm just, that might be the reason that you can give them poison, um. So renting drakes, like you said, they go very quickly. They've got a disgustingly early range of initiatives, um, three being six, twelve and thirteen, which obviously can be problematic and in our particular scenario that we're doing this time, we have to add plus ten to, you know, ours, which means these guys going to go early, like a lot, I think that's what three out of eight, um, they're level six, which is the earliest. Sometimes when they're that low there, they're doing something crazy or they are doing something defensive. And that's exactly what they do with their, their six, they add their two shield because they don't have an innate shield. They don't have an innate retaliate or anything like that. They're, the only thing you're worried about when you're going up and hitting these things is the fact that they're going to have a turn and hit you back potentially multiple times. And if there's groups of them, that's disgusting. But yeah, they, they've grown, they don't have the defensive things in place to prevent a burst down. But when they're six comes out, it's kind of crap because it's the only card they have that doesn't do anything. It gives them strength and it gives them shield and it just means, and it's not a reset card, which means whatever follows this is going to have strengthened, which is something to think about and, and a little bit on the gross side, they got two cards that multi attack the same target. So they've only got two that do it, but obviously they're, they're pretty gross, especially the one that hits three times. And they've got two that will target two people instead of the same person. And one of them is arranged one in poison, which is something we didn't know until it happened when it was like, Oh, wow, these guys are actually ranging us right now. And if there's a few on their kind of socks, 13, all right, the number 13 is their initiative for one of their cards, which is a reset card. And that's one of the multi attack cards. It's an attack. It's a move. It's an attack. And I'm like, what am that? Like we, we always talking at least all the way back to like derelict elevator and the way throwers where with enemies that have a reset card that they can spam. What's gross about this is this one goes to the 13. Yeah. Like, sure, like these things are pretty gross. The more and more that I look into it. Yeah. Well, I mean, and that's the thing, right, but, uh, they don't have shares on over telly it, right? So you can kind of lay into them. I've got decent HP, uh, but that's going early and hitting really hard. It's just this kind of constant, uh, you can't be near them, right? Because as you said, if they go at 13 and they attack say nothing because nothing's next to them and then they move next year and then they hit you pretty hard because they were hitting us for like five and sixes at that, um, plus two, which is, uh, level five monsters. It's they, they hit it a five and a six and it plus three, sorry, plus zero, which is where we normally would be clearing stuff. It's a four and a six. Yeah. So it's not like. So they're still hitting pretty hard. Um, and then they, as you said, it's a reset card. They also have a 12. So there's a two in eight chance, right? When they have their next turn, they're already next to you that they're going at a 12 or a 13. Now I know people can go quickly, but like most classes are going to struggle to consistently go below 13. Yeah. Right? Like you have to, it's like an active, like I'm going quick this turn because I want to do something. So it almost puts you in that position where if you don't have your really quick card or some other weird initiative shenanigans, you're probably going to get much, right? At that, that combo kind of for an elite is almost a move, attack six, attack six, attack six. Yeah. And then not, before you get a turn, they're not even credible due to that movement because they're four movement for normal and six, four elite, right? At at least plus two, it's six. You can't get away from them. But they're going to catch up with you and it's one of the, you got to out DPS them from what I can say, or definitely UCC. Yeah. So gross. These guys are actually pretty horrendous when they're actually teamed up with a support. And that's something, this is now the sixth time we've experienced it because the first time was with the forest teams. This is again with the forest teams and the forest teams, I mean, the forest teams have poisoned attacks, which obviously make their multi attacks hurt more, which is kind of crap. The imps will strengthen and obviously, muddle us, which is bad. And of course, healing, right? The imps can actually heal. Good thing that I have any elemental affinity to worry about or play around. Yeah. Overall, a very key mob that has made the trek over from gloom, having the frosthaven and still pits a bit of fear in, I would dare say a lot of players, arts, you know, yeah, if these, if we had encountered these more, I feel like when we raided them, we would have rated them a lot higher. Well, I forgot to write down where they were rated. Do you remember? I've got them here now, actually. I don't, I don't, like, my guess would be that we rated them in the middle, which is what, like, which would have been not bad. Not bad. Yeah. I feel like we probably put them in there because we didn't really encounter them. And then when we did, we were able to deal with them fairly easily, like, I know, I remember Phil got booked by the room where they were in, but that particular scenario, we fought them in there wasn't really, they weren't a lot for that long because we kind of all though came in there, the next turn just killed them all, right? But I feel like if we were fighting these on a more regular basis, then we would have more experiences like we did on Monday and this way. And we probably would put them up at least into like, well, we rated them in the fourth tier. So in the meh tier, so there's some of them in meh and they finished in meh. And like, we're probably going to do one more of those, those videos just to do a final overall kind of thing. But yeah, we didn't really rate them, but I can tell you right now that they would move up. I don't know how far, but they would move up from there. Yeah, definitely. So I knew appreciation. With the actual spitting drapes, they counterpart, which we also, oh no, we put them as higher initially, then we did the raining drapes. And then in our second tier list, we dropped them into the same bucket as raining drapes, actually right next to each other in the meh bucket. So we didn't really worry about those too much. But basically I have the same level six card as the raining drapes with the shield and strengthen. They have two 50 initiatives, and then they have three in the late 80s. So they're definitely slower and much easier to play around. But if they are allowed to hit you, I mean, they, they also hit fairly hard four or six on a range to attack, which is fairly gross and they do have poison attacks. All their attacks are ranged. And of course, like you said earlier, they have an unconditional stun. And that is an 89, which the only other one I can think of that does that I think is still a Thomas one, but they'd have to be adjacent to you because they don't move when they do it. Yeah, I think so. I was really surprised with how hard these things hit. So in my head, the stun and some of the AOE was the main kind of, that was the thing that was going to get you right when there's three or four of them, they're all going to range attacking you in three or four, attacking, you know, can add up. But seeing some of the cards they were drawing, like they were hitting for like five, six, seven on some attacks and like range seven, sorry, attack seven at like range three or four with like two movement, basically, they just meant that you couldn't hide from them. Right? Like you're not getting away from something with that's flying and has that range. And that was just, that was bonkers. So I was, yeah, these, these just were absolutely doing so much more damage than I thought they would. Yeah, they're little nucus because it's also annoying because they're flying and I think that came up when I think Phil made some comment about, you know, if that's okay, I'll just pop him in the trap and it's like, no, mate, they got wings, like that's going to happen. The other thing that's also that I've was really shocked by was their health for most flying things, at least that we experienced, these things have like at least that plus two, they have 12 at normal and 19 at elite. So they're hitting like trucks, they can stun you, they take a while to burst. You can't burst in the way if there's two or three of them because there's usually, that's usually the case. You're in for a potentially bad time. Yeah. Yeah. It's weird. I think if I head, right, and this is just kind of head cannon from Gloomhaven because I didn't put these as a massive threat, I kind of had rending drakes were kind of, I don't know, they were saying small dragons, but the spitting drakes were like, "Welps." I kind of, they might think that's how it was, they were like small flying ones, but they're not. Like they're just flying dragons, like they're flying drakes, like they're kind of, they, if you were to size-wise, they look like they should be the same size, not like imps, which I thought they were going to be like imps and hit like imps, but they didn't. I think it was a great description because even the image makes them look a little bit wealthy, I mean, it's probably our WoW background as well, where little tiny anoints, but no, they're absolute nukeers. Any general strategy you can think of that you would put for, not so much rending, but more of the spitting drakes. There's just, they range things. You just got to jump onto them and kill them, like archers or those, I mean, there's a couple of, you kind of range utility, sorry, artillery type units, but yeah, you're right, like you said with 12 or 19 health, like at our level anyway, that was like a lot to chew through. If you had one of each at Elite right there and the four of us are about to, you know, deal with them, we can't see them at all, who's the priority? I still think the rending drakes are pumping out more damage unless you can cut them because they're probably going to, over a couple of turns, do a double attack and they go really early, so I don't think the damage is avoiding that, whereas at the, I think the worst the spitting drakes are doing is the AoE attack, which we're pretty good at like kind of lining up for. Learning up for, yes. Not avoiding. But we can probably with something like that, avoid it, at least avoid two or three of us getting hit, right? So I'll probably still say the rending drakes, but it's, it's, it's a tough call. Yeah. Okay. Hypothetical. You. You guys. You're in a medium-sized room and you're currently playing shards. Would you rather 1v2, two rending drakes or two spitting drakes? It's probably, again, the spitting drakes because I feel like the rending drakes are going to get next to me and then just tear me up. Okay. Now you're coral. Oh, well now I want to be fighting the rending drakes because they're just going to wreck themselves. Now you're prism. Um, I'd say they're spitting drakes because the rending drakes are just absolutely destroy. Like they'd all be one-shotting. Yeah. Next up, the robot. Yeah. I can sort of say that. But is it spitting drakes again, then there, there is a chance they stack up, but again, they don't, and they're not hitting multiple times. Okay. And also, also they, they're, I can guarantee to go before almost all of the turns of the spitting drakes, whereas the rending drakes, like I had some quick cards on the prism, but like they, like 12 and 13 is really low. Yes. Like insanely low. Banispear. Um, probably the rending drakes because they're easier to get into formations or is it things that arranged were always annoying because they'd move away. So getting allies next to a range thing and then them still being there was annoying because even if they, if they had a turn, they'd move away and then you had to reposition by kind of the ally and you and the monster, or is it early trending drakes is just going to stand there. And as we know, the banispear is the best tank in the game. So jokes don't flame you, please do upwind or kill me understand, go to the subreddit. But yeah, I'd say for the banispear, probably again, the, the rending drakes. I'd rather fight. Nice. Um, and lastly, the drakes are their well designed. I think so. I think these are something that I didn't think much of. I always thought rending drakes were tough and I just remember that from Gloomhaven, but I feel like now knowing their cards and also fighting them, um, they are a really good high DPS medium tanky level of monster. Like they're not, it's, they're cool because they're not hard to deal with as in. They don't have shields. They don't have, um, retaliate. So it's really a DPS race, like each of those is a DPS race, but they're going to be in your face and they are going to hit you hard. Yeah. Um, and so you're almost guaranteed that. Um, and so I kind of like that, like, because we don't have a lot of monsters that are just like, I'm going to move straight up to you're just going to keep pounding and just smash you, right? Yeah. Like incredibly dangerous. Very assassin-y pounds. He almost like an Ursa from Dota when they're in your general space, like these are the ultimate you need to probably CC these. And if anything, that six card, like I said earlier, it's, yes, it goes really early and it can mess up your plans, but that's your window, basically, because you know the next thing that's going to come out, um, is going to be an attack of some variety. That's your moment of disarming, you know, something if you're going to and, um, yeah, giving yourself that opportunity to just create that tiny bit of space so that you can go back in and blow them up. Yeah. Um, the spitting dorks here, I think they're fine. Like they are particularly interesting from a design perspective, but again, there are another kind of like Algox archers in that they are just going to constantly pump damage. Yeah. I think it's also nice when they can take a unit and expand on it. So you've got the dorks and you've got different varieties of it. I'm, I'm hoping at some stage there'll be a polar bear faction or something where, you know, polar bear priests, polar bear wizard, um, just different variations of polar bear. Yeah. And you never know which kind of combo you're going to get and then later on, they make a playable polar bear who is defected from the polar bears that you can then bring into the game. There we go. All right. Um, they, uh, I just, yeah, the only thing is I would like them to be in more scenarios because I think they, it was cool for a variety of reasons, but they're an interesting monster to fight. Um, and it would be cool to see more of them even in, in small doses, I agree. We need more. All right. So now I'm on 33 bolts. So how are we going to approach this at a harder difficulty? I would, oh, no, no, no, go for it. Just jump right in there and just like get smashed by everything. Right? It's easy. Right. And just see what happens. Just push buttons and pull levers. That's what I say every time. The very beginning of this, now we probably need to talk a little bit about the end of last week is that feel, and we didn't mention this in the last recording, we will now feel mentioned towards the end of the last week, he was like, done my trial and he read exactly what it was. And we were like, Oh, amazing. You know, well done. I don't have the card with me, so I can't say a word for word. But I just know that in any given scenario, he can't say the words attack, damage or take. And every time he does, he takes two damage, right? So he did that trial and in last week, and it was funny because for some reason there was one moment, I remember he specifically said the word attack. So when he explained what his trial was, I'm like, Oh my God, that's amazing. But by the way, no, I heard you say attack during one thing when you were pointing at the screen of X Haven during just one arbitrary round that happened in the game. And he was immediately like, Oh, no, you know, you've got to, you know, redo it kind of thing. And it's weird going into a scenario where you know what someone's trial is, but that should have its, you know, it should be advantageous to go in there and knowing that everyone's kind of reminding you of what you cannot or should not say. And you know, we're all encouraging this. So we kind of at the very beginning, he's already replaced the word damage with the word rabbits, I believe. He went with rabbits. And like even before the scenario started, he would have taken about eight damage. And we had to say to him, as soon as, you know, as soon as like it's go time, all right, that's when the thing starts, get all of your damage attack and takes out of the way now. Yeah. Because, and this ended up becoming probably the funniest thing in the game in a very, very long time. And I'm so glad that this trial went to fill because it is amazing. I wish we could just record it. And the amount of times he says it. And then Mark just goes to X haven and goes, yep, take two damage. Yeah. Take two damage. Take two, because, oh, but my health should be on this because I healed, you know, with my hillpot. Okay. Cool. We'll just bump it up again. And then we'll take two damage. And then take two damage. It had me in stitches and it just was a very, very enjoyable trial to watch. It's a, yeah, it's a funny one because it's funny when it happens and no fault to fill because it's tricky, right? And hey, and I think it's, it's one of those ones where you need to be switched on all the time, which it's, it's really, it's tough in a game like that. We're playing for three hours, right? So it, but there were some very funny moments that came out because of it. And I think as well, because Phil is trying really hard that he also gets really disappointed when it's pointed out, because he's not really noticing that he's saying it, which is usually what's going to happen with a filler word or a particular word. And so when we point that out, it's almost like, like he just, it's just this like sigh of like, oh, not again. Yeah. And, but it's because he said it, but he didn't realize he said it because he's trying not to. Yeah, so it's such a weird and interesting trial. And you're right. It's the best that it's landed on Phil. Thanks, Phil. It is. Sorry that you have to deal with this one, but it's definitely creating some entertainment for the table. 100%. So we started this particular scenario and we had all the drapes in the room. It was kind of like, oh, no, we didn't really have time to plan anything because they all have really large movement and they all came up to us. And our mate, Phil, who's on his playing play, got to open up again. And he did something he did similar to last week except this time gas, he planned to go invisible, which was pretty cool. So he was going to go real deep into the whole group of all the drags and all that. And he went invisible. And then you mentioned that in the session, okay, cool. That's turn one. What are you planning on doing next turn? And he was like, oh, uh, that's your shot. And then the raining drakes, he came out of invis and there was, oh, no, no, no, no, it got nice and munched. I also took a bit of a beating in this particular room. I got Cassandra out. I didn't bring her last week. So I think I did bring her this week because I figured she would help with clearing. She got booked again because she gets hit by it only creates and plus twos, even though she's got five health and a shield. And we're just, I mean, Gaz and I are just sitting there waiting, praying, hoping for a blink blade and kelp to explode and do their thing. And it was a long wait, at least in this particular run. Because this was looking incredibly resetty. Like we were in the room for, I don't know, six, seven rounds or whatever. And it was, we were struggling to actually clear safely. We were just taking damage left, right in the center, almost certain feel had to discard two cards fairly early or something along those lines. And of course, we remember the special rules, if anyone exhausts, the snow is gone. Oh, we lose. Yeah. The one special rule that's really important. Super important. I'm pretty sure that Phil had to discard a card in the first round. Most probably. Like he got, was he starting up forward and the drakes pulled one of the early cards? And that's one. No, because I think the first, I think like the first turn, he just moved forward and hit something, then he moved back and he was going to give us all movement. But then he was targeted. And so the, I think maybe the range drakes, the speeding drakes might have gone next and they all just moved up slightly and just like shot him for like six at a time. And because he'd said attack and or damage a couple of times since the game started, which he was lower on health and then he had to burn a card. Yeah. So it was off to a good start. Yeah. But some of it was very self-inflicted, which is very amazing. Yeah. Very good. One thing that did. Yeah. Sorry, okay. No, no, no. I was going to end that bit and talk about the second run. Oh, no. I was just going to say one thing that did happen at the perfect timing was there was a listener or watcher or fan of the show or person that knows the show exists that popped into discard at precisely the right time, which was a mikkoopa, I believe, and said, notification for gas trial, which is exactly what I asked for. I was remembering it, but that made me look back and remember it proper because I had, I put it up in front of me instead of putting it down. And I was like remembering, but I kept forgetting it because that's what I do. And then I saw that thing and I was like, yes, okay, cool, it is. And it was basically we're about to pick, I think, either pick our cards or it was very, very close to right the start, which was perfect timing. So I made sure that was front of mind. Yeah. And I'm glad because I don't have to listen to another week of you forgetting it, which is awesome. That's all. That's it. Yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you. So mkoopa. Yeah. And I am Cooper, mikkoopa. Yes. It's probably mkoopa, right? Mikkoopa. It might be mikkoopa. Like, I don't know. It might be mkoopa. But yes. And also Mark did a good job of just randomly through the scenario, but like, charges. And I was just like, yes, thank you. So I was remembering it, but it was good to kind of get these slight bumps of like just remembering so that I didn't forget to do it. Yes. And we will talk about it later. We will talk about it later. So we collectively decided to restart this scenario. And then conversation came up, oh, just quickly on the previous one. One of the things that were probably booking us the most was the fact that all our cards had to go at +10. And against the drakes, which are already covered, is horrendous. And that's probably one of the main reasons why Phil got booked. And we just, that initiative card just did not work against these mobs. Yep. Yep. That's, I think I said it when we were choosing them, I'm like, uh, that's the least bad one. And it's probably not going to be that big a deal because 10 isn't an issue. Yeah. And on the first turn, the drakes went one initiative before me, including my +10. So I would have gone before them without that. Yeah. And my thing was going to be to muddle like five, which would have been them. And then looking at the cards that came up, one of them was a crit, which is why Phil took too much damage, which he wouldn't have taken because they would have had muddle. So one turn it took for Mark to, uh, Mark's prediction to come true of like, you realize now we're going to get booked by this initiative, uh, kind of challenge. Yeah. So. Which is, which is good. In a way, that a challenge card can be challenging. Yep. Like that. So we did decide to start again and the conversation came down to, do we turn it down? All right. We, we tried plots through. It was quite bad. Do we turn it down? And I think Mark may have suggested, or someone suggested that we keep it at the difficulty it is because it felt doable despite feeling quite difficult and, and get rid of the challenge card. I think for me, the turning point, cause we were, I'm making an airing was when you said, Oh, well, if we're going to drop it down to one, then I'll change my deck back to just like low, easy mode and just pump through it. And I was like, wow, that's a challenge if ever I've heard one. Let's do two. Who said that me? You? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think you were pretty adamant, but I think instead of just saying like, I think we should do plus two, you were like, well, I'll just change my deck back to like, and I was like, I mean, fill even that says, just if we drop the challenge, if we're going to do plus two, which I think is a good call for what we were doing because we really struggled in that first room. We did, but I think a lot of it, and we'll talk about the difficulty afterwards, you kind of used to running on autopilot with a lot of your cards and a lot of the movements. And you just in a regular game of Frosthaven, at least that I've experienced, your kelp just runs around and two shots, everything. And then, you know, the Blinkblade was doing that before the kelp was even doing that. Now they're together on the same team. So it's kind of like, at least spice it up for them and we'll throw the odd heel every now and then. So it felt doable, right? It felt plus who did feel doable, just was going to require less recklessness and more planning, a little bit more planning, a little bit more communication. So we set it up again, take away the, what we do is remove the challenge card, and we jump straight back into it. And already after the first round or two, just watching what everyone was doing, more thought was going into the card selection. People are taking a little bit longer with choosing their cards and we were more just careful with our communication and just making sure everyone understood what we were intending to do. It's making sure that the rounds themselves had more impact as opposed to, because the game I've mentioned in the past, there's a tempo thing. And if you fall behind in the tempo game, it's really hard to catch back up, making sure that the tempo stays good and that you're not having dead turns. You're still achieving something. And we definitely did that. Like it was, it was evident after the first two rounds. But also what I noticed was the tension went up. Every single round felt like really tense as we're revealing what the enemies are doing, working out if our initiative is working out and we're getting the plan that we had set in place. And it was a completely different feeling, which was cool. Yeah. Yeah. It's a really good point. So we compared the very first turn of that scenario in our first run to what you're speaking about, which turned into most turns through our second run, is that the first one was like, oh, yeah, pick your cards, do a thing, feel it's going to move around and give us all movement. We were all going to go forward and do things. I was going to muddle things, whatever. And then he got exploded. And then the drags moved forward and tactics and everything really bad happened. It was almost like a holy crap. When did that happen? It was going to like stroll in and compared to, as you said, every turn we were communicating more about the threats, I think, is a little bit about what we're doing, but it was more about like identifying threats on the board and people talking about how they could or couldn't deal with that, right? And that kind of came into potential CC or killing things if we could or whatever, just so that you knew where you should or shouldn't because they were hitting hearts. You're like, I don't want to get hit by that. I'm going to be like, don't I? I've got it. Yeah. Cool. But you're right because the tension always came out of what they're going to draw because you can't deal with all threats. I think that's one of the things that I know that they've changed from Gloomhaven and was one of the issues with some of the classes and their kind of supporting abilities was that you could neutralize most of what was on the board a lot of the time. I feel like in Frosthaven so far anyway, and I mean, this is when it's been difficult, it's because you can't do that. And definitely in this scenario, we could probably manage a couple, but we were going to get hit by some stuff. So there were most turns where it was like, okay, well, hopefully they don't draw something really bad because that's going to make us not dealing with them even worse. We did more CC in this for that reason. Like you said, the tension comes, the card goes up. We see what everyone's doing and then it's risk management and it's a priority system. This thing's shielding. Ignore it. We're not going to deal with this right now. There's nothing over there. Like if one person takes two hits from a Renning Drake, let's say it's Phil, for example, who's level four and he's, you know, what, 14 health or something like that. And he's a two hits is nearly going to kill him, right? Especially if they pull really well, like they draw really, really well. And then all of a sudden the whole group's mentality or the whole group's change, the priority is crap, get Phil out of here, heal him, keep him up, protect him. And that's what sets you on the back foot a little bit is that you, instead of assessing the whole board and the whole situation and trying to work out what everyone's role is and performing it, all of a sudden it changes to panic mode of crap. We need, you know, this person's dying, quick focus card choices and all of that on keeping that person up and then you start to fall a little bit behind. And because that was what happened in the first round, first run, we thought about that in the second run, which meant that our health was relatively high despite there being the exact same amount of mobs and the RNG still pulling the same amount of cards. It's not like they shielded themselves three rounds in a row and didn't do anything. They were still doing everything. But I mean, Mark on kelp has a lot of CC. You've got some CC, I've got CC. And the next minute, we're calling out to some targets, we're calling out, you know, Mark's got a stun and the CC was just, it felt really good. It felt really rewarding when you see all of the mobs and what they're about to do and you're about to take seven different hits that's being spread around the party and all of a sudden, by the time it's their turn, we're taking two, right? And the two hits that are coming are on a target that has a bunch of shield and a ward and things like that. And I think that was a great growth exercise for what could be. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I think it was, we had, I think as you mentioned at the start, we had to play it differently, right? We had an auto pilot and I think that first one kicked us out of that. Just as a side note for anybody who might be new to the term, CC is crowd control. Just in case that's a, so that's your stuns, your just arms, your immobilizers, all that stuff. Thought it was credit card. I thought we just went, you know what? Isaac, where's the DLC? We paid for it. He was like, here's your new buffs. Here's your new, you know, skin that gives you plus five to all starts and where we went. Yep. So we actually cleared the first room bar two imps that we just talk as and feel can deal with, which is, they're forest imps. What are they going to do? They're going to do a little four damage nuke and maybe a good one. Can I talk about my trial now? Yeah. Go for it. Yeah. So the trial that I had, which I forgot twice, was a lot, something I'll paraphrase here. Oh, I've got it. All of your attacks can only target the lowest numbered standard on the map. Yep. So this is why it was something that I was really annoyed that I forgot the last two weeks because a, there wasn't a lot of mobs that I can do, not a lot of attacking that be, it's also something that there's a chance that I completed by accident, but I wasn't willing to say I did. Even though I think looking at the DPS meters on those last two scenarios, only attacked like three or four times, right? Which is what makes it more annoying because I could have just not done those attacks or targeted, you know, the standard with the lowest. Disclaimer wise, you're playing the shards that it's focusing not so much on attacks, right? Yeah. Yeah. I'm trying to be more supportive, right? Yeah. And, and let the, that the DPS go to town. So it was, it was really like this one particular was very, very tricky because both times that we set it up, the number one stand E, right, was a Drake that was at the back of the room. So it was very much out of range for me and looking at some of my cards, like I have a card that is arranged to attack. And you start with brittle or something, right? Well, yes. I can also start with brittle as a, as a starting thing, and I gain a bonus to resources. So, but one of my cards is the stun one target, what's an attack. And if you spend a residence, I think it's called, you stun it. And if you spend two residents, then you add an extra target. So you spend three and you can stun two targets. Pretty good. But it's an attack. So I couldn't do it without booking my trial. So that made it really tricky. So I was like, okay, I can do, I've got a longer range attack. And so it was kind of these times that I was able to move in and do that fast forward to when we had two imps on relatively low life sitting in the main room while daddy and Mark have kind of moved on to go fight the next room, feels kind of hiding back, trying to heal and rest. I'm sitting there, moving forward slowly going, okay, I'm like, I can't kill this. I'm like, let's just kill it. I'm like, I can't kill it. It's like, why am I like, I can't kill this thing. It's all we've heard. They just said it's so windy. Like, Oh, come on. Of course you can. So we like that. It was like, just kill it on the way out. And everyone was like having a go and then not killing it because it had two shields and it was leaving on one life and then like, ah, whatever, tell me on one life. I'll just leave it and go fight those other things. I'm like, I really, really need someone to kill this thing. So yeah, it was, it was interesting. I had one card that is a move and then something adjacent to me takes true damage. So there was a situation where I could use that to hurt things, but I burned that on my first cycle because I was like, I think I, for some reason, I looked at it and I think the top wasn't going to be all that particular helpful. So I was just like, Oh, I can't even do that now, like to kill these stupid imps. So I basically just sat next to these imps getting smashed by them. You know, just whinging of your own asking for help. They're just forest imps guys. There's a reason we left them because we believe that you can handle them because you're lazy. That's why I don't want to go back. Yeah, I don't want to go back three hacks, Texas. So anyway, that was my trial and it made the first room really difficult. And then because we were setting up the next room, right, and we happened to have killed number one, flying Drake, the spinning Drake, when the next one got put in, we had a spare standard. And there we go. It goes in at the back of the room. So I was like, wow, I'm not killing these then. So it was a really cool trial, but it was very frustrating on this scenario, particularly because there was so many mobs and they were spread out so far. That's the other thing. In the, if I think about the last one, we were in one room at the start where everything was there. I wouldn't have a problem on targeting stuff. Then the next one, when we cleared, there was only like four mobs and they were right there. And then the last room we jumped over. So it didn't matter. Yeah. So the last one, it would have been super easy to do. Yeah. But yeah, but anyway, I did manage to get it done. And in the towards the end of it, I managed to, there were multiple standees that had the same number. So I was able to do that. And yeah, it was good. So it's a fair to say that if you didn't have that trial, you would have contributed more damage and that is scenario would have, I mean, we made it spoiler alert. It would have been easier. Yeah. There's definitely times it would have been easier because like I said, on turn one, I can do my stun too. So I could just stun those two drags that were right in front of us. Like having between mine and marks like stuns plus your disarm, we can probably at least one or two targets in a cycle have kind of, you know, C seed or slow them down at least for, you know, three or four turns, but I couldn't really use it. No. Yeah. Okay. That's good. It's good. I'm glad that we know it after the scenario because yeah, there are definitely times so it's like, wow, you're really complaining a lot and not doing a lot of the damaging stuff and the stunning stuff, because you can't obviously target these kind of things. It was very confusing. But I'm glad that it wasn't you and it was your trial because next week we should be able to play a plus three then, right? Sure. So the plan that open the doors, we wouldn't, we know that there's the lock doors. We can't open without the pressure plates. So they're probably hiding behind a room is probably going to be one in the left room and one in the right room. So I'll just go open one up and we'll get an idea of how big it is because there are, there were eight standees or something in the first room and it took us a while, especially at our difficulty that the side rooms will be tiny, they have to be, they'd have to be tiny with a pressure plate, et cetera. And we opened the door and there are heaps of drakes in there and one for us to buff them and heal them and all that kind of stuff. And there were two pressure plates, two, right? And there was a special rule that just said, do not set up the pressure plate B, which is one of the pressure plates in that room for two characters. And that's when the penny kind of dropped and it's like, oh guys, I think there might be two in each room, which is really awkward because yeah, trying to split us up and with the size of this room and how many mobs are in here, it's likely that the, it's going to be mirrored closely in the other room. And that's kind of the bit where once, I mean, we just started clearing through that room and cutting things back because, you know, it was going to be all dangerous and all where I was kind of like, I don't know if we can do this. I don't know if our cards are going to allow us to do this. And also it's an escape scenario, right? And it's not a kill-all, which makes me think maybe we're not supposed to kill everything. We just go and stand on a pressure plate, get our arses handed to us, survive as long as we can, and then run to some kind of exit that's going to spawn a little bit later. And yeah, well, yeah. I think that's it. We've done a couple recently where we did pressure plates. So without going into numbers of them where we've had to stand on multiples and we've managed to cheese them in a sense, not cheese them, but we were able to not have to kill all the monsters on all of them. Like we did the big robot one where we just basically skipped that mechanic entirely. We did the prison one where we did kill most of the stuff up there, but we were able to in a way get everyone back down and do some stuff. So this was one where I'm like, there is no way in hell that we can split up into four, like, you know, two and two in each room and stand there, go in, stand there for a turn and then come back out without just getting completely blown up because like I said, these things were hitting for five to seven damage each time. There was a bunch of range stuff in there. It just was not going to happen. Like we would just instal off. So we definitely were in a we can have to kill this or at least most of it. We crunched the numbers and the amount of times that we're going to get hit was going to be far greater than our health would sustain. So yeah, it just became became a little bit of a kiting game. I just want to just note quickly. I did change my deck in the second one in the second run because I was like, you know what? This is harder. I'm going to actually have to try hard a little bit and actually go through my deck and actually find cards that I think will be suitable for this. And more shields came in and I was like, no, I'm going to definitely going to play a more tanking kind of role with the Jason Kirsting that I have the infusion and you were also shielding me. So there were a lot of times I was running around with maybe three shield, three or four shields, which was very, very helpful. But finally, it finally felt like I was tanking and I haven't felt that yet. I've definitely taken a couple of hits here and there, but because of how scary these rooms were and the monster types were, it's not like the kelp and the blink player just going to charge in really nearly knowing that they're going to probably survive. And there's really nothing for me to tank because their initiatives are lower and they'll win on the tiebreaker. It actually felt like, okay, everyone's going to be back and careful. I'll take the hits. I'm going to go in there and reduce them as much as I can. And it felt good. It really did feel good, very rewarding. So I wanted to go in and commit, then we're going to blow a bunch of stuff up and we kind of everything back into the thing. Mark, this is the part, every single scenario there's a part and this is the part where Mark goes, no, I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it, I'm going to blink in and I'm going to go absolutely ham. And like he did, it's good that it still works, it's good that even at a high difficulty he can still go in, go in this pop two power potions hit with advantage and just blow up a room. Yeah. And that's exactly what happened, which made this so much easier. And then the plan was ultimately Gaz and I are going to sit on these pressure plates for the two DPS who can go invisible, can envisage their way into the other room, which we assume is going to have the same kind of size and the two pressure plates, which will give us the opening for the last door that was locked. Yeah. And I think with seeing the help do that in this scenario, two observations, one, it's still as busted as it was when we were doing it on low difficulty, like nothing changed, it's still deleted like three or four monsters, right? But two, now instead of it feeling like it's both busted and kind of too, like kind of over-tuned for the scenario, it felt required. Yes. Right. Like we don't, we don't complete that scenario if he doesn't do that. Right. Right. We still had a few cuts, so maybe on a toned-down version of that turn, we maybe still do get through the mobs and we're a little bit weaker, but it definitely felt like that was a turning point from a, almost for a little bit of a deep breath, because there was still three or four there to deal with that were quite high, and then after his turn, they were pretty much all dead and maybe there was one left alive. So then that we could then kill that, move in, and they went and did their thing. So yeah, it definitely seemed like a required component of how we completed the scenario rather than a, "Oh, well, he just did it instead of all of us." Yeah. There was a world where while back when he would do the wombo combo that he would do, that it would almost be seen a little bit, and I can quote it from me or say that this is the way it feels a little bit, is that when someone does that, you're potentially robbing the fun from everyone else, right? Because they're doing everything and you're not, you don't have to do anything. So in a way, you don't really have to contribute to that, because it's done. Like you said, this was a requirement. So the minute he's doing that, instead of sitting there going, "Oh, here we go," standard room clearing fun, killer buzz guy, it was more like, "Oh my God, go for it." Like the cheering, the arms up, it's like, "Come on, Mark, you got this. We need this reprieve," and it was such a different feeling. I just absolutely loved it, just the way that kind of came together. That's another really good point, is that we were able to get behind him doing that thing as a really cool thing that he was doing, rather than, and not the way against it, but it's more like a, well, that, the room being deleted, and we felt this with the blink blade, and I'm sure there's been other times that we felt this with certain classes when they get really strong, is a, it doesn't really matter what cards I pick, because I either need to go stupidly early to hit something that is irrelevant, or I need to pick movement cards to get into another room to do something before. Sorry, this was a cool situation of, it was like, "Yes, okay, cool," like, I was hoping that he drew really well, right, because it was like, "We need this," and that's, again, that's a really cool feeling, but just to be clear again, for I get messages from the door, absolutely still busted, okay, and not just power pots, let's move on. That's just power pots, so the other guys run into the other room, they go invisible and they hit their things, and sure enough, in there, there's more draining drugs and, you know, spitting drugs and all that. Although that room seemed easier. It did a little bit. It did a little bit. It seemed to want empty. I think there were more spitting drugs in our room, but that's born, which, I don't have that check, but yeah, it felt easier, definitely, it probably feels easier, because they were invisible and just ignored most of the things. In fact, due to the fact that they were invisible and all of that, a lot of the mobs then chose us as focuses and started pouring out into the hallway, and with their movement, it's kind of like, "Oh, we don't have that luxury, do we?" Well, I think that Drake's had a move five, it was, and they drew it two turns in a row, so I think that was actually what happened, because Mark opened the door, was in vise, and then they moved out five or something like that, and I was, like, over the other side of the map, and it's like, okay, well, as long as I go before them and they don't do their move five, well, I'm fine, and they did it, and they managed to do their really big move and hit me, and I'm like, it was so far away, I was like two or three rooms away, and this thing just lagged it for me to absolutely munch me, and I'm like, this is, I gotta get out of here. It wasn't that bit, it was, there was another bit where you made me discard a card for you, and it was like, your sauce, your gazbirds. Oh, yeah, I think that might have been a rest maybe, or I don't know, whatever it was. It was just, actually, that could have been in, I think I got hit really hard, and that's when we, yes, it was, and then we realized that you could have used your pants. Yup. My pants were up. At the time. Yup. But then that's another side point as well, is it, I think we're trying to be also very strict on how we play because the difficulty is pumped up, so, you know, in, just to paint the scenario really quickly for everybody, this thing hit me for a lot, I took the damage, I discarded a card, and then, then it's like, oh, like, before anyone else has gone, right, so very easy to retcon it back, and it's like, oh, he's got these pants that let him take a hit for someone next to him. It's like, oh, I could have used the pants. It would be fine to say, okay, that's fine, because it doesn't change anything, right? It wasn't that you did it because I got hit, because I didn't, I didn't get crit. I think I just got hit. It's the case of going like, oh, but we were like, no, right? Like, again, keeping it really consistent on like, not trying to kind of bend the rules lightly, because it's harder being like, no, we just have to be better. Yes. So, something that I want to keep doing is, you have to think about these things if you've got triggers that you can do, if you've got items you can use, if you've got abilities, you need to do them. Yeah. Unless not doing it breaks the game and you need to retcon it because that thing has to have happened. Yes. Right. For a game state thing. Like a targeting thing or something like that. Yeah. Correct. Yeah, yeah. So, I think stuff like that, I think we just need to be a lot cleaner on. So, yeah, I think it kind of keeps the difficulty wholesome, I guess, in a way. It does. It makes the finish, basically, more rewarding, where you can sit there and go, you know what? We did that on, you know, a hard mode and even more so hard mode when it's very easy to make little tweaks here and there to make it easier. And I think we've spoken about this slightly, is that we did that for a really long time and we've been talking about how we're a stickler for kind of the rules, even though we get them all wrong, but we're a stickler for what we think they are, right? And then we correct them when we get them wrong. I feel like there's a place where maybe in the last four to eight weeks, when things have been a bit like kind of steam rolling, that we've just gone a bit loose with that because, you know what? It doesn't matter. Like, it's like me taking five damage or you taking the five damage when everything's about to die anyway or about to win is like, whatever, yeah, just use your abilities because. And so, those tiny little trigger windows where technically it's, you didn't miss it, but it doesn't really have an impact. You're like, yeah, fine. Yeah. Right. So scenario impacted it, like those steam rolling ones, you, it wouldn't impact the end result, whereas this happening and me not using the actual legs, you probably had one card left in your hand, which is why you chose the negator and that's where it went. So if, like, if we, if we retconned it, you all of a sudden you have that card left. This can impact whether or not we, we actually finished the scenario. Well, because, yeah, in two turns, I would have used that, which gives everyone basically a move five, which we're all trying to get to the exit. It's huge. It's a costly mistake, but we owned it and we were just like, no, no, no, let's see, you know, how we go. And it just put more importance on making sure that we're switched on enough to make sure we're doing this properly. Yeah. So anyway, cool. There's just a really, really interesting side note around tightening things up a bit and how I think this encourages to do that. Yes. So the other two pressure plates are done. All four pressure plates are being stood on. The doors open up. We got the last room, which is a nice small room with all the escape hexes. We've got three polyvers and a treasure chest, okay? And immediately the polar bear start, you know, bottlenecking that doorway and Phil runs into our room and we're like, well, we're not going this way. We're going to be going that way. It was really confusing. Mark teleports from the far right hand room, which we didn't clear anything, by the way, into the last room. And Gaz now teleports because he's now got the most MVP item in the game that seems to have just some amazing play weekly where he can then tell a week. Yep. Teleport straight to the last room. This has been the best useless random item I've ever had. Like it's just, I don't want to replace my, it's a chess piece. I don't want to replace it. For those that aren't aware, it's a cloak that you can teleport up to 20 spaces as long as you end next to another player, another character. So yeah, I mean, especially in escape scenarios, but there's also just been other times like in the robot one, I used it to great that that was an escape, but that was the case of I could, I could go push a button and then teleport over. So again, just came in clutch. Yep. And the two of them were in that last room, I still wasn't feeling confident. Like I wasn't like, God, this is, you know, going to be horrendously bad, but one bad or one misplay. And that's the scary thing. One misplay. You don't think about the positioning of where you're at versus how many things are in the next room that have a move fiber, a move six and can catch up with you. I had to still get to that last room with you guys there. Now that you're not around to give me the birds thing, I had to now make sure that I could get them myself. And you got polar bears in the doorway who can mobilize. I still had cards, like item cards that can remove conditions, which was really lucky that I still had them. So it was more that conversation about here's the bad thing, here's my response to if bad thing happens, a contingency plan and just making sure that we had the tools needed to get out. Yeah. So we did, we got to the last ring, everyone started blinking into the last room, jumping over stuff. So everyone started to one by one escape with the exception of Mark, who I think missed time to his initiative. And there was a tiny butt clenching moment where I think the polar bears, all the running drugs, one of the two came up and started hitting him multiple times. And he was discarding, I mean, losing cards to do that to then have done left as his last turn. He went on to the escape. And that, oh my God, when he was explaining that he's going to have to lose cards, he's only got two left and none anywhere else, that was kind of like, you're kidding me. You cannot throw in the last round, just because he decided to hang around. But to be fair, he was hanging around for me because he was like, we are not leaving until daddy is in here. Well, yeah, that's the really tricky thing, right? Because he was doing the right thing, because I stayed as well, but I stayed down a bit lower. But that's the, yeah, the hard thing, it's like staying there to make sure we can help in case something went wrong. And then you're like, cool, I've made it. And he's like, oh, I'm getting punched in the head. It's like, I know, like now maybe I should have stayed to make sure you can get back. You know, so it was, yes, very, very close, a lot closer than it needed to be. But, yeah, it was kind of, again, made it a good feeling to get through. Yes. So we finished, we all escaped our first pass through difficulty, yay. And we received an item, which was the cracked idol, which is the one that we were holding. Oh, by the way, Phil was holding that the whole time and he never passed it off to anyone. No one asked for it. It was great on him. He has advantage in all his attacks. And Phil, you have advantage, don't forget, draw a second card. Yep. Forgetting. Yeah, it was a weird kind of item buff because you don't attack heaps, I wasn't attacking very much. Mark basically has advantage all the time anyway, whenever he's invisible. So it really only had one target, which meant that, which is good, eh, because we could do it. But I feel like there's a, there's a world with a different party makeup where you are kind of ordering, staggering your initiative so that you can pass it off to people. It's part of probably the strategy, Ryan's encouraged. Yeah. Well too, it may like DPS that are going to work hand in hand. You just make sure that the one with the idol goes first and the end of the turn, they pass it off and then they can pass it back. So they're always going to have this idol and everyone gets advantage, which maybe is kind of factored into the difficulty of the scenario, like if you're going to have a lot of advantage, then you probably hit a bit harder. So yeah, as a, as a cool little bonus, we just didn't really need to play around with it. Yeah. So an interesting question I have for you now, which is the same question I ask you every week. How are you? Like, this is a really hard one to answer. I know. I mentioned that too, I had a lot more, a lot of fun with this one and more fun that I've had with Frosthaven in, you know, recent weeks, like I loved the prison bait, break scenarios from a design perspective, from a law perspective and we've talked at length about that. But I think because we seem rolled through them so much that from a play experience perspective, it probably wasn't as good as some other scenarios have been, right? And it just left something on the table. This is almost the opposite. I go, well, the experience of playing this was great, like had so much fun, it was so tense. It was very close. We had important decisions to make. The scenario itself is probably pretty, and I'll use vanilla, which I do all the time, meaning it's good, right? But there wasn't anything really special. I mean, standing on the pressure page is interesting with escape, but like it's not doing something we hadn't done before. I mean, the Drake's did mix it up. So that is one thing that does make it a bit more memorable. But it was really, I think, the difficulty of the situation that made it more tense, which made it more enjoyable, because I think if we had run this on our normal difficulty, which is what plus zero, this wouldn't definitely wouldn't make my top 10. I don't think it made my top 10 now, but it definitely would be no, it wouldn't be in my bottom 10, because it wasn't a bad scenario. It would just be super forgettable, right? You'd be like, remember that time that we had to stand on the pressure plate? I'm like, no, which one? And you don't really remember when we had to fight the Drake's? I'm like, oh, yeah, vaguely, the one that Phil kept forgetting at an advantage, right? That would be it. That would be the memory of that, right? Or maybe the trials come into play. So it's fascinating, right? I don't think this scenario is amazing. No. I need it amazing, I bump the difficulty up, and I'm really curious if we maybe need to restart our campaign. 100%. I mean, think back to some of those scenarios that would be like, yeah, whatever. They could be mind-blowingly amazing, because like you said, it's the monster variety of in there. It's a great choice of monsters. That's where a lot of attention comes from, and then you add the difficulty to that. That's kind of what made this so enjoyable, and it's weird. It's the same game. It's the same game we've been playing, the same classes we've been playing, and a very kind of ordinary, like you said, vanilla scenario, like objective, but that one decision to increase the difficulty has just made that so much more memorable. And once we finished and we sat around the table, we're like, holy crap, that was fun. And Mark was just like, I mean, even halfway through, Mark said, I'm enjoying this a lot more than I have in the last couple of weeks, like we're all enjoying the game. That's something that we've put a lot of time into, but this was like, it's a weird thing where we all came together and was like, wow, this is fun. Yeah. Yeah. And finally, like I just wish someone had suggested this earlier. I know that Duol sometimes suggests to people who are finding the game difficult to lower the difficulty. I just, like I agree with you, I wish you'd mentioned that we should probably increase it, and it might be time for an increase. We should probably speak to, again, just really quickly as to why we haven't, is that we just have found we don't have a lot of chance to replay stuff. So if we bump it up, we've done some hard ones before that I feel like if it was that much harder, we wouldn't have had a chance to, but yeah, we just kind of took the plunge and I think it's worked. So I guess it's now something we need to work out moving forward. Is that where we see it? Yeah. And I think, I think right now, just on the topic of difficulty very quickly, the what it does is that I think you can technically do this at any difficulty. What this has taught me is that it's just more down, obviously, to how you're playing and how well you know your class, how well you can coordinate your rounds with your mates and look after the board. And the rest of it is just numbers and RNG, obviously, from the ability deck, which by the way, your ability to look at that top card is even more clutched now because it allows us to have a full round of planning of how we're going to deal with a certain enemy because we can see what they're doing. Yeah. Well, that's kind of what we talked about offline a bit, and in between sessions was that, you know, with say the Astral and your Disarms or your Briddles, you know, my ability to look at kind of the, or even your muddles, right, the muddles that you throw out from your attacks, my ability to look at the cards or some of those things, they don't seem impact for when the thing's going to die anyway, right? Like, it doesn't matter what the drakes are doing because they're going to die. It doesn't matter that they did his arm because all you're doing is saving one attack of four, which makes no difference because the person's probably not going to get attacked by anything else. So it's more like, oh, I can do these cool things, but I'm just doing them because that's what my cards say and I should be doing that. Whereas that it felt, again, like all of those abilities were required. Yes. Right. So having a look at the next monster ability was like, hey, what are they doing? But when are they going, right? And that was probably the most important thing is like, okay, well, we've got to go before them doing that thing because we want to kill them or we want to stun them or something like that. So yeah, it is, it is really interesting how much excuse that. Yeah. No, it's, it's been fun to be able to craft a deck and I think this is going to lead further into the importance of deck building and making sure that we're not getting complacent because I think that's something that we fall into the habit of. It's just going in, take a few hits, et cetera. Now we have to really focus a lot more on what we're doing. That's it. And I think to that point, right, it means now Phil and Mark playing those kind of really heavy DPS characters like that we've sort of talked about, they are going to, I need to probably optimize a bit more and not talking about items and making sure that they have all the right stuff, but they need to play their turns right. And the reward for that is that they're going to be able to clear this harder content and they're kind of at all in that process. Big time. It's going to be more rewarding because it's not who can race to see who can kill everything the fastest. It's like, how do I plan my turn so that, you know, we get through this, this speed up because now those high health, high damage monsters are actually seeming like a roadblock or a hurdle to get past rather than just a speed up, you know? What would be interesting is whether or not the bump up in difficulty will put some of those bin monsters on slightly higher alert and whether or not they become more dangerous. And I was going to say that because the polar bears have 24 health on our difficulty, but that's just ridiculous. Now, I don't think we've been them, but like they definitely mid if that. I know some of the ones, like you said, like earth demons, like they're going to have a lot of health as well. I think like the still autonomous ones or whatever they're called, like they had the same like 24, 25 health and what, two or three shields or something something. That's basically for our party at the moment, they're invulnerable, like you may as well just put a dash next to the hit point. So this thing is going to run around and just do whatever it wants for the length of the time it's on the board. Because we will just, just quoting here first, you did just call fill and mark tools. That's okay. I will cut that out and save it for future. Excellent. Very quickly. Because we are running out of time trial talk. So Phil did not complete his trial. He gave up after he, because we gave him an option to opt out once he had taken enough damage and to say, okay, do you want to try again next week? We have thoughts on that, because that, his trial in particular, this is one where you have to track yourself because people aren't expected to know you're not meant to share these things. That's the one thing I find a little odd. I love the trial system. I find it a little bit awkward when you have one that requires kind of everyone to help you in a way to track of what it is. Otherwise, yeah, it just seems weird. Yeah, that one there I really like, but it does kind of go a little bit again. So because I think this one works better when everybody knows what you can. I can't say because it makes it a kind of a group thing to help that person not achieve it, but I mean, because they're not, we're not helping him get it. We're just making sure we're helping him police it, which is, which is important in that one. Because otherwise you don't know, like you go through and go, I'm pretty sure I'm fine. As you said, it's really easy to say these words and not even know that you did. Yeah. Yeah. I would like more of them. It kind of gives me party game vibes that you can't really take too seriously because it's not built into the game. It's got nothing to do with the game. It's literally a person. There's nothing card related. There's no negative there. It's just things you can't say. And I like the fact that it's in there, but yeah, it's harder because if I'm looking at a card and just going, okay, cool, people don't get to enjoy it anywhere near as much as we now do. Well, that's exactly it. We wouldn't have got to enjoy this process of him doing the trial without knowing about it. And I think we are enjoying that. I mean, I don't know how much you guys would have enjoyed my trial more if you'd known what it was. Right? You would have just if you'd known it, you would have been like, okay, well, that's just a limitation he's got. Or is it me not telling you and just literally like, can you kill this thing? Because I can't let no just do it. I was like, I can't. Yeah. Right. Then you like again, it could be a battle goal. It could be part of the trial could be the whole trial. You don't know why I can't kill that one. Yeah. Right. So there's mystery around it. And I'm not telling you it's because of my problems. I can't do it. Then you guys need to play around that. So that's kind of fun. You why? Then it's almost solved. Yeah. So good system. Isanda. So doing really well, looking forward to getting through more. I'm looking forward to completing mine at some stage. I'm sure a lot of people know what it is. And if you've been keeping track, you'll understand why I have not been able to do it. My only guess is like, watch everyone else complete the rest of the deck and then you complete yours. Right? Like, could be. Could be. Mark's quick thoughts about scenario 133, but bumping the difficulty made it feel like the game I remembered so much more engaging. The scenario itself was a great continuation of the first with a funny story to bridge the two. The idol being helpful this time was a nice twist and it had good impact. Monsters were brutal. Mechanics were tricky. In terms of mechanical design, I feel like this ticked a lot of boxes and for a two-parter its story was fairly engaging. Two claws up. Yes. I'm not very good at the game and I wish Daddy could share some of his wisdom with me so I can stop being a new praise Daddy. Oh, thanks Mark. So, and Phil wrote, "Nothing crazy, but fun." I liked the harder level. Um, fair to say, almost dead. Uh, 100%. There's, I don't even think with the difficulty he plays into this, there's just too many monsters. Or me to a scale. I don't think he scales. So. No, well, yeah, that's exactly it. So that's even, even on lower difficulty, he's still getting, if a drake gets next to him, he's dead. 100%. Absolutely dead. Yeah. Uh, community wise, I saw one post on Facebook last year in July, uh, and the person said Frosthaven Center 133 can go die. Um, so they had a bad time. Uh, I will post DPS on the board. We won't go through that. Our post phase, we had the event for the Verlings again. And this time they saw us coming back and they were just like, "Hey, food." And we lost all of our food. And then we had to, we met up with Mays Arthur and we met up with Katherine Olmsted. And they were just like, "Hey, we need to deal with this. How do we deal with this?" And apparently there was two different approaches. One of them is run out their headstrong, which obviously sounds like the right thing to do. They're vermin. So what's going to happen? Right? It's like the Skaven, right? And then you've got a, one, we catch a boat out and it goes all sneaky beaky in a little canoe somewhere and you find that camp. And we assassinate them ultimately. And I mean, that's pretty much what we did. And I don't remember what we got from it. It was a morale or inspiration because they seem to be the two things that give us stuff. And I think we hadn't any other event that went in. No, I'm not sure. Oh, we had an attack. Huh? Well, that was the attack. We did the attack and then we didn't do an event, yeah. Just on that though, I really liked how that one played out. I don't know how much we want to go into detail of it. But from the way they changed an attack to how this one worked, because we were building a strike force. So spoilers, if you're still listening, don't care anyway, you go through your town deck. I think that's what it's called. Yeah, that's right. Our guard deck. Yeah. And it was like pick out six cards and then add in the success and add in the rec card. So you're going in with this really by kind of obviously tuned deck, where you get to pick everything and then you're trying to beat this defense of 75, which is really high. And then there was obviously, I think there was negative to say, if you'd lost two of the three, then you were going to wreck four buildings or something like that. The numbers. Yeah, it's like a random amount of buildings that you draw from the deck. Yeah. But it was so it wasn't individually like here, this is the building under attack. So I think the way they did this was a really cool twist and actually made it like a mini puzzle because we were looking at it, going what would you do? We've got like 350s in there, which was pretty good. But the other three cards, well, a 10 and a 20 wasn't going to get it done. So it was this case of needing to put rolling ones in there. So they could roll into it. Yeah. It's just, I thought it was really cool. It was a little bit of planning and it was a different way of doing it. So yeah, I'd love if more of the attacks had some difference. Yeah. I like that they can add a layer of special rules to a core part of the game. And normally the core part of the game is actual scenarios, but this is they've taken something in the game and gone, you're getting attacked, but here's a bunch of modifiers and special rules that you tweak it to make it thematically work and viable as well. So no, I agree with you. I love it. Now, because we went in twice, all right, we had our first run. We managed to capture a Drake, a Reading Drake in the first run. And then I actually, I think we started asking because there was another group, we know that we had the similar problem with us and we're asking for them because they were confused as to whether or not you can retry a scenario because you failed and do you keep the pet you got? And it seemed to be a yes, which meant on attempt number two, we called a Spitting Drake. So we got two pets from one scenario, which is pretty cool. And they seem to be the last two pets we need. So we, I spun my wheel at work. We went to do that at the end of the session, but I totally forgot. So I introduced the newest pets to the end of Frosthaven's stable. We have our Spitting Drake, Danguga, or just Dang. So congratulations Dang, you are now our Spitting Drake. The Spitting Drake ability was all characters will add poison to all their range attacks for the round, which is fairly cool, especially if you've got, like, I can already see the media doing something like that, which is, which is pretty cool on the guard. I've already forgotten the card and I built my whole thing around a lot of it. Magmals. Yeah. Just that was just off the top of my head. And yeah, it's, it's very cool. Then you've got the Rending Drake, which is on the wheel again, and we got Kalega. So Kalega, congratulations, you are the Amdert Rending Drake. And I'll get guests to write them in his pretty handwriting on those, those cards. Now the Rending Drake is all similar to the Spitting Drake, but it's poison instead. Sorry, it's wound instead. So all characters will add wound to all of their milieu attacks this round. What are your thoughts on those two pets? I think they're really cool. And they're definitely hard to catch because there's not many. They're like super rare Pokemon. Something I just realized when you read them out, though, is that the Spitting Drake is only ranged attacks and the Rending Drake is only melee attacks. I didn't read that the first time, I thought it was just poison to all attacks and wound to all attacks. So I love that it's not just a, like a, because I think a poison to all attacks is pretty, pretty good. Poison to all range attacks is definitely a lot more niche. So you might have to call out, hey, range attacks this turn and then the people with no range attacks are going to be like, what's that? Yeah. I actually don't have any, so. You should do? No. The sword one is still a melee attack. Oh, really? Yeah. Okay. Okay. So you, Mark, and I mean, Phil, I know has ranged attacks. I don't know. I've never seen him do them. No. Yeah. He knows what it does. So it's for you. All me. Me, just me. Yeah. So you should just say, gaz, ad, what is all your range attack? Yeah. That's right. Cool quiz, so funnily enough, adding on to the email I got, I think last week, I think we're talking about the dirt bag, Emcoopa, who spoke to us and has joined at Discord has put, gave me a quiz idea for you. And the quiz idea was basically to name, or this for you to do, you have to name either the monster or character based on the name of an ability card, right? So for example, if I was to say, crushing weight, you say, drifter, that's right, that's right. Or yeah, you name the monster based on the monster ability card. Okay. Now that can be quite difficult. So I've definitely tuned it in such a way that it should be helpful. It's not going to be like, what are they called? Nothing special. Nothing special. Correct. It's got to be everything. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty much. He said it could be a lot of silly fun, so let's go through it. I have picked 21. There are 10, there are 10 monsters, and there are 11 class abilities. Oh, okay. You pick class abilities. Yeah. Cool. All right. Let's go. So we're going to go with the monsters first. Okay. All I'm going to say is the title, and you just kind of have to use that information to work it out. Okay. So number one, we have aid from below. Uh, the borrowing blades? No. But the word aid may have helped. So I'm just going to let you know what this one is now. This is the look, a wave thrower. Does that make sense? Yes. I was thinking support and I didn't think that the borrowing blades had it, but at the below part, I was like, yeah, cool. Makes sense. Yeah. Let's go. Not an initiative. Yeah. Okay. Oh, that's the, I always get this wrong in regards to what they're called. Uh, ice wraiths. That's it. It makes them up with frosting, but like the frost part, Austin, ice and frost. So yeah. Cool. Nice. Nice. One for two. Number three, beam of annihilation beam of annihilation beam of annihilation. What shoots beams? Um, oh, is it the, the, I really want to shoot us? No. Deep terror. Of course. Yeah. Okay. Uh, yep. Makes sense. Yeah. I really wanted to do a, um, who wants to be a millionaire segment with this where I give you four multiple choice questions and you can call a friend and do 50/50 and stuff like that. That would be really fun. So this is, this needs a bit of setup. Number four, birds of prey, uh, street fence. Yes. I like how you just given me these really easy ones in between the hard ones. I think beam of annihilation was pretty easy. Oh, I suppose if I got about the deep terror is immovable objects, uh, they're still a ton of a ton. Yes. Well done. Grenade grenade grenade, um, uh, see, they're a robot or a, uh, it is a robot. He's nodding his head. Uh, is it a ruined machine? No. Ancient arts Hillary. Oh, okay. Yep. That makes sense. Um, of all, sorry, if they don't make sense, like let me know because, uh, then we can talk about how badly the designer between that enemy and their card naming abilities is now frost breath. Okay. Um, the yetis. Yes. Frozen corpse. Okay. Yep. Shocking. Voltage. Um, what does. What does that be? Stuff. Um. Again, it's going to be a robot I'm thinking like real machine or what's the other robot? Uh, the spinning Bayblade things, but they're fire. So I'm going to say real machine. No lightning. Eel. Oh, I completely forgot. I was like, there's no lightning monsters if there are they have lightning in their name. Yep. Okay. Power shots. Uh, that's the arches. Yeah. I was arches. That's right. And the last one for the monsters tunneling slices. Oh, so is this going to be borrowing blades or is it going to be spinning Bayblades? Um, what's it called again? Tunneling slices. Oh, okay. That's the borrowing blades. Yes. Nice. If you went with the spinning Bayblades, I would have been slightly disappointed. All right, let's move on to our character ability cards. Now just as a heads up, there's only 11 now there's 17 classes in the game. None of them are doubling up. All right. No worries. First one is hunter killer. Uh, prison? Correct. That's your jackal man. Jackal. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Part of me was like, people always have a nickname for certain cards, right? Jackal, American, all that kind of stuff, but the actual card name is maybe the confusing part that people don't necessarily read, they memorize the whole card except for the name. So that'd be interesting. Flailing tendrils. Flailing tendrils. Um, I don't know, is it coral? No, this one was geminis. Uh, okay. Yeah. Makes more sense. Yep. Blood in the water. That's coral. Nice. We've got sand in the hourglass. Uh, is that a blink blade? That is. Putrid cloud. Uh, bone shaper. Mm-hmm. Sustained momentum. Uh, is that bannaspia? No. That is drifter. Oh, okay. All right. Is that boots? Is that the shoes? Yeah. Yeah. Reprisal. Oh, that, like, I know that, uh, like, I know the name of that card. Uh, is that bannaspia? No. Is it, uh, you've already got it wrong, but you can keep guessing. Yeah. It's like, that's not coral. You wouldn't have doubled up. No. I don't know. Shackles. Okay. Yeah. Meets grinder. Meat grinder. Meat grinder. Drill? No. Good guess though. I didn't consider that. This is bannaspia. Oh, okay. Yeah. It's one of your formations. Which one? Uh, one per, yeah, you are at the top and then you've got two adjacent and then one opposite of your arm. Oh, yeah. And it does weren't? Yes. Yeah. Okay. Well, I would say this would be shackles, but, um, I assume you're not doubling up. Uh. Crap. Yeah. Nice. Well done. Uh, second last one, we have storm wall. Uh, snowflake? Yes. That's the shlong. Uh, okay. And finally, transparency. Kelp? No. No, no, no, no, no, no. This is, um, this is a shards. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Bad. Picky a shards while I was hard because like vibration sound vibration. Yolp. Is that the one that is bottom in this? No. That is the attack arranged for reveal the top card of the target's monster ability deck. And if you get a resonance, you can add plus one damage and pierce. Yep. Yep. Okay. Cool. What are your thoughts on like, um, that as a whole, but also just seeing how much theme and, and flavors tied into just a simple thing as a title for an ability and being able to keep all of it relatively consistent, especially when it comes to, you know, how they come up with a title for an ability and it somewhat works with both the top and the bottom ability and it's kind of like, Oh, yeah, that's really, really cool. The naming of the cards for the character abilities is I think one of the most underrated parts of the design and flavor of the game because I feel like in most of the cases outside very select cards, you don't know the names of them. No. Right. And when I read some of them and you actually look at the cards, they hit and land on flavor way more often than they don't. So I think it's a really like, it's almost like a thankless job because they would have taken time to go through them. And I feel like in a lot of cases, nobody even, they just look at that and look at the abilities because nobody cares about the writing. They just care about the ability. Pretty much. It's a skip, skip, skip, skip cutscene, all that kind of stuff, right? Yeah. Yeah. So no, I think they've done a bang up job. And I think the same was in Gloomhaven as well. Like they're really, really good job of, of thinking and naming. Yeah. Okay. Um, I, no, I look forward to that. If you have any more ideas that you would like me to test guys and just see, I mean, he did better than this than he has in a lot in the past. So I, I'm very well done. Um, yeah. We'll see what other little fun games I can play with you on the episode. But that is all we do have time for this week. Join us next week as we hit up scenario something, something as we haven't worked out. What's next in the meantime up in your host, daddy? I've been joining them, I guess. And remember, when it comes to rolling terribly, it's all in bumping up the difficulty. [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO] (upbeat music)
