SPOILERS AHEAD SO READ NO FURTHER IF IT MATTERS FOR YOU . . . . . .
So we’ve played through the Dunwich, and Path to Carcosa campaigns and had a grand time all the way through them. Then we started on the third campaign The Forgotten Age.
Things were definitely trickier with the new explore mechanic but manageable for the first two scenarios. We definitely felt a large step up in difficulty.
Then we got the Boundary Beyond and just got like totally smashed with almost no headway towards finishing the second act. Like we retried it twice but the results were nearly the same we got one maybe 2.5 locations cleared out before our situation became obviously hopeless.
The costs to explore each location are just so punishing and leaves you with no gas to handle the mythos that ultimately ushers us to our doom.
It’s really soured our group on the game in general and I’m not sure they’ll want to continue at this point. Is there something we’re doing wrong?
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I have heard that The forgotten age is pretty difficult. I played it recently 2 handed solo, had someone die and then both investigators die in the next scenario (can’t remember which exactly).
So are you doing something wrong? probably not, it’s just poorly balanced. I would recommend “cheating” - the recent rules have “boons” which are modifications to make the game easier. For example, one boon lets you choose one card for your starting hand, another lets you have one additional move action per turn, another lets you ignore an autofail once per game - which i kind of do anyway, sure the game is “balanced” around it but it’s simply unfun for me to commit half my hand to a test and then lose.
The game is supposed to be fun (I think) and sometimes it and it’s fanbase forget that.
Anyway, I definitely feel you on not wanting to continue, I had a similar experience a while back on a different scenario where I lost and was killed part way through the campaign. I dont have the time required to replay all that to make it “fun”.
last thought, is that the game really wants to surprise you with the scenarios but simultaneously wants to reward you for knowing what will happen so theres some real conflict there imo.
Thanks for helping me see it another way! Guess it’s too much to expect for every scenario to be perfectly balanced 😅. We’ll have to revisit it sometime and maybe just skip a scenario or two!
Just chiming in to generally agree. Boundary Beyond is a hard scenario (I wouldn’t call it “imbalanced”, but that’s such a matter of opinion I also wouldn’t argue about it). And, even though it’s hard in general, there are definitely some team compositions that will struggle more than others.
Also, just to check you know: the game is designed so that you (usually) just move on to the next scenario whether you “pass” or not. Failing BB and then moving on to the next scenario is fine* (edit below), and you can still win the overall campaign. I almost never replay scenarios, even if our group fails one way or another.
There are just a few scenarios in the whole franchise where investigators will be killed or driven insane instead of just defeated. (You may have already encountered one of those, or you might not have noticed!) Sometimes the second-to-last scenario in a campaign will tell you that you lose the campaign if you lose that scenario. Usually though, you just move on, a little worse for wear, but still trudging ahead. It’s one of the things that I find unique about ahlcg. I’ve been playing for some years now, and I appreciate that the game can still beat me up a little.
*EDIT: what I mean is, moving on is actually intended game play according to the rules; it’s also “fine”, in a broader sense, to adjust the game in absolutely any way that makes it fun!
We’ve definitely lost scenarios before and were fine with it even if it ended our campaign (our first carcosa campaign did not go well). Its just that at least most scenarios that we lost, we at least come reasonably close before losing or saw that did something dumb that caused us to lose catastrophically. In those cases we could at least see what we did wrong and how we could improve if we were to have another go at things later.
This one was the first case where we didn’t see either of those situations. We just didn’t even come close no matter what we did and we had no idea how to deal with everything that was being thrown at us in terms of strategy or deck building so that threw everyone off.
But yeah we’ll definitely have to skip this one or give ourselves a pretty meaty handicap to keep us motivated next time around!
I see what you mean; sounds frustrating and I’m sorry I can’t think of a particular suggestion you wouldn’t have tried (go faster, be better at Willpower tests, etc.)
I can say that there are some absolutely wild (fun) surprises ahead—unlike anything in the previous campaigns—so I hope you enjoy them :)