Arkham Horror LCG Battle Report: Curtain Call (Path to Carcosa Part 1)

Disclaimer: If you haven't heard about Arhkam Horror: The Card Game, you might have trouble with this post. Also, potential spoilers ahead. 

Last time, I talked about playing through the Dunwich Legacy solo. Well, I still have my campaign night group interested in playing Arkham Horror, so we sat down to play Path to Carcosa starting with Part 1: Curtain Call.

So, I’ve been very anxious/nervous to play through the Path to Carcosa scenario. Part of it is because this is the third time I’ve tried to get the campaign going, with only getting to the 3rd scenario in the previous attempts. The idea of actually being able to complete the campaign is very exciting to me. However, looking online at all the Arkham Horror discussions, people almost universally consider Path to Carcosa to be the best campaign that Fantasy Flight Games has put out. Therefore, I’m a bit nervous to play through it as I’m afraid that I may have built it up too much in my mind.

First of all, we’ve got new investigators! Or at least, most of us do:

Myself: Jenny Barnes

Cory: Mandy Thompson

Jimmy: Jim Culver

Mike: Tommy Muldoon

The Jenny Barnes deck I’m playing is the same one that I played during my solo Dunwich campaign. Why didn’t I switch? Well, everyone wanted to stay the same classes (Guardian, Mystic, etc.) so I showed them all the investigators I had and let them pick. Since I picked up the Dream-Eaters deluxe box during the holidays, I am only missing all of The Forgotten Age and The Circle Undone cycles from my collection. Unfortunately, Mike and Cory picked investigators from the Dream-Eaters, which didn’t have many decklists available when I went to arkhamdb to figure out which to make. Probably due to me not having the previously mentioned cycles. So I made my Jenny deck again as a way of balancing out the fact that their decks might have been a tad bit “weaker”.

We set up the scenario, which had us investigating a theater where we fell asleep watching a weird play. For me, the fact that we were watching a play would put me to sleep, weirdness or not. While the team wasn’t familiar with their decks, we all knew what our roles were so we scoured about trying to find clues and mitigate enemies. We gathered all the clues needed to past the first Act, which suddenly spawned a huge monster for us to battle. For those who have played the scenario and are scratching their heads - keep reading.

I managed to get to the Balcony to investigate when suddenly the Royal Emissary was on Stage. Not only was it on stage, but it was by itself...and I happened to have my favorite card Dynamite Blast in my hand! So I chucked the dynamite at the Emissary and leaped down from the Balcony to finish off the Emissary!

Not long after that, we gathered the remaining pieces we needed to advance the next Act….only for me to go “huh?”. I flipped over the card, and read the text, which said we all take 100 unpreventable horror. At this point, I look and realize that I mixed up the Act and Agenda decks. With everyone at the table now glaring at me, I look at the time and see that its now past 9 o’clock and we really don’t want to backtrack to get us back on track. So…..

<—— CHEAT MODE ENABLED ——>

Yep, its time for some rule fudging. I flipped through the actual act deck and realized that we had gathered enough stuff to complete the cards that we should have encountered. Taking the Stranger into my deck as punishment, we wrapped up the game, deciding not to go to the police even though one of us is a cop.

What did you think of this Battle Report? How many times have you attempted to finish a campaign only to never do so? Let me know in the comments, or you can hit me up on twitter or facebook.