Very similar to what I wrote
before my team started our Path to Carcosa campaign, I wanted to go into a
little bit of depth about the next load of investigators we will be piloting
when we boldly enter The Forgotten Age campaign.
My logic when I start a new
campaign is how to fill all the real roles of the team, such as who will be our
main fighter and who will be our main investigator primarily. I’ve always
resigned two of us to be the inbetweener, those who may need to service both
roles as we progress in the campaign and help the primary should things get
touch and go.
This time however, I wanted to
try and move away from our standard format, to make things a bit more
interesting. After taking our original
choices for our next investigators for a test run using the Carnevale of
Horrors scenario, a couple of us were not too happy with our choices of
investigator. So with our Mystic and Guardian options now up in the air, it was
back to the drawing board and time to review these options.
So originally I opted to go
with Father Mateo, a couple of reasons really, him starting with 5xp in the
bank before the first scenario would give Shaun (the player) a good lead going
into the campaign and some excellent options off the bat for upgrades. However
Shaun’s experience didn’t give him much faith (pun intended) on the good Father’s
ability to really hit hard during the campaign. After a bit of a discussion
about who we had left to chose from our stock of “unused” investigators there
was only 1 mystic we had to use which was Akachi Onyele.
Now, I’m not a big fan of hers
to be honest, with being limited to only 2 Arcane slots until you get some XP
behind you limits her “adding charges” ability use early campaign. However,
once she does get some XP behind her and gets some useful tools, her combat
usefulness is up there with the Guardian class. There are some excellent spells
and support tools, such as the Spirit Athame or Book of Shadows are easily
useable in the deck. Upgrading to higher level versions of Shrivelling and
Blinding Light can also boost the fight power of the deck, these will be
searchable too with Arcane Initiate in the deck. This got me thinking that if
we went ahead and made this switch, we could ditch the Guardian class
altogether for this campaign and use her as our big heavy hitter instead,
making a very drastic change to our group dynamic.
I had originally gone for Leo
Anderson to fill the role of our Guardian class; my original though was to
embrace the Guardian / Rogue crossover and try to focus on using my experience
to build him into more of a Rogue than a Guardian by the end of the campaign.
Utilising some of the sneaky tactics of the Rogue class while maintaining a
heavy Guardian Ally front to serve as shields against any real danger I may
encounter. Sadly, during our test run of
the Carnevale of Horrors, I did not really click with this character during any
point of the game and I also opted to not continue with this investigator.
During the last campaign I got
a taste for the Rogue class while playing as Wendy Adams, I liked it, a lot. When
we played the Labyrinth of Lunacy scenario, Josh used Finn Edwards (Rogue
character), to great effect in the combat role, utilising Finn’s signature card
to attack bad guys attacking other people while using the Rogue weapons to make
sure he could defend himself also. The ability to search for illicit cards
using Finn’s other signature card really opens some doors too, especially if
you have the Chicago Typewriter in the deck, the combat output can be massively
boosted.
So onto Finn Edwards, his deck
can only play up to level 3 Rogue cards, unless they have the Illicit trait, plus
up to 15 Seeker &/or Survivor level 0 cards, also he gets to do a free “Evade”
action each turn, which at first isn’t so good, but with the Rogue card pool at
hand, it has loads of potential. His unique deck building inspired me to switch
to a more full time Rogue character instead of a part time one. Although Finn
loses a fair few of the Rogue Class cards with his deck requirements, the ones
he does get are sufficient to build a solid deck. So I opted to ditch Leo
Anderson for Finn Edwards as my character for the upcoming campaign, plus to
try filling some of the combat functions of the group.
Our last remaining two
investigators were fairly straightforward to select. Josh opted to take on the
role of the Seeker this campaign, with only really 3 options left in my library
to fill this role it came down to who would provide the most value to the team
overall. Out of Ursula, Norman and Minh,
Ursula was the one which jumped out to me value wise. Her ability to have a
free investigate action once per turn when she moves is awesome, also her
ability to pack relics, gives her access to some massively useful cards once
she picks up some XP. On top of the already massive array of Seeker cards, she
has a lot of potential in the campaign.
The last option was left in
the hands of Stuart himself. He expressed an interest in playing as Calvin
Wright, as a pretty out there character with no stat line to start with, this
was a risky choice, but I feel this whole campaign will be a little risky in
comparison to our safer plays previously. I like the potential for Calvin, when
we played the Carnevale of Horrors, Stuart was hammering bad guys with Calvin
and generally doing well at investigating too, the closer Calvin comes to being
defeated, the more powerful he becomes. So I have faith that Stuart will be
filling in nicely for the loss of the Guardian class as the campaign goes on.
So the role call is Calvin
Wright (Stuart), Ursula Downs (Josh), Akachi Onyele (Shaun) and Finn Edwards
(Me – Tom). This rag tag collection of randoms will embark on a journey into
the “Forgotten Age” come January 2019. I for one am really looking forward to
seeing how these guys tackle this stage of the Mythos and what crazy crap this
campaign will throw at us in comparison to the Path to Carcosa campaign.
I’m Big Boss.... I’m Out.....
Peace
