Continuing with my 10 x 10 Challenge I set a few hours aside yesterday for gaming; and following my comfortable victory last time, I decided it was time to turn up the heat a little. This could have been done in a number of ways (imposing a time limit on the game, or increasing the number of threats); but I instead opted to preset the order of the avatars.
I would now have to work through them in a sequence determined by myself, which after some thought I decided would be..
1st - Caroosh, Stone Fist.
2nd - Gron, Furnace of Justice.
3rd - Sylliph, Moon Diver.
4th - Jarroth, The Cogsmith.
5th - Auriel, Harbringer of Healing.
6th - Khantos, Arcane Master.
7th - Leafwind, The Wildling.
8th - Ophinia, Envoy of the Dead.
The reasoning behind this order being that I would lead with my less flexible avatars, and reserve those capable of buying me more time (Leafwind and Ophinia) to last; where their abilities would be the most useful.
Plan set, I drew my first threat; which was..
Round 1 - Threat: Uluwash, Devouring Tide.
Uluwash fell rather easily, aided by having Caroosh in prime position; and some favorable rolls. All told avatars only lost a total of 8 Life Points dealing with this encounter, but Caroosh and Sylliph had bore the brunt of this; being reduced to 3 Life Points and 1 Life Point receptively.
Round 2 - Threat: Narssis, Unholy One.
Next up was Narssis, who was incredibly hard work. I cycled through most of my avatars in the process of taking him down; and increased the total Life Points lost amongst the avatars from 8 to 18!
Five of the avatars has also now been reduced to half of their initial Life Points, or less.
Round 3 - Threat: Makano, Drill Strider.
The avatars took a real pummeling overcoming this threat; increasing the total Life Points lost amongst the party from 18 to 29 by the time the last challenge had been resolved. All but one of the avatars was now on less than half of their starting Life Points, with four of barely clinging on by their last Life Point.
Round 4 - Threats: Pirn, Rampaging Overgrowth / Broxix, Pestilent Breath.
When faced with these two threats, I opted to tackle Broxix first. I figured that of the two, he was going to be the most difficult to defeat; so that's where I wanted to direct the bulk of resources, using whatever remained to overcome the much easier (in my opinion) Pirn.
Narssis did indeed take up a lot of my resources, and by the time I came around to facing Pirn I had only two avatars at my disposal; with the rest of the party either exhausted or eliminated. Unsurprisingly this was not enough to win the game, but I did come close; making it to the second of three challenges on the final threat.
Final Thoughts
Electing what order your avatars will act in throughout the game at setup has really added a new dimension of challenge to the game. It's also changed the strategy that I employ as I play; as no longer can I rely on having the optimal avatar for the task at hand at my disposal. I may have already used them, or they may be several activations along.
The already tight margin of error just got a lot tighter with flipping that one toggle; but I think that's a good thing.
The blog of a gamer and his eclectic interests; including home brewed content for board games, roleplaying games, and video games.
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