10 x 10 Challenge #21: Eight Epics - Game #6

Undeterred by my last short and frustrating game, I re-shuffled the threat deck and setup another game of Eight Epics; leaving the toggles and avatar order unchanged from game four.

I then drew my first threat card; which was..

Round 1 - Threat: Makano, Drill Strider.

Urgh! Of all the threats to draw first after what happened in my last game. Unlike my last game however, the avatars did come out the other end of the round victorious; but it was a push. I ran through six of my eight avatars during this encounter; with four of them being reduced to half of their starting Life Points or less.

Round 2 - Threat: Durge, World Breaker.

I think of Durge as one of the easier threats to overcome. True, there are eight challenges to overcome on his card; but as six of these only require that you roll one dice (with a 1 in 6 chance of success), lucky rolls can take you a long way. Caroosh and Khantos can also cut through the challenges with ease using their abilities. So there are plenty of options when you encounter Durge; and the odds are certainly in your favor.

That said, I took some heavy losses during this encounter; as for love nor money I couldn't roll the 1's that I needed to clear the last few challenges. The extra effort expended to clear these took the total Life points lost by the party from 13 to 30; and left six of the avatars with half of their starting Life Points or less, with three of them being reduced to just one.

Round 3 - Threat: Uluwash, Devouring Tide.

Uluwash is another threat that I consider to be fairly easy to overcome, but once again I found myself taking some considerable losses during the encounter; with two avatars being eliminated during the conflict, and the remaining five avatars all being reduced to 1 Life Point.

Round 4 - Threats: Broxix, Pestilent Breath / Narssis, Unholy One.

From previous experience, I know that both of these threats can be quite difficult to overcome; but when weighing them against one another, I am of the opinion that Narssis is probably the more challenging of the two. He makes you roll more dice, and the results that those dice have to show is more specific. So perceiving him to be the more difficult opponent I chose to go after him first, as I reasoned he would require more resources to defeat; resources I may not have after tackling Broxix.

The dice however were firmly against me on this one, and despite my best efforts to manipulate the results using the abilities of my remaining avatars; the game was lost at the first challenge, with three of the remaining avatars being outright eliminated and the other two being exhausted.

Final Thoughts

This is my third successive loss at this difficulty level, but I'm not complaining. I've made it to the final round twice, and to the final threat once. This tells me both that the level of difficulty is about right for my ability at this point, and that I am close to surpassing it.

So I may be losing at the moment, but these defeats are not without a sense of progress and achievement; which keep me coming back to this fun, challenging, and sometimes frustrating game.