Was entertaining as usual, plus good hobby chat etc.
Progress...
When last we checked in with our (sometimes) bold adventures they'd defeated the first shrine (1 of 4) then hightailed it back to precipice to recoup. When you finish a shrine it resets the 'threat level' (to zero/easier) and doesn't add one for returning to precipice immediately after the shrine.
With little in the way of extra coin to trade with we used the ships facilities to get the 'inspire card' for the eldar - success. So three of our explorer now can auto-inspire upon starting an expedition . For any non-blackstoners, this is substantial boost to their stats and abilities.
So onto the shuttle they trotted and back to Blackstone. The intention was the start back at The Gateway (Chamber 7) as we didn't have enough clues to spend to return to one of our known chambers (and this would have been kind of pointless anyway).
Anyway, i stuffed up and we built Chamber 8 instead.
I think it's reasonable to say that flowing narrative and gameplay is far more important to our little group than a persnickety adherence to protocol. Something to watch out for in the future.
The map above shows our progress for this session (highlighted blue).
We started in Chamber 8, and exited via Passage 13.
This took us into the Blackstone Labyrinth (random map or challenge from the card deck) where we fought a combat map.
Thence into Passage 18 were we had a optional challenge that we all passed on (no grievous wounds for us thank you) and arrived at Chamber 10.
From Chamber 10 we popped a very short distance into Passage 24, where we got shot at by a sniper
or something but managed to avoid any wounds.
So next time we pick up at Chamber 4.
Brief Overview
We faced a moderate mix of enemies; negavoltists, traitor guard, ur-ghuls, spindles and cultists. Some obviously more scary than others, but our rolls were relatively lucky and our strategies relatively conservative.
I don't think there were any overly tense moments when the explorers were in danger of getting hammered hard.
- The navigator continued to provide a solid defensive role, both with and without the servitor. The retrieval of a failed destiny dice was a huge boon too.
- The missionary continued to flame anything in sight and with the extra hex of movement is crazy fast to do it.
- The eldar was now utilitarian as a proactive ranged threat, and to a far lesser degree with overwatch.
- Probably the rogue trader was the least 'specific function' of the team [which was something i also found when running the second rogue trader in the earlier sessions]. Kind of there to mop up and support if anything got too close, which seems to work ok too within this group dynamic. Probably a function of the missionary and eldar being highly successful at whittling down enemy so there is little to do.
Aside: It might be interesting as an exercise to try an expedition without the missionary, navigator and eldar and see how much those characters dominate the proceedings. It feels like they do an awful lot, but that might be familiarity talking. The ability to auto-inspire as well almost feel a bit OP too and all of the other characters we haven't used don't get this - the second RT for example really struggled to inspire.
End of Session Game State
Just dropping in the end of session cards etc so i can find them easily for next session.
Paint
A couple of the unfinished models got a token lick of paint the night before the session, but not enough to approach 'finished'. Mainly wanted to move the servitor along a bit as we actually use him.
Until next time...
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