Castle Ravenloft - The hunt for Strahd

After picking up the SunSword in my last quest, it was time.  Time to hunt down Strahd and end his threat to Barovia once and for all!.

Anyone familiar with the game knows that things start slowly.  Although things start slowly though, they can go south quickly if you roll badly.

Despite that, we managed to get things back on track quickly enough.  At the end of the day, mooks aren't a real threat.

Speaking of real threats - Strahd is guarded by Klak, the Kobold Sorcerer.

Relatively speaking, Klak is one of the weaker bosses so we really lucked out in pulling him as the guard.  It didn't take long to put him down.

Which left the Count himself.  Time to go kick his undead booty back down the secret stairway!

Unfortunately, the dice had other ideas.  With his AC of 19, our party had difficulty hitting him.  In fact, my fighter never even managed to touch him despite 4 attempts to do so with his brute strike.  The rest of my party didn't fare much better and it wasn't long before Strahd was able to saunter back to his secret lair with 3 additional vampires for his army.

Castle Ravenloft - Quest for the Sunsword

After numerous adventures in and around Castle Ravenloft, it was time to take care of the Count - once and for all.  However, before doing so, we would need the legendary Sunsword.  One of our party had the blade - an heirloom handed down over the generations.  All we needed was the hilt which was rumored to be in the Crypt of Sergei Von Zarovich.

Setting off into Castle Ravenloft and immediately under attack

Fighting our way through the Castle, we eventually came across two corridors.  Unsure of which was the correct way, we decided to explore both.

Left or right?

In any event, both corridors met up at the end before we found the Crypt.  Inside was the famed hilt and we made our way back out.

All roads lead to ... a crypt?

Final thoughts
This was one of the missions designed by WoTC and made available to download.  The mission itself is ridiculously easy as we didn't even come close to needing a healing surge which also meant that the big bad of the mission never came out.  Granted, I had great rolls as all of my attacks and quite a few of the enemies missed.  Even so, I suspect the mission was designed to be relatively easy.

Game Night! - 26 February 2016

Game Night!

We had 5 people turn up so did a repeat of the games that we played in the last Game Night!

Get Bit!
To get ourselves warmed up, we played 3 games of Get Bit!

As always, we had a ton of fun and at one point, were told by "The Man" that we were too noisy.  Oops!  If nothing else, I guess this proves how much fun we were having!

Also - I managed to win one of the games!  Woot!

Castle Ravenloft
As with before, Castle Ravenloft was the main event of the evening.

I actually had some reservations as I'm not convinced that 5 player Castle Ravenloft works - my main concern being that with 5 players, there is too much downtime.  This is actually based on a previous experience with playing Castle Ravenloft with 5 players.  This time around, things seemed to go a bit better in that the players didn't seem bored during the game.  With that said, I'm still not 100% convinced that the game works with 5 (yet).

We took on the Flesh Golem again as four of the players were involved last time when we lost that mission.  As such, we were eager for revenge.

We initially tried to calm down the golem but halfway through, we realised that we likely wouldn't have enough time to do so and switched to trying to kill it instead.  It was a close thing which ultimately came down to a final dice roll.  Our fighter needed to roll a 9 to kill the golem.  This was our last chance as, if he failed to do so, we would lose as we were out of healing surges and we had PCs down and out.

Our fighter rolled an 8.
>:(

Game Night! - 29 January 2015

Another game night so soon?  Be still, my beating heart!!

Making up for a shortage of game nights in recent months, we decided to have a double in January.  Good thing too as last week only had a turnout of 2 people.  We originally had 5 people scheduled for this weeks game night but only 4 showed up.

Get Bit!
We started off with a simple game of Get Bit!  Or rather, 3 games of Get Bit!

As always, the game went down extremely well and was really popular with the group.  It's actually been a while since I played and I have to admit that this is a pretty great filler game.  It's quick, fun while having just a little bit of brainpower needed and at the same time, it's always amusing to pull arms and legs off the little toy pirates!

I lost the first game but did manage to pull out a win in the next two (as usual, we played with my house rules where the game ends as soon as 1 person is eliminated).  To be honest, I'm still not sure how I managed to win twice!

Castle Ravenloft
We then moved onto the main event of the evening - Castle Ravenloft.

This is a game which I always enjoy playing even though it's a relatively simple dungeon crawl.  We decided to take on the Flesh Golem which the others hadn't faced before (but which I had in a previous solo game).  The Flesh Golem is a really good mission and can end in a really exciting manner as you end up in a running fight through the dungeon.

Unfortunately, due to the way the cards played out, we drew the Flesh Golem only 2 squares away from the Start tile.  This didn't give quite the running battle I had initially hoped for.

It was a close battle but we did end up losing.  :(

Game Night! - 30 September 2015

We had another group of 4 with 2 newbies.  With that said, the 2 newbies seemed to pick up the rules to the games we played pretty quickly and seemed to enjoy themselves so there is hope they might come more regularly.

The Agents
Once again, we started with the Agents.  This was primarily because the game was already out as the host and I tried to sneak in a quick game while we were waiting for the 2 newbies to arrive.  Unfortunately, we didn't get very far but as the game was setup anyway, we decided to start with this game.

The host managed to get the win (his first win at this game!) with some good combinations of missions and agents.  Grrr - I shall have my revenge next time!

Castle Ravenloft
Next up was Castle Ravenloft.  This turned out to be a good choice as one of the newbies had played cRPGs before so was quite keen to play a mini's based board game.  We took on Klak as we wanted a boss to go up against but at the same time, wanted a mission that wasn't too hard given the 2 newbies.

Good choice as we ended up winning the game without using a single healing surge!

I ended up playing the Rogue - the first time I've played the Rogue.  I have to admit, the rogue is better than I first gave her credit for.  Her ability to disarm traps more easily seemed too situation specific to be really useful so I never really ranked her.  However, she has some nice abilities which make her useful outside of her ability to disarm traps.  Would play again!

Castle Ravenloft - Flesh Golem!

Felt like a dungeon crawl for my Sunday Mini Game Day this week so ended up pulling out Castle Ravenloft.  It's a fun game which is pretty simple and quick to play (approx 1 hour) so good for a quick dungeon crawl experience.

More details of my session on BGG here.

Castle Ravenloft - Klak's Infernal Artifact

Haven't played Castle Ravenloft in a while but an upcoming game night put me in the mood for a dungeon crawl so I whipped it out recently to have a quick play.  And promptly got my ass handed to me by Klak and his infernal artifact.
>:(

Clearly, this was unacceptable and there was only one recourse.  Revenge!

Naturally, if this was going to be revenge, I had to use the same team as last time.

A fighter, a mage and a cleric walk into a dungeon

Things started out fairly innocuously with just a simple wolf threatening us as we entered the dungeon.

Pah - puny wolf

Naturally, the wolf tried to flank the fighter but its fangs proved no match for his strong armour.  Our cleric was then able to get the drop on it and take it out.

Flank attack!

As we moved deeper into the dungeon, we adopted standard PC marching order.  Fighter in front with the mage bringing up the rear.

Little did we know that the dastardly monsters had anticipated such a strategy!

Behind you!

Our first real test was a stone gargoyle.  No matter what we tried, we just weren't able to penetrate its defence.

Fighter needs food!

Ultimately, our pitiful attempts to deface the gargoyle were laughed off with ease.  And things really took a turn for the worse when the gargoyles mate showed up and wasn't appreciative of our attempts to deface the original.  Alas, this proved too much for the poor cleric who promptly keeled over with fright.

Alas poor cleric, we hardly knew ye

Nevertheless, one healing surge later and the cleric was back in action.  Not just back in action but also venturing further into the dungeon.  At least, that is how he described it. At the time, it looked like he was running for his life.

Nevertheless, progress was made. More importantly, the laboratory was found! Klak and his infernal artifact finally making its appearance. Which can only mean one thing.

Cue dramatic dungeon lighting!

The fighter charged forward and, using his Brute Force power, dealt a devastatiing blow to Klak which left him at deaths door!

Take that!

It didn't take much longer for Klak to fall as the fighter pressed his advantage.

And that!

At this point, despite our best efforts to roll poorly when attacking the artifact, we were able to hold out to get the win.

Final board position