Jacqueline Fine in Return to TCU (Hard) (Campaign Guide)

This deck was created for a two-handed Ironman run of Return to The Circle Undone on Hard and focuses on collecting clues. The partner deck features Roland Banks and it focuses on enemy management.

The guide for that deck can be found here :

Roland Banks in Return to TCU (Hard) (Deck Guide)

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Introduction

Jacqueline's ability is very strong. Drawing three tokens and cancelling two provides a solid boost to your chance of passing any test (around 10-30% in the bag for The Witching Hour) and if you can cover the two largest negative modifiers you're guaranteed to succeed. More often, though, you'll be using the ability to either find or avoid a particular token for one of the many Mystic cards which interact with them.

There are definitely different ways to build Jacqueline but I can't imagine any of them involve not taking Sixth Sense. I decided early on I'd base this deck around the Sixth Sense (4) / Sign Magick (3) combo where having two copies of each in play lets you take five investigate actions per turn.

And since I was building a combo deck I didn't want to increase its size by adding the two cards from the introduction where you choose to accept your fate, so we called bullshit.

This means we get two Elder Thing tokens added to the deck for the entire campaign, and for the first scenario that meant we wanted to be +4 on each test, for an 87% chance of success. A +2 attempt would only be successful 60% of the time, but if Jacqueline had her ability available that +2 attempt would actually be successful 83% of the time. Messing with the forces of fate pays off!

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The Cards

I mostly play two-handed solo games so I usually have one deck focused on collecting clues and the other on enemy management, but in each case I always leave a few slots for the off role because it's more efficient than having a deck which can do only one thing.

• Sixth Sense x 2, Clairvoyance x 2, Read the Signs x 1 : This is our starting Investigate package. The base version of Sixth Sense doesn't provide enough efficiency by itself so I went with Clairvoyance for backup as it's a bit more flexible than Rite of Seeking.

  Read the Signs is useful for the Witch-Haunted Woods in the first scenario which have nasty effects, and I was running two copies for a long time before swapping one out for a second Mists of R'lyeh.

• Drawn to the Flame x 2 : Testless clue gathering with considerable but generally manageable risk attached. Strangely, due to the quirks of Sixth Sense (4) I actually found myself reaching for this less often than in previous games so I ended up replacing both of them before the end of the campaign.

• Spectral Razor x 2, Storm of Spirits x 2 : The killing half of our enemy management package. Storm of Spirits is particularly good in At Death's Doorstep, The Wages of Sin, and Union and Disillusion (funnily enough, the three scenarios where The Spectral Watcher shows up to boost the potential enemy count) and of course it's good for getting a free hit on Aloof enemies as long as someone is engaged with something at the same location.

• Mists of R'lyeh x 2, Sword Cane x 2 : The evade half of our enemy management package. I went heavier than usual on evade here because of the new objective for The Witching Hour where you can only advance the act if there are three exhausted witches at the Witches' Circle.

• Voice of Ra x 2, Uncage the Soul x 2 : Our starting economy cards. Jacqueline obviously has an advantage for Voice of Ra and if her weakness is out she can get an incredible eleven resources from it! That never happened during the campaign, but I did hit only one resource a disturbing number of times. Generally, though, the results reflected the expected odds (mostly three or five resources).

• Arcane Initiate x 2 : Card draw, deck thinning, and soak. Later in the campaign our spell load will get a bit lighter, leading to more dead uses, but there's simply no replacing this card when Sixth Sense is such a crucial part of our gameplan.

• Crystal Pendulum x 2 : I was really skeptical about this card. Not about the lack of horror soak from forgoing the Holy Rosary (I was pretty confident it wouldn't be missed even while running Arcane Research x 2) but because I didn't think it would draw many cards.

  Then I tested it and in practice it was really solid, and while I didn't keep track of exactly how many cards I drew I'd guess it would have to be at least 4-5 per game if it came down early. I remember having a full hand quite often but using it anyway because I needed to dig for my combo pieces, so it actually became one of the deck's key enablers.

  It's quite simple to use, too. Just pick the most common negative modifier in the token bag for each scenario and if you pull one of those you win. But keep in mind that if your choice would have led to a successful test but you fail instead, you can still win because of the 'fail by' clause, so unfortunately it does sometimes become a mathematical endeavour after all.

• Arcane Research x 2 : I'm no Mystic expert but I'm pretty sure most Mystics want two of these most of the time. It's worse in The Innsmouth Conspiracy because you can't upgrade cards between half the scenarios, and it's better if you do a side scenario because you get an extra use out of it, but for regular play it's just a huge amount of extra XP in a class that wants as much as it can get. And with nine starting sanity the two trauma is rarely a relevant downside.

• Prescient x 2 : Apart from Crystal Pendulum this is the only 'Jacqueline' utility card I went with, and it was mostly used to recur Ward of Protection and Spectral Razor. Note that you don't actually have to succeed at the test to get the card back. And similarly to the Pendulum, you generally just want to name the most common of the available choices : symbol.

• Guts x 2 : I wouldn't normally bother doing a justification for this one but Promise of Power is a strong contender for this slot so I feel like I should mention why I didn't choose it.

  Firstly, I don't really like taking curse or bless token stuff when I'm not playing decks focused on those mechanics, and secondly and more importantly, I really wanted the card draw. Also, I didn't test it but I'm pretty sure non-standard tokens screw with what Jacqueline is trying to do, at least if you're not actually focusing on the bless/curse stuff.

• Delve Too Deep x 1 : It was easy to accommodate this in The Witching Hour, and with the new objective in the Return version that still holds true. And it turns out At Death's Doorstep is a lot easier when you don't care about saving the Lodge guys, so it was pretty easy to fit it in there, too.

  And then after a heap of runs up to The Wages of Sin I really wanted to push it further and take it in The Secret Name, partly because that scenario has a more variable XP profile than before, and partly because every single last bit of XP counts for getting through The Wages of Sin. So after a bunch of playthroughs I felt comfortable enough taking it in TSN, but there was no way in hell I'd ever take it into Wages.

• Haunted x 1 : This is the basic weakness I drew for this run and it's definitely closer to the nuisance end of the scale, with the hilarious game-killer Overzealous at the opposite end. My runs tend to go a bit better when I get these double action taxing ones, though some of them are definitely worse than others.

• Dark Future x 1 : Jacqueline's weakness is pretty mild. It shuts down her ability but with the base TCU bag it has a 47% chance of disappearing at the end of each turn. There were a few times it persisted for three turns but most of the time it was only one or two. And as I mentioned before there is a bit of a silver lining in that you can potentially get more money from Voice of Ra. Not very compelling, I know, but it's kind of cool!

• Arbiter of Fates x 1 : This is a tough one to evaluate. I was really torn on whether to mulligan it every time it showed up without a Sixth Sense alongside it. Yes, it's strong because her base ability is strong and it makes all of your tests better, but if you don't have a Sixth Sense you can't perform your primary function to begin with.

  And three resources is a lot for this deck even with all of its economy cards. If it showed up during the early turns of a game it would often sit in my hand for a while, but it was still always a welcome draw.

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The Campaign

I did a lot of playtesting while refining the two decks, with a particular focus on the first few scenarios, before embarking on an Ironman run. This section describes the strategies I came up with for each scenario.

Prologue : Return to Disappearance at the Twilight Estate

In an earlier run of the original campaign I took Gavriella Mizrah and Penny White and I was able to save both of them about half the time and one of them 100% of the time. I tried to replicate my previous strategy whereby I spent all of Gavriella's resources to save Penny, and it initially seemed like an impossible task.

One notable change is that the new Fate of All Fools that Gavriella starts with doesn't help you with the doom clock anymore, but as I got more familiar with the new cards I realized the encounter deck is overall a bit easier to deal with, though the replacement enemies are a bit harder.

In the end I concluded that it was functionally impossible to ever save both of them but it was still almost always possible to save one. The main change in strategy was to have one of them drag the 2-3 enemies you'd get as far away as they could during the final turn or two while the other retreated to the Billiards Room, the goal being to put enough locations between them so that their hunter moves wouldn't let them catch up to the survivor before the doom clock ticked over. I chose to save Gavriella this time because she would be a great fit for Roland's deck.

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Scenario One : Return to The Witching Hour

The strategy here is fairly straightforward : collect six clues and advance the first two acts one after the other so we don't have to waste any actions getting clues from the Arkham Woods locations.

Jacqueline usually took care of that task while Roland kind of sat around digging for the Handcuffs or waiting for enemies to appear to use them on. If I got a witch or two within the first few turns I'd usually kill them for clues because the deck would be guaranteed to cycle and return them to play, but if they showed up any later than turn four or so I'd cuff at least one of them and keep them around.

The doom clock was very safe here on every attempt, and Jacqueline would cycle her deck with several turns to spare so she was always able to play the one Delve Too Deep she took. I'd always wait for it to appear before advancing the act to reveal the Witches' Circle, which I'd then let 1-2 regular witches move into, and on the following turn Jacqueline would move in and evade two of them then Roland would move in with his prisoner and we'd advance the act and win.

Resolution 3.

6VP (five locations, one Delve Too Deep) + 3XP from the resolution = 9XP.

The witches' spell was cast.

Erynn wants to meet.

Mementos Discovered : Mesmerizing Flute, Strange Incantation.

Upgrades

Jacqueline : 10XP spent, 1XP left.

• Sixth Sense x 2 -> Sixth Sense (4) x 2 : This is an insanely powerful and efficient card for Jacqueline and this upgrade puts us ahead of the power curve until at least the sixth scenario. For the remainder of the game Roland now has a side job : open up all the places Jacqueline wants to visit in her astral form, or however else you imagine the mechanics translate into a narrative effect.

• Mists of R'lyeh x 1 -> Robes of Endless Night (2) x 1 : More economy and some actually-quite-valuable soak seeing as how Jacqueline is about as agile as her flat-footed partner.

Roland : 9XP spent, 0XP left.

• Stick to the Plan x 1 : I covered this one in the intro to Roland's deck, but buying it this early is absolutely the right decision and it basically lays the groundwork for the rest of the deck from this point on. For the rest of the campaign two of its slots would be taken by Ever Vigilant and Prepared for the Worst, leaving one flex slot filled most often by On the Hunt.

• Logical Reasoning x 2 -> Ever Vigilant x 1, Extra Ammunition x 1 : Ever Vigilant has a permanent spot under SttP and it provides excellent action compression and economy. Extra Ammunition will be handy for all the shooting we'll end up doing in the next scenario, and it has a particularly good interaction with our big gun of choice later on.

• Daring x 1 -> Well-Maintained x 1 : It didn't feel great to replace the Darings since Roland appreciates the boost, but they were kind of the only flex slots the deck really had, at least at this stage. Well Maintained isn't doing much for us now but after we get our two-handed weapon it will allow us to get another use out of it after we bump it off with a one-handed weapon (or if Vice and Villainy hits it).

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Scenario Two : Return to At Death's Doorstep

Due to our choice to save Gavriella in the prologue there were six clues on the Entry Hall, which was better than the Balcony because we didn't have to waste actions on movement. It did have a higher shroud but that barely mattered to Jacqueline since she was now testing at base seven with Sixth Sense (4). Clairvoyance was more efficient here since there was no other location with clues on it, but either way it didn't take long to grab them all.

And in those turns before we grabbed them there was literally no chance of encountering any enemies that we could fight, and also no point in getting more clues for the next act because the number we needed to advance to the final act was exactly the same amount provided by the VP locations. This meant that Roland often had a few free turns to dig into his deck or gain resources, and I went back and forth on starting with Extra Ammunition and On the Hunt in the SttP flex slot. Extra Ammunition was good because of the variance in the number of monster enemies you could get when the first act advanced, but in the end I went with On the Hunt to ensure I'd be able to pull the Nether Mist out of the encounter deck for its VP (by the time we want to use it, if it hasn't already appeared he almost always had the other copy of OtH in hand so between the two of them we pretty much always nailed him).

After clearing the Entry Hall we move to the Master Bedroom to speed up the doom clock so that we don't risk putting any more monster enemies on standby. In the unlikely event that we had zero monsters waiting (it only happened once in all of my test runs) Jacqueline would go to the Office right away, but otherwise we want to be together to deal with them more efficiently.

If we pulled any Lodge guys before the act advanced the first one would be placed in the Wine Cellar and the second in the Master Bedroom. Since they count as investigators when The Spectral Watcher hunts this allows you to pull him away from the Victorian Halls (after he eats the Senator) so you can travel freely between the Master Bedroom and the Office or the other side when we're ready to move to the Billiards Room to confront Josef Meiger.

Roland would typically grab both clues on the Master Bedroom by killing the monsters and Jacqueline would move up to the Office while The Spectral Watcher was still in the Entry Hall, but if she got delayed for some reason we would defeat the Watcher rather than wait an extra turn for it to kill the Senator. Unstable Energies on the Bedroom was kind of annoying but not a huge deal because as soon as Jacqueline gets to the Office she can grab clues from it with Sixth Sense (4) anyway. And after clearing the Office Roland would visit the Billiards Room, grabbing its clues and gunning down Josef (often on the same turn) then we played Delve Too Deep while standing in the Entry Hall and got the hell out of there.

Resolution 1.

8VP (three locations, two enemies, and 1 x Delve Too Deep) -> 8XP.

The investigators are enemies of the lodge.

We're on Gavriella's trail.

Upgrades

Jacqueline : 11XP spent, 0XP left.

• Sword Cane x 2 -> Sign Magick (3) x 2 : Our combo enabler. After activating and fully resolving the action on a spell asset we can activate Sign Magick (3) to immediately take an action on another spell asset. The assets don't have to have different names, and in fact the ideal situation is to have two copies of this and two of Sixth Sense (4) for a total of five investigates per turn. If we had a spell asset with a fight action we could even use it to do an investigate action without taking an Attack of Opportunity since Sign Magick (3) activates with a reaction trigger.

• Drawn to the Flame x 1 -> Robes of Endless Night (2) x 1 : As before, economy and soak.

• Mists of R'lyeh x 1 -> Blur (1) x 1 : The new spell assets from Edge of the Earth are all good but I think Blur is the best of them. They all have the same clause where you don't actually spend charges unless you succeed.

• Ward of Protection (2) x 1 : Kind of a staple for multiplayer games. Now Jaqueline can save Roland from Unhallowed Land at least some of the time.

Roland : 7XP spent, 1XP left.

• Tetsuo Mori x 2 -> Beat Cop (2) x 2 : Passive Combat boost and testless damage. Still one of the best Guardian allies.

• .45 Auto x 1 -> .45 Thompson (3) x 1 : This is our big two-handed weapon for this campaign. It's expensive and it only does two damage per shot, but Roland starts every game on seven resources so he can always play it on the first turn (even if he has to find it with Prepared for the Worst) and TCU doesn't really have much in the way of bosses or high-HP/high-fight enemies except in the final scenario.

  As soon as you start firing this thing your resource pool begins building up again, and Roland has tools like On the Hunt (and its amazing upgrade) to speed that process along. With two Combat boosting allies this gun tests at 8, which is pretty respectable even for the Hard token bag. I've always wanted to take it but I could never find the right campaign/investigator match for it. Until now.

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Scenario Three : Return to The Secret Name

The first part of this one is pretty straightforward and simply involves visiting all of the rooms and collecting the clues, with Joe Mazurewicz's Room being quite handy for pulling out Roland's new gun. Regarding SttP, On the Hunt wasn't particularly useful here so I swapped it for Extra Ammunition.

We made sure we had enough clues to advance the act without touching the two in Walter Gilman's Room, because this meant they would swap to Keziah's Room and Roland would have a convenient way to clear Cover Up since the enemy spawning is so predictable.

Jacqueline would place the first three Unknown Places locations without moving to them because none of them could be the Witch House Ruins, then I had her place a couple more and start moving to them, keeping one in the deck in case we revealed City of Elder Things. While this was going on, Roland would move to the earlier ones to identify them, and naturally he would always be the one to reveal the Court of the Great Old Ones. And Jacqueline would always end up revealing the Twilight Abyss.

Clearing all the VP locations was simply a matter of Jacqueline moving to one of them and grabbing two at a time with Sixth Sense (4) since they were all two locations away from each other. Once we'd accomplished that we would advance the act to reveal the Site of the Sacrifice and then move in and put our stockpile of clues to work removing all of the doom from Nahab within two turns.

I had to play Delve Too Deep on the turn we revealed Nahab otherwise Brown Jenkin would nuke it so I would try to defeat Nahab the turn we engaged her to prevent more doom building up, but if we had to tank her instead it wasn't a huge deal. On most of my runs we advanced to the final act while on the final agenda, so Nahab did get a fair bit of doom on her, but again it didn't really matter. We also didn't bother defeating Brown Jenkin at this point because we didn't need our hands when all of our actions would be spent removing doom.

I played this one a huge number of times while refining the decks for The Wages of Sin and one thing I noticed is that occasionally you can get really bogged down with the hex treacheries. They can be really taxing to remove so I eventually tried ignoring them whenever possible and just making do, but the problem with that is that if you get Unstable Energies on Keziah's Room there are so few hexes left in the deck that it can completely cycle more times than it otherwise would, which is sometimes good but usually not.

Still, for the most part this scenario is very predictable and saving Ward of Protection for the right targets (usually Ghostly Presence but sometimes, as always, Unhallowed Land) smooths out the rough edges.

Resolution 2.

4VP (three locations and 1 x Delve Too Deep) + 2XP from the resolution -> 6XP.

The Black Book was added to Jacqueline's deck (one Skull token is added to the token bag for the rest of the campaign).

Mementos Discovered : Gilman's Journal, Keziah's Formulae.

Upgrades

Jacqueline : 7XP spent, 1XP left.

• Clairvoyance x 2 -> Word of Command x 2 : This is kind of like turning Clairvoyance into a third and fourth copy of Sixth Sense (4), and since Word of Command is itself a spell it can be tutored by Arcane Initiate.

• Delve Too Deep x 1 -> Blur (1) x 1 : DTD has served its purpose and now it's time for it to go.

• Ward of Protection (2) x 1 : Now both copies are upgraded.

• The Black Book x 1 : We took this because Jacqueline appreciates both the Willpower boost and the extra Skull token, and Skull tokens are the 'easy' symbol token so it shouldn't cause too many problems.

Roland : 6XP spent, 1XP left.

• .45 Auto x 1 -> .45 Thompson (3) x 1 : Surely no explanation is needed.

• Daring x 1 -> Custom Ammunition x 1 : This is some tech for the next scenario. One neat interaction with the .45 Thompson is that if you only have two resources when you initiate a fight action you will immediately gain a third from its ammo being spent and you can then play this card as a fast action to gain its benefit for that fight.

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Scenario Four : Return to The Wages of Sin

It's all been leading up to this. One of the hardest scenarios in the game didn't get any easier but instead got itself a new objective which requires you to banish three Heretics. This was a feat I'd only ever accomplished across both versions perhaps 1-2 times over dozens of attempts, so if there was a way to do it with any kind of consistency I was determined to find it. And in the end, I did.

So the basic problem here is that you just don't have enough actions to accomplish everything unless you luck out on Unfinished Business targets. And luck is not something you want to rely on in this game, so after doing a lot of test runs with the same basic opening strategy, and I mean really a lot of runs, my first breakthrough came when I simply said to myself, "Hey, instead of peeking at all of the Heretics before choosing which ones to kill every time, why don't I just have Roland go in blind, guns blazing?"

So I put Custom Ammunition onto SttP and Roland could now two-shot a Heretic starting on turn two or three after Jacqueline grabbed enough clues to advance the act. This felt really promising, but the second and more important breakthrough came when I realized there was one particular location I could leverage to both protect us from the encounter deck and save us a lot of actions, and it's this one : Haunted Fields

Here's a typical opener from our new playbook, in point form :

• On turn one, Jacqueline plays Sixth Sense (4) (which is now pretty consistent with Word of Command in the mix) and does one investigate action with her ability, then moves to the Haunted Fields. Since all the locations in this scenario begin the game revealed this gets us two clues right away. Roland equips his Thompson and maybe Handcuffs or an ally and stays at Hangman's Brook.

• On turn two, Jacqueline goes first and performs 2-3 investigate actions and now has six clues (we grab the additional ones from Hangman's Brook because it's a potential Unfinished Business target on one of the two new Heretics). We advance the act and flip to the spectral sides of Haunted Fields and Hangman's Brook, and on Roland's turn his first action is to move to the Fields. He then investigates, which fails, triggering the haunted ability which pulls a Heretic on top of him. He shoots it once and takes a hit during the enemy phase.

• Jacqueline goes first again and as soon as she grabs a clue she peeks the Heretic to make sure it isn't the parley one, then on Roland's turn it dies and we plan our next moves based on its Unfinished Business task.

Sometimes we lost a few actions to various things but as long as we stuck to the plan (heh) things went pretty smoothly. As with the original, it's always better to pull from the spectral deck than the non-spectral because you don't get any of the action-taxing hex treacheries, and in fact the only card you can draw which will cost you any actions to deal with is the Screeching Banshee (the other enemy spawns at one of the crypt locations and can be safely ignored until the agenda advances because it won't have hunter). In addition, none of the spectral encounter cards deal horror unless you happen to get one that triggers an Unfinished Business card which does, which was important for Roland's survivability since he'll be taking a few hits.

And there are several good reasons for staying together on the Haunted Fields whenever we can afford to :

• When you advance the act the new Erynn MacAoidh ally gets placed at the Haunted Fields, so you need to be there to perform the action on the Act for the new objective.

• If we happen to have drawn a Vengeful Witch it spawns right next door so Roland can pop over, deal with it, and pop back to end the turn on the Fields.

• Both versions of The Gallows and Heretics' Graves locations have haunted effects which are much easier to manage than those on the other side, so we want to kill these two Heretics first if we can anyway.

• But most importantly, in spectral mode the following treacheries are essentially completely nullified : Witchweed, From the Other Side, and Bloodthirsty Spirits (ArkhamDB doesn't have them up yet).

And if you happen to get Unstable Energies on the Fields and it would cause a problem you can flip it back to its non-spectral side before leaving. In general it's surprisingly easy to deal with Unfinished Business tasks before the agenda advances, but once The Spectral Watcher appears you need to really plan your moves well because you're now racing against the clock, and you likely also have two Malevolent Spirits about to start chasing you. That part wasn't much of a concern though since by this point Jacqueline always had a huge stockpile of clues built up to use with Spectral Web, because now when the act advances you place two clues per investigator on every location. Unfortunately, though, you can't use that spell on the Watcher itself.

In our proper run we killed the Heretic from The Gallows first and it wanted to go to the Chapel Crypt, so Roland took it over there while Jacqueline stayed at the Fields (Sixth Sense could grab clues from it as soon as Roland flipped it). Roland killed the Crypt Heretic then banished the earlier one and headed over to the new Unfinished Business location, Hangman's Brook. Jacqueline finished clearing its clues and met him there in case he wasn't able to pull off the new "test any skill at 5" task, then Roland headed up to The Gallows to recover because we were one turn away from the Watcher spawning and he only had one point of sanity left. Staying two locations away from where the Watcher spawns meant Watcher's Grasp wouldn't finish him off, and no other encounter card could defeat him on the next turn.

A couple of turns later Roland had two fresh allies to soak horror and he moved into the Heretics' Graves and killed its occupant, and it turned out its banishment location was... Heretics' Graves! We caught a break, but experience told me we had enough time and resources left to clear a location on the other side if we really had to.

And that is how we overcame one of the most difficult challenges in the game. From now on the rest of the campaign would be all downhill.

(the rest of the campaign was not all downhill)

Resolution 3.

So it turns out you don't actually get any XP for banishing the three Heretics, which I really do think is unintentional, but hey I'll play it the way it's written this time.

2VP locations cleared -> 2XP.

One Heretic was unleashed into Arkham.

Erynn joined the investigators.

Mementos Discovered : Bloody Tree Carvings.

Upgrades

Jacqueline : 5XP spent, 0XP left.

• Storm of Spirits (3) x 1 : I kind of had to do this one to avoid losing the Arcane Research bonus but it's a good upgrade that I'd make at some point anyway.

• Read the Signs x 1 -> Lucid Dreaming x 1 : We are a combo deck and this card provides one of the few ways to directly tutor for combo parts. As with Word of Command it's also a spell so it can be tutored by the Arcane Initiate.

• Erynn MacAoidh x 1 : So, Erynn's ability isn't great but the Willpower boost and 2/2 soak for two resources makes her worth it. If I'm being perfectly honest, though, increasing the size of this particular deck is probably not worth the cost of adding her so I shouldn't have done it, but she was also a brand new part of the campaign so in the end did I really have a choice?

Roland : 3XP spent, 1XP left.

• On the Hunt (3) x 1 : This is an excellent upgrade. You can now search the entire encounter deck and if it wiffs you don't have to draw a card at all, and of course you now also get a three resource bounty for killing your target. This card will be particularly useful in the next scenario.

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Scenario Five : Return to The Greater Good

This is still my favourite scenario and this time it was even better because I'd never experienced the Members Only version where you're an enemy of the Lodge. The layout and the design here really captures the feeling of sneaking into a place you're not supposed to be, and dispatching any passers-by without leaving an evidence trail is an amusing side objective. And coming off the back of the previous scenario it was nice to be able to unwind a bit with one that wasn't nearly as demanding.

With the new On the Hunt (3) under SttP, Roland grabbed the Cell Keeper right away and Handcuffed him to remove the doom, then shot him and claimed his key. We cleared out the left hand side first and it turned out we were able to put the new Hidden Passageway into play, but moving to it presented a bit of an issue because it was pretty much guaranteed to add doom.

I had Jacqueline circle back around to start working on the Sanctum locations to find the one with the 2VP reward, meanwhile Roland stayed back to deal with a couple of enemies. On the turn before the agenda would have advanced I had him reveal the Passageway (triggering the extra doom) and he met up with Jacqueline and they cleared the Ceremony Room together, then we advanced the act to spawn Nathan Wick nearby and took him out.

By this stage we had all the keys and the encounter deck had cycled once, so we were able to grab the Cell Keeper again and claim bonus VP for his key, but unfortunately that was the only extra VP we had time for and we wanted to get the Puzzle Box resolution to be able to use it in the next scenario.

Resolution 2.

6VP (four locations, one enemy, and one bonus key) -> 6XP.

The Puzzle Box was added to Roland's deck.

Upgrades

Jacqueline : 8XP spent, 0XP left.

• Blur (4) x 1 : Now that we can spend more than one charge it's tempting to always take that option but it does mean you get fewer uses out of it overall. Still, that's pretty much how I played it every time. More actions now is usually better than more actions later.

• Storm of Spirits x 1 -> The Black Cat x 1 : It's time to break out the 5XP cards! They're so much fun, and this one is a good fit for Jacqueline because of course she has a higher chance of finding the Elder Thing token and also the Elder Sign token, and Jacqueline's Elder Sign ability is something you can't always make use of so having an alternative works pretty well. There are no Tablet tokens in the bag so it's not optimal, but that doesn't matter too much as she can always use that HP for soak.

Roland : 6XP spent, 1XP left.

• On the Hunt (3) x 1 : It's one of Roland's core cards.

• Handcuffs x 1 -> Dynamite Blast (3) x 1 : Sadly, Handcuffs has just about reached the limits of its usefulness. There are some humanoid enemies in the last two scenarios but we generally want to kill them outright now, and Dynamite Blast (3) is an excellent way to augment Roland's damage dealing potential, plus it works very well when enemies don't spawn on our location (something the final two scenarios have in common).

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Scenario Six : Return to Illusion and Disillusion

This scenario features the titular Circle, and due to our story choices so far it would be our job to make it Undone.

There's some variance here with the Unvisited Isle locations because between us we're only good at two skills, but there's only one location which doesn't use either one of them and in the proper run... it turned up.

We spent the early rounds collecting enough clues to be able to advance the act twice in a row so that if we got unlucky with the Penny Monster spawn we had some room to maneuver, and I made sure Jacqueline had a Blur down before we advanced. She did end up getting Penny, who, it turns out, deals damage when you evade her (geez) but Roland dispatched her pretty easily and we proceeded to scoop up the remaining clues before tackling any of the Circle actions.

Delaying a few turns allowed us to grow our hand sizes a bit because we'd still need to commit cards to the tests we were good at, but for the one we were bad at (Agility + Intellect) I briefly agonized over spending most of Jacqueline's clues to drop it to zero, then I did exactly that because I wanted to dodge the auto-fail token with her ability and doing that often meant taking two other big negative modifiers. And I did draw the auto-fail! She ain't the only psychic around here.

After we'd unlit all of the other braziers it was time to advance to the final act. We had a few turns to spare and it was a fairly simple matter to defeat The Spectral Watcher at The Geist-Trap after Roland used the Puzzle Box to unlight its brazier.

Resolution 4.

6VP (five locations and one enemy) -> 6XP.

Anette Mason is possessed by evil.

Gavriella Mizrah was added to Roland's deck.

Upgrades

Jacqueline : 8XP spent, 0XP left.

• Drawn to the Flame x 1 -> Lucid Dreaming x 1 : The other copy.

• Blur (4) x 1 : As above.

• Charisma x 1 : We now have three different allies in the deck and while we generally want to sacrifice one of them, that task is very easy to accomplish without having to use the ally discard mechanic.

Roland : 6XP spent, 1XP left.

• Handcuffs x 1 -> Enchant Weapon x 1 : We now have two upgrades that Well-Maintained can return to our hand, but more importantly Roland can now do One Good Attack per turn, which is all he really needs, though the final scenario did put that statement to the test.

• Charisma x 1 : We can now have two Beat Cops or Gavriella and one each of the others in play, which is a decent upgrade.

• Gavriella Mizrah x 1 : So, all the way back in the prologue when I decided to choose Gavriella over Penny, one of the reasons was because I looked ahead and saw that In the Clutches of Chaos would not have Unhallowed Land if the Lodge guys were our enemies, so Gavriella's one point of sanity wouldn't be a liability. But it turns out that being enemies of the Lodge doesn't necessarily mean you fight them in that scenario, and due to our story choices we ended up fighting the witches. Whoops.

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Scenario Seven : Return to In the Clutches of Chaos

This scenario is a good test of your deck's ability to perform a range of different tests, and my two were found kind of wanting in that regard. It wasn't a huge deal, though, because we got a few non-skill test ones, including the Southside which lets you discard three cards from the encounter deck and then resolve a Power treachery if one appears (which, annoyingly, Erynn can't cancel).

I was pretty cavalier about performing that action because most of the Power treacheries have Willpower tests and Jacqueline rarely ever fails those, but then when we were getting ready to advance the act she discarded the third Daemonic Piping. Oh, right, that one's a Power treachery, too. Hmm.

We expended a lot of resources dealing with the Piper of Azathoth and Roland ended up with one remaining sanity. According to my notes I held Ward of Protection for the last four turns of the game because Unhallowed Land would have finished him off, but I ended up not having to use it.

We were pretty lucky because late in the game we placed three clues on the Silver Twilight Lodge so there were a few left there when we spawned Mega Anette Mason. There was also one on French Hill, so there was a lot of distance between us and her and we could gather them all safely. This dropped her HP low enough for her to be finished off by dynamite and an angry copper.

Resolution 1.

7VP (one location, four enemies) -> 7XP.

The investigators arrested Anette.

By arresting her we avoid the option which adds a -5 token to the bag in the Twist of Fate interlude, but you now also remove one Skull token from the bag and erase one tally mark.

Upgrades

I love the upgrade round before the final scenario of a campaign. You don't need to worry about the utility of your choices for future scenarios because there are none, so you can afford to take more situational cards to counter specific threats. That's not really what I did in this instance, but it's what I like to do.

Jacqueline : 9XP spent, 0XP left.

• Prescient x 2 -> The Black Cat x 1, Brand of Cthugha (4) x 1 : Prescient was kind of the only flex slot the deck had left and during an earlier test game I went with Guts (2) instead because the additional card draw was useful. But my testing changed my mind about that and I wanted an extra cat for the soak and for its abilities.

  I took the Brand because it was the best option to use up all of the Arcane Research XP (I bought the base version for 1XP and upgraded it right away) and some more firepower might come in handy, not to mention it's an additional spell asset to interact with Sign Magick (3).

Roland : 7XP spent, 1XP left.

• Crack the Case x 1 -> "I've had worse…" (2) x 1 : I actually didn't realize I had one extra XP here or I probably would've gone with something that cost 3XP instead, but it occurred to me after playing with this that it would've been a pretty nice thing to have throughout the entire campaign because there are now a lot of treacheries that deal two points of damage and/or horror.

• Enchanted Blade x 1 -> Agency Backup x 1 : Is this the smartest upgrade I could've taken? No, but it is sweetest! They're from the Agency! Roland is from the Agency! Who else is he gonna call? Seriously, though, Roland can afford it and it would give him some staying power if we had to fend off the Mindless Dancers for a turn or two. It's also more fast testless damage, which is a very valuable thing with all the high-priority 1HP cultist targets that could appear.

  If I hadn't taken this I probably would've taken "I've had worse…" (4) x 2 because it counters Whispered Bargain fairly well, and funnily enough the level zero Dodge has pretty good value here, too. If I had Tablet tokens in the bag (if you fail, Azathoth attacks you) that might've pushed me over the edge, but then if that were the case I simply wouldn't do any test below +3. Though when you're in a tight spot perhaps that's easier said than done.

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Scenario Eight : Return to Before the Black Throne

The Cosmos/Empty Space mechanics in this scenario invite a lot of rules questions, so I'll do a few quick clarifications :

• When you advance the act you shuffle the Empty Space cards in play into their owner's deck (you're allowed to look at them). New Empty Space cards come from the active investigator's deck.

• When you use the ability to shuffle your location back into the Cosmos deck and teleport to the starting location you don't replace your spot with Empty Space.

• You can place Cosmos cards in any valid location where there's a gap; you don't have to place them on Empty Space. This means you can extend the game board out if you need to, which I did a couple of times during this run.

• Empty Space isn't a location as per the rules reference, so if there are any Mindless Dancers floating in Empty Space when the act advances, technically they shouldn't be shuffled into the top five cards of the deck as per the instructions. But I played it so that they were because it seemed like that was probably the intent.

• This came up once during testing, but if an enemy (in this case it was the Piper) is at one of the starting locations and you advance the act, that location gets removed from the game so any enemies there are discarded.

I did a couple of test runs in an earlier game and I've gotta say, this one is actually pretty difficult. The new Nightgaunts are very useful but I refrained from spending them right away to check the first potential objective location, preferring instead to save them for emergencies like when a Cultist with doom on it needed killing before the agenda advanced.

The lead investigator really takes a beating here with all the Daemonic Piping surge draws but in general most of the encounter deck will cycle through and you'll see all of the cards, so any silver bullet upgrades you took are quite likely to pay off.

The main piece of advice I would give here is that those Cultists are your #1 priority because they're the primary means for doom building up on Azathoth, and that's the thing you want to avoid at all cost. For this reason, during the first Mythos phase Roland ripped the Wizard of the Order out of the deck with On the Hunt (3) so that we wouldn't have to deal with that potential game-ender.

I always tried to draw two Cosmos cards at a time (never three) because one of the new ones is pretty bad, and I almost always ended up pulling a location I could use without having to pay an extra cost. The Mindless Dancers were best avoided if at all possible, but Roland could take them down if it was really necessary. In the proper run he had to take down two of them and then deal with the Piper of Azathoth (Agency Backup came in really handy for that job).

We weren't very lucky at finding the objective locations. The first one was our second pick (out of two), the second was also our second pick (out of three) and the last one was our fourth pick (out of four). That last dash to the final objective location was pretty hectic, with two Mindless Dancers and the respawned Piper chasing us (Blur (4) was MVP here) and Roland was four locations behind Jacqueline when she made it to The Black Throne. I thought we had to be there together to advance it but it turns out it didn't matter, but I still had Roland catch up to her because he wasn't able to slow the monsters down any more so if we didn't win within the next two turns it wouldn't matter.

Unusually for us, we had 'accidentally' passed two Unavoidable Demises earlier in the scenario, so for those last few turns Jacqueline was one last Unavoidable Demise away from fulfilling that card's title, with no Ward of Protection in sight. In the end she was able to clear the clues pretty easily (I triple-checked the math anyway) and we won with no agenda in play and Azathoth on six doom.

Resolution 6.

Azathoth slumbers... for now.

This was the new final resolution which required the new objective from The Wages of Sin. It doesn't give the most bonus XP but I think it's the best one for the investigators : only one mental and one physical trauma each!

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For reference, here are the final versions of the decks :

Jacqueline Fine (58XP)

Roland Banks (44XP)