Kicking off the Holidays - Session Report

[ATOEtalGeek]

We had a little marathon session on Saturday night with 7 players. We hosted at our house and I had been sending the group texts all week dripping with theme so I could whet the appetites of all the would-be heroes. Everyone was chomping at the bit by the time Saturday night rolled around. It was awesome.

We started off with the Volgovian Nutcracker and remembered right away how tough this guy is while reading his back story and abilities, and those of his minions. Now we were primed. This guy kicked our butts last year but we played him closer to Christmas so perhaps he waxed in evil strength the closer we got to that glorious day. This year though we got him before he gain so much strength. It was a good challenge but we won out in the end after two and a half rounds of the first showdown. We cornered him in the Fields and brought along the Magistrate and the Reverend. A couple of us were KO'd after the first round and the majority of us had items and allies stripped away though we felt like we were on top when we finally beat him.

Then we reset and went right into Krampus! (BTW, I have gone all out in making really nice quality print-n-plays of all the Web Villains. It makes for a much deeper immersion in game play for me and the group.) Krampus was eating Townsfolk left and right out of his sack. He ended up with 5 additional health by the time we got him into the showdown at the Inn. We had failed attempt after failed attempt to get into a fight with him by searching the Revelers. We kept rolling 4 or less and couldn't initiate enough fights. On a couple of the fights we missed while swinging at the Sack. We did not do a good job saving the Townsfolk out of the sack but we did manage to make a couple of clever moves in placing Militia between certain Revelers and Townsfolk on the board to protect them. We had a couple of nasty remains in play Mystery cards that we wanted to get rid of. One was Growing Power that gave +1 Combat to the Villain but the bigger, more troublesome one was Veil of Darkness that would move the Shadow Track 2 steps every time a Hero is KO'd. We only had enough steps left for 1 and a half of us to be KO's so we had to try to get rid of that card. Because of that we took a flier on Sophie because we didn't know her secret (luckily she only had one). It turned out to be a little secret. So far, so good. Now we had to make the rolls. The assigned player rolled against the +1 combat card first - and MISSED! We thought "Oh crap we need to roll better on that Veil card or we're sunk. So that was a tense moment with a drum roll and all...and he nailed it. That gave us a chance knowing we could stand to have a few heroes KO'd without driving the shadow track home. It took us two rounds against Krampus and it got close again but we put him to rest...at least until next time.