Mina discards the new things:
FAST HORSES
LUCY’S REVENGE
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Discard Holy bullets and crucifix
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@RossM, I assume you intend to mature the vampire?
If so, that’s the game, and I would like to hear the post-game from everyone.
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As a mere spectator, that was great. Well done @RossM sneaking about and everybody for the humour and good spirits, I enjoyed that!
I think it would be great to see when the hunters were discussing where Dracula could have been, where was he actually in the map at the time.
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I will post a Dracula move chart later, which can be compared to the pictures of the board to see how close (or not) the hunters were to Dracula.
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On the assumption that Dracula will mature that vampire - and even if not he can definitely evade us for long enough for the Despair Track to take effect - I’d like to start with a few thank yous, and give my thoughts on the game later today.
Firstly, thank you @COMaestro for running this game. I’m sure it can’t be easy keeping track of everyone’s moves and inventory when a lot of that is done through private messages, but it seemed to run very smoothly. You were always there with advice and clarification when I wasn’t sure what cards did, and I’m looking forward to discussing the changes from 1st edition later on too.
Secondly, thank you and congratulations to the Count: @RossM. A most fiendish chase and excellently played, plus some great moments of humour too. How I managed to type your title correctly without dropping the “o” throughout the game was a miracle. I can’t wait to see your moves and read your thoughts on them and your strategy and choices at those key stages of the game. I’m also hoping to even the score in our current Star Trek PBF game here, although with a third of that game left to go anything can still happen - especially if you keep on blowing up the Federation ships.
Thirdly, a thank you and commiserations to my fellow hunters @Whistle_Pig, @MichaelCule and @RogerBW. Sadly our hunt wasn’t successful but we gave it a great shot and might have ended up closer had a few key decisions or encounters gone our way, including one or two specific choices I made that would have changed the game much earlier. I’d also like to apologise as at times I felt like I was quarterbacking you all in our hunt too much, and tried to back off that too; I hope that didn’t affect your enjoyment of the game. More on all of that in the longer roundup discussion.
Finally though, a collectively thank you to all of you for being part of this game. It was my first PBF game and I thoroughly loved the experience so am looking forward to playing more. In fact, after thoughts and a brief discussion with Roger, I am hoping to run my own PBF game here in the next week or so, playing through a similar although fully cooperative hunt for a supernatural villain in a small 1800s village in A Touch Of Evil. I was intending to run it for 4 people, but if all 5 of you are keen to play I can accommodate you all. I posted a review of my thoughts of the game here and you can find playthroughs and reviews on YouTube or by following the link in my review to the BGG website, but it plays a lot like Arkham/Eldritch Horror or other Flying Frog titles Fortune and Glory and Invasion From Outer Space (slightly more complex than Last Night On Earth) if you are familiar with those games. Please let me know publicly or privately if you wish to take part.
Thanks again - more to follow later on!
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A hidden movement game should, I think, produce in the hunters a mix of frustration and cunning; that’s certainly the way I feel about Whitehall Mystery. This was a little on the frustration side for me, but I think I should probably have supplied more and travelled less (at least judging by my combat outcomes). And I think we only used Mina’s power once… that’s a thing that varies a lot between games. In Aeon’s End you really want to work up to the point where you can spam your individual player power as often as possible; in this the setup meant it usually wasn’t worth the effort.
Thank you to all!
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In my opinion, you made a tactical error in your first combat with the Reckless Vampire. It has 4 HP. By the way Hunters have to alternate their attack cards, and combats going a maximum of 6 rounds, you could not defeat the vampire in one combat, so you probably should have tried to escape early, especially as I think it matured that night (I would have to go back and check). That defeat gave Dracula 3 extra influence.
But you did have such horrible supplies, never really getting a weapon until near the end of the game, I believe, which are the things that really do damage.
For my part, this is my first time running a PbF, and it was a lot of fun being behind the scenes and getting to see how everything was unfolding. A person on BGG, DaveD, made a wonderful spreadsheet with macros that manages a lot of the game for the moderator, as well as files for the board images and was kind enough to share them all with me. It is not perfect (the combat section does not appear to work at all), so I might try to tweak it if I can find the free time to do so to patch the holes. Got frustrating trying to get someone to move by rail when I could clearly see their ticket allowed them to move that far, but the spreadsheet said it was out of range. Turned out one of the cities was not listed as being adjacent to the middle city by rail, which caused the issue and I was able to fix that. There are probably a few most missed connections like that, but with SO MANY adjacencies to deal with, it is no surprise some may have been missed.
I had fun trying to predict what Ross would do on his turms, which ended up being very different than what my choices would have been most of the time, but obviously worked out very well for him.
I would be happy to run this again, to give other players a shot if interested, or run the same crew through for a shot at vengeance against the Count if all were interested.
Thanks for playing, everyone.
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That tactical error was mine, which I’ll get to later.
Ah. It’s better to get back to my true form.
Despite my constant moaning about event cards, I actually got incredibly lucky once in combat, drawing exactly the cards needed.
Also, my one drawn event card was exactly the one needed.
Thanks to all, I’ll talk about decisions once the move map is posted.
Well played everyone. I was super stressed throughout.
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More stressful playing Dracula in 1st edition, when a stake (and if I remember a knife too) can instantly kill the Count if he loses initiative to a hunter in combat. I think the extra blood points and combat system here might give Dracula license to scrap more if he (or she) so chooses.
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Here is a move chart, for everybody:
| Week | Day | Day/Night | Godalming | Seward | VanHelsing | Mina | Dracula | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Start | |||||||
| 2 | 1 | Mon | Day | Leipzig | Milan | Madrid | Madrid | Athens |
| 3 | 1 | Mon | Night | Leipzig | Milan | Madrid | Madrid | Valona |
| 4 | 1 | Tue | Day | Brussels | Prague | Santander | Florence | Valona |
| 5 | 1 | Tue | Night | Brussels | Prague | Santander | Florence | Varna |
| 6 | 1 | Wed | Day | Bordeaux | Vienna | Saragossa | Rome | Varna |
| 7 | 1 | Wed | Night | Bordeaux | Vienna | Saragossa | Rome | Constanta |
| 8 | 1 | Thu | Day | Nantes | Zagreb | Toulouse | Bari | Constanta |
| 9 | 1 | Thu | Night | Nantes | Zagreb | Toulouse | Bari | Bucharest |
| 10 | 1 | Fri | Day | Nantes | Zagreb | Toulouse | Bari | Bucharest |
| 11 | 1 | Fri | Night | Nantes | Zagreb | Toulouse | Bari | Klausenberg |
| 12 | 1 | Sat | Day | Paris | Vienna | Marseilles | Adriatic Sea | Klausenberg |
| 13 | 1 | Sat | Night | Paris | Vienna | Marseilles | Adriatic Sea | Szeged |
| 14 | 1 | Sun | Day | Berlin | Budapest | Genoa | Valona | Szeged |
| 15 | 1 | Sun | Night | Berlin | Budapest | Genoa | Budapest Hospital | Belgrade |
| 16 | 2 | Mon | Day | Prague | Constanta | Vienna | Budapest Hospital | Belgrade |
| 17 | 2 | Mon | Night | Prague | Constanta | Vienna | Budapest Hospital | Valona |
| 18 | 2 | Tue | Day | Budapest | Bucharest | Vienna | Budapest | Valona |
| 19 | 2 | Tue | Night | Budapest | Bucharest | Vienna | Budapest | Athens |
| 20 | 2 | Wed | Day | Zagreb | Belgrade | Munich | Szeged | Athens |
| 21 | 2 | Wed | Night | Zagreb | Belgrade | Munich | Szeged | Ionian Sea |
| 22 | 2 | Thu | Day | Sarajevo | Klausenberg | Milan | Szeged | Ionian Sea |
| 23 | 2 | Thu | Night | Sarajevo | Klausenberg | Milan | Szeged | Tyrrhenian Sea |
| 24 | 2 | Fri | Day | Valona | Klausenberg | Genoa | Constanta | Tyrrhenian Sea |
| 25 | 2 | Fri | Night | Valona | Klausenberg | Genoa | Constanta | Cagliari |
| 26 | 2 | Sat | Day | Valona | Belgrade | Rome | Varna | Cagliari |
| 27 | 2 | Sat | Night | Valona | Belgrade | Rome | Varna | Cagliari |
| 28 | 2 | Sun | Day | Adriatic Sea | Salonica | Naples | Sofia | Cagliari |
| 29 | 2 | Sun | Night | Adriatic Sea | Salonica | Naples | Sofia | Cagliari |
| 30 | 3 | Mon | Day | Bari | Athens | Tyrrhenian Sea | Szeged | Cagliari |
| 31 | 3 | Mon | Night | Bari | Athens | Tyrrhenian Sea | Szeged | Mediterranean Sea |
| 32 | 3 | Tue | Day | Rome | Athens | Cagliari | Vienna | Mediterranean Sea |
| 33 | 3 | Tue | Night | Rome | Athens | Cagliari | Vienna | Granada |
| 34 | 3 | Wed | Day | Genoa | Athens | Rome | Munich | Granada |
| 35 | 3 | Wed | Night | Genoa | Athens | Rome | Munich | Alicante |
| 36 | 3 | Thu | Day | Marseilles | Tyrrhenian Sea | Rome | Munich | Alicante |
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Hmm I thought Dracula might have made it home to drop a vampire there between Valona and Klausenberg but maybe didn’t quite have the time for it.
@RossM Way back on the Wednesday evening of week 1, you said you would like to comment on those early plans we had. What did you want to say back then?
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I sort of feel I should apologise for the disasterous way the encounter with that Vampire turned out… And sort of feel I shouldn’t. We were already very close to the ‘last chance saloon’ and while we had an idea of where the Count had got to we had nobody near enough to him to attack.
Losing the four points when the vampire matured was going to screw us either way so I went for broke. I have a tendency to do that. I think perhaps, while attacking and then going away wounded wouldn’t have helped much, that waiting till the next morning so I could attack the critter in the daylight might have made enough difference. We’ll never know.
Our primary problem was that the Count wasn’t found early enough. We had no trace of him until after the first despair was placed (I think: could be wrong) and that was far too late. Perhaps our initial dispersal of the hunters was unwise and we should have kept Mina in company with someone who could trigger her special ability.
One point of disagreement: I don’t recall Mina and Van Helsing being in the same place at the start. If we had been I wouldn’t have left Madrid without using her ability.
EDITED TO ADD: And what I should have said at the start was my thanks to all of you for a great game, especially my thanks to the GM for making it possible. And I’d like to do that again sometime. Playing someone different this time…
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Oh, yeah. That was a clerical error, where I had messed up the starting positions. The spreadsheet record is wrong on that point, I manually changed it in the actual game tab.
And a word of advice for any Van Helsing player. Never just Rest at night unless you need to heal. Instead, use your Leadership ability to privately converse with one of your fellow hunters, learn what they have in hand and see if another hunter could use anything.
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Answering the above and more…
Starting location.
Weirdly I’d picked Athens before anyone had decided starting locations. This decisions was based on rubbish railway links and Blake 7. My tactic was to always pick locations that were tactically poor, gambling that people would assume I would keep my options as open as possible, Initial route was to skirt the edge of the map heading north east.
Lots of sites suggests keeping wolf move for when I was attacked, but I reasoned the earliest I could break up my trail, the better. I dropped my reckless vampire first, knowing it was the one location most likely to mature before I was discovered, especially as it would wipe out the trail for locations 4-6 as well. I got loads of vampires and played them all as soon as possible.
On Wednesday, you’d twigged where I was, and if it wasn’t for a double night time move you could have double teamed my vampire. As luck would have it Mina didn’t have the cards to stop me.
The next issue was I’d used all my vampire cards, so as I backtracked and tried to confuse my trail, I only had cards that could delay you, so the next tactic was to tie people up in one area and then flee as far as possilbe.
The water move was a big risk, but the net was closing, and I wanted to draw hunters into my double fog trap.
Saying all this, I was absolutely livid when you played consecrated ground as I was convinced you’d play it exactly where I was, and by this point I’d spent a whole week not laying vampires. I needed that second vampire to mature. If not Dracula would just have to keep on damaging himself to escape, and one single combat would have been fatal.
I got so lucky drawing strength twice against van helsing, and I’m very surprised I won.
My next move would have been back into the Mediterranean to really mess with you.
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That was probably our major and biggest mistake: we never communicated at the start or came up with a plan until three or four days into the hunt. That almost gave him a head start. Unless you get lucky and draw some event cards to reveal his locations early, we really should have spent time agreeing our approach and starting positions before play began, making use of player abilities, such as keeping Mina central so any of us could meet her, allowing Godalming to be an outlier if his ticket supply ability gave him further train travel range, and yes Van Helsing’s Leadership ability too.
Fights are what they are: win some, lose some, depending on the cards drawn by Dracula and the items that hunter has collected. However if there is chance another hunter can get there before an encounter matures, the first hunter can always consider an escape in the first three rounds while always being vigilant to avoid being mesmerised and bitten.
My main mistake was coming up with a pretty good plan - but then second guessing it with regards to where Dracula was. Hindsight is great I know but Mina’s defeat by the vampire at Valona when I was planning to meet her there put us in a big hole at the end of the first week. I became convinced Dracula may have snuck back past us and headed towards Germany and France - probably because that’s what I would have done - and didn’t think Godalming or Van Helsing could block him off. Had I continued with the plan, I would have got to Valona first with my stake and a knife plus maybe also my pistol (I think I had it around then) and tackled the vampire much better equipped. Godalming’s chartered carriage from Paris to Berlin might have been enough to cover any anticipated Count’s advance, but of course collectively we didn’t know he had that. Then Mina and I could have checked the two most easterly regions for his presence. May not have changed the outcome at the end, but would have given us more scope for taking risks in week 2, especially if he was starting to be penned in around Szeged.
And in retrospect, maybe we should have taken a punt and sent Consecrated Ground to Cagliari. As I think I said at the time when he made his first sea move it was strange as we weren’t sure where he was and Dracula only goes to sea for three reasons: if cornered or boxed in, if heading to/from the British Isles and Ireland, or if going to put an encounter at Cagliari - and usually a nasty one. With typical irony I think I drew a Heavenly host card the round after we played that card, and if one of us had one at the time, Cagliari was the ideal place to put it just in case.
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Adding to the above, I tried to remove all evidence I wasn’t slipping north past hunters in order to feed this misconception.
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