SD and I Plays: Death May Die

Round 7 and Ian is happily collecting tokens. 1 of each at this point. Which is somewhat useless, but on the other hand we only need 1 more token and we’ll have access to another tome. Meanwhile in the basement, a lot of monsters are being spawned.

Stumbling across a dead policeman, Ian collects his shotgun (smart move Ian). Ahmed runs away using his stealth (another smart move). Star Spawn decides he’s been sitting on the bench for long enough and returns to the player board.

Ahmed finds some spectacles, which lets him draw two tokens from a dead cultist and keep the one he wants. Quite handy, but at this point not really necessary since he found the last token needed. However, if he doesn’t spend the stress to keep the spectacles he’ll become terrified. And we really didn’t want that ‘status’ on him, when they finally go up against Cthulhu.

Round 8 starts off with Ian claiming the last book needed. He spends the rest of his turn resting, knowing Cthulhu is about to make his party entry. Sitting on the floor, reconsidering his life choices, he discovers an unstable grenade. How lucky is that!

Ahmed doesn’t give a friggin f* and whams Mr. Great Dreamer on the snout with his briefcase (it’s clearly his thing). Having upgraded his Healing Prayer skill really comes in handy here too.

Round 9-11 sees our heroes chasing Cthulhu all over the game board. He has 3×12 hitpoint, and everytime you take him down by 12 he spawns in another place with new abilities. Obviously a little annoying, since we have to waddle through cultists and monsters. One such encounter having Ahmeds Catatonia setting in in front of Star Spawn (no! Playing dead really won’t fool him Ahmed).

All this running around however actually nets them a Medical Kit, and enough insanity to lvl up a bit too. The key to fight the creatures of the Cosmos is clearly to be insane…just not too insane. It’s a balance for sure. Wibble!

It all comes to an end in round 12. I should probably mention there are no limits to how many people, monsters and otherworldly guests can be on a tile. So they all end up crammed into this tiny hallway.

There’s no way our heroes can survive this. Star Spawn, a Cthonian, some random cultists and off course our Big Boi is all there, wanting a nice, tasty investigator snack. But in my mind, this is perfect. There is no surviving…just a death that hopefully makes sense.

So Ian and Ahmed goes all in on Cthulhu, ignoring the other two. Ahmed was down due to another round of Catanoia (again, it’s really not helping you Ahmed), so it’s kinda ll up to Ian at this point. And he makes this insanely lucky roll of 2 blanks, 3 successes, 1 elder sign, 2 success+elder signs. Taking down Cthulhu but is eaten up in the process. As he should be.

I didn’t roll for Ahmed at all. At this point he’s near no health, gibberingly insane and lying prone on the floor trying to look like a dead cacti. No luck there mate, if Star Spawn didn’t eat you, the Cthonian surely did.

So my heroes died, but Cthulhu was banished back to wherever he’s taking his vacations.  And I’d call that a massive win any day. And I seriously loved that part of the game. That it all came down to a few dice rolls and putting everything on black, hoping beyond hope that you’d get that lucky roll. Which I did. It could just as easily have gone the other direction, and they would have died…inches away from victory. But I would have been fine with that too.

In both scenarios it’s been a close call, a struggle. But that’s definitely as it should be. It is a CoC game after all.