7TV Dracula Campaign Playthrough

We come at last to the final chapter. The heroes have tracked Dracula back to his lair, and move in to destroy the King of Vampires once and for all…

The goals for this scenario are very simple: the heroes want to kill Dracula, and Dracula doesn’t want to be dead. However, since the game is played to a time limit (determined by the Diurnal deck), the winner will be determined by victory points, which gives each player some incentive to make sure certain things do or don’t happen.

The heroes get extra points if Mina Harker and/or Quincy Morris survive to the end of the game (presumably Quincy has been singled out because he’s the only hero who dies in the book). Also, the heroes get one point for each of Dracula’s Brides that is eliminated, and 4 for destroying Dracula himself.

The Dracula player gets extra points if Dracula survives to the end, and also if Mina gets turned into a vampire. In addition, either player gets a point if the other player’s cast is axed (more models removed from play than in play), and also for every status token on an opponent’s star or co-star model at the end of the game.

This last bit makes for some interesting game play, as many characters have what are called Presence attacks, things like the Transylvanian Wolf’s Wild Howling or Van Helsing’s Iron Nerve that don’t deal damage but inflict conditions such as Distracted or Weakened on their targets. A player can spend a plot point (the game’s action currency) to remove a condition from one of their models, but then that’s one less plot point they have to activate a model or a special ability.

The setting is a 3 foot by 3 foot area representing Dracula’s crumbling castle. For most of it I’m re-purposing the Battle Systems Ruined Monastery kit that I used in the previous chapter. There aren’t quite enough walls to replicate the setup illustration, but I think I got the general idea across. For Dracula’s tomb I built a new papercraft kit, “The Vault” from Mystic Mountain Productions — you can read my project blog about it here.

7TV allows for tactical surprises and “gotcha” moments via Artifact cards. Each player gets a certain number of these at the start of the game, based on the number of Stars and Co-Stars (major characters, as opposed to Extras, the rank-and-file) they have on their side. Additionally, some characters have special abilities that give their player additional artifact cards. The cards typically cost plot points to use and must be played during a Star or Co-Star’s activation. In our game, Artifact plays led to some particularly cinematic moments…

My opponent’s Forces of Light got the first turn (by virtue of winning the previous game) and immediately moved in Quincy Morris, a beast of an Extra with a Winchester rifle, an especially effective long-range attack. The board setup created a bit of a shooting gallery down the middle of the board, so I was concerned. Luckily, I had a nasty little Artifact card called Scholomance — on my turn, I was able to pay three plot points to remove one of my opponent’s Extras from play and replace it with an Uncanny Un-Dead under my control. Oh no! It turns out that Quincy Morris got turned into a vampire under Dracula’s thrall!

Later in the game, in an effort to avoid the aforementioned shooting gallery. I had moved most of my forces to the L-shaped building on the right side of the board. This created a bottleneck for my opponent as she had to move her models in through a narrow doorway. While they were bunched up there, Dracula used his ability to turn into Elemental Dust to sneak up behind them and attack Mina. This resulted in the Bitten status for Mina, the first step towards turning her into a vampire — she dies, but remains in play, and I get to roll every turn to see if she rises from the dead as an Un-Dead under my control (also worth several victory points for me).

Unfortunately, Van Helsing crashed the party with a vial of Holy Water, an artifact that creates an area attack in an arc in front of him. Any Un-Dead within that arc receive the On Fire status, and any heroic models get to remove one status. So not only did Dracula and two of his Brides catch on fire, but Mina lost her Bitten status. Now she’s just dead, so no extra points for me.

These are the great story moments that keep me coming back to 7TV. It’s easy to imagine Van Helsing splashing his vial of holy water everywhere in an effort to save Mina’s soul, even if he couldn’t save her life.

The game ended with a narrow victory for Dracula, my first win in this whole campaign. It was a blast to play and I’m definitely going to try to save all the paper terrain I made for it, as I can easily see us wanting to play it through again, or at least play some of the chapters as one-off games.