Frosthaven – Scenario #46 Dead Pass – The Boardgames Chronicle

We started 2024 with the most played game of 2023 – yes, with Frosthaven! We are getting very close to the end of the Algox track, with story developing in a pretty interesting way! The scenarios are a bit complex and sometimes crazy (like innovative #28 Summit Meeting, very difficult #38 The Way Forward or recent very long #45 Living Glacier).

Still, we press on, now to #46 Dead Pass which will require us to gather some ancient snow in order to cleanse the curse which is affecting the Algox community. As you might expect, that will not come easy!

Our Frosthaven Campaign in scenario order:

Some interesting materials about Frosthaven World:
Frosthaven – first look – starting characters (1/2)
Frosthaven – first look – starting characters (2/2)
Frosthaven – monsters' analysis & strategies – Lurkers
Frosthaven – monsters' analysis & strategies – Unfettered

Our team recently gains a lot of experience – those end-of-campaign scenarios, while very difficult & complex – provide also a lot of possibilities to level up. And we finally will have first character with level 9 (after this scenario which I am presenting here).

Deathwalker – our main damage dealer – level 8 (me)
Trapper – a versatile crowd control and support – level 6 (Kuba J)
Coral – so important tank – also is now on level 6 (Kuba G)

We really had a feeling that with such group nothing can stop us!

Scenario

Let us now analyze scenario, its set-up, win conditions and complexity levels.

Both two dots below the scenario name and actual Goals / Win Conditions prove that there will be some strange riles in this adventure. Somehow, collecting “new snow” is not so straightforward, yes? Well, let us see!

PS. As always, feel free to click on below images for full details.

Session report

**Scenario #46 set-up** – pretty small adventure size-wise, only two rooms, very nasty enemies in first but where is the complexity? Where is the snow?

After couple of turns we got rid of nasty Shrike Fiends (immunity to poison, wound or muddle, huge health) and Burrowing Blades (those shields!). Still, we are now experienced enough to know how to deal with those folks.

We entered second rooms and immediately realized where complexity – and difficulty – of this scenario lays. Please have a good look at above picture (expand in new window if needed). First of all, there are five green areas, where the new snow falls. However, if somebody stays on it / next to it – nothing happens. Then there are three red arrows – spaces where pretty often nasty creatures will appear. The snow will start to gather on mentioned hexes, monsters will start to come, and we will have to sacrifice **actions to gather precious substance.**

**The trickiest thing was to 1) keep monsters away from snow tiles 2) keep us not adjacent to them as it was stopping snow generation! And we need 20 (twenty!) of those!**

**That was hard –** Trapper was a tremendous help here, with his crowd-control using… traps! I stayed in last room but survived **onslaught by couple of enemies. As you can see above, it was high time to finish the scenario as we would no way be able to get rid of those monsters. We collected twenty new snows!**

Summary

That was interesting, difficult but not artificially complicated scenario. A lot of fight, killing, decent chance to survive but also to lose – a well-balanced adventure. Now, having ancient ice from previous scenario and ancient snow from this one, we can move to almost last adventure on Algox path – #52 Fleeting Permanence.

Stay tuned – see you in another session report!

Michal and his Deathwalker can handle rooms by himself. He didn’t need our help. Deathwalker can easily attack on other tiles through his shadows, so there was no risk to leave him behid alone, he even still kept doing most of the damage in the bigger room eith my trapper and Kuba’s Coral. We had a slow start, as the starting monsters have been blocking the snow “production”(we were forced by them to stand near the production sites). It took us a while to get rid off them and slowly build up few traps in a way that would allow us to defend. I started on the left, after i cut off that wing it became much easier. Channeled enemies went to the right, towards our tank, they were slow and didn’t have much room, so sometimes they couldn’t move ahead and stayed behind. I didn’t block the way completelly, as it would force enemies to enter traps. Monsters always need to have a way to move towards us, that avoids traps, but if enemies occupy all available tiles along that road, they stay put and wait for the route to be cleared.

Maybe it wasn’t fascinating scenario, not very coplex, with our current setup very easy to win(channeling enemies by me, tank to withstand incoming hits and Deathwalker to kill them), but fairly boring. Less action than usually, more crowd controll was required. More bookeeping than usually – it was little problematic to track when and where new monsters spawn, remembering to add snow production. We like more exciting scenarios, where till last round we are not sure if we can win, here it was just the matter of time. Without trapper this scenario would be much more difficult and exciting. 20 snows produced took quite some time, as on averege we had just 2 tiles a turn during which the snow could build up, and each turn new monsters appeared.

LikeLike

One thought on “Frosthaven – Scenario #46 Dead Pass”

Jakub Jakimiak says:

January 18, 2024 at 16:31

Michal and his Deathwalker can handle rooms by himself. He didn’t need our help. Deathwalker can easily attack on other tiles through his shadows, so there was no risk to leave him behid alone, he even still kept doing most of the damage in the bigger room eith my trapper and Kuba’s Coral. We had a slow start, as the starting monsters have been blocking the snow “production”(we were forced by them to stand near the production sites). It took us a while to get rid off them and slowly build up few traps in a way that would allow us to defend. I started on the left, after i cut off that wing it became much easier. Channeled enemies went to the right, towards our tank, they were slow and didn’t have much room, so sometimes they couldn’t move ahead and stayed behind. I didn’t block the way completelly, as it would force enemies to enter traps. Monsters always need to have a way to move towards us, that avoids traps, but if enemies occupy all available tiles along that road, they stay put and wait for the route to be cleared.

Maybe it wasn’t fascinating scenario, not very coplex, with our current setup very easy to win(channeling enemies by me, tank to withstand incoming hits and Deathwalker to kill them), but fairly boring. Less action than usually, more crowd controll was required. More bookeeping than usually – it was little problematic to track when and where new monsters spawn, remembering to add snow production. We like more exciting scenarios, where till last round we are not sure if we can win, here it was just the matter of time. Without trapper this scenario would be much more difficult and exciting. 20 snows produced took quite some time, as on averege we had just 2 tiles a turn during which the snow could build up, and each turn new monsters appeared.

LikeLike

The Boardgames Chronicle

Boardgames reviews, strategies, unboxings and session reports.