Frosthaven – Scenario #23 Spire Basement

As mentioned in the earlier session reports, we decided to follow the slightly neglected by us sub-campaign of Frosthaven – Unfettered (Machines). After the #15 Ancient Spire we were really curious what that tower hides form us. But we were completely surprised not to see any of the robots, but undead – including our archenemy and often, especially in Gloomhven, reason of failures – Living Bones. If you look at past scenarios, like #4 Crypt of the Damned or #28 Outer Ritual Chamber, you see what I mean. On top of this, new a character joined us. So, a lot happened during that evening!

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

As always we start with the composition of our merry company. Two scenarios ago Frozen Fist and Snowdancer joined us, while this time we had a pleasure to meet Infuser – who replaced just retire Trapper:

This is a bit crazy character – but who in Frosthaven is not? – as it infuses a lot of elements and then executes so called Infusions. With our other two characters strongly relying on some elements, that might get tricky sometimes. So, here is our current composition:

Frozen Fist – level 2 (me) – a little of tank (most HP in our group), a little of damage dealer (tons of interesting attacks), and a very mobile creature. Still need to find way to optimally play with it.
Infuser – level 3 (Kuba J) – the recent addition to our group. Seems like damage dealer type but we still need to discover what is he capable of.
Snowdancer – level 2 (Kuba G) – first and foremost crowd control, with all its pushes and pulls; can create hazardous terrain.

Let us see how the scenario went!

Scenario Specifics

Below we analyze scenario, its set-up, win conditions and complexity levels:

That one is pretty straightforward – Kill ‘Em All! Well, them means monsters 🙂 The tricky thing is that we start poisoned and if monsters will move before us – and we lose possibility to heal and remove that negative condition form our characters before it – it will hurt us badly. But they would not do anything like it, would they?

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

Session Report

**Scenario #23 set-up** – medium-sized adventure, with three rooms (two of them large).

Zoom-in on first chamber; the set-up is very tricky, as we are practically in range of all enemies – what is more, there is no space for maneuver. Also, Living Bones will attack two/three adjacent enemies and Living Spirits are flying and have ranged attack. Beautiful 🙂

**At least challenge seemed pretty straightforward, as we did not have almost any actions from enemies which will give us negative conditions.**

Situation in the first room at the end of clean-up process. It is grim although might not look like this. In the first round Living Bones were faster than we; also, Living Spirits approached us. That resulted in my character getting 4 strong hits, Hit Points reduced to 1 and need to lose two cards. A very rough beginning for such a small-hand character. After such a start Frozen Fist went rampart, burning cards and killing enemies in droves. As we shall see, his sacrifice did not go in vain.

The second room was much bigger, there was way to maneuver plus Living Bones did not attack immediately. My Fist finished game with exhaustion (but a lot of loot) and Snowdancer & Infuser continued. Without high hopes but still 🙂

The second room was cleaned – Infuser really started to make a difference once he had more of those Infusions active. Then guys entered room three with main enemy – Living Doom. Again, some space to maneuver and only one Living Bone getting in range of attack helped to survive initial onslaught of monsters.

**Whole focus of Infuser and Snowdancer went against the main enemy – he can have some tricks but here fortunately did not manage to use them. After couple of turns guys finally put him to rest.**

**Final situation on the map with all enemies dead, most loot collected and my Frozen Fist exhausted in first room.**

Summary

That was surprisingly tough scenario in first room and relatively easy in second & third. Initially, we got unlucky with enemies being so fast and so close, with no room for maneuver and multiple attacks each turn. That resulted in rather quick exhaustion of Frozen Fist.

But the company did not give up and bravely charged the next two rooms, smashing through the enemies, destroying them in droves and finally – honestly, to our great surprise – winning the scenario! That is the spirit!

Learning for us was pretty obvious – we do not have a dedicated tank in our team; yes, Fist has slightly more health but has to use it to recover cards. So, we need to learn how to split the hits more evenly among the group in the future.

One thought on “Frosthaven – Scenario #23 Spire Basement”

Jakub Jakimiak says:

March 18, 2024 at 17:10

“Easy” enemies like living bones are tricky, shield one, target 2-3 enemies, solid movement, it’s a strong combinations in close combat against very low level party like us. 3 “weak” hits of 2-4 damage in the first round and the Fist dropped to a single HP and was forced to burn cards to cancel hits. Very rough start for us. If livings bones didn’t get +1 move and attack, but heal+shield up, we would clean the room without any cards lost, but if i remember well that action got picked in the 2nd round which made cleaning the room even more difficult, since we couldn’t pass them (no jump) to attack more dangerous enemies – living spirits(higher single target attack value). I was forced to infuse myself which might have cost my fellow Fist some healing, but at this stage it seemed Fist may have trouble to survive till the end and in such situation my longevity would be more important , so i was at full power against the semi-boss. Having 2 infusion as early as possible to enhance my agility (+1 movement+jump ) and attack(adding wound and muddle to attacked enemies) was crucial against enemies with high shields(living spirits, living bones), even if they survived my attacks and didn’t die of wounds i wouldn’t get hit too hard(thanks to muddle). Only the first room was difficult, in the next ones we could position ourselves safely outside enemy range and attacks were strong enough to kill enemies quick.

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