Daniel Blumentritt
United States
Austin
Texas
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My gaming group recently played this through 4 times with each player taking Dracula once.
1st game Dracula spends the first couple of days sucessfully dodging the hunters and gets 1 vampire to maturity; he drew 3 other vampires but the hunters defeated most of them. However, he did a lot of damage with fog and bats and was hard to track down. When he finally got caught he sailed to Ireland and then England and the trail went cold for a bit until the hunters located him with the hypnosis card. He then abandonds the island but they successfully follow him into Amsterdam and then start teleporting over with resolve. Old man Van Helsing kills him - at night, no less - thanks to winning 4 straight combat rolls.
2nd game Dracula can't draw any vampires all game, but does manage to defeat one of the humans, can't remember which one, in Austria after first roughing him up with some minions. It comes close to the end and Dracula looks to be winning, but he is almost out of blood and Sister Agathe is in play, severely restricting his ability to fight, and a full strength Goldalming wears him down and defeats him with 2 turns to go before he would win on the vampire points from the advancing of the day.
3rd game Dracula gets located right away in Northern Italy thanks to the "reveal the oldest location in his trail" card coming out on 2. He does manage to plant one Vampire in Florence before heading NW, and was sure to lay his trail adjacent to itself so the hunters skipped over Florence and the vampire matured. He dodges all over France and Spain but never shakes them, getting beat up several times but punishing the humans a lot too. On the very last round, 4 of the 5 characters were at 6 hp or lower. With Dracula at 5 VP, a storm just before midnight sends him into a port where he is sure to be caught no matter where his final move goes, but he manages to lay a vampire in the port, and a pursuing Mina (someone had to check the port in case Dracula used Hide) runs into a vampire and is defeated due to a bite from the Seduction event, giving Dracula the winning points without having to fight out the final combat.
4th game Dracula breathes a sigh of relief when "Reveal his oldest location unless it's his current location" comes out on the first turn before it can be used. His delight turns to agony when the same event comes out again on the 2nd turn. He does a great job evading pursuit as he moves from Switzerland all the way to Lisbon, and Mina, despite having only 4 Health thanks to some wolves and lightening, decides to fight at night against Dracula and his 14 blood, since she has 2 stakes. Dracula plays an event to discard one of the stakes, but Lord G assists her by playing Advance Planning. She alternates dodges with stakes (to get the +2 roll whenever possible) and Dracula dies thanks to 3 kill results in the same battle without inflicting a single point of damage.
Summary: Dracula only won 1 game out of 4 and died at night in all 3 games he lost. However, in two of those games Dracula got horribly unlucky on the combat rolls. He also got very unlucky in the last two games with having his starting location revealed while he was only one move away - it is really really tough on the Count to be located so cheaply so quickly, even though one of those games was Dracula's only win.
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Stephen Sanders
United States
Henderson
Texas
25% Scottish, 25% Dutch, 18% English, 15% Irish, 9% German, 5% French, 3% "Black Dutch" (?) = 100% American!
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Yeah somewhat surprising that Dracula got killed at night on all three games. Looks like he was unable to play the escape move to avoid the kill(s)?
That would be fun to play 4 sessions with rotating players. Neat idea.
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dave 65tdh
United States
San Diego
California
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Sounds like great fun and what a great idea to marathon 4 games in a row rotating D. The game becomes so much better once you know the cards and encounters and you can just focus on strategy.
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Travis Hall
Australia
Brisbane
Queensland
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The way you write about that first game, it sounds like the hunters may have spent Resolve for the Sense of Emergency effect one after the other. Do you realise that effect (and each of the others) can only be used once each round?
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Daniel Blumentritt
United States
Austin
Texas
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Yeah, I don't think we actually killed him in Amersterdam, I think somebody landed right behind, then someone else used Resolve, then he moved away and then we used Resolve again, but my notes don't actually say where we killed him at, so it's possible we did it wrong.
Quote: Sounds like great fun and what a great idea to marathon 4 games in a row rotating D
It was on 4 different nights, but you did give me an idea for the next time I have a full day of gaming ... especially if I can find 5 people so everyone gets a different character every game.
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Mark McEvoy
Canada
Ottawa-ish
Ontario
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caltexn wrote: Yeah somewhat surprising that Dracula got killed at night on all three games. Looks like he was unable to play the escape move to avoid the kill(s)?
Aside from the fact that the Sister Agatha would hurt him for it in game 2, I don't see anything that was stopping him from playing Escape as Mist. Escape as Mist always ends a combat, even with a failed die roll, barring Holy Water or Garlic, and I saw neither one mentioned in any of the summaries.
A Drac who kept combat at night going against a Stake-wielding AdvancePlanning-boosted Mina ... really deserved to be staked.
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Dracula played Rage in that battle, so he was forced to fight the first three rounds. Still, with an Advance Planning in play, he should have played Strength instead of trying to bite Mina. Either he wins and destroys the Stake, or he loses, and the combat ends.
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