May 2025 T.I.M.E Stories 1,2,3 again again again

I want to play all 9 of the original TIME Stories scenarios so I am making it happen. I have played 6 of them multiple times with different people and solo so I will try and clear them again with my good group of friends here then move onto the final 3 for the first time.

The Asylum:

I was the cannibal girl once again, the best all-rounder IMO. I think Royce was the nymphomaniac, Billy the old lady and Dave had anxious girl.

Billy's character has 1 hp so she was KO'd at one point; we did the dead end route at one point (still being brought up to this day). I think it took two runs but the lads were very good; they solved the riddle themselves IIRC.

Asylum is cool because the characters suck and there's a creepiness to the whole art and writing. 

The Marcy Case:

I was the grizzled veteran for the first time.

Royce was the reporter girl IIRC, Billy the FBI agent and Dave the bodyguard. In comparison to Asylum, all these characters are absolute units.

This took two runs which is not surprising; I think we had everything we needed from the first run to breeze through the second run. The finale we didn't have some of the items to make it easier but had plenty of time. For the second time, lots of noise was made with firearms. In the first few plays of this scenario I did years back, the wisdom was to not use the guns at all - this has changed!

I used to think it was the outright best, but it might be slipping behind EE and Asylum.

The Prophecy of Dragons:

I played the Thief so we could have the option to steal stuff. I always take them if no one else does, so handy to have.

Royce was the Paladin (best character IMO) Billy was the Elven Ranger (also very good) and Dave was the Cleric (I'm still iffy on the mages in this scenario).

We found the 3 McGuffins easily enough and did the Fighter route to the midway point; we almost did the Mage route but I vetoed it as we would completely rely on poor Dave to make every roll.

We managed to clear it in one run, we got to the midway point and got our TU refreshed and then cleared the second half in a second session a few weeks later. We didn't use any tokens/beacons yet but did in Expedition Endurance later.

PoD is the weakest scenario - the multiple routes (4?) to the same midway point make it unfocused. There is no mystery, no plot, no named characters to keep track of throughout the scenario only at the very end.

Points per scenario and token taken:

#	scenario	points/token pick
1	Asylum	31/green blue
2	Marcy	42/green blue
3	Prophecy	64/pink

Next up:

Expedition Endurance we cleared at the end of May 2025 but soon we will play Under the Mask and eventually Lumen Fidei, bringing us up to 6/6 of the ones I've played; after that I will post an update here on those and then get to crack open Brotherhood, Estrella and Madame for the first time.

May 2023 general update

 I wasn’t sure what to post for my monthly blog thing so I just went with a short life update.

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I have been studying full-time in-person at a local GRETB facility since September 2022 and part-time online at a local technical university since January 2023. Both courses are in Programming and Software Development. I never knew how to code before starting in September 2022 and honestly after 8 months I am not that much better but my foot is in the door.

I have now completed the in-person course and will do the online course until December 2024. I had originally planned to do the online course full-time and have it done in 1 year, January-December 2023 but elected to switch to part-time early on. It was too difficult to do both full-time. I will have such a light schedule from Semester 2 to Semester 4 that I may go back to work, having left work in July 2022.

The in-person course was only a QQI Level 5 so it was easy enough, some of the modules were no challenge if you’ve been a student before or are old (I am both). The coding was tougher but we walked through everything. As for the online course, it’s a level 8 designed to convert workers from other fields into ICT workers and is way tougher but all the information is provided. I will try and spend the summer 2023 doing a bit of coding. It's something I need to get a handle on.

One bonus of the in-person course was the option to apply for something called Erasmus+, which two of my friends have done in the past and have gone to Finland and Malta respectively. I am going to Malaga on the 21st of May until June 11th. I will be doing work experience part time and just chilling the rest of the time. I'll post some update on my various travels later in the year.

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Arbitrary ‘challenges’ in 2023: the only main one is no takeaway for the year, I can get it if it’s with other people or for the family or whatever but that’s been like maybe 5 times in the last 6 months. I'll write more on this in the usual 31st of December yearly post.

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I have been cycling a ton, 60 cycles since late January. It’s just a short 7km from my house to Menlo and back but is relatively stress-free, I feel good and it’s good for my hip. I was still lifting until recently but have taken a break in May for a month or so, will go back in June. Sometimes a break can be the best thing. I always go back to it with renewed energy and passion. I had also recently reduced the weights of all my dumbbells and the barbell as I am less focussed on getting bigger. It’s just not happening so I will focus on being as healthy as possible.

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Video games - I haven’t been playing as much but when this happens, Civilization 4 always has my back. I am thinking about writing a gigantic appreciation post for what is possibly my all-time favourite game. Earlier in the year I was playing a bit of Resident Evil 1 and 2. I played Doom 2016 for a bit in January but walked away from it. I got a Star Ocean 2 emulator so I played that about ¾ of the way through and got stuck as I was doing an all-mage playthrough, horrible. I did play a ton of Halo in April which deserves a write-up. It’s been mostly Civ 4 so far though so stay tuned.

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Board games/RPGs - I ran GURPS in January, just one session but was OK. I am still playing a D&D 5th edition Spelljammer game every Wednesday. We are level 11 and my character is a multi-class monstrosity: Fighter 5, Bard 3, Warlock 2, Rogue 1. I went to Athventurecon in February and played a Dread Jenga game and a D&D 5th edition game.

I managed to run not one but two games of Britannia this year, finally, after buying it for over a hundred euro a few months back. I was the Yellow player the first time in January and lost narrowly and was Green in February and came third. I did almost everything right as both sides but Red and (shockingly for me) Blue won the two respective games. I am hoping to run it again over the summer, playing Blue (have played at least once before years ago and can’t figure them out) and after that Red (have won with them before, the strongest colour IMO). I will probably post the results of all these games in the coming months and some thoughts on it. I have stats! I have data!

Other than that, hopefully I can get a game of Dead Winter or two and maybe revive T.I.M.E Stories for a campaign. I have yet to play all the original games so may try and make this happen.

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Other than that, just trucking along! Everyone is happy and healthy. I'm trying to grow my hair out.

Love/Hate #14 T.I.M.E Stories: Lumen Fidei (UNFINISHED)

The party continues in Spain during the Reconquista, with our receptacles on a mission to assist the Papal Legate find a man who has been under an oath of silence for years and the mission of our time agents to acquire a missing green stone for the time reliquary. You'll be forgiven for forgetting all this as it is one long, long adventure. Different, but long.




Characters

There are only six and they are divided into two different types of Faith - 3 of each - which is a factor in this setting. The Faith of the group is assessed accordingly and if you have four players or a mix of both types of Faith it will affect your final group Faith rating.

There is a good mix of combat, dexterity, diplomatic and healing characters and they all have a special ability that require blue tokens to use. As in recent expansions there will be 'if you have x, you may do y' cards in some locations but you won't be completely locked out they give you a chance at least.

Love/Hate #13 T.I.M.E Stories Expedition Endurance *spoiler free*

A very brief review of T.I.M.E Stories: Expedition Endurance, sans spoilers this time for a change.



It all feels very different, from the very start. Even the briefing is handled differently.

The characters are hardy enough but each have small little advantages unique to them. Closer to the Asylum level of difficulty in character choice, while Marcy-PoD-Mask being stronger than these/more focused probably.

There are a number of unique mechanics and cards/events tied to them in this scenario, which really refreshes the run, fail, run again etc. of the others. I like that they're starting to invert the same old formulas.

Plot-wise there is a good bit there. If you are any way savvy in the themes it uses it may influence how you handle certain situations. However it wasn't too obvious about it in most instances - there was a trend in PoD and UtM to show a good/bad situation on the card and do the opposite for gits and shiggles, usually at player and fun expense. Not to mention TU. EE has a good few narrative building cards that you may end up ignoring on the subsequent runs but do add plenty of flavour.



This was certainly one of the harder more recent scenarios. The unique mechanics and certain tests will brutalise you and they do it so simply. It's a lean, mean scenario and was refreshing to run through 3 times until we beat it. There was none of the misery of PoD in doing subsequent runs, it was like Under the Mask - refreshing and new each time you play. If you kept failing, then it may get tedious for sure.

Run time - for us it took about 4 hours, with a good bit of chat but plenty of strategising and discussing what the next move was. Lots of decisions and stuff to be made, making tie breaks necessary. They definitely looked at everything that made T.I.M.E good and started fresh with a great new scenario.

New ranking w/ EE added:

Marcy Case
Asylum
Expedition Endurance
Under the Mask
Prophecy of Dragons

This is probably the way I'd rate them for now. If PoD was still good that just means the rest are even better. PoD was "here's 4-5 different routes to the end with different templates on them" but still managed to be good. UtM and EE bring so much freshness to the series but Asylum and Marcy still loom large, even if the latter has that one big issue built into it - it can never really be played again. All of them can't really be played again but Marcy is the most like that! Here's hoping for more scenarios soon.

Love/hate 12 T.I.M.E Stories Under the Mask *spoiler-tastic*

I played the Ra priest who could lock an automatic success the whole way through and Ger played the soldier dude; Dave played the scribe and changed on one run while Donal played the healer and changed many times.

We scoped out the boat and acquired the transfer device, allowing us to change characters mid-game. There are two characters here but we opted to press on, leaving the boat behind for this run.

I think we went to the streets first, then the military barracks followed by the temple. We scoped out the dyer's market later. A villa was revealed on the map and led to a number of encounters.

Our second run was equally good for revealing more locations but much like the first run we had nowhere near enough time to complete it. We more or less found everything you possibly could and occupied all but one or two vessels (the priestess, the soldier and the other version of the servant girl).

The third and final run was the quickest, at about an hour or less. We chose a slightly less optimal path but ended up only losing a small bit of time before we had everything we needed to make a run for the end. The puzzle at the end was quite easy and the final encounter was even easier. It did the Prophecy of Dragons thing where what seemed like a tough encounter or two is not what it seemed. I had the mask ad the poison so was able to glide toward the tomb and the mission was accomplished.

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The original four characters are pretty great but some of the ones you pick up later are better in some fields, the artisan when improved has the best dexterity and the servant girl has great charisma. The initial guard guy is great strength-wise and can hand-wave many encounters from happening. The priestess of Ra I controlled has a nice auto-success and the ability to buff allies was very nice too. Healer priest had a hefty TU price-tag which would be good if combat were a factor but there were very few fights in our runs.

This was much better than Prophecy of Dragons. It felt somewhat fresh each time and was not as frustrating to run through again. I'm really looking forward to Expedition Endurance now. Being able to transfer between characters was excellent.

Probably ranking them:

Marcy Case
Asylum
Under the Mask
Prophecy of Dragons

If you reverse that order it's probably how replayable they are. PoD is the most pick your own adventure like and can be grinded through like five different ways while the Marcy Case is pretty much spoiled forever. I've forgotten quite a bit of Asylum so would not remember the optimal path and the same goes for UtM. I hope EE tops them all from what we know thus far.

Review #8 T.I.M.E Stories: The Prophecy of Dragons redeux *spoilers*

Bit of a gap since the last time I posted but hell these posts are only for my memory and my loyal spambot fanbase.

Prophecy of Dragons I played with my brother's group in a single night and I have the record in another post. This is my second play through with Cathy and Royce from a few weeks ago.

I played the Elven Ranger, Royce the paladin with the re-roll and Cathy was the lady assassin. We had lay on hands from the paladin which costed no magic and were pretty tasty in combat overall. We started out in the inn as well, made sense to go there. We made the mistake of turning over the door card without the key but we would be coming back, Royce got the golden underwear item and I made contact with our employer; someone checked out the gambling but we left for the market.

In the market we didn't buy any armour and weapons but bought some assorted whatnots from the potion dealer. We also bought tools either here or at the castle plaza, wherever the cat merchant is. Most of the tools we bought we ended up not using at all.

On the docks Cathy followed the girl and managed to defeat the thugs by herself. Royce made contact with the Fighter's Guild and received the mage Rhom and directions to the fight path. They really wanted to go that way but I insisted we check all the mundane areas first before going down any particular path.

We investigated the castle plaza and then the Forest as we had run out of money. We gathered some herbs there and then went back to the castle plaza and sold them. At some point Royce had bought the fairy lantern and we had found two of the fairies in all this moving around; we went back to the inn and uncovered the thief path and the last fairy. We managed to acquire all three glyphs and then uncovered the Trululu path to the castle. This went straight to the portals, which we resolved after using all three glyphs. Then we received bonus time and moved onto part 2, the castle proper.

In the castle we had to backtrack between the various locations about twice each to get everything we needed to advance to the final dungeon. We had loads of time from the first part and the bonus time, all very generous for our party of three. The dungeon was interesting if a little uneventful and we came to the final boss.

I attacked the King himself, Cathy attacked the giant robot and Royce faced the other big monster guy. They easily dispatched their opponents and I asked if I could use our pink token to annihilate the king. They agreed and we had wiped out 3/5 enemies. We investigated the warp or rent or whatever and managed to seal that after a ton of rolls, most of them by Royce with his character's re-roll ability. We had acquired numerous items which allowed us to 'cast magic' otherwise we never would have solved that. We ignored the other two enemies in case we needed to get dice back, ultimately only one or two were locked away for rolling blanks.

We sealed the portal and won the game with an absurd amount of points, thanks in part to the decent number of enemies we felled and the wealth of time points and gold we had left over. It was definitely much easier than Marcy or Asylum and I really look forward to the Egyptian scenario now.

Game report follow-up: T.I.M.E Stories The Marcy Case 1992 w/ C & R spoiler-tastic

We were extremely well-drilled from having played the Asylum the morning before. Cathy and Royce took turns managing the Item Deck. I managed the turn tracker and interpreted rules and general oversaw everything running smoothly.

Run #1

We started at the City Entrance and Cathy decided to save the copper fighting the zombie. I told her to fire her gun once here I think. She received a shotgun afterward! I went for the car boot while Royce tanked the zombies that you must fight. Trapper the Dog joining Royce for this fight only but stayed with Cathy for the rest of the game. I eventually liberated the convict (after checking out the dead policeman) and got the jury-rigged rocket.

Evoking zombie tropes, we elected to go to the police station first. We got a Marcy for our trouble, a cassette (I think), keys and the Gatling gun. I got that by shooting off the lock. Going into the room with the zombies is never palatable, especially when you have plenty of health packs.

The High School was next and Royce spoke to the gun nut and the guys hanging around. Cathy spoke to the fisherman and chose not to trade med kits to get him but she did go and siphon some gas. I was going to negotiate with the leader guy but we agreed to just threaten him instead and got to see where the Bunker was.

Royce really wanted to check out Bunker but myself and Cathy wanted to explore Hotel first. I received another Marcy for my trouble while Cathy shot up the lift and checked out upstairs rooms. She had the keys from the police station so found the helipad but we couldn't use it yet.

In the Forest Royce checked out the cabin and received another Marcy and something else here, the ax maybe. Cathy found a tape. I was attacked by the convict but just gave him all my handgun bullets, 5/6 were left. We went deeper into forest and found two bullets and two medkits, a picture of a couple and fought the big zombie.

The Church was the last of the mundane locations; Cathy spoke to the nurse, then went with Royce and got imprisoned by priest. I gave the picture to the man and received the lab location. We eventually got out of the fight in here. We had generated 7 noise tokens and for a moment I had thought we had to fight an undead wrestler but in fact we received a stroke of luck and nothing happened,

The Laboratory came next and Cathy received a scientist ally after fighting off some zombies with the help of Trapper. Royce got the antidote, which was a relief as we now had 3 girls we thought were Marcy who each had one infection token. I took both tapes and spent some time listening to both of them. We were able to rule out Hotel Marcy right there but did not have the other Marcy one of the tapes referred to.

Royce finally got to go to the Bunker and we had less than 10 TU left. We had every code crossed off, with the scientist with Cathy eliminating two and the other two codes we read were old somewhere (we checked the base cards and they were indeed months old). Myself and Royce unlocked the last Marcy who was referred to in the second tape. Cathy operated radio and lost 5 TU, then I reminded them of the +3TU token we got in Asylum which we used and then lost another 5TU, bringing us to 0 left. With our last action we read the correct one and received the state token required to get onto helipad.

Run #2

Same set up except this time we chose to start in the Police Station, finding one Marcy and everything else here. Neither the Church nor the High School were essential as we had the map tokens from last time so we skipped those entirely. We then went to the Forest and got the other correct Marcy girl. The Lab allowed us to get the scientist again and get the antidote. The City Entrance wasn't mandatory, Royce was against it but I wanted the convict after having skipped past his two ambush attempts. The Bunker was our last stop before the Hotel and Helipad and we got another Marcy for the laugh and the correct radio transmission.

In the Hotel we skipped past the Marcy there, into the lift and checked out the two rooms properly. I had the adult magazine from the last run so unlocked the safe which contained a note eliminating the Police Station Marcy, leaving just Forest Marcy. The Helipad beckoned and I gleefully flung the scientist at the zombie horde and we used the jury-rigged rocket to signal the attention of the helicopter. We handed them the Forest Marcy and won the game.

This being our second run we received 40 MP and 17 more for having that many TU left, allowing us to choose the pink token for the first time and a blue token to replace the one we lost from before. We still had the green token from last time. Cathy was excellent and on-form as the journalist lady, constantly moving toward things that appeared to require investigation while Royce jumped toward combat, having all the close combat dice. Having played it before I knew it was Forest Marcy from the beginning but insisted that we check everywhere and everything. I'm glad I didn't have to veto the River as the others did it out of hand as being too far away. Cathy did say we should just go there and check it out which we never got around to doing. They took TU loss seriously. We were a bit more liberal with guns but altogether clocked up a total of 10 noise tokens roughly, 7 and then like 3. We were lucky not to have met a horde or any other distractions in the Street encounters. I showed them afterward how brutal the River can be. Onward to the Prophecy of Dragons, maybe in another month or so. The other expansion is out already I think too.

Marcy Case still the best but there were a lot of things about Asylum I loved (and some things I hated).

Reviews of some shite I've enjoyed/hated over the last few months #6 T.I.M.E Stories The Asylum

Cathy chose to be anxious girl, Royce picked the bitter old lady and I chose the erotic lady. We found everything we needed in the Day Room, notably the painting being a big hint later on. We went to the promenade first and Cathy received a croquet mallet after a game went awry while myself and Royce couldn’t do much with the locked gate and the strange dancing man.

The dormitory came next and Royce released the man in the bed and fought him to death, I looked out the window overlooking the park and Cathy acquired a load of items from the lockers.

In the infirmary we were told to go see Dr. Hyacinth and one of the nurses asked us to meet her in the Dormitory. Royce of course got embroiled in the male orderly attentions, so I saved him from that. We went there first and got her items then went to the good doctor who led us through a tunnel to the Park.

In the Park Royce got in a fight with a man with a gun, Cathy inspected a kiosk and I found the greenhouse. Cathy received the gun for helping defeat the man attacking Royce. In the greenhouse I fought the Manticore, Cathy discovered a hidden item and Royce discovered the dead body with another item.

We elected to go to the catacombs next and bypassed the gate with the pentagram and instead ended up stuck in the labyrinth or whatever followed by the tomb and dead end. This was roughly where we timed out.

Second run: It was lightning fast except our going to the man who wanted the plunger. Cathy chose to be the cannibal girl instead of the anxious girl second time around but myself and Royce stayed put. I knew about the plunger from the other guys talking about it but elected to say nothing and we lost time but we were flying it. We decided to fight the doctor this time and thus got stuck doing the long tunnel to the park but from there we went to the greenhouse then back into the catacombs eventually and found the gate with the pentagrams. We felt stuck right there and then as we had done absolutely everything until we eventually figured out the riddle.

This brought us to the final section which was also easy to resolve as we glided past the encounter or two and had just the right thing to get a mission successful after choosing not to assist the demonic girl with her ritual.

We received 30 points for completing it on our second run and had 3 time units to spare for a closing score of 33, making us first class agents. We got the blue and green tokens and all agreed that it was excellent. Cathy was brilliant, helping me manage the cards and whatnot and remembered where almost everything was. Royce was also a really good player as he was enjoying every minute of it.

Definitely better than Prophecy of Dragons, I loved the creepy artwork and setting. The characters were really cool too. We’re going to play MARCY Case tomorrow morning hopefully so I’ll have to keep mum about which is the right one. When we find one she’ll probably die within a few turns anyway without the antidote. If Cathy and Royce are as good as they were today at looking for every single hint and clue and exploring every option and location we should make it after a few runs.

Reviews of some shite I've enjoyed/hated over the last few months #5 T.I.M.E Stories The Marcy Case and Prophecy of Dragons

The Marcy Case

I had the opportunity to play this a few months ago at my brother's house. The other two guys plus my brother played the Asylum one first then when I was over at some point they offered to bring me in as the new green agent for The Marcy Case!

I had no idea what I was getting into when the board was being set up and the lovely colourful pieces were brought out and the base cards were laid down in panorama.

The Marcy Case started out with zombies! This was a major surprise to the others who had played Asylum first and myself too I guess - it was not foreshadowed at all - save the girl save the world.

The artwork is gorgeous. From the base cards to 1992 in Wisconsin the game was beautifully presented. It had a very The Walking Dead Vol 1 feel to it.

Mechanics were lovely and simple, 1 Time Unit to move, take a test to potentially do nothing but as the timer is going down every turn planning is vital.

Tests were really cool, combat skills were there but I enjoyed the use of the investigation skill, which is present in other games (Elder Signs comes to mind) but is perfect here as every card has flavour text.

One of my favourite aspects of the game was that everything mattered, every location we entered with three or four cards laid out in panorama meant one or two agents to a card to check out what it was. Clues, info, potential encounters with some form of reward for our time. This being a zombie apocalypse there were some areas where splitting up was not ideal - the chaotic hotel, police station and of course the forest - where various different things happened where being alone was not the best choice. We walked away from every encounter wondering what was next and more importantly wanting to find out what happened next.

We went in quite trope-savvy but the game threw enough curve balls at us to forget what kind of game we were playing. Every little clue mattered in the end and ultimately we failed one run by a particularly brutal noise encounter (I think we lost our last 10 TU in one go) and another run we had the wrong conclusion. I think we finished it on our third run, which was fairly hit the ground running and go again yet we still had to take our time doing certain parts. Note-taking became essential toward the end.

Prophecy of Dragons

I entered this one a bit more of a veteran. I had read a spoiler-free review which slated it but he liked T.I.M.E Stories generally so I tried to go in with no expectations. The base cards seemed to be a bit fudgier this time, it was a bit harder to take in that the King of Algueria needed to be reached, something about guilds and temporal faults as opposed to Marcy is important to history/the future, go get her.

We blazed past that into Algueria, a fantasy town layout greeted us on the locations map. We started in the bar and immediately tropes or trope aversion seemed to come into play - if something seemed scary, they're actually friendly and so on. This would come up again throughout. Almost straightaway we were being handed potential red herrings and threads of things we may never be able to fulfill, all with a paltry 25 TU to play with.

The Market seemed like a good second location to go to for the latest news and gossip and to relieve ourselves of the gold weighing us down. This came to pass but it felt too RPG/gamey - equip up now for the dungeon you know is coming. We were also told early on that three sigils would be needed to get into the castle so us being thorough we aimed to get them all (this was wise in the end).

Various people and cards (we were thorough so I think we 3 or 4 of a potential 6+) informed us they could get us to the castle. That was what we wanted to do ultimately but it felt too video gamey - the final boss/dungeon will wait there forever (OK, maybe not with TU involved) and here are several different ways of getting there, all into the inevitable funnel. It reminded me of Fallout: New Vegas where they provided 3-4 different ways to solve various quests (Ultra Luxe rescue quest: put Med-X in Wine, cook imitation human flesh, trap the chef in pantry, cause chef to have breakdown, cook human flesh yourself with high enough skills etc).

The result was only one choice mattered, making the other five kind of redundant. Different yes, but ultimately redundant.

We had the brother/sister thief/assassin combo, the dwarf (and later the paladin instead) and I was the cleric. This informed our choice of 'funnel' as we went for the thieves guild route, which we ran out of time doing. We also lacked the lockpicking kit and vowed to pick up that and every random tool and utility we could from the various merchants (looking at you cat man).

So we grabbed all the tools, the three sigils, breezed through thief route to castle and came up to the three portals. We lost time doing one and were left with less than 10 TU so we were glad the second one was right but almost drowned getting there. Luckily one of us had bought the water-breathing potion and found a no-kidding convector which brought out TU right back to 30+. We had to spend our blue token of +3 TU to make all that happen. The second half of the game commenced and we broke up for a few days, arranging to meet again 4 days later to finish the game.

On reuniting we immediately tore into the castle and were still left wanting for challenge. We eased through the library and the archives and then the banquet hall without spending too many TU - I encountered a particularly annoying time sink in the banquet hall, it was cute and different little trap but it felt more like a nuisance than a proper terrifying. Some more red herrings were collected on the way. W proceeded to the guard room and sure enough that was the path to the final encounter.

The final encounter was different for us and challenging but not crippling. We decided to start around the edges and took out some of the other henchmen before tackling the main boss. This turned out to be a mistake but we didn't cop that until the final challenge. It was mentioned in the archive and perhaps at the very start if the mission to watch out for temporal faults and what not but we thought little of it until that real pain of a final challenge. We only had myself as the cleric and our paladin equipped with a magic-enabling item to roll on the final test which just felt needlessly brutal. Sure enough we failed after some tremendous Murphy's Law lessons learned. We all felt out of steam and pissed afterward, unlike Marcy Case where it was like 'let's look at all the clues this time and get it right' we just felt dejected. It was all down to chance and the dice, which sucked.

We BLAZED through the last run we did in about 30 minutes or less, getting right back up to the final boss who we killed outright and then completed the final challenge with some careful magic rolls from our paladin. We had burned up every single reward token in the prior run and were legitimately pissed and just burnt out at the end - glad to be finished but it had none of the satisfaction of the Marcy Case.

There was no riddle as in Asylum (I look forward to playing that with my group) or investigation and sense of danger in the Marcy Case. The first half in the town just felt light on plot and flavour. There were people telling us about the dragons coming to destroy us all and whatnot and the artwork is GORGEOUS, my gods it's such a pretty game but damn it had none of the punch of TMC or even the Asylum. I haven't played the latter one yet but I will in about two weeks and I'll make my mind up but I can foretell it'll probably be Marcy>Asylum>Prophecy.