Not one, but two games of Elder Sign

I got a chance to play two games of Elder Sign today and it was fun but very tough. The first I played solo with one investigator at a time. I took some pictures, but of course I can't find the one cable I have for an upload.

Anyhow in the first game I drew our old friend Nyarlathotep, what are the odds? (They are 1/8 or 12.5%, but I digress.) I drew Ashcan Pete as my investigator. I'll spare you the details and just say that a combination of terrible dice rolls and forgetting special rules at key junctures led to Pete's demise. I then drew Harvey Walters and continued. Harvey's attribute of strong mind comes in very handy, allowing you to change a horror result to a scroll result, saves on nasty terror effects. It's of course hazy now but some miscalculation had me run out of stamina, perhaps it was a mythos card effect that I forgot to take into account. Suffice it to say, one investigator by themselves has a hard time making it.

Cue game two. My wife and daughter are off at some reward activity for selling a ton of Girl Scout cookies. So boys at home alone, my son wanted to play the game. He picked Monterey Jack and I shuffled the remaining deck and picked ... Ashcan Pete (^$#@^!). The ancient one was Yig. He takes only ten elder signs to seal, but has only eight spaces on his doom track, five of which are monsters.

We did pretty well, coming close to death a couple of times. My son got a little frustrated and bored when he wasn't rolling well and I had to finish the game for him, but he did pretty well for a six year old. We struggled a little bit with locked dice but also got an otherworld adventure card through a magic item. It took me quite a while to realize that we needed to be there to collect the Elder Signs to seal off Yig. I did have to take one mulligan for Monterey Jack, as I just wasn't paying attention and would have gotten him killed foolishly.

We started rolling hot and using the focus die a little bit more and got nine of the ten signs needed before the hammer dropped and Yig appeared. Among the many things I misread, we each needed a common item unique item and spell to not be devoured. Neither of us had any items. I also forgot to remove elder signs for each Cultist we killed, but i'm not sure if that came into play or not.

So great fun, but very hard. If any of you have played solo and have any tips, please let me know. JF on Solo Nexus has a review of Elder Sign that is good and I think fair. I totally agree that the fonts are way too small to read easily. You can find his review here.

Welcome to Matt, he has an interesting blog about desktop wallpapers. I think the cow is saying "nice udders".

I'll try and put up some pictures when I find that damn cable.