Cheated By the Old Ones!

Still waiting for Matthew's return from his swim meet, Nathaniel and I played Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu, and, sadly, failed to save the world from the eldritch evil of the Old Ones. It was, nevertheless, a fun and memorable session.

Having elected to play roles that we had never tried before, Nathaniel was the magician (an "inventory management" type of character) and I was the occultist (a character who uses telekinetic powers to move cultists and monsters around the map). We started out auspiciously enough, arriving in Arkham and then making our way to Dunwich to close the Old Ones' portal there in short order. Next, I traveled to Kingsport (side note: I re-read all the Lovecraft stories not long ago, and I really don't recall this town figuring into any of the Cthulhu Mythos tales) while Nathaniel returned to Arkham. We spent several turns trying to amass enough clues to close another gate -- work that was interrupted by the devastatingly bad luck of getting two "Evil Stirs" cards on consecutive draws in the same turn -- all the while keeping the local cultist populations in check. Meanwhile, cultists were massing in Innsmouth, as neither of us had yet visited that accursed town. I managed to close the gate in Kingsport and met Nathaniel in Innsmouth, where we had to fumble a bit with our inventories to arrange clue cards so that I could close the gate there and he could go back to Arkham to deal with the final portal. Nathaniel took off for Arkham as I stayed behind in Innsmouth just long enough to close the portal. It was three down and one to go, but the Old Ones had another trick up their sleeves. Just as Nathaniel was reaching the outskirts of Arkham, we pulled the last two "Evil Stirs" cards on two consecutive turns; as a result of the ensuing dice rolls from the second card, we ended up with a flood of cultists appearing out of nowhere to enact more of their nefarious rituals. The odds of that happening were less than 3%, but the chain reaction of consequences set off by those roles ended the game before we could take another turn. We needed perhaps one more turn apiece to win the game, but the Old Ones certainly have a way of twisting fate to serve their evil designs!