#Wrath of the Righteous ACG

[amiriandfriends]

Amiri & Friends #44 - Transmogrification Central

Artist: @sheastandefer

One of the loot rewards in Wrath of the Righteous is a spell called Transmogrify. It is intended to allow a caster to weaken a powerful monster (usually a henchman or villain) by reducing its difficulty to defeat by your Arcane or Divine skill +1d6, so it is easier to combat for the win. Sometimes, you don’t have any other options, though.

With the prevalence of demons and undead in Wrath, Kyra got a little too reliant on her laser powers (recharging any spell or blessing for a powerful attack...but only against those creature types), and encountered a monster with no conventional means of fighting. Rather than take it on the chin, she used Transmogrify on the middling Cultist archer.

The trouble is, by the time you earn this loot spell, though, you are so powerful that casting it is a fairly ridiculous bonus, even against beefy villains. Against a standard monster, it was messy. Thanks to skill feats, mythic charges, and the Black Robes, Kyra’s Divine static bonus was already +12. After rolling max on d12 + d6, the Combat 14 archer had its difficulty reduced by 30. Needless to say, Kyra had no trouble then rolling her base strength to defeat it. 

[jeremy-ken-anderson]

Poverty of Options

There are some games where the hardest levels are the first few, and this is because they’re games of building strategy and at the beginning all the systems to make them hard are in place but all the systems to cope with the difficulty are...not.

The best example I ran into recently was Pathfinder ACG: Wrath of the Righteous. Adventure Deck B, the prologue, is by far the hardest adventure in the whole thing, even though the numbers (as numbers do, in RPGs) get larger and larger over time. At the end of deck 6 you have to handle 3 Difficulty 77 combats in a row, and (at least for our group) it is no sweat.

I thought of this recently as I was pondering class divides (uh, rich vs poor, not rogue vs mage). Certainly when you’re rich there are a number of expectations of you, in many cases the living situation you need in order to have said income carries a higher financial risk/burden, and so on. But you have SO MANY OPTIONS. One of which is to retire, and live cheaply but comfortably for the REST OF YOUR LIFE, never having to work again. And what I think so many rich people miss when they’re looking down their noses at the “stupid” behaviors of poor people is that they have poverty of choice associated with that shortage of money. In order to move away from a bad job you need the money to move. In order to quit a bad job you need the money to tide you over until you have another job. In order to skip out on eating out once or twice a month you have to have a job that isn’t so soul-crushing that your choices are “treat yourself now and then even though it means it’ll take longer to become financially stable” and “kill yourself.” In order to own instead of rent you have to have good credit or the personal trust of someone with good credit, AND stable income, AND a situation where you’re willing to commit to not moving for a while.

On top of that if you’re rich you need to work hard or get lucky, once, to get richer. If you’re poor you need to do everything right AND get lucky multiple times AND have no bad breaks, all in the right order, in order to dig out of the hole. It happens, and when it happens it’s wonderful and praiseworthy, but we shouldn’t act like all it takes is good behavior. Right now, with the system we’ve got, that just isn’t true, and the belief that it is promotes the idea that poverty comes from laziness and that’s horse shit. Most poverty comes from misfortune - and most often that misfortune is (or stems from) the state of being born into poverty.

[amiriandfriends]

Amiri & Friends #45 - Middle of Nowhere

Artist: @sheastandefer

Adventure 5 of Wrath of the Righteous is pretty merciless with it’s labyrinth-themed movement confusion and restrictions. Even after getting through the two major maze scenarios, minotaurs are still popping up as henchmen, and a bad roll against them can land you...well, in the Middle of Nowhere,  a useless location that is very hard to leave!

[amiriandfriends]

Amiri & Friends #42 - Unearthly OP

Artist: @sheastandefer

When we started playing through the old boxes, I thought adding in Ultimate Add-On decks would be a fun way to spice things up on a replay (for me) and see a variety of interesting cards for my new friends. However, we seem to keep finding little card combos that were likely unintentional.

In Wrath, our Hunter Adowyn had been having trouble recharging spells, so with the Riffle Scrolls came along (which lets you place spells on it instead of banishing them, and then bury the Riffle Scrolls to recharge all spells on it that could be recharged with a check of a skill you have), that seemed like a great solution to not always be losing her Cure.

Then we found Unearthly Aim, a (supposedly) one use card that banishes to add 10 + AD# to your Ranged combat check. A really powerful card, but it has no recharge check, so you just have to banish it to use, and hope it comes up to acquire again.

Except, if you place a spell on Riffle Scrolls, and then never bury it to recover those spells, all spells left on it are buried. Meaning, they go right back in your deck! It requires you to sink two cards to keep, you have to be a caster who also makes Ranged attacks, and you need to have the Riffle Scrolls out before you can play Unearthly Aim without losing it, but a once-per-game +13 (or +14 or +15 or +16) is pretty good insurance in the villain fight!

Despite his comedic objection in this comic, I feel like Mike Selinker would approve our ingenuity. :)

[amiriandfriends]

Amiri & Friends #40 - A Phallus by Any Other Name

Artist: @sheastandefer​

You knew we’d be back with a dick joke, right? Kyra encountered a monster and inserted a strategic pause between syllables in announcing the identity of the Giant Cockaroach, and art was born! :D

We have to make light of the monsters because this box is BRUTAL early on. Let’s hope we survive to finally hear the call of our mythic paths!

[amiriandfriends]

Welcom back, friends of Amiri! Apologies for the hiatus, but our artist is a working artist, and she has had, well, work, and not felt like drawing as much in her downtime. Understandable! In the meantime, Damiel, Oloch, and Lini successfully defeated the Hurricane King and have become reigning pirates in the Shackles, so we are off to the ever-brutal box Wrath of the Righteous! Goblin cutpurse Ekkie, human hunter Adowyn (and her faithful wolf Leryn), and Sarenrae’s devoted cleric Kyra are off to defend (and dare they hope, close?) the Worldwound as all manner of demons attempt to invade our world. No doubt hilarity will ensue!

[amiriandfriends]

Amiri and Friends #41 - Too Easy

@sheastandefer

The “cock. roach.” was easy joke fodder, but some of the monster art in this box just ridiculous in is phallic resemblance. “Here you go Kyra, fight a bag of dicks-- er, I mean, a “maggot swarm.”  Or this “worm demon.” That’s what they call it. Sure. The “spice” must flow.