Lesha Foxglove

[dbemont]

I am mystified as to a strategy to deal with Lesha Foxglove in The Skinsaw Murders -- Foul Misgivings.  You have to find Haunts pretty quickly to close locations, but each time you do, you are increasingly likely to get Lesha with her charisma/diplomacy/divine 13 check (with magic, no less), which is going to so overwhelm most characters as to wipe out their hands.   First time, you might win by using a fistful of blessings, but over and over?  It's not like I am just unlucky and have the wrong cards available, as best as I can see, no combination of my cards would work.    I've got to be missing something here.

[Hannibal_PJV]

Solution one: Use armors to reduce damage to zero by banishing or burying the armor.

Solution two: Find skinsawman first and win the game by temporary closing everything else.

 

Edit

Solution four: Evade! (Merciel is the dame in this scenario!)

Edited July 13, 2017 by Hannibal_PJV

[Ripe]

Solution three: use Aldern to remove haunts, reducing the chance of facing Iesha.

 

Also, Crown of Charisma (if you have it) can be used to pass the check against Iesha. At one point that also counted as defeating her (so you'd get to examine a location) but I think that was no longer the case.

[dbemont]

Thanks.

 

Unfortunately, I have not seen Aldern (or Crown of Charisma) but I will certainly be on the lookout for both.

 

Finding Skinsawman first and closing everything else presents some practical problems, of course.  Limited control over who you find first.  And spreading out the characters means adding 1d4 to this villain's already formidable combat 14, then combat 16 strength... but it is true that even then he is more defeatable than Lesha.

 

About half my available armor can be banished to reduce damage to zero, but nowhere near all characters have this available all the time... and unless you are very fortunate, the situation will arise over and over.

 

As to the rogue evading, yes, if she happens to be the one who encounters Lesha each time, all is cool.

 

I guess what I am gathering from this is that no high probability strategy exists -- which is fine.  It's just that pretty much all the scenarios up to this point, if you go about it correctly, there is a high probability way of succeeding.  This one, it looks like without the right characters and the right cards and a fair amount of good fortune (or at least two out of three) you are probably going to lose.   So I will quit feeling dense like I am overlooking something, and just figure it may take a few goes. 

[Hannibal_PJV]

I did it using combination of those things. Those who had armour used it. Others burned a lot of blessings (own and others) to not lose badly. And did spread the team and used Augyry and spyclasses etc. to find right cards from the decks.

[Irgy]

Even on legendary/heroic mode where you face her every single time, banished haunts or not, it's still beatable (and by that I mean fairly consistently).

 

Merisiel evades. Kyra defeats and gets to even examine a location. A couple of other characters have a good enough roll that a blessing will generally cover it, as much as any normal check at least. Anyone with armour buries an armour - if you haven't drawn your armour, well guess what you get to draw a whole new hand size worth of cards to find it for next time . Everyone else just takes a hand-dump, and goes and gets a cure at the first opportunity.

 

One thing to avoid: spending all your party's blessings and hoping to get lucky on the check only to end up getting a hand dump anyway. Unlike a monster/barrier that gets shuffled back in or a henchman you need to find again, there's no penalty for failure other than the damage, so be willing to just suck it up sometimes.

 

In general you shouldn't have to face her more than once per character, and one hand-dump per character hurts but it shouldn't be the end of the scenario. Just wait until you get to 4.5 or whatever it is where the whole party takes d4 force on every henchman! (ok again that's only on legendary/heroic) Explore more aggressively with the characters who can actually deal with her. Pack a lot of cures, which is good general advice.

 

I do think overall though that the end of deck 1 and the start of deck 2 is the peak of difficulty for the game. The good news is this scenario specifically is pretty much the end of that run, once you get through it the next two are quite a bit easier, and indeed the only really hard scenario (relative to your growing power) is the flood one (and it won't kill you, it's just easy to luck-out and fail).

Edited July 14, 2017 by Irgy

[dbemont]

I do think overall though that the end of deck 1 and the start of deck 2 is the peak of difficulty for the game. The good news is this scenario specifically is pretty much the end of that run, once you get through it the next two are quite a bit easier,

 Yeah, I needed a good break to win that one, but got it a couple goes later, and I agree that the rest of deck 2 was much easier.

 

I think I am just surprised by the unevenness of the difficulty level, and this led me to believe I must be overlooking something obvious.  But I really wasn't. 

 

And this is not meant as a complaint about the game, nowhere is it written in marble that the difficulty level needs to flow up evenly.   I'm enjoying the game a lot, with only the slight quibble being that an awful lot rides on how deep in the deck the henchmen and villain are.   And even that really doesn't affect the enjoyability of the game much.

 

First card game, computer or otherwise, that I have really gotten a lot of fun out of.

[Ripe]

Unfortunately, I have not seen Aldern (or Crown of Charisma) but I will certainly be on the lookout for both.

Aldern Foxglove is a useless ally that you always receive as a reward (or at least I always got him) for beating Local Heroes scenario. Other that that, I'm not sure he's available to be found during scenarios. HIs sole use is during this scenario when he can be revelead at one location (at any point during the turn! anyone's turn!!) to remove all haunts.

 

Crown of Charisma is a very, very good item from "C" deck (possibly one of the best non-loot items in the game) that you will be using pretty much entire campaign.

[Ethics Gradient]

 

Unfortunately, I have not seen Aldern (or Crown of Charisma) but I will certainly be on the lookout for both.

Aldern Foxglove is a useless ally that you always receive as a reward (or at least I always got him) for beating Local Heroes scenario. 

 

 

I think that should still be how you find him.  He is an "unlisted" Ally card.  Even though that card is part of the base game, he shouldn't turn up in location decks when you play through scenarios.

 

Though, if [spoilerz happen], I think your party save is marked to stop getting him as a reward.