My *Final* 1st Thoughts on THE FEAST OF HEMLOCK VALE Campaign (Spoiler-Free and Spoiler Discussion!)

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Hey everyone! We finished up our blind play of The Feast of Hemlock Vale, which means it is time for me to share my final first thoughts on the campaign as a whole. I cover what I can and chat about what I can, both spoiler-filled and spoiler-free, so let's dive in and talk about Hemlock Vale!
0:00 Spoiler-Free
17:34 Spoilers Start
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[@therealestize]

Hemlock vale is pretty solid campaign. I think it’s a good sign for things to come.

[@QuintiniusVerginix]

One big issue I have with the final scenario is that it almost doesn't scale at all. You were of course playing with three investigators which seems to be the intended amount (since it lines up perfectly with the Act 2 goal), but if you play with two or godforbid one investigator, it becomes incredibly hard to finish the scenario. Finding the investigator cards takes much longer when you have fewer players, getting the clues off the locations takes much longer (and might include a lot of wasted turns on movement) and the final acts might be nigh impossible (for example, in my last playthrough I went for the Burn Down the Vale option, which, when I saw what I had to do and how much turns I had left, was literally impossible to win). I think the designers could've been a bit better with that. PS: I think the campaign mechanics vs. Hank Sampson's inclusion with this campaign really funny. Like, all three night-only scenarios neutralize his weakness (the Forced effect doesn't trigger in the pursuit area, Longest Night has no enemies in the deck, you can't manipulate the Abyss). I can't think of another investigator bundled with a campaign where their weakness does nothing in half the campaign they're bundled with lol

[@MattCrawley_Music]

Man, you guys play fast. My regular 4 player group takes about 3 hours per scenario!

[@stephenball2108]

Hemlock was great. I’m actually relatively new to the game, and was going through the campaigns and decided to jump ahead to Hemlock so I could watch your channels gameplay, and loved the campaign. Since then I’ve gone back and played Edge of the Earth and The Scarlet Keys, and I’m so glad Hemlock was fantastic because otherwise I would be worried about the direction of the game. I thought EotE was fine, I have my problems with it (the maps are absurd, way too much writing, and the setting didn’t lead to dynamic story arcs) but still enjoyed it enough. The Scarlet Keys is the only blind run where I’ve gotten to a point of thinking “I actually can’t wait for this to be over”. I thought it was incredibly clunky, I didn’t enjoy the campaign mechanisms of the keys and concealed. I appreciated what they were going for but really didn’t like actually playing it. I’ll eventually loop back around to it but it’s so far and away my least favorite. One thing I think FFG does well is learning from design mistakes, and I think Hemlock Vale is a great example of that. I think it takes EotE and TSK and refines the things that didn’t work with them into a more clean and manageable product. It took the partner system from EotE and refined it into the residents, and gave you the option through the codex system (a huge win) to deal with them if you’d like. That really cuts down on the giant walls of text prevalent to the past few campaigns. Hemlocks dynamic scenario ordering also is an improvement on TSK’s map system. It’s cleaner and the day/night stuff along with the encounter cards specifically for what day you were on lend to the feeling of growth. I like the prologues and how flexible they can be. I feel like on replays it offers a lot. I can decide that I want to really go after some people that I didn’t converse with at all last campaign. If there’s some cards that are really important to me I can instead prioritize them. For instance, I was playing with an Ashcan Pete Multi-Tool deck and was able to consistently have Multi-Tool in play because of the store. I think the prologues bring a lot to the campaign, not just with story but with gameplay too. I’d say currently Hemlock would be my second favorite campaign behind Carcosa.

[@davidko9289]

I'm glad for the complexity and narrative structure being reasonable in this one. Hyped for when I eventually play it.

[@robhumfeld2018]

Prediction: Judith Park returns in next campaign... Hope: rather than an NPC she is a playable Guardian (See end of Epilogue Codex 7)

[@ryanmireles1486]

There is a mechanic like concealed, Tekalili, etc. in HV it’s just so elegant you don’t notice it as easily. It’s the grid based maps which get used in almost every scenario and do make the level design feel very unique to HV Also, when are you all going to do another campaign rankings video? The last one you all did was after TIC

[@PlayingBoardGames]

I personally don't view that as a mechanic but rather a feature of a campaign. Grid based maps happen in a lot of campaigns, just like how big maps and small maps happen in a lot of campaigns. A campaign mechanic to me is a mechanic that only exists in that campaign. The grid based maps was awesome and I like how they handled that with the campaign guide doing the heavy lifting, but it does not make it a new mechanic being explored. Campaign rankings will be coming in the near future.

[@ryanmireles1486]

Yeah I guess your right, it’s more of a feature then a mechanic, though I think it is one of the features that make the campaign feel unique

[@PlayingBoardGames]

@@ryanmireles1486 It definitely does and I really like how they handled it, which certainly helps make it feel more connected to the campaign.

[@thalafoon]

There is also The Codex, which is a pretty memorable mechanic in the Campaign and I hope they bring it back.

[@LaboratoryGrey]

Thanks for always doing a spoiler free section.

[@BlackStarsRiseGaming]

Thanks, Justin! Agreed 1000000% -- the next campaign should be eight scenarios! These designers could go in so many cool directions with that approach!! The Longest Night is easy S tier for me. FHV is also my second fav campaign behind Carcosa. Going back and forth on selecting my third fav tbh. Cheers!

[@patricksullivan6988]

I would have appreciated a Pandemic shuffle for the top cards of the Abyss deck. Our investigator cards ended up back to back (along with a significant tranche of our player cards). On top of that, we just overshot them during the mythos phase our first 3(!) times through the Abyss deck. It was a rough ride. I can't believe we managed to "recover" from that start to get within one turn/action of passing the scenario (ultimately failing).

[@patricksullivan6988]

I'm a bit mixed on the preludes. I find their actual play a bit tedious, and they draw out the playtime with added set-up, etc. BUT, I do appreciate how they help modify the difficulty of the floating scenarios (In addition to changes to the chaos bag, the decreasing generosity of the preludes over the course of the campaign is a clever way to scale with player power.), and I do appreciate the relationship developments with the NPCs (for which a larger portion occurs during the preludes).

[@robertthurman9866]

Get or make some decoy and barricade markers. I have been using tokens from three other games for various things and I also bought a bag of translucent plastic tokens (used for Bingo) that come in handy. Used red for barricade, blue for a decoy or any way you want.

[@yogibbear]

I really really like it too, but will need some official documented errata on their website or something to satisfy everyone re: minor interactions and anomalies. Hemlock House is pretty nice and good analogues to fanmade stuff that they probably got to independently themselves, but still very very cool.

[@anonymous-dk3um]

NEW DAY NEW VIDEO

[@gabriel0santiago]

YEAH, PLEASE, DO A SCENARIO BY SCENARIO REVIEW

[@jrofeta]

In your recent scenario ranking video you mentioned that since Dream Eaters that all the finales have felt like they should have been two scenarios rather than one. Did that change with Hemlock? (sorry if you mentioned this in the spoiler section)

[@PlayingBoardGames]

No, Hemlock still feels this way to me.

[@patricksullivan6988]

Hemlock finale is cool, but it's a marathon

[@rupert7565]

But when do we get the final_final_v2 version?

[@PlayingBoardGames]

Next year. ;)

[@rupert7565]

@@PlayingBoardGames Good, no final version is final untill at least one redraft. Looking forward to your replay of the scenario then, because i won't watch any of the current videos, until i'll have played the scenario myself. Which will take a couple of months still.

[@KrishnaRoskin]

Which are some of the investigators that get punished? Asking for a friend...

[@QuintiniusVerginix]

Let's just say that there's an achievement in the campaign guide for finishing the campaign as Patrice

[@KrishnaRoskin]

​@@QuintiniusVerginixDoes that mean that Yorick is good?

[@QuintiniusVerginix]

​@@KrishnaRoskin Not necessarily better than usual. There are a lot of discard effects in the campaign, but you do not necessarily want to discard a lot.

[@DrMcFly28]

I liked Hemlock Vale, but I'm still unsure how much of it was because of its objective quality and how much was due to the contrast of it immediately following two of what were for me absolutely worst cycles in the game. :)

[@MattCrawley_Music]

Well it could only have got better after TSK

[@athanasius4273]

Just play another campaign first, everybody seems to forget that there were let's say "polarizing?" cycles before EotE

[@rattenusrattoonus1880]

Mi likey Edge of the Earth beri much!

[@MattCrawley_Music]

The prologues needed a "resign" action somewhere

[@M-E_123]

I think the story structure was nice, but the events of the unique Night 2 scenario was too much - it just wasn't believable that you'd all still go out on a survey on the third morning after what you went through / discovered at the barn the night before & that you'd wait until the following night to have some proper reaction to it. I think it would have been better if the Night 2 scenario was somewhat secret / needed unlocking - so you had to have already uncovered something about certain villagers to get the option to play it - and then if you survive the night at the barn you also get a unique Day 3 scenario to try and stop / disrupt / warn people about the Feast happening on Night 3. To allow for this I'd probably change up the Night 1 unique scenario to allow you to survey the woods in the day time, with different Act & Agenda decks - if played on Day 1 you'd basically be visiting the woods with Bertie and all get lost in the woods, trying to get back to the village for the evening meal - if you don't play the scenario Day 1 or Night 1 Bertie would not want to go back to the woods, but you can "survey them properly" to follow up on the Doctors report of what she saw / encountered when she went there on Night 1 to fibd Bertie. I think my overall issue with the story is that you know there's a dodgy cult running the village, but can't do much to investigate them or disrupt their plans for the Night 3 Feast, even though you have really good reason to after the night at the barn. So I'd also change some of the survey scenarios to better tie them each to the suspicious activities of different villiagers - make it feel like they're either "keeping an eye on you" for the cult leaders, or they are under instructions to keep you away from certain locations, maybe even under orders to "make sure they don't come back" if you get too close to a sensitive location (while other villiagers are more helpful, "keeping an eye on you" more to make sure you don't get into any trouble / danger - but make it so you aren't always sure which type of villiager you have in any given scenario unless you've spent time getting to know them in the preludes). Instead it feels like any single villiager can be your friend/ally, you just have to put enough time in - and if you don't they're all bad. I'd rather there were some with fixed good / bad intentions, and others you can influence by completing side missions. I think overall for me it just feels like it needed certain narrative elements tightening up a bit - the tension with the cult and preparing for the feast felt through the roof after Night 2 at the barn, but then we just went off for the day doing a survey as usual and it lost some of what it had - and that made me think about how you could really tweak/change thing's up to make it possible for the group to either carry out their surveys relatively unaware of and untroubled by the cult and then get surprised by the events of Night 3, or have them get sidetracked off their day jobs and into a cult busting operation depending on how the first couple of days go and what encounters they have with the different villiagers - so they can see Night 3 is going to be bad, but actually have an attempt to fight against it much earlier if they're clued in enough. Overall promising start for these designers, but I feel like they could have done better with a bit more focus on how to use the villiagers as more than window dressing and something you try to "earn" into your decks. They've still not ever really nailed how to use NPC's / varying NPC relationships or attitudes in this game - but I do feel like they're getting closer.