After five runs, local players have yet to face the wizard. The first three had to be called because it took too long to defeat the apprentice. The fourth bested her very quickly with a party of four, but got bogged down during its attempts to regroup. (The primary striker got isolated in the worst possible area. He managed to get far enough to be rescued, but it was a near thing.) We had to close that one down, but it was obvious that they were too spent to continue to their final goal.
The fifth group also got the better of the apprentice very quickly (though I discovered I'd overlooked something that will make that trick more difficult next time), only to eat up too much time running around the mansion. With six players on Nightmare Mode (it seemed the best way to scale it up for a group larger than 5), they found it much harder to regroup than they did on the previous run, but there was only one casualty before the finally managed to pull it off. The others were probably still fit enough to tackle the wizard and perhaps even succeed (though I think they'd have suffered at least one more casualty first), but we had to call it a night again.
We'll try again tonight and Saturday. I've been reminding the players that taking 10 on Stealth checks made before combat begins would speed things up considerably. Hopefully, they've also worked some of the distractions from the first stage out of their system.
The Treachery cards have been great fun. "You're Doing It Wrong" is like an improved version of Aid Another, and "Aw, Too Bad" is a crit-fisher's friend. (Sure, you're stealing crits from allies, but there are many times that's to everyone's advantage.) "Coattail Rider" and "Give Me a Taste" both increase the efficacy of healing powers considerably and are a must for anyone playing a vampire. Any of the cards that only modify the amount of worth gained or lost don't do anything here, but I've ruled that any card that lets an ally lose worth to gain another benefit is valid. I'm fine with letting "I Won't Tell a Soul," provide one ally total immunity to damage from a single trap. "My Bad" penalizes an ally's attack roll to apply a bonus to your next attack roll -- but is played after the ally makes the roll, letting you borrow excess. (It's also proven useful in cases where one ally included another ally as a target.)
Between the means for gaining healing, saving throws, temporary hit points, modifiers to attack and damage, and extra attacks, a good mix of cards is like having a backup leader or two in your party. That's not even getting into the tricks you can pull to spread damage around with such cards as "Maybe It's Contagious" or "Splinters" for offense or "Meat Shield" for defense. There are costs, but clever players can manipulate those to party advantage.
One thing I've enjoyed about this season is how much it's forced people to think outside of their comfort zone for defenders. People have opted for revenant battleminds and wardens here, but the revenant battlerager fighter held its own surprisingly well (even though the player took an unnecessarily huge hit to AC), as did the drow tempest fighter (even though the player had designed the character under the impression that Dual Strike and most of his other attacks would let him make two attacks against a single target). They're not quite as flexible when it comes to other roles, but some of the post mortem kibitzing suggests they're getting there.
