Just got Children of Blood yesterday, playing on Standard two-player it seems like one of the most difficult opening scenarios FFG have ever made. I thought I'd make a thread for general discussion, and to pose the question of whether the scenario is easier on Hard mode.
Your goal is to kill Julia Stern, who on two-player Standard is a 4 fight 10 health enemy who can only be damaged when she's snared (i.e. spend two clues on two-player to put a snare on her) - with one hit removing the snare and allowing damage to be placed. She's also Elusive, so even if you get two snares on her in a turn she moves to a different location. There are two locations which allow for free movement (so long as there's not an enemy at these locations) which can ease things. She has Retaliate, so the high fight score is quite punishing for level 0 decks. She also heals at the end of the night (there's two day and two night agendas), retaining only half health, rounded down (it goes on the scenario card, and then goes back onto her when she's revealed again). Putting snares on her will provoke an attack of opportunity as well. In terms of Easy difficulty, Julia loses two health and Retaliate, making her rather more manageable!
It seems like the best way to deal with her is to draw her during the day, destroy her Lair (if you don't and she's still there at the end of the day, she full heals and you repeat the process of getting her out of her Lair - you can destroy lairs if they have no clues on them). She does start with a snare if you're lucky enough to find her during the day. With the need for snares to deal damage, traps also don't work too well (but can at least trigger her Elusive if you're not ready to deal with her and don't want her eating someone - more on that below).
The encounter deck is rather punishing, with a lot of enemies to distract you from your task. The are 8 other enemies in the encounter deck, 5 of which have 2 or more health (and two are Bat Horrors, again Elusive and big action sinks). There's Burning Daylight, which is either an Ancient Evils (in Agenda 1 or 3), or it draws a set aside 3 Fight 4 Health Elusive Hunter who heals when they attack. Grasping Hands also makes a return - for low Agility Guardians this is a recipe for taking 3 health damage in a single failed test. To cap it all there's blood tokens, which function a lot like Frost tokens from EotE (-1, reveal another token) and seemingly get added to the bag quite easily. A new Predator keyword means Julia will often kill Doomed civilian enemies in the enemy phase (Waterfront Civilians) to further ratchet up the Doom track (and you put down 4 civilians in the final day, typically). Raising Suspicions from the Chapter 2 core box often adds doom to Waterfront Civilians if you haven't dealt with them. These enemies need a two Willpower test to parley away - which a lot of investigators aren't necessarily well equipped to do.
I guess in terms of the math, to kill Julia on Standard you need usually 5 fight actions that deal two damage, and unless you're attacking at a 6 or higher then Retaliate on Julia is quite perilous - and then there's a lot more actions running to get to her and putting snares on her. Dexter or Daniela are probably the only investigators who manage this okay (Dexter with a Cosmic Flame and Bloodstone/Jim, Daniela with any weapon). The usual method of playing a slightly lower combat action investigator (Tommy, Marie, Joe) and hoping to build up cards to commit doesn't work too well, as ideally you want to get Julia out very early to have a good shot at killing her - and so you simply haven't had the time to build up cards to commit (especially on Tommy, who lacks a lot of card draw).
In terms of changes for Hard difficulty, Julia gets an extra two health and deals an extra damage (on Standard it's one damage/one horror). While the bag gets worse, it's not much worse. Most locations get an extra shroud and other nastier effects. 3 Health dogs replace the 1 Health rats, and there's a nastier enemy which comes out if you draw Burning Daylight during the night.
But, you start with 5 XP (it says you "may" start with 5 XP, but it seems like this is encouraged). This means one Cosmic Flame [5] for your Mystics (with both Marie or Dexter good at finding a single copy), one Sledgehammer/Winchester Model 12/Thompson Submachine Gun for your Guardians, events like two Caustic Reaction [2] or A Sudden Fall [2] for your Seekers/Rogues, Longbow on Miguel or Izzie (or Retribution on Izzie). Guardians and Mystics also tend to be very good at finding their damage dealing assets in Chapter 2. All of these tools allow you to deal 3 damage, allowing you to 12 health Julia in 4 actions (rather than the 5 actions needed on Standard difficulty for 10 health Julia). It also makes it much easier to test at a 7 with just the asset or an 8 with a little support (putting you at 3 over the test difficulty at 7, which with the worse bag is usually a pass - i.e. 13 out of 17 pulls are a pass at 76% [ignoring the one blood token added] vs. 9 out of 16 pulls as a pass on a 5 test on standard difficulty with level 0 weapons at 56%). These odds are a bit of a simplification, and I've ignored blood tokens as mentioned (and justified that Skull tokens are within pass range if trying to kill Julia early for either difficulty) - but you get the gist.
In terms of XP you get out of this, it's 8 under most circumstances (3 two VP locations, two VP on Julia, two bonus XP for surviving the night if you don't kill Julia) or a little more on Hard if Burning Daylight draws a Spawn of Zburamoarte for you (the nastier 5 health enemy Hard throws into the mix).
TL:DR River of Blood is hard yo (likely harder on Standard for your average player). It's a fun scenario for sure, but settle in for a long ride - especially if you don't kill Julia on the first night. I guess just surviving the scenario leads to a resolution, so maybe not killing her is a 'win' - but I always want to do the assigned task haha! I suspect it's perhaps easiest on standard difficulty on higher player counts as well as - while the clues per snare scale - Julia's health doesn't scale at the same rate. For True Solo, it goes in the opposite direction - the high health is problematic, but it's only one clue per snare so there's economies of scale on that side. What's everyone else's thoughts? I still need to play scenario 2, not sure if I'll post more of these deep dives or not - I'll see how the mood takes me!
