Bad Cop: A North Country review and Roland recap

Path to Carcosa is drawing to a close, and Fantasy Flight hasn't yet added Return to the Night of the Zealot or Forgotten Age to their upcoming page. It might be time to look into a fan campaign to fill those lonely weeks between official releases, and you could do pretty well with Tim Cox's North Country Cycle.

Set in upstate New York, the investigators are looking into fires breaking out in the remote town of Wrotham and come into conflict with the local police and a cult over the course of the three scenarios. There's a lot to like here. Starting with the fundamentals, North Country covers the basics well; treacheries are interesting and integrated into the particular scenario and there are a variety of enemies. Wrotham Backcountry, the first scenario, is the most straightforward, but Wrotham Township and North Woods have some nice tricks with regard to locations that feel really appropriate for the setting. Speaking of the individual scenarios, they also have multiple ways to victory that matter. How you choose to advance the act deck and complete the scenario changes how you play. Mr. Cox even has a great innovation by including a map of the locations and their connections in the setup guide. Good stuff. North Country has a solid foundation and some nice window dressing.

Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your proclivities), this is by far the most difficult campaign of Arkham I’ve played. I mentioned before that there’s a real choice in how you can complete each scenario, but you’re going to need every stat to overcome the encounter deck. There are high-fight, high-health enemies; will and evasion tests; and challenging investigation checks. You need don’t need to be a jack-of-all trades to do well on Wrotham, you need to be a master of all to survive.

If you want to give North Country a try, and you should, I would strongly recommend you just straight up reduce the clues needed to advance the act by two. Don't worry. Locations are already challenging enough to investigate. You're not making it that much easier.

Wrotham Backcountry: Roland Banks is one bad cop. Picked up a bunch of clues by straight up murdering the patrolling deputies. He got their attention and shot them down. Once he was done pillaging their bodies for clues, he walked straight up to that sheriff and delivered a shot to the head and let his dog finish the work before making his way into town. Brutal but effective.

Wrotham Township: It was looking dire there for a while. Sat on three health and two sanity for far too long but had to push through, especially after Cover Up came up. I wasn't picking up another mental trauma. I even had the clues necessary to advance most of that time, but I wanted to be prepared for that pyromaniac shaman. The game didn't make it easy for me, throwing out Charred Men and tests to not immediately die from encounter horror, but the draws were timely. Then Landon Hullet arrived. I had three chances at 5 against 4 before committing icons. The first draw, the one I threw everything at was the tentacle, the second time that game and the second time I committed a batch of cards. The second draw, naked, was a success. Do I resign or push through? I made it this far. I go for it with one extra icon. I needed that icon and finished the shaman off. Game. The Stolen Motorcycle was a lifesaver in preventing damage from the erupting locations. Don't think I ever made an investigation check between Charred Men, Art Students, Working a Hunch and the Banks method.

North Woods: Three times I took a mulligan on this scenario. The first was because I missed that I put the second act first and misread the Gloomy Woods rules, but the other two times were because this scenario is a grinder. I didn’t get to the second act until my third try. And then I lost because the boss was too beefy. Just ugly.