Ursula in Dreamlands, or There and Back Again

Intro

I like Ursula a lot and when I saw the deck published by @Saej (thanks!), I decided to give it a go in the Dream Quest part of the Dream-Eaters campaign. I previously played Ursula with a higher cost curve and Relics, so the low cost curve and 'rush' approach was new for me. This was a success as I managed to beat (with some luck!) Nyarlathotep. The deck is described very well here, so I won't repeat it.

Here is a short summary of the campaign (contains very mild spoilers):

1. Beyond the Gates of Sleep

Very thematic scenario but quite straightforward. Did bot have problems here, especially as I did not draw a certain location, which spawns a certain hunter enemy. Cleared all the locations for 12 exp. Ended the scenarion on round 10.

2. The Search for Kadath

This scenario ran quite smoothly. I had a good start and ran around the map as I visited Oriab, then Timeless Realm, Mnar and Forbidden Lands as the last stop on that cruise. Managed to gather 8/10 signs, entering the Forbidden Lands. Because of the accelerated doom from treacheries, I had to resign there, nevertheless all VP locations were cleared - 11 exp. Resigned on round 13.

3. Dark Side of the Moon

Very fast start in this scenario, but then I got slowed down heavily by certain hunter cats and had to push hard to evade the other hunting bad guy at the bottleneck high-shroud location. Here good old Higher Education helped to clear the locations from the 1st go. The guys Randolph Carter, Jake Williams and Dr. William T. Maleson took all the damage for Ursula. A couple of very tense rounds, but then safely on the other side. All VP locations cleared for 6 exp. Ended the scenarion on round 10.

4. Where the Gods Dwell

So this one is quite tough for solo play as the ability on act card in the second half of the scenario does not scale for true solo! It turned out as expected. Very fast start,being able to advance the act turn 1. Cleared the second in a couple of rounds. The third act was a breeze with enough signs of gods. So came Act 4, where most of the chaos bag is quite negative and you have to be lucky to pull the right cards. The locations were not a problem since I had a pretty good setup with Pathfinder, Hawk-Eye Folding Camera and Fieldwork. The good Dr. William T. Maleson let me re-draw a couple of pretty bad enemies, which helped a lot. Nyarlathotep appeared by the middle of the encounter deck and the cards to beat him as well, though the first one was for fighting with fists, which did not help Ursula a lot. But luckily I got options for other stats quickly enough. Once he escaped, but I got him back and the second copy right at the end of scenarion and beat him on the last action of penultimate round, 8 cards remaining in the encounter deck! Ended the scenarion on round 14 with 6 exp.

Well that was a fun scenario, but a bit swingy and luck dependent to my taste. It can be either super easy or unbeatable in true solo. I think it would benefit from some scaling as quite a lot of people play true solo.

The MVP cards of the campaign:

1. Hawk-Eye Folding Camera
2. Pathfinder / Fieldwork combo
3. Jake Williams and Dr. William T. Maleson
4. Higher Education as should be expected from 8xp taboo card, goes well with 2x Studious

The not so MVP cards:

1. True Understanding in theory it gives good tempo play, but I was not able to use a right moment to get benefits from it.
2. Crystalline Elder Sign was ok, but since I covered the most important stats with other boosters, the effect was not particularly conspicuous. That is due to my upgrade path mostly, not the problem of a card.
3. Practice Makes Perfect has Deduction and Perception as targets, but I managed to play it 1x in the campaign, was a bit fiddly.

Thanks for reading.