I'm playing through all the Mansions of Madness scenarios I own, and reviewing each one as I go. Vengeful Impulses is part of the Beyond the Threshold expansion, and it's rated 2 stars difficulty (the lowest for any scenario I've seen so far). This review contains spoilers.
The premise of the adventure, as provided in the description in the app, is that you are called to Thomas Carvey's mansion, ostensibly for a dinner party. The real reason you've been hired to protect Carvey, who believes that one of his dinner guests is trying to kill him. It's a strongly resonant setup for anyone who grew up playing Clue or Cluedo, and feels a little like a prequel episode to that game (although, come to think of it, I don't remember tentacles and cultists in Clue).
For this game, I played as Lily Chen and Charlie Kane from the Beyond the Threshold expansion set. Probably not by coincidence, their special abilities go well with the nature of this scenario. Charlie can convert Clues to Success as long as a Person token is within range, and Lily deals extra damage in unarmed attacks (OK, so Lily's ability is good all around).
I also brought in Preston Fairmont from the main set. He can discard a facedown Horror card any time he picks up an item.
And last but not least, Ursula Downs from the Path of the Serpent expansion. Once per round, she can move 1 space before or after performing an Explore action or resolving Sight token.
The game is divided into two phases. You get a few rounds before dinner, and then the dinner bell chimes and the rest of the game happens. Before dinner, you're meant to wander around the house and interview the suspects, er I mean dinner guests. You cannot interact with Search tokens, but you can all doors aside from those that are clearly locked.
Clue tokens are one of the most important resources in Mansions of Madness, and typically I prefer to reserve them for life or death situations. However, I got the sense (right or wrong, I don't know) in this scenario that what I discovered before dinner would be particularly valuable. I don't know whether that's true because so far I've only played the scenario once. I'll play it several more times, I know, and it'll be interesting to compare notes on the significance and effect the interviews have on the rest of the game (if any). Anyway, I was fully prepared to spend Clue tokens to get information out of these suspicious guests, but I ended up rolling really well. What poor decisions I believe I did make, I made in choosing from the dialogue tree and not by roll of the dice.
I don't know whether it's possible to extend the number of rounds you get before dinner, but time is definitely of the essence during the first phase of the game.
This isn't a scenario fraught with monsters, but it's got its fair share of mythos events. Many of the events just happen to you. There's no chance to negate, you just take a facedown Horror. I've played Mansions of Madness by now to know that facedown Horror just goes with the territory, but then again it can start to add up.
No spoilers, but after dinner the gameplay shifts from interviewing suspects to following up on the clues you gathered at the start of the game. I don't hesitate to confess that I wasn't able to piece it all together. Effectively, I failed this scenario. Because the game has an alternate win condition, I didn't technically lose, but I didn't achieve my primary goal and 3 out of 4 of my investigators were Insane at the end. Each Insane condition has a unique win condition for that character, and I Lily and Ursula both failed. Charlie managed to score a victory and Preston was the only one clinging to his sanity.
On the one hand, I don't feel this scenario provides all the clues you need to solve the mystery. Then again, I do feel like I was on the right track. In my own defence, I was in the process of moving my investigators to the space where my primary suspect was, ready to make an accusation. But you can only move 4 spaces a turn, so I just couldn't get into the same square in time.
It annoyed me, a little, that the game didn't have any countdown timer. It hinted that time was running out, but it didn't tell me what that meant in game terms. I didn't know whether I had several rounds left, just 1 round, or whether it was just flavour text adding atmospheric anxiety. Had I understood the time limitation, I'd have made an accusation earlier, just for the satisfaction of knowing whether I was right or wrong. I'd rather find out through an accusation than by taking too long by measure of game actions.
Despite feeling robbed of "true" victory (and to be fair, obviously I'd feel that way), I very much enjoyed this scenario and fully intend to play it until I at least solve the mystery. I love re-playing Mansions of Madness scenarios, because you never know what unexpected detail you missed or that just didn't get generated on your previous play-throughs. You also never really know how specific Investigators are going to affect the gameplay.
I don't know that it's a 2-star difficulty scenario. Even without monsters, a lot of Horror got dealt, and eventually quite a lot of Damage. This was a tough one!
But also fun.