Getting back into the swing

After a long dry spell, we’ve finally gotten back into the swing of things with CoH — just in time to head off to California, alas.
Friday night was our Synapse TF for Psi-clone and Amorpha. Went pretty well — minimal character deaths (and most of those from not paying attention), Babbage went down pretty quickly, ditto CK. Ran about 4½ hours, and no real new lessons learned, except that a discussion of tactics beforehand is probably a good idea, and varying those tactics to keep interest up (esp. when each mish has the same foe and, often, the same map) is an even better one.
Saturday we (briefly) played with Amazonite and Truly Unstable. TU’s a hoot to do over the chat boards. And, in one of those “small world” bits, no sooner had I said, “I look forward to meeting you someday” to Liberty Bill, then he swooped past me as I was entering Perez and he was exiting.
(Blink.)
We chatted, then went on, but it was … odd.
Sunday night was for Velvet and P-siren. Did a Sky Raiders mish (Velvet’s), followed by our first Banished Pantheon mish (PS’s). An amusing contrast (and one of the plusses/minuses of running with a science/magic duo).
Margie’s been feeling less thrilled with PS of late, and so we decided to call in some help on a mission, just to give her additional bubbly goodness to try out.
Ended up running with Avocet (exemped down, until things got hot) and Enyxia (who was new to us, though we’d seen her in the coms for a bit). Timed Sky Raiders mish that turned out to be a bit hotter than expected, leading to at least one or two character deaths before we succeeded (Velvet couldn’t quite hold enough aggro, esp. with force fields up and Porters getting past me). Still, fun.

Margie enjoyed playing with another psychic.
Monday night was scheduled to be the Cavern of Transcendence trial — the last gasp attempt. Margie’s been feeling antsy about not running Kazima, and I have … ideas for Honeygun, so we were ready. Margie did all the planning and coordination of folks, we brought in a ringer to clear the troll caves, and …
Damn. One person we thought was 15 was actually 16, skewing the numbers on the TF so that we couldn’t actually run it. Since we started it late, to accomodate one player, it was even later by the time we determined that, and none of the higher-levels had sometihng in the 12-15 range.
So we had to call it a night. I’m seriously uncertain whether it’s going to actually happen; as much as the “Transcendent” badge would be perfect for Kazima, I think Margie wants to run her more. We’ll see.
We decided we needed some success for the evening, so Margie pulled out Amorpha, I Psi-clone, and we headed off to …
Oh. That annoying Skyway mish Amorpha had where the mission door was somewhere below the pavement, but we couldn’t find any sort of flood control tunnel or other method of getting down there. Margie’d done a bunch of searching in the sewers, and we’d even had Doyce/Hang Time come and help. Nada.
So Margie petitioned, and, within about 15 minutes, GM_RICHA appeared, a very polite Police Drone. He met us at the spot, and then he descended down through the pavement to the mission entrance. That made it very clear where the access point was — a drainage entrance multiple blocks away (which is kind of goofy).
The Drone was very nice, asked if we needed any other help, then left.
Old mish. Cleared it with no trouble (fortunately it was a Free Hostage, not Kill All).
Similarly old mish (we just did Synapse, so we’re higher than we were) against the Tsoo for me. Then we decided to do the “Board Train” mish that Amorpha had.
It’s the first of that type we’d done, and we were depositied in Omicron Park (hmmm — wonder where that is on the city map) to break up fights between Warriors and Tsoo. Which is fine, except that we got cocky against the whites/blues, and ran into trouble when we hit the worst group, which was large and had two yellow (and powered) leaders, leaving Amorpha dead.
Hrm.
I rezzed her, and we ended up clearing the rest of the park to get rid of the debt.