avec said: I agree with Dam. That seems wimpy. It's wimpy that you get to choose the order of monsters you fight at any time, isn't it? But you can (and probably do). OTOH, it's just a rule. It's wimpy that the first player gets to choose the order in which monsters are placed on gates too. So I randomize any choice I have. One can randomize any of one's wimpy choices can you not?

InnsmouthLooker said: I would say that you all won, but there is an honorary title of First Citizen of Arkham which goes to the player with the most gate trophies at the end of the game, that I think is the only other way one person can win something special on their own, other than that I say everyone is the winner or everyone is the loser When I first started playing I made up little certificates for three honors in victory. First Citizen: The eternal gratitude of the the city of Arkham is bestowed on you for leading the struggle against the Ancient Horror. Honored Citizen: The eternal gratitude of the the city of Arkham is bestowed on you for the courage shown in the struggle against the Ancient Horror. In Memoriam: The eternal gratitude of the the city of Arkham is bestowed on you for your ulitmate sacrifice in the struggle against the Ancient Horror. They were made from encounter size cards through Strange Eons. I just couldn't find frames small enough for them. Yes, if the any one member of the team defeats the Old One in anyway, every one wins!* Depending on your religious belief, however, you may never know it. But mostly Arkham Horror practices reincarnation (sometimes through the Migo) and you'll be back! If you want to... And I hope you do. *A certain traitor card would be the exception, of course.

awp832 said: More likely though, you'll close a gate to avoid awakening the Ancient One by having too many gates on the board. This is usually not necessary in the Base game (occasionally it is), but it happens every now and again when playing with Innsmouth or Dunwich, because there are more spots where gates can open. According to Tibs' statistics, "too many gates" is what causes the awakening nearly 1/4th of the time. It probably should happen more than that. I know I've forgotten it a few times and even on purpose when playing a large training game. It's not that hard even in the base game if playing with 7+ investigators. It only takes 5 open gates!

Glasgow Scotland said: Have any of you gone up against "Servitor of the Outer Gods"(SOG)? It came with the Innsmouth expansion.Here are the stats Nightmarish 2 Overwhelming 1 Endless "If you fail a combat or evade check against SOG you are devoured." Toughness 3. Horror check is -3 (loss of 4), and Combat -2. Evade is only +0. This bad dude had us pretty laid out, since none of us had the firepower to take him down "for sure." Who wanted to gamble? Failing the tough horror check was guaranteed instant devour. We got by him several times with an evade check. No one wanted to face him on mano a mano. We finally took SOG out with the Greater Banishment (GB) spell. This spell is lore -2 on the check, and sanity loss 2, so it is not something you want to use too freely. The one of us who used GB had the Golden Trumpet, thus lowering the sanity loss by 1. One real plus with Greater Banishment is that you do not have to be in the same square with the SOG to banish it. The dimensional symbol of SOG is a square. I do not think GB works with crescent moons. Are there any other candidates for "toughest monster"? We used to think "God of the Bloody Tongue" (mask) was pretty bad, with a toughness of 4. Let me know what other super-baddies are your particular nemesis. You mean besides the Dunwich Horror? Since I don't feel I have to fight monsters, the Servitor is barely a bother, even less so the GotBT (Evade +1). The Servitor is not on the board most of the time and I'll certainly evade IT rather than waste resources fighting it. In a normal game, I really hate to see the Colour of the Space and the Star Vampire. They both come and get you in their own way, so you sort of have to deal with them. If trapped by a Star Vampire, you can't leave because IT will come in after you in an unstable location. Good thing that a Flyer can't be a stalker too except maybe Tulzcha's Byakhee sort of do that. It terms of flyers, I dislike the Wraith more. He's not as tough to fight but he just won't leave normally because of his moon symbol.

I'll defintely be buying the first box, for they ARE two of my favorites. I'll probably be buying all of them if AH can hold my attention like it does now for another couple of years, but that is a long time. I've painted thousands of models over the years but none in the past 2 years so I'm glad to see that these are pre-painted. I hope Wilson is on a motorcycle. I want to see how they mold him riding a motorcyle and reloading a shotgun. I suppose the Whiskey helps. Probably won't see him for almost a year or maybe more, though. It will take more plastic that way, but maybe they can package her with itty bitty Wendy even if they are from different expansions. I showed the pictures to my wife, Jenny, a player, and asked how much she thought and she said $15, so I'm home free there. It would be nice if they could add stories to the figures as suggested by so many. I wouldn't mind if they accelerated their creation either.

Kkat said: Which expansion are Corruption Cards from? We play with either two or three players. Why do you say a two-player win is easier? I would think it would be considerably *harder*. As for Heralds... what makes Heralds worthwhile? What do they add to the game besides just making a tough game harder? I'll admit, I'm one of those strange players who enjoy Arkham Horror for the flavor of the game. I love the work of Lovecraft and those who follow(ed) in his footsteps. I love the Lovecraftian horror genre. And I love seeing places and circumstances that I recognize from the stories brought to an interesting new life in the game. If Heralds add depth to the characters or the story, like "personal stories" do... or bring in additional Lovecraftian Mythos in an intriguing and artful way, like the addition of an entire well-loved town like Innsmouth... let me know, because I'll be eager to use it. If all they do is make the game more difficult: yawn, bleagh, toss. Kkat Corruption cards are from the small box Black Goat of the Woods. Two players usually make it easier to win a final combat game. They do have a difficult time with a seal victory and perhaps even more so with a close gate victory. For the most part heralds do make the game harder and that is one of their main purposes. The most thematic herald is the one from the King in Yellow where every raise in terror "blights" a local citizen who then does mischief. It makes the terror level terrorizing. Unfortuneately there are only 13 blight cards and they get kind of old. The Dunwich Horror herald attempts to make the Dunwich Horror to appear more readily. I don't think it does a very good job of overcoming the dilution of adding other expansion sets however. We have a house rule that all monsters in Dunwich except green borders almost move on the arrows. This includes flyers and stationary monsters too. Even then, a vigilant party of 4 players can almost always prevent the Dunwich Horror from appearing. I consider myself a flavor player. This summer we went on vacation from California to Massachusetts and visited all the places that were in any way related to the game and to Lovecraft's stories and life. Innsmouth Horror is head and shoulders FFG's best work and definitely the most thematic of all the expansions. The Curse of the Dark Pharaoh is next followed closely by the King in Yellow. Dunwich is an amalgamation of several stories, none of which quite grabs the mythos for me but its components fix a lot of the game problems. Kingsport is like a bright and cheery vacationland to me, though certain components are very nice. The Black Goat of the Woods expansion needs lots of work and except for the Corruption cards has little to offer and even the corruption cards offer little in their current form.

awp832 said: Anyway, Yorrick is one of my favs. Yes, low speed can be a problem, but hopefully he can get around it, plenty of other low speed investigators who manage. But mainly I wanted to say: what the heck are you doing getting him blessed first turn? You crazy? I would only think about doing that if Mary were in the game (story Synergy). Otherwise as you said, +1 focus isn't that great, and rarely is an early blessing too helpful anyway. He's basically starting with 3 clues and you're sacrificng them all for an early blessing and +1 foucs. Instead why don't you use his first turn to pick up a clue at Historical or Silver Twilight? After that, if he can kill a monster, especailly if one had spawned on a gate, you have your 5 clues to make a seal with. Depending on what you have, Twilight turn 1 and General store turn 2 is also an attractive option, giving yourself a chance at a momevemt boost or a gun if you don't have one. Or Emily would tell you that he's probably half way to being the deputy and then all his movement problems are cured.

Glasgow Scotland said: We sometimes want to fail a combat check against a Byakhee, since it chucks you through the nearest gate. There may be other situations where it can be a benefit to fail a particular check. I think you mean nightgaunt.

Luther said: I just played my first game of AH solo the other night to learn the rules and I personally can't see how you can win with one character. Resources dwindle too quickly and gates and monsters jsut seem to pop up too fast, especially when it takes you three turns to close a single gate! In that time, you can find another three gates and monsters added to the board!I think the next one I play will be with multiple characters so one guy isn't running all over the place to close the things without a chance of regaining his stamina and sanity. Looking forward to a multiplayer game... It sounds like you are playing just the base game. You can win, in some cases quite easily, with one investigator by final combat except against Azathoth. But it is very difficult to seal the Old One with just one investigator. Once you get a few seals down, if you do, then there's a good chance that future gate openings will "bounce" off the sealings. Many players use 3 or 4 investigators which gives you a pretty good chance to seal the Old One in most cases. Multi-player games are best!

GrooveChamp said: That goes for pretty any stable location.outside of Kingsport. I feel bad for the guy who had to do all that work coming up with as many encounters for stable locations as there are for red. I think the only times we've ever taken stable location encounters was when there was a powerful flying monster in the sky and someone ducked into a location to avoid being on the street during monster movement. I often stop at the train station hoping for a free ride to anywhere I want if my normal movement won't take me to where I want to go anyway. I also frequently interview at the Newspaper too looking for a retainer. I've interviewed at the Administration building but without luck. I've also been known to stop by the Library in hopes of finding a good book to fulfill certain personal stories. You haven't really been Blessed until you've been Blessed at the Bank of Arkham.

For pictures: mageith@comcast.net and jkiefer@elranchoinn.com. At those prices I'll probably buy 20 regulars, 5 curses and 5 blessings. I think you have a paypal acount, so send it along too please.

flamethrower49 said: I wish you could let us in on the full details of some of these scenarios, Mageith. They sound fascinating. Do you come up with all of the guidelines yourself, or do you have some sort of program? No program. It's just what I've always done with game I'm in love with at the moment. I try to make the game (I fear to use the term in impolite company) "realistic". (You, Flamethrower are polite.) This? In my last game we played a homemade herald called "Cults". Eihort was the Old One and one of his cultists appeared with each gate. If the a cultist was on the board at the start of the Mythos the first player had to take one of these, his choice: Corruption, Madness or Curse card or Brood token. Above is pretty much the scenario. Now that all my monsters are mixed in one bag, it seems that the cultists are rarely seen so I just add a cultist to the gate appearance. Since that would add a weak monster (in most cases), it would probably end up being an advantage. However stopping to defeat a monster is an time waster (intentional). Extra monsters also means the terror track might increase faster. It's also a way to bring in the Corruption cards. The average game is around 16 turns and there are, coincidentally, 16 green and 16 red corruption cards. So this way most of the corruption cards will come out naturally, plus many corruption cards make other corruption cards appear or get discarded, yet there is some control available to players to erradicate the cultist menace (at least until the next gate appearance). I've played this scenario three times and this is the first time the red corruption cards did not get into play. Two brood tokens were taken, one madness card and one curse (Emily already had a blessing so it cancelled it out. It was due to expire soon anyway.) Or the choosing of the expansions? I've been doing that for awhile. I have each expansion separated out and I roll a die to determine whcih expansion from which the Mythos is drawn, though we do pick which expansions we will be playing. Several months ago someone experimented with playing each expansion alone and so I thought, why not just drop the base Mythos altogether for awhile. So as long as at least one of the expansions is CotDP, Kingsport or BG then I'll still get plenty of gates in Arkham. Even Dunwich and Innsmouth have some Arkham cards (though I think they are all gate bursts), but KiY doesn't have any minor (cool) gate cards.

scotherns said: I would like to see: 1) A set of alternative personal stories for every investigator 2) An expansion for those that have every expansion (mythos cards that open gates in Dunwich and put clues in Innsmouth for example). 3) More Epic battle cards and sinister plots to add greater variety. I would be happy to see more small box expansions, but don't think we need any more boards. All great ideas. However I NEED a Mountains of Madness board. One of the most pleasant surprises of FFG was the personal stories. Flamethrower I think is working on alternative personal stories that incorporate the seldom used elements of Arkham like the Sheldon gang and Darke's blessing. Those would be great too!

Hannibal Rex said: Yes, but you don't need to postpone them indefinitely. With the advance warning you have, you can prepare for the card, and draw it when you're ready for it. It's unlikely that all three draws will be equally bad, before you're prepared to deal with one of them. If want to like it. The spell deck needs powerful cards to compete with Elder Signs, magical weapons and others such as Healing Stone from the unique deck. What I saying is, that as it is it's too powerful for a non-discard spell. So it should either have been cast-and-discard, or less powerful. Do you think the designers can do no wrong? What about Denying the Ancient One? Balanced spell? Wrack? Fist of Yog-Sothoth? Spectral Razor? How about Daisy or Patrice? AH designers make mistakes, just like everybody else. In the very first game I played I was Jacqueline. I had the Arcane spell and was able to pass it for several turns in a row. My job in the end game was to gather Sanity and Clues as by then we were living on the edge. However I was overwhelmed and couldn't gather clues fast enough to discard the Mythos cards. We were playing KiY and Dunwich at least. The Mythos deck was quite large. We lost but after the game was over I looked at the three cards I would have gotten. All Act Cards! We already had 2 Acts out. Probably almost statistically impossible, but either the gamemaster didn't shuffle very well or he just got KiY and we were playing the harder (touring?) version and he just didn't tell us. I see him nearly every game convention. Maybe's he's on this website. I will have to ask him.

In my last game we played a homemade herald called "Cults". Eihort was the Old One and one of his cultists appeared with each gate. If the a cultist was on the board at the start of the Mythos the first player had to take on of these, his choice: Corruption, Madness or Curse card or Brood token. Mostly corruption cards were taken and we used all the Greens up. We were in Innsmouth with both the Black Goat and Egyptian Museum active but not using the basic Arkham Horror mythos cards at all. The influence of the museum was most prominent. Arkham both flooded leaving off a couple of exhibit items as the waters subsided, then immediately experienced a freakish sandstorm allowing us to obtain a few more which greatly aided us as we put down the rumors of Cursed relics. Still the terror level in town reached 9. Bob, the designated fighter, sealed 5 gates! Jennie played Bob who had the Migo Brain Case (perhaps the best non weapon item in the game), passed his personal story for $15 and gained the ability to buy Clues and benefitted from his corruption of "Endless Greed" almost from the beginning of the game. Our hero. He also greedily accepted money from Deputy Zoey (Emily) who held down two jobs for over half the game, getting $3 per turn. Her amazing patrol wagon allowed her to hand off the cash on those few occassions that Bob was in Arkham and not off in some other world. Jacqueline's main contribution was gathering Clues to keep the Mythos and DOR tracks under control. For the three turns before the end we were at 5 on the DOR track and 11 on the Doom Track even after we had removed three doom tokes using the Eltdown Shards and parchments of the Elder Sign. We finally laid the law down in Innsmouth. I don't think anyone had ever even sealed 4 gates before though Wendy and Daisy routinely seal 3 in a four player game.

Dam said: Those scenes were edited out! And he did keep his eyes closed when "people" used the Exhibit Item in Raiders ! Heart-scene in Temple probably ate at his Sanity or at least he used Clue(s) to pass the Will check. I'm not really comforted that Limburger Jack actually lives down to the "Truth about Indiana Jones" you have so heartlessly revealed.

Dam said: mageith said: I picked Monterey Jack as my first investigator. He just didn't and doesn't live up to his rep. What's his rep ? Indiana Jones. Clearly a cheesy rip off. But he turned out to be Limburger. 3 Sanity/ 3 Will is a way too beatable combination. I don't remember Indy spending a lot of time in Asylums.

1) The pictures don't make me no nevermind. I'm glad Daisy is rather plain looking. If that keeps people from playing her, that's fine. I picked Monterey Jack as my first investigator. He just didn't and doesn't live up to his rep. 2) Does it have to be those I "love to look at"? If stats include the special Skill, then I'm most irritated by the politician. Whenever he's picked, players always ask what does this mean and I say I don't know. Play it like you like. No one plays him the same way. No matter how we play him, he's still not much, even when taking an ally each time it goes to the warp. In my world, he simply automatically passes all tests to take any ally when they come in an encounter card. Dr. Vincent and Patrice are the other two that I can't stand their skills so much, they have been surgically altered. Many investigators get Unique items without any reason for them having them (such as Michael McGlen and Tony Morgan) (Hank Samson should have a monster trophy and not an Unique item). One of the investigators that should have an unique item but doesn't is Leo the expedition leader. What did he do, sell them before he got to Arkham?

Part of the purpose of tasks and missions is to keep the average cost of common items ($3) and Unique Items ($5) constant. Many great items have been added to the deck that cost more than the original deck (Flame thrower for example and Sword? of Carcosa) that something had to be added to keep the average and balance the decks. By allowing these cheaper items to be discarded you are giving yourself a slight advantage in that the average value of each investigators items will be higher than the average of the item decks.

cim said: I counted several games - without an extra board expansion, 2 Investigators tended to last 20-25 turns. Anything quicker was either a rapid seal through sheer luck, or things going very wrong. Anything longer generally ended up being a slow death by attrition.With an extra board (Dunwich in this case) the "going very wrong" short games happened rather more often, but the seal victories (or games that could have been with a little more luck) were again around 20-25 turns. With more than two Investigators, it will probably last less time than this. 15-20 seems reasonable. It usually takes a minimum amount of "investigator turns" to accomplish a seal victory. If a 2 investigator game last 25 turns that means they 50 investigator turns were taken. If a 4 investigator game lasts 15 turns that means 60 investigator turns were taken. To seal six gates it takes 18 investigator turns just to accomplish it. In addition clues need to be gathered or generated. I once calculated the average number of clue tokens investigators start with. It is 1.7. The main board starts with 15 clue tokens. In order to seal six gates it takes 30 clue tokens. So with a 4 player game you need to generate 8 more clue tokens (8 more investigator turns) without using or losing any to gates any. And of course it takes an investigator turn to gather each clue on the board. So now we have 6.8 clues to begin (0 turns), with 22 investigator turns to gather clues and 18 investigator turns to go through the gates. That's 40 base investigator turns to do the job. But only if there are no pesky monsters to get in your way and pesky encounters to deal with that might cause your to lose or use clues. There's no such thing, in most games, as extra clues. The elder sign is so great because it saves you five clues AND removes a doom token, giving you an extra turn. So anything that generates more than one clue per turn is a great boon (examples: scrolls, trading in gate trophies, press pass) Anything that saves turns (such as the Find Gate Spell, Madness and Injury cards) is great. So essentially you are working with 40 investigator turns (which 2 investigators can do if they are very efficient and/or lucky). So 8 investigators should be easy as magic pie, no? After all, you'll have 15*8 or 120 investigator turns. You still only need 40. You have 80 to spare (waste). But Arkham has cleverly devised clocks. The one that usually kills me in big games is too many gates open. Some investigators are going to have to inefficiently close gates without sealing to keep the game under control. Another is that now there will be up to 11 monsters in Arkham which means investigators will have to inefficiently spend their investigator turns killing monsters and then renewing their sanity or stamina to do it again. In addition, clues are generally a finite resource and not tradeable. So not every investigator can go about gathering clues. Of course, each Ancient One and/or expansion plays with these limits and requirements in different ways. The possibilities are endless and that's way Arkham Horror is a such a great game! Or for some of us, a way of life.

Harold Square said: One fellow writes, 'someone is going to the hospital." This seems contrary to common sense. There should be a way to use time bomb to kill monsters, without taking yourself out with it. It seems to me that the best way to use time bomb is to cruise through a location with one or more monsters, evade the monsters, and then tcontinue your movement out of the area. You have to be allowed to drop the time bomb off when passing through the location. If you are forced to stop when dropping off the bomb, you get it along with any monsters. Or---- picture the irony. You blow yourself up, but the next mythos card moves the monsters out of the location to safety. I think the Time Bomb works just like you describe. In fact it pretty clearly works that way. But just like a real time bomb, you may not get all the monsters you intend. They will have at least one opportunity to walk away. Of course, another monster might even wander into the bomb too! I think you missed the context on "someone's going to the hospital". The others of us were speculating on ways to maximize damage. The only way to insure no monsters walk away is to leave an investigator behind (and even that won't work with elusive monsters). Even then, there are numerous ways for the monsters to escape (but as long as they get out of town, who really cares?)

Dam said: mageith said:Movement Phase: Cast and exhaust to choose an investigator in Arkham who has not moved this turn. Move that investigator to your current space (even an Other World). The investigator may not move again this turn. Somebody's going to the hospital. I think he means Inv A drops TB, doesn't move, then Inv B zaps Call Friend. Call Friend can be IMO read one of two ways 1) has not moved, so stayed in the spot he started the turn in or 2) has not had his/her Phase 2 yet. Two ways huh? Never occured to me. The word "again" seems to refer to the called investigator. The wording seems only to refer to the called investigator. Though I guess it's not perfectly clear. Oh well. Is it to be FAQed? It is a better spell read the alternate way, however and actually makes more "realistic" sense. That way both investigators still can get one full move but not more than one (unless you count teleporting to another town a move.)

Gatha said: Even if you get stuck with the monsters you can always whip out Call Friend No smiley? You play rough. Movement Phase: Cast and exhaust to choose an investigator in Arkham who has not moved this turn. Move that investigator to your current space (even an Other World). The investigator may not move again this turn. Somebody's going to the hospital.

avec said: I realize that, but there's still no way that all the effects you describe could happen at the same time. At the very least, I'm willing to bet that you can't have a headline that returns monsters to the cup during the same turn as an "all monsters move" mythos card. Come to think of it, monsters wouldn't move off of your location anyway. If you drank the milk, you'd be insane and not there. If you set time bomb, hopefully you set the clock with enough time to escape. However we did once use the milk and timebomb combo and deliberately left an investigator in situ to be sure none of the monsters wandered off.

Lorenzo said: Hello everibody, i thought that acquatic location markers could be used in Dunwich too, for example in the Cold Spring Glen and in the Bishop's Brook Bridge. What do you think about? It's time for an house rule?? I put them on Rivertown (Riverton?) streets and Merchant district streets. The river flows right along them. Sometimes they get flooded and strange items are left in the wake. Bishop's Brook bridge is a good idea though since that puts one in Dunwich. But a problem is that the bridge's brook water is fresh water which my insane sense of reality wouldn't allow. Even more so the spring water in Cold Spring glen. I don't know if this is the inspiration for it. It's apparently near John Bishop's house. National Register of Historic Places #96001498 The Mill Brook Bridge, the oldest known free-standing stone arch bridge, is approximately at the junction of Blissville Road and Mill Brook Road, just north of the present bridge that spans the brook. The stonework is typical of the dry-laid fieldstone masonry of the period. It was built for the stagecoach route used for the U. S. Mail between New York and Boston.