Hi all - thinking about doing a first MoM playthru later this week and wanted to get some feedback on a few things...

1. What is generally the best scenario to introduce new players? I.e. one that covers the basic mechanics and ideally has a particularly satisfying rising action and conclusion. We'll be playing with a keeper and probably 3 investigators - all new to the game and are casual board game players rather than diehards, though a couple have played Arkham Horror before.

2. I'm a little unclear how much the Keeper should know beforehand. Do you familiarize yourself with say all the event cards, including the results and conditions of the final event? On one hand it's your responsibility to run the game smoothly so familiarity is good, on the other hand some of the pre-knowledge seems a little game-y.

3. What's an ideal # of investigators? I've noticed the difficulty and rules in nearly everything don't scale with the # of players, which seems odd. I've heard with 2 investigator players some people double up for 4 total, but what about other combinations?

4. What expansion(s) would you recommend getting first? Is the Alchemy expansion worth it for at least the new investigator characters? Are any of the expansion materials (aside from the aforementioned investigators) intended for play in other scenarios, i.e. can they be cleanly integrated? Or pretty much only usable in that particular story?

Thanks in advance. Looks like a great game.

1. The Fall of House Lynch is a good introducary scenario.

4. I'd say "The Yellow Sign" Print on Demand is perhaps the best value for money. "Call of the Wild" if you want something larger. As for the "Forbidden Alchemy" expansion, some of the material (especially the combat cards) integrate very nicely with the base, but a lot of the other stuff is specific to that expansion - and the newly released "The Laboratory".

... 2 and 3 are harder to give a good answer to.

Thanks for the reply demozon.

I set up House Lynch last night and did a little walkthru - it seems to work well, I like the board layout, my only caveat is that it's low on the Mythos monsters and theme. Pretty bored with zombies these days (and know for a fact my players are), the maniac doesn't quite do it for me, IIRC there is potentially a shoggoth but everything needs to break right for the investigators to see it. Was hoping for a little more Lovecraft flavor there.

Good to know about the expansions.

And yeah, I know those other questions are more a matter of opinion, just wanted to get some feedback from people who have multiple games under their belt and see what worked best for them balance-wise.

The scenarios is the base game are a little lopsided in favor of the keeper - some objectives are really impossible to win with as investigators. So, playing the keeper to win does not always result in a fun session...

Blood Ties and The Inner Sanctum are the best of the other scenarios, but each of them have some issues.

Check here: http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/855701/objectives-to-embraceavoid

This collects some fixes for the base scenarios:

http://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/92877/mansions-base-scenarios-minimum-fixes

I often play the keeper and when it comes to balance my rule of thumb is simple: make it fun!

If I have a lot of threat and truly awesome opportunities I always go back to rule number 1 - what's most fun for everyone in this moment?

This way, I don't abuse my powers for my own sake and everyone has fun. I think I've managed to reach a good balance because our games are always really close calls on who wins / looses.