Just got Dunwich, and just completed our first game...

By Fraggle of War, in Arkham Horror Second Edition

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kroen said:

Enough with the blasphemy! The Kingsport board is the most interesting board so far! The encounters are amazing and the most interesting and theme-dripping encounters in the game! Kingsport is ingenious! If was asked what do I prefer, AH+all current expansions besides KH and I'm unallowed to buy KH or AH+KH and I'm unallowed to buy any of the current expansions I would easily pick KH over all the other current expansions!!!

I wouldn't. I love Dunwich. And I think that just Kingsport and the Base set would be way too easy.

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kroen said:

Too bad the Dunwich Horror Track isn't as well designed as the Rift Track.

Imagine the if the Dunwich Horror track would be like the Rift Track, except there are no rifts near the rift track; whenever a matching movement occurs, a rift-progression-sized token with the pic of the current dunwcih token is placed on the matching pattern, and when all 12 are filled, the dunwich horror awakens. Would have been awesome and would have assured that the Dunwich Horror would alway be a threat. Vortexes=Fail.

I disagree. The vortexes were very fun, when Dunwich was active. The problem with Dunwich these days (of DH+KH+CotDP+KiY+BGotW) is that its gates don't appear enough. I made a brief set of rules a while back (which I should probably turn into a herald, buuut) to fix it.

An easy way to fix the Dunwich Horror expansion in normal games (when you have all the expansions, but Dunwich Horror has been diluted) is
A)Your first mythos draw must be a Dunwich gate
B)Before drawing a mythos card, roll a die, if you roll a one, you must draw and discard mythos cards until you draw a card with a Dunwich gate. This should help boost the frequency. If it's still not enough, you could make it a roll of one or two (which I think is overdoing it, since, after all, it's not like you can't still draw Dunwich mythos cards normally, this'll just give you an extra boost of maybe two more gates in Dunwich, it'll help ensure Dunwich doesn't have a mostly inactive game).
C)If you're really masochistic you can add a rule that says you can not seal Wizard's Hill :'D and if you're masochistic and enjoy playing with seals you can make an exception rule, "Except if you have The Great Seal." ;') if that's still not tough enough for you, you can make a rule that causes Wizard's Hill to spawn double monsters.

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I typically do not play with more than one or two expansions. My problem with Dunwich isn't that no gates ever open there (they do) but that the monsters that appear in Dunwich are hardly ever of the kind that actually moves towards the vortices:

  • yellow monsters stay put
  • blue monsters fly to Arkham
  • green monsters either stay put or teleport to Arkham

And even if I do get a black, purple, or red-bordered one, I can often get rid of them without actually visiting Dunwich (e.g. by closing gates or using spells). The red ones are pretty much the only ones that sometimes manage to slip through.

I think it would be great if the Dunwich Board would overrule the standard movement of monsters, so they always move at least one step towards a vortice, regardless of colour.

Posted at

kroen said:

Vitus_Prem said:

kroen said:

Too bad the Dunwich Horror Track isn't as well designed as the Rift Track.

Imagine the if the Dunwich Horror track would be like the Rift Track, except there are no rifts near the rift track; whenever a matching movement occurs, a rift-progression-sized token with the pic of the current dunwcih token is placed on the matching pattern, and when all 12 are filled, the dunwich horror awakens. Would have been awesome and would have assured that the Dunwich Horror would alway be a threat. Vortexes=Fail.

Just use the Dunwich herald. Problem solved.

Not quite. The terror level almost never reaches 3. Not to mention 6. It doesn't solve anything.

Sometimes I get the feeling we're playing different games. Terror hits 3 almost every single game, no matter how much we bash the monsters. 6 is not always given, but possible. Get a single gate in Dunwich and the Horror's almost awaken.

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In my last three games, using all expansions, the Dunwich Horror awoke, and awoke early. In last night's game he was out by like round 4.

The Dark Druid did help accomplish this feat, but getting gates in Dunwich certainly accellerated things. I'm starting to think that it's fine the way it is.

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awp832 said:

Sometimes nobobdy can realistically go up and kill that Star Vampire that comes out of Dunwich. Sometimes a gate opens and spawns a dimensional shambler who moves on the wrong color. Sometimes you're simply not fast enough to get up to Dunwich and deal with the threat in time.

That first one is an especially good example, in my opinion. The Star Vampire has frequently emerged in Dunwich in our games and we generally have a hard time stopping him from making it into a vortice. Last time he was indeed one of the monsters who woke up the Horror. The time before that it was the Werewolf, a Shoggoth, and the Tcho-Tcho Priest :( .

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Avi_dreader said:

B)Before drawing a mythos card, roll a die, if you roll a one, you must draw and discard mythos cards until you draw a card with a Dunwich gate. This should help boost the frequency. If it's still not enough, you could make it a roll of one or two (which I think is overdoing it, since, after all, it's not like you can't still draw Dunwich mythos cards normally, this'll just give you an extra boost of maybe two more gates in Dunwich, it'll help ensure Dunwich doesn't have a mostly inactive game).

In the base game plus Dunwich, there are 103 mythos cards, of which 25 open a gate at a Dunwich location. If you want to preserve this (approximately) 1 in 4 ratio, roll two dice each turn and draw a Dunwich card if both dice are 4-6. As you point out, this would also involve separating the Dunwich cards from the rest of the mythos cards so that they don't get drawn normally.

Or you could randomly select 78 mythos cards that don't have Dunwich locations and shuffle in the 25 mythos cards that do have Dunwich locations.

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avec said:

Avi_dreader said:

B)Before drawing a mythos card, roll a die, if you roll a one, you must draw and discard mythos cards until you draw a card with a Dunwich gate. This should help boost the frequency. If it's still not enough, you could make it a roll of one or two (which I think is overdoing it, since, after all, it's not like you can't still draw Dunwich mythos cards normally, this'll just give you an extra boost of maybe two more gates in Dunwich, it'll help ensure Dunwich doesn't have a mostly inactive game).

In the base game plus Dunwich, there are 103 mythos cards, of which 25 open a gate at a Dunwich location. If you want to preserve this (approximately) 1 in 4 ratio, roll two dice each turn and draw a Dunwich card if both dice are 4-6. As you point out, this would also involve separating the Dunwich cards from the rest of the mythos cards so that they don't get drawn normally.

Or you could randomly select 78 mythos cards that don't have Dunwich locations and shuffle in the 25 mythos cards that do have Dunwich locations.

I don't care if the ratio is perfectly represented. One out of six with the possibility of drawing dunwich cards normally is accurate enough, I think.

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Game last night all five unstable locations in D hand gates... but we where only playing Base+ DH.