If so, you can essentialy kill all monsters in the cost of being insane...

This came up in a game I played recently. I used the Milk while in Yuggoth, leaving a Gug, a Dhole, a Dark Young, two Byakhees and a Shan there. I can't find a ruling or an FAQ on this. So, I don't know the answer to this, but it's fascinating! There are two things to consider.

Firstly, using the Milk this way would not immediately return all monsters to the cup. The rules for Other World monsters deal exclusively with monsters that appear as a result of resolving encounters. If it's possible to move a monster to an OW area, there's no specific game rule that would 'get rid of it'.

Secondly, monsters moved into the OWs will have almost no further effect on the game. The monster limit doesn't count monsters that aren't in Arkham or the Sky. Gate closures only remove monsters in Arkham and the Sky. And most important of all, the movement phase in the Outer Worlds does not make investigators encounter monsters. All you do is move one space further along and then stop. Monsters are effectively ignored because the rules make no provision for them. All the ordinary rules for how we handle monsters are part of the "Arkham Movement" step and don't apply. You couldn't encounter these monsters even if you wanted to.

(Although interestingly, according to a strict interpretation of the rules, if a Cthonian or a Colour Out Of Space was in an Other World, its movement ability would continue to trigger if its symbol matched a Mythos card, and people in Arkham would continue to be affected. And there'd be no way to go and encounter and defeat it! Harsh.)

However there is one possible reason why you shouldn't be able to use the Milk this way: I don't think AH ever uses the word 'location' as a generic term. The official rules seem to only ever use it in reference to places in Arkham. Other Worlds consist of two 'areas', not two 'locations'. If you're not in an Arkham location, then the phrase 'your current location' may undefinable, which would mean the ability can't be resolved.

thecorinthian said:

This.

"Locations are indicated by circular illustrations on the
Arkham portion of the game board." (p. 6)

Hah! Well done sir. So I typed all that out for nothing.

Oh well, at least we've actually definitively settled a rules question for once.

Dam said:

According to RAW, I'd say you can't.

"Street areas are represented
by rectangular boxes on the game board, one
for each neighborhood in Arkham (for example,
Miskatonic U. and Rivertown)." (p. 6)

Location, street and neighborhood are pretty well defined, once you get into the area/space wordings, things start to cloud up.

OH nice, so you can't move into the space with the Dunwich Horror, use the Milk, and have another investigator come in with the Flute and annihilate them all...

Oh, I'm sure you could use the Streets. And I'm sure you can't use it in Other Worlds. Because we can all see what is supposed to happen here: some brave soul in a town space is supposed save everyone else on the board a lot of trouble at the cost of his Sanity. Because that's what makes the most sense, right? Even though it's worded in a way that's just begging for a clever player to rend it to pieces? FFG needs to realize that we Arkham players shave with Occam's Razor, and start paying extreme attention to what words they use and in what order they use them.

"They'd never think/do that, would they?"

Yes. Yes, we would.

Heh. Consider casting Milk while in Kingsport...Monster Traffic Circle, safely tucked away for however long you want.

jgt7771 said:

Until you want to get by to close rifts, that is. In my house rules the monsters in Kingsport count toward the Arkham monster limit, too, so it wouldn't be all that beneficial (other than getting rid of Gate guardians).

jgt7771 said:

My group has done that before when we were in dire straights. There was one poor soul stuck up in Kingsport. They didn't stand a chance...

Bexarath said:

Oh my......not beneficial??? If your monster limit is completely tucked away, Gates would open CLEAR. Monster Surges would EVAPORATE. Rifts would just float around the streets like pretty snowflakes. Your Investigators would be FLYING all over Arkham, bouncing in and out of gates like Whack-a-Moles! You could...could...

I like this House Rule.

I liked to move into the Monster Cup and Milk there.

Black Goat's items are part of the reason it's my least favorite expansion.

I believe both the Milk and the Naacal Key can be used in streets, as they make sense in that manner. Neither should be used in the Other World.

Just replace "location" with "space in Arkham" or "in town."

Tibs said:

I don't think the key was meant to open gates on streets...

It's tough to tell. Maybe not. But Black Goat items are written so poorly.

Tibs said:

No they're not! Stop exagger--

[looks at some Black Goat items]

Actually you've got a point there. I didn't really notice because my item decks are usually a mix of several expansions, so Black Goat items aren't that common. But yes, many of them are a bit screwy. It's not exactly that the standard dropped, it's more that this was the fifth expansion and the ideas had to be a bit crazier, which meant they were harder to explain. Although this discussion of Milk of Shug-Niggurath does shed some light on things. Naacal Key can clearly only be used while in a location, not a street or an OW area. But does Magnifying Glass work on more than one Tome, if you use it them read two tomes in succession?

(That's small potatoes though. The real cock-up is the .357 Magnum. It was already an oddity because it exhausts to work for an entire combat. Most weapons which exhaust only work for one combat check. But by introducing this new type of weapon ability (and this particular phrasing) they've made a complete mess of the already-very-unclear rules about exactly when you start and stop using items, how long effects last, and what you have to use your hands for. How the weapon is meant to work is obvious, but a strict reading of the rules (and the card) means that whenever you exhaust the .357 Magnum, you add a +5 bonus to all the combat checks you make until the end of the current combat. The normal rules about having hands assigned to weapons don't matter because the Magnum's ability defines its own duration - it lasts until the end of the combat. In Arkham this doesn't matter. But the Final Battle is all one combat. Against the Ancient One, the Magnum just accumulates five more dice each turn.)

Corinthian: Are you suggesting that the .357 gives +5 without needing to dedicate a hand to it's use?

awp832 said:

I think he is, but I don't think that a strict reading of the rules suggests that. Combat spells provide their bonuses until the end of the combat; so do weapons that aren't discarded or exhausted. They just don't say that on the card.

All the Magnum is is a pay-to-reload weapon that works as long as it's equipped (like a spell), and not just once (like the Dunwich or Kingsport weapons).

In short, anything that grants a combat bonus and requires hands won't grant that bonus if it's not in your hands. This holds up with things like Summon the Beast Within (no hands) and Bullwhip's re-roll (no hands needed for this ability, but it's not a combat bonus) or the horror check from the Cross (not a combat bonus).

jgt7771 said:

I agree with your house ruling. It does make sense. You decided "location" didn't really mean just "location" (because literally location excludes street areas), but actually means "Arkham" and of course Arkham doesn't actually mean Arkham. It means Arkham and all the expansion boards. Except Arkham doesn't mean that when determining monster limits. It all makes sense! It really does! Doesn't it? Plink! There goes another Sanity token.

But I don't think Arkham players shave with Occam's razor. There's no need to. I love it when a player comes up with a novel, but questionable use of some item or rule in the game. Unless it's clearly against the rules, I usually say nothing.

Arkham Forum members might shave that close and probably should because this is where questions come to be answered.

I remember when I first considered buying this game, but first read the FAQs. They were almost all common sense interpretations. Let RAW go hang itself. That was the straw that opened my wallet.

Since then I've devoured dozens of Old Ones and dozens have devoured me, but there has been no new facts/faqs come forth. The rumored FAQ project falling further and further into obscurity.

I'm comfortable with MY game now. I'm not sure I want a FAQ.

mageith said:

Raise your Will slider, jgt. If an upcoming FAQ contradicts things that you enjoy doing, then you don't need to stop doing them.

Those of us who want to play the game as close as possible as intended (and there are many) eagerly await the FAQ almost as if it's another Innsmouth.

I feel sorry for those people... for them, all other worlds are another dimension...

jgt7771 said:

What about the Terror Track? If the monster limit is always full it will increase very quickly. Besides, it not as if all monsters placed in Kingsport are going to stay there. Flyers, special movers like Hounds of Tindalos and Aquatic monsters (yeah right) could still return to Arkham at any time, and the Colour and Cthonians will still cause problems. Also, don't forget that open rifts advance the Doom Track as well. And with Kingsport full of monsters, closing them would be a huge pain.

Tibs said:

I was being a bit facetious about the Magnum. Obviously it's meant to do what everything thinks it does.

But...

I wasn't entirely joking. This is where it gets a bit abstract. The 'unwritten rule' of nearly all board/card games is that specific cards can override general game rules. For example, the rules of AH say that you can't make Horror checks using Luck, but if you found an item that said you could, that item would "over-rule" the game rules (otherwise it would be pointless). The general rules of Arkham define the duration of combat bonuses from weapons as being "as long as you are devoting hands to the weapon". Some weapons (flamethrower etc.) make this definition of the duration of the combat bonus irrelevent because they explicitly limit the combat bonus to one check. But the .357 Magnum puts a different limit on itself. It says that you get +5 to Combat checks until the end of this combat. When you're up against pedants like me, it's a poor choice of phrasing, because it implicitly overrides the rulebook's ideas about the duration of bonuses. It puts the Magnum in the same camp as an Encounter card which says "until the end of the next turn" or something of the type. The ability imposes a state which is implicitly independent of the state of the originating card.

This isn't usually a problem because there's no way to abuse it - you can't use the Magnum for anything else anyway because it's exhausted and you won't be able to refresh it until the upkeep, by which time any combat will be over. Except for combat against the Ancient One, which lasts for many rounds and has upkeeps in between them. There's a perfectly valid interpretation of the Magnum which says that when you fire it on turn 1 of the final battle, it sets up a +5 bonus for the rest of the combat, then when you fire it on turn two it sets up another +5 bonus, but the bonus from turn 1 would not end until the AO battle was over. And so on, and so on. You can add five more dice every **** turn because the combat won't end until you win. Like I say, that's a perfectly valid interpretation. It's just also a breathtakingly stupid one.)

If anyone I'm playing with will decide he doesn't need to pay for the magnum during the final battle and that he can gain endless +5's I would personally point a real magnum to his- well, you got what I'm talking about.

I still suggest that Magnum works like a spell, but just says it aloud (this would not make its wording special, as such). Works as long as you hold it; have to re-use every round of final combat.

kroen said:

All the anger, kroen. Lighten up a bit.