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Rhan-Tegoth: are they insane? not only he has a doom track of 11, but a doom is added whenever a cultist is drawn? that's insane! with BGotW and KH there are 11 cultists in the cup! this is madness!

Also I don't really understand how his attack works. For every stamina he drains, does it take 1 extra success to remove each doom token? meaning if there are 4 investigators and he drained 4 stamina you need 8 successes to remove each token? ot does it mean that after you remove all doom tokens you need to roll one success per stamina he drained in order to finish him? HALP!

Example 4 player game... 44 successes are needed to kill this AO. His attack makes it +1 for each failed stamina roll... so if you rolled 5 die and got 2 successes... that total would be brought up to 47!

MrsGamura said:

I hope you're right, as it make much more sense than 1 extra success per doom token per stamina... nasty, nasty attack. If you come with full stamina investigators, he will be much tougher to kill, and if you come with low stamina investigators its a good chance they will die instantly.

p.s. yay, we're getting more Gnoph-keh!

p.p.s. his power isn't that strong with all expansions, as there are around 130 monsters with all expansions, so the chances of drawing a cultist is around 1 to 13, or about 7.5% not so bad and unless you have terrible luck he shouldn't gain more than two to three doom tokens while he's asleep, which is still quite a lot given his doom track is 11...

McGlen beats him in Final Combat, yes?

awp832 said:

yup just pick Him then say good game and start a new one. They will proberly edit it so Mr Glen don't auto win vs. this AO.

MrsGamura said:

I'm sure they will. This is still one terrifying Ancient One! Even if no Cultists are drawn he'd be difficult to defeat. If one or more Cultists ARE drawn, then that's most likely it for you. They're obviously not kidding when they write that Innsmouth introduces the toughest Ancient Ones to ever grace the game.

Interestingly enough, since we know the two Heralds are Dagon and Hydra, we can now be reasonably certain of all eight of the Innsmouth Ancient Ones.

1. Bokrug (confirmed by Kevin)

2. Ghatanothoa (confirmed by Kevin and by the List of Contents of Innsmouth)

3. Zhar (confrimed by List of Contents)

4. Rhan-Tegoth (confirmed by preview)

5. Zoth-Omogg (the Sinister Plot card shown in the game trade magazine depicts a tree of gray flesh with numberous tendrils; this matches Zoth-Omogg's description)

6. Quachil-Uttaus (List of Contents includes twelve Small Dust cards; Quachil Uttaus is the Treader of Dust and turns those he touches into dust).

7. Nyogtha (Specificially mentioned in the preview in the same sentence as Rhan-Tegoth)

8. Chaughnar-Faughn (Like Nyogtha and Bokrug, mentioned in the same sentence as Rhan-Tegoth)

Solan said:

Let me correct myself. Actually Nyogtha and Chaughnar-Faughn aren't mentioned in the same sentence as Rhan, but like Bokrug, they are specifically mentioned and I doubt that was done by chance.

MrsGamura said:

How? It would require a drastic revision to this AO's attack. That or just saying "McGlen can't use his ability in this FC" which just seems like a childish ploy to make up for bad game design, and a 'screw you' in general to McGlen. Personally I'm appalled that they missed something so obvious. Do they *play* this game? Don't they realize that whenever McGlen is played you are silently hoping for Blood Magic, or Pushing Yourself to the Limit?

In other news, I feel this AO is going to be beatable, although it might take some prep work. Hanging on to Food and/or Enchanted Jewelry for the final combat would go a long way towards mincing this AO.

Jaquiline Fine is almost an auto-win in this scenario too. Assuming that she's smart about her jewelry, saves it for FC, and then passes it around to whoever is going to have to make the check during upkeep, jewelry will save 3 investigators from being Devourered.

Leo's Leadership

aargh, you're right. Hadn't thought of that one. Gosh, this is making me angry.

awp832 said:

Nice. I can buy some food at the Rope & Anchor before it awakens.

Regarding the matter in hand, you guys seem to be forgetting something: Plots. Perhaps its plot cards can kill guys like Mclagen. Also Mclagen can't survive forever ; sooner or later it will be the End of Everything. Still though, bad design, and I wonder what are they gonna do about it.

p.s. specualtion: there would be an ancient one with the exact same attack only with sanity instead of stamina.

kroen said:

You also can't assume that McGlen will survive until the final battle; there's always a chance you might draw him but get devoured. And then, like Kroen says, there are the sinister plots, which have always been a 'great leveller' of overpowered final battle combos in the past.

But the Plots would have to be pretty extreme - "the highest-stamina investigator this turn is devoured instead of losing stamina" is about what would do the trick. Much more likely is that McGlen really does trounce this AO. He doesn't just help himself; he saves everyone else too. If he goes into the final battle with Stamina 7, then he'll always be the investigator with the most, and he'll never lose any.

If only they'd phrased Rhan-Tegoth's ability with an 'X'! What were they thinking?! "The investigator with the highest current stamina rolls dice equal to his stamina, and loses X stamina, where X is the number of failures rolled." That's a single loss, larger than 1, so everything would have been fine! It's not like there wasn't space on the card, especially if they'd cut the 'fluff' sentence at the start and the redundant bit about how to break ties.

If there is another Innsmouth AO which does the same thing for Sanity, won't the Professor break that exactly the same way?

Actually X won't kill him either, because once he's at 1 stamina you only roll 1 die, and if that's a failure the damage is prevented...

MrsGamura said:

...or you just play with epic ballte cards. Makes Michael and Leo live a lot longer, but they, too, will die in the end.

But not everyone will have Kingsport who gets this expansion, and everyone will have McGlen.

Maybe it's in the FAQ, or even simply listed in the rulebook regarding the new AOs, that McGlen's ability doesn't work when he's at 1 stamina during final battle.

kroen said:

Hey, you're right. It's impossible for X to be greater than his current sanity, and the damage he takes off it will always be 1 less than that. Sorry, I didn't think that through.

Tibs: surely this expansion will include Epic Battle rules, as well as the cards for its own AOs? It would mean that people without Kingsport wouldn't have cards for any non-Innsmouth AOs, but it still wouldn't be that unreasonable for Innsmouth to just cater to its own AOs.

According to FFG, there are exactly 3 plot cards per the new AO's. No epic battle cards. Meaning the plots would be useless if you don't have Kingsport.

I trust the rulebook has a footnote for how McGlen's (and progably Walters's) abilities work during final battle.

Hey guys! Did anyone else realize that Tulzscha doesn't do anything with this AO, and unlike with Abhoth, I can't think of a clean rule to get it to work?

Just thought I'd throw it out there. Kingsport didn't get enough playtesting for some things. Black Goat didn't get enough playtesting for a lot of its things. I don't mean to alam, but is Innsmouth going to take another step down in airtight "suppose-if" quality control that apparently began after King in Yellow? Especially consider that there are twice as many AOs and Investigators, and 48 individual personal stories—can we expect there to be a huge leap in broken, unfair, or thoroughly untested components?

For most highly anticipated expansion since Arkham was even released, I sincerely hope not

But since I do use the epic battle cards, McGlenn is actually bad against this Ancient One. Not broken, not even good. While McGlenn does not lose any Stamina, this actually means that he keeps rolling a large number of dice every round. On average he's going to be negating 4 successes each round. That's making things pretty difficult, each round things extend brings the deadly epic battles and sinister plots closer. So while this final battle isn't Cthulhu-difficult, he awakens much faster.

-Frank

Frank said:

I don't understand what you are suggesting. He loses stamina down to 1, and then does not lose any more. And this boss gains hits from the stamina it "drains"—I don't imagine the boss gains stamina that isn't actually taken from the player.

I have two problems with this GOO

1) The aforementioend rules conflicts that will have to be explained away.

2) Don't Gnoph-Kehs worship Itahqua, or at least have some kind of relation to him? I read all I could about Gnoph-Kehs but I didn't see a mention of this GOO

McGlen / Leo (and potentially Fern). It's dead simple. Just house rule that their ability cannot prevent the loss of the final stamina (sanity) point during a final Battle.

Tibs said:

Tibs is right - the loss is negated, which I assumed means that the Stamina (which McGlen still has) wasn't "drained", so Ranty Goth (or whatever it is) gets nothing.

It's FFG's own damned fault for using colourful words like 'drained' which have no rules meaning.

Acebob said:

I can't do anything about your first problem, but I can solve the second one for you. In the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game rulebook it notes that while the Gnoph-Keh are associated with Ithaqua, they may also have some relation with Rhan-Tegoth. I don't know which story gave that impression, but there you go.

I too wish for an answer to your first point and while I think this AO might be a bit too hard, I am impressed with the whole notion of the blood-draining attack and the way he takes Investigators' Stamina for himself. That is cool, you must admit.