I've played approximately 10 games with Kingsport with me and my brother that got to the final battle, and we always lose. It's just too **** hard. Even against "weak" AO like Nyri. We play a total of 4-5 investigators. I've read all the Epic Battle and Sinister Plot cards and I can't possibly imagine anyone winning an Epic Battle with more than 2 investigators. The only way I see of to win Epic Battles is to 1. Have 10+ clue tokens each. 2. have the perfect weapons each. 3. have maximum sanity and stamina each, regardless of who the AO is. 4. have everyone blessed. or to simply have Joe+Fight+tons of clues. Either way Epic Battles are plain simple impossible. Am I missing something here? maybe a secret strategy to win Epic Battles or something?

Are you sure you're doing them right? God, I hope it's not me who's doing it wrong...

My and my group always use the Epic Battle cards when we play. We seldom get our act together when it comes to sealing gates, so we nearly always end up fighting the AO, and we still win quite often - probably about half the time. We've played at least a couple of dozen games which fit this pattern. We usually don't even manage to get blessed first, which a lot of people seem to do.

I'm surprised to hear you find it so tough. We usually play with 4-5 investigators and quite often we kill the AO before we even draw through to the 'red' Epic Battle cards. I can't remember exactly which AOs we've beaten this way, but we've definitely done it against Shudde'Mell, Ygolonac, Ithaqua, Yig, Atlach-Nacha, Hastur and Nyarlathotep. On the other hand, Cthulhu, Tsathoggua and Shub-Niggurath have always defeated us.

There's no clever trick to it (as far as I know). Take Atlach-Nacha for example. He's one of my favourite AOs, because he can produce the fantastically grim situation in which a tiny piece of orange cardboard is more valuable than a human being. Basically, you spend the whole game buying allies who give Fight bonuses, and you just go into Atlach's final battle and clobber the bastard. Like most AOs, it's an optimization puzzle; work out which cards/players are worth the most Fight dice across the longest time period, and try to keep them.

If you can get Basil Elton then quite a few final battles become a joke, because you can negate the only Sinister Plot attack which can occur in the first half of the battle deck. Sinister Plots are by far the biggest threat. The green Epic Battle cards just aren't that dangerous, particularly against AOs who don't reduce your sanity/stamina.

You adapt. The first time my group used Epic Battles cards we won and I would say that we win most games that come down to final combat. At first it was hard, but now epic combat gets about as predictable as normal combat. If we ever do have to fight the GOO, we always evenly distribute spells/weapons so we have extra ones, try to heal up for the cards that hit your sanity/stamina, hold things that stall attacks until the sinister plot, etc. It gets just as predictable as normal combat.

Actually, I think Epic cards mostly destroy strategy. Because everything is usually going fine because of strategy, then BAM they decide to (usually) randomly pick one (or several) off the table with well aimed lash of a tentacle or claw or something. Heck, all of good ol' Cthulhu's Epic cards involve throwing a dice and just deciding THE NUMBER of investigators that die based on the result.

I dont think what you described counts as a strategy, probably more into the 'Coming in well-equipped". Though I can see strategy coming in during the actual game, the AO fight is usually just Throwing die until one of the sides explodes. Or (rarely) retreats back to slumber. I guess if you use some spells you can come up with strategy, but other then that....

All Epic battle does is boost up the AO, which requires you to be "luckier' to win, but makes a win by final battle probably the BEST ending to an Arkham Game -Ever- (Even tough i'd recommend going for seals and avoiding the monster waking up, you have to admit that failing at that, being forced into a final battle, then having a round of mortal combat with the AO is a lot more apropriate then just sealing and then...thats that (especially if you have theme Music, some sort of final boss song from your favorite game ).

I'm probably doing something wrong then... strategy-wise, not rule-wise... we just never seem to have enough clues when the AO awakens.. you see we're optimists, and even if the AO has 1 more doom to wake up we will spend those 5 clues to seal the 5th gate... I don't know...

Saldre said:

Not sure I agree there. WHile having lots of good items is obviously a big part of it, there's also just an element of working out what the best combinations of items/investigators is, whcih is close enough to my idea of strategy - or tactics, anyway.

Like I said, the final battle is all about the optimum distribution of items - who's the most powerful, can their weapons be distributed better, and so forth. For example, some allies let one player ignore resistances, so that player should have the best weapons if possible. And you give the zero-handed weapons (alien device etc) to the guy with the shotgun, because extra dice for him are worth slightly more (on average) than extra dice for someone else. You give all the money to the guy with the Elephant Gun, and so on and so on. Then any spare items which you won't need to use, you distribute out as evenly as possible, in case you get one of those cards which requires you to discard something. In most cases, you need to stop and re-calculate everything each upkeep, because someone will probably be closer to death, an because the chances of certain Epic Battle cards will have subtly changed.

Kroen: Clue tokens barely come into it. If you have any, use them on the AO's skill check (if applicable), since they have the potential to buy you multiple turns of attacking, which means that indirectly they're getting you more dice in total. But seriously...how many clue tokens can you expect to have each? In terms of the number of dice that you need to be rolling in the final battle, the realistic maximum number of clue tokens you might have (five? ten if you get really lucky?) is still not a high-order term. If you're relying on clue tokens, you're already screwed, because you will never have enough. Go shopping for weapons instead.

I actually never thought about it that way, and your completely right: that would count as strategy. For some reason, I had limited myself to the actual act of attacking Seeing as in my particular group, were all rather greedy (In that we take Arkham and turn it into some kind of half-breed horrific monopoly game where everyone is out to be number one, we'll help each other but only when it's obviously the only (or best) course of action.)

I remember One time i had an encounter that would allow you to take all of the clue tokens of another player. I used it on one of my friends. He cursed me for hours that day (Well, I was the weakest link that game, and i spent all eight of his clue tokens trying to close - not seal, but just close- a gate. and i failed. So he was probably right but him being the cursed reporter managed to gather them back up in five minutes. Didnt keep him from cursing me in real life.)

Saldre said:

Ah yes, well, y'see, in my group we're quite altruistic, so most of us will quite happily be devoured if it means the others have a slightly better chance of winning as a result.

thecorinthian said:

An attitude which is shared in my group, and which is definitely key to winning Final Combats. In a recent game against Aboth, my partner's two characters deliberately gave away all of their items to my two characters and so were devoured. But thanks to their sacrifice, my characters were able to defeat Abhoth. More than any other boardgame, Arkham Horror truly does require teamwork and the willingness to sacrafice yourself for the good of the group.

Dont get me wrong, When final combat hits and that giant eldritch abomination is upon us, we trade and work together to beat it trying to get the maximum possible damage and stuff, but we usually try to avoid that situation, each in his own way When we do work together, we often expect some sort of reciprocity. After i stole his eight clue tokens, I payed him back with a Blessing so that we'd be even. Turns out we werent even, but thats not the point

I have played vanilla Arkham Horror at least 10 times now and never seen an "Epic Victory". Only once we got close against Yig but after that we realised that we didn't count Yig's "curse all investigators"-ability so...

After all, I don't mind that AOs are so **** hard - actually I like this feature. They truly are greater beigns and only extremely lucky investigators can manage against them.

kroen said:

::laughter::

---

My real question is why the AO is ever waking up when you have four or FIVE investigators. Yeesh. I can usually just breeze through the game with that many :')

Templarion said:

Maybe I've misunderstood—but Epic Battle cards aren't in vanilla Arkham... they come with Kingsport. They are also one of the coolest add-ons ever made for this game.

Tibs said:

I'll raise your EB cards with Gate Bursts !

Also, might as well throw in the Injury/Madness and have you fold .

Dam said:

Yeah I'd rather have I/M AND Gate Bursts than Epic Battle. But I'd take EB hands-down over I/M and possibly over Gate Bursts any day.

Oh ye of little Kingsport.

Tibs said:

Sadly, from my POV, EB cards only come into play once you've failed to win the game via primary means (close/seal/JtWT ) .

Dam said:

Yes yes. Just get the Epic Battle cards and use the 6-doom rule I use, so you can start counting final combats as victories, for God's sake. EB makes final combats epic showdowns as they were meant to be, and you'll feel you've won something if you can actually pull through and stop the Ancient One. You'll save the day in a last-ditch effort and actually feel like you've earned it!

Tibs said:

If I have 5 seals, can I remove 10 doom tokens (6 extra + 4 for the extra 2 seals) ?

Dam said:

Yes, if you manage to have 5 seals down when the AO awakens, then the AO will be 4 doom tokens less than normal. Congratulations—all your sealing efforts weren't for nothing. You probably didn't get a chance to gear up at all because you were focused so much on sealing (which is good with you, right?). But this doesn't happen as often as you'd think. I've won and lost equal numbers of battles as a result of using that house-rule. I hate having 5 seals down and not having the AO any less of a challenge than if I just sat around and did nothing all game.

Besides, if you have down only 1 seal when the AO awakens, it'll get +4 doom tokens. I've seen it! Not pretty.

All in all, Epic Battle has cut down on my final battle victories by a huge amount.

Tibs said:

Snap. Obviously some groups have playing styles which favour the Final Battle and other groups prefer to seal.

I probably wouldn't care one way or the other, except that the Final Battle is a much more satisfying climax to a game than the game simply ending because you've done a good job. This house rule which removes Doom tokens is a good idea, although I nearly always want to fight a Final Battle anyway, so I'd be tempted to say that that's all the seals do - you don't automatically win if you get six of them, they just make the FInal Battle easier! I don't particularly care if I lose, though (much to the annoyance of some of my fellow players).

Dam said:

What? No :'P that's lame. One of the great feelings in this game is when you make a great attempt to do something and are a hair's length away from success right before failing :') the only way one could improve on that situation is if you then lost the final battle with one doom token left on the AO ;'D I've had a game like that before. It was lovely. I still remember poor Jenny's dying squirms... Heh heh heh...

Personally, I don't like the house rule about removing doom tokens for getting seals. Seals are their own reward, like virtue :') besides, if you seal three high frequency gates, in all probability it will make stocking up for the final battle easier ;') even if you suspect the odds of you sealing all five are very not good.

Avi_dreader said:

With three seals you'd break even. Or try adding 8 doom tokens before removing 2 per seal. The idea is the incentive to seal, and discourage gearing up until maybe the last two turns if battle seems inevitable. It's worked like a charm, and I would recommend it to people like Dam, just to inject a little tactical excitement into the battle.

Or you could get Epic Battle, which injects a LOT of fun.

Tibs said:

I have Epic Battle :'P

I know. You flaunt it in front of Dam every time you get the chance. My statement was more... in general.

Would it be too much trouble to ask for an elaboration on the 6-doom rule? Or a link to where it's explained? I'm intrigued, but I'm not quite clear from this conversation as to how it works.