Hi, I just bought this game, and when I checked the ancient ones, they're all quite strong in my eyes. I know Cthulhu himself is the strongest (who would've known... ), but if someone can shed a little light on which one is the WEAKEST (as in, easy for newb investigators), would be good.

Azathoth is the weakest.

I had the exact same reaction when I first played the game - I thought the Ancient Ones looked impossibly difficult. Nowadays I eat Cthulhu for brunch. Actually the game has a lot of items, abilities and gimmicks which you can acquire in order to deal with the AOs, and part of the trick is just knowing what to do during the game in order to maximize your chances.

Not everyone agrees on which ones are the easiest, but Azathoth is certainly a contender. Yig is also quite easy. In the cases of many AOs, there are specific things you can do which make them disproportionately easier to deal with. So in Yig's case, for example, you go and get blessed before the final battle.

Azathoth is the simplest Ancient One (AO) to deal with. He barely touches the gameboard, and is a good tutorial sheet to learn AO mechanics.

I would say the next easiest is Nyarlathotep. He's got a slower Doom Track than Yig (who seems the easiest, but isn't), he doesn't make Cultists harder to fight (unlike Ithaqua, Nyarl just makes them harder to HOLD), and while the Masks are evil-looking, they're 5 monsters in a Cup of dozens. They just don't come up that much (although, when they do, you'll come to enjoy that more and more). His Final Battle (if you have one) is fairly straightforward, as he requires you to have Clue Tokens, one of the more easier-to-gather resources.

After that, there's Yig and Ithaqua. Yig looks easier, but you will find his Doom Track fills up fast, possibly making for a somewhat frantic game. On the other hand, if Yig awakens, he is the easiest to take down in most cases. Ithaqua makes the Streets dangerous, so you end up trying to figure out how to stay "indoors"; sometimes that added twist can be a little frustrating for those still learning the ropes.

Welcome to the Carnival, Knuckles Eki!

Nyarlathotep is the weakest overall, including the 8 expansion AOs. Sealing isn't that hard, his ability is usually negligible, and final battle is very easy to prepare for.

Yig is also pretty easy, although you're probably going to wind up doing final battle with him. Luckily, Yig is the easiest to beat in final battle.

Azathoth's an OK choice, but not the easiest. You don't even have final battle as an option, and newbies usually wind up having to fight. However, he is the simplest rules-wise, definitely.

Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, and Shub-Niggurath are the toughest. Beware!

Also, if you need a fix of more stuff I suggest Curse of the Dark Pharaoh. It's the expansion that adds the least difficulty to the game, and it introduces some great and thematic stuff.

Knuckles Eki said:

Others have listed the weak ones, though I definately put Cthulhu among that bunch. To me he's the second easiest base-game GOO to win against (Azathoth is the easiest as mentioned). I say win, since I count final combat "wins" as draws; win being victory via closing gates or sealing (or Join the Winning Team ). 13 doom track + minimal game impact = super weak GOO. Poor Azathoth has an even longer doom track and even less game impact.

"minimal impact"? -1 max sanity and stamina are a LOT of impact, especially for new-comers. Not to mention that Cthulhu's Cultists are the toughest.

kroen said:

I said game impact, those are pre-game stuff. And even then I think people are over-hyping those. You can work around them easily. As to Cultists, for them to have an impact you first need to draw one. Even then, unless all your random investigators were San 3 Max, you can take them out and keep them as trophies, problem solved. Carolyn Fern in particular loves to *****-slap Cthulhu's wussy Cultists.

For me, my record against Cthulhu is all I need to know about him, he's easy-peasy. In my first game I was worried, as I'd played all other base-AH GOOs, with only Cthulhu remaining. After the game I was like "huh, that's all, can't believe I was worried about him". Of his fellow 13-doomers, Tsathoggua has more game impact, yet is as easy as Cthulhu in my stats. Hastur adds difficulty into winning a game, that 8 Clues for a seal is naughty.

It is in-game impact. You don't merely throw away maximums during setup and that's it: with less maximums that means you're more readily susceptible to going insane or unconscious—this ups the ante with many encounters, and all monsters. That's a pretty important in-game ability. Maybe not as bad as Yog-Sothoth's, but still far from negligible.

Tibs said:

Insane and unconscious are minor setbacks. Even if you get LiTaS against Cthulhu, you back in the hunt a couple of turns later. Yog, ugh, don't even get me started on how nasty he is. Cthulhu's green with envy about Yog's game impacts .

Dam, stop waving that win-loss ratio around: you're scaring the customers.

(You have a point. But you also have many dozens of games under your belt.)

jgt7771 said:

But Tibs has even more games and he keeps hyping the big green wuss .

Dam said:

Correction: I manage a stats site that has many hundreds of games under its (digital) belt, and last I checked, players lost to Cthulhu more times than Yog-Sothoth. And I'm not just talking about final battle—I mean overall. So I'm a sucker for statistics. That ain't so bad.

Of course, there could be a complete paradigm shift in overall games lost because of the introduction of the Epic Battle deck, but you just wouldn't understand, Dam

However, if you want to know my honest opinion, aside from that which the stats site tells me, I'll always choke a bit when I draw Yog-Sothoth. With Cthulhu, not so much. So in my personal experience, Yog-Sothoth is significantly scarier.

Tibs said:

When's the next update anyway, he says in a "innocent" manner ?

Finally found the Stats thread on page 9, after delving through pages featuring probably close to 50% threads started by you-know-who.

Dam said:

You mean... Ultra Mega Chicken?
SHHH!
He is only legend...

The next update is hopefully tomorrow, with two footnotes:

1. To minimize redundancy, I want to try doing them monthly instead of bi-monthly (1st of each month)
2. Soon I will not have easy access to Excel, which may make future reports too difficult to be worth my time

Tibs said:

Wait, IIRC your boss let's you play AH (plays with you?) at the office, but no Excel at your workplace? Sounds like a Another Dimension to me .

Dam said:

Others have listed the weak ones, though I definately put Cthulhu among that bunch. To me he's the second easiest base-game GOO to win against (Azathoth is the easiest as mentioned). I say win, since I count final combat "wins" as draws; win being victory via closing gates or sealing (or Join the Winning Team ). 13 doom track + minimal game impact = super weak GOO. Poor Azathoth has an even longer doom track and even less game impact.

I agree. We didn't face Cthulhu for a long time because the Sanity/Stamina impact seemed daunting. Turns out it's not. However, we've never defeated him in face to face combat (3-4 investigators), though with him there's a chance unlike with Azathoth. I hate Shub-Niggurath though others apparently find him not that difficult.

Dam said:

Close. We've played a few games. Actually Excel is at my work only (I have no copy at home) and all my reports have been done here. However, we are getting laid off soon, so there won't be anywhere I can do my reports.

Blimey, I placed this thread 1 night and already in the morning there's a ton of posts, including the Legendary Tibs. So Azathoth is recommended then? I'll keep that in mind. Thanks

Wait a second... Azathoth is Mr. Instant-Death-when-Woken? I'm guessing it's easiest since we don't have to fight that thing... right? Well maybe Yig or Nyarlahotep will be our next one.

Aw shucks... you're too kind.

Yep, Azathoth doesn't offer final battle. But he has no in-game ability and his worshipers are insubstantial. He also has the longest doom track, giving you the most opportunity to seal him.

I knew I recognized your name, Knuckles. From BGG, right?

Ohh... you're a Doom fan! That's right... I first saw your name when you purchased my Doom microbadge :-P

Man it's been a while. I need to get a Doom campaign going so that I can get motivated enough to finish Episode 4. It's about halfway done, but has been since like '05. LOL

Everyone's into Arkham now. What can I say? Cosmic horrors that actually horrify you are quite mesmerizing

I played my first game vs Mr Donut (Azathoth). I got slaughtered LOL. 6 surges in a row since I've been delayed for quite a bit in the other worlds.

I hope I get better luck with my rematch vs Donut.

PS: Do keep up the good work for Doom.

Well, in some cases, Azathoth being one of them, surges are better than no surges. Terror>Doom.

I lost that game because Azathoth woke since I got too many monsters on the table and level 10 terror. I've neglected killing the yellow-bordered monsters until I realized they're filling up the monster limit and pushing the new surges (about 5 each surge) to the outskirts.. When I figured they're slowly killing me from outside, then I decided to fight them (death by portal closure ), but by then it was too late.

for those saying that masks are easy to deal with and don't come into play regularly: are you playing with expansions? With vanilla AH I tend to see at least a couple per game and they re always something hard to deal with.

My advice though is to not worry so much with winning and losing. I have fun just playing and reacting to whats given to me. I normally play with randomized AOs and characters.