vs.

With all the respect to the Pendant, there are som really nasty environments out there. I once actually lost the game because of No One Can Help You Now. I had 2 investigators on explored gates, each having more than 5 clues, there were 4 elder signs already on the board, and they just waited there until that **** environemnt would be replaced. But it didn't. 1, 2, 3 turns and nothithing. After 8 turns the Ancient One awoke and the investigators lost the final battle. All I needed was one turn, just one, without that stupid environemnt and I would have won. There's also the environemt that spawns the streets with zombies. All in all Astral Mirror is a much better tool to have in your possession than the Pendant. What do you think?

Previous Great Debates

Elder Sign Pendant. Monster surges can really mess with you, and there are more AOs who have strengths that are based on surges or the terror level than there are negative environments. "No one can help you now," "Mirage of Lakes," and "Clothing Drive" are all very annoying environments, but that's 3 mythos cards out of around 200. Plus, the chances of an environment card being replaced each turn is something like one in three, isn't it? Monster surges, on the other hand, don't get replaced. Their effects linger.

Astral Mirror will be a blessing if I happen to have one when one of those three awful environment cards messes with me. But monster surges are far more harmful and more frequent. The Pendant is widely more useful.

I'm gonna go the other way: Astral Mirror. (Why we always gotta fight, Tibs? )

The only regular way to get rid of an Environment...is to draw another Environment. (And God help you if it's an Environment negated by your Ancient One.) You only mentioned the really drastic ones; what about the some of the others? Like the ones that prevent you from gaining Stam/San except at the Asylum/Hospital or by one of two Investigators. Or the ones that take away movement. (Let's play 8 turns with a top Speed of 2, hmmm?) And several that wreck one stat and boost your Sneak...oh joy. This one will actually make a lot of people laugh: the Solar Eclipse makes Daisy almost as bad as Sister Mary. Talk about lingering: you get a bad Environment that doesn't go away...games die.

Monster Surges. While I can totally appreciate where you're coming from, and have felt the same stomach-dropping churn when the Polyp, the Dhole, and the Bloody Tongue dance together in the same turn, there are just other ways to deal with monsters. Gate closures. Evasion. Several cards from almost every deck on the table can move or remove them. Or just try killing them. Plus, as you say, Surges are so much more frequent. It seems to me stopping a mere one of them is not going to help as much as removing "No One Can Help You Now".

I'm inclined to pick the Elder Sign Pendant. On the whole, we don't have a huge problem with environment cards. We've considered getting Astral Mirror many times, but most of the time, something more interesting or useful or powerful presents itself. Of course, we've never drawn it when a horrible environment is already out. As a result, we've never used it, but respect the possibility. Meanwhile, the Pendant is a good veto against something almost sure to happen, and absolute gold against Abhoth, Shudde M'ell, the Black Goat, and the like.

Well I'm justifying by saying monster surges are more frequent, which offers more opportunities for use of the Pendant.

Yeah, there are some other annoying environment cards, such as lowered speed or the like. However, many of them can be dealt with by a simple click of the sliders. Cards like the inability to heal aren't all that big a deal because I usually just swing by the hospital or asylum if I need it that badly—I don't find opportunity for a lot of healing outside of those places. Having Ithaqua or Tsathoggua out will make "No One Can Help You Now" more long-lasting—but at least Tsathoggua removes the possibility of Clothing Drive and Ithaqua the possibility of Mirages of Lakes. And with Atlach-Nacha, you're screwed anyway. That's still only 3 AOs, and 3 truly awful cards.

AOs that benefit from monster surges in more than a mildly passive way are:

• Nyarlathotep—high chance for Masks
• Shub-Niggurath—tough monsters, and more of them??
• Glaaki—terror level increases are BAD
• Hastur—same thing: terror level can come back to bite you
• Shudde M'ell—monster surges themselves are bad
• Abhoth—monster surges: bad.
• Rhan-Tegoth—can you even afford a surge, knowing what cultists will do?
• Atlach-Nacha—you'll probably have to win by resting some investigators on gates so they can all close simultaneously. The last thing you want is a monster surge with a couple Dark Young really screwing up your plans and knocking even one investigator off an explored gate.

In addition, there are a lot more positive environments than there are positive floods of monsters.

Tibs said:

Erm... I thought the idea is which one was more useful, essentially to aid the investigator. "Earthquakes are fun" indeed, but each one pushes the investigators closer to an unavoidable failure.

Regardless of how you manage to handle each of the situations I've presented, you still do need to handle them. Bad environments aren't that common and will just go away on their own, usually quickly. And if they don't, you were just unlucky outside of reasonable odds. You can't use an incredibly uncommon scenario as a basis for an argument to mitigate that scenario as though it probably will happen any given game—that's an appeal to probability fallacy.

After the last game....Elder Sign Pendant. We were running scenario 7 of the Original Arkham League (Feeding the hand that Bites) and Y'Golonac woke uo due to a monster surge. 7 player made the Outskirts limit 1, then we already had 10 monsters in town, as we were spending too much time in the hospital. Monster surge happened. 7 monsters. The terror level was already high so it jumped to 10 and pumped out the last doom tokens to wake him up.

We won the fight...but barely since we while we had accepted he was going to wake up, we were trying to heal up so we could fight him...and he woke before we could. Yuck.

Then again the pendant wasn't even in that round...but it woulda helped.

Pendant, definantly. Environments usually replace each other quickly anyways and as Tibs has quite clearly illustrated, many GOOs run off of monster surges and terror increases.

I frequently run games of 7+ investigators so monster surges are never taken lightly especially when the Goat of a Thousand Young is the GOO. We don't really have an Outskirts limit to help, but plently of room in Arkham. And if Akrham is full, who really needed shops to be open?