I've ready many many posts on here and constantly find folks complaining about how all of the expansions sets dilute the game experience or lessen the chance of thematic story telling. etc etc

well i say thats a load of crap. stop your wingeing! the game is fantastic the way its been designed.

this is the most flexible board game i have ever seen. there are many ways to play this game some of them are below.

the all in game

if you want everything in the game at once then fine but expect to experince a little of everything, little being the operative word. danger could strike anywhere in this game you simply don't know where or how the evil will take you.

advantage: complete randomness of experience any thing can happen drawing experiences from all of the expansions. fancy going to kingsport? no problem just go there.

disadvantage: some game themes might not complete, no closure on actions. ie the dunwich track might not fully complete, the rifts don't appear.

the pick and mix game

in this style of play you mick and match expansions

so in this one you might play with the investigators and cards from all of the expansions but only use the dunwich board and the dunwich mythos deck.

advantages: you open up the ingame choices and flexibility without diluting the flavour.

take out the elements of the game that don't appeal to you.

disadvantages: longer prep time , you may unbalance the game by using only certain elements of an expansion.

the thematic game

in this style you fully integrate one expansion with the base set, using either the touring or permenant style of play.

advantage: fully thematic where the theme elements play out from start to finish.

you won't get the same experience two weeks running if you constantly swap out the expansions used.

disadvantage: more preptime sorting out decks and cards, (however all of the cards have an expansion symbol to help with this)

the scenarios

you dont have to be playing the league to enjoy these.

these are stories that tell you how to set up and what to include

advantages: full thematic experience and story courtesy of ffg

disadvantages: preptime, thats about it

so basically if you find your games are diluted due to the number of expansions in it don't complain about it just change the way you approach the set up. go ahead play the base set and just the blackgoat together then see how much more corruption comes into play.

comments?

thank you, i have had so many people on the boards yell at me because i pick and choose the expansions to suit what i want to play, but everyone can play ah how they want, its built for that!!

The Thing In The Attic said:

I agree - I rarely mix everything in, and I am definitely against mixing all the expansions together. I usually play with a heavily customized cut of the game which takes some elements from each expansion and ignores others.

And yet... I don't think it's a question of people constantly complaining. If I posted a list of whcih cards I use and which I don't, I'm sure everyone would scream that I was a heretic. Some people do want to use all the expansions together all the time, and the idea of having the occasional giganto-game using all three towns does appeal to me. There are some problems with that format and I think a lot of the discussion of them has been reasonably constructive.

The biggest issue is Dunwich gates - they don't open often enough if you use all the Mythos cards. This seriously nerfs the already-too-calm Dunwich board, which is a shame because it's a great board when it actually does anything.

I'll happily raise a glass to the infinite customizability of AH, but I don't think we should give up on trying to come up with the "perfect mix" of cards and house rules yet. I probably won't agree with most peoples' ideas of what the perfect mix is, but I'd at least be interested to hear their suggestions.

I think the gates in Dunwhich are the single biggest problem of an all-in-one game, by far. My friends and I tend to play AH obsessively all evening when we break it out and we have one more than one occasion had nothing happen in Dunwihch in an entire evening - and we play three or four games in a row. The only idea I've had to help with this problem is to take out every Mythos card that refers to Dunwhich at all and put them in their own deck next to the main Mythos deck, then every turn roll a dice and on a 5 or 6, draw from the Dunwhich deck. I haven't tried it yet but it's the only solution I can see if you have multiple expansion sets.

The way I've got my game set up right now, I've removed all Mythos cards that refer to Dunwhich or Kingsport, some of the unpopular spells and a few other items, and most Missions and Tasks. We then play with just the main board and the remainder of each expansion. The only real problem is that the Next Act Begins cards are still too diluted.

Wait, what? rifts can never be diluted.

kroen said:

I didn't say they were. I just said that I've removed all Mythos cards that refer to Kingsport because currently we only play with just the Arkham board. There's no point a card coming up that places two monster in the Kingsport streets if Kingsport isn't even in play. Even less point in the Mythos card that sends the first player to the Lightouse, etc.

Stenun said:

... just re-read the OP and realised you probably weren't talking to me, sorry! :-)

Yep, was talking to the OP It's always fun though to have mythos cards release monsters in Kingsport, although it rarely happens (happened to me only once in over 10 games). You'd think flying and aquatic monsters would find their way to Kingsport, but you'd be wrong. In fact, I haven't seen an aquatic movement once. I hope Innsmouth would change that.

I won't call you a heretic (your game, play it how it's fun), but I personally would never consider playing with anything less than everything (league and newbies nonwithstanding).

I love it all. Is Dunwich less active? Good—because that usually means there's something else you have to deal with. I just played an all-expansion game where no gates opened in Dunwich and still feel like we won by a close margin. Two rifts opened in Kingsport and we had to scramble to shut them up. Gate bursts and annoying monsters and the Mistrust rumor kept us all on our toes. All four of the characters were monster fighter-types, so clues were spread pretty thin. Plus our sanity was waning (Monterey Jack with Mythos Lore is fun fun fun).

The only real dilutions that suck are the Next Act and ally dilutions. Dunwich doesn't need the Horror to be dangerous: extra gate locations and easy terror-ups are scary things. Plus there's the herald to help speed the process along. But when 70% of your ally encounters are "not available" and when The Next Act Begins! is a breather, you have a problem.

I also played with two house-rules to help those things out, and they seem promising. Only one game isn't enough to test it, but I have high hopes.

Tibs said:

Gerat minds think alike.

Regarding your ally problem I have a great house rule for that:

1. You play with all allies.

2. The first time terror rises, remove 4 allies from the deck. The following terror-ups remove 3 allies each time. This is the equilivantt of 11 allies.

3. To balance this, each time you get to pick any ally you want (such as when buying allies at Ma's) you only get to draw 2 allies and choose one. The only exception for this is defeating the Dunwich horror.

4. If shopping at Ma's with Charlie, draw 1 ally from the deck and 1 from those that were returned to the box and choose one (ignore this if no allies were returned to the deck).

Good luck.

Naw, I tried a new one tonight that worked quite well:

• 11 random allies in the "Ma's" deck, and the rest in the "town" deck.
• You can only use the Recruit ability on the ones in the Ma's deck, Charlie included.
• If you draw a random ally or get a specific ally encounter, you use the "town" deck. Any who are at Ma's are considered out of the game.
• When instructed to remove a random ally, you remove one from Ma's and 2 from the Town deck. There are almost exactly three times the allies as the base game, so the pacing is quite good. Also, it still counts as one ally for Glaaki's ability.

This rule is cool because when you get an encounter where you can gain an ally, the chances the ally will be available is 2 of 3 (just like Dunwich only, the expansion that introduced this rule!) instead of the crappy 1 of 3. I like having a random ally set every game. I just don't like never being allowed to get one.

And the rule I tried to un-dilute the Next Act cards was:

• Each time you have to draw a mythos card, if it is not a Next Act Begins card, discard it. Draw a new one and keep it.

If my math is correct, doing this with all the current expansions (not Innsmouth) puts the Next Act cards at exactly the frequency as they would be with just the King in Yellow expansion mixed in. If my math is off, it's only off by a bit and their frequency is still remarkably close. Adding Innsmouth to the mix won't change it by all that much, and it will continue to be a threat.

Sure it doesn't make the Dunwich gates more frequent, but it also doesn't make them less frequent either.