Well, we are cracking open Kingsport and Lurker for the first time this weekend, but was looking for ways to really emphasize these expansions -- Tibs post earlier this week on scenarios seems to be just the ticket -- we are looking at Chapter 5 (There's Something in the Mist) as our base, but noticed that Lurker isn't listed as one of the optional expansions. Does the Lurker expansion throw things seriously off base?

We were thinking of introducing the new gates, the Lurker herald (along with Nodens from the scenario) and the relationship mechanic. We know the game pretty well by now --- any advice before we dive in?

Thanks everyone,

Gil

A couple. First of all, the Herald is totally broken, in sense that, if you understand properly how it works, you are gonna break the game in the first half an hour. So, Lurker Herald + Nodens = two Guardians in play.

Many of us ("old school Arkham") developed their own Heralds to fix the Lurker. For example you can use my fix:

Just saying

Hmm, so the Herald in Lurker is really more of a Guardian than a Herald? Looking at Nodens, it does not appear that there are any mechanics conflicts between Nodens and Lurker, but I can see that both are "helping" the investigators. What exactly does having two of them break? -- do Nodens Blessings and the Pacts directly conflict? Is there an old thread I can check out?

Thanks Julia!

By the way, I do love the custom Guardians, Heralds and Institutions on the forums -- is there an easy way these can be printed to color/cardstock, or is there a supplier who has created them already?

There is nothing preventing you from using both Nodens and the original Lurker: 100% compatibility.

Point of the Lurker is that there's nothing preventing you from gaining power and spending it in the very same turn, so that actually you can generate power, spend it as clue tokens for sealing and more or less have nothing to fear from the Reckoning cards. Things change slightly due to some bad Reckonings coming with Miskatonic, but I don't know if you have access to them yet.

Otherwise, an easy fix is this simple houserule: power cannot be spent the round it's gained

This should fix it without adding custom stuff

By the way, I do love the custom Guardians, Heralds and Institutions on the forums -- is there an easy way these can be printed to color/cardstock, or is there a supplier who has created them already?

I printed everything at home, and then I had them laminated. Not as good as original material, but I'm quite happy with the result. Not so sure if this answer your query, though.

In the Mists was intended to maximize the Kingsport expansion. You'll see that there is a separate Lurker scenario but that requires Dunwich.

In principle, I don't see an issue with mixing in Lurker for the fun of it. But for exactly the reason Julia has pointed out, the herald (while amazing in theory) is unfortunately exploitable. Her suggested fix is one that I have canonically implemented, and the Miskatonic Horror reckoning cards actually give the things some spice (to the point where investigators playing the Lurker scenario are typically scared to death to volunteer taking power).

Lurker might be my favorite herald but it's a half-baked implementation. In any case, if you're dead-set on maximizing the Kingsport theme I recommend not adding the Lurker gates and Mythos cards and saving those for when you get Dunwich and can do Chapter 8. However I see no issues with you mixing it in for the fun of it—certainly you're not going to suffer from expansion board dilution, thanks to how Kingsport's mechanic functions.

Thanks all,

Sounds good on the house rule. We haven't got far into the Heralds yet, but thanks for the warning on the exploit. I think we'll go ahead and go with the 2 expansions -- moving gates seem to be a theme, so the Lurker gates should be suitably horrible. We'll try not to go down in flames, or maybe we will!

Wolfpack,

I'm late to the party, but wanted to serve as the final person in the trimvirate espousing the "fix" to Lurker's " Heralian " ~ "you may not earn and spend Power Tokens in the same turn."

The moving Gates are awesome...and frustrating at the same time...Good luck with that!

Cheers,

Joe

Well, a good time had by all this Sunday -- we won in a final battle with Yig using the Kingsport and Lurker expansions (Into the Mist scenario). The 3 players were Luke Robinson, Darrell Simmons and Lily Chen.

House Rules in effect:

• Hidden gates
• Gates do not fill entire location (clue tokens stay and player must choose to encounter location to obtain clue or gate)
• One free turn at starting location before Mythos and doom begins
• One Horror check for duplicate monsters in the same location
• Players may pool clue tokens if they go thru the same gate and close/seal the gate together -- one player must roll to close
• Players may pool items to fulfill a Rumor as long they both visit the same location and contribute a requisite item
• On Mythos phase, roll a die -- a 6 indicates no new Mythos card is drawn that turn -- existing Rumors/effects take place normally
• Lurker expansion: no power may be spent in the same turn it is earned
• No rumors on the first turn (not really a house rule, just specifying)

Expansion rules in effect:

Lurker Herald

Nodens Guardian

Personal Stories

Relationship Cards

Lurker Replacement Gates

Rifts

The first few turns we did not gain much traction -- Darrell's personal story goal was to avoid getting a full 5 clue tokens, and Luke was stuck in the Dreamlands and LITAS for the first couple turns, while 2 gates popped pretty quickly. Lily tackled the Black Cave while Darrell took on the Woods. When Luke finally arrived he went straight to Kingsport to push back several rifts threatening to open. We got a huge break with 3 solid turns of no Mythos, but without many clues or investigators to close and seal. We did manage to seal the Woods (Elder Sign) and Black Cave, but before then with 3 gates still open, we got a double monster surge with Eerie Coincidences! hitting both the open Black Cave, Independence Square and Witch House gates for 6 total monsters, and lots of stuff moving. The board was effectively blocked. We were keeping the rifts at bay, but suddenly Mythos came back with a vengeance with 2 Rumors hitting and gates popping everywhere -- we were at 6 pretty darn quickly, with Luke hemmed in at Independence by 3 monsters.

The big problem was the number of cultists and serpents on the board. We took them down pretty easily, but the choice of doom or LITAS on the cultists was tricky, and we chose a couple LITAS to keep the doom track at bay, which delayed our gate exploration. Also the Rumors, The Southside Strangler and The Unraveling Tapestry were decimating the allies and threatening a full out 3-rift explosion finally forced us to deal with each of them in turn before the Fail effects hit, with Lily using a bunch of trophies gained in the OW for the Blessing requirement and Darrell dropping off a skill.

The old ones were not merciful however, and 2 more Rumors immediately replaced the ones just beaten back. A Nightgaunt and a Flying Polyp descended upon Lily and Darrell in the Miskatonic streets. Lily invoked Nodens to be taken off to the Abyss and a chance at preventing a 7th gate, while Darrell managed to evade both the Nightgaunt and the Polyp to get to Ma's boarding house where he sacrificed his own personal story (and career) to drop of 5 clue tokens at Ma's Boarding house and put an end to the Strangler. Luke hunkered down at the Independent as the monsters finally moved and the Doom track hit 9 with the death of another Serpent at the hands of Lily in the Abyss.

It was all for naught as a double doom token was drawn on Mythos (Cover-up, yet another Rumor!). Yig was here.

We had a decent amount of equipment, and Lily had fulfilled her Personal Story which immediately knocked 2 dooms from Yig right at the start. But both Lily and Luke were Cursed, while Darrell's Blessing was immediately discarded. We actually rolled decently with a 6 here and there, and were managing 1 doomer per turn on Yigster. Lily had the elephant gun which helped, but only had 3 total rounds to use it ($4), while Luke and Darrell kept at it with a Rifle and an Enchanted Weapon. We got the hands rule right this time, and Luke held off on spells in favor of regular weapons, while Darrell kept on with the magic weapons. Late in the battle and at dwindling sanity and stamina, Lily rolled 4 sixes on 6 dice using Martial Arts for a 2 doom token turn. Then she followed up by finally shaking her curse and took down Yig with a final blast from the elephant gun.

The couple of notable things on the game -- we didn't make a lot of use of Nodens (only twice), and everyone seemed to avoid the Herald. We had enough Sanify loss preventing items it seemed to keep from using him, though there was a couple instances where a san free spell would have come in really handy.

We actually sealed only 2 gates this game, with a close third, but we were completely outstripped this time around -- no way it could have been done with only 3 players.

Loved the cultist and serpent mechanic -- it really played in this time around, and we always seriously were considering whether or not to attack those guys, and there were a lot of them!

Only Luke spent a reasonable amount of time preventing rifts in Kingsmouth but didn't stay too long. After awhile the gates started growing too fast in Arkham and he returned, only to be hemmed in.

Both the Relationship and Personal Stories Cards have played a big role in the last couple games. Love them.

I think this was our most legit win. We nailed the rules this go around, and the final battle was close and fun! Next time, we introduce the Epic Battles.

Next week is the King in Yellow in some shape or form!

It sounds to me as if you are playing it where multiple rumors can be in play at the same time. It specifies in the arkham rulebook that if a rumor is already active and you draw another one, only do the gate spawn and monster movement and then discard it. When I have the lurker as Herald I house rule it that if you have more than 3 investigators you draw a reckoning card when a gate opens regardless of whether or not someone took a pact.

if a rumor is already active and you draw another one, only do the gate spawn and monster movement and then discard it.

You also place the clue

Ha! Well at least we weren't making it too easy on ourselves. Suppose it makes victory that much sweeter - we were pretty sure we were in for a loss.

We were playing 3 investigators hence the roll 6 on Mythos house rule. The auto draw for lurker on 4 sounds like a good way to go but we certainly had our hands full. Will try out Julia's herald next time.

One other thing we were unsure of... We drew a double gate card on Mythos, and we had open gates in both those locations. We ruled it as a double monster surge, that is 2 monsters per gate -- is that correct?

It's certainly a double monster surge, but the number of monsters spawned by each surge is the largest between:

a) the number of investigators in play

b) the number of open gates on the board

so, considering you played 3 investigator, it means a minimum of 3 monsters / surge (more if there were more open gates), to be spawned accordingly to the rules for resolving surges (i.e. monsters must be divided as equally as possible among the open gates)

Good deal - we got that one right. We had 3 gates at that time and had cleared the streets of monsters so we spawned 6 which maxed our limit. outskirts were hit afterwards.