Hello all,
I am busy in the process of arranging a game of AH, but would like to encourage players to visit Miskatonic University. Players hardly visit this site/area.
Does anyone have any ideas/scenarios/thoughts on this? Nothing game changing. I just want to encourage people to visit the University (its an important landmark of Arkham), with some form of benefit........for the player.....
You can use this custom guardian created by Amikezor:
This was designed with the general aim of increasing stable locations being visited, so, not University-specific, but maybe it could help
And of course there's the MU Institution from Miskatonic Horror ( photo , text ). I haven't actually played it, so I don't know how useful it is--I suspect that the only thing normally worth doing is Advanced Classes, the first use of which is like an improved science building. Of course, since they haven't already been going to the science building, maybe that won't help, but the institution should still make that whole neighborhood feel a little more special.
Yeah, never used that myself. IIRC, there were some complaints about the costs for activating the cards? Dunno.
Yeah, to be honest I haven't used any of them, because from what I remember each of them had one "holy crap yes" ability (retainers for everybody, something involving allies?) and several " why would you ever do that "s.
Still, it might make a decent tourism advertisement for players in need of a bit of a nudge.
I like the MU Institution when you're playing with 5+ players and have at least 2 expansion boards. So not an everyday occurrence. But the free bus ride from one board to the other helps sometimes.
I wonder how many of these rare helping things (the Great Seal - I never get that one) are actually used?
The conditions coming with Dunwich are the most elusive to me. So far I had only three times a chance to activate Coded Messages, but always failed. I've seen the other conditions from DH even less...
As for the Great Seal: I climbed the Kingsport Head in a nightmarish game against Eihort with only KH in play (it lasted something like 9 hours, the longest AH game of my life): too many gates bursting forced me to an extreme choice. Twice I scored the White Ship (only recently, tho), and never the Beloved of Bast (but I played only once with Bast as the Guardian... it's really badly designed, the conditions are too rare to justify the investment)
Wow, that sounds like a grueling game Julia -- I am curious now about how the Great Seal works, but now also looking up Eihort; seems the strategy against him is to go for a close rather than a seal win, which is considerably harder when you count the expansion effects. Ugh.
Bast worked well for us in our Cult of the Dark Pharoah run, but we had lots of monsters in the streets, which the token helped us nicely avoid in our travels. No one got the Beloved of Bast though; it seems like its pretty difficult to obtain, and perhaps not worth it, unless you have major devouring effects in-game before the AO comes through (Yog-Sothoth?)
We're going to try a Miskatonic-themed scenario this week with the Institution/Kingsport in play, Y'Golonac and all-student investigators. The major tweak will be swapping the Science Building and the Library unstable/stable locations, and making the Library the point where gates open/monsters surge. Will see how it goes...
Yes, the game was gruesome indeed. Point is that Eihort is so totally broken: it allows nvestigators to retire, and brood is not carried over to substitutes, so that, in the end, you could simply retire the richest in brood and work with the new ones. But for that game we didn't want to exploit this loophole, and yep, it had been a nightmare
The Great Seal: basically, when you place an ES on the board, you can place the Great Seal as well, and that seal can never be removed by any game effect. Could help to keep a high freq location sealed in an Atlach game, but apart from that, it's rare that is used, especially because it's not that easy to gain.
As for Bast: apologies, I intended the Beloved of Bast card. The Guardian is okaish, but it's a pity that the card enters so rarely in play. Veet developed a Herald called the Cats of Ulthar, IIRC, that boosted a little the interactions with Bast. If you're interested, I can dig it out from somewhere.
Nice game you're planning! If you want some extra Y'golonac sufference, I suggest you using this Herald I developed some time ago:
Ha! You read my mind. I actually went and got this and about 20 more heralds printed out on card stock this week and was debating how evil I wanted this first scenario test. We're probably going to try this out just to see how it plays with just the AO this first time but we will most definitely playing this herald. Oh the pain we will experience!
We tested out our home-brew Cold Print, all-Miskatonic scenario this last week, and came out with a solid win. Some very nice draws at the beginning of the game, and lucky draws on Mythos (Graveyard and Univisited Isle) keeping the Doom track fairly quiet. It had a nice thematic feel, though -- session report here:
http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1249392/cold-print-scenario-ygolonac-miskatonic-university
Next test will be with Naqug'artha -- I have a feeling it will be a very different experience!
Great play! Thanks for the rep, and good luck for when you add the Herald in!
(anyhoo, you should write down rules for Scenarios, and up them to the Geek, to preserve the knowledge and give other players some ideas for variants!)
