For those of you who didn't see the revisal to my "anti-dilution solution" thread, here it is (copied from BGG). I didn't want people using the directions in the first post of my first thread, so I put the one with the more fine-tuned math here.

I love using all the expansions mixed together. You never know what you're going to get. However, those of you who play this way have surely noticed that activity in Dunwich and of the Next Act cards has diminished way too much. Innsmouth will probably suffer a similar issue, as there are Innsmouth gate locations and vortexes.

When you play with only Dunwich, the chances of drawing a Dunwich gate are 1 in 4.08 , or 24.51% ( Story Continues is not counted, because you have to draw another card after it).

Innsmouth has the same number of mythos cards as Dunwich, so it probably has the same number of cards with Innsmouth gates. If this is not the case, then it can't be such a different number that my math will be affected much.

When you play with only King in Yellow, the chances of drawing a Next Act card are 1 in 15.5 or 6.45% .

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So when playing with DH, IH, and KiY, and any of the other expansions , use this variant:

• Make a second, smaller "special" mythos deck that is comprised only of the cards that open gates in Innsmouth and Dunwich, the six Next Act cards, and The Story Continues.
• Whenever you are supposed to draw a mythos card, roll two dice. If you don't roll any 1s or 2s, draw from the large "main" deck. If you have at least one 1 or 2, draw from the "special" deck. If you draw The Story Continues, shuffle both decks and roll/draw again.

This variant gives us these statistics:

• The chances of drawing a Dunwich or Innsmouth gate each are now 1 in 4.03 , or 24.80% (as opposed to 4.08 and 24.51%). VERY close!
• The chances of drawing a Next Act card are 1 in 16.8 or 5.95% (as opposed to 15.5 and 6.45%). Also pretty close. Certainly a lot better than not using a variant.

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For those of you who want to use this variant who only have Dunwich and King in Yellow, as you're waiting for Innsmouth, do this:

-Make a second, smaller "special" mythos deck that is comprised only of the cards that open gates in Dunwich, the six Next Act cards, and The Story Continues.
-Whenever you are supposed to draw a mythos card, roll a die. If you don't roll a 1 or 2, draw from the large "main" deck. If roll a 1 or 2, draw from the "special" deck. If you draw The Story Continues, shuffle both decks and roll/draw again.

This variant gives us these statistics:

The chances of drawing a Dunwich gate each are now 1 in 3.72 , or 26.88% (as opposed to 4.08 and 24.51%). This is still very close.

The chances of drawing a Next Act card are 1 in 15.5 or 6.45% . EXACTLY the same as using just King in Yellow as your only expansion!

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I also have a solution for the ally problem:

Shuffle all 34 allies together. Remove 11 at random to be the "Ma's" deck. While in play, these allies can only be acquired by using the Recruit ability at Ma's. If you get a random encounter that references any of these allies, they are considered "unavailable." When you're asked to reference the number of remaining allies in the deck, use this number.

The remaining 23 allies can be acquired by encounters, or when you're instructed to draw a random ally (draw random allies from this deck only).

Whenever you're supposed to return a random ally to the box (the terror level rises, The Southside Strangler strikes, etc.), remove one from the Ma's deck and two from the "town" deck. Clearly, for Glaaki, this still counts as only one ally. Charlie Kane has access to all removed allies, irrespective of what deck they were removed from.

This variant puts the percent availability of allies back nearly to what it was when playing with only Dunwich (when the rule was first introduced).

As an added variant, you can set aside the Young Zoog ally before setup. It will not be shuffled into the deck, and won't be part of the 11 Ma's allies or the 22 "town" allies. Young Zoog can ONLY be acquired by the random encounter that references him by name. I hate rescuing a random ally from capture during an encounter, or starting with a random ally, to then find that it is Young Zoog. It's silly. The cat and dog I can tolerate though

Tibs said:

Just so I'm clear (and skipping Innsmouth for the moment): The Special Deck does not include ALL Dunwich Mythos cards, just the ones that have a Dunwich Location picture on them? The Dunwich Mythos cards with Gate Bursts in Arkham Locations are placed in the larger Main Deck? So this would make the Special Deck consist of 25 Dunwich Gates, 6 Next Acts, and 1 Story Continues, which is 32 cards, yes?

Your Zoog stinginess makes me snicker.

jgt7771 said:

Exactly: 32 cards and one die with the "Dunwich/KiY" version, and 57 (probably) cards and two dice with the DH/KiY/IH version. The DH and IH cards that show an Arkham gate location (or no gate location as the case may be) are left in the "main" deck.

I haven't used the Zoog Stinginess version yet, as I have just thought of it. This will make getting his "not available" compensation (whatever it may be) almost impossible. But I am not worried at all about that. In fact, I've never in 120+ games even seen the encounter that claims him.

Okay, I just needed to satisfy myself on the other side of the plane...I can't quite get exactly your numbers, but I am coming pretty close (which must mean I'm either missing a few cards or a few classes in Statistics). So when I went to the Main Deck in a AH/DH/KY variant, I ended up in the neighborhood of 64% of drawing an Arkham Gate, as opposed to one giant Mythos deck which ended up closer to 73%. I don't think a 9% difference is going to turn Arkham into a "ghost town" as someone may have suggested. In fact, I find that sacrificing that 9% actually wakes Dunwich up quite a bit, a hell of a lot more than before.

Virtual beer to you, Tibs.