So I'm planning to have a session in the next week or two for people who have a once a week game, but tend not to play longer form games.

They're good gamers, so I don't want to start *completely* baseline, so I was thinking of a home brew mix.

Base Game:

ALL the investigators (Draw 3, Pick 1), Subtract a couple of investigators who play best with other boards, such as the Sailor and Rita.

King In Yellow Encounters, Investigator cards and Encounter cards. Include the Act deck, but not the Herald.

Madness and Injury cards, for KOs and Insanity.

Innsmouth's Personal Story cards.

The Epic Battle cards from Kingsport (should we need them)

Hastur as the Ancient One (Have you seen the Yellow Sign?)

If we get 5 or more players, throw in Nodens as a guardian.

What do people think?

I can't speak to any Innsmouth Investigators yet, but I see no reason to "leave out" Rita if you are planning to play with the Madness/Injury decks. She actually has some awesome stats and starts with a Retainer! Compared to some "clunkers", I would pick Rita rather frequently.

You should add the Dunwich Investigator cards as well. You will need them if anyone chooses Mark or Jim, and they're a well-tested supplement of cards to use, especially the Skills and Allies.

If you're going for Theme, and that's what your friends will respond to, then by all means, use Hastur. Or perhaps you're secretly hoping to not succeed at a 6-Seal victory, and thus provide your group with a Final Battle that won't be too hard as long as you can keep the Terror Track down. I can't say either way, but my personal observations are, you run a risk of frustrating your group when the Clues dry up.

When introducing a rookie last weekend, my AO stack (to draw randomly from) was Az, Ith, Nyarl, Shub, and Yig. If Az was drawn, I would have also used Ghroth. We did "draw 2, pick 1". It was a somewhat "fortunate" game, and I was surprised when Rookie expressed some disappointment that we didn't lose in a river of our own blood. Sometimes, there's just no predicting how this game will bend a mind.