Hi everyone,I am a new player of AH from Hong Kong.I have a few questions about rules of AH,hope you can help.

1.when I come back to arkham through a gate,I may choose not to fight the monster guarding that gate,right?Then I can close and seal the gate in arkham encounter phase.If I choose to seal the gate,does the monster at the same location return to the cup?

2.Ashcan Pete's ability states that he can look at the bottom of the common/unique item and spell deck anytime he want and he can draw form the top or the bottom of those decks.Does this actually mean that I can keep shuffling the deck when I draw until the card I want is at the bottom of the deck?or must I stop shuffling the deck immediately after I look at the bottom of the deck?

3.Does the locations with an open gate on it count as a location?When a mytho card has an effect of returning all monster in a location to the cup,should I return the monsters at a location with an open gate on it to the cup?

4.What will you do if you forget to do something,such as roll a die for a blessing in the upkeep phase?

ad 2. You don't shuffle any decks unless you are told to do so (in the case of 'item deck' it's usualy after certain game effect made search the deck for a specific card)

Citron said:

oh I thought that I can shuffle the deck before I draw a card

No. You shuffle all decks at the start of the game and then you leave them as they are unless specifically told to shuffle the decks back together again. There is a mythos card that tells you to shuffle the mythos deck but that's pretty much it.

gilleolicon said:

That is only with Arkham Encounter cards. You don't shuffle any of the item decks (unless you just took a specific item out of it). This means that the item on the bottom of the decks may stay the same for a while. For Pete, this could be annoying if the items sucks; but it could also be a strategic move to nab the items on bottom (say, someone drew two great items when shopping but was only allowed to buy one).

gilleolicon said:

Arkham Encounter decks yes. Item decks, Other World deck, and Mythos deck, no.

Good scoop. I thought I was hep to most of the basic game playing questions, but you threw me a curve. I always treated an open gate with a monster as a non-location, because I thought the gate replaced the location. Does the gate simply replace the location for Arkham encounter and special ability text on the board? This is cool.

For number 4, it depends on when we remember the forgotten task, and how influential it was on the game. For example, if I forgot to factor in a curse and passed a skill check, I usually have a pretty good idea what I rolled to pass. If I rolled 3 sixes, it sticks in my mind and I don't reroll. If I know I passed by the skin of my teeth with a couple of 5s, I redo the whole check (or combat, which is usually the case.)

In general, when I forget something, it is something that would have helped me. Because I play solo a lot, I often forget to factor in investigator special abilities, especially with new expansions where I'm not already familiar with th einvestigator. I'd never forget that Bob gets an extra card from the common item deck, but I might forget that Akachi only needs four clues to seal.

Thanks everyone.I think I've got the answers of the questions above but now I'm facing some new problems.orz.

1.If I fail in the lore check when casting a spell,do I need to exhaust the spell?

2.The mytho card tell me to release monsters to an area but this will break the monsters limit.Do the newly released monsters go to the area or to the outskirt?

3.Is there any effective way to kill the monsters in the outskirt?They are driving me crazy,especially when the Great Old One is Hastur.

4.When a gate and a monster appear in an Arkham Encounter,should I fight the monster before I'm sucked through the gate?

gilleolicon said:

1) Yes.

2) Outskirts (or one outskirts, one area, if the monster limit permits)

3) Maybe. Closing gates will remove monsters in the outskirts with matching symbols (and there are a couple of expansion encouters and items with similar effects). There's a mythos card that removes them. IIRC, there's an item or spell in one of the expansions that will remove one outskirts monster. There's also an expansion encounter that lets you fight them directly. Generally it's better to not let them get there in the first place, though. How many Investigators are you using? If it's only one or two, then you're unlikely to have time to do much monster control and you'll just have to hope they don't get into the outskirts. If it's more than two then you should have time for someone to do a bit of monster control in the streets, which will reduce the number going there in the first place.

4) No. It's left there until you get back, unless it wanders off in the meantime.

Hi! It's my first post to the forum. I;m new to Arkham and i have some questions.

When a monster is in the sky area and it's time to move monsters, if there are more than one investigator in the street areas, to who investigator does the monster move to?

thanks.

The monster swoops down on the Investigator with the lowest Sneak value. If there's still a tie, First Player chooses.

Siromist said:

To the one with the lowest sneak skill. When more investigators have same sneak skill, the first playech chooses to which one of those investigators the monster will move

gilleolicon said:

I don't think this question was ever fully answered in all the posts here. When there is a gate open at a location, then the gate supercedes any unique characteristics of that location, such as encounter cards for that location, location special abilities (if any), and closed tokens (if any). However, the gate does not completely replace the location itself; if a gate is open at the woods, since the woods is in the Uptown neighborhood, so is that gate. Therefore, any mythos card or other card that says to return all monsters in the Uptown Streets or locations to the cup, would cause all monsters in the woods, even with a gate open there, to return to the cup as well.