The directions tell you to cut the mythos cards into your deck to expand the base game, but what do you do when a gateway is drawn to a location that isnt being used? Should the card just be skipped, or should certain aspects of it be played(clues,environment) and others ignored? Should i go through my entire deck and pull out the gates that relate to the expansions if i'll only be using the base game?

That's entirely up to you. If you just want to use the mythos cards in the base game, you don't have to go through and take out all of the expansion mythos cards. You can just draw until you hit a mythos card with the right symbol (or lack thereof). Do Not use the cards that open gates in Dunwich or Innsmouth if you're not using the board. All of the things on a mythos card come with a gate opening, and to ignore that would be silly.

As I'm sure you know, the Dunwich expansion has a lot of mythos cards that have gate bursts at Arkham locations. However, many of these cards have Headlines that apply to locations on the Dunwich board. If you're not using the Dunwich board, but you want gate bursts (and why wouldn't you?), you can't just ignore these mythos cards. Therefore, you'll need to decide if you want to ignore the Headlines outright or change the Headlines to make them apply to whatever board you are using. (Or invent completely new Headlines, I suppose.)

*Laughs* I didnt notice that flamethrower was a diferent person so I thought you were insane and answering yourself. We do get an unsually large number of insane folk on this forum.

darkkami said:

Maximum Sanity has increased since Avi went on his holiday/whatever trip though .

Or has it...? According to Avi, I am Avi.

darkkami said:

You just drain current Sanity at a steady rate (Colour Out of Space).

Well, would you look at that I just literally laughed my ass off. Hrmmmmm guess that answers that question. Oh sorry talking to myself again...

Dam said:

Why are we capitalizing the "S" in "sanity"?

darkkami said:

Don't know about you, but I've gotten into the habit of capitalizins the 'S' when talking about Stamina/Sanity in the AH section.

DeepSix said:

I only play with one additional expansion at a time. I don't have any small box expansions. When I do that, I only use the original Arkham cards and the mythos/gate cards for the board expansion I am using. I keep all expansion location encounters in the encounter decks. I have only found a couple that make no sense without their expanision, and I just ignore them and redraw if required.

Nghtflame7 said:

I do something similar. I usually keep all the cards separate, and after a game, will go through all the decks, separating all the cards into their respective expansions simply for storage purposes. So, when I have all the decks separated, I will just shuffle the cards that belong to the expansion(s) which I am using that game into their respective decks. Otherwise, if I begin a new game before separating the decks, I will just discard every card that comes up that belongs to an expansion which I am not using.

avec said:

One way to add Gate Bursts into the basic game, would be to hosuerule that a seal bursts if the relevant location is drawn and any player has a gate token with a symbol that would move. That might make bursts more likely as the game goes on (or more probably encourage gate token trade ins). Could interfere with some personal stories in a good way :-)

Alternatively if a gate is drawn at a sealed location then draw a gate anyway. If the symbol moves (or moves on black for fewer investigators) then the seal bursts.

Not tried any of these, mind.

- Mariana the ex-nun cultist

Musha Shukou said:

All the cards or all the Mythos cards? I do that with the Mythos cards but doing that with investigator cards, gate cards and Arkham cards seems awfully tedious. I've tried discarding the drawn cards, but since I don't actually draw the cards when I play with others, its hard to keep that happening. I think the Mythos cards are the main flavor givers, anyway.

For Innsmouth only I have also separated out the monsters so that I am only using the base set plus Innsmouth. (I'd previously marked them on the back with a symbol to indicate their set.) I wanted to get more aquatic monsters. So far the aquatic rule has still not kicked in but a lot of deep ones are showing up in Arkham.

mageith said:

Lol, I do separate out all the decks to store them in the boxes they came in, because for some reason, when i have all the cards piled together, there is less space in the boxes for all the cards, somehow. Anyways, it IS tedious. But the only cards I discard when I have combined decks are the Mythos cards, I still enjoy playing with the allies and spells, etc from the other expansions. Its just that if a Mythos card comes up that shows a gate opening in a location that doesn't exist on my board, then I simply discard it and draw a new one.