Does starting equipment count as being 'drawn' for the purposes of missions?

I'm leaning towards no, because I think Patrice would auto-complete her mission if that were the case. However, things like Monterey Jack's/ Bob Jenkin's/ Dexter Drake's ability *do* work for starting equipment, and are phrased nearly identically.

I too think they shouldn't. But not sure about the rules..

awp832 said:

I had this come up last night when Dexter drew a tome as a starting item. I counted it as a "yes" and put a clue on his personal mission card. Got to about turn 8 before I had to go to bed and he still hadn't managed to pick up his second tome to comlete the mission. Boogers.

are you joking? items starting off as drawn? that is cheating. if you want to play like that fine but come on you know that is not how you are supposed to play it!

hey, I'm just a guy who hates contradictions. FF makes fantastic games, and Arkham is one of the best, but when you start introducing as many expansions as Arkham has, you run into things that you didn't expect. Particularly, my gripe is that words like "delayed, cost, spend, loss, discard, and draw" have become technical terms in Arkham games. When the words are thrown around willy-nilly, sometimes for artistic flare, sometimes for other reasons, things get all booped up.

This thread is a perfect example. To clarify my point for those who have missed out, let's take Dexter Drake whose ability, which you probably already have memorized if you're reading this, is: Whenever "The Great" Drake draws one of more cards from the spell deck, he draws one extra card and discards one of the cards.

I think most of us have been playing that Dexter gets dealt 3 random spells for starting equipment, and discards one of them, so he gets to use his ability at the start of the game, basically. But it doesn't seem fair to say that when Dexter recieves his beginning spells, they are "drawn" and when he recieves his beginning unique item, it isn't "drawn".

So either.

1. Starting equipment isn't "drawn". Dexter and Company don't get to choose their items for setup, which to me makes the already weaker investigators Jack/Dexter/Bob positively lame.

2. Starting equipment is "drawn". Patrice auto-wins her mission and instantly gets 5 more clue tokens.

3. We live with the contradiction, which grinds my gears, but it might be what I end up doing.

Looking at Y'Golonac his ability says that the Tomes drawn with starting equipment do not count for adding Doom counters to his track. So I would go with starting equipment would not count for the completion of a personal story.

There is a FAQ entry (or possibly it's just a "collected replies" entry) that says that their abilities also work on starting items. That suggests that the general case is 1 but those three get an extra bit of help. (You might call that '3', but at least it would be an official '3')

Also... Bob, weak? Bob was already one of my favourite base-game investigators, and their personal story makes them even more powerful. Exceptional Will, excellent Speed, very likely to start with at least some sort of decent weapon to counteract only having average fight - and now almost guaranteed to generate 5-8 extra clues during the game. Focus 1 is the only downside, but they shouldn't need to move their sliders around that much.

as far as i see when your are getting your starting equipment THE GAME HAS NOT STARTED YET. no abilities work before the game!! can i cast wither on my co=workers? no! the game starts when you resolve the first mythos card.

pittplayer said:

Dexter's, Bob's, Amanda's, and Monterey's abilities apply towards the random items they're dealt during startup.

If you're supposed to deal out stories last, he would get the tome before getting the story conditions and it wouldn't count.

As a side note, I play that characters who have to "draw" a number of unique items to complete their stories, such as Patrice, have to draw and gain them. That means another investigator giving them an item doesn't count, and neither does just drawing and not necessarily gaining, such as going shopping.

Checked the rules - nothing useful there..

I would treat it just as Tibs said. Deal the "personal story" cards as a last step of "receive.." phase of the set up. It should be ok like that

heh, sounds like a stretch to me, but allright.

We've been wavering between allowing story completion from just drawing the relevant item and from disallowing it unless the item is actually kept. There's an argument to be made either way -- on the one hand, Patrice's story is an auto-complete first turn if you do it the first way and the player is willing to spend a turn sticking around at the Curiosity Shoppe. On the other, shops and cards use the term "draw" to refer to actually drawing cards from the decks, regardless of whether or not they're kept.

I'd say starting equipment only counts as a draw if it's explicitely mentioned - like Montery's special ability, or the Dark Pharaoh's "Know, O Thief" part.

pittplayer said:

Whoa, take a valium dude. I hardly considered it cheating, and it was reading the forum that made me realize that I was probably doing it incorrectly. I hadn't equated the tome requirement draws at the beginning as the same as other comlpetion criteria because drawing a tome was random, and drawing "two unique items" or whatever provides no randomness to the goal.

Now that I have read the logic of some of the other folks here, I realize I was doing it wrong. Unlike the omniscient here, I didn't "know" how I was supposed to do it.