I my game game last night, two of the investigators were Ursula and Daisy they were battling Y'Golonac. This was the first game that I've played so far where you really do not want to pass the personal stories. Passing Daisy's has you draw the first tome and Ursula's has you draw the first five cards from the unique items deck (keep two). So I had to play the game keeping these two between their pass and fail conditions or else add from one to six doom tokens to the track. .

I haven't read through the personal stories deck, has anyone else come across combinations where the pass conditions end up being a detriment to the investigators?

Lily Chen is one that you might not want to pass. iirc it is passed when the ancient one awakens.

...ok, so that was an easy one, but I haven't read through them yet either, since they'll come up eventually anyway.

Akachi's could be a real pain when playing against Yibb-Tstll. It could also, if passed at the wrong time, make Trish Scarborough very likely to fail hers.

Passing Tommy Muldoon's story is good but could be really inconvenient some of the time.

On the other side, Nyarlathotep, Abhoth and Rhan-Tegoth make passing several investigator's personal stories impossible or near-impossible.

cim said:

Quite a bit more than a real pain, as I nearly discovered, you can end up facing a -16 combat modifier...only being deputy and driving around in the patrol wagon redeemed her fatal mistake and saved us in the 3 turns that remained in the game...this is one of the fun aspects of not reading the cards before you fail or pass them...

I deliberately fail Tony Morgan's personal story every time.

Warning spoiler:

You'll fail it if you collect five clues; you'll do that first turn since he has three to begin with and only needs to collect two more, which makes sence anyway so you can seal. You then have to discard all monster trophies (which you won't have anyway during the first round) and in the future, will gain 1 clue any time you take a monster as a trophy.

Compare to the pass condition: You need to have a number of monster trophies, 4 I think. You then discard all of your clues!! and gain 10 or 15 $, I don't remember the exact amount.

Now tell me, which one would you choose?

Yes, passing Daisy's story against Y'Golonac hurt me recently. I don't look at the pass OR fail until I do both of them.

Passing Rex's story against Ghatanothoa would hurt a little, because he would receive two clue tokens each time he became first player. Not that big a deal though, as the others would only gain one.

You can pass Rex's story against Yibb-Tstll. However, you would need no less than:

• 5 clue tokens
• both Research Materials
• the Mythos Lore skill
• Granny Orne
• to be Changed

I think having Patrice would help too, but without her, you would need all that crap. Awesome

Morgaln said:

We had Morgan in our last game, and fought tooth and nail to pass. That was a dud! Unless the situation demands it specifically, we are going to look to fail it each time.

Passing Jim Culver's personal story is awesome, by the way. Has anyone done this yet?

Tibs said:

Had Jim in my first IH game, he even had monster trophies, sadly, the monster cup is "quite large" so no Undies were seen in the game.

I knew some of them would be more challenging with different AOs but the Daisy and Ursula against Y'Golonac were the first ones that I had seen that I thought passing them actually hurt the investigators.

Tibbs and dj2.0: It actually hadn't occured to me not to look at the pass or fail reward/punishment until one was reached. I think I will do that from now on.

I was thinking of either playing with a house rule or making a Herald that would add a doom token if you failed your personal story. In order to add some "incentive" to pass some of the stories that have pretty benifical fail consequences.

Dam said:

I had Jim in my first game of IH. Jim passed about mid game. There was much rejoicing. I ended up winning that first game rather handily (I forget which AO I was using), but then didn't win another for about 6 or 7 games. Finally, this weekend, my son and I beat Bokrug in final combat. It helped that we were able to wipe every child of Ib of his card by the time he was awakened by the DOR track.

Last night I lost to Nylarhotep (playing solo, so I considered it a loss when he woke. When I play solo, the final battle is a rather tedious die rolling effort which I don't enjoy) then managed to squeek out a seal win against Cthuga, which was good for my ego.

Before I went to bed, I set up my first game against UQ, and played three turns. Bob, Gloria, Joe Diamond, and the Martial Artist. Not bad so far. Joe is whooping the monsters, Bob and Gloria already passed their personal stories. Bob is first investigator. So far he drew lose an insanity, then two "shuffle back together all dust cards" draws from the dust deck. I think I'll leave him as first player to spend his money on other investigators' behalf until he gets devoured.