Just did a 9 player game against Zhar. All expensions in. Luckily almost everyone had played arkham before so generally knew what they were doing. Was a hectic game but we ended up winning in final combat. It was rough though, 7/9 dead by the end of it.

Exactly as Lovecraft intended...sounds like an epic game!

You beat Zhar in Final Battle??? DETAILS!!! :D

(and congrats!)

I too am amazed that you beat Zhar in combat! Well played!

With nine players, you do have a touch more firepower, but still...it's Zhar * for Gods' sake!

(*intentional use of plural possessive)

Aye, you got more firepower, but you still have to score 9*11*2 = 198 successes, which means, if no one is blessed nor cursed, on average you need a total of 198*3 = 594 dice. Considering that every two rounds you lose one investigator, you have a total of:

9*2+8*2+7*2+...+1*2=90 sequences of attack.

If we consider that Zhar is an unmodified -3, over 90 sequences of attacks it nullifies 270 dice, which means a total of 594+270=864 dice to be rolled. If we divide the number of dice by the number of sequences in attack, we have that each attack needs to have an average combat value of 9.6. So, you need to have 9 characters each having Combat = 10 and able to bypass both Physical and Magical Immunity... well, it's a heck of a combat.

My only question is this: Is there an expansion that says you can play with more than 8 players? Or did you just have an extra player/investigator anyway? (Lurker and Innsmouth are the only two I haven't played with... er, and I guess Miskatonic.)

Pyromaniacal,

actually there are no rules to cover more than 8 investigators playing, but there are rules that say that if you play more than one exp board at the time, you consider your party as having less investigators than it actually has. Quoting from the Kingsport Horror rules, pag 6:

The rules are unchanged when using more than one expansion city, except that the number of players should be counted as being one less for each expansion board in play beyond the first. So, if six players are playing a game using both Dunwich and Kingsport (for a total of two expansion cities), they would be counted as having one less player, for a total of five players.

In the OP's case, he played with everything in, hence having 3 expansion boards means you can count your party as having two less investigators. He played 9, but he resolved the game as if he had played 7.

Hope it has sense (it's too early here and my brain is searching for coffee)

Julia,

Oh, you'really using this human math which can't begin to quantify the truly chilling experience of encountering a Great Old One...almost 600 dice, though...I think that I might have that many dice from my D&D days.

MMkay, yes, we were fairly stacked weapons wise. Had plenty of money, the elephant gun, a couple of shrivelings on our PS passed on dexter drake, all the enchanted blades out, some carbine rifles, shotguns, half of us were blessed from the mythos card that lets you get blessed on a -1 luck check. Also if you count us as only have 7 players (which is how i believe it should be counted) we would only need 7*11*2 154 successes (but just for fun, I didn't clue y players in on that so they believed that they did need 198 successes). Now here comes the horrifying part. During the epic final battle cards, he got the regenerating card which got him an extra doomie, and the card where you roll a dice, subtract 1 and add that number of doomies... I rolled a six said "**** no" rerolled it, got a six again and well, fate decreed and so it was. we finished him off even with those doomies, we had decent fighters and lots of magic weapons as all the extra doomies came in his second form). Went down to the last person on his last hand. looked at the last card of the epic battle deck... the end of everything. it was kind of epic.

Totally epic, thanks for sharing the details

Only one observation on rules: the board reduction factor does not apply to final battles. Hence, you needed 9 successes / doom token, not 7. FAQ, pag 24:

However, it [=the board reduction factor] it does not apply to various card effects (such as Rumor mythos cards), to the number of successes needed to remove a doom token in the Final Battle , nor to the number of gate trophies the investigators must have for a victory by closing all the gates on the board.

mmm, thanks for the clarification julia. They still got enough successes though by the skin of their teeth!

Aye, you got more firepower, but you still have to score 9*11*2 = 198 successes, which means, if no one is blessed nor cursed, on average you need a total of 198*3 = 594 dice. Considering that every two rounds you lose one investigator, you have a total of:

9*2+8*2+7*2+...+1*2=90 sequences of attack.

If we consider that Zhar is an unmodified -3, over 90 sequences of attacks it nullifies 270 dice, which means a total of 594+270=864 dice to be rolled. If we divide the number of dice by the number of sequences in attack, we have that each attack needs to have an average combat value of 9.6. So, you need to have 9 characters each having Combat = 10 and able to bypass both Physical and Magical Immunity... well, it's a heck of a combat.

My brain just said 'nope'.

That's awesome MadFuhrer! Talk about crazy skating by! O.O

Aye, you got more firepower, but you still have to score 9*11*2 = 198 successes, which means, if no one is blessed nor cursed, on average you need a total of 198*3 = 594 dice. Considering that every two rounds you lose one investigator, you have a total of:

9*2+8*2+7*2+...+1*2=90 sequences of attack.

If we consider that Zhar is an unmodified -3, over 90 sequences of attacks it nullifies 270 dice, which means a total of 594+270=864 dice to be rolled. If we divide the number of dice by the number of sequences in attack, we have that each attack needs to have an average combat value of 9.6. So, you need to have 9 characters each having Combat = 10 and able to bypass both Physical and Magical Immunity... well, it's a heck of a combat.

My brain just said 'nope'.

LOL.