Thank you as always for the quick response, Julia!

It's high time I started listening to you, so we'll get around to picking up Dunwich as soon as we can, preferably before next friday's game.

I guess adding Innsmouth later will be more preferable.

I also had some questions concerning the Lurker expansion. We usually feel like the relationship cards are quite the boon for the entire game, at least until my character got devoured.

In addition, we feel like it's always never beneficiary to pick up any power tokens nor the Sanity/Stamina/Ally cards - and therefore never really have to deal with the extra card deck the Lurker expansion offers. Does anyone else feel the same way? I can't say we've been forced to do so yet in our games. Also, the Lurker expansion feels a lot slower than the Black Goat, as the terror level increases much quicker with the Goat than the Lurker.

I'll be sure to let you guys know how it all turns out!

The Lurker is quite a bizarre expansion. There are two great features coming with it:

- Relationship cards, which add a nice extra coop touch to the game, and in most of the cases are interesting (some of them are simply to be burned, due to their uselesness or ability to break the game, but that's another story, in most of the cases they are good)

- New Gates: are a lot of fun (I keep them mixed with the originals, tho, just to add a little bit of variety to the games)

The rest is... meh. As for your question about power, it's actually extremly helpful: use the pact at the beginning of the turn, gain power, use the power to seal in the same round you acquired it so that you don't have to fear from Reckonings, then repeat. Boring.

Aye, that's pretty much what I think is the boons and cons of the lurker expansion.

I guess we could just play with the Relationship cards and the New Gates (removing the Underworld ones etc), while we play with the base board, dark pharao, Dunwich and the Black Goat as Herald?

Would you say the Relationship cards and that mix of expansions would provide a steeper challenge or would these boons from the Lurker contribute to making it easier?

Honestly, I'd suggest you to start with just the Dunwich Horror stuff mixed in. First of all, to have a proper feeling of the expansion, and then to check how you feel with the increased challenge. With gate bursts, more unstable locations, nastier monsters and some tough new AO in the mix... it should be a nice start. If you want a challenge, start with Abhoth. Then, if it's still too easy, start adding Heralds

Ok, we'll be sure to simply add the Dunwich in for our first playthrough if we can get it pre-friday.

Quick question though, I noticed this line in the rules: "A spell or weapon that gives you a bonus (even one that says it lasts until the end of combat) only continues to give you the bonus while you devote the required number of hands to it. You can choose to switch weapons/spells in later combat rounds, but as soon as you “release” a spell or weapon, it stops working for you. Similarly, spells that are refreshed (such as at the beginning of each combat round in the Final Battle) cease to work and must be re-cast." and I felt like I had to ask: what spells would require re-casting in the Final Battle?

All of them. Final Battle is structured over a series of combat rounds: each investigator resolves one attack, then it's the AO's turn to attack. Then you receive a full Upkeep phase, so that you refresh exhausted items, roll for Curses / Blessings and so on. Then you start a new series of attacks: it is now that combat spells are to be recast.

All of them?!

Holy bonkers, batman - then that's why we're beating the AO every game. I couldn't find this rule in the Arkham Horror rulebook, but now I understand how many of our AO fights have sounded completely bonkers.

Last game we had one player use Shirveling in both hands, and only had to cast the spell once at the start of the Final Battle.

This makes for an entirely new game, a change of strategy hands down.

Yeah, unfortunately the AH rulebook's wording for Final Battle has not the soundest wording. I think if you skim the Kevin Wilson's official answers thread you should have some better info. In any case, good that we find the bug

Thank you, Julia.

I found the Official Answers post, and I also noticed that when fighting several monsters a turn, this comes into play: "In any case, the spell is exhausted after casting, so it can only be used to fight one monster each turn. Also note that in a battle vs. the Ancient One, you will need to recast the spell each attack, since it gets refreshed and ends between attacks." Thus another mistake made by us, as we've been treating the entire fight against a group of monsters as one combat, allowing us to fight against say two monsters, while only casting Shrivelling once. Seems like we're in for a tougher game come friday, even if we can't pick up the expansion..

Yep, this certainly makes combat harder, and also more tactically interesting, since stack of monsters could actually represent quite a threat!

Let us know how it goes

In addition, we feel like it's always never beneficiary to pick up any power tokens nor the Sanity/Stamina/Ally cards - and therefore never really have to deal with the extra card deck the Lurker expansion offers. Does anyone else feel the same way?

I may be mistaken, but I think you are supposed to draw a Lurker card every mythos phase if a gate opens, regardless of whether any of the investigators have any pacts. True, most of the cards are only relevant for investigators with power tokens, but there are a couple of cards that can force pacts on you, at which point it starts to get a bit interesting. Try it, you might like it!

Philip has a point here, every time a gate opens you also resolve a Reckoning

I'll be sure to give you guys proper feedback after our next game, perhaps we are erroneous on other aspects of the game as well?

And good catch on the Reckoning cards, I guess after drawing quite a few "If any player has a Pact or a Power Token"-cards, we stopped drawing them all together.

Next run with the Lurker I'll make sure we draw them either way.

Thank you, both!

Don't worry about errors... I played Visions wrong for something like 5 years before noticing the real meaning of the wording :-/