With EH+FF+MoM the condition pile is getting rather large (especially when sleeved!) and I've had to resort to splitting it into two piles which obviously isn't ideal. However, I was wondering if I could split it down logically to speed up the game.

There are currently 9 types of conditions:

Bane

Boon

Deal

Exposure

Illness

Injury

Madness

Pursuit

Restriction

To my knowledge, all "gain X condition" either refer to a very specific condition ("Gain a Back Injury condition", "Gain an Amnesia condition", etc) or specify a single type ("Gain an Illness condition"). Splitting them by type will make it very easy to gain, discard and shuffle conditions without having to work through a huge deck. Even if I didn't do it for the whole deck, something like Hypothermia (where each time you flip it you discard the current version and gain another one) would be a good idea to keep on its own to speed things up.

Anyway, just throwing it out there. If there are potential rules issues that could arise such as something in the game telling you to gain one of multiple types of condition ("gain a madness or injury condition") then I see this not working. Indeed, if you know of any please let me know. After MoM table space is at an even bigger premium but I'd be more than happy to invest in some upright card holders to make cycling conditions much quicker!

(also MoM is amazing and I love it)

I keep conditions in one pile but together with their own. We roll a dice if the choice is a madness. When it comes to a deal condition, 1 is dark pact, 6 is funding the rest are debts. It just cuts down fishing for stuff.

When we fight yig I keep poisons out by themselves. When fighting Windwalker will pull hyperthermia. I keep debts out on top of bank loan of the board.

Creating one stack for each type of condition should indeed not cause any problems.

At the moment I've split the condition deck into two piles:

- Physical & mental afflictions (Illness, Exposure, Injury, Madness)

- Deals & states (Deal, Boon, Bane, Restriction, Pursuit)

Each stack contains exactly 46 cards.

There has been a thread about this before as well. I have no problems with splitting the decks up if there is room to do so. There has also been a concern about "counting cards" when it comes to knowing what is on the back of each condition/spell and then being able to stack the smaller decks how you would want.

There has also been a concern about "counting cards" when it comes to knowing what is on the back of each condition/spell and then being able to stack the smaller decks how you would want.

Seems a good solution for this would be to shuffle the deck every time you take one. If the players aren't looking at the back of cards they hold, there wouldn't be an issue with being able to figure out what's 'next' in the deck (however you draw from it).

I play with a group that likes to count cards and number crunch the games. Because of that they have been able to guess the correct card backs when they have to flip them every time they are assigned. It is a little nitpicky but it has just been my observation. I agree that splitting the decks into their constituent piles saves so much time and effort so long as you have the table space to support having an extra 6-7 decks.

If you shuffle deck every time you discard something or search the deck for the condition you need, then I don't see how counting cards is even possible.

We stick them in one big stack. When you need to draw X, you search through the stack and take the first X you come across, putting all the other non-X cards to the bottom.

If you shuffle deck every time you discard something or search the deck for the condition you need, then I don't see how counting cards is even possible.

I used to do this for the sake of simplicity, but it's not legal.

Reference RB says:

- Whenever a card is discarded, it is placed in a faceup discard pile by its deck. (page 5)

It's like you deliberately didn't read the bullet point between the two you posted:

Maybe you don't need to do it when you search the deck, but definitely when you discard the double sided cards then counting cards to know what's on the back of the cards should be impossible.

Actually that's in the reference guide as well, under Gaining Possessions and Conditions. Whenever you search a deck, which I think is every time for conditions, you shuffle it afterwards.

Good point, missed that last one. Now I figure why I used to play it that way initially.

I still haven't purchased any of the expansions yet, but did they add additional conditions? I seem to remember there only being a handful of each so when you split the decks up, regardless of shuffling, you would have, say, a 1 in 5 chance of guessing the proper card backs. I can keep track of the location of any card in a 5 card deck, but when I put every card together I lose track of where a specific one would be. Maybe it is just our group's own little problem where we can keep track of everything that is on the board at a glance, but that's how we see it. And like I said before, it was only my observation. In the game world there is nothing stopping anyone else from houserulling things the way they want.

Husker,

yes, the expansions add new conditions, both in terms of "never seen before" conditions and in terms of "adding more cards to the existing condition decks", so that actually there's quite a wider pool of cards

Thanks Julia, I have been operating off of vanilla EH for everything so that was something I missed.

My pleasure helping

Separating Conditions by type is a great idea, which I had not thought of before finding this Topic and others like it. Since I play with all 8 expansions, my complete Condition deck is several inches thick, and very difficult to shuffle.

While separating out my Conditions into smaller piles, I noticed some things that would make it advisable not to separate certain types:
- Composed, from the Dreamlands expansion, is both a Talent and a Boon. Thus, if using that expansion, Talents and Boons must be in the same deck
- There exists at least one card that causes the Investigator to draw a random Illness or Injury (specifically, the back of one copy of Corruption, from the Masks of Nyarlathotep expansion). Thus, I don't separate those types.

There may be other cards that specify more than one possible category of Condition, but that's all the ones I currently know of.

Personally, I choose to also combine Bane with Talent/Boon, Exposure with Injury/Illness, and Pursuit with Restriction, for thematic reasons and table space (and because Exposure, Pursuit, and Restriction are pretty small decks on their own)

make a https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:989153

On 2/13/2019 at 2:23 PM, Emperor Dodd said:

Separating Conditions by type is a great idea, which I had not thought of before finding this Topic and others like it. Since I play with all 8 expansions, my complete Condition deck is several inches thick, and very difficult to shuffle.

While separating out my Conditions into smaller piles, I noticed some things that would make it advisable not to separate certain types:
- Composed, from the Dreamlands expansion, is both a Talent and a Boon. Thus, if using that expansion, Talents and Boons must be in the same deck
- There exists at least one card that causes the Investigator to draw a random Illness or Injury (specifically, the back of one copy of Corruption, from the Masks of Nyarlathotep expansion). Thus, I don't separate those types.

There may be other cards that specify more than one possible category of Condition, but that's all the ones I currently know of.

Personally, I choose to also combine Bane with Talent/Boon, Exposure with Injury/Illness, and Pursuit with Restriction, for thematic reasons and table space (and because Exposure, Pursuit, and Restriction are pretty small decks on their own)

I separate them into smaller piles, but put composed in the talent pile. If I am told to “gain a boon” I just assign each type of boon a number and role a die to see which I get.

Same would go for the illness or injury example too.

Mine are split and anytime there is a need to draw something in general, we roll a die to determine which one to draw from and then go random draw from there. Having 1 massive stack has led to too much "wait are we actually OUT of leg injuries already?" situations where players are taking turns rifling the decks.

On 1/20/2020 at 1:59 PM, ArcadianDelSol said:

Mine are split and anytime there is a need to draw something in general, we roll a die to determine which one to draw from and then go random draw from there. Having 1 massive stack has led to too much "wait are we actually OUT of leg injuries already?" situations where players are taking turns rifling the decks.

If you're going to seperate them, you could try using this to help randomize your card pulls.