In my games of Arkham, I know that a closing victory is theoretically possible, but I don't think I've ever seen one. But according to the stats, however, it happens often enough. What are the strategies that are used to bring about such a victory? It seems mostly luck as you have to hit seals or an open gate while you are trying to seal or close the gates that are out there. So, how do you bring this about?

Kate Winthrop + Arcane Insight. Need someone to deal with DOR if you have Innsmouth, otherwise, might as well call it a win and re-start the game with new investigators + GOO. It's also . Drew that combo once with all random stuff, poor Cthulhu never had a chance. Hopefully won't ever get that combo again, though IH + DOR track makes things harder.

I've managed 5 in my 83 games. Bounces on seals or lucky gate openings/monster surges is required. De Vermiis Mysteriis, Silas Marsh, etc. can both help getting rid of those far away gates.

Walking the Ley Lines improves your chances, at least theoretically (I've never pulled it off myself).

avec said:

I had that recently, sadly in the heat of the moment didn't go for it as I figured I'd not have 4 extra gate trophies. Of course, only after the game recalled the -1 for using DH + IH, would've definately had 3 extra gate trophies.

I won mine by closure by using a Science Building encounter. One of them gives you a chance to close everything.

Knuckles Eki said:

Yes, but the chances of closing every remaining gate and then having enough gate trophies is still pretty low.

There have been a lot of responses on how to win this way: Walking the Ley Lines, Arcane Insight... I've even used De Vermis Mysteriis and that one Mythos card effect, and have used the minus investigator handicap for multiple boards to my advantage... but these are expansion related.

The best way to win by closing all gates is:

• have at least 3 investigators
• have a couple seals down
• take a chance and shoot everyone into a gate!

I've found winning this way to be an increasingly common occurrence, as I find myself dangerously close to the AO awakening or have no real chance to get the seals I need.

Once you go up against Atlach-Nacha, you'll find that not only is this tactic a necessity, but it's harder than usual--seals won't really help!

Very low, you say?

My group (2 investigators) have 2 gate trophies before I encountered the machine. Then I somehow rolled 3 6s to close the 3 remaining gates.

Yeah, get seals on the high-risk areas and leeroy the gates that are still open. If you time it right, the chances are great that they all should close on that same turn. That's how I've got my closing victories in the past.

Seems like it takes a lot of luck, then. It feels fairly risky, as you have no idea usually what is going to come up in the mythos phase. I can't see myself using it unless it's a tactic of desperation, as you are giving a chance for more doom tokens on the locations you close.

Tibs said:

I've gone up against my good buddy Atlachy three times so far. I've won three times so far, by sealing. So i've found this isn't a necessity against him. Of course, we've usually been one mythos card away from a nasty gate break, but he was still a little bit too slow.

Knuckles Eki said:

The key phrase is that you "somehow rolled three 6s." If you had not gotten that encounter (1 chance in 7), or had not rolled three successes (1 in 27), or if there were more gates than that...

Well, my point is that your chances are very low. You got very lucky in this case (1 in 189). In my 50+ games with 2 investigators, I think we won by closing gates only one or two times. Once was by mistake--suddenly we realized that there were no gates left and we had at least 2 trophies.

Tibs said:

Things get even better with more expansions added. I "only" have a 31 card Arkham Encounter deck for each neighborhood, people with KH have a 35. Haven't checked, but don't think any expansion added an extra copy of that encounter.

We've -of 180ish games - had 3 closing victories. All of them have been in games where the Mythos deck has been Base+KiY only. I think it's probably the easiest set up to do it - it focuses the gates much more on the busy and moderate locations, but doesn't add gate bursts to open them up again.

My 5th one was in an all-but-KH game. Nobody had Clues to seal and there were no easy deposits of them anyway, but only 4 gates were open, so just jumped all 4 investigators for the heck of it, total hail mary. First Mythos during the OW jaunts opened a fifth gate and I'm like aww man, the second Mythos caused a monster surge and actually allowed me to close any gate of my choosing, score ! Of course, that still left me with 4 nervous gate closing rolls, but made it.

Dam said:

Aren't there only three explored tokens in the base set? My group plays without the sealing victory condition which makes it quite relavent.

Nalanthi said:

Yeah, and none of the expansions add one. Heh, maybe I should discount that one, since 1 investigator clearly didn't have an explored token, and would get sucked right back in ?

Whoah, no sealing victory? In base game I can see that happening, but with AH + DH + IH there are 20 unstable locations (not all created equal of course, but still 20 that can possibly open) and gate bursts. Closing victories are more of a hail mary (like mine was) than through any planning (barring those Arcane Insight/Mythos deck adjusting encounters).

We've only played two games with IH so far and as I said about our play in another thread:

I play with all IH+KH+DA+AH+KiY and found Kingsport to be kinda meh. Recently we built our own set of tokens for all the stable locations on all three boards (except for the House on the hill track which we are still debating) and that has made it much more interesting. In fact, in the last game we got totally bushwhacked by the placements and had two rifts open on us. We still managed to win the game but only becuase we drew 4 elder signs, the two tomes that remove doom tokens, completed the PS of both the sailor and the rookie cop. Closed gate victory with three turns left (8 seals down but we don't use that victory condition most games, with 6 players it is too easy.) We took out 3 bank (one was Finn) loans over the course of the game.

Before people start yelling about dilution, I've trimmed the deck so that all Hot locations have 12 (10[2]), all the warm locations 7(6[1]) and all the cool locations 2. Plus the various Monster surge, next act, etc gives me a 151 card deck that is,

50.6% Arkham

4% next act.

16.4% Dunnwich

21.7% Inssmouth

6.6% Other.

I keep BGotW and CotDP shuffled out because I can't solve for dilution with them shuffled in. DOR Track is really fun when playing for a closed gate victory.

We normally play with 5-7 players (with 6 being the norm.) Our normal strategy for gate closing involves putting down ~5 seals and then closing down to two gates and putting characters through those gates simultaneously. If another gate opens then we put someone through it and the first two wait and all close on the same turn. If a fourth opens we put someone through that and the first two close (usually seal) immediately on getting out. We average 8 seals down in out closed gate victories. When playing with 6 and the two expansions we sometimes would decided not to deal two monsters on the gates at the start of the game as we had already made the game harder on ourselves. No elder signs or other token removing events in the first 5 turns usually shifts us into epic battle mode. Hastur, Atlach-Nachos etc just go straight to epic battle without sealing. We killed hastur in one rould last time on account of a blessed Joe Diamond with the fight skill that gave him another extra dice for clue tokens + sealing the beasts power. It was sick. We dealt him 23 extra successes (beyond death) in the first round.

Nalanthi said:

Guess you didn't use KW's suggested rule regarding final combat then?

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=5&efcid=1&efidt=148484

(basically, can only spend Clues = number of seals on the board per round)

Dam said:

Actually I had missed that one. I tended to only skim the highlights of the forums and I don't think that was in my highlights. That would be really iffy with the GOO my group tends to call Nacho Breath (Atlach-Natcha or something) that makes all opening burst gates. Also it does not seem compatible with my groups since sealing can't win you the game wich seems to make that rule sort of questionable.

Nalanthi said:

Even if you're not allowing sealing win, you are sealing to stop new gates from opening/buying time from fizzled Mythos, right? So you could easily go up to 5 seals. Seals low-activity spots vs A-N. Irony of the KW's proposal is that after he suggested it, I don't think I've done a final combat since . Not that I really even have more than 5 Clues really, unless an investigator was swimming in them, dove in to get a seal and the GOO woke while s/he was doing the OW jaunt. Most of the time I seem to have max 2 or 3 Clues at the end on my investigators.

The key in many of my no-gate victories has been Find Gate. One-turn close and/or seal anyone?

Of course i always forget to check the Norman Withers' sanity level before diving into yet another gate, forcing the poor guy to drudge through R'yleh on 1/1 stats or something, but still, it works mighty fine. Having Patricia Hathaway scour for community clues on her motorbike or patrol wagon helps getting the damnable things sealed as well as closed too.

If you can scrounge up enough clue tokens this way and have any available other players mash up monsters to keep the count down and buy everyone blessings and such, virtually no GOO stands a chance of breaking through for the final battle.