Hello , i have played a buttload of games of eldritch horror since release,

and adding in the expansions as they became available .

Every single time i played i have noticed the game invariably took 5+ hours to complete , setup not included .

(we`ve also had a good amount of games take more time.)

Despite the rules being more streamlined and a lot simpler to understand than AH ,

the game simply takes its time to go to completion.

We always read the encounter cards description as well as any other event such as mythos (by description i mean flavor text mainly, in addition to the rules bit)

or for a particularly important fight , one of us will give a short description on the leadup to the fight.

We are Dutch speakers who regularly play english boardgames , like Battlestar Galactica in about 3 to 4 hours max playtime ,

but always seem to have the game take its sweet time in EH.

Those of us that arent as fluid in english just occasionally read a card in its original english text straight from the card,without translating it.

Translating doesnt particularly increase playtime , in my experience.

We take our turns in order , which is contrary to one suggestion i recently heard to speed up the game .

I think this is according to the rules as normal.

We usually get several rumors in our game , which almost always are near mandatory ..

lose the game types

we always end up with rather close games when we win , and most of the time when we lose..

usually it comes down to mythos deck depletion being a factor in winning or losing..

we almost never lose to the doom track , even against azathoth...

Do other people have the same experience?

We also play 4 investigators, but only 2 max 3 players around the table. Time is considerably shorter, tho: it's about 3 hours, but consider that we take notes during the games for statistics and so on, so we're slower also because of this.

Dunno. I noticed EH has some mental traps: things that force you to go along path leading far from victory. Sometimes it's more a "let's take this hit, and go straigth on the mystery" game. Possibly, if you're having problems with the Mythos deck, you can go with staged difficulty removing (some of) the hard cards? In this way you could possibly enjoy the experience more?

Julia is an ace player, so I'd take her numbers and add a bit.

To be honest, I've had games of EH that take 5+ hours, but it really depends on who the Ancient One is. Some inherently take longer in my experience (looking at Yig here). But really, it just takes me a while to decide the best course of action. Same with those I play with. I'm a very cautious player and try to look at things from all angles before making my moves.

We also play 4 investigators, but only 2 max 3 players around the table. Time is considerably shorter, tho: it's about 3 hours, but consider that we take notes during the games for statistics and so on, so we're slower also because of this.

Dunno. I noticed EH has some mental traps: things that force you to go along path leading far from victory. Sometimes it's more a "let's take this hit, and go straigth on the mystery" game. Possibly, if you're having problems with the Mythos deck, you can go with staged difficulty removing (some of) the hard cards? In this way you could possibly enjoy the experience more?

yes , we do end up chasing a lot of the rumor cards, although usually it is because of the fact that they are lose the game otherwise situations,

or very similar to losing the game .(doom track to 0 , 7 damage to all investigators and others)

If we were to be in a position that there were no rumors that we had to chase , i think that just maybe it would make the game really easy.

Because like i said, there have been a bit too few instances where the doom track really got to be a problem .

And the only other ways to lose is through rumors and their ilk or simple mythos deck depletion.

I have started using the optional staging rule in the MoM expansion since it came out

and changed it so that the stage 1 has easys majority + a few normal, stage 2 has them all, but normal majority,

and stage 3 has a few normal + the hard in the majority.

Also , about removing hard cards, some of those are a breeze compared to some normals ,

which also contain a few doozies with lose the game situations....

Also , i am not looking for an easy game , but a challenging game where it is usually a close call between victory and defeat,

which EH does deliver , although sadly it is always the only game played in an entire games day ...

Out of curiosity: do you metagame on the reckoning, right?

I tend to play with 4 investigators/players, and we can usually fly through a game in 1-2 hours. Granted we don't take notes and statistics like Julia, my group just has probably a cumulative time of 4,000+ hours of Arkham Horror experience that helps to push through hard situations and know when to take the largest hit possible to go for a victory. I think the longest game I have personally played was me solo with 4 investigators and it took about 3 hours.

a sample turn ;

first group discussion of what to do ,

we usually have one less experienced player , though theyre usually open to suggestions,

we come up with a plan , including who is the lead investigator ,and each does his thing .

We usually have 3 players , occasionally 4 .

Then the encounter phase , everyone has their encounter , some monster fights are described .

dice pool sometimes needs rerolling for dice pools larger than 4 .

All encounters are described , always , loosely translated into dutch mostly, or straigth up read in english for those less fluent.

the mythos phase gets resolved , flavor text always described , then the main effect of the card gets resolved.

rince , repeat.

I do not think we metagame the mythos deck , how do you mean?

From your previous comments here , i gleaned that maybe the different colors have different effects like blue is always rumor,

which i already knew, but do you mean green is always monster surge and yellow always reckoning or something like that?

in that case we do not metagame by checking the stages on the AO and counting how many blues, or greens or something like that.

We just count on every 2d or 3d turn a reckoning , and know it is shuffled in stages if that is what you mean .

also in our experience , the really enforced rumors get drawn at the beginning or middle of the game .

So for lose the game types , we´re kinda having to do them anyway, and for things like 7 damage ,

i dunno if we really can let those slide since it usually means draw 3-4 new investigators and lose time picking up their stuff.

As i said , we also rarely lose bc of the doom track , sometimes due to rumor, and a lot due to depletion.

Metagaming the Mythos deck: the deck it's divided into subdecks, each containing X Reckonings, Y Surges, Z Rumors. By knowing the deck composition, you know that in N turns you'll have to face THIS number of reckonings (advancing rumors), so that, by knowing that you can decide when leave the Rumor alone, or work on it. Let's say I have a rumor that will make the game end in 3 reckonings and I know that in the next 6 Mythos I'll have exactly two reckonings, I can simply ignore the rumor despite the insta-defeat penalty.

Also, how much time do you invest on planning? We usually decide strategy in 30 seconds or so, so that possibly this is the time majorly impacting your games

We are not aware of which color of cards contain the reckonings, other than its usually not blue.

no, we do not tend to heed the subdeck part by counting or remembering the number of cards in each subdeck either,

nor do we usually keep tracking the turn number with plenty of rumors laying on the board, but we do take a count when the cards are running low.

Also it could it be that the reckonings are divided among the green and yellow cards?

bc last game v chtulhu , with a bad starting rumor , and 2 other bad rumors drawn ,

we experienced probably the highest nr of reckonings drawn yet.

therefore , our first rule of thumb is to go with the fact that time may be up faster than we realize,

since even when divided into subdecks, Reckonings can come quite quickly after another .

Also if a bad rumor start out in the early to midgame , we might be correct in assuming they might go off eventually.

-as for planning , maybe a moderate amount of planning in about 2 to 3 minutes, sometimes longer ,

although when continuing a previous plan near immediate?

I`ll have to talk to my friends about this, to get their take on the planning time.

Do you guys like to give descriptions of the flavor text (encounters too) or do you each read your own card quickly and silently?

for us its part of the fun reading the card to one another , or having it read to us.

2-3 hours seems ridiculously fast for EH , and sounds to me like a quick win, or accidental loss.

Reckonings are always yellow, and Surges are always green, so that it's easy to focus on that. Cthulhu's difficult because it has 2 rumors in the first four cards, and the other two are Reckonings, so, you're always at risk of failing very soon the rumors.

As for flavor: we never read the flavor of the Mythos, but we like reading all the encounters, without skimmin any part of it.

As for the game time: a game lasts usually 10-12 Mythos, so that playing in 180 minutes implies you resolve one turn in 15-18 minutes. Not so quick, I think (consider I usually play Arkham Horror in less than 90 minutes)

Anyhoo, keeping count of the cards in the Mythos deck is really an important part of the game (otherwise the Pact with Eibon card would not be so devastating for balance), so possibly, you could consider looking at this to be more certain of avoiding traps of the game

We always read the flavor text when we play, but we also plan ahead and know what is about to come up like Julia was talking about. Usually we will have one person that just runs around closing gates, one that collects clues, one that defeats monsters, and a Charlie Kane that purchases and distributes items. It turns into more of a machine when we each have our roles, but everything is usually down to the wire when we do play.