Okay, at least it's not a totally worthless piece for a board like the KH one (IMO of course). Vortices = DOR token, which can wake up the GOO. Martial Law is fun to deal with. But there is something the DH board does better and that's actually funnel monsters into the vortices. In DH, each moving monster will hit a vortex in 3 moves max. In IH, I've seen several "love triangles" with monsters bouncing from Church Green to Factory District, only to get a reversed movement symbol and bounce back. Sometimes they even visit Innsmouth Shore and then head back. DH has arrows going one way basically, eventually, regardless of the symbol drawn, monster will hit a vortex. In IH, it requires a Fast monster to make me worry about it, if it appears at Marsh Refinery or EOoD. Devil's Reef and Y'ha are of course, "hi, goodbye" locatons, but even those can be unsuccessful, as was the case in my first IH game, D. Reef opened and spawned a Deep One Hybrid (fitting, huh), who then saw Ashcan Pete over on River Docks and decided to go get itself killed against Pete, instead of hitting the vortex. I think double-arrows would've been better, funneling everything towards Joe Sargent's regardless of the symbol color drawn.

For me, the Church Green's White arrow should be with the Black, Innmouth Shore's Black should be with the white, everything would move smoothly toward Joe Sargent's, problem solved (as far as monsters being reluctant to head toward the vortex).

Or am I being too harsh?

I think a little too harsh. In between hitting seals adding DOR tokens, and the possibility of a couple of monster surges in a row with open gates in Innsmouth, the DOR track can move very quickly. Having guaranteed movement towards the vortices, and with the number of "Place monsters in Innsmouth" mythos cards, some balance needs to be maintained.

I think it's actually quite a good way to do it. While it means the DOR track fills up more slowly - and don't forget there are far more mythos cards that pile monsters into Innsmouth than Dunwich, and nothing (other than Feds Raid and Manhunt from the original game) that removes them, as well as the gate locations being more active than Dunwich, so there are more monsters compared with Dunwich on the board to start with - it also means that getting to Innsmouth's Blue areas (especially those) to fill up the Feds track often involves fighting or sneaking through a lot of monsters, as opposed to a quick run to it that a mostly-clear Innsmouth could allow.

I've had those monsters delay getting the final clues down long enough for the DOR track to go from 3 to 6 a couple of times.

Thing is, out of 12 games, the DOR track has filled once (and that was due to Plans in Motion Rumor) and only once have I filled up the Feds Raid track, when there were 4 DOR token on the other track. I've had as many as 9 monsters in IH (though in that case 50+% were Green/Yellow). Last game there were 8 normal monsters in IH, a pair of Elder Things just kept going back and forth between the 3 streets I mentioned, Zombie and Deep One Hybrid weren't even close to reaching the vortex from Marsh Refinery (which optimally is 4 moves away, but I think realistically at least 6 moves needed, from what I've seen). Most of the time, any monsters from EOoD move once, then the critical move sees them hit White "and they were never heard from again" sorta thing hits.

The "main" part of Innsmouth can possibly allow monsters to do the "back and forth" thing. However, this is made up for in a couple ways:

• The "at sea" vortexes are a mere one space away, so monsters exiting there can move immediately into a vortex; in DH only fast monsters can do this.
• The penalty for maxing the track in DH is that the woken Dunwich Horror helps to awaken the AO. The penalty for maxing the DOR track is that the AO immediately awakens without any further support. Jumps immediately to endgame without one more shot for the investigators to prevent it.
• While investigators can intercept all "dancing" monsters by arriving at Joe's Bus Service, when martial law is declared this can become dangerous.
• Resetting the DOR track in Innsmouth is more dangerous and in a way more costly, and there is no further reward (like when killing the Dunwich Horror).
• There are 32% more cards that open gates in Innsmouth than there are at Dunwich. And fewer unstable locations in Innsmouth means that proportionally more of these opening gates will produce monster surges--a critical danger in Innsmouth!

With so many more dangers in Innsmouth than Dunwich, I appreciate that the investigators even have such a break as to have "waltzing" monsters.

... not to mention that renting a ship at Falcon Point costs $2, and returning from there is kind of fiddly.

Tibs said:

I don't want to ask...Dam, what composition of decks are you using? AH-IH, or everything?

Dam said:

Too many expansions in play. Dilution is in effect. If the DOR is only going to close when gates are prevented, it will seldom cause the Deep Ones to rise. I've played close to 20 games with IH only and I've needed to call in the Feds nearly every game and been too late a few times too. Probably only twice did I called in the Feds not needing it.

Your rule suggestion at the beginning would be helpful if FFG had playtested IH with all the expansions which they clearly have not but would be way too extreme when playing with only IH where there's more gates in Innsmouth especially on the island where a monster can be summoned and into the vortex on the same turn.

Perhaps your rule can go into the upcoming "ALL EXPANSIONS VARIANT" that so many have called for.

If I know Dam, and I think I do, it's everything minus KH.

I'm playing just IH mythos cards and encounters, with items from all of the small sets and the three multicolored OW encounters from DP. I use three investigators. The game is absolutely kicking my ass. I haven't won a game in quite a while. A lot of it can be chalked up to unfortunate timing or horrible dice rolls, but I am in need of analyzing my strategy, to see what I can do. I could make it easier by adding another investigator or adding a small expansion's mythos cards (to dilute Innsmouth), but at this point I feel that's the wimpy way out.

My problems mostly seem to stem from stacking up doom. I seem to draw the double-doom rumours often, and frequently get the three more common gates in Innsmouth. If one or two rare gates open in Arkham, that's going to be it for doom in most cases. Add some bad luck, and I can't seem to get many seals down to add to the DOR track anyway. I've only called the Feds in a few games. In one hideous game, I drew Relentless Doom early, then got 3-4 monster surges before the environment went away. Into No One Can Help You Now.

Even Patrice hasn't helped. Out of three games she's been in, she was twice beaten by Rhan-Tegoth, and once the first player against Quachil Uttaus. It didn't help that in that game my girlfriend played her, and she was absolutely terrified of the dust cards. Not optimal circumstances for her, of course, but still.

Any words of advice for a frustrated player? I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

I concur with the Dilution assessment. I've played 12 games with just IH + AH for Mythos, and in all but three the DOR was a pain. The monsters definitely formed an obstruction, to the point where my latest strategy has been to pre seed the feds track with all but on clue (and that need to be green) so that I can hustle somone over to finish it off when needed.

I didn't want to just come out and say it...but the three above me did...so there it is. Dam, the only reason I brought it up is because, around here, you have clout. We grognards all know who you are. But some of the newer players might not. And when you make blanket statements about an expansion and its problems WITHOUT full disclosure on how you play the game, you invite misunderstanding.

I gave up on defending Kingsport because so many people agreed with you; I'm not gonna let you walk all over Innsmouth when you're not even giving it a chance to beat you up.

flamethrower49 said:

Innsmouth is FFG's best expansion to date when played with only the base game. I also have a losing percentage when played that way (ain't it great!. Emily doesn't think so.) Patrice is 2-0 vs. Innsmouth only, however. Dust guy is the only Innsmouth GOO I've never lost to.

We lost our first several games playing with only 3 investigators I'm probably 1-3. With four investigators, I may actually having a winning percentage. So I can't help you. I had the same experience with 3 investigators. So either start wimping or embrace your defeats. I"ve also only used the monsters from the base game and IH except I added the Knoph-Keh (for one of the GOOS). It appears you are using all the monsters? If so, you probably have more monsters sitting on the Innsmouth gates and the DOR track isn't as active since there is probably a higher percentage of non-moving monsters.

Rare gates! Yep that's a killer. Two of them and you better start writing your will and putting it in a time capsule for a few hundred thousand years down the road.

In short, you aren't doing anything wrong (except maybe only 3 investigators). You're playing like FFG intended and its great!

flamethrower49 said:

If you ask me, you're not doing anything "wrong". In recent days, my win ratio has plummetted as yours has. Innsmouth is just a bully that's too evil to recognize that you're trying to stand up to it. In all honesty, I think you've just had a really long bad luck streak; I would suggest calling the Cubs or the Red Sox, and ask them how they deal(t) with it.

As far as I can tell, no strategy is foolproof, but the old ways still mostly work. I try to lay down a few early Clues on the Fed Track for a rainy day. I find myself going into supposedly-Clue-heavy Locations a lot more than I used to (I think I'm wearing out my Newspaper space). I no longer fear devouring; it is now often just another strategy (suicide run on Devil Reef seal).

But, in the greater scheme, isn't that what we've all been pushing for all this time? FFG's been putting up with our crap since the beginning. Before the base game was even dry, we were already complaining it was too easy. They gave us Dunwich; we said, "Done. So what's next?" They gave us Kingsport; we laughed and threw spitwads. So here's Innsmouth. Who's laughing now?

At the end of the day, the only advice that works is, "Enjoy losing, because it's the journey that matters."

P.S. Your Patrice experience mirrors my own. Maybe that's why I don't find her broken.

jgt7771 said:

I'm still fighting on the front lines for Kingsport. Come aid the noble cause, brutherr!

I'll always defend Kingsport. It does have its theme, rules, and balance issues, and it's better when you house-rule the rifts only to open in Kingsport and never in other boards, but if someone had to choose between Kingsport or Black Goat or Dark Pharaoh, I'd always persuade them towards Kingsport. If they were looking for a "first" expansion, I would favor Kingsport over Innsmouth even.

mageith said:

I'm glad I'm not the only one with this problem. I thought it was just me. No, I'm thrilled to be losing again, it's just that I like to win one occasionally. (Ha! Tell that to Innsmouth.)

I don't own Dunwich or Kingsport yet, so my monster cup actually consists of Base + IH + BG. Only I took out the extra Dark Youngs, so my monster cup is even more mobile, if anything. Thanks, Dark Druid.

Also, I love Quachil Uttaus. He is amazing. He turns investigators into what the should be. Meaningless specks of dust!

Tibs said:

"...theme, rules, and balance issues" Other than that a great expansion! Your rifts suggestion makes it a little more thematic (or at least it has more integrity) but you need to to count Kingsport monsters in the monster limits then otherwise you've made it easier.

I wouldn't. You'd bore the new players to death with Kingsport. It's better than Black Goat which is either a non issue (without herald), except fo the Gate Bursts or too terrible (with full herald) and doesn't give any reason to join the Cult which is frustrating.

At least with CotDP you have a neat thematic expansion with a few (I say) minor wording problems that can easily be worked out in play. On the other hand with Curse of the Dark Pharaoh the game is only marginally more difficult. With the herald, it's confusing as all heck.

I'd say either Innsmouth Horror or Dunwich Horror is clearly the first expansion to get. Both increase the difficulty of the game significantly but still leave it winable. I'd still go with Dunwich because its easier than Innsmouth, but I think Innsmouth actually meets the expectation of AH players in that it creates a 50/50 or even 45/55 (maybe less if not played fully cooperatively) game or pretty close to that when played with only base game. Dunwich was probably 55/45 when not diluted. Both stick close to theme, IMO.

Sorry for being pulled of the main reason for this post, however. Though its sort of related. If the game is played with only one expansion at a time, it's a better game and it was playtested that way.

flamethrower49 said:

So much for that theory. I guess my experience is just different. Maybe you spend "too much" time in Innsmouth decreasing the monster population there. I just plan on calling in the feds and lay down the clues for the moment. I usually do it on the fourth DOR token and start up there when the third one is laid. It's easy to get two in the same turn. The DORs beat me several times in the first games and so I'm jumpy. I've never had to call in the Feds twice, so just get it done and don't worry about it again.

I don't have much difficulty with the track at the moment. As with Dam, the only vortex that sees movement is the Devil Reef one. That's made up for, of course, by how so very brutal it is. Monsters flooding the streets of Innsmouth aren't very good for getting around, of course.

flamethrower49 said:

Just curious. How do you place monsters from monster surges? The rules allow the first player to choose if some are to go to the Outskirts. I always place randomly. Maybe I should quit that.

As for getting around Innsmouth: Usually we send the best sneakers/evaders up there anyway because of Martial Law. So that works doubly well for getting around monster too. It also works for drawing extra cards in the Innsmouth jail for finding the escape tunnel that the fishmen can't seem to block. One mechanism to rule them all.

mageith said:

...that sounds wrong. Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but noone has the ability to choose anything about the Outskirts (normally). It either happens, or it doesn't.

A monster is to be drawn for every gate or every player (whichever is greater). I'm sure you got that. First Player chooses a Gate, then draws a monster for it, starting with the Mythos Card gate drawn. Any monster drawn for an Arkham Gate is checked against the limit...blah blah blah...Outskirts. I'm sure you know that too. Any monster drawn for a non-Arkham-board Gate is placed. I can't think of how there can be an Innsmouth Gate and a monster not be drawn for it.

2 open Innsmouth Gates, 1 open Arkham Gate (also the one drawn on Mythos), 4 Investigators, one below Monster Limit: 1 monster to Arkham, 1 to each Innsmouth, 1 monster has to go back to the starting surge gate in Arkham but can't, so goes to Outskirts.

1 open Innsmouth Gate, 1 open Arkham Gate (also the one drawn on Mythos), 4 Investigators, one below Monster Limit: 1 monster to Arkham, 1 to Innsmouth, 1 monster in Arkham but can't, so goes to Outskirts, 1 monster to Innsmouth. (Spread evenly.)

2 open Innsmouth Gates, 4 open Arkham Gates (one of them drawn on Mythos), 4 Investgators, one below the Monster Limit: 1 monster to surge Gate in Arkham, 2 to each Innsmouth, and all of the other 3 can't be placed on their Arkham Gates, so all three go to Outskirts.

Something about those above situations you disagree with...but I don't know what it is, and I know I'm doing it right.

I do exactly what jgt does.

jgt, in your second scenario you say that the last monster should go on the Innsmouth gate after one each has been placed on the Arkham and Innsmouth gates, and one monster has gone to the outskirts. When the rules say that no gates should receive more monsters than the surging gate, does "receive monsters" mean monsters attributed to that gate (whether or not they go there or to the outskirts) or monsters remaining there? The other scenario I could see there is that the second monster going to Innsmouth would go in the outskirts too. Not sure though, these kinds of scenarios don't up very often.

Wow, this ballooned nicely.

Yeah, everything but KH as regulars know. Dilution might be part of the problem, not all of it. Like in the last game, Mythos dropped 2 monsters to Factory District, both happened to be an Elder Thing. Next turn they move to Innsmouth Shore and I'm looking at the IH board kinda iffy, like do I need to move someone there or not. The next move the ETs make (can't recall if it was the following turn or the one after that), the stupid things just move back to Factory District and I'm like, well, no need to worry about sending someone to deal with them (as they were know minimum of 3 moves away from the vortex again). If there had been a black/white from Innsmouth Shore to Joe Sargent's, would've had to redirected someone to deal with 2 Elder Things.

Monster surges are another thing. Even if D. Reef, EOoD and Marsh Refinery are already open, they'll get 1 monster each at "best" and only the D. Reef one has the real likelyhood of actually going to the vortex (assuming it's not a Blue/Green/Yellow, which happens often). There is something fishy going on if you can have 8 monsters in IH and not having to worry about them going to the vortex off Joe Sargent's for several turns (mainly because of the criss-crossing arrows that allow back and forthness). I know I'd never dare leave 8 monsters in DH or the Horror would guaranteed wake up (unless they all suddenly appeared toward the end). Taking out the Horror vs filling the Fed Raid track, don't know which is harder.

Dam said:

With just base+IH, you're going to get an Innsmouth gate ~1 in every 3 cards. With those three open, that means a monster surge dropping an extra three monsters into Innsmouth every few turns. If you get tied up with something in Arkham or Other Worlds, this can get out of hand. We've had fifteen or so monsters in Innsmouth before - and sure, they weren't going into the vortices much - we even got lucky with yellow/green/blue ones on Devil Reef - but we'd never have been able to get someone through them to clear the DOR track, which meant trying to get six seals down before we had three more gate bounces or vortex entries.

We were nowhere near, naturally...

I wouldn't intentionally leave 8 monsters in Dunwich, no. On the other hand, I'm not sure Dunwich would generally get 8 monsters in the first place. It has fewer active gates, and the locals, while occasionally suspicious, aren't out to kill you. If you're going for monster fighting in Dunwich, you don't need Sneak. In Innsmouth, you do - which rules out some investigators immediately, and slows some others down a lot.

For that matter, we did once have a game where Dunwich just got out of hand. The Dunwich Horror awoke, and started adding doom tokens occasionally. What actually ended it was not the Dunwich Horror - the single extra doom token it added was not a big deal - but the terror level hitting ten from all the monsters diving through the Dunwich vortices. That's happened once. Innsmouth seems to get similarly out of hand every few games.

(Now, we play with just 2 Investigators, which means games with other boards are always a desperate race to seal gates before absolutely everything piles on us, but our experience with the few 4 Investigator games we've had has been similar.)

cim said:

Well, D. Reef and EOoD are the big ones from IH, Marsh Refinery is low to middlin and Y'ha is almost as rare as a Bank Loan . With base + IH, your chances of getting an ES early are greatly increased, thus you can slap down a seal or two on D. Reef and EOoD, which severely cuts down on the monster ratio. For me DOR track is infinately more manageable due the fact that you can actually clear it with modest effort (esp. if you lay down those early Clues to cut down on the required number for later) than the doom track, which has been my main concern with GOOs. Doom tokens are a lot harder to remove than slapping Clues on the Fed track (exceptions happen of course). Haven't been close to getting too many gates open, I think 5 is topping things for the moment (with 8 being the limit). I learned from the games with the BGotW Herald that I need to start attacking gates earlier, if possible. If I have Clues, tackle a high-frequency one, if not, jump in one of the low-ones, as early as turn 2 if able.