Okay I'm having a bit of trouble in our games with allies. In our last 25 or so games we have had the chance to gain about 10-15 or so allies. Of those chances one person managed to actually get an ally. So were looking at less than 10% chance of gaining an actual ally when given the chance. This of course is not talking about buying a random ally, I am talking about being offered a specific ally with the cards. Does anyone else have a similar problem, and if so, how do you deal with it. We have been discussing that when offered a specific ally from a card if you succeed in gaining that ally you get it even if its in the box but you discard the top ally card from the ally deck in the game.

Whyllwyst said:

One note, using Ma's Boarding House board text, it isn't buying a random ally, you can look at choose which to buy (okay, if you have expansions, it's still a bit random as to which Allies are there).

I have a 23 card Ally deck currently. Out of that, I make 2 decks of 11 cards (1 Ally goes back to the box), 1 "Ma's" deck for buying allies, which you also draw from if you get a "draw a ally" like Dhol Chants, where the Ally isn't specifically named, the other is a deck you can fish Allies out of IF they are specifically named. When Terror goes up, discard 1 from each deck, but count it as one discard for things like Glaaki, etc. With KH, I think you get 3 11 card decks.

Knowing the combination of expansions you use would be helpful. I'm so (in)famous, I don't need to mention it anymore .

Yeah I have 34 allies, I guess I could do the same thing by making 3 decks, removing 1 from each deck when the terror level raises, Thats a great idea thanks for the input (I have every expansion except Innsmouth atm one more month and I'll have Innsmouth as well).

Whyllwyst said:

My regular group played with that exact house rule for a while, but usually found that it was too good. It can make it too easy to get a lot of Allies, and that can make the whole game too easy. Allies are (in my view) the best way of powering-up an investigator, because you usually can't lose them and they're one of the only ways of really reliably increasing your Fight skill. But the game just doesn't seem to be balanced for every investigator having three or four allies.

I've got the 34 allies like you (all exps, that is) and we put everything together. A big tiny-deck. So everyone is available when there is an encounter. Except if they fled from town when the terror level increased. Which, when it happens, makes that there is not a single ally that leaves, but three at the same time ! it really freaks everyone out, but, yeah, this is a house rule.... Oh come on, just a single tiny one !

Simple solution which doesn't alter the rules much:

• Shuffle the following allies, and draw 11: Base game, used expansions except CotDP, Young Zoog (from KH).
• With CotDP, follow the rules, except that you handle the above 11 allies as the base game's allies.
• When you take a look at the available allies (setup), place markers in the locations where you can find them.

Where you can find the allies [warning: SPOILERS!!!]:

Anna Kaslow - Independence Square (I+)
Duke - Woods (I+)
Eric Colt - The Unnamable (I+)
John Legrasse - Unvisited Isle (I-)
Professor Armitage - Historical Society (I+)
Richard Upton Pickman - Graveyard (I+)
Ruby Standish - Silver Twilight Lodge (I+)
Ryan Dean - Hibb's Roadhouse (I-)
Sir William Brinton - Science Building (I+)
Thomas F. Malone - The Witch House (I-)
Tom "Mountain" Murphy - Black Cave (I+)

(I+: available through Innsmouth encounter => higher probability than I-)

David Packard - Woods
Dr. Ali Kafour - The Unnamable
Erica Carlyle - Hibb's Roadhouse
Erich Weiss - The Witch House
Father Iwanicki - Graveyard
Sarah Danforth - Independence Square
The Messenger - Unvisited Isle

Ammi Pierce - Gardners' Place
Corinna Jones - Cold Spring Glen
Earl Sawyer - Whateley Farm
Professor Rice - Wizard's Hill
Zebulon Whateley - Devil's Hopyard

Asenath Waite - Hall School
Basil Elton - North Point Lighthouse
Charles Dexter - Ward Neil's Curiosity Shop
Dr. Herbert West - Congregational Hospital
Foolishness - Artists' Colony
Granny Orne - St. Erasmus's Home
Professor Morgan - 7th House on the Left
Terrible Old Man - 607 Water St.
Thomas Olney - Rope and Anchor
William Bain - Strange High House in the Mist
Young Zoog - The Dreamland

thecorinthian said:

Are you using all the Arkham encounter cards? If you go all-in, you have 35 per neighborhood and how many Ally encounters, 4, 5 per at max? And you still need to pass the check in some cases, in others have something else (Messenger and Ali Kafour come to mind).

thecorinthian said:

I think that after looking at everything, One of two options stand out.

Option 1, Make 3 - 11 ally decks, one is placed at the side of ma's boarding house and is used as the allies in the game. The other two are placed to the side of the board and only used if a specific Arkham Card directs you to draw a specific ally. One ally is returned to the box and not used. If the terror level raises then discard the top ally from all three decks.

Option 2, Make a single 33 card ally deck returning one ally to the box. Each time the terror level raises simply discard 3 allies from the deck.

Do these rules seem fair or over powered in anyway?

Any rule that makes allies easier to get makes the already sucky politician Connections special skill even suckier--not that anyone probably even cares.

Since I usually just use Mythos cards from one expansion at a time, I randomly select the allies from the expansions I'm using (plus the KIY allies since I do use all the encounter cards) otherwise I play with the ally deck as last written--Only 11 in the game.

On the Other hand, if Charlie is in the game I never know how he's going to be played. I always ask the person who drew him what the rule says and almost always go along with their interpretation. (Someone on this forum once calculated there are 32 possible interpretations for Charlie.)

We just draw 11 random Allies out of all of them (we have all expansions) and that's all you get, end of story. We also only use, generally, two expansions -- one big and one small. This means we only use those mythos, gate, and encounter cards (along with those from the base game), despite having all the investigator cards always in the decks. So if we're not using Dark Pharaoah and the Messenger is in the deck, tough cookies. We buy allies enough that the "inaccessible" ones usually get snatched up anyway.

I think allies should be tough to get on random encounters -- but keep in mind you can look at the Ally deck to see who's there, so you'll know if a particular Ally is present when deciding whether or not to make the appropriate skill check or sacrifice.

Since we've always played the Politician as able to get any Ally, whether in the deck or box, adding some kind of rule that includes all allies would dilute his power. Perhaps he is overpowered when played this way -- but one still has to pay for the allies for the most part and it usually doesn't get too out of hand.

mattherobot said:

I agree on the allies being tough to get from randoms. However, to get them from encounters, you do need to visit unstable locations (except for the allies in "that one" expansion; total BS BTW), possibly risking "a gate and a monster appears". And the alternate rewards are kinda bland in most cases. Since I'm all-in, I have 31 cards for each Arkham neighborhood, if I see one ally encounter in a game, I'm pleased. Part of that is the speed of the game, I still say about 14 Mythos (so 13 turns). You have a limited amount of encounters at each location (and I don't normally even go to a location if it has no Clues), further reduced by shopping, OW trips, gate closing, using Science Building (though William Brinton doesn't exactly make me go "OMG, the best ally ever"), etc. Shopping for allies is very rare for me. I think that's happened once in 20 games since adding IH.

mageith said:

Typical bloody politician : all things to all men.

I used to rigourously draw 11 allies at random, then Rachel would swp them out for her favourites* while I set up the other stuff.

Then I swithed to just letting Rachel choose the 11.

Nowadays I just leave the entire deck out. It makes little difference in practice whether Rachel looks out her favs before or during the game, and the Terror Track has hardly moved in months.

We rarely get allies anyway, although Rachel goes through phases where she becomes obsessed with getting her best friends on her sheet.

When I play solo I will still cut down to 11 if I can be bothered, but I get them so rarely that I've started not bothering to do this.

- Mariana the ex-nun cultist

*Top of these would be these would be Ruby ("sneaky girl", her first ever ally). Foolishness (never was a girl happier than when Rachel first found out there was a cat in the game, suddenly the GOO became priority number 2. The Zoog on the other hand is beyond mention). Theother 9 that get chosen would vary very little, but we rarely got to these as Foolishness & Ruby were always at the front of the queue.

Dam said:

There are enough allies with game-level effects (Basil Elton, William Bain, the Professor who places clues) to make it a bit of a problem if you can go and 'camp' at locations in order to get them all. Really you ought to only have access to one or two of them each game. As long as you know the decks fairly well, it's possible to get allies reasonably efficiently, and in the case of some locations, like North Point Lighthouse, it's well worth doing because the location itself is pretty friendly and there are other great rewards on offer. I'm not saying it's particularly likely to work, but it can end up giving you a big advantage across the course of a whole game if you have access to quite a few more than 11 allies.

thecorinthian said:

Ironically enough, all seem to be DH or KH ones, meaning 1 in 14 shot. But camp out? Seriously, you have time for that ? All my 4 are going full-tilt pretty much every turn, collecting clues, trekking through the OW, shopping, etc. I can't dump out a char just for getting an Ally. Of course, Basil Elton definately doesn't appeal to me, given his final combat ability. As for Prof. Rice, camping at Wizard's Hill really doesn't sound pleasant. You can always get that "a gate and a monster appears" instead (actually, checking the wiki, looks like 2 of those, so 1 in 7 odds for that, but also 2 of the Rice one). Dark Man encounter is of course nice.

Dam said:

Firstly, I'm never playing with more than one investigator myself, and I have very limited influence over what the other players want to do with their investigators... so keeping the group coordinated and on-message is sometimes a lost cause anyway...

Secondly, and I can't stress this enough: Basil FREAKING Elton can win you the game. He can nix the AO's nastiest Sinister Plot, and at worst he can save the whole group from suffering the AO's attack for a turn in the Battle, which means X player-turns gained, where X is the number of players (if you see what I mean). So if you've got five or six players, camping at the Lighthouse to guarantee getting Basil Elton will often allow you more time in the long run than having an extra guy active for a few turns.

Anyway this is drifting wildly off the point. All I meant was that access to a selection of more than 11 allies can make the game too easy (depending of course on who the extra allies are). I think the idea of the restricted ally pool is that many of them are meant to be a bit rubbish and you're only supposed to have access to a few combat ones, a few healing ones, etc etc.

I religiously follow the original 11 allies rule, but I do realize that most encounters (in Arkham town itself) which do give allies tend to have the ally not available, especially after dilution with the CotDP allies, which are almost never easily drawn.

I can only imagine a game with "Ashcan" Pete, Leo Anderson and Roland Banks. You probably never have a chance of drawing an ally again throughout the game unless you're playing Charlie Kane.

So, the only other way to get an ally is Ma's, or hope for the encounter in OW with Mr. Skin (whose introductory speech, in all honesty, is appalling).

thecorinthian said:

For me, Basil's ability only comes into play if I've failed to win the game, so I'm very "meh" on him. It's another reason I don't like Stormin' Norman, WTF is up with a PS that only works after the GOO wakes up? KW himself proposed the anti-ClueShotgunning variant, yet IH added not one but two PS that only work in final combat.

Dam said:

Hmmm ok, but as usual, I think you and I are going to have to agree to disagree about the Final Battle! As far as I'm concerned, if you've got Basil Elton, you probably haven't lost yet.

thecorinthian said:

Of course, that still doesn't account for his overpowerdness. Basil is worth 6 gate trophies/30 toughness in monster trophies (or any 1/5 combination of those) vs Chaugnar Faugn. 1 Basil negates the entire attack, which otherwise would cost each investigator an Ally or 3 Clues. Compare that to the Messenger. Hmm, I can discard Messenger for CF's attack OR I can choose not to and then discard him to prevent from being devoured? Gee, that's mighty powerful mister. Thankfully Quachil Uttaus puts Basil in his place . Oh, and you can get Basil (and other KH Allies) at STABLE locations ! WTF!!! Even if the low-frequency unstable locations don't have "a gate and a monster appears", you can still get "a monster appears" when going Ally fishing (OT: does Science Building have "a monster appears"?) AND the Mythos can open a gate on you. If you've sealed that location, at least you've done some actually work to make that location safer, so you should at less risk when fishing for Allies then (med- to high-frequency can always gate burst, all spots can with A-N). Should be risk vs reward thing, not no risk, great reward.

Dam said:

Not in the base game, but some of the expansions add one.

Does Silver Twilight have one? I've never had a monster appear there (Inner Sanctum excepted) - but on the other hand it's generally visited far less than the Science Building.

cim said:

STL has those, my draw there is usually pay $3 for membership or "a monster appears". I want the Ruby encounter for once . As far as # of encounters STL vs SB, both get almost a guaranteed 1 in my games. Later in the game, SB's text is used instead, except vs Tsat, when SB gathers a lot of dust.

Mariana the Ex-Nun Cultist said:

My 10 year old is a dog nut. He has learned that he can get Duke from teh Woods, so there have been games where he won't move from the woods until he gets the darned dog. Doesn't matter whether he has a stamina 7 character or not, he just has to have "the puppy." Although I think Duke looks more like a rabid feral stray that a puppy.

I'm a cat nut, so I like Foolishness, too. We just leave all the allies in play. It rarely matters, and is much less disappointing when you get the opportunity to draw one only to find that the ally in question is on of 20+ languishing in the box.

Of course, leaving all the allies in makes the game a great deal easier too. But I guess this is one area where people seem to vary greatly on how they do things. I know that if I have all the allies always in, I'm going to be buying them non-stop, and Basil Elton and a few others will be on the top of my list.

Nghtflame7 said:

This is quite a good point, and it's what led my group to use the house rule that all allies are considered to be "available" for the purposes of encounters, but that Ma's Boarding House still only has access to a deck of 11. In practise this is still often a bit too helpful though, since you can easily end up with a handful of fairly random allies without restricting anyone's buying options later.

It's still a bit odd that Allies work in the way they do: they're pretty much the only game component which can be 'unavailable' even if no-one else is using them. Everything else, if a card tells you to go and get it, you go and get it.