New to AH when & What expansions should I get ?

By morpheus673, in Arkham Horror Second Edition

dj2.0 said:

Terror ALWAYS rises WAY beyond its usual crawl when I play with the Herald...

Ditto for Dagon? Do you get abnormal amounts of monster surges with BGotW Herald? Is the game alive gran_risa.gif ?

Speaking of Dagon, I think he's my #1 "pain in the ass" Herald. That "must spend" regarding Clues is just horrible. At least Glaaki didn't punish you for not having the thing his Servant makes you discard, Dagon adds a doomer. 2 Mythos at the start of the game isn't all that nice either. By comparison, Hydra (from reading the sheet, he hasn't come up yet) looks a very minor nuisance, if that.

yes, ditto for Dagon, although I have spent less time tussling with him, every time the terror has been at least 6. Usually I get as high as 3 or 4. Only one game so far reached 10, and guess which Herald that was?

Hydra is tame compared to Dagon, I agree the clue loss is the most punishing little thing because you have to look at the seals as needing 6 clues to be on the safe side.

YES, the game IS alive, make no mistake.

Ive redecorated. Do you like the new padded wallpaper?

Hi

I played my first 2 games on saturday with a couple of friends.

What can I say but AWESOME I really enjoyed the games.

Our first game was against Azathoth (think its Azathoth awakens and game ends no final fight) WE WON!!! (by sealing gates)

Our victory was by sealing gates. I put our victory down to 2 things all our investigators started with 2+ investigation/Clue tokens. and our intial random draws of item cards and that where lucky and all got pretty decent weapons etc.

Our second game was against cthulu We lost!! (final battle)

Our investigators where re selected and we removed the 3 from the first game so we could see what the other investigators where like.(did same when selecting ancient one so it was all random).

I put this loss in part down to inexperience and in part to investigators other than my investigator (who was a detective cant remember his name) the other characters seemed weaker and losing 1 off stam and sanity hurt. I kept losing halve my items and all my followers to insanity as spent halve my time in arkham asylum. Also we did not start off with anywhere near as many investigation/clue tokens.

We lost the final fight as it was a long drawn out fight and 2 of the investigators had just died twice in a row (including myself) losing majority of their stuff.

Well done on sealing out Azathoth - how close were you to the End of Everything? How much doom to go?

Usually, you can find the time you need to seal out Azathoth. He doesnt adversely affect the game very much, his Doom track is still the largest in the game and you have to be very unlucky to run out of time, unless you are playing with a single investigator (try it!).

Cthulhu is a whole other deal. He puts the crunch on you from before the game even begins, in setup. For characters with a 3 stat, this is a crushing blow, as you discovered. The final battle is the hardest of the 8 base GOOs to get through, bar Azathoth of course. He is still very sleepy though so you can often pull off a seal victory if you dont waste time, and make frequent trips to the science building.

Thats the thing to learn, quickly, I think: your most valuable resource isnt really clues, or weapons. Its time. What good are all the clues and guns in the world, if you only have 1 turn left before Azathoth wakes up and 2 seals to put down? Arkham is a race against time, which is sometimes a pity especially when new, as you want to explore a bit, but you cannot really afford to unless you are looking for those clues or something urgently needed...

dj2.0 said:

Well done on sealing out Azathoth - how close were you to the End of Everything? How much doom to go?

Usually, you can find the time you need to seal out Azathoth. He doesnt adversely affect the game very much, his Doom track is still the largest in the game and you have to be very unlucky to run out of time, unless you are playing with a single investigator (try it!).

Cthulhu is a whole other deal. He puts the crunch on you from before the game even begins, in setup. For characters with a 3 stat, this is a crushing blow, as you discovered. The final battle is the hardest of the 8 base GOOs to get through, bar Azathoth of course. He is still very sleepy though so you can often pull off a seal victory if you dont waste time, and make frequent trips to the science building.

In order

Azathoth - had 2 or 3 doom left to go.

Cthulu - When we died he had most of the top line left on doom track 3 or 4

I will try a single investigator vs azathoth one night this week and let you know how badly I get done over

Science building -- To be honest dont think I made it their in any of my games (too busy closing/sealing gates trying to keep monsters under control stop stupid mythos cards from ruining my game plan which was more or less reactionary).

Basically and probably because I was new I was running about gathering clues when they appeared then charging straight to a gate to close and seal. however my 2 friends both managed to get some elder signs to seal gates and they proved useful. (apart from when cthulu rose and we had 3 sigils and then they where useles).

I found I kept wanting money for sanity repairs (in cthulu game) or for weapons/item shopping. But never really got a lot.

The way I play generally goes in three acts:

act one: scoop up every single clue asap, and send 1 investigator through

act two: spend all clues sealing gates one after the other, preferably more than one at a time, and return to the science building to change gate trophies for clues. Because usually by this time, clues are scarce.

act three: scramble to gather up the final clues and make the 6th seal before the doom track fills. At this point you may have only 1 or 2 gates to seal, and if playing with 3 or 4 some time to explore the other locations or shop for weapons to mop up monsters in the way of gates. Look for clues if needed in the locations that advertise them with clue icons on the board.

This strategy does not work against Tsathogghua, but against all the others, its good. And it falls apart when a gate opens on the science building, or a nasty rumour threatens to turn the tide such as Good Work Undone...

Thanks for advice I will try this.

Quick question

Do you randomly pick your investigators ?

and when you got the asylum/hospital do you shuffel the items you lose back into the relevent decks or are they gone for remainder of game ?

Sorry just thought of these

morpheus673 said:

Thanks for advice I will try this.

Quick question

Do you randomly pick your investigators ?

and when you got the asylum/hospital do you shuffel the items you lose back into the relevent decks or are they gone for remainder of game ?

Sorry just thought of these

I randomly select. Sometimes with newbies I'll let them redraw once or twice. Sometimes for theme I will select non-randomly. Typically I choose investigators randomly though.

morpheus673 said:

and when you got the asylum/hospital do you shuffel the items you lose back into the relevent decks or are they gone for remainder of game ?

Sorry just thought of these

The items are discarded when you go insane or get knocked out (p.16 rulebook) That means they are put in the bottom of their respective decks.

Some cards (allies leaving town due to terror, used elder signs etc) and monsters are "put back in the box". They are gone for the remainder of the game.

Yodlaf said:

Some cards (allies leaving town due to terror, used elder signs etc) and monsters are "put back in the box". They are gone for the remainder of the game.

Well, there is Charlie for Allies...

Ken on Cape said:

Well I just ordered King in Yellow and Insomouth from Amazon, should be here by this time next week.

I'm a little worried about my insomouth order. The tracking status has not updated since the 7th. KiY shipment updated today. They are sending them seprate because coming from two different places.

I will say "all of them", bearing in mind that Curse of the Dark Pharaoh is, in my view, weakest in terms of what it brings to the overall experience. However, they all bring something of interest, especially the BIG THREE.

The insoumouth shipment updated today. I was a little worried because one was being updated daily and other was not heard from for like 4 days. Both will be here tomorrow then I'll have all expansions. cool.gif