How do you fellows differentiate between the set monsters?

Do you put a letter on the backside of the monsters?

Do you color the edge differently by set?

Do you freehand draw the expansion symbol on them?

Do you use dark sorceries to somehow only use the sets you need?

Do you ask Yog-Sothoth to guide your hand so to not picking the expansions you don't use?

Tell us about it.

Knuckles Eki said:

Very small Letter or symbol in black in upper right hand corner of back. They are so small no one has ever commented on them.

. (Dot) for basic

kp for Kingsport

bg for black goat

d for Dunwich Horror

Right now Innsmouth is unmarked but since I had also blackened all the edges of the normal monsters from the other sets, they stand out a lot. I don't recommend blackening the edges of the monsters, however. It looks great on the black bordered but the lighter colors look pretty ragged.

I printed out a sticker sheet with a bunch of expansion symbols. The Innsmouth and Kingsport symbols came out surprisingly close to a circle despite hand-cutting them with an X-Acto knife.

I like quality and realism in my components. Not that it matters; I use all monsters every game.

I'm thinking of adding a D on Dunwich, a K on Kingsport, an I on Innsmouth, a Y on King in Yellow, C on Curse of Tibs and G on the Black Goat, that sound good?

Knuckles Eki said:

KiY only comes with 3 special Spawn monsters used for 1 Blight and Curse has 0 monsters.

Dam said:

Poetic License Dam, how else was knuckles to make his "Curse of Tibs" comment?

- Mariana the ex-nun cultist

Is that the US-version of Curse of the Black Dog (or whatever it was) ?

So only D, K, I and G to be marked? I thought every expansion had monsters (that would be nasty)

Is it really necessary to do so?

All I do is keep deep ones, Mr. Marsh, the Dagon Priest and Wizard Whateley in a separate bag since they're the only ones that seem specific to their boards. They're also pretty easy to spot (I don't have Kingsport). Everything else seems to tie in thematically.

Maybe it's a scenario thing but I don't bother with those...

I have paid extremely close and special attention to how the monsters look from the moment they are punched out of their cardboard. Easy differences are the color ones from pre- and post-Kingsport, so Nightgaunts, Goat Spawn, Shoggoths, even the BG Dark Young are separated out quite easily. But for the black-borders (Cultists and Formless Spawn), I have to go to backside color border orientation. Lay out all the Cultists facedown, find 6 that have a similar border orientation, match that orientation to the Dark Young and Formless Spawn...that's AH. Of what's left, thick top border = DH, barely-there top border = IH, and whatever's left = KH. The rest is just Monster List memorization, or print them out from BGG.

I guess I'm one of the few that actually stores each monster in the set in which it came. If the game has to travel, I carry all four boxes in a very carefully scouted-out overnight bag that fits all four (2 stacked on the left, 2 stacked on the right) sitting flat on the bottom. There is room enough for two more big boxes, or at least 6-8 more small ones, if need be. (Bring it on, FFG.)

I just transcend the situation and use every monster in every game (even masks). The only monsters that are not in the bag are spawns and The Dunwich Horror. Of course if I draw a mask I just set it aside and draw again.

Whyllwyst said:

My OCD wouldn't let that fly. But my organising scheme takes this into account, I have one stack with all the special monsters that are needed GOO/Herald depending (Masks and Spawns). It's easy to fish out what I need in a given game from that stack.