A review over at boardgame geek of Inssomouth Horror had the idea of just using one expansion board at a time. But they kept all the items, spells, mythos, encounter cards together. If you pull a gate token that does not match one on the boards being used, put it aside and pull one until you get one that matches.

They said this will reduce setup time and still be fun as too many boards can strain the investigators.

Has anyone played like this? What about drawing an encounter that takes place in a loction that is used on another board?

What does everyone else think?

Ken on Cape said:

We usually play one board expansion and one card expansion at a time. We don't separate any decks prior to play -- they all have all expansions in them. This does mean that we sometimes have to keep drawing to get an encounter for an expansion that is "active" (Other Worlds are the worst for this) but I think it is definitely a superior solution to mixing and separating the decks whenever you want different expansions in. We do separate gate tokens since it doesn't take much time, though.

EDIT: I should note though, that we leave all investigator cards in play no matter what, except for the Exhibit Decks, which are inaccessible if you don't have CotDP in play anyway.

Ken on Cape said:

I never use more than two expansions at a time, and I normally separate out the ecounter decks, but leave items etc. in play. Whether separating out decks is worth it probably depends on how often you play.

yeah I play with all expansions cards, and all otherworlds, I just slide the boards under the main one so that only the otherworld spaces are visible.

dj2.0 said:

BINGO! That's the solution I've been looking for! Dammit, I shock myself with my thickness sometimes... And to think I was an academic biologist before!

I've only got Innsmouth and Dunwich, but I'm definitely of the view of just playing one expansion board at a time while keeping all the other trimmings in effect. Ultimately, all this really means is telling the first player to ignore Mythos cards with an anchor/barn on them to keep things going smoothly. The Arkham board itself is big enough (especially when bringing it round to messy stoner havens) but having two expansion boards on top of that has proven to be extremely annoying.

Plus, it maintains theme: when playing with no new players, I've brought in Herald selection mechanic of rolling a dice before the game starts

4-6: Dunwich Horror

3: Father Dagon

2: Mother Hydra

1: Dagon & Hydra

So, naturally, the board is selected too. It works out very nicely . It Also means that I don't really feel the need to buy any other expansions else it ruins my herald choosing mechanic (though smart money says I'll pick up Black Goat and Yellow King at some point in the next 36 months... Unless I take the plunge into the Living Card Game)

How people with ALL expansions in even manage to shuffle all their decks properly mystifies me!

Mylo said:

My Mythos deck has 207 cards I think (all but KH), and are sleeved. I can still keep it in one hand and hand over hand shuffle with the other no problem. I have a harder time shuffling the small card decks, due to them not being sleeved.

Mylo said:

simple solutions are often overlooked for more complex ones.

Dam said:

how do you handle the OW deck, its impossible to pick mine up let alone shuffle them and I have BIG hands.

dj2.0 said:

OW deck is smaller than the Mythos deck (204 OW cards maxed out with KH included if the AH wiki is to be believed), so if I can handle the Mythos deck, don't know why the OW deck would be a problem. Though I do have to say that shuffling the Mythos deck is easier (for some reason) than the slightly smaller OW deck.

wow thats weird my piles stack differently! or the wiki is in error.

so do you use all OW cards from everything but KH?

dj2.0 said:

All cards from all but KH. Looking at the stats, if you use all, the OW deck should be 204, Mythos deck 229. So mine are OW 172, Mythos 207.

ah i see now, my OW stack is presently including a bunch of other cards after the last game was not struck down .

dj2.0 said:

Nice idea, but how do you deal with mythos cards that have clues and gates showing up on expansion board locations?

I dont often use all the mythos cards, just all of everything else. I like theme, so I usually play with one expansion on the base game, sometimes one large one small. Other times, I will just use some cards from some expansions, mix and match, swapping out a base card that opens a gate at Indie square for one from another expansion for example. Sometimes I build theme mythos decks like say a rumourdeck, in which I add in all rumours from all expansions with gate open locations that match the boards I use, and then I balance this with other cards until I get to or close to the base level frequencies.

You could also simply assign the unused locations a place on the boards you use, for example, match Wizards hill to the Black Cave. This skews things a lot sometimes depending on your allocations but is an easy fix. Another one is simply to ignore everything but the gate opening, and draw another mythos til you find one that opens on the board/s you are using.