You ever have one of those Arkham sessions in which you can only stare in disbelief at the game's blatant contempt for the laws of probability? Today we had what seemed like a surefire win against Hastur. We were using all four boards, and we already had one gate trophy. There were two other gates open and Wendy and Ursual had just come out of them. All they had to do was close both gaes, and victory would be ours! Wendy closed hers using one of the eight clue tokens she had. She no longer had enough to seal, but that didn't matter if Ursula could just close her gate.

She had two dice to close with, plus an additional eight dice for her clue tokens, and she couldn't get one, single success! Needkess to say things went steadily downhill after that and we ended up failing the Disturbing the Dead Rumor and facing Hastur cursed, with a -10 modifier. We didn't even bother rolling it out.

Does anyone else have similar tales to share, in which you lost despite all of the odds being on your side?

Once Finn (at full strength) lost to a cultist. He failed six combat checks in a row. Granted, his Fight was 1, so he only got to roll two dice per check. But it was still pretty mind numbing.

Did you use the Clues one at a time with Ursula? I always shudder when I spend Clues individually instead of in lumps. I know the odds are the same, but I have this picture in my head that if I spend 5 Clues individually, I'm lucky to get 1 success, but if I spend them all at once and roll the 5 dice together, I regularly get 2 successes.

Therte is no such thing as a sure thing in AH, thats one reason i keep playing. You had a nasty surprise! Things like that happen almost every game to me

@ dam: yes I have the same experience, it really takes guts to roll a handful at once sometimes but single clue rolls are almost always more painful in the end.

Dam said:

Quoted for truth.

Dam said:

The rulebook says you have to spend clues one at a time. Page 13 of the main rules.

Ken on Cape said:

I spend Clues one at the time, until I've spent say 5 Clues, then roll .

Solan said:

I had two games in a row where my second draw was the Yha Nethlei gate that removes all clues from the board (my last two game). More proof that there is a God. An evil evil God.

Yesterday buddy of mine rolled 0 sucesses on 8 dices. And he needed only one. Nasty fact was that we really needed that roll. After that we all just gave up.

Adrian said:

Sorry, my bad odds have beaten your bad odds ;') and once I blew a roll with 13 or 14 dice, I don't remember the exact number— I do remember screaming and cursing at the board.

And Finn failing six combat check in a row, with two dice each, means he blew a roll with 12 dice. As Sol Star might say, 99.23% ain't 100.

My personal "best" is 10 out of 11 Blessed dice failed .

Dam said:

Ah, but you got one success ;')

I suppose all this should be enhancing my appreciation for George "Sure Thing" Barnaby, but it's not.

Yeah, I always feel like I have horrible luck with single-die rolls. They just seem to go against me. And I suppose they do, 66.7% of the time, or so. But I don't like it, anyway. I would be much more comfortable with spending clues in groups. Say I have three spare clues and have to get another success, I would much rather roll three dice together than separate.

George has never helped, either. Last game I played him in, he didn't actually pick up more than one or two clues the whole game, he was so busy. Before that, I've never seen a situation where spending a spare clue would help me. I always roll below a four, or something similar.

My personal best is failing a 23-die check.

Tibs said:

Topper

Oops, forgot to mention: I failed a 23-die check that required one success to pass.

Actually, from the title of this thread, I thought it was about the new Arkham Pirates Expansion being announced at GenCon.

Tibs, what check was this that you needed one success to pass on twenty-three dice? The benefit to passing or cost of failing must have been enormous for you to spend that many Clue tokens. How did you have that many to spend in the first place? Wait, Patrice was in the game, right, and Joe Diamond was the one making the check?

No, pirates go "Arrrr!"; frustrated Arkham players go "Argh!".

Yes, we always spend Clue tokens one at a time, unless we're blowing a bunch in Final Battle.

Update: Well, after the disaster against Hastur we went up against Glaaki, who of course trounced us easily in spite of the two Elder Signs we had as starting equipment. Then my brother arrived home.

Last time Dad and I were playing with bro, we had an incredible winning streak of about twelve games in a row, the only loss being to Zhar. It was that streak which convinced me to stop using Guardians, start using Heralds, and ban Patrice forever. Since then our win percentage has naturally cratered, but my brother got a big head from our earlier victories. So when we drew the AO and he got Ithaqua, he wanted to redraw because Ithaqua was boring and too easy.

He drew Quachil Uttaus, and we were defeated by him for the first time ever, with the Deep One Rising track filling right before we would have sealed the sixth gate. Next game we had Cthuga, and suffered the same "lose at the last possible moment" tragedy. Then it was Nyogtha, and not only did the Deep One Rising track again fill at literally the last opportunity, but we reduced Nyogtha to only one Doom token before we were wiped out.

As my brother points out, we almost certainly would have won the Quachil Uttaus and Nyogtha games if not for our use of Mother Hydra. Her starting token on the Deep One Rising track is what doomed us, and I would encourage anyone who enjoys Innsmouth to give Mother Hyrda a few tries as a Herald. She's not total destroyer like Black Goat or Ghroth, but she has more of an effect than you might think and definitely adds an extra edge of threat to Innsmouth.

Finally today we had a Cthulhu game which wasn't even close; he annihilated us. Now my bro is talking about putting in Hypnos and Patrice .

Solan said:

It might have been a combat check, where you keep rolling again and again until you pass or get knocked unconscious.

No, it was one check. It was clearly something so important that I needed to spend a load of clues to do it. And with that many dice the investigator probably had a skill that granted two dice per clue. It was against Azathoth and it was like 1 in the morning, so that failed check effectively cost us the game.

Just can't remember what exactly.