Yesterday after work I had a little time to play before dinner so I decided to start a solo game. I've recently been playing with AH, KH and IH. Eihort was the AO and my 4 investigator team was Luke, Min Thi Phan, Hank and Finn. All drawn randomly. I thought it was a pretty strong team and anticipated getting a win. Little did I realize that the world would end in 7 turns!

All investigators started out with decent items. Luke had a Yithian rifle, Mihn had a weapon and Eltdown Shards to complement her KiY tome. Hank had a derringer, and had picked up a carbine and a tommy gun in an early encounter. Finn was weaponless, but had a motorcycle and was stealthing his way around the board with virtual impunity. Starting mythos left me with a gate on STL and a couple monsters roaming the streets.

On turn one, Lukes otherworld encounter sent him LiTaS. Boogers. Hank dispateched a cultist which had moved from the gate, and Finn whacked a cultist and another easy monster in the streets with the help of his +1 fight skill. Did I forget to mention that? Luke had the other +1 fight. Mihn had +1 sneak adn Hank had -1 Max Sanity, exhaust instead of a clue. End of turn one a gate opens on the science building (what's with these infrequent location gate openings) and a couple of monsters hopped into the streets.

Turn two, Mihn succesfully read the Eltdown shards to give us an edge on the doom track, Hank whacked a couple of monsters and Finn killed his third of the game. PS passed on turn 2! Woo Hoo! Luke cooled is heels. Another gate opens, I forget whether it was Independence Sq or Witch House.

Turn three, Mihn and Hank are grabbing clues off the board, Finn decides it might be fun to visit Kingsport and Luke drops into one of the gates. Luke's OW encounter? LiTaS! Well, at least he's picking up clues in his otherwordly travels. Dreams are better than reality for him anyway. Anothre gate opens and a relatively benign environment starts. Hmmm, four gates are open and there is no one in position to start closing. Yuck.

By turn the end of 6, we had six gates open, Luke was once again prepared to exit the OW, and had picked up 5 clues from his travels, so he could seal. Mihn also had plenty of clues due to reading KiY, and two tokens on her PS. Woo Hoo! I think there was a monster surge in there so there were plenty of monsters roaming the board, but my boy Hank was making quick work of them with his rather significant personal arsenal. A rumor had opened which required an investigator to discard a blessing and a skill to pass. Hank got himself blessed by selling off some monster trophies and shut down the rumor with that and his -1 Max sanity skill. Everybody gets back to max sanity and stamina (can't remember the name of the rumor.)

Well after that Luke just sat on his gate trying turn after turn to close the darned thing with no success! Mihn was clue heavy, but had an encounter that sucked her into Innsmouth to EOoD and she got stuck over there because she had spent her money.Hank and Finn were trying to get into gates to close ANYTHING. By turn 8, we had 7 gates, Eihort woke up and I decided to call it a day. I was so demoralized that I didn't even want to bother with the final battle. Like Dam, I consider them a draw anyway. I usually discard the AO and the investigators and draw from ones I haven't used recently, but this time I figured I'd just reset the board and try the same combo again. Shucks, I managed to lose in about 40 minutes. I guess tonight after work we'll see if the gang has better luck against Eihort.

I know the big mistake was letting Finn vacation in Kingsport early in the game when he could have been closing. The seven different gate locations in 8 turns really hammered me, though. I peeked at the next few cards in the deck after Eihort woke up, and in the next two turns I would have had 2 additional gates anyway. At the end of the game I had gates on STL, Historical Society, Science Building, Witch House, Independence Square, EOoD (the last one to open, which is why Mohn was no help over in IH) and the Unameable. The next two were going to pop Devils reef and the Woods! Criminey! The terror track and the DOR tracks never budged the whole game. Finn and Hank each had but a single brood token and the doom track was on 6 for cryin out loud!

Look on the bright side, at least those early Brood tokens for killing Cultists didn't come back to bite you in the ass .

Arkham Horror: no one here gets out alive!

Interesting game, and it raises an interesting question - whats the earliest unplanned awakening of the ancient one you have come across in your games? Im sure I remember once I drew an encounter whose consequence of failure was "the ancient one immediately awakens"...

I've heard of awakening the AO during the pre-game, in the scenario where you could take corruptions for clues. Needless to say, that didn't really work, since you need monster trophies to survive Shub-Niggurath's Start of Battle.

Personally, the greatest injustice done to me on that front was during a game against Zhar, Dagon and Hydra. The DOR track started at two, and the first gate opened at Devil Reef. After four mythos cards, at the end of the second turn, Zhar woke up due to the meddling of the nefarious Deep Ones. I don't remember exactly the sequence of events, but I'm pretty sure the mythos card that adds one token to the DOR track was involved. There was hardly even enough time to get up to Innsmouth, let alone clear the track or think about sealing gates. That was probably my harshest loss.

I suppose I was lucky I didn't roll poorly with Zhar. He could have risen from his slumber after the first turn, or, indeed, during the pre-game. How unforgiving. If that game were an RPG campaign, then the GM didn't want to play in the first place.

I restarted last night but only had time for three turns. Pre-game mythos card was one that returned all investigators in OW to Arkham, so Luke was out and closed a gate before the first turn was over. Hank was stomping the monsters that appeared pretty easily and Luke had jumped back into another gate. Just before I quit for dinner, the mythos card was ...Closed Mouths. All the clues disappeared! Most disappointing!

Maybe I'll just try to close all gates instead of sealing since we started with an early closing and are a little ahead of the gate.

Clueless in Arkham at turn 3, oh my...Best hedge your bets and seal 2 or 3, just in case, they can only help, unless you use Innsmouth.

dj2.0 said:

Using Innsmouth and Kingsport. I'll probably try to seal a couple. Right now, only Min has the clues to seal, although Luke will have enough after his travels in the OW when he goes back for his third gate closure.

Good luck! I take it you are not worried abour open rifts and ignoring Innsmouth hoping it goes away?

dj2.0 said:

As we say here in the lovely Dept of Defense, hope is not a strategy. In AH, hope is not even an option.

I'll ignore the rifts. I can't ignore Innsmouth because there is alrady a gate at Ybdathribble (still can't remember how to spell the darned thing) that I need to deal with most skosh. It has already dumped two monsters into the riftbopping the DOR track to 2 by turn 3. Frankly, it just isn't looking good for the home team.The AO is punishing me for drawing a team that I really like.

Nghtflame7 said:

uh-oh...careful where you put those seals!

I think you are wise to ignore the rifts.

Oh and its Y'ha-Nthlei

Nghtflame7 said:

In AH, hope is not even an option.

They should put that on the BOX! Complete with the wailing smilie. But I suppose that's anti-marketing.

I think the quickest Epic Fail for me was the time we utterly failed to stop the monstrous Terrible Experiment against Glaaki. I can't remember the turn number, but Glaaki only had 5 or 6 Doom Tokens. As the Terror Track skyrocketed to 10 from 2 (!!!), all the Servants hit the board, and then Glaaki woke up and swallowed us all, naked in our undergarments.

...**** you, Glaaki...

I've had Glaaki + Terrible Experiment failure myself. I was left with 4 investigators combining for a grand total of 3 dice, needing 48 hits in one round...

That slug, it happened here too, with the Yellow King launching all 10 blights onto Arkham before we were slimed.

Using Innsmouth, it is possible for the Ancient One to awaken before the game even begins.

In a 5 player game use the Herald which makes you draw two Mythos Cards during the setup. The first one opens a gate on Devil Reef. The second one is a monster surge on Devil Reef with, for the sake of argument, all monsters (6 in total - one from the gate opening, 5 from the surge) are all the same Dimensional Symbol ... which now moves. 6 monsters straight into the rift, 6 tokens on the Deep One Rising track, bam ...

In practice, that's very unlikely to happen of course. The quckest I've ever actually seen the AO wake up is at the end of the second turn.

We were using Innsmouth but no Heralds. But it was monster surges on Devil Reef again, but with slightly more variation of Dimensional Symbol on the monsters drawn. But they still all leapt straight through the Rift. The game was over in less than a quarter of the time it took to set up ...

Stenun said:

William Yorick + Rhan-Tegoth, if you manage to draw 11 Cultists for his starting monster trophies.