Or have the ancient ones blasted it off the face of the map while the forums are inundated? Enquiring minds want to know.

I feel like the forum was struck by a Star Spawn's wrath, crippling all four limbs of an investigator. Still, Arkham will survive.

I feel like the forum was struck by a Star Spawn's wrath, crippling all four limbs of an investigator. Still, Arkham will survive.

All four limbs, you say? That investigator would be having a bad day indeed.

Arkham is indeed still around, but this forum attack is nothing compared to my last game...

We were fighting Yibb-Tsil, so we were only permitted to ever have 5 clues at once, and since we were playing with the King in Yellow Blights... The terror lvl went up once from a mythos and lo and behold, the blight made sealing require SIX clues.

Carolyn Fern was delayed and knocked around for the first 4 turns of the game and ended up lost in time in space...then an enviroment was pulled that caused all LITAS characters to test or be devoured! Carolyn failed, and for the greater good, elected to ignore her gathered clues so we could pull Patrice Hatheway....

She was our only chance at sealing.... and we knew with Yibb-Tsil who had a whopping 88 health points or so and would have inconceivable combat modifier, our only chance was to put the beast back to sleep.

By the end of the game, two investigators had Double-Vision (cannot pick up clues from thed board) and one had Amnesia (can only have FOUR clues at once). Somehow we still managed 4 seals with the aid of Patrice. But we were forced out of gates and into streets before being able to seal the final two.

Sometimes, I swear the game has an awareness. It's like it knows what it has to do to win. Even Patrice couldn't secure our victory.

Great story, Soakman! Sounds like a really EVIL game As for Double Vision and Amnesia: have you considered retiring the characters?

Heh, you could have the investigators retire and send them on a bus to Innsmouth. I'm sure it would be much more relaxing there.

The mathematician in me says there is no way the mythos can know, and all such situations are purely coincidiental...

This message has been brought to you by the exciting new play that has just debuted in Arkham: The King in Yellow. See it today!

You know, Jason, all the mathematicians that starred in HPL's stories had quite an interesting story to tell...

And holy cow, saying you could retire in Innsmouth sounds fishy!

*groan*

It *smells* fishy too...

Here, I fixed it:

The investigators can retire be retired in Innsmouth.

If you already have double vision or amnesia and end up in Innsmouth, you are really going to question your sanity and senses when the Deep Ones start taking to the streets!

"Yesterday I was seeing double, today everyone look like fish. <sigh> I really need a new optician."

Great story, Soakman! Sounds like a really EVIL game As for Double Vision and Amnesia: have you considered retiring the characters?

Oh Julia, it gets worse. The way the game played out, the blight occured on the 2nd or mabye 3rd turn. Carolyn Fern was devoured turn 4. Enter Patrice. We seal 2 gates, but Patrice gets a lucky Elder Sign from a swapped luggage encounter! However, we are running short of clues and Patrice has plenty, but we need at least one on each investigator to seal even using all of hers because of the blight...

THEN... the Nightmare Pool Rumor popped up. 2 of our investigators were in Other Worlds, and only 2 could get to the rumor to start working on it. Next turn, one of the other investigators emerges and seals. Hooray! It feels like a turn-around, except for that dang rumor!

Enter the environment mythos that makes you only able to travel around the board via the black arrows! WHAT!!! We were going to solve the rumor! Now the final investigator that needs to sacrifice sanity at the nightmare pool in Southside is stuck traveling AROUND the board from the silver twilight lodge! Talk about the WORST mythos to draw while Nightmare Pool was out!

In order to counter act the additional sanity tokens being added by the rumor while the final investigators attempted to round the board, the two who were there had to go insane, take madnesses, and run back to the nightmare pool from the Asylum! This is how we ended up with so many madnesses. We simply could not afford the 3 successive mythos draws that would result from the failure of the rumor.

So, to answer your question, we HAD thought of retiring our insane characters, but they actually had some very lovely items and clues (despite being everywhere, clue were becoming more precious and difficult to pick-up). For this reason, we kept them around (and it's a good thing because had we lost those clues, we would not have had a chance to win).

Eventually it was down to the last 2 gate seals, 1 doom, and 6 open gates. We were having surge after surge because of all the open gates and seals. And we were in position to win twice, but one of the investigators was rendered insane (because she still hadn't recovered from the Nightmare pool incident), and the other was forced from his explored gate into the streets!

Finally the last gate opened, he woke up. It was madness.

EDIT: We had the addtional option of winning via gates closed as one of our investigators started with the Walk the Ley Lines mission... but we just didn't have enough time and still manage the rumor.

I WAS wondering though Julia (if you or anyone else knows), when you complete the Walking the Ley Lines mission, do you take the gates that close as trophies? It seems powerful and an alternative way to win, but if you don't receive the gates it seems very unlikely you will ever have (in a 4-player game) 4 gate trophies + one investigator to close 4 gates and use those additional trophies for the mission requirements.

Also, I have a joke for you! How many tickles does it take to make Cthulhu laugh?

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TEN TICKLES, OF COURSE!

Soakman,

I'm afraid that you cannot keep the gates as trophies. The last line on the card reads:

Effect : Close all open gates, returning them to the pile of gate tokens.

so, unfortunately, unless you're playing with a very low count of players, it's almost impossible to win with this mission, since you have to sacrifice gate trophies along the way

(loved the joke, btw)

Oh, you're absolutely correct. I forgot that in my excitement to find a means to a less untimely end. Thanks.

Yeah, no probs. You're right: the mission is rather difficult to use to achieve victory. Point is that if they didn't rule that way, then it would have been in most cases an autowin by closing with only 4 gates sacrificed. Too strong. In my opinion, they should have allowed players to keep the trophies, but they should also have made more difficult to reach the places where to sacrifice the gates (i.e., specific OW areas) so that it'd have been more difficult to complete, and more rewarding in the end (also, a good way to add variety and new victory conditions to the game)