Lily Chen's and Norman Withers's Personal Stories aren't affected by Chaugnar Fagn's game text, right? His text specifically says that you cannot remove more than three doom tokens in one round of combat, but the Personal Stories text are not part of combat.

Assuming I'm right, then I've just beaten Chaugnar Fagn in Final Combat. Had Norman blessed the turn before Chaugnnar Fagn woke up and ended up removing 4 doom tokens before combat even started.

If I'm wrong, er, well, then I've not just beat Chaugnar Fagn in Final Combat as I'd run out of cards to cancel his attack and neither Norman nor Joe Diamond had any Clue Tokens leftl. So they'd be splatted. Leaving Lily and Patrice one final turn to remove 4 doom tokens ... which of course is impossible thanks to Chaugnar's text.

We're actually waiting for a response to this very question in the much anticipated FAQ, supposedly coming soon. Until it gets here, I'm afraid there is no way of knowing whether you've won or not.

*drops to his knees and raises his fists to the sky*

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Looking at the wording of the cards concerned and at the rulebook, I don't actually see how you can argue that Chaugnar Fagn's ability would affect Lily and Norman's Personal Stories.

Their Personal Stories kick in the instant the Ancient One wakes up. And yet if you look at the rule book, combat with the Ancient One doesn't start until after the first Refresh phase after he has woken up. And Chaugnar Fagn's test isn't actually applicable until combat has started as it specifically refers to "combat rounds".

So as far as I'm convcerned, it counts as a win. :-)

I'll be willing to change your entry on the stats page if it's ruled otherwise, but I would assume that CF doesn't limit those effects, because they are not conducted during a round of combat.

Yeah my feeling is that CF does not limit these effects. So, you win!

My next challenge, however, is to beat Chaugnar Fagn without using Norman or Lily at all ... :-)

I'm thinking 2 Investigators; tool up on Magical Weapons and cards that cancel the Ancient Ones attack and make sure I have enough clue tokens in both Investigators to survive the turns I don't cancel.

Chaugnar Fagn is, in my opinion, one of the very few Ancient Ones who gets harder the more Investigators you have. The reason being that there are a maximum of 48 Clue Tokens and a minimum of 4 turns needed to beat him (ignoring any possible turns his attack is cancelled). Therefore each Investigator needs a minimum of 12 Clue Tokens to beat him. Impossible with 5 or more Invesitgators so Allies will start being needed ...

Stenun said:

I'd argue that EVERY ancient one gets harder the more investigators you have. Less clues per investigator, and with more specialization being necessary in larger games, every character that isn't combat oriented is dead weight jacking up the number of successes per doom token. Joe Diamond solo with all the clues vs Joe Diamond + 7 other investigators with the same number of clues?

Same goes for other ancient ones that remove limited resources like trophies. I've always found Yog Sothoth to be impossible to beat in the final battle. He's one of the few ancient ones where every single aspect of him works against you in synergy. He gobbles up gate trophies, the least numerous thing in the game (in larger games you're always going to have investigators devoured right from the start) . He makes it difficult to close gates so only the highest fight/lore characters can even accomplish this and gather trophies. He forces will checks which requires investigators to lower their fight and the number of dice you get against him. Finally he has a hefty -5 combat modifier.

But yeah, I can't imagine how they figured Chaugnar Fagn would be possible to beat. Throwing in an increasing difficulty skill check to avoid discarding the clue tokens would have been a lot more reasonable. Right now you pretty much have to say "screw sealing gates, we have to spend the entire game hoarding and preparing", (even then you probably won't have a chance) which is bad ancient one design in my opinion. You shouldn't have to choose between the final battle and sealing right from the start. Requiring 2 specific investigators plus their personal missions plus an extremely rare specific unique item is even worse design.

It just seems to me like the past 2 expansions have been way too geared towards the power gamers who say the game is too easy because they memorize every possible encounter, know the exact good/bad ratios for each location, and have Rainman on hand to tell them exactly how many more gate locations are left in the deck (how many "too easy" people also cull the item decks for the stuff they want?). Yes, the base game was on the easy side and Nyarlathotep was a joke, but the difficulty for the average player peaked somewhere between Dunwich and Kingsport. Everything since has been leaning towards the obsessively difficult, some so outrageously so that it seems like no one even tested it; I honestly though that the Black Goat herald's online posting was some sort of April Fool joke and Chaugnar Fagn might as well be Azathoth in terms of final combat. Wasn't the optional starting difficulty levels in Black Goat enough? The casual gamers could really use some love.

GrooveChamp said:

People have been saying Quachil Uttaus gets more beatable in final combat with more. Joe D solo is still the only recorded final combat win against him though (and Joe was picked AFTER seeing the GOO).

GrooveChamp said:

Or get lucky. In my first meeting with Pinky, I got the 2 GOO-attack cancellers during setup (or at least very early). Additionally, at least two investigators had an Ally (one had 2), so all the other two need to get to the crucial 4th round of combat would've been 3 Clues. Managed to win the game though, so wasn't forced to dice-fest for a tie thankfully.

GrooveChamp said:

Not at all.

Let us look at the most obvious example, Quachil Nattuas. Assuming the average roll of an Investigator in each round of the Final Fight is X, then against QU a one Investigator team would have X dice then be devoured. Whereas a two Investigator team would have 2X dice on the first round, one Investigator would be devoured and then they'd have X dice on the second round before the second Investigator is devoured, resulting in 3X dice for only twice as many successes needed as opposed to a one Investigator team. A team with three Investigators gets 6X dice needing only 3 times as many successes, etc.

For a more complicated example, look at one of the Anicent Ones that requires you to make a Skill Sheck to survive. Let's assume that on average, again, each Investigator is rolling X dice. Let us also assume that, on average, they have a stat of 4 in the skill that you need to roll to stay alive and can not survive failing even once ... You can write it all out in long hand if you want, but the maths works out to this:

A team with 1 Investigator will, on average, roll 4X dice then die.

A team with 3 Investigators will, on average, roll 13X dice then die. Just over three times as many dice but only needing precisely three times as many successes.

etc.

One thing I should have said in my previous post, I'm using simple statistics and rounding off.

I realise the numbers aren't exactly what I'm saying they are, I'm trying to keep it simple/

Stenun said:

KISS, right ?

I agree with GrooveChamp on this one (except for Quachil Uttaus). Stenun, the math you worked out yields interesting results, but it works on the assumption that all investigators have more or less an equal attack power and defense-saving stat. In a 1-investigator game, it's relatively easy to gear that one investigator up with a good weapon, and give him enough clues to stay alive. With three investigators, getting everyone good weapons and enough clues to stay alive is harder. I'd guess that it's more proportionally difficult than the small "discount" you get for three investigators: 13/3 successes versus 4/1 successes.

On the other hand, if you're using Kevin's clue-limit rule, then a 1-investigator final combat won't have much of a benefit of using clues for saving rolls because you can't spend more clues in one round than there are seals on the board. And it's much easier to get multiple seals with 3 investigators than 1.

Where are these "final combat changed based on number of seals" rules I keep reading about?

It sounds like a great idea. Give investigators a reason for trying to seal gates up until the end instead of just saying "screw it" and stockpiling for the ancient one awakening (final combat should always be an absolute last resort in my opinion). Though it sounds like it just makes final combat already harder than it is (already ridiculously difficult with Innsmouth ancient ones).

All final combats should be as tense and epic as this one:

GrooveChamp said:

Lazy bum , found the thread on page 18:

www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp

Yeah, what are you, lazy? You only had to find the specific thread and search 18 pages to find it!

No, but seriously: I currently use two rules that Kevin suggested in relevant threads regarding players' lamenting of the "early gearing up" tactic for winning a game:

• During each round of final combat, each investigator may not spend more clues than there are seals on the board. He specifically mentioned that this rule was for anti-"shotgunning." Joe Diamond with a shotgun and 20 clues blowing away Yig on his first shot is a fun tale, but not in the spirit of the game.
• After setting up the Epic Battle deck, remove 6 green cards at random; then add back in one green card for each seal on the board (essentially you'll have 8 red cards and x+2 green cards; x is the number of seals on the board).

I absolutely love rules that affect final combat based on seals. Any direct or indirect incentive to discourage gearing up for final combat until the absolute last moment is something I can get behind. I actually do a slight variant on the second rule listed above, but the concept is essentially the same.

Tibs said:

Actually, checking each page took about 5 secs, as I just cheked the name under "Author", looking for KevinW.

What are you, lazy? Search function is for dimwitted monkeys

Tibs said:

FTFY

Acronyms? What are you, la....

Nah, nevermind. It's too easy at this point. And you know how much we Arkham fans enjoy "easy"

The forum serach button is greyed out and unclickable for me. I dunno!

GrooveChamp said:

Works for me, just write your word and press enter.

By works I mean, I get results. All hits from all forums with said keyword.