Ok, in the last four months of my life I played 0 Arkham games. Realizing that, I setup quickly (ehm, in only 70 minutes. Joe, we need one more item tray, so that I can keep all the minicards ready, lol) the game and went on with my personal challenge against the Black Goat of the Woods official herald. So, in play: AH, DH, KH, BGotW and clearly MH; Hank, Vincent, Diana, Marie and Leo challenged the Black Goat and Quachil Uttaus (if you have to return in the ring, better going for a real challenge)
We decided to go with Vincent first player: it's the most useless, so, no need to keep him alive more than that. Then Diana, Marie, Leo and finally Hank. Some good starting items, especially for Hank, who got the Tommy Gun, Yithian Rifle and especially a Press Pass.
Opening Mythos spawned a gate at the Black Cave and a clue at Hibbs: perfect for Diana, renting Hank's Press Pass and collecting clues for the first seal in just one movement phase. Marie and Vincent met at the Old Magic Shoppe, so that she could cash immediately her PS; Leo went for extra clues and Hank with a few extra bucks stolen from Leo went to the Curiosity Shoppe to buy an Elder Sign.
Second Mythos: Black Cave again. Yay, +1 doom, all monsters on the very same location. New plan: Hank gained from Vincent moving North a Time Bomb; he then moved to the Black Cave, cleared the inevadable monsters and placed the Time Bomb with just one clue on it before diving into the Unknown Kadath (after 350+ AH games I'm still wondering what remained unknown of Kadath, but still). The OW encounter was fun: Kadath specific, option 1 was forcing Hank to gain 2 corruptions, option 2 meant returning to Arkham (or LiTaS) with a time bomb ready to explode. Ok, two corruption thanks.
Third Mythos: Woods. And some funny monsters roaming in the streets. Vincent (brilliant at dodging the bullet of upgrading the dust decks) helped Diana to reach the Woods gate by clearing some monsters; Diana then jumped into Lost Carcosa.
The game moved in quite an anomalous way, with the main monster hacker (Hank) jumping from gate to gate, Vincent losing quickly his PS, gaining a Nerve Damage but still whacking monsters like tedious mosquitos, and Leo, who had 5 clues since turn 3, forced in Kingsport to close a rift that was opened by a Mythos card at the end of turn 3. Crazy, all the roles inverted.
Still, everything was under control but the monster situation; a couple more surges forced the doom track to reach 9 doomers; at that moment, Marie started using her ability that helped containing the doom advance. Seals were mostly safe: two minor opened (Hibb's and STL) so that they were easy target for immediate seals. The press pass granted a good clue-flow into the game, so that Vincent, in the last 4 turns, kept on spending clues to avoid drawing cards from the dust deck, giving time to the other guys to work easily on the remaining seals.
A somehow slower game (12 Mythos, but played in 120 minutes in stead of the usual 80-90) but mostly due to my strategy being "rusty", yet still a lot of fun
Happy Quachil was defeated, it's always very difficult to deal with him (I'm now 6-2 against him)
Yeah
