Hi all,

Brand new to this forum, but I've read some threads and it seems like we have some hardcore players here

So I thought I'd get some input on which AO you guys think is the toughest to deal with, and why. Personally, I've mostly played the base game, so I haven't gotten to meet many of the new AOs.

I'd have to say my least favorite to encounter is a tie between Hastur and Cthulhu. Hastur making the gate seal requirement 8 tokens is just unnecessarily spiteful imo, although I understand he's not so hard to fight, should it come to that. Cthulhu isn't so bad I guess during the majority of the game, but god help you if you have to fight him - I've never had one game where I was able to beat him because he kept refilling his doom track.

A runner up would probably Yig, which might sound a little surprising as I think he's supposed to be one of the easier ones. I don't know about you guys, but I can never count on rolling a number when I need it, so that curse sucks - I'll never get the 1 to remove it, or enough 6s for a success. The other annoying part is the cultists that you basically can't afford to kill. They choke up the board, making it hard to get past them (-3 sneak penalty) and keeping the monster count closer to the limit almost indefinitely.

How about you guys? Which AOs really get under your skin?

Hi and welcome to the board

Indeed, if your playing only with the core set, Yig is possibly the toughest, basically because he has both a doom track accelerator AND a very short doom track. Close to him come for me Shub (makes combat harder and with core only you risk quite a few surges) and Yog (two successes / gate are very difficult especially if you have not top-notch sealers in the mix. You can convey this with Blessings, but still it's challenging). Hastur is boring (I wasn't surprised to see a reversion for Arkham Nights)

In general, the toughest is Rhan, clearly (short doom track, idiot doom accelerator, impossible final battle). But he's stupidly difficult, you cannot control if you draw cultists from the bag. The real challenge for me is Chaugnar Faughn: his ability makes you suffer a lot during gameplay.

In any case, I think the best AO around is Yog: play with core game only, play all exp in, whatevs, you are always risking being kicked in the butt. Pair him with Lurker's gates and it's done, a -4 gate requiring 2 successes to be closed is a challenge And I'm happy to see an original AO still challenging after 10 years and 8 expansions (and 350+ games under my belt)

In just the core game, Yog-Sothoth is easily the hardest. All three ways to win the game are made harder: Gates are harder to close (close AND seal victory), and you need gates to survive him in combat (so you need to close gates NO MATTER WHAT). Additionally, those gates are best NOT spent on clue tokens and blessings as they might be in any other game; lastly, to top all this off, Yog's battle survival stat is Will, which is directly opposed to the Fight stat needed to damage him. In the base game, Cthulhu may be hardest to best in battle, but Yog is worst all round, hands-down.

Toughest all-round, from all official AOs, is Atlach Nacha. I would have said that before the statistics site even corroborated that, but having every gate opening be a gate burst is frickin TOUGH to manage.

Toughest all-round, from all official AOs, is Atlach Nacha. I would have said that before the statistics site even corroborated that, but having every gate opening be a gate burst is frickin TOUGH to manage.

Yep, I know this but I tend to read it more as bad strategy than real difficulty. And the dude becomes easier the more boards you add. Just seal some minor / medium freq gate, don't waste clues, squat on gates and coordinate the final seals and it's done. Clearly, if you play less than 4p is more difficult

You know it's funny, I've owned all the expansions for a while now, but I wanted to get a good handle on the rules of the base game before I started adding them. I've kinda seen all the AOs, but I definitely have to go back and look at the ones you guys pointed out. I haven't played with heralds yet either, so I can only imagine what level of headache that adds. Heralds synergize with the AOs to some degree, correct? I have to imagine then that there are some combos of AOs and heralds that just make you wanna flip the board over in frustration.

Some heralds synergize with certain AOs for sure. The one failure is that the King in Yellow herald works much better with the Glaaki AO than it does with Hastur . If you use the Arkham Nights revision of Hastur (which, by the way, is both more difficult and more fun—I know you're not much for Hastur), then King in Yellow works well again.

There is one specific AO and one specific Herald that I hate, regardless of who they pair with: Rhan-Tegoth, and Dagon. I hate them not because they're difficult (they are), but because they're not fun. The difficulty is something that's mostly out of your hands, and that greatly penalizes you despite being mostly out of your hands. If I draw those two together, they synergize only in that they make me so very pissed off .

Yeah, Heralds boost difficulty a lot, but also provide a superior gameplay experience. Some of them have a fantastic design (the King in Yellow, as Tibs said), some others are more playful (Tzulscha), some others are just brutal (Black Goat).

In any case it's certainly better play and win consistently with no Heralds in before stepping the difficulty up

Yog-Sothoth is my most hated enemy of all time. He has kicked my butt more than any other AO. Granted I always only play with lurker gates but still. if you pair him with thelurker herald as well, closing gates becomes so hard assuming you don't abuse the pacts.

One deadly AO herald combo is the Yibb-Tstll with Tzulscha. good luck finding those cultists bent on killing your hard earned elder signs... unless you are wendy adams, she is good at hide and seek.

I also find Cthuga a massive pain. I like being mobile and his ability is just the pits.

The hardest one to beat in final combat though is, suprisingly, Azathoth. I don't know why, but I just can't seem to beat him whenever I play against him and he awakens... I just can't tell what i'm doing wrong

The hardest one to beat in final combat though is, suprisingly, Azathoth. I don't know why, but I just can't seem to beat him whenever I play against him and he awakens... I just can't tell what i'm doing wrong

Lol, yeah I know right? I wonder why he's so difficult? I mean he's only annihilating the planet right?

Definitely Atlach Nachna for me as I always play using Epic Battles (which makes it much less easy to just hoard weapons and kill the AO). Julia listed some pretty sound advice here though that I hadn't considered, so I might have to try him again and see if I can secure a win.

Good luck Soakman, and let us know!

Then, when you're ready...

Dem flying monsters/cultists + surges! It's like monsters and people-monsters raining from the sky!

Dem flying monsters/cultists + surges! It's like monsters and people-monsters raining from the sky!

Yeah, need a specific umbrella...