I played a couple of interesting games yestereday. I generally keep my Mythos cards separate and only play 1 expansion's Mythos cards at time and using a herald (mostly of my own devising). I roll a die during mythos. On a 1-4, from the basic set. On a 5-6 from the expansion set.

Yesterday I used 3 expansions: Dunwich (1-2), Innsmouth (3-4) and King in Yellow (5-6). No mythos would come from the base set.

The first game was cakewalk against Nyogtha (the last Ancient to fall in my campaign) against 4 survivers*: Leo, Dexter, Sister and Mandy. No gates appeared in Arkham until the 7th gate was called. Three gates appeared in each the villages before that. The DOR track never threatened and only 1 Dunwich token was added. This confirmed by theories/prejudices that the more expansions you use the easier it gets. We did have 3 elder signs, but only used 2. Still there were only 7 doom tokens on Nyogotha at the end, so the elder signs weren't really necessary. We drew 14 Mythos cards.

However the second game against Nyarlathotep and the Black Man (herald where the Black Man was the only mask but was either on the board or waiting to come on the board with the next gate) was a different story. Pretty much the same thing happened as to the gates. No gates in Arkham until the middle of the game.

The party again was made up a my last few survivors: Dr Vincent, Harvey, Diana and Patrice (watered down so that she did not get clue tokens each turn and could only help investiagators in the same town.)

This game was tough from the very beginning. Why? because of way more monster surges than I expected (though they saved us in the end), putting more monsters into Dunwich and Innsmouth. At one point there were 18 monsters on the three boards. I was playing with Bill (Diana and Harvey) who wanted to kill monsters but I (Dr Vincent and Patrice) suggested that we get to the gates and pull the monsters up with gate closings. We did both. Until the end Patrice never had any Clue tokens and when she did lend them they were spent without result. It wasn't her fault, but she just wasn't much help.

At Doom track 8 (of 11), we only had 3 seals and there were still plenty of monsters, though they had been thinned out a bit by Bill's kids and the few gate closings we had. We soldiered on without much hope. Patrice had failed her story and so was paying from her Sanity/Stamina for each Clue token she shared (which weren't many). Then a gate burst took us back down to 2 sealed gates. Harvey went into a gate and we were soon back up to 3 sealed gates (with Patrice's help) and at the expense of the DOR track which reached 4. The terror track was creeping up and eventually reached 6.

Patrice obtained the healing stone and doom 9 occured-5 clue tokens for Patrice. Still, all looked lost. Everyone headed for gate. Diana made it. Vincent was devoured with 4 clue tokens. Bill moaned. I drew Gloria as Vincent's replacement.

The 10th doom hit. The next mythos could bring the Old One. (I know. I know. It's only Nyarlothotep but we would be using Epic battles and I've lost to Nyarly before with EB. Besides we never really want to fight the AO.) Harvey and Gloria made it to a gate. Patrice went to the Asylum and used her healing stone.

The next Mythos was a bump and the DOR reached 5. Diana was ready to come home. The next turn could defeat us in two ways: DOR or Doom tokens. Surge! Diana sealed (with Patrice's help). Gloria sailed into her second side of Another Dimension. Harvey lost all his clue tokens and crawled into his second area of the Abyss.

The next Mythos could bring the end either by opening the DOR or dropping a gate at the Woods or Unvisited Isle which had never opened. The three sealed gates were all in Innsmouth. Surge! It looked good! Gloria and Harvey returned, closed and sealed (both with Patrice's help using all her clue tokens and bringing her down to 1 Sanity and 1 Stamina.)

We could not have won without the healing stone. Harvey had 3 seals for first citizen. (The doddering Harvey survived two stints in the Innsmouth Jail.) But we both agreed that without (the failed) Patrice (even watered down) we could not have won. She helped in sealing at least 4 gates. (I'll probably have to water her down even more.) There were also a lot more bumps and surges than I expected (with 3 bumps and 5 surges) with all the gates available. The game went 19 Mythos phases. Neither game had a rumor (in 33 total Mythos phases) which also helped a lot.

*Survivors are those investigators who have not been devoured in prior games. Some survive because they are so helpfull (Patrice, Leo, Mandy). Some survive because they are never picked (Sister, Dexter) or rarely picked (Diana, Dr Vincent, Gloria).

mageith said:

Took 3 investigators to counter-balance the curse on Dexter .

mageith said:

You had 6 gates open in non-arkham locations (3 in IH), how much more do you need before DOR is a threat? Devil's Reef + 2 surges there?

Dam said:

Actually had that last week-almost. First gate was Devil Reef, then a Strange Sightings surge where everything moved into the vortices. The DOR was at 4 at the end of the 2nd turn. (Could have been 8*). But 3 of us ran up there and laid the law down. After than Innsmouth pretty much quieted down for the rest of the game.

The Deep Ones Rise for me only when I play Innsmouth and the Basic game only and using Innsmouth and the base game monsters only. And it does almost all have to do with Devil Reef and more so with the rare opening of Y'ha-nthlei. As you have pointed out in the past, the tracks in Innsmouth don't direct the monsters to the vortices very well. Another factor: The percentage of non vortex monsters is higher when only using Innsmouth monsters (I think) than when the whole mix of monsters is involved.

Also in the first games I thought flying monsters went into the vortex from Devil Reef, so the DOR was a bit hotter than it should have been.

*I know 6 is the maximum.

mageith said:

I don't understand. You had an endgame with your nerves on fire and your heart in your throat. You BARELY won, avoiding the Sword of Damocles TWICE (if not more). But because you actually pulled it off...you're BLAMING Patrice for the WIN?

"Dammit! We should have lost that game, if it weren't for HER."
"I know! Oh well, I'm sure we can get spanked during the next game."

I don't get it.

Thanks for the great story; still sounds like a fantastic game.

I don't think I've lost a game in which I've used Patrice. I may have lost if others used Patrice. I play a sort of campaign with my characters. When the character is devoured for any reason s/he's put away until all the other investigators have been devoured or the Ancient One defeated. Toward the end of the campaign the final AO's were fought with parties using Mandy, Wendy and (watered down) Daisy and eventually (watered down) Patrice because they are not merely survivors but winners. Their abilities shine above all others. In this, my fourth campaign (fifth run through with the investigators) Wendy and Daisy had already been devoured but still Mandy and Patrice survived to save the day and the world (repeatedly).

I guess it feels a bit like cheating that I know this and still use them. I really feel sorry for the Ancients Ones. After all they've faced all sorts of overwhelming cosmic trials for a thousand million years and now, so easily always taken down by 3 young women and a girl-child.

Daisy and Patrice still do it with one hand tied behind their backs. At least Daisy has some weak krypontite in her personal story. Patrice's just makes her better. ("What do you mean I somehow have to get 2 incredibly power magical alien unique items and I get 5 clues besides! This is a problem how?")

Maybe someone could come up with a variant where Cthulhu, Nyarlathotep, Yog-Sothoth, and Ghatanothoa are a team of investigators who are trying to stop Patrice, the violinist from Hell.

avec said:

Now that's thinking out of the box! They'd beat her though. She does need other investigators to pass off her rain of clues to.

In my last game we played a homemade herald called "Cults". Eihort was the Old One and one of his cultists appeared with each gate. If the a cultist was on the board at the start of the Mythos the first player had to take on of these, his choice: Corruption, Madness or Curse card or Brood token. Mostly corruption cards were taken and we used all the Greens up.

We were in Innsmouth with both the Black Goat and Egyptian Museum active but not using the basic Arkham Horror mythos cards at all. The influence of the museum was most prominent. Arkham both flooded leaving off a couple of exhibit items as the waters subsided, then immediately experienced a freakish sandstorm allowing us to obtain a few more which greatly aided us as we put down the rumors of Cursed relics. Still the terror level in town reached 9.

Bob, the designated fighter, sealed 5 gates! Jennie played Bob who had the Migo Brain Case (perhaps the best non weapon item in the game), passed his personal story for $15 and gained the ability to buy Clues and benefitted from his corruption of "Endless Greed" almost from the beginning of the game. Our hero.

He also greedily accepted money from Deputy Zoey (Emily) who held down two jobs for over half the game, getting $3 per turn. Her amazing patrol wagon allowed her to hand off the cash on those few occassions that Bob was in Arkham and not off in some other world.

Jacqueline's main contribution was gathering Clues to keep the Mythos and DOR tracks under control. For the three turns before the end we were at 5 on the DOR track and 11 on the Doom Track even after we had removed three doom tokes using the Eltdown Shards and parchments of the Elder Sign. We finally laid the law down in Innsmouth.

I don't think anyone had ever even sealed 4 gates before though Wendy and Daisy routinely seal 3 in a four player game.

I wish you could let us in on the full details of some of these scenarios, Mageith. They sound fascinating. Do you come up with all of the guidelines yourself, or do you have some sort of program?

flamethrower49 said:

No program. It's just what I've always done with game I'm in love with at the moment. I try to make the game (I fear to use the term in impolite company) "realistic". (You, Flamethrower are polite.)

This? In my last game we played a homemade herald called "Cults". Eihort was the Old One and one of his cultists appeared with each gate. If the a cultist was on the board at the start of the Mythos the first player had to take one of these, his choice: Corruption, Madness or Curse card or Brood token.

Above is pretty much the scenario. Now that all my monsters are mixed in one bag, it seems that the cultists are rarely seen so I just add a cultist to the gate appearance. Since that would add a weak monster (in most cases), it would probably end up being an advantage. However stopping to defeat a monster is an time waster (intentional). Extra monsters also means the terror track might increase faster. It's also a way to bring in the Corruption cards. The average game is around 16 turns and there are, coincidentally, 16 green and 16 red corruption cards. So this way most of the corruption cards will come out naturally, plus many corruption cards make other corruption cards appear or get discarded, yet there is some control available to players to erradicate the cultist menace (at least until the next gate appearance). I've played this scenario three times and this is the first time the red corruption cards did not get into play. Two brood tokens were taken, one madness card and one curse (Emily already had a blessing so it cancelled it out. It was due to expire soon anyway.)

Or the choosing of the expansions? I've been doing that for awhile. I have each expansion separated out and I roll a die to determine whcih expansion from which the Mythos is drawn, though we do pick which expansions we will be playing. Several months ago someone experimented with playing each expansion alone and so I thought, why not just drop the base Mythos altogether for awhile. So as long as at least one of the expansions is CotDP, Kingsport or BG then I'll still get plenty of gates in Arkham. Even Dunwich and Innsmouth have some Arkham cards (though I think they are all gate bursts), but KiY doesn't have any minor (cool) gate cards.