Hi all.

I just got my copy of Arkham Horror. I'm a big fan of Lovecraft and can't wait to play. I set up board, cards, tokens and such. I had this question before I start my first game (probably next weekend):

How many turns can you expect to play with an investigator for a standard game? There seems to be so much you can explore / investigate. I know there's probably a good range of answers but what's an average number of turns per investigator?

Also, are expansions going to make games shorter, longer or the same as the original?

Thanks.

Aquilonien

My last 24 games since adding Innsmouth (those 24 games featured every expansion except KH) average 14-15 Mythos cards. Which is pretty much the amount of turns as well, since you draw 1 Mythos normally during pre-game, but if you close/seal, the game ends before the Mythos phase on that final turn.

I used to mention 20 turns as a rule of thumb, have no actual facts to back that up though.

Also, the number of investigators used in the game will impact the length. With more investigators, less gates need to be open for the GOO to wake up, so a setback or two can bring the game to screeching finale.

Well its hard to say , the game goes until you or the AO wins. This can make the game shorter or longer (I have had 2+ hour games and games as short as 30 min). As far as expansions the "small" boxes mainly add a herald and a theme to use with the main board (Dark Pharoh has a downloadable herald) while the "big" box expansions add more investigators and AOs plus a board to add to the overall size. Dunwich adds the "Dunwich Horror" a nasty guy who you never know what his powers are until you fight it and adds doom counters when it moves. Kingsport adds no new "unstable" locations but adds rifts that can move around the board spawning more monsters and it also has some nasty monsters and AOs. Innsmouth adds the "Deepones Rising" track which if it fills to AO awakens immediately plus personal stories for all the investigators (adds a small quest to try to complete for a reward but can also be failed for a penalty). Innsmouth can be left for last being the personal stories are for all investigators from other expansions as well but your call. Small boxes like Dark Pharoh (without the herald) adds mainly items ect (and Exhibit deck) , King in Yellow herald is nasty , Black Goat is the hardest herald so far some say. Anyway your games may actually be longer without expansions and shorter with thats the beauty of Arkham Horror you just never know

P.S getting devoured BEFORE turn 1 stinks

If we can play all the way to the "end"--meaning full Doom Track or Sealed 6 Gates--20+ usually. I'd guess a good average would be 23. If things go horribly wrong, and something else "aborts" the game (too many Open Gates, Deep One Rising Track filled, etc.), a better average would be 17-18.

(Dam, there may be a reason you used to say 20 turns. Back when you used to say that, you weren't playing with as many expansions heaped upon your games. Just a thought. )

I only play with one or two expansions at once, and I'd say my games are pretty much the same as the original. If pressed, I would guess that my games are probably a bit longer rather than shorter, but only because playing with just the Base Game, things tends to get much easier in the endgame. The Expansions fixed that, and the game remains unpredictable to the very end now.

Welcome to the Carnival, Aquilonien!

jgt7771 said:

(Dam, there may be a reason you used to say 20 turns. Back when you used to say that, you weren't playing with as many expansions heaped upon your games. Just a thought. )

Actually, I think 20 average would still apply to the pre-IH games (so AH + DH + DP + KiY + BGotW). It's IH that's dropped things down to 14-15, Dagon partly, extra 4 unstable locations as well (okay, so really 3 apart from the really rare cases).

I've been keeping track of my turns for quite a while now. Usually I play 4 player games, but some are larger. Rarely does the game go to 20 turns. If I play a 14 turn game or less it was usually a pretty easy one and includes some Elder Signs. I'd use 14-16 turns as an average game that we win. I usually use only 1 or 2 expansions at a time however, though recently I've started using 3.

Let's say the average AO has a doom track of 12. So, 11 or less you are OK.

Let's say you have about 1-4 monster surges.

Let's say you have about 1-3 gate bumps or bounces.

So that's 14 to 18 to win or 19 to lose by doom tokens.

Of course there is other ways to lose (summon the Old One) such as the Deep One Rising Track and too many gates out.

And there's other ways to get doom tokens which shorten the game: rifts, Dunwich Horror, double doomer cards, many of the heralds.

And there's a few cards that don't automatically add doomers such as strange sitings, Act cards, and double terror. And there's the beloved Elder Sign which actually reduces the number of doom tokens and many of the personal stories and abilities remove doom tokens.

I counted several games - without an extra board expansion, 2 Investigators tended to last 20-25 turns. Anything quicker was either a rapid seal through sheer luck, or things going very wrong. Anything longer generally ended up being a slow death by attrition.

With an extra board (Dunwich in this case) the "going very wrong" short games happened rather more often, but the seal victories (or games that could have been with a little more luck) were again around 20-25 turns.

With more than two Investigators, it will probably last less time than this. 15-20 seems reasonable.

cim said:

It usually takes a minimum amount of "investigator turns" to accomplish a seal victory. If a 2 investigator game last 25 turns that means they 50 investigator turns were taken.

If a 4 investigator game lasts 15 turns that means 60 investigator turns were taken.

To seal six gates it takes 18 investigator turns just to accomplish it.

In addition clues need to be gathered or generated. I once calculated the average number of clue tokens investigators start with. It is 1.7. The main board starts with 15 clue tokens. In order to seal six gates it takes 30 clue tokens. So with a 4 player game you need to generate 8 more clue tokens (8 more investigator turns) without using or losing any to gates any. And of course it takes an investigator turn to gather each clue on the board.

So now we have 6.8 clues to begin (0 turns), with 22 investigator turns to gather clues and 18 investigator turns to go through the gates. That's 40 base investigator turns to do the job. But only if there are no pesky monsters to get in your way and pesky encounters to deal with that might cause your to lose or use clues. There's no such thing, in most games, as extra clues.

The elder sign is so great because it saves you five clues AND removes a doom token, giving you an extra turn.

So anything that generates more than one clue per turn is a great boon (examples: scrolls, trading in gate trophies, press pass)

Anything that saves turns (such as the Find Gate Spell, Madness and Injury cards) is great.

So essentially you are working with 40 investigator turns (which 2 investigators can do if they are very efficient and/or lucky).

So 8 investigators should be easy as magic pie, no? After all, you'll have 15*8 or 120 investigator turns. You still only need 40. You have 80 to spare (waste). But Arkham has cleverly devised clocks. The one that usually kills me in big games is too many gates open. Some investigators are going to have to inefficiently close gates without sealing to keep the game under control. Another is that now there will be up to 11 monsters in Arkham which means investigators will have to inefficiently spend their investigator turns killing monsters and then renewing their sanity or stamina to do it again. In addition, clues are generally a finite resource and not tradeable. So not every investigator can go about gathering clues.

Of course, each Ancient One and/or expansion plays with these limits and requirements in different ways. The possibilities are endless and that's way Arkham Horror is a such a great game! Or for some of us, a way of life.

Thanks for all the information so far. It is really interesting to read.

I started my first game (no expansion) with three investigators (gangster, professor, and psychologist) against Nyarlathotep. I'm now at turn 16-17 with four sealed gates, 9 doom tokens and terror track at 5. Rules are pretty easy to get used to although I often refer to the order summary sheet. I'm having a great time with Arkham Horror! I'll post my final game turn count (and investigator turns) when I'm done.

Aquilonien.

Rule of thumb for number of turns is probably 150% of the number of doom spaces on the ancient one you're playing with.

After finally after 12 games... Got a win! but we did count the number of turns and to beat Yig with 4 investigators, it was 16. No expansions so it was on par on earlier posts.

I'm done! It took me 24 turns to finish my first game. I won by sealing six gates.

Final score: 11 points; +11 (GOO) -7 (Terror) -1 (Loan) -2 (Elder signs) +3 (Gate trophies) +4 (Monster trophies) + 3 (Sane investigators)

I expect to be play more efficiently next time and thus taking less turns on average to finish a game.

Aquilonien said:

Lol, Terror 7. +4 for Monster trophies, so you had 12 unspent at the end?

Dam said:

Dam, would you mind explaining your post to me? How is Terror 7 funny? After only one game played, I'm not sure I understand the link between terror, monster trophies, and unspent trophies. Thanks.

Aquilonien said:

I think it's just reminding him of his old newbie days. When you grow more experienced with the game, a terror level of 7 is shockingly high. Had you ever played Arkham Horror before btw? I remember my first game, nearly four years ago. I played solo with one investigator and hit a terror level of 10 :')

Aquilonien said:

This was a game with just base, right? Terror 7 means you went through a butt-load of Outskirts overflows. If Terror 7 came from a "Disturbing the Dead" Rumor hitting early on, then I can see it happening, but so many Outskirts overflows seem quite high. Outskirts limit for 3-investigators is 5, so it overflows when the 6th monster is placed there, to overflow 7 times, that's 42 monsters!

Aquilonien said:

You mentioned +4 to score from monster trophies. Unlike gate trophies, which count on a 1-1 basis, monster trophies count on 3-for-1 basis (so to get +4, need to have 12-14 unspent monster trophies). That's what I was asking about.

Thanks for the explanations Dam.

I did get the "Disturbing the Dead" Rumour Mythos card that made the Terror track advance on a 1-2 roll once per turn. I cannot wait to play again and see how better I can play.

What GOO would you suggest next for a second game?

Work your way up easy. Do Yig or Ithaqua next.

He already de-pantsed Nyarlathotep, he can take on Azathoth (though he's even easier than Nyarly) .

Yes, Azathoth in the base game is significantly easy indeed. Yig and Ithaqua are a touch harder, but still in the realm of "easy."

Hastur isn't really hard, but the game can take a while (8 clues to seal). Shub is moderate difficulty. Cthulhu is somewhat moderate, unless you wind up in final combat. Yog-Sothoth is hands-down the hardest from the base set. Don't face him (it?) until you're good and ready.

And just to let you know now, Yog's ability that says it takes one extra success to close a gate: that doesn't mean gates get -1 modifier. That means you need to roll two successes at once to successfully close the gate. Yeah. Good luck.

Tibs said:

jhaelen said:

With Yog as GOO, -2 mod gate, even having closing Stat of 5 makes me nervous to say the least, Stat of 4, forget about it. Even a +0 gate, you'll want Stat of 4. LiTaS devouring doesn't help either. I'm over the moon happy if I see 1 Elder Sign in a game, so everything has to be done "manually". And since the time frame is limited to around 14 turns these days (haven't played Yog with IH yet), there is no time to collect extra Clues to use if/when the close roll fails, so you're stuck there either a) try again next turn or b) use Clue(s) to close the gate.

With Hastur, 8 Clues = same as for Yog if you need to use Clues for the close roll, since 3 Clues should give a 1 success. When Hastur is in, you know you have to collect those Clues, but even if you don't close/seal him away, he's most likely a pushover in final combat. Yog, not so much, at least not for us non-gearheads.

What Dam said, and also, bear in mind:

Closing gates is harder. Harder in the ways that Dam mentioned: unless you're lucky or carry extra clues, you might be trying to close that gate for a long time.

Therefore, sealing is also harder: you can't lay those five clues down to seal until you first close the gate.

And you NEED those gates to fight him! AND you have to a balancing act between your attack stat and your defense stat in order to both survive and inflict damage.

Worst of all, he doesn't even have a doom track that goes above 12. At least Hastur has that.

I put Shub in the moderate category because while the monsters are noticeably tougher, no other part of the game is affected. You can seal at your normal leisure. Cthulhu is moderate because his ability can sometimes pose a problem (sure you're more likely to get knocked out or go insane during the game), but if you manage those stats well you should be fine. It's the final combat with Cthulhu that REALLY gets you!

Tibs said:

Maybe it's a matter of play styles: My standard strategy (especially if using the base game only) is to have all investigators meet in the Curiositie Shoppe and go shopping till I'm out of money. It's a rare game where this doesn't net me at least one elder sign. But that helps against Hastur, as well.

Saying that three clue markers equal one success usually is not correct. In my experience there's lots of ways to get more out of your clues. There's a lot of abilities that grant you two die rolls for one clue and equally many that grant you rerolls, i.e. you get to roll every extra die again. Abilities and allies may increase your scores to close gates, too, and there's even (item) cards that grant automatic successes when closing gates.

Then there's blessing: Would you rather spend your trophies to gain two clue markers or to get blessed?

If I'm playing against Hastur, I'm often forced to get those clue markers because: You have zero chance to seal a gate if you don't have those eight clue markers. Against Yog, all you need is a lucky roll (well, unless your chance is below zero which it should never be...).

Maybe there are ways to easily get more clue markers that I'm overlooking. If there were easy ways to get them (in the base game), that might change things in favor of games vs. Hastur.

jhaelen said:

My stats put Yog at 2-1-3, Hastur at 3-3-0. Whenever Hastur comes up, there is never the feeling of "oh-oh" that Yog tends to evoke. Hastur is more like "well, this will take a while, but draw is pretty much guaranteed unless Terror goes to hell" (worst Hastur in final combat so far has been -4).

jhaelen said:

I do the same, but for me it's more of "it's a rare game where this actually nets me one Elder Sign". With 4 investigators shopping there, the odds for me are 50% to draw an ES when 4 investigators draw 12 cards between them. But this being AH, odds-shmodds. I seem to magically always cut the deck in a way that all the ES are in the bottom half of the UI deck .

jhaelen said:

But when you're talking about closing gates, you can only use Fight or Lore, which cuts down the number of Skills that can work with those stats.

jhaelen said:

Clues, every time.