I'm curious:

Do you guys include ALL the stuff from every Expansion into your games? Or are you a bit more selective, and only put stuff in there you like? Are there components/decks/rules you deliberately leave out of your games?

So far I'm pretty satisfied with the game (Base-Game + FL + MoM - SR isn't out yet in Germany), I just decided, that I don't like the new City-Expeditions (Sydney/Arkham/Rome), so I took them out. I like Expeditions to be confined to hard-to-reach Expedition-Locations, thus making them more rare and epic. Including City-Expeditions also renders that "Secrets from the Past"-Rumour rather toothless (impossible now, to lose the game because of it). I'm hoping to get more cards here, in future times, for increased variety (for default Expedition Locations only).

I also don't like the Preludes/Adventures; I find them fiddly and underwhelming, and I'm okay with only playing on Antarctica, when Elder Things are the AO; I like that one tweak from a certain Prelude though, where (during setup) you spawn a Rampaging Shoggoth on Lake's Camp - it's a tweak that makes things rather challenging from the get go, plus it's hugely thematic, and I think I'm gonna include this into all my Elder-Things-Games from now on.

But I can still cherish the fact, that they included special rules for people who like to play with the sideboard on more occasions (Adventures). Making everyone equally happy is a task accomplished.

Depends on the game really. King of tokyo for example we always play with all the expansions, but with talisman we usualy pick one to add. (still have to do all corner expansions + the dragon together one day) And with LCGs its easy to build a deck out of all the available cards. I will usually put all the expansions in seperate bags/containers inside the box of the main game to save space.

Each Eldritch expansion has a peculiar new mechanic / series of conditions that are triggered into the game by encounters and Mythos effects. Removing specific portion of these decks will result in removing the odds to actually trigger those conditions. So that removing most of the encounters in FL, for instance, will make Poisoned and Lost in Time and Space less likely to appear in your games. Which can be good (if this is the result you wanted) or detrimental (if you liked those effects=

As for me, I play EH all in

We use all the content our games mostly, However, if we are playing with new players, we cut out preludes just to simplify the game, and we usually don't do Rise of the Elder Things(since it adds a new dimension to the game). Too much too soon can be bad for new players.

I've yet to have my copy of SR arrive, but when it does I'll do as I have with every expansion to date: play all in.

For the most part I find that Preludes do tend to make the game easier as the extra items more than offset the costs (for the most part), but I don't want to remove this as I like the variation that they bring. For some AOs (Yig, Cthulhu in particular) it's also nice to get a bit of help. For the easier AOs I've begun to use the "Starting Rumor" option to make things harder. This has led to some epic combos - my most recent game against Rise of the Elder Things started off with the Doom Sayer from Antartica prelude coupled with the Twin Spawn of Cthulhu rumor. Then the first mystery was Invasion of the Elder things. Result: Four epic monsters in play at the very start!

I almost never use the preludes, unless I want a specific thematic effect* or a difficulty tweak. When I actually choose one, it's never at random.

Everything else goes in.

*For example when we are terribly destroyed at our first attempt, we sometimes restart the scenario with the same setup, except the Ultimate Sacrifice keeps our investigators from the first attempt defeated on the board.

I've yet to have my copy of SR arrive, but when it does I'll do as I have with every expansion to date: play all in.

For the most part I find that Preludes do tend to make the game easier as the extra items more than offset the costs (for the most part), but I don't want to remove this as I like the variation that they bring. For some AOs (Yig, Cthulhu in particular) it's also nice to get a bit of help. For the easier AOs I've begun to use the "Starting Rumor" option to make things harder. This has led to some epic combos - my most recent game against Rise of the Elder Things started off with the Doom Sayer from Antartica prelude coupled with the Twin Spawn of Cthulhu rumor. Then the first mystery was Invasion of the Elder things. Result: Four epic monsters in play at the very start!

And how did it end? *biting nails*

I'm still on "all in". As long as I have table space, I will keep on buying the expansions as I love the variety; so I use everything.

I've yet to have my copy of SR arrive, but when it does I'll do as I have with every expansion to date: play all in.

For the most part I find that Preludes do tend to make the game easier as the extra items more than offset the costs (for the most part), but I don't want to remove this as I like the variation that they bring. For some AOs (Yig, Cthulhu in particular) it's also nice to get a bit of help. For the easier AOs I've begun to use the "Starting Rumor" option to make things harder. This has led to some epic combos - my most recent game against Rise of the Elder Things started off with the Doom Sayer from Antartica prelude coupled with the Twin Spawn of Cthulhu rumor. Then the first mystery was Invasion of the Elder things. Result: Four epic monsters in play at the very start!

At the moment I only have the base game + FL which is fully integrated. After my trip to England later this month I shall get MoM and that will get the same treatment as this must contain the easier AO's because I still only have one win under my belt I like the challenge so I won't make the game easier but to think some people want to make the game harder makes me feel very humble and you have my respect.

I've yet to have my copy of SR arrive, but when it does I'll do as I have with every expansion to date: play all in.

For the most part I find that Preludes do tend to make the game easier as the extra items more than offset the costs (for the most part), but I don't want to remove this as I like the variation that they bring. For some AOs (Yig, Cthulhu in particular) it's also nice to get a bit of help. For the easier AOs I've begun to use the "Starting Rumor" option to make things harder. This has led to some epic combos - my most recent game against Rise of the Elder Things started off with the Doom Sayer from Antartica prelude coupled with the Twin Spawn of Cthulhu rumor. Then the first mystery was Invasion of the Elder things. Result: Four epic monsters in play at the very start!

And how did it end? *biting nails*

Playing (solo) with four investigators: Silas, Finn, Daisy, and Jacqueline. Had some good starting assets in the reserve (the carbine rifle and a magical weapon - the Spirit Dagger I believe) so Finn and Silas loaded up and each took one of the twin spawn. Daisy was the initial lead investigator so she opted to start at the Miskatonic Outpost per the Prelude card. She then trekked over to City of the Elder things (avoiding Lake Camp) to procure an artifact (which she swapped for the Alien Device). Jacqueline gathered clues as people picked up Conditions and then passed them out to people. They were soon at a point where they taken down the twin spawn as well as the Crazed Elder thing. They never did take down the Rampaging Shoggoth at Lake Camp - it just proved easier to avoid the place!

Of course that still left the regular monsters that were popping out of gates which included a host of moving monsters: a Dhole, Nightgaunt, and Hound of Tindalos (Aside: I think the Dhole is my new "absolutely hate the most" monster what with its health + sanity damage both at its location and adjacent ones.)

Flash forward to when all rumors (Growing Madness and Mysterious Lights) in the mythos deck have been solved Two mysteries down, working on At the Mountains of Madness. All investigators are in the southern part of the board tackling gates, monsters, and working on the mystery when the Mythos deck turns up The Storm. As there is no rumor in play one is drawn from the box: Web Between the Worlds. So now we have The Spinner Of Webs in play wayyyy up north and need to kill it before three reckonings go by (and at this point the mythos deck is roughly 50% yellow).

So the team scrambles. The current mystery is completed the very next turn and the next drawn: Binding the Dark God. Daisy and Finn head to the Plateau of Leng - Daisy to work on the mystery while Finn (armed with both the Carbine Rifle and a Wither Shriveling spell for good measure) plans to use the Plateau's special action to move to a gate in Arkham so he can then tackle the Spinner of Webs. Jacqueline splits her attention between getting clues to people and trying to close some gates, the latter with little success. Silas is low in both sanity and health and just trying to find a place he can rest up.

Of course doing this takes some turns during which two of three three eldritch tokens are removed from the rumor and doom overall ticks down to 3. In addition the Hound tracks down and kills Silas. Fortunately his replacement is Norman who greets Finn in Arkham and offers to help take down the Spinner of Webs. The next turn Daisy puts the second of two eldritch tokens on the last mystery, Finn takes down the Spinner of Webs and all wait with bated breath to see what the Mythos deck will reveal. A huge sigh of relief: it's just a green card which ends up advancing doom by just one and not killing anyone off.

Final results: Doom at 2, total score of 13, four epic monsters defeated, four rumors solved. All in all this will be a game I'll remember for a long time. Full of equal parts "all hope is lost" and "maybe we have a chance" (note: maybe).

[Edit to use correct spell Finn brought to fight with Spinner of Webs]

Fantastic session report, thanks for sharing

(armed with both the Carbine Rifle and a Wither spell for good measure)

Excellent write up. You do know these two bonuses can't stack though, right?

(armed with both the Carbine Rifle and a Wither spell for good measure)

Excellent write up. You do know these two bonuses can't stack though, right?

My mistake - the spell was the one that does damage as an action which is Shrivelling. Post corrected.

Glad you liked the write up and thanks for pointing out the mistake.

Thanks for your answers, really interesting to read through them, especially that session report by ricedwlit.

I just wanted to let you know, that finally I decided to go All-In as well, introducing City-Expeditions into my game (I'm still leaving Preludes out, though, since I can't bring myself to like them).

My group ignored preludes with MoM, but the new ones in SR seem much more interesting, so we're giving them another go, with some house tweaks. The Prelude that starts with dead investigators no longer gives them an Artifact, and the ones that allow players to start with unique allies or tasks only affect the Lead Investigator. Some of them we've taken out entirely (The Dunwich Horror, Ithaqua, Azathoth)

I use everything, when I first play an expansion I have new cards on top of the deck and mythos is mostly with the cards that came with the set. I got strange remnants a few days ago, and lost the first game because of some nasty combos of the new mythos cards and the new card called agreements (which are worse then dark pacts >_<) Lose all health/sanity cannot be prevented onslaught in this new expansion. Specific rumour with a certain ongoing green card was the final nail in the coffin I made for myself. Did not help we used the tougher prelude as well.

I'd say agreements are still a step below Dark Pacts, but they are easily one of the nastiest conditions in the game right now.

Think there is 60% chance surviving a darkpact but only 25% chance to survive an agreement when they go off. Certain investigators can probably get rid an agreement easily but others it would be crippling to gameflow and likely go off.

Well, I got only FL, and I'm seriously pondering about removing LiTS.

Poison mist is also pretty bad in a game with less than 5 people.

Sorry for asking something dumb, but since english is not my primary language (and I play the german version of the game), sometimes I don't get certain abbreviations:

What is LiTS?

It's the misspelled version of LiTaS, Lost in Time and Space

Ah, thank you. :-)

I never really understood why people hate this Condition so much. Of course, the moment it pops up, it kinda sucks losing your turn. But it also means: nothing bad can happen to you during Mythos-Phase. And then you even get a chance to teleport anywhere on the board, perhaps some faraway location, where otherwise you would have burned up more than one turn to reach it.

It can be quite handy, sometimes.

True that. It's just too random for my taste (like most of FL, sadly)

I forgot the "a" in LiTaS, i blame my native language - "and" is "e" (just a single letter, so it doesn't appear on initials).

But I must agree with Julia, FL adds some things I don't really enjoy.

1 - Tests with negative tests

2 - Test with non tipical skills for that encounter type.

3 - Tests with no good outcome

I really considered removing a few encounter cards and/or considering the tests without the penalties.