As much as I like the game, I'm still not very happy with the balance for any odd amount of players. 3 players will always face the same challenge as 4 players. Has anyone made any good experience with custom setup-rules to mitigate this problem? And I don't think, that modding the Mythos-Deck (Easy vs. Hard Cards) is a satisfying way to do this, I don't like the feeling to potentially miss out on harder Mythos cards, just because we're playing with an odd number of players. Now, if you do the math, 4 players have 64 player-turns to tackle the AO (4*16), while 3 players will only have 48 (3*16). If you'd go as far as adding 5 random cards to the bottom of the Mythos Deck, they would have 63. This may be a bit much, though, since it would completely revert the focus from solving Mysteries to Closing Gates.

I was thinking something along these lines:

Start with -1 Gate

+2 Mythos Cards (randomly drawn from 2 green and 2 yellow cards), 1 put at the bottom of the pile, the other put on top (giving players 2 extra turns)

Any additional (better) suggestions?

I like the idea of starting with -1 gate, I'll try to try that.

[...]

Start with -1 Gate

+2 Mythos Cards (randomly drawn from 2 green and 2 yellow cards), 1 put at the bottom of the pile, the other put on top (giving players 2 extra turns)

Any additional (better) suggestions?

When playing one investigator, I use Chris's idea of taking two turns before each Mythos Card phase.

For odd numbers I just add 1 to the Doom track.

If the group is experienced it's still tougher than normal but there's still a reasonable chance of winning.

Another method I have read about but not tried is to add in a communal Charlie Kane and park him in Tokyo or London, Acquire assets, distribute, extra turn and encounter means he is probably the easiest to control as a extra and can be passed player to player.

Adding a Support 4th investigator (charlie) would be the best way to deal with that.

Trish is a good 2nd option, since she helps a lot on rumors. Can park in lodon "in safety" and cycle the asset store.

If you add mythos cards, perdition wil becomes an issue. As it's way harder to keep portals closed in a 3 player game.

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I'd give the following a try: in a 3 player game each investigator start with and additional clue and a +1 improvement token

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Else, just accept it's harder. Make sure to pick adequate characters for small number (not so specialized)