Craziest Arkham moments

By gjam, in Arkham Horror Second Edition

Hey guys and gals,

I thought I'd come up with a fun topic to pick everyone's brain. What's the craziest OMG moment you've had in a game of AH (assuming you remember)? Was it a come from behind victory when you were sure the game was almost over? Or maybe you thought you were about to win and then BOOM, something happened that completely flipped the game on its head? I'll have to think of one myself - yeah, I know I came up with the topic, but I didn't have a story ready :P

I'll have to think a bit for the really amazing story.

But I do recall a time where my friend and I were one seal away from winning the base game, and there was someone on the gate with an elder sign. We still had to do the Mythos phase.

"Tibs can we just say we won?"

"Actually there's precisely one Mythos card that will prevent us winning immediately."

Mythos card was No One Can Help You Now: gates can be closed but cannot be sealed.

Hey! I technically had to check.

HAHA! Yeah, see that's exactly the kind of luck I would have in that situation. And exactly why I would have just said I won ;)

I got some epic moments in Arkham (recently: here , scroll down until you find Arkham Horror, check "Game 06"), but facepalm defeats? Some in EH (recently I lost a game I had already won because of Bermuda's Triangle. It's the third time that friggin' card costs me the game)

probably my 9 person game of arkham against zhar in final combat.

We used the epic battle cards and we ended up needing like 249ish successes we got to 247. It was very sad. I may or may not have kept moving "end of everything" further back. But we lost anyway.

Another was was a game where there were 11 out of twelve doom tokens and we only had 2 seals on the board and we ended winning by some miracle . the same gate spawned several times and we got some lucky mythos.

Oh man that's gotta be so frustrating! Lol you know, that made me kinda wonder. Am I the only one who "maybe" cheats a bit to get out of a tight spot? Like "oh well that die didn't land on the board, so I have to reroll it" or "hmm that combat didn't go well - ok, forget all that, it never happened". Not like completely ignoring mythos cards, or drawing new encounter cards because you get a bad one, but little things like that that get you out of a jam and keep you from getting frustrated.

The problem here is that when you win with a very narrow margin the game, the Ancient One should be therefore entitled to do the same: shrug a tentacle and say "if that darn die gave a different result, I'd now be feasting with mankind". You don't trick the results to have the AO win; in the same way, you shouldn't trick the results to have the investigators win.

My two cents, at least.

Yeah, I get what you mean. I thought the same thing myself the other day. On the one hand, you don't want to lose, but on the other hand if you're going to always be like, well I should get a reroll, then what's the point of playing? I have to try to just suck it up and deal with it when stuff like that happens instead of giving into temptation :P

Yup. Unfortunately, it's a side effect of any game based on dice. Arkham's rather good tho: sound strategy usually beats bad luck. Sure thing, when you roll 247 successes out of 249 needed (like in MF's example), well... it's really a "meh" moment :D

Several years ago, my girlfriend and I attended Arkham Nights at FFG HQ in Roseville, MN. We engaged in a 6-player, 4-hour, nail-biting game, in which we had the city of Arkham flooded with monsters, Yig sitting at 9 Doom Tokens , five Seals on the board, and open Gates equal to one less required to bring the AO forth. Fortunately, we experienced a few gate "bounces" and then a series of activities captured the attention of several other moderators...

Playing Darrell , I managed four succ essive " Evade " rolls, escaping from the Woods location laden with monsters to move exactly one space, so I could pass an Elder Sign to my girlfriend, Ashcan Pete , who in-turn raced on his Motorcycle to Mary , who moved one more space from the French Hill Streets to the Silver Twilight Lodge and hand it off to Dexter , who, fortunately due to his "5" Speed raced to Hibb's Road house , spending several Clue tokens along the way to avoid a few monsters loitering after midnight in the street, and finally deliver the iconic image to Bob , who had emerged from The Dreamlands . It was an incredible finish to a great, great game!

Cheers,

Joe

Last night we had one of those moments when the game is clearly played by some invisible force and not randomness. Five seals, two investigators in two other worlds with ability to seal (for backup) and Shudde had only one rubble marker left. OW encounter got BOTH investigators delayed, then the Mythos card "No one can help you now" came up. So our only chance was to get another Mythos card the next turn without causing a monster surge, without bursting a seal and with an environment card. Let's say I didn't dare reading the Mythos...

And then it came, an environment Mythos causing a new gate to open. Hallelujah.

Probably the craziest thing I can report is that by using Curse, all the Horror sets plus their expansions from Miskatonic, we've gotten to the point where, with four Investigators, more than one out of three of our last twenty games literally comes down to the last Mythos card drawn in order to decide the outcome :) .

There was a game against Zhar where he only had two Doom spaces left and my brother encountered Mr. Skin in another world. I told him to take Bain for the Doom track breather, but we had someone ready to seal next turn and so he felt safe enough to take the original Curse Messenger Ally, who we'd just shuffled back in.

Naturally, Zhar got a new gate, then rolled doubles, and got another new gate. Nyarlathotep, in his Mask as the Messenger, laughed at our refusal of the safety he had offered as Zhar devoured us.

One of my very favorite endings also involved Nyarlathotep, this time as the opposing Ancient One. In a bloody and savage final conflict which went deep into the Red Battle cards, the Crawling Chaos succeeded in killing three of the four Investigators opposing him. The only hero left was down to his final clue token, but the Great Meddler was only one damage point away from banishment himself! With each of them on the very edge of annihilation, Nyarlathotep offered his battered foe a deal: survival and a position of power in exchange for shifting his allegiance to the Ancient One.

The investigator nobly refused, and prepared to end his opponent. Nyarlathotep only sighed in disappointment before going back up to ten Doom tokens in the next round and crushing the investigator like a bug! I thought that was a fantastic ending, a wonderful in-game example of how in literature Nyarlathotep is depicted as deceptive and manipulative, with a wicked sense of humor :P .

Oh, and here are two of my best games: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/151630/brilliance-abhoth

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/387837/cruel-cunning-crawling-chaos

We've had many fun (and funny) moments while playing AH, and like everyone else we've had our surprisingly-easy wins and our depressingly-impossible defeats. The funniest event that we've had involved a character currently moving through R'lyeh. The R'lyeh encounter card describes a body floating in the water, you bring it to shore and need to apply artificial respiration ... cue dice rolls. The player really, really wanted an Ally so was determined to make this work, he ended up spending a fistful of clues all the while doing some beautiful impromptu role-playing, quoting The Abyss liberally ("Live **** you! Live!"). At last he achieved success, and the Ally was his. Who did it turn out to be? Foolishness, of course!

"Wait a minute ... I was doing mouth-to-mouth on a cat?! "

Edited by BWP

Yog + Black Goat, with Mark, Joe, Akachi, Jenny and Tommy. I won because of a Mythos card biggrin.gif

Doom track at 11 (out of 12), two seals to go, Jenny and Mark about to return from OWs. Jenny had been previously blessed by Akachi directly from Kingsport (thanks, Summoning Glass!), but still she had 2 blessed dice to roll 2 successes to seal Kadath; Mark was somehow in a better situation (5 standard dice to score 2 successes and close Another time; but he had 7 clues, so that the virtual pool of dice for passing the check was 7). The Mythos card that bumped doom to 11 was the card allowing investigators to trade clues as items until the end of the turn; Akachi moved to Dunwich, was able to make an extra movement step thanks to a Relationship card, and tossed 4 more clues to Jenny, so that she had a few rerolls available. 2 sealers on gates, 2 seals, bringing the total to six. Goodbye Yog.