Hi there

I was hoping that someone could help me out - I have a few questions about Arkham horror:

1. What are the different winning conditions for AH ?

2. How does one remove doom track tokens from the Ancient One ?

3. Closing and sealing gates: Turn 1. go through gate, do first encounter; Turn 2: go to second side of other world, do encounter; Turn 3: return to Arkham, and close the gate; Turn 4: seal it ? Is that correct ?

4. What would be the value of closing gate instead of sealing it ? Why would one decide to do this ? If the gate is merely closed, then the investigator has stay on that location until it is sealed, because once they move, that gate is no longer closed.... Wait...if a gate is closed, does that mean the Investigator takes the gate token, i.e. there is no open gate on the location ? I think I answered my own question!

Sorry about all the questions. I only recently boguht AH, I love it! But sometiems the rules are confusing, and it helps to hear it from someone else.

Thank you!!

1. There are 3 win conditions for Arkham, suceeding in any of these nets you the victory. You can close all open gates *and* have gate trophies equal to or greater than the number of players (rare, but it happens). You can have 6 seals on the board, each seal being accomplished by surviving a few turns in an other world and spending 5 clues (the most common victory method, probably the one to 'go for'). Or you can defeat the AO in final combat, which, depending on the Ancient One, can range from mediocre difficulty to downright next to impossible.

2. There are a number of ways. Certain items can do it, the most common being the use of an 'Elder Sign' card, a unique item. A handful of investigators have abilities or Personal stories (with the Innsmouth Expansion) that can do it. There are some rare encounters that remove doom, and even a monster from the Innsmouth Expansion that removes a doom when he is defeated.

3. Very close, Turns 1-3 are all right. There is, however, no 'turn 4'. Sealing is done as soon as you close the gate, so, on 'turn 3' in your example.

4. Yes, if you close a gate, you get the Gate trophy. To answer the original question here, you might want to do this because you simply want a gate trophy to trade in for a reward. Or, perhaps you are going for a 'gate close' victory, which, as I said in (1), is very difficult to pull off, but situationally, very useful. More likely though, you'll close a gate to avoid awakening the Ancient One by having too many gates on the board. This is usually not necessary in the Base game (occasionally it is), but it happens every now and again when playing with Innsmouth or Dunwich, because there are more spots where gates can open.

awp832 nailed them all.

Don't worry about all the questions. We LOVE questions (or any opportunity to share our "wisdom"). And you will have more...oh yes...there will be more questions...

Welcome to the Carnival, QueenLich!

awp832 said:

According to Tibs' statistics, "too many gates" is what causes the awakening nearly 1/4th of the time. It probably should happen more than that. I know I've forgotten it a few times and even on purpose when playing a large training game.

It's not that hard even in the base game if playing with 7+ investigators. It only takes 5 open gates!

Thank you *so* much for the responses! Phew... that really cleared things up! Woaw ... so the doom tokens can really stack up quite quickly (seeing as how there aren't many ways to remove them regularly). Aww.... Arkham Horror... always stacked against the players! Love it

We're planning today - wish us luck.Thank again so much!!!

QueenLich said:

We're planning today - wish us luck.Thank again so much!!!

May all your dice come up 2 (you probably don't have IH yet, but just in case Skids is in the game) and the GOO wake to devour the world !

The instances where you'd want to close gates without sealing goes up the more players there are (less open gates to wake ancient one).

Other circumstances might be:

- Gate symbol would banish monster(s) you really need to get rid of.

- Gate is on an expansion board in a spot that would pour monsters into a vortex.

There are others - you are playing Amanda, and gate is to R'yleh. Or, gate is on important location (science building syndrome).

dj2.0 said:

In this case, I'm hoping that another gate to R'lyeh opens ASAP, so I can get rid of a pathetic investigator and hopefully get a useful one as replacement . Of course, the game would probably pop Vincent Lee out next.