Check the new FAQ out folks!
Revisions on the Reference cards have taken place for better balance.
FAQ-Jan 2016 now available
I may be being a bit dense here, but I'm not too familiar with the boards yet.
Can you direct me to the faq or post a link please Grim?
Link to new doc. https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/eldritch-horror/ (see FAQ under Support).
Regarding changes: 4 player games will need to deal with more gates (2 instead of 1) and fewer monsters (1 instead of 2) per surge. Should make for more tense games. Shub may be a bit easier since we don't double down on monsters during surge, but then again, there may be more matching gates as more open. Since I mainly play 4 investigator games, it will be interesting to see how this effects thing - on the whole I do think (again, for 4 investigators) that it has been getting easier. But with more gates, doom should advance faster and so the rush to complete in time will be there again.
Ah, I gotcha. Thanks ricedwlit. My girlfriend's tablet is struggling to download or open the file at the minute for some reason, but from what you say this sounds major!
My first impulse is this isn't something I'll want to adopt. Like I've said elsewhere, EH is so delicately balanced that even a small change can make a big difference to the outcome. And 2 gates instead of 1 for a 4 player game is far from a small change.
I'll try and reserve final judgement until I can get a proper look at the file and see what you guys think of how it changes the structure of the game.
I'm keeping an open mind about what the changes mean. For my part, since MOM the introduction of preludes + focus tokens + lots of powerful unique assets has lead to a huge increase in my personal win rate.
Prior to the release of MoM, my overall win rate (mostly 4 person games) was approximately 52% based on 42 games. Looking at just games since MoM (43 games) my win rate has risen to over 75%. This is even with the addition of starting rumors for easier AOs (e.g Elder Things). If changing number of gates etc is enough to adjust for this, then I've a lot less to have to manage on a case by case basis.
Ricedwlit, just out of curiosity, do you tend to choose your investigators or randomly pick them?
I almost always pick randomly and I'd put my success rate at somewhere around 33%. Maybe leaning toward 40.
While its true that some additions have helped, I find the general dilution of the decks means its also harder to get the likes of the shotgun and lightning gun (got the lightning gun in my last game, which was first time in at least a dozen games).
Also, building up those all-powerful spell-casters is much less likely, so my own impression is that the game has maintained a good balance of difficulty.
Ricedwlit, just out of curiosity, do you tend to choose your investigators or randomly pick them?
Strategy has evolved over time. Early on I selected my investigators semi randomly but when FL came out (with the increase in difficulty) I started picking them in advance. Then the game got easier so I went to a semi random: select 6 random investigators (distributed across all but the two most recent games). Pick four to play with - if they die then fall back to the other 2. After all this, then semi-randomly pick the AO (algorithm varies, but the main point is that while picking my four to play with I'm not 100% certain which AO I will face).
Regarding the increased size of the decks, over time I've learned to not rely on getting anything specific (thought I do love it when I see Agency Quarantine is available) and instead make the best of what I can get. It can take a while for a good weapon to turn up in the asset deck (by the way a good proxy is generic city encounters - there's roughly a 50% chance of getting an asset and it's often specifically a weapon asset).
That's a neat strategy ricedwlit, I like it. As you don't know which AO you'll be facing I wouldn't think it could account for such a big difference in our win ratios though. Maybe your decision making is just much better than mine
Going back to the new rules, me and a friend played a game against Nephren-ka just earlier and it was a classic (with the normal 1 gate spawn in a 4 player game). Lots of ups and downs and after several rounds I was thinking we had no chance, but we really pulled it back thanks to a miraculous task that closed three gates. In the end, Nephren-ka awoke and it all came down to a single dice roll - pass and win, fail and lose. We lost, but the point is it was a brilliant and extremely tense game. If we'd spawned 2 gates instead of 1, it would've been over before we'd solved the second mystery. Maybe even the first.
Methinks I'll stick with 1 gate, but I'll be interested to see how these changes play out for everybody else.
Yikes! Played several games with the adjusted reference cards, and my success rate has dropped substantially (as in I have lost every game instead of about half).
Is this too hard now?
I've only played one game with the new rules (against Syzygy) and lost. Not certain if I would have won with the old rules as there lots of nasty mythos combos. In particular the game started with the Epidemic prelude that gives everyone an illness and Spawn of Abhoth also in play passing out more illnesses if you don't have any - then just after getting rid of the Spawn (so everyone still has an illness - or, in some cases, more than one due to encounter effects), got the Mythos that requires everyone get another illness and then when next reckoning comes lose 3 health per illness. Yikes - lost two investigators immediately and another on death's bed to die a turn later.
Managed major control closing gates later in the game (as in 2+ a turn for two turns), but that still wasn't enough to slow the doom track from getting to 0. My main takeaway for the next time is to not delay closing gates at all . As in, from the very start, try to close a gate every turn. If there are monsters, then tag team - one investigate kills and then lets another closer. Notable also is that the use of Focus for re-rolls allows some investigators that aren't the best (as in Mark!) actually have a slight chance of succeeding.
All in all too soon to tell what it means for me - I'll likely have to plan 10+ games before I get an overall feel. But at least I'll give it that much of a chance before I write it off completely.
Just saw this on BGG: The FAQ has now been updated (as of 1/19). The revised reference cards are now "variants" to be used if you want to make the game easier (for 1 and 5 investigators) or harder (for 4, 7, or 8 investigators)
Edited by ricedwlit
Just saw this on BGG: The FAQ has now been updated (as of 1/19). The revised reference cards are now "variants" to be used if you want to make the game easier (for 1 and 5 investigators) or harder (for 4, 7, or 8 investigators)
Thank god, playing with 4 players was really crushing.
Yeah, I think that was a wise move by the powers-that-be.
Yes sure. Now 4 players gane against Nephren ka or Risind a Elder things become more challenging.
3 players game not more difficult then 4 players game anymore. I think is good idea.
At the risk of going slightly OT, I think I may have found a more fitting fix to tweak the difficulty, although whether it applies depends largely in how we each play the game.
Lately, I've been on a real winning streak and I've been doing only one thing different - I've been pushing investigators harder, sacrificing a majority of rest actions for something more productive. As a result, I've seen a much higher average of defeated investigators during my games, but at the same time a sharp rise in victories.
Maybe a simple fix for this would be to advance doom by 2 instead of 1 whenever an investigator is defeated.
Trouble is, until FFG stop producing material for EH, I feel obliged to stick to the official rules, but maybe I'll test this out if my win percentage keeps climbing and the game stops feeling as challenging.
At the risk of going slightly OT, I think I may have found a more fitting fix to tweak the difficulty, although whether it applies depends largely in how we each play the game.
Lately, I've been on a real winning streak and I've been doing only one thing different - I've been pushing investigators harder, sacrificing a majority of rest actions for something more productive. As a result, I've seen a much higher average of defeated investigators during my games, but at the same time a sharp rise in victories.
Maybe a simple fix for this would be to advance doom by 2 instead of 1 whenever an investigator is defeated.
Trouble is, until FFG stop producing material for EH, I feel obliged to stick to the official rules, but maybe I'll test this out if my win percentage keeps climbing and the game stops feeling as challenging.
Might be worthwhile to tweak it a lttle bit.
Something along the lines of 1st death in a round advances doom by 2 instead of 1.
My reasoning is to account for mass extinctions on certain rumors like the Wind Walker to not be insta-lose.
Hmm, good point runko. Although, just how often does a rumor like that come along as well as trigger? Might be workable to just consider that rumors like wind-walker would be made that much more dangerous and provided a huge drop in doom doesn't automatically awaken the AO, then there's still a chance of undoing half the doom drop. I guess it'd have to be played consistently to really get a feel for the impact.
Another thing I'm noticing is the contribution of 'advance the active mystery' effects, which are somewhat taking the sting out of epic monsters and some mysteries, especially if that mystery requires tokens equal to half the number of investigators.
The game designers could nullify this through dilution - i.e: eliminate the effect in future expansions, which would make it pop up less frequently as more cards are introduced.
Here's another thought that would help balance the advancing of active mysteries effect, though it probably wouldn't be a popular one...
...
retreat
the active mystery!
And if it's nothing to retreat? Because you can't have one without the other
I think it would be too punishing to say you add an extra token to the mystery requirement.
Better to say you advance doom instead or that you've just got lucky, kinda like the mythos card that shuffles a solved mystery back into the deck (you may not have encountered that one yet, Cimitri, and hope you don't!).
As a matter of fact i did.. twice so far. Fortunately for me it was in the beginning and i had no mysteries solved so i just advanced doom by one. That card is brutal.
Hmmm I did play 2 games with new rules. So open 2 Gates and monster surge 1 in 4 investigator game…. I love difficulty usually but here game become a brutal… there is ni chances to win…. Game just become crazy difficulty. Even witj some easy ancient one! If yu choose chtulhu or Yig that will be impossible to win! That new rule in my opinion is not balanced at all. For example ability of Shaman girls become useless…. And if you get card like Mysterious light rumor (gates cannot be close) 2 gates per round abd vuala you lose already.
For now is best to play with 3 or 5 investigators. Game is difficult but not impossible!
One thought I had was that they could get fractional values on these reference cards by putting a Omen symbol on that line. So a 4 player game the Gates could be 1+Blue. That way it's one gate but add an extra if the Omen is currently on the Blue spot. So, effectively 1.5 gates. The Monster Surge could be 1+Red so 1.25 on average. Etc. I'm thinking mainly for games with very low player counts (as that's all I ever do).
This also gives the players more to do when moving the Omen track to avoid the extra bonus effect.
Another things ... I'm just a newb at this game but would adjusting the number of Gate tokens actually in play affect the difficulty? The game started with only 9 now you can have up to 18. By reducing the number of Gates (by setting aside all but a certain number) you'd limit the total number of Gates that can be open at any time. For example, a 1-player game could have a limit of 5 gates. (Also, I seem to have heard about a card that has "Open all Gates" or somesuch which would be devastating in a low player game)
One thought I had was that they could get fractional values on these reference cards by putting a Omen symbol on that line. So a 4 player game the Gates could be 1+Blue. That way it's one gate but add an extra if the Omen is currently on the Blue spot. So, effectively 1.5 gates. The Monster Surge could be 1+Red so 1.25 on average. Etc. I'm thinking mainly for games with very low player counts (as that's all I ever do).
This also gives the players more to do when moving the Omen track to avoid the extra bonus effect.
Another things ... I'm just a newb at this game but would adjusting the number of Gate tokens actually in play affect the difficulty? The game started with only 9 now you can have up to 18. By reducing the number of Gates (by setting aside all but a certain number) you'd limit the total number of Gates that can be open at any time. For example, a 1-player game could have a limit of 5 gates. (Also, I seem to have heard about a card that has "Open all Gates" or somesuch which would be devastating in a low player game)
Very nice and easy solution