Hello there!

I am now the proud owner of a Eldritch Horror copy and, being an avid fan of this type of board game, i just came to realize that my wife also bought me all of the expansions . (nice present, huh? ). My question, just like the title says is how many expansions can i use in a game at once. I mean, i know that given the Ancient one that i choose, the special encounter decks and the mysteries deck are tailored for that specific ancient one but i was curious about the other cards. expeditions,assets,conditions,spells,mythos....etc...

Can i use them all(4 expansions) in one sitting battling an ancient one or if I want to play the Mountains of Madness for example i just play that expansion with the base game? And next if i want Strange Remnants i take out the Mountains of Madness cards and put the SR?

I personally play with everything all the time! Love this game! You may be interested in the following BoardGameGeek.com links. The first is in direct relation to you inquiry and the second is the general game entry listing. Hope this helps.

https://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/1503939/mixing-base-expansions

https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/146021/eldritch-horror

All in, al the time!

On a more serious not, for basic components such as locations, assets, spells, conditions etc you can mix everything together with no problem AO specific items (mysteries, research encounters) will rotate in as needed. Depending on the prelude you draw (if you choose to use one - these were added starting with Mountains of Madness), you may need to use a particular side board and it's associated location decks. Same goes for the Mystic Ruins deck - you will use this depending on Prelude and/or playing against Syzygy.

For items such as Gates and clues - you can add these in as needed (which is what I do) or you can simply always include them and if you draw one that doesn't apply due to the location not being in play, then just draw another.

Last, the conditions and unique asset decks will get big and take a while to search through - fortunately you can subdivide these if you desire based on trait since you are never asked to just "draw a condition" or "draw a unique asset" - if the precise card title is not given (e.g. "Hallucinations" or "Antartica Guide") then a trait is used (e.g. "Madness" or "Unique Relic").

Thank you both very much. I expected the same thing but i wanted to make sure that i can play all of them at the same time. I already separated the specific items and i'm planning a game with my wife for saturday with all expansions added and playing vs Azathoth for our first game and then (if we win) want to go after Yig or little old "Shubby". I was wondering, since you have way more experience than me with all the expansions, how much would a game last on average? On the site it's written 2-4 hours for the base game. Is that realistic or should i expect to last longer?

Thanks Devon for the links. I made an account there and started reading. All the best!

With two players, if each player controls 2 investigators, with little experience in the game, I would hazard to say play time will be close to the 4 hour range. I play 4 investigators solo and with set up and tear down usually run about 2.5 hours.

I play solo controlling 4 investigators and despite many many games I still take at least 2-3 hours. For a new person I'd agree with Devon and say expect up to 4 hours.

Second bit of advice - don't worry about the time spent, just try to get into the feel of the game and try to view it as a story. And, given that this is Lovecraftian, it may not necessarily be one that ends well.

I am able to control 2 investigators but the wife isn't. We pretty much want to learn the ropes first. I already watched some playthroughs on YT and got the basics set but my half said that she doesn't want to ruin the experience by spoiling it and wants to confront the game head on saturday. So basically we are going to play only 2 even though most LP-ers suggest playing 4 is optimal. I was asking about the time because we can't postpone the game for the next day if we don't finish it because we also live with two devils (please read cute and fluffy kittens) that want nothing more than to play along. Two more investigators would definitely help us but i have a feeling that they don't want to play by the rules. I am still trying to find a clue token that one kitty got behind the couch. I hope she didn't swallow it or else that research encounter is gonna be awkwaaaaard

If playing with just a total of two investigators then you can reduce overall time by an hour. Likelihood of failure will go up - but you can always chalk it up to a first time experience.

I just can't wait for saturday to come faster so i can play it. I got the game this monday but i finish work and get home around 7:30 pm every day and finish daily chores by 9 pm so starting a game is not an option if i want to get to work next day in the morning. I swear to you, every evening i enter my house I feel the game box is watching me and i feel that Cthulhu is shouting from the box wanting to get out.

I've had my first match and boy, what a treat it was.Never felt this satisfied in a looong time. Me and my wife went up against Azatoth and managed to win with the doom track at 1.We played with 2 investigators(but lost 4 in the process) and the battle lasted 5,5 hours until azatoth finally revealed his true name and we managed to banish him from this realm. The irony is that for the last mystery i got the one that told me to close a gate that had the same symbol as the one on the omen track and next thing we know is we draw the mythos rumor card that doesn't allow you to close gates until you resolve that rumor. Fun Fun Fun!

Nevertheless, I never felt that the game was harsh on me or that it didn't gave me a way out and we played with the rules from the rulebook(no houserules). Although if we didn't had the focus tokens from the expansions we wouldn't have won to tell you the truth.But i guess that's the reason she bought me all the expansions so that we may enjoy all the content. And i am really glad she did.

First off, all the expansions makes for the best present ever!

Great to hear you had a blast with it - there'll be plenty more vicious mythos card combinations lying in wait for you too. It's freaky how the game messes with you sometimes

I almost envy you, playing it all for the first time. I'll be curious to hear how you get on with each Old One, so keep us posted!

I will post future matches and opinions as I play. Unfortunately (for us) we can only play on the weekends and only on saturday given the fact that it takes a while to setup and play and we are not so young anymore so we can ignore sleeping hours or tending around the house and taking care of those two devils-of-cats that. I think the little one ate that rumour token because i moved the couch and it wasn't there.

I also wanted to ask you somethink(Eldritch Mike) or anybody with more experience than me that can answer 100% correct.

When I'm building the Mythos Deck the rulebook says that first I separate the cards by color. Then I shuflle all the indepedent stacks of cards (green, yellow and blue) then I proceed to make the Stage 1 ,2 ,3 and place 1 over 2 and everything over 3. My question was:

After i make the three stacks (1,2,3) do I shuffle them independently before uniting them or just leave them like the Ancient one sheet so that i know each time what colour is the card I will draw and knew how to prepare? Because I shuffled them and got 3 red tentacle cards in a row for our first three turns and It felt a little harsh.Not impossible, but harsh.

After buulding the three stages of the Mythos deck, shuffle each before stacking.

As noted, you shuffle each stage (1, 2, 3) after creating them and before placing stacking them in order. Getting three hard (tentacle) mythos in a row is just bad luck and can happen even with shuffling since each type of mythos (green, yellow, blue) has a mixture of easy, medium, and hard mythos cards.

If you find it this too annoying there are several options

- outright remove the hard mythos

- take some additional time to set up the game and use the staged difficulty variant (see the Mountains of Madness rules, p. 6)

One last thought: you can speed up the initial setup a bit by doing some pre-work an evening or so in advance of the day you play the actual game

- pick investigators and search out their starting possessions and set aside somewhere

- pick out AO and set up mythos deck, put aside special monsters, etc and set aside as well

Then actual game day you can focus on the common components for every game etc.

- take some additional time to set up the game and use the staged difficulty variant (see the Mountains of Madness rules, p. 6)

I've only tried a staged Mythos deck a couple of times, but on those occasions I found it made the game much harder. Also, it takes away the sheer relief and joy of seeing something like 'The World Fights Back' when it's late in the game and the investigators are run ragged.

Thank you all for the responses. So it was just bad luck then with the tentacles. Oh well..i guess i'm gonna need to improve my shuffling hand then.

@Ricedwlit: if the game is supposed to be played with all the content i'm not gonna remove any card .Even if I'm gonna lose. It's part of the experience and I want to have it all not just a part. I gain more satisfaction by beating the game by myself than by dumbing it down by removing cards or house-ruling it. That's my opinion, at least.

I guess i've missed that part of the rulebook with the staged deck. Gonna take a look at it tonight but if i'll conclude that it's gona make the playstyle less random i'll probably not take it.

About the prior setup I am already doing that. I already prepared the game for playing it directly on saturday. I was thinking of playing Syzygy next because what can be better than fighting the universe. Right? Riiiiiight? (*trembles in fear)

Any strategy to use or should i just rush through the mysteries as fast as I can? Again, we'll play with two investigators.

I just finished another game against azatoth(random) and it went a lot better. We won at doom 12 solving the 3 mysteries while there were 3 rumors (2 with tentacles) in play. Our luck was based that the rumors didn't affect our mysteries at all and we had good luck with the random investigators. I got Jacqueline and my wife got Trish so while I was rushing through the mysteries with ease(had some luck with clues spawning next to me) she was fighting the epic monsters after getting the sword of saint jerome(suck it Ghatanothoa-six successes,oh yeah!) and closing gates to prevent doom from climbing.

Being my 2nd playthrough i wanted to ask another question . On BGG there is a file somewhere that tells you how to make the setup for each expansion(if you have all, or just one or two) here: https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/127755/eldritch-horror-setup

On that page at every expansion it says to draw a prelude card. Do i draw just one and then use the content/setup on that single prelude card or do I draw one prelude card for each expansion I have that came with preludes(3). For both my games I only drew 1 card and that was it. My first game it was a card that told me to gain 1 clue and 1 focus if.... and this game I had the Dark Blessings prelude that told me that if i want i can get a dark pact so that I may gain a boon and..... So this means that in both my games I haven't used the Antarctica and Egypt boards but i used cards from that expansion when i mixed them in except those special ones (mystic ruins,adventure,outpost,mountain...etc....) because they didn't got preluded.

Did I played correctly? Or am i supposed to draw preludes for each additional board I have? Because it can be also a blessing(gaining boons,artifacts,clues,etc..) but i can also be a curse (using both boards and the main board) in a two investigator game(dare not to think of playing just 1) would be hassle (for traveling I mean).

All in all, i'm having more and more fun with this game match after match.

Seems to me you're playing it just right Cimitri, although the truth is you could feasibly pick a second if you like or none at all. The rules are pretty relaxed about Preludes. I don't always use them, but I tend to draw two and pick one when I do.

That said, I've recently experimented with using AO-specific Preludes to enhance their themes and slightly bump the difficulty (for instance, Azathoth starts with 2 eldritch tokens on the green space of the omen track, or Yog-Sothoth starts with a very tough Dunwich Horror monster in Arkham). This seemed to work really well for the game. In Azathoth's case I thought it was going to be disastrous as I drew the Green Flame mystery straight out the gate and the epic monster it spawns was going to effectively give me no chance, as it could have added a few more eldritch tokens to the omen. As it was, I defeated it with only 3 tokens on the omen. Even that would've been enough to make the game almost unwinnable, but on two occasions I was able to move the omen track to a space of my choosing, which bought me enough time to get the job done. Barely.

I hope they add Preludes specific to Shub-Niggurath and Yig, as they're the only two currently missing one.

Hmmm.. Drawing two and picking one or choosing to keep both(depending on difficulty) should work for me too. I guess it all breaks down to how many investigators are playing.I was thinking that it was too easy and thought i played incorrectly by just drawing one. Phew.. So i guess it was just luck.( or skill, hehe ).

Thanks for the response