new version. Change picture (avi will be happy) because I realize that the Gang Head is Sadie, a woman. :-) Try to make it more simple. Any more comments are welcome.
Custom Heralds
For those who care, I revised the design (not the game mechanics)
amikezor said:
Avi_dreader said:
amikezor said:
Heh... Set's tough because he gives Yig strong shields, and allows him to kill investigators much faster. He's also dangerous if the first monster the pops out is a Serpent People (I was tempted to make the Serpent People mandatory, but it seemed a little cruel, not that having Yig start off with a stalker cultist isn't rather cruel ;'D I wouldn't describe it as one of my tougher heralds though. At the same time, players would need to be at least somewhat advanced to know how to manage evading the cultists and the serpent people while killing Yig before he wakes up (as he probably will if they're relatively inexperienced), because now it's much more unlikely that they'll just be able to bludgeon him to death. Honestly, I don't think any of my heralds are *that* hard. They're all designed to be beatable. They just change around game dynamics significantly so you have to put a little thought into them and vary your game strategy a little to manage against them. If you just charge into one on autopilot, it will kill you, but if you put thought into it, you should be able to take it down. Well... Except for the Arbiter of Reality ;') that was designed to break spirits while being nasty, and you need to play a really good game to deal with it. Even The Maskless has an achilles heel (if you look for it). I prefer some of the other players Nyarlathotep heralds (I'm kindof tempted to redesign this, but on the other hand, I'm not sure if it's necessary since I'm making a new Nyarlathotep herald anyways).
It happens so that the first monster was indeed a serpent people, the second one a cultist. Though, I killed them both with a spell (the one that reduces the toughness by 1) before they damaged us. Anyway, I just wanted to emphasize that we enjoyed the game with Set (usually I am not such a big fan of Yig that is *usually* rather easy to deal with).
OK next of yours will be worm, janus and kerathimel.
I fetched all heralds from this thread. Any other place where people post custom heralds ? (BGG ?)
Janus won't playtest well, it' too protean. I've never bothered to calculate how many combinations it has, but there are *alot* just counting the base game AOs. I'm going to be mostly afk for a few days, so I'll try to respond to your herald after I'm done with my papers.
Avi_dreader said:
Janus won't playtest well, it' too protean. I've never bothered to calculate how many combinations it has, but there are *alot* just counting the base game AOs.
Number of combination is n_choose_2, being n*(n-1)/2, n being the number of AO. Base game is 28. +DH: 66, +KH: 120 + IH: 276... It basically grows like n^2...
But play test is fine : try one or two games and see if it is fun :-)
amikezor said:
Avi_dreader said:
Janus won't playtest well, it' too protean. I've never bothered to calculate how many combinations it has, but there are *alot* just counting the base game AOs.
Number of combination is n_choose_2, being n*(n-1)/2, n being the number of AO. Base game is 28. +DH: 66, +KH: 120 + IH: 276... It basically grows like n^2...
But play test is fine : try one or two games and see if it is fun :-)
::Laughter:: there you go. So basically you need to playtest it 276 times at the bare minimum ;') but realistically you should play multiple games, in case one's a fluke. So probably about 700 games :'D
I guarantee you, it's fun, but it's very variable. So either preselect the Ancient Ones you want merged, or get them at random. Just don't say that your experience of the herald is representative of the herald ;') There's a reason I spent such a long time thinking about Janus (because I knew if I could get the design right it would essentially be the equivalent of creating hundreds of heralds, so I wanted to wait until I had an idea that really worked).
You know I would say that "flukes" happen in play testing a good 25% of the time. When I tried to play test Dr Herbert West I got a monster surge on turn #2 that sent 3 monsters flying right into an innsmouth vortex and an investigator fell to the innsmouth look leaving the terror track at 6 and the deep one rising track at 4 with 6 pretty beefed up cultists running around.
It happens alot.
Veet said:
You know I would say that "flukes" happen in play testing a good 25% of the time. When I tried to play test Dr Herbert West I got a monster surge on turn #2 that sent 3 monsters flying right into an innsmouth vortex and an investigator fell to the innsmouth look leaving the terror track at 6 and the deep one rising track at 4 with 6 pretty beefed up cultists running around.
It happens alot.
::Laughter:: why do I have a feeling you lost that game?
Avi_dreader said:
::Laughter:: why do I have a feeling you lost that game?
Well I did manage to seal a gate a few turns later, due mainly to the fact that the investigator drew an elder sign in his opening hand. Then it burst almost immediately after which I prety much spent the rest of the game in St Marys with said cultists waiting outside. I've never gotten such a bad ass kicking and I owe it all to a single Innsmouth mythos card.
Veet said:
Avi_dreader said:
::Laughter:: why do I have a feeling you lost that game?
Well I did manage to seal a gate a few turns later, due mainly to the fact that the investigator drew an elder sign in his opening hand. Then it burst almost immediately after which I prety much spent the rest of the game in St Marys with said cultists waiting outside. I've never gotten such a bad ass kicking and I owe it all to a single Innsmouth mythos card.
Yeah. Innsmouth has a few killer mythos. Was it the one that swarms the town with monsters? Or just random bad luck? There was once where I got the remove all clues from the board mythos two games in a row as the second card (there was about a month in between the games, and I was horrified when I saw it happened *again* after shuffling).
It was the one that makes the first player draw innsmouth look cards, it just happened to open a gate on devils reef which the opening card did as well so all 3 monsters in the surge went there and of the 4 monsters which were now there 3 moved.
Veet said:
It was the one that makes the first player draw innsmouth look cards, it just happened to open a gate on devils reef which the opening card did as well so all 3 monsters in the surge went there and of the 4 monsters which were now there 3 moved.
simple curiosity: how can 3 monsters appear from a surge to the same location with 1 gate in play ? (Do I feel stupid ??! :-)
amikezor said:
Veet said:
It was the one that makes the first player draw innsmouth look cards, it just happened to open a gate on devils reef which the opening card did as well so all 3 monsters in the surge went there and of the 4 monsters which were now there 3 moved.
simple curiosity: how can 3 monsters appear from a surge to the same location with 1 gate in play ? (Do I feel stupid ??! :-)
Probably three investigators. Gate surges produce monster equal to the number of gates or investigators, whichever is higher.
Avi_dreader said:
amikezor said:
Veet said:
It was the one that makes the first player draw innsmouth look cards, it just happened to open a gate on devils reef which the opening card did as well so all 3 monsters in the surge went there and of the 4 monsters which were now there 3 moved.
simple curiosity: how can 3 monsters appear from a surge to the same location with 1 gate in play ? (Do I feel stupid ??! :-)
Probably three investigators. Gate surges produce monster equal to the number of gates or investigators, whichever is higher.
sure it makes perfect sense. Now I know : I am stupid :-))
::Laughter:: don't worry about it, we all have our stupid Arkham moments.
Soooo... Veet, Tibs and I played the Azathoth herald on Skype today, along with The Arbiter of Reality and Tzschula. It was a tough game. We lost. Double terror is *brutal* especially when the rails wash out, and there are three monsters in Innsmouth while The Dark Druid is on the board ::Laughter:: I also got Dexter Drake devoured on the second turn by accident. ::Sigh:: I think The Arbiter went really well with it as a supplement.
If you kept the "song of the outer gods" power then that is a lot of madness flying around. I can't find tzschula to check out his powers though.
On a slightly unrelated note, why does photobuckets suggested searches seem to think I want to search for hermaphrodites?
Veet said:
If you kept the "song of the outer gods" power then that is a lot of madness flying around. I can't find tzschula to check out his powers though.
On a slightly unrelated note, why does photobuckets suggested searches seem to think I want to search for hermaphrodites?
Oh, the madness/seals weren't a huge problem... The double terror was actually the major issue (along with The Arbiter's combat inhibiting effects and devouring penalties). It just racked and broke us.
Avi_dreader said:
Soooo... Veet, Tibs and I played the Azathoth herald on Skype today, [...]
I am not sure I know this herald, do I ?
amikezor said:
Avi_dreader said:
Soooo... Veet, Tibs and I played the Azathoth herald on Skype today, [...]
I am not sure I know this herald, do I ?
I haven't *officially* made it yet. But I describe its functions a couple pages back. It takes the abilities Tibs gave to his Azathoth remake, and gives them to a herald, while also causing terror track to double on increases, and... Well... Go look for it, I don't want to describe it again :') or just wait a bit and I'll post it in a more polished form.
I guess the Sheldon Gang herald did not inspire anything you guys... did it ? ;o)
I have a Guardian to use the forgotten cards. All comments most welcome ;o)
Avi_dreader said:
I haven't *officially* made it yet. But I describe its functions a couple pages back. It takes the abilities Tibs gave to his Azathoth remake, and gives them to a herald, while also causing terror track to double on increases, and... Well... Go look for it, I don't want to describe it again :') or just wait a bit and I'll post it in a more polished form.
Great ! Great GOO Veet, by the way. I should check this GOO thread more carefully. So, let you do it Avi ! :-)
amikezor said:
I guess the Sheldon Gang herald did not inspire anything you guys... did it ? ;o)
Whoops, sorry, I've been really busy lately (three days of almost no sleep— nonstop finals work), and now I got the FAQ that I've been sinking my time into (I spent all of yesterday on it even though it was my second day of pseudo-vacation after schoolhell). I'll try to give you a response one of these days ;')
Also, Guardians don't belong on this thread, they belong in the Guardians thread (which you have to dig back a few pages to find, since it tends to sink down quickly— ironically, the Guardians thread has no guardians).
http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=113&efcid=1&efidt=24003&efpag=4
Avi_dreader said:
Whoops, sorry, I've been really busy lately (three days of almost no sleep— nonstop finals work), and now I got the FAQ that I've been sinking my time into (I spent all of yesterday on it even though it was my second day of pseudo-vacation after schoolhell). I'll try to give you a response one of these days ;')
Also, Guardians don't belong on this thread, they belong in the Guardians thread (which you have to dig back a few pages to find, since it tends to sink down quickly— ironically, the Guardians thread has no guardians).
http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=113&efcid=1&efidt=24003&efpag=4
Thank you Avi. No rush. Enjoy your holidays.
I guess that too subtle for me... let's see ... for the second guardian, you mean anyone that respond to post ?
Direct Link: http://i622.photobucket.com/albums/tt307/avi_dreader/TheCreviceofChaos.jpg
Direct Link: http://i622.photobucket.com/albums/tt307/avi_dreader/TheCreviceofChaos.jpg
Veet created most of the Start of Game text and the idea for Azathoth's additional heralds, the text "Song of the Outer Gods," and the idea of forcing investigators to draw Madness whenever they close gates. Thanks Veet :')