I don't know if it offers any sense of scale, but I started playing Arkham since just before Innsmouth came out ( so around 2009, roughly) . Also, until literally a couple weeks ago I've been playing with house rules: Gates are face-down until you enter them, and all monsters on a gate you close get sucked in. I stopped playing with house rules when I finally got Lurker since the new gates can't allow that playstyle (moving gates, being the issue) .

Obviously I went through that phase where I thought combat was the biggest part of the game, and only recently have I seen otherwise. That being said, I still think covering good distance while evading is still a daunting challenge at times, even at something like a -1 awareness. So, usually fighting seems like the best way to deal with things in the way.

So, when I see something like either of these heralds, they seem especially difficult on paper. After reconsidering them a bit, I understand how they might be handled, but they still seem amazingly hard. Also, any comments I make on custom content is always made with the intent of improvement, not aggression. I hope there isn't any confusion there (which it looks like there wasn't)

I really appreciate the input, and I certainly didn't want to come off as a complete beginner because I do have a few years of this under my belt, but it seems there's apparently a lot about this game that I apparently don't know. That last thing concerns me since I have around 60 custom investigators, and I hope they aren't disfunctional on account of having a faulty knowledge.

Anyways, thank you for the comments, I really do appreciate another viewpoint.

EDIT: To edit your post, click the quote button on the post you are editing, go the url and change the word "responder" to "editar", and change the phrase at the end that says "efidc" into "efidm".

Hi there,

thanks for the new feedback. The sense of scale can't be expressed really by the number of years you've been playing, but by some other factors. For instance, the number of games you've played. The type of games (number of investigators; expansions in play; and so on) and your winning / losing ratio. This is what Avi tried to communicate. Not the years, but the way we understand the game mechanics. Clearly, not being a noob implies you're familiar with cards, encounters, opportunities offered by the game, and so on, but essentially you should consider other factors in the mix (and yep, I know you were not aggressive, and I hope you know we were not aggressive, it's just oratory, passion for the debate). Avi for instance played something like 400 games, plus studied the game so well he was one of the proofreaders for the last FAQ, and he tended to play all expansion in games with three investigators. And was able to win most of the times. He is light years far away from the place where I'm stuck (actually, he's probably the best player of the world). This is just to say that it's important that we share our experience, compare our gaming styles, debate strategy and tactics.

I looked at your creations in your thread, but I didn't say anything at regard, simply because the Arkham I play and the Arkham you play are quite different (this does not imply one is better than the other; they are different). You creations are poliedrycal: add nuances to the game, but I'm searching for bigger challenges since "normal" Arkham does not interest me any longer (sadly). I'm not saying is a bad game, I love the encounters and the theme, but it's too easy now (in my last 150 games I've lost something like 3 times), so I need this. Pressure. Pressure. Pressure. A lot of things to consider. A board that is always threatening you and that forces me to plan several turns in advance, combining items, accepting risks. At the beginning I was very scared by Avi's stuff, thinking that I couldn't be possible to survive any of his Heralds (and I was slaughtered during my first tries) but then I found that I could change the way I play to match different challenges. And now I'm on his side on this, but I don't pretend it's the right way to play Arkham

Posting Heralds here is made for two different reasons:

a) offering people who love playing "hardcore Arkham" something *difficult* to fight against, and showing them the potential hidden inside the game (some of the custom creations done by Avi, Veet, Amikezor, Rovdjuret and myself - immodesty moment, sorry - are much more interesting than *any* of the official material ever printed), twisting the game mechanics, and so on (if you want to dive into Hell, simply follow the link on Avi's and my signatures). It's a different Arkham

b) to have feedback on the wording and the rules. After mumbling for several hours you usually believe that everything's clear, and you're not able to see loopholes as big as an infernal grotto, so other people can help in finding the weaknesses of the Herald

But we are ok with the difficulty level. Most of them are expressively done to be insane.

Plus, clearly, if something it's not clear, we're always willing to help

Hope we are ok :-)

And with that very profound moment concenring how long a person has played and the effects it has on their way of thinking--let's shove out this newly created Herald from a two-month old newbie to the game!

The original image is by ianllanas from deviantArt. Essentially, I wanted to do something involving the 'Witch Factor' of Arkham since there seemed to be very little in the main game and expansions that I have so far. I'd recently finished re-reading "Dreams in the Witch House" and my thought was that if Keziah Mason was working witchcraft, then she likely wasn't alone in her work given the scope of the witch trials and how Lovecraft has usually hinted that there were a lot more witches in and around Salem/Arkham then history allows us to believe.

There was also a disturbing lack of any Eastern European influences (which I think is decidedly unnerving in terms of overall tone) and so, I give you Gorska'Maika, an ersatz Baba Yaga Herald.

Working solely from my own limited experience, I wanted to shift the notion of the Witch monster into a 'Hag' similar to Baba Yaga, thus the boost to their effects--the flying and Nightmarish 1 coming from the notion of hags having horribly decrepid appearances and flying through various means (be it broom, mortar and pestal or what-have-you).

The Game Start ability comes from the idea of a witches coven, and thus the 'Endless' and repeated placement of the tokens. The thematic idea was a group of witches, under Gorska'Maika, were working on opening these gates themselves and thus why the appear any time a gate is opened.

Finally, the 'Don't Go in the Woods' ability comes from the obvious influence of the real lore. Baba Yaga was primarly a boogey-man type of character to keep children from wandering off and so I play it up here as a means to keep more gates open longer.

Here's a Herald I made on request. It might look like a joke, because that's how it started ( source ), but I wanted to make it a real, playable Herald with a certain Pacman feel to it. All feedback is much appreciated. =)

Click here for full size.

Judging by the wording of this--this is actually a combination of Ghosts AND Pacman. Actually, scratch that, I would almost hazard to say that you should have made Inky, Blinky, Pinky and Clyde the Heralds instead of Pacman given the way the herald works, especially since the portals are Stalkers and thus, follow/chase/pass through stuff to get to the investigators.

Dr.Faust said:

This is very true. The name 'Pacman Horror' was more a reference to the game than the character. I can see how the image is confusing, though.

Wondering why the dam(n) forum system cancelled my reply on your Pacman Herald, Eiterorm. Honestly, the site is horribly slow in these days, and the structure of the forum completely sucks.

Anyhow, let's try to comment again.

The Herald is brilliant and hilarious, especially in the part when stalker games becomes "stalked" and move away from the most powerful characters. It adds also a certain strategy so that even if all gates can actually move, you can coop in order to chase some of them back to another location.

There is only one point requiring clarification, I think: in the Power pellet paragraph, you say "otherwise the gate will retreat according to the movement box on the Mythos Card". So what happens if the movement patters leads to an investigator with enough clues to seal?

As for the rest, as I told you, it's brilliant

Julia said:

You might be able to replace that line with "If there's nowhere for a gate to retreat, it stays in place".

I have to admit, I didn't like the herald much when I first read it, but it has very quickly grown on me. Very interesting design idea that encourages proper investigator placement.

Julia said:

Thanks for the kind words. =)

About chasing down gates: in order to win a game against this herald, you will most likely need to designate a gate herd: an investigator with sufficient clues or an Elder Sign (from now on referred to as power investigator , for simplicity) whose job is to return gates to unstable locations and keep gates from moving out in the streets. Consider the situation where a gate is located at Independence Square and another investigator will exit from this gate in the next movement phase and seal it. In order to make sure that the gate doesn't move in the Mythos phase before the other investigator can exit, the gate herd could end his movement and stay in the Downtown street area that turn. If the Mythos instructs the gate at Independence Square to move, the gate cannot, because there is a power investigator blocking the way.

About your question, just to see that I understand you correctly, consider this example:

A stalking gate which is about to move is in the Easttown street area. Investigator A is a power investigator and is located in the Rivertown street area, so the stalking gate must retreat. There is already an open gate at Hibb's Roadhouse, so the stalking gate cannot retreat into an unstable location. The stalking gate must therefore retreat according to the movement box. So you're asking what happens if the movement box instructs the gate to move towards a power investigator?

Situation 1: The gate's dimensional symbol moves on black. The gate moves to the Downtown street area, away from the power investigator in the Rivertown street area. No ambiguities. (I hope)

Situation 2: The gate's dimensional symbol moves on white, but this would mean movement towards a power investigator, so this goes against the rules. My intention here is that the gate should still move to the Downtown street area, because this is the only possible direction away from the power investigator. However, I clearly see how my choice of words makes this confusing. I will try and rephrase this.

Situation 3: There is a power investigator both in the Rivertown street area and in the Downtown street area. My intention here is that the gate does not move. It cannot retreat, but if it moves toward a power investigator, it violates the rules.

Shining Aquas said:

That was indeed how I intended it.

Thanks for the compliment. =)

Yeah, Situation 3 was kinda implicit, the problem was Situation 2, as you see, so, a rewording is really welcome :-)

Clearly, you have to design one investigator to force gates to stay in their place / return to nstable locations. Plus, this adds a lot of interesting points: you can use investigators to have gates moving to more interesting locations. for instance, in an Atlach game, it could be good moving a gate from the Witch House to the Twilight Lodge so that an eventual seal is prevented from bursting

Actually, it's good to see that this thing that started as a joke, has become a Herald that's fun to play with :-)

Here's the revised Pacman Horror. I rephrased the last sentence of the "Power Pellets" rules. Hopefully, the rules are clearer in this new version. I also changed the "Game Over" rules. If there are three clue tokens on the herald sheet, the investigators instantly lose the game instead of awakening the Ancient One. I think this is more thematic. For the gameplay, this doesn't change much, as it is highly unlikely that three of your investigators will be devoured by a stalking gate.

Medium resolution --- High resolution

Additional clarifications about the rules:

- Only investigators with an elder sign or sufficient clue tokens are immune to being devoured by a stalking gate. Power tokens or monster trophies (for William Yorick) do not count.

- A stalking gate in a street area is immediately returned to an unstable location when an investigator who matches the above description enters that street area. Return the gate to an unstable location according to the rules before fighting or evading monsters. The investigator is not required to end his movement in that street area in order to return the gate to an unstable location, and may thus return several stalking gates to their unstable locations in a single turn.

- In general, ties are broken by the first player. For instance, if a stalking gate can retreat into several unstable locations, you are free to choose which one.

Julia said:

Done!

Nice, I didn't even think of that. Maybe this herald can be used in other ways I also didn't think of.

My group were disappointed by the default difficulty of Kingsport Horror so i designed this Herald:

Posted this as a Great GOO but I guess the Herald parts technically can stand alone.

To use "The Mythos Stirs" on its own replace Shudde M'ells special with whatever Ancient one you are currently using's special.

Inspired by the Herald here: http://s622.photobucket.com/user/avi_dreader/media/Additional%20Components%20for%20the%20Fan%20Creation%20League/haunterofthedarkfrontfa.jpg.html?sort=3&o=4

I took a good idea and tried to improve it a bit. Hopefully I succeded! Let me know what you think.

Haha, well it still appears to have the craziest formatting possible. Anyway, as far as Avi goes, no worries of course. I feel strange thanking him for his advice, as he is not likely to be reading this, but oh well, thanks! Regarding his suggestion, I was worried that the Haunter might be too difficult/annoying as is, but I guess that just goes to show how much I have to learn about heralds.

sdkelso said:

I'll tell Avi of your post, don't worry (it happened we're friends outside Arkham boundaries, so…). And you should be able to see some interesting (I hope) new Heralds coming here in the next weeks (I saved all the Heralds brainstorming sessions done with Avi through the years, and sometimes I work on them; two are almost done). Haunter is not too difficult, don't worry. Go on with your ideas

You're welcome. :'D

Heh… Okay. Quick reply. Basically the herald currently has a few weak spots. You can just change your game strategy to not shop for unique items (common items and spells only), and you can bless or deliberately retire investigators that you don't want to bother with. Also, the Haunter is very weak. A few weapons from the common item store can let even a cursed investigator kill it fairly easily.

Alternative difficulty boosts. Rolling a die at the beginning of the mythos phase on a failure (or a 1-4 or a 1-3 depending on the difficulty you want), the first player can draw a unique item (forcing investigators to recurse even if they try to get around it). Also, I'd probably give the Haunter +1 toughness. That should be tough enough to cause problems.

Also, you didn't specify which investigator to move the Haunter to if there's more than one cursed.

Alright, I'm off for another year or so. Bye guys ;'D

Haha, thanks a lot for dropping by. Though it's unlikely you'll read this, I'll respond anyway. You make some good points. Let me say, though, that I'm not sure what you mean regarding blessing cursed investigators: I delibrately removed the only reliable method of doing so that I know of (i.e., the South Church's special ability). And I adapted the Haunter's movement from that of the Hounds of Tindalos, which also don't mention how to resolve "ties". I know that players have found the Hounds' movement ambiguous, but in the interest of economy, I had hoped that people would naturally follow the same guidelines. That issue in particular I don't think I'm willing to change, so consider this post my Herald's very own F.A.Q. .

As far as the Haunter being too weak goes, I guess that just goes to show how much I have to learn about Arkham Horror, because I don't consider him weak at all, especially to a cursed investigator (who are the ones most likely to be encountering it). And even if an investigator can beat it, he or she has spent a turn and possibly been injured doing so. I'll definitely give it a go with increased toughness, though.

Anyway, thanks again for the help and the advice!

Ah… I can't currently see the herald image, but if you've made it so the church can't bless, that's a major help :') (I was under the impression that you just made it so the haunter guards the church— granted I read while at work and was in a rush, sorry). Julia notified me that you replied. Thanks Julia ;') And bye again.

Oh, also. You can state the movement principle in an abridged way as "Player's choice in case of tie." Probably as a parenthetical remark. Or you can tag those details onto the comments section of your herald image.

Avi_dreader said: