... and I did it solo.
It should be painfully obvious to everyone that I would lose, and to be frank, I did not exceed anyone's expectations. But was it fun? How long did it take? What rules did I use? What investigators did I use? What Ancient One was involved? How badly was I whipped? All of these questions need answering before I engage in any sort of dialogue.
I've come to AH in my early forties (though depending upon the indexing system being used, it might be my early-mid forties), regardless of age however, my intrigue was tickled (am I mixing my metaphors here?) and due to my slightly obsessive nature I found myself getting my grubby mitts upon each of the expansions for the game. I figured, "why not?"
I've mixed in all of the common items, spells, skills, and unusual items from all of the expansions except The King in Yellow (this is because, disappointingly, all of the Ancient One cards in that expansion are larger than all of the other AO cards in my possession, naughty FFG! and I really wanted to include that stuff too), I've also mixed in all of the Ancient One cards, including Mythos and Other World cards (not withstanding the KiY issue detailed above!).
I randomly selected the Ancient One from ALL available from the base game and all expansions, as did I randomly select four characters from the forty-eight available.
The line up then for this opening adventure(?) in Arkham was as follows:
Wilson Richards ( the Handyman ), Gloria Goldberg ( the Author ), Ashcan Pete ( the Drifter ), and Bob Jenkins ( the Salesman )
vs
Yibb-Tstll ( All-Seeing )
and the setting was the base game board .
I managed to close and seal two gates, the terror level only rose as far as three (which was caused by the outskirts of town getting over-run by monsters), and the Ancient One awoke when she did due to some darned bad luck (I had a doom track filled to nine out of eleven and drew a Mythos which stated that "no gates open this turn, however the doom track is to advance by two").
During the final battle, we held our ground pretty well I think (I actually get the feeling that Yibb-Tstll is a rather easy AO to defeat in battle), removing seven doom tokens (remember that with Yibb-Tstll we have to have eight successes as opposed to four in order to remove each doom token) ... hmm I might have to modify my deduction concerning the ease battling of Yibb-Tstll, because her difficulty was really only tempered by the fact that I only had a single clue token on the board when she awoke.
The strongest in the final battle was Wilson Richards, holding out longer than most and right to the end. He had a fight strength of 4 and a +4 from his shotgun; this was a super handy weapon because also, all rolls of 6 count as 2 successes. He was the first player during the initial round of battle with Yibb-Tstll, and during her first attack (due to his focus of 4) he was able to become blessed, which then became a great boon for her following three attacks in the first round.
All characters survived the first round and first player moved to Bob Jenkins. Bob had the Elephant gun, and coupled with his fight score of 4 he had a total of 12 for his attack against Yibb-Tstll. Unfortunately, due to his poor (very poor) focus of one, he was devoured during Yibb Tstll's first attack of the second round. First player moved to Ashcan Pete. Again, due to a very poor level of focus (one again), he too was devoured.
First player moved on to Gloria Goldberg, who had also been performing surprisingly well during this final showdown. She had the .45 for a +4, she had Martial Arts for a +2 for her empty hand, and she had Wrestle skill which enabled her to re-roll all results of 1 during her attacks. Gloria Goldberg survived Yibb Tstll's attacks on both herself and Wilson Richards, but sadly did not become blessed.
I was then down to two characters and still the doom track was up to 8. A couple more rounds and Gloria was devoured (during her next round of being player one during the AO attack), Wilson hung on like a trooper, slowly but steadily removing tokens from the doom track until that last fateful roll when Yibb Tstll unleashed her most dire attack and devoured our lone hero
... Arkham is now only spoken about in myth and legend
It really was an enjoyable experience. In total I think it took me around four and a half to five hours to play. There was a lot of checking up on rules and clarifying the order of events, and how does each creature move, etc. But I can foresee that happening less and less the more I play the game. With regards to encounters and items that were pertinent only when expansions were in play were drawn, I discarded them and re-drew from the pile.
My intention is to understand the rules etc. without having to refer to them during the game
before
I play with anyone else. My experience of board games has been that it is a more enjoyable experience if at least one player knows the rules. I can foresee many many hours of fun ahead playing this game.