Hi all, first post hereabouts.

I've been playing AH for quite a while now, and I've noticed that while the game plays very well (and is often challenging) with 3-4 players, once you get above that it's just too easy. With more players, you have enough people to do everything without losing stride if one or two are busy healing up or item-hunting or whatever. The lower Gate and Outskirts limits and the higher Arkham Monster limit adds little to the challenge.

Boardgame nights being what they are, one can't always exactly control the number of people who turn up -nor do I want to. As a result, I've been toying with ways to increase the challenge with more players, but if possible I don't want to reinvent the wheel.

So my question is, how do you guys increase the challenge? Anyone have any good house rules?

I currently have the Dunwich and Pharaoh expansions.

GraaEminense said:

Maybe you forget that with 5+ players you get 2 monsters per gate open? IMO that is more then enough to make the game harder with 5 then with 4 players.

GraaEminense said:

Several things I've tried in order of effectiveness:

1) With experienced players above five we add 1 monster per gate for each investigator above 4. So with seven investigators, you'd have 4 monsters per gate. That should keep a few people busy. (I've played with this only with 6 investigators however not, 7 or 8)

2) I've played 2 games where we placed the Dunwich Horror herald was out from the beginning. That means someone has to gear up to defeat him, otherwise he'll add several doom tokens to the game. In addition, this will mean that whomever fights him will be sucking up clue tokens in preparation.

3) And/Or: We've played where yellow and blue bordered monsters in Dunwich move as black bordered. What this does is create a since of urgency and causes the terror level to go up faster. However the times we played with just this rule, we were able to prevent the Dunwich Horror from coming out but at least it should keep an investigator or two busy part of the time.

4) Always play with a herald. Since you only have two games, that means the Dark Pharaoh herald or Dunwich Horror Herald. I almost always play with the King in Yellow Herald against the easier to defeat Old Ones. But alas, you do not have it.

Your combination of DP and Dunwich means that monster surges as well as gate bursts will be rarer than normal since there are more gates and the minor gates come up more often. Probably playing with just Dunwich will be a tougher game (but probably still not tough enough.)

5) Or just play Glaaki all the time. (It would do it for me anyway!) (Actually this is the most effective for me!)

6) I have a scenarios that I play with the easier to defeat Old Ones. You can just use the parts that work, since you don't have Black Goat. I haven't played these against all Old Ones, but it does make some of them very difficult. I actually developed "Cults" to work with the corruption cards.

Depending on the Old One cults can be very effective or just offer some juicy targets. In either case, it adds about 12 more monsters to the game which will take up an investigator's time.

CULTS: Many of the Old One have cultists. This Scenario stresses the work of those cults. Requires cards from Black Goat of the Woods expansion.

<left><b>Worshippers:</b> If the Old One has human followers or cultists (Azathoth, Cthulhu, Glaaki, Eihort, Hastur*, Ithaqua*, Nyarlathotep, Y'Golonac, Yig* or Yog-Sothoth), follow the rules below:
Remove all normal cultists and human worshippers from the cup and place them on this card. When a gate appears, place a worshipper from this sheet on that gate in addition to one normal placement. In all other cases, follow the rules for the worshipper on the Old One's sheet.

<b>Mythos:</b> If a worshipper is in play at the start of the Mythos phase, the first player must take a <i>Corruption</i> card, Madness card or raise the terror level by 1 with the following exceptions:
If Hastur is the Old one, the only choice is to raise the terror level by 1.
If Ithaqua is the Old one, the first player cannot choose a Madness card, but may choose an <i>Injury</i> card instead.
If Yig is the Old one, the first player may not choose a Madness card, but may choose a <i>Curse</i> card instead. If a cursed investigator is cursed again, s/he is <b>devoured</b>.

<b>Arkham Encounters:</b> <i>Subverting the Cult:</i> An investigator with any combination of 2 of those cards and tokens or with a Cult membership may draw a <i>Cult Encounter</i> when s/he is at the <i>Woods, Unvisited Isle, Wizard's Hill, The Causeway or Esoteric Cult of Dagon.</i> Place some cult encounter cards on each of those locations as a reminder.

Abhoth, Bokrug and Rhan-Tegoth do not have worshippers.

7) Again depending on the Old One The Monster scenario can be devastating (a turbo charged Cthonian in play almost every turn is not nice). But it will make every Old One with monster worshippers tougher.

THE MONSTER: Many of the Old Ones are worshipped by alien monsters.

<left><b>Monster Worshippers:</b> If the Old One is Atlach-Nacha, Chaugnar Faugn, Cthugha, Ghatanothoa, Nyogtha, Quachil Uttaus, Shub-Niggurath, Shudde M'ell, Tsathoggua, Yibb-Tstll or Zhar, follow the rules below:

<b>Monsters appear:</b> The first player removes one of the Old One's monster worshippers from the cup and places it on this sheet. When a gate appears, place one of the monster worshippers from this sheet, if any, chosen by the first player on that gate instead of one of the monsters normally placed.
When an investigator defeats a monster worshipper, the investigator receives 1 Clue token per toughness of the monster worshipper but returns the monster to this sheet.
Whenever any worshipper monster is returned to the cup in any way, return it to this sheet instead.
In all other cases, follow the rules for the monster worshipper as described on the Old One's sheet.
Abhoth, Bokrug and Rhan-Tegoth do not have worshippers on the board.

8) Get Kingsport. According the statistics its the hardest expansion but its also the least fun IMO, but it should keep 1/2 an investigator busy.

9) Check out the statististics page on the difficulty of Old Ones and always play the toughest one you think you can handle. For you that would be Abhoth. With DP and Dunwich, there won't be as many surges, so don't play DP with him. I've never actually played him with the just the basic game. That might be interesting because there'd be more surges. I'll bet nobody has since he comes with Dunwich, why would you?

Next would be Glaaki. He's only the 14th most difficult, but he gets me most every time by just being him.

Then Yog, 13th most difficult. For me that's a big game between him and Glaaki. I don't usually have a lot of trouble with him.

I have more trouble with Tsathoggua (11th), but he guts down on fun a lot too for me since most of the locations are closed. He's the 2nd easiest but the 2nd hardest of defeat in final battle.

10) Innsmouth and Kingsport add some much tougher Old Ones.

GraaEminense said:

Oh goodie new meat :') Hmmm... My first suggestion is that you get either Kingsport or Innsmouth (probably Innsmouth— it'll ramp up difficulty faster). Personally, I made a bunch of custom components to add to game difficulty (the problem is, they're mostly designed for use with multiple expansions).

Here are my custom components (I made one for every base game Ancient One to amp up their difficulty) and a few others: http://s622.photobucket.com/albums/tt307/avi_dreader/

You should be able to use The Maskless, The Darkness, Dretrimord, H.P.L. (The Arbiter of Reality), The Lich King, Kerathimel, Dracula, Death, Wendigo, or Whateley. They should all amp up your difficulty a bit, some quite a bit more than others. I suggest you add in The Arbiter for a quick fix :'D Hrm... I made that such a long time ago... I'm just looking at the text and thinking (I could make it so much shorter) ::sigh:: early custom creations... I would say try The Maskless, but I think you'll be able to take out Nyarlathotep in final battle. Maybe. ::Sigh:: I need to design a second herald to accompany her (and incorporate the other masks).

You could just play this one though ;') It's by tiborvadovan (it's *very* good).

direct link: img252.imageshack.us/img252/1717/thecrawlingchaosfrontfa.jpg

Our group regularily plays with 7-8 players, and while we've had our share of easy games, we've also had games where the difficulty was immense, and we do not always win. The game is probably easier with just the base game (we have all the expansions, and pick both characters and Ancient Ones randomly from all expansions with investigators, we deal out a pool of 4 to each player to choose from). There are certainly enough ways to make the game more difficult, but the games can be plenty tough on their own.