I know the rules say choose investigators (randomly or not) before AO (randomly or not) but they really don't give any guidelines on how to do it for Heralds, Guardians and Difficulty cards.

My friends and I like to choose our investigators first then randomly choose the AO. Then for herald or guardians we roll a d8 and consult this chart...

1-2 ~nothing

3-4 ~Guardian

5-6 ~Herald

7-8 ~Herald and Guardian

...also roll for the Herald and Guardians when they come up.

Was thinking about rolling a d10 for the difficulty cards sense there are 5.

So let me hear some other ideas about how people go about this process.

My group picks Investigators randomly with the choice to pick again if you've played that Investigator before. Stops people picking their favourite all the time and lets them experience something different.

AO's we also pick randomly, although when I'm playing by myself I will sometimes choose so I can play against an AO I don't see much of.

I only have Dunwich Horror so no Heralds, Guardians or Difficulty cards, but it will probably come down to random when I do have them.

Investigators always random. When playing solo, I choose #s 3, 7, 13, 21 (out of 24). Return to "deck" and re-shuffle if investigator(s) was used in the previous game.

GOOs semi-random. I do rotations. With Dunwich, I got 12 GOOs, so I go by 12 game cycles, random GOO, unless already used in the current cycle, then reshuffle and draw again.

Heralds by choice mostly (but nowadays always use a Herald). I keep track of which GOO + Herald combos have been used, and if possible pick a Herald that has not yet been used.

For example:

Cthulhu 5-0-1 (BG, DH, KiY)

So for the 7th rotation, when I draw Cthulhu, Dark Pharaoh will be the Herald. Some GOOs have already featured the 4 Heralds I have, so will have to think which Herald to use.

Guardians, pfftt, I don't have Kingsport and definately wouldn't be making the game easier by using Guardians.

Difficulty cards, no real desire to use them, though they do add some difficulty. Just wish they'd had other effect than just adding/decreasing final score, I count score after my games, but don't play for it.

I do totally random.

I randomly choose the AO (discarding the ones we consider "boring" before hand), a number of characters equal to the number of players are randomly chosen allowing people to choose which ones they want to play. 1-3 a herald 4-6 no herald, then d6 for which herald. If we were using Kingsport I'd consider a guardian but I don't think they'll join the usual rotation.

Difficulty wise we always play Vanilla.

depends how we are feeling and what we haven't played for a while. not more than 1 board and expansion though, it is too daft. I can also say the epic battle cards don't get in much since they are hideous.

I usually pick characters randomly. Sometimes if I'm playing with other people (on their first game) I'll let them pick two or three characters and pick whichever one they want. As for GOOs, I pick randomly, but I tend to exert up to one or two vetos if I really don't want to play a GOO because I feel it's too easy or too annoying. I still haven't played Shudde Mell or the Spider thing ::shudder:: I played Y'golniac for the first time a week or so ago, I was surprised, he actually wasn't *too* hard to beat with three investigators (then again, I did have Mandy and Darrell in the team). Heh... I guess I just thought he would be much closer to impossible.

tamsyn said:

That why I like em

Avi_dreader said:

Which one do you rate Shudde as? Just asking, because if memory serves (it does, since I just checked), Shudde ranks quite high on the difficulty scale in the Statistics thread over on the old forums. Which is totally weird, since Tsathoggua is #2 there (behind Glaaki) and both Tsat and Shudde rank just above Azathoth for me.

On a side note, I'll post my slightly subjective ranking on the GOOs today or tomorrow. Just need to get game #72 with Yog Sothoth + Black Goat Herald done, then I've played 6 rotations.

Dam said:

Honestly, even though I've never fought him, I think he'd be somewhat of a pansy. As long as you don't seal gates whille fighting him, you should have 3-7 rounds to kill him. His doom track is relatively short, and his modifier pretty low. His resistances could be a little annoying though. Still, just your guys blessed and he should be fairly easy to bludgeon. I just don't like the randomness aspect of fighting him, get an unlucky draw and you could basically have the game ruined in the first 3-4 turns (I also don't like how he closes places). ::Shrug:: he might be kindof neat to use in a four or five player game. I just think that in my types of games (typically 3 players) he'd be easy. Heh... He's so much easier than Atlach-Nacha... The statistics threads are meaningless in my opinion. If a bunch of softcore players have trouble against GOOs :') well, that only means that the GOOs are hard if you don't play the game hard enough. I think Atlach is probably the hardest GOO... After that, it's hard to say for sure. Probably Y'golniac. I think Tsathoggua's fairly difficult— not having access to, blessings, allies, or clue tokens is a major pain (and then he's very tough in direct combat). Most of the GOOs either have weak spots in combat, or are ineffectual before waking up— in either case, if you know what you're doing, you should be able to have a fairly high ratio against them ;'D (which is one reason I enjoy heralds, and vetoing GOOs I think are too weak— I play Nyarlhotep with modified rules because I love the masks— but I think he's a peice of cake according to his design). Btw, I love when people think Yog-Sothoth is difficult. He's such a joke really. If you're willing to do anything for a win, you can get investigators to dump their items and cash onto other players, and even take out a bank loan, then deliberately weaken him in suicidal combat then send him to an other world like Rlyeh if possible, the abyss or yuggoth if not. I.e. suicidal otherworld runs for the sake of getting a new investigator ;') cheap little exploit against him. Technically legitimate (I'd probably avoid it though, unless the game was getting extremely close, just because it would be boring).

--

My Nyarlhotep rules :') before you ask. [i think I'm going to make this a separate post also].

At the beginning of the game, do not put the masks in the cup. Random masks spawn when new gates open, after they're defeated the first time, they go into the monster cup for random selection afterwards. Masks do not effect the monster limit. They can be temporarily removed by gate closings or feds raid arkham type cards. This variant is particularly fun if you have all the box expansions and have the tougher masks from Dunwich and Kingsport, The Beast, The Skinless One, and the guy who destroys clue tokens (not his actual name) make town navigation quite a challenge :'D and a neccessity. ::Laughter:: and once you get a gate surge or two, the town gets really flooded. It makes it difficult to stockpile stuff. If you really want to add to this challenge :'D throw in Tzulchwa (or whatever his name is) as the herald, and then you'll also have cultists destroying clues while being defended by the masks. A thematic and challenging variant :'D I'd say try it, but you don't have Kingsport yet ;')

::Laughter:: I've never actually tried this with the herald, but when I finish my finals Saturday at midnight, I may play this as a 12-3 game :')

We make randomness random. :-) In other words, we don't have a set way of choosing anything. Is the whim of the players considered random? Sometimes we choose random AOs and random Investigators. Sometimes we select the Investigators but go random on the AO. Someimtes the opposite. Other times I will pull a random investigator, and my sons will choose theirs based on what looks intersting to them.

We don't generally use heralds or guardians. When we do, it is because someone playing has a whim to include them. We don't score our games and don't use difficulty cards.

For a while, when playing solo and after getting the DH expansion, I randomized the Aos and investigators in a stack. Then I just grabbed the top AO and top 4 investigators. I continued in that vein until I had played all the AOs and all the investigators once.

Avi_dreader said:

How exactly would this make fighting Yog-Sothoth easier? Losing investigators is generally a setback, and here you're hindering your ability to get those gate trophies.

Arborshate said:

::Laughter:: okay, clearly you haven't thought out how to be devoured for the benefit of a team ;') here's how you do it. You get a new investigator, the new investigator comes with items and cash, you give the items and cash to another investigator, then you get the new investigator devoured. This'll probably take a few turns, but starting equipment is worth a good amount of cash. Or you just dump an old investigator when it's getting weak. Either way, you get a new one, with new items and new purchasing power. If you're planning on direct combat, this probably isn't such a good idea, but if you want to take him out with seals, getting new investigators keeps you flush with cash to keep searching through the unique item deck for elder signs and The King in Yellow.

Avi_dreader said:

Well, first of all, that one is somewhat limited. Obviously, you need more than 1 investigator, and 2 probably won't cut it, since 1 won't be as good at shopping AND sealing gates AND controlling monsters while recieving the money and items. And, of course, clues that came with the throw-away investigator are lost, as is some time. Maybe it works out. I'll see.

Moreover, though, I don't know how that's really an exploit specifically against Yog-Sothoth. You started talking about it right after talking about how Yog-Sothoth is easier than everyone else thinks. The benefits of sacrificing investigators could apply to fighting most AOs.

Arborshate said:

Heh... Most AOs don't devour investigators prior to the final battle (Yog might be the only one actually). Sure, if you're lucky and a card pops up that allows you to be devoured (there's a couple environment cards like that) or if a shan or a moon beast is drawn, you can do this against any AO, but the only AO that is easy to suicide against is Yog Sothoth because he eats LITAS investigators (just deliberately fail a combat with high sanity damage, the run into a tough gate and your investigator will probably be devoured within the next couple draws— especially if you mess up your skill sliders deliberately— low luck, low speed).

Hrm... What's his face can eat you too, errr, Eihort, but he's not set up in a way that makes suicide potentially beneficial. Or easy.

Sure, but couldn't you just retire the investigators a la Dunwich Horror?

Arborshate said:

::Laughter:: whoops. I'd completely forgotten about retirement. I almost never get two injuries (I rarely get one) and I don't really like the idea of retirement— it mostly comes into play on the odd occasion when I'm playing with other people and, um, their strategies are... Suboptimal :') I've pretty much retired retirement. I think it's more fun to keep piling madness and injuries on an investigator until they're an insane cripple ;'D My idea of fun is sadism for my imaginary puppets.

Anyways, I retract my previous argument :') except under my house rules (I don't allow voluntary retirements when playing alone, I do allow suicides though :') they seem more in the spirit of Lovecraft).