So my group and I are long time RPG players with a bunch of computer gaming experience as well. We're big Call of Cthulhu fans too.

We're on our 4th attempt to play Eldritch Horror now and we continue to fail spectacularly! In our 3rd attempt we finally managed to solve the 1st mystery card, and that's the best we've ever done. Starting with the second game we are doing mythos phases only every other turn, and we still can't seem to get anywhere!!

We're a group of 3 and we're playing Silas Marsh, Leo Anderson, and Diana Stanley.

Any advice on basic strategy that we're just not seeing/doing, or perhaps a better group of characters we could be playing would be greatly appreciated.

I think one of our problems is we're not proactively closing down gates. Typically we when monsters spawn we try to stay away from them which leads to gates staying open and more and more monsters generating...

Again, dumbass beginner help requested!!

thanks

malcolm

What do you mean you are doing mythos phases only every other turn? The turns of a round are Action / Encounter / Mythos. After that rinse and repeat.

What AO are you playing ? I recommend starting with Azatoth because he is the most straightforward of the AO's (mind you, not the easiest to defeat but the easiest to understand). If you try playing Ctulthu first you're gonna have a baaad time (like I did in my first games so don't be me)

For the first games you might want to try to remove the hard mythos cards (the ones with the tentacles) and only leave normal and easy ones (with the frostbites on them). Also, are you doing the mythos deck correctly? Assemble Stage one (shuffle), assemble stage two (shuffle only stage 2 and put under stage one) then assemble stage three(shuflle only stage 3 and put under stage 2). I am saying this because in my experience news players tend to assemble the mythos deck and then shuffle it as a whole and this will result in odd situations like 3 rumors one after another or multiple reckonings which shouldn't happen.

Do you have any expansions for it or are you playing the base game?

It also depends if you unknowingly ommited something from your playthrough and that's the thing that drags you down. Can you describe how a normal game is playing? Also, I would recommend going with 4 investigators rather than 3 and put Charlie Kane as your fourth. He is a very cool character for starter players who can buy and outfit every other player on the board wherever he is (on a city space though) and allow the other players to investigate other pressing matters than trying to buy stuff. Consider him like an innkeeper djinni NPC or something for the first games. In time you will learn how to manage your action turns that you can also buy stuff while exploring.

Let me know if you need any other advice and enjoy the game!

All the best,

Cim

I would say you describe your problem in your text.

Closing gates are a high priority. That, working on dangerous rumours and not forgetting the mysteries are the things you always should work hard at. It's easy to get caught up in improving the characters and such so the important stuff get overlooked.

Ideally you only have none to two gates open at a time.

That's my experience at least.

have a gate closer,

a fighter,

and a solver.

that's basically it.

one person to get rid of big baddies, one to make sure gates are closed. Gloria and Akachi are good at this in the base set. Especially Akachi, while Gloria provides good support.

Don't forget the mystery. This game is not supposed to be easy.

Since the game tends to be easier with an even number of investigators, I suggest you add one more investigator that's controlled by committee (the best choice here would be Charlie - he's a powerful support character who isn't very exciting to play).

Gloria?

have a gate closer,

a fighter,

and a solver.

that's basically it.

one person to get rid of big baddies, one to make sure gates are closed. Gloria and Akachi are good at this in the base set. Especially Akachi, while Gloria provides good support.

Don't forget the mystery. This game is not supposed to be easy.

Yeah, Gloria? I think maybe you mean Jacqueline? She's pretty much top tier support.

+1 to StLemon's advice.

It took my group a few tries to get accustomed to the rhythm of the game and learn how to plan ahead, how to best use investigators' strengths, etc.

What's cool is that we stormed the topic to offer advice and the OP dissapeared. Maybe the AO got him?

Check that you're doing your rounds correctly. Each round has EVERYBODY doing their actions, and then EVERYBODY doing their encounters, and then one mythos.

Always try to keep gates closes, and make rumours a priority. I've found its easy to get side tracked trying to level up your character and forget to actually try to solve the mysteries. And if you're playing with the expansions, always keep focus tokens handy.

Sorry, but making rumors a priority is actually a horrible example of good advice. Rumors could be game-breaking or not: rumors are triggered by reckoning cards (yellow Mythos cards), but if a Rumor is failed after X reckonings and you have X-1 Reckonings in your deck (and you know this because the composition of the Mythos deck is a known element at the beginning of the game), you can easily forget about the ongoing rumor and focus on more important points of the game.

Same for gates: gates are triggered by the omen track matching the symbol on the gate. So that if you have a gate triggering doom when omen is on the azure symbol, and this won't happen in the next three turns, you don't need to prioritize that gate, but something else.

Key for winning the game is passing the mysteries. Focus on the mysteries, and keep under control all the rest.

Sorry, but making rumors a priority is actually a horrible example of good advice. Rumors could be game-breaking or not: rumors are triggered by reckoning cards (yellow Mythos cards), but if a Rumor is failed after X reckonings and you have X-1 Reckonings in your deck (and you know this because the composition of the Mythos deck is a known element at the beginning of the game), you can easily forget about the ongoing rumor and focus on more important points of the game.

Same for gates: gates are triggered by the omen track matching the symbol on the gate. So that if you have a gate triggering doom when omen is on the azure symbol, and this won't happen in the next three turns, you don't need to prioritize that gate, but something else.

Key for winning the game is passing the mysteries. Focus on the mysteries, and keep under control all the rest.

Too true. Too many times has our group been distracted by a rumor and has run out of clues or even just mythos phases! Remember that if the mythos deck runs out of cards, it doesn't matter how much doom you have left!

It really is just a matter of analyzing each situation individually. Sometimes key investigators can render the effects of a rumor almost meaningless anyway by being able to spawn new clues or generate damage mitigation via spells like flesh ward/instill bravery/healing word.

Exactly what Soakman said. The game is full of mental traps: elements that move your focus away from what's really important. And while you're distracted doing this or that, the clock keeps on thicking, and you end up losing the game.

Case in point about rumors being a distraction : the importance of knowing when to properly prioritize rumors: just managed to win my first game against Hastur (4 investigators, using revised reference cards which really boost up the difficulty for Hastur).

The two rumors that came out were The White Ship and Twin Spawn of Cthulhu . Either one going off would be essentially end of game

• if The White Ship failed there would be 15 gates on the board since I was playing with all expansions. This would mean a certain death the next turn
• If the Twin Spawn failed, then I could say good bye to every investigator that turn (even those who normally started with more than six sanity since Hastur is so punishing)

So the decision was to focus on mysteries and hope that the green mythos would come out before the remaining yellow. And, as luck would have it, that was the case.

On the final turn of the game we resolved the second mystery. During the mythos phase the last eldritch token was removed from the White Ship (thereby resulting in 15 open gates on the board), payed out four clues (two to prevent Twin Spawn from having it's last eldritch token removed and two more when a Star Vampire was revealed to prevent omen from advancing which would have been death due to 15 gates being open). Doom track ended at 1 and the final score (due to a dark pact also going off cursing people) was 27 - a new all time high for me.

[Edited to correct mis-representation of prior post]

Sounds like a nail-biter game, Richard

Just to make it clear: I didn't say rumors are a distraction, I said that deciding to prioritize rumors over everything else is not always strategically wise. Getting White Ship early in the game can be a problem; getting it when you have one or two yellow cards remaining in the whole Mythos deck is actually a non-effective Mythos card

Of course, it's not possible to get the White Ship when there's only two yellow mythos remaining (unless you were forced to shuffle the mythos deck) since rumors always come in the first two stages and I don't think there's any AO with less than 2 yellow cards in the third stage.

However, getting the White Ship when you're on the third mystery (or even close to finishing the second) is indeed close to getting a free mythos stage.

Just to make it clear: I didn't say rumors are a distraction, I said that deciding to prioritize rumors over everything else is not always strategically wise.

You are quite correct - I was incorrectly borrowing from your general phrase "while you're distracted doing this or that". Apologies for misrepresenting you. Post clarified

And yes, resolving the very last mythos phase for that game was a real nail biter of an experience!

Thanks for all the input folks!

We managed to beat Azathoth last night! Woot!

It was still a hard go, and we still used our easy mode (ie everyone action, everyone encounter, then everyone action again, then everyone encounter again, then 1 mythos).

Next time we're going to 4 investigators and normal mythos phases.

Wish us luck!

mal