My group's had a fairly large problem lately with the game not being a challenge at all to beat. We played vanilla up until last night when we added the egyptian expansion to the game, and we basically get around 4 seals on the board before much time has passed at all. We saw the clarification for the professor and the gangster (have to pay full costs) which makes the professor less ridiculous, but even with that we still barreled through any monsters and obstacles the game could throw. Does everyone get this way with the game after you've played it enough to know exactly what to do, or might there be some major errata we're missing? We play by the book and have had multiple outside players play without any problems, so I don't think we missed anything in the rules.

To be fair, we did see some nasty effects from cards that we dodged, but still we noticed there were 4 seals after the first 4 portals were gone through starting the turn they appeared and were like man, this expansion didn't ramp the difficulty at all. Oh and I highly doubt anyone will ever shell out $50 for an expansion with a board, so those won't help.

Dark Pharaoh is arguably the easiest expansion out there, if you want a challenge I suggest downloading the official herald for that expansion or getting Black Goat of the Woods with it's difficulty cards to ramp up the challenge. If you look around you may also find some nice house rule suggestions that will make things more difficult.

The base board game is extremely easy. It doesn't get significantly more difficult without the addition of Dunwich or Innsmouth (I'd recommend Innsmouth). The small expansions aren't worth buying except once you own the large expansions (in my opinion, some people prefer to buy everything in the order of release). I think you can game any of the small expansions for easy wins with the base game (if you know to manage seals), even Black Goat of the Woods (if you have a team of three or under-- you can just go for an easy combat win).

I also have several custom components that can significantly add to game difficulty (and hopefully fun as well, I try to do both :') despite what some forumites say). Ummm.... But since you only own the base game you can really only use a few of them. Try Janus, Death, Wendigo, Dracula, Kerathimel, and The Darkness. Those should all boost your game difficulty.

http://s622.photobucket.com/albums/tt307/avi_dreader/

Try some of my creations and complain about easiness ;') I dare you.

It does happen especially if you know where to throw down the seals. Also if you are not going to buy a large-box expansion, then I would suggest The King in Yellow. Our group always has the most trouble with that expansion. Other quick "fixes" might be:

1) Keep gate tokens face down until you travel to the OW.

2) Remove all Eldar Signs from Unique Item deck.

3) Use only the win condition of all gates closed w/ gate tokens equal to the number of players.

4) As suggested, download fan-created GOOs and heralds.

5) Try some of the league pdfs.

FFTARoxorz05 said:

Did you try this?

VISITING EXHIBIT PLAY STYLE

In this play style, the “Legacy of the Pharaohs” museum exhibit has
just arrived in Arkham, and will eventually pass on to its next stop.
While it’s in town, however, the strange events surrounding the
exhibit will occupy most of the investigators’ attention. Ancient relics
from the time of the pyramids find their way into the investigators’
hands and tales of strange insects, old gods, and exotic visitors fill
the streets and locations of Arkham. As a backto these occurrences
and possibly influenced by them, an Ancient One stirs in its
slumber, opening gates to new and terrifying adventures in other
dimensions.
WARNING: This variant is for experienced players. Gates may open
more often in unexpected places in this variant, and the Ancient One’s
doom track is likely to advance quite rapidly! Such is the chaos created
when powerful relics and ancient spirits are brought from a distant
land into the already unstable mystical nexus that is Arkham.

....

Mythos Phase: In order to highlight the new Mythos cards, draw
from the CURSE OF THE DARK PHARAOH deck for the first Mythos
Phase, then from the ARKHAM HORROR deck for the next Mythos
Phase, alternating every turn. Keep a closed marker near the two
Mythos decks; after you draw a Mythos card, place the closed marker
on top of that deck to remind you to draw from the other deck on
the next turn.

Once you've done that, play with just the Curse of the Dark Pharaoh Mythos cards instead of alternating.

plus on a side note, how do you play the game? is it just a game you must close the gates to win, no other thing to do, or is it an experience into the town?

you know dont play to win excacly but have fun going to shops, explore a bit?

I do agree that with just the base board, once you slap down a seal on the four major hotspots, you can pretty much sleepwalk your way to 6 seals 99.9% of the time. With base-AH, you have 11 unstable locations, of which 4 see the most action, so you'll get a lot of "bounce, bounce, bounce" Mythos phases (gate openings hitting on your seal). With DH + IH in the mix, you have 20 unstable locations and you also have gate bursts which might pop your seals, you might not even get a gate opening at one of the 4 Arkham hotspots until the doom track is at 8+, meaning if you then get a gate opening at each of the hotspots, that's 12+ doomers on the track, enough to wake most GOOs. More expansions in mix also dilutes the Unique Item deck, making Elder Signs (and weapons) rarer, one of the key points IMO.

If you find the game too easy, I guarantee you're playing some of the rules wrong.

Magic Pink said:

If you're finding the game too hard, you're probably not playing to win .

I know I'm not playing the game wrong, yet I've lost less than 1 in 5 games after 96 games (54-24-18). As I finally got around to sleeving my AH small cards (2 hours for 691 cards), January should see some more AH action and since I'm still working on my IH GOO rotations, losses should increase.

You can make the base-game more difficult by using a gate-burst variant if you don't want to shell out another 50 bucks for Dunwich or Innsmouth.

Magic Pink said:

My group have so far followed the rules to the letter, and I still think that the vanilla version of AH is too easy. But I started a thread about it earlier and asked for guidance, and im looking into the prospect of getting either the Dunwich or Innsmouth expansions. They seem to ramp up the difficulty enough for my tastes.

Varnias Tybalt said:

I agree. I would expect to win 95+% of the vanilla games. Over my recent vacation, we so missed AH I bought a new set and play 8 or so vanilla games and sealed them all handily. However in one teaching situation we picked Azathoth, and after telling folks he was the easiest to seal and nothing went right and we were all devoured. Still that's not fearul enough for me.

The stats* show that players win about 62% of the time. If you don't count final combat as a victory that drops to 45%.

There's lots and lots of ways to make the game harder and thereby increasing the level of joyful/fearful experience. Some of them don't even cost any money. But the easiest and most fun way is to get either Dunwich or Innsmouth, which is what you've apparently already decided to do. Playing both won't necessarily make the game harder, strangely enough.

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AliZyklaTCWzdEszdXpoRVJQNGltTU5wMi1qWEJnQkE&hl=en

Magic Pink said:

If you find the base game hard, I guarantee you, you don't know how to play it properly ;') I can beat it with a single investigator sometimes. Dam already basically said how to do it.

Varnias Tybalt said:

Again, I'd say get both :') but Dunwich first probably.

Dunwhich + King in Yellow will keep you busy for a while.

Atlach in Kingsport will have you begging.

The Innsmouth ancient ones will have you flipping your table over. One of them devours 2-3 investigators per game, only has 12 doom spaces, and is statistically impossible to beat in final combat. Anyone who says otherwise is a solo Shotgun Joe liar.

Well it's posible but the only way I can think of to do it is casting Call the Ancient One with Harvey Walters, a completed personal story and shitload of trophies and clue tokens.....even then you'd have to get lucky rolls to beat him.

The game is that easy because it is an easy game. There are two definite ways to make it harder.

1 - Play with less than 4 characters

2 - Play with the league scenarios, especially the second league.

The group I play with has an ~90% win rate at the game even with all the expansions. In some ways having all the expansions actually makes the game EASIER. The only way I've found to counter this is to play with fewer people than there are boards or to play with only a couple expansions in (so they get their full effect).

Mostly though, I suggest the league. We still tend to win a lot, but it becomes harder and harder as you go and you actually feel like you're working for it. The second league is much more difficult than the first and we've had to try some scenarios multiple times to beat them.

GrooveChamp said:

Joe liar, or Joe outlier ::cough cough:: a little Arkham Horror statistics pun to bring in the new year. We're doomed next year, aren't we?

MrEntity said:

Wtf? You have a %90 win rate with all expansions? How many players is your group? Have you tried heralds? Have you tried *my* heralds? ;'D

Just get the stuff at my photobucket page (although I'd advise you to go through the heralds thread for the Werewolf herald that was made a few months ago, and the Nyarlethotep herald, also loads of fun).

here's the link: http://s622.photobucket.com/albums/tt307/avi_dreader

The Leagues have only one problem: they are not designed to be used only with the base game. So sad.

Vittek said:

Ffff... And they're way too easy.

The 63% win rate is for all Arkham games, irrespective of expansions.

With just vanilla Arkham, the overall win rate is 74%.

I'd say pick up any of the three board expansions. They are all awesome.

Hello! My first post. I just got the base game from my girlfriend this christmas, and of the three games we've played up until now we've won them all... This last one was against Chtulhu and after we sealed the last gate I figured I would try fighting him as if his doom track had filled. And when I had defeated him with half my maximum stamina and sanity left I felt a bit unimpressed...

So, what can I do to make the base game more difficult for two players? Things I'm considering:

* More than 5 clues to seal a gate (8? 10?).

* Monster surges when every gate opens (would be unfairly biased towards combaty characters though).

* Reducing the effect of bless and curse - like a 1 or 2 to discard instead of a 1 only, or having them active for only 3 turns or something.

* Making other worlds more difficult: only move/leave other worlds on a check or only one try to close a gate.

* If you close a gate but doesn't seal it, it is just moved to another unstable location (how to determine which? Monster? Doom track? Leaning towards next mythos card to determine place, a monster appears but no doom token on the doom track since it's the same gate and that ).

Any more suggestions?

Leave it 5 clues to a seal. Hastur's special ability is that sealing costs 8 instead of 5.

My best recommendation (other than getting an expansion) is to use these two rules:

1. When a gate opens on an elder sign, flip it to the doom token side (it still counts as a seal). When a gate opens on the doom token side, remove it from the board, but don't open a gate. So a seal can only block a gate twice before it's gone.
2. During final combat, it requires one more success than normal to remove a doom token from the AO's doom track (so 3 successes with 2 investigators, 7 successes with 6 investigators).

KoalaOfDoom said:

Just curious, you sure you played him right? Cthulhu ain't no pushover, though 2-investigator final combat isn't as hard as with more. Still, Cthulhu has a -6 combat modifier (so Tommy Gun or Sword of Glory uses both hands and merely give a net +0, leaving you with just base Fight) and heals 1 doomer per turn.