I've normally been pretty hot on the rules for this game, we've never run into any glaring rule errors that haven't already been covered by errata but I'm really stumped on this latest one.

When playing with just the original AH then you play with all the ally cards available (I think I'm right there but it's been AGES since I've played vanilla AH). Each time the terror level rises, one is discarded. Simples!

Then came the Dark Pharaoh expansion and it added more allies which, when playing as the fixed exhibit, existed in a separate ally pile that you discarded one from each everytime the terror level increased. If you wanted to play it more integrated then they all got shoved together in one pile and you discarded two at a time. Still Simples! And fair enough.

So then we added Dunwich and it introduced the rule about picking out 11 random ally cards (forcibly including any that come as a fixed possession), but at this point you have less allies (if you're just picking 11 random ones with the original, Pharaoh and Dunwich all mixed together) but seeing as the Pharaoh pack is still integrated then you have to follow the "lose two allies for each rise" but this means that you're losing allies really fast and are all out in 5 terror rises where in vanilla AH you would have at least a few towards the end. Confused! :-S

I've been playing the "discard two" for ages now and it's not really a major bother to me but my family complain about it everytime it happens and I keep directing them to the Pharaoh rulebook. Did the rule get changed at some point and it just pass me by? Am I supposed to put the Pharaoh allies to one side, deal out 11 randomers from the Dunwich and Original combined and then add the Pharaoh ones in?

Anyway onto my other question... I prefer AH in its most diehard form and was trying to integrate my Dunwich and (recently acquired) Innsmouth boards together (for some reason I've missed out Kingsport :-( will get it at some point), and was wondering what happens when a monster goes in a vortex. If it happens in Dunwich do you raise the Dunwich Horror track as well as the Deep Ones Rising one? Or does the track increase effect only apply to the board it happens on. So Dunwich goes up when monsters go in Dunwich vortices and the Deep Ones goes up when monsters go down the vortices there.

Sorry that was so long! :-P

I think the Dunwich rule is meant to replace the Dark Pharaoh rule. Or at the very least use only 1 at a time. Dunwich only includes 5 allies in comaprison to the other expansions that have alies including 11 each.

As for monsters in vortexes I think the letter of the law would suggest that it affects the board on which the vortex is, however, since playing with multiple boards tends to water them down substantialy you can have every board affected by any vortex just to raise the difficulty level.

I play using 22 Allies (everything but KH totals 23 Allies), 1 goes back to the box during setup. 11 at Ma's for shopping (though those rarely get touched for that reason), 11 for encounters (both by name and "draw ally"). Each time Terror goes up, discard 1 from each deck, counting it as one discard for Glaaki. If you have KH, I think you have 34 Allies, so would toss 3 per rise, still count them as 1 discard.

Vortices are keyed to the board they are on, no cross-board impact other than Terror going up.

Sacred Voice said:

The most diehard form would be to randomly select 11 allies from everything you have and put the rest in the deep deep box (removed from game) per the Dunwich rules. Those are the only 11 allies that exist for the purposes of that game. However, it sounds like your family doesn't really want to diehard however.

I think the only purpose for selecting exactly 11 allies is to keep track of the number for certain counting situations, such as Glaaki, the Southside strangler and a purchase of items or something in one of the Mythos cards (and apparently to make Charlie Kane even more worthless as per reports from the FAQ editors). But in my opinion, if you simply devise a method to keep track of the 11 count, that's all you need.

Limiting the allies to 11 does usually make the game harder and more irritating but usually doesn't really affect the outcome much. Sometimes its better if the ally isn't in play because the consolation prize can be more useful.

For the first time in my recollection of close to 400 games, we actually had a chance to recruit Prof. Armitage from the Historical society, but the player decided not to give up her required gate trophy. (+2 Lore Your attacks are not affected by Magical Resistance. ) I can't remember the consolation prize, but apparently it wasn't worth it either.

My method, derived from Tibs, is to have two piles. One of 11 and one of the rest. The 11 are only available at Ma's and the rest are available only in their locations.

mageith said:

Man, I tend to get that encounter a lot, though, sadly, Historical Society tends to be one of the early stops for an investigator starting at that end of the board, hence they rarely pack a gate trophy on turn 1-2 . Later on, when one actually has a gate trophy, HS sees a lot less action, trophies get swapped for 2 Clues at SB.

Dam said:

Oh we get the encounter a lot, but usually we have turned in the gate trophies for something else.