First, spoilers in this thread as to how GOOs impact the game, how to prepare, beat them, etc.

Second, no Kingsport GOOs on the list since I don't own that expansions

Third, subjective point of view

Combinations that I've played with (adding new expansions to the previous combo, never taking anything out):

Base-AH: 7

AH + DH: 15

AH + DH + DP: 26

AH + DH + DP + KiY + BG: 24

Each GOO has been involved 6 times, with various Heralds. Record against each listed as win-draw-loss (draw being victory by final combat). For the 7th rotation, I'll probably use those Heralds that haven't yet been in a game with the GOO I draw. Just need to figure out what to do with those GOOs that have already used all the Heralds.

#12: Azathoth 6-0-0 (BG, DH, DP, KiY) JtWT

Poor Azathoth, doom track is too long and has a bare minimum of game effect. At least final combat is HARD! No doubt I'll get games where I'll just draw weird combos that will wake up Az, but during an average game, you should have no trouble putting Azathoth back to sleep.

#11: Shudde M'ell 5-1-0 (BG, DH, DP, KiY)

Yes, that's right, Shudde. Again, pretty much negligible game effect. For one, you can go whole games (yes, plural) without seeing a Cthonian. For another, if a monster surge occurs, only the Newspaper is a location that I don't like getting rubbled. Double-resistances can be a hindrance, but the only time I had to fight him, I had 6 turns to punch him (I think normally, 4 investigator team beats GOO in around 4-5 rounds of FC).

#9 (tie): Cthulhu 5-0-1 (BG, DH, KiY) & Tsathoggua 5-0-1 (BG, DH, DP, KiY)

Yuppers, the Big C. After you're done setting up, game impact is definately lacking, plus a 13 doom track is on the long side. Fight is HARD, thanks to the stupid regeneration, but you shouldn't have trouble close/sealing him (accidents can of course happen, C woke from too many gates open, thanks to drawing 2 "a gate and a monster appear" during a turn).

Tsathoggua, again 13 doom track. Oddly enough, Tsat has a couple of game effects that should make things harder, but so far haven't been affected too much. For one, closing everything but Shops, Hospital and Asylum. Mostly not a big deal, but Science Building not available for 2 Clue Tokens isn't nice. Church and Ma's, not a big deal for games around here. Secondly, Urban Environments get tossed without coming into play. Normally, doesn't necessarily matter, but if everyone's favourite Mystic Environment "No One Can Help You Now" hits the table, it should stick around longer than normally. Fight is really nasty, getting Clue chucked at the Start of Battle negates using them. Then, pure monster killers are as useless as pure gate closers. Everybody's gotta multi-task (not a problem here, we don't do set roles for investigators).

#8: Shub-Niggurath 4-1-1 (BG, DP, KiY)

+1 toughness usually means faster spending. With the Black Goat expansion (esp. the Herald) Endless Dark Young can be a real pain. Unless you're really short on magical weapons, final combat should be challenging (thanks to the -5), but not impossible. Meeting Shub-Niggurath through an OW encounter on turn 3, with a fully loaded (Elder Sign, 3+ Clues) investigator with 0 monster trophies, pricess!

#7: Hastur 3-3-0 (BG, DP, KiY)

8 Clues to seal, that's definately not nice. Doom track is nice and long though, but those 8 Clues takes time to gather. Anything that can give you extra Clues (Old Journal, King in Yellow, Press Pass, etc.) and/or Elder Signs are even more welcome than before. Final Combat, well, depends on what number the Terror Track is on. The worst I've had to face was -4 mod. Since 99.9% of the shopping around here takes place at Curiositie, magical weapons aren't hard to come by. Thanks to the Luck check and 2 Sanity damage, spellcasters tend to be less than useful in this (when using Spells that is).

#6: Nyarlathotep 3-2-1 (BG, DP, KiY)

Pattern here, see it? A couple of 12 doomers and 13+ doomers all statistically easier ones. From here, it's all either 10-11 doomers or 12 doomers that have severe impact on the game. Nyarly, 11 doom track, so less time to waste. Luckily, while collecting Clues (and sealing gates), you're also doing what you need to win or survive in the Final Combat. Nyarly doesn't really impact the game (Endless Cultists mean more fodder), you just have less room to hit a bad patch during the game. -4 and Magical Resistance shouldn't really be a problem, unless you only brought spellcasters into the game.

#5: Yig 1-4-1 (BG, DP, KiY)

Yigster, Yigglypuff. Call him what you want, he's a speed-freak. 10 doom track, doom token for LiTaS and killing Cultists (doesn't help when the first 5 of 6 monsters drawn in a game are Cultists either). Not hard to avoid defeat against, but things can happen, it's Arkham after all. Curse isn't fun, but you should get rid of it hopefully in a few turns. Of course, there are those people who get Blessed just before Yig wakes up... To win, I've found gotta hope for gate openings in the major hot spots, then seal them, hoping for seals to snuff Mythos cards or then get monster surges (and not play with the Black Goat Herald). Marie Lambeau can buy that extra round you need.

#3 (tie): Abhoth 2-2-2 (BG, DH, DP, KiY) & Ithaqua 2-2-2 (BG, DP, KiY)

Abhoth is a sneaky one. 11 doom track and looks like minimal game impact. But Abhoth hits you during set-up (and then during game), not having Cultists removes the standard easy fodder, making every monster draw that much more nasty. Like with the other 11 doomers, gotta hope for a relatively smooth ride. Final Combat is all about making sure people have things to discard. As you can see, sometimes there aren't enough items to discard and losses happen.

Ithaqua, my early nemesis. 5th try was my first close/seal against Ith and that came with no less than with the Black Goat Herald! On the first 4 tries, always seemed to get some totally bizarre Mythos card draws. Ithaqua's Cultists love clogging the streets and with +2 toughness, you're looking at some hard buggers. Still recall my first game where Joe D took 3 damage while trying to kill a Cultist in the streets while rolling 12 dice per attack. Final Combat? Argh! Ithaqua loves nothing better than to eat all your usable items. Doesn't help when you're rolling 11 dice while Blessed, failing 10 of those. Biggest hurdle is the start of battle, after that, not too much to worry about (if you have weapons left of course). If you're Carolyn Fern with Heal, you can pretty much outlast Ithaqua with your bare hands.

#2 Yog Sothoth 2-1-3 (BG, DH, KiY)

2 successes to close? LiTaS equals devoured? Ouch! 12 doom track sure, but you should pretty much expect to try close rolls more than 1 turn or spend some Clues (or use Mandy re-roll). Then again, I still recall my Cursed Jacqueline Fine sealing a gate to Yuggoth (3 dice rolled) without Clues! Of the devourings that have taken place during games, Yog probably has caused majority of them. Of late, LiTaS has been a rarer occurrence (of course, I wrote that bit before today's Yog + Black Goat game where Gloria Goldberg drew 2 OW cards that both would cause her to go LiTaS!). Final Combat is nasty. Will checks and need gate trophies? My only draw came after optimal initial possessions: 2x Tommy Gun, .45, .38. During the game, picked up another .38 and Deputy's Revolver. Oh yeah, and Joe Diamond met John Legrasse at Unvisited, started with +1 Will, got +1 Will and +1 Fight during the game! So even with Fight maxed, he had Will 4 and if he ever failed, 1 Clue token would earn him 4 more dice for the Will check. Oh yeah, and I had done Sealing the Beast's Power during the game. Generally though, Yog's a hard customer. And don't let Dunwich Horror be wake when Yog wakes (if using DH Herald).

#1: Glaaki 1-3-2 (BG, DP, KiY)

Head honcho, big cheese, top dog. An all-round nasty bugger. I swear that 2 Clue token removing Servant ALWAYS shows up when I least want it. Unless you're loaded with Items, be prepared to discard some decent ones. Oh yeah, say bye-bye to your Skills. Only managed my first seal on the 6th try (oddly enough, with some of the least favourite investigators: Vincent Lee, Amanda Sharpe and Gloria Goldberg; only redeeming one was Jacqueline Fine). Final Combat can be a surprisingly long affair, if the Terror Track is low to begin with. You can easily get 8+ turns to kills Glaaki, which is way more than you usually can rely on against other GOOs. Then again, failing Terrible Experiment and the 4 investigators having combined 3 dice is an experience I'll not forget (1 round of attacking before eveyone is devoured, 3 dice, need 48 successes, you do the math). Don't forget, Servants not yet in play are going to pop up during Final Combat so spread those items around.

Main reason I rate Glaaki higher than Yog is that Yog's impact in the game is a known factor, while the Servants are random and unknown until you place one. And I always draw Mythos card that would not open a gate/cause monster surge when drawing where to place the Servant. In one game, "No One Can Help You Now" lasted ages as I always drew an Environment card for the Servant and never for the regular Mythos. Both are really tough buggers though, I always know I'm in for a difficult game against those two.

Hastur is a total ass-clown. Sure, if you want to make things challenging, you can go for the sealing victory, or you can just beat him the right way. Keep the terror track down. Don't seal gates. And when he pops out with a -0 to -2 modifier bludgeon him to death. He's really a *very* easy GOO if you fight him right. Nyarlhotep is also a joke, if you go for a combat victory. I would like to think that Ithaqua is hard, but he's not if you play him right— especially if you plan to fight him from the beginning with a smaller team (with a larger team, it shouldn't matter because it's easy to get sealing victories with larger teams). Stock up on as many common weapons as you can (i.e. overstock), get as many combat allies as you can, get deputized for the gun that can't be lost, if you can, get blessings. Beat him down. Yig can be a little annoying, especially if you go for a sealing victory. Don't. Bludgeon him like you're supposed to ;') Sure, these combats are harder if you *deliberately* avoid a legitimate method of victory, buuuuut, you're doing this why exactly?

P.S. Want to make Glaaki *really* fun? Change him so that *all* undead are stalkers, and so the servants of Glaaki count as undead :'D Let me know if you have any luck with that.

Dam said:

A very interesting read and accurate analysis. I agree on several parts, especially Yog's deadliness (certainly the hardest GOO of the base game).

However, our group's experience with some of the GOOs is a little different. This might be partly because of the different expansions used or the slightly varying number (from 3 to 6) of investigators we use, as I've found that 4 is often the optimal team size against most (if not all) GOOs - less than that and you won't be able to close every gate, more than that and you'll lose the final battle more likely (because not everyone is going to have great equipment). Take 3 players against Cthulhu and you'll have plenty of difficulties sealing him - and he'll still eat you all in the final combat. Or take 5 players against Shub-Niggurath and you'll soon have a board full of incredibly tough monsters (with 2 monsters appearing from each gate, getting the ones with Toughness 3 is much more likely). Also, simple luck on the draw of investigators at the beginning can have a huge impact on the whole game: Ithaqua is very difficult if you have a bunch of Stamina 3 weaklings; but with the Gangster and the Doctor in the team he becomes a piece of cake - you can stay on the streets beating monsters as much as you want and you won't even be needing any weapons in the final combat to beat him.

The one part where I have to really wonder your gameplay, however, is Nyarlathotep. I don't think our group has ever been even close to losing against him. As you said, he has minimal effect on gameplay and even if you have horrible luck and he awakes, old Nyarly is still very easy to defeat in the final combat. I'd rank him the second easiest GOO right after Azathoth. Having said that, we've never played with the Dark Pharaoh herald (as we don't like printing game pieces by ourselves), so perhaps our experience with Nyarlathotep is just limited.

-Villain

Villain said:

I disagree. With a large group the game is very easy to break (which is why I prefer 3-4 player games). You just concentrate your resources on making two or three of the characters extremely powerful, while the other characters try to gain more resources for them. The overpowered characters kill monsters and seal high frequency gates. Game over. Five against Shub is great... It just makes it easier to get clue tokens and allies.

Also, there's an exploit against Yog-Sothoth where you can suicide naked characters in other worlds just to respawn new investigators with full items and cash. Granted, you might not want to take advantage of this weakness :') but you *can* legitimately do it. And easily too, if you leave a gate to Rlyeh open after deliberately losing a combat.

Oh... But as for fighting Yog normally... He's not *that* hard. Just stay away from gates with -2/-3 modifiers unless you have an elder sign, and don't go into other worlds if you're not nearly at full stamina/sanity. Try to avoid difficult other worlds for as long as possible. Okay, fine, I admit it, he's annoying. I can't bring myself to calling him difficult though. Other than in some of my custom scenarios (that tend to be ridiculously difficult), I can't remember losing to him.

To clarify my previous message, I also count "wins" in final battle as draws only, so the preferred method is always a win by sealing/closing. Thus, none of those strategies of Avi_dreader would count as truly winning strategies for me. Still, I agree some of the GOOs are very easy to beat in the final battle for a draw result (we haven't yet used the Epic Battle cards).

Avi_dreader said:

Ah, that reminds me of my main complaint in the game mechanics: getting an investigator devoured mid-game is not punished nearly enough. I'd rather use a house rule that kicks the devoured character's player out of the game, even if it means he'll have to sit out while others have fun for the rest of the game (while keeping the effective player-count at the original level for all mechanical purposes, like monster-limits, GOO hits, etc). Otherwise getting someone devoured is often less harmful than getting someone insane or unconscious.

As for the amount of investigators, I agree the game becomes broken at 6+, but I still claim that 5 is harder than 4 (although not as hard as 3). With 5 investigators the following things make the game harder than with 4 players:

1. Only 6 open gates awakens the Ancient One (instead of 7).

2. More monsters from gate openings (2 instead of 1) and monster surges (as usually the number of players is higher than the number of open gates).

3. The Terror level rises faster with more monsters and lower Outskirt limit (for example, if you are at 5 monsters on the board and none in the Outskirts, 3 consecutive monster surges will raise the Terror level by 3; with 4 players the Terror level would rise only by 1).

4. The Ancient One is more difficult to defeat in the final battle.

I think the above points more often than not offset the obvious advantages gained by one more investigator. Of course this also depends on the Ancient One - Cthulhu is easier the more investigators you have, because you're not going to win the final battle any way (except perhaps with a lonely investigator with good weapons).

-Villain

Villain said:

Well, for one, I'm the type of player that will try to seal gates, even when doom track is 1 from waking the GOO. Thus I can find myself with 0 Clues if the GOO wakes. I did a little checking (thanks to the Statistics page), looks like my only defeat was my 3rd AH game ever. 3 Investigators, 1 got devoured for being LiTaS when Nyar woke (it was a theme for me for the first 3 games, trying to close/seal till the very end, 1 investigator always got LiTaS just before GOO woke) so I was stuck with just 2, trying to get 30 successes. Can't recall which investigators were involved, but I'll doubt I had more than 2 Clues on each investigator.

Avi: I never shop for Blessings just before a Final Combat. Mainly if an investigators is Blessed, it's because an encounter or the Spell (or Mary). Getting Blessings equals gearing up in my book.

Interesting; I would agree with most of your rankings, except for the following:

Nyarlathotep is quite easy for me, even though I do not play Final Battles most times but count them as a loss ( I just find them too boring).

Shub-Niggurath is one of the hardest opponents for me, she's kicked my butt so often I can't count. She is really one of the AOs I almost never win against.

Glaaki is so-so. I wouldn't rank him as the most dangerous AO, but he's very unpredictable.

Abhoth is my personal nemesis. For some reason, I just can't win against him. Regardless of Herald, Guardian and Investigators, he just kills me every time.

Admittedly, I use Kingsport but haven't used Black Goat yet, so our results are bound to differ.

::Shrug:: the game was designed with the idea that you could have final battles in mind. Granted, it's not too hard to make some of those final battles really easy, but that's what heralds, and epic battle cards, and custom scenarios are for ;') in my mind. I tend to use three player teams, so I'm happy with a sealing victory or a combat victory (although I normally go for sealing). Personally, I think sealing victories are ridiculously easy with larger teams :') I'm also amused by this house rule against "gearing up" ;') I probably wouldn't bother getting blessings for someone like Nyarl, because it'd just be *too* easy, but it seems absurd to me to expect to go into combat against someone like Yig, or a high negative modifier GOO with immunities without blessing.

I enjoy sealing victories, when I can get them, I consider them victory plus :') but really, there's nothing wrong with combat victories (unless you've done it with a fight skill, 20 clues, and a shotgun). It is great fun to be one or two doom tokens away from banishing the Ancient One, only to be devoured instead ;')

I *love* Shub, but that's probably a reflection of my play style (I like building up characters with allies especially, and Shub makes it easy). Of course, if you're having problems with him, just get your street sweeper a blessing (easy enough, you just need one two toughness and one one toughness monster to get it), and then you can blast anything in Arkham fairly easily.

@Dam

P.S. You'll find that it's still challenging getting any sort of victory with three investigators when you add on Kingsport :') (because it basically neutralizes one character, who is still counted for the final battle) especially if you pick challenging AOs and heralds— or in my case, veto weak ones :').

As for the suggestion that devoured characters shouldn't respawn... I'm not sure about that, that seems a little *too* brutal... Perhaps the way to get around the exploit (if you really feel a need to write it into the system) is just to house rule that the replacement character can not start with more cash, clue tokens, or items than the devoured character (sure you could still exploit this, buuuut). Otherwise you unbalance the game, and boot players who might not want to be booted ;') I don't know, how often do you actually see people exploit devouring? I've done it two or three times in games that were going pretty badly, but never more than once in the same game— it's unusual, but I can't help myself if my team is losing, we'll never lose while I have will to spare, my fight slider might be down, but my will slider is ever at its farthest!

Morgaln said:

Personal preferences are welcome of course. If you've ranked them, feel free to share (or just have a gut feeling). Which GOO throws the most curveballs for you?

Morgaln said:

You got a handle on why Shub owns you? Just the "usual" bizarre Mythos combos? I tend to have tunnel-vision towards close/seal, so I only tackle monsters that are necessary to deal with (even then Evade is preferrable; gotta love Ashcan Pete with 2 Sneak skills).

Morgaln said:

For me, it's the unpredictable nature (unnaturalness?) that makes things hard. I might be close to returning to Arkham and sealing a gate, when bam, a Mythos card pops Terror up by 1 and "2 Clues Tokens" Servant arrives. I'm the type of player who dives in pretty much as soon as I have 5 Clues (barring Blights or Hastur). Usually that's the one I leave in play and maybe the Unique Items eater, the others I don't mind tackling to keep Glaaki from waking because all the Servants are in town. Glaaki just gets favourable draws from the Mythos pile so often it's uncanny. Bursts, double-doomer, Intermission, you name it, he'll have some or all of them drawn.

Morgaln said:

I think you'll be having even more "fun" with Shub using Black Goat (esp. with Herald).

Oh, a general note regarding the # of investigators. Barring a few early games that were 2-3 investigators, 4 investigators is the norm for me.

@ Avi: I think out of the 72 games I can count with one hand the number of games where someone has bought an Ally at Ma's. Usually it's either through Tasks, encounters or Dhol Chants that allies are acquired around here.

Villain said:

How about this instead:

Increase the effective number of investigators for every investigator joining the game because of devoured or retired investigators.

This should make it very difficult to win the game by final combat and could potentially cause the AO to awaken immediately (e.g. because the maximum number of open gates decreases).

Regarding your ranking of AOs:

I agree that Glaaki is the toughest one. Shub Niggurath is #2 for me: The increased toughness of monsters means that even easy fights can end badly with an unlucky roll. Simply evading them all the time will eventually lead to a high terror level - I lost my first game because I reached double monster limit!

Nyarlathotep is usually a piece of cake. Unless you're unlucky and draw a couple of Mask monsters, it's no threat at all.

Hastur and Yog Sothoth are only bad if you try to avoid victory by final combat. If you do, I think Hastur is more difficult than Yog Sothoth.

Looking at my personal statistics, Tsathoggua can also be difficult, especially if you fail to prevent final combat.

All others are rather easy (# of defeats so far: 0 or 1; I haven't yet played 6 games against every AO yet, though, so this might change).

@ Dam apparently our play styles are quite different ;') but I think my W/L is better. I tend to go for sure things. I take my time as much as I can, and try to horde up a little extra, just to take care of unforseen events. Sometimes I'll dash, but it's usually out of desperation. I like my games nice and slow :') I usually send off one investigator at the beginning of the game to seal a gate, while the others try to shop and make money (at the newspaper) for a second shopping spree. I like to get two elder signs per game :') minimum.

@Jhaelen

I really like that house rule you suggested about devourings. I think I'm going to incorporate that, for games of four and over.

What happens if you're in an eight player game though ;') or another massive number game. I guess at that point it's so easy anyways, who cares what house rules you use, but then again, that's what Atlach and the Black Goat are for ;'D. Perhaps for games of five and over, you have that, and a monster surge. They feasted on your flesh :') and grew stronger. Granted, I've only played two games with five players (and hated both of them), I wouldn't even consider an eight player (unless it was solitaire).

Dude go buy KH maybe Santa will get it for you but our groups hardest AO is Y'Golonac.

MrsGamura said:

I used to think he was hard, (well, okay, he's still a pain in the ass), but he's actually doable. Just don't shop at the unique item shop. Hit the common item store for items a bit, then stop. If you *really* need a magic weapon, go buy spells. He's tricky, but doable :') Atlach is worse, imo.

Well that all depends by what you mean by "fight him right". Which comes down to how you best enjoy the game: primarily as a stragtegic board game where you adopt the statistically most likely approach to winning, or as a desperate struggle to avoid the appearance of a GOO.

mathematical puzzle v theme

I'm not going to claim that either approach is intrinsically better, although I do have a strong preference for the latter. I personally wouldn't see the point in playing a game against Hastur in the manner that you describe, there would be no fun in it for me. But like I said above that is just personal preference & not a value judgement.

Cheers - Chris

Avi_dreader said:

I don't get this part:

"Joe Diamond ...1 Clue token would earn him 4 more dice for the Will check. "

Why 4 clues? Not saying you're wrong. I just don't get it.

And here is my personal hobby horse tub thumping slogan:

*No investigator specials during Final Battle*

Although I have to admit that I've said this multiple times without a single eprson ever saying "Hear Hear".

So I'm probably in a small minority on this :-)

- Chris

Avi_dreader said:

So far the largest number of players in my games have been 5. We've been theorizing about games with larger numbers of players and I think you're right that they'll get progressively easier.

Does anyone have any playtest experience? I'd be reluctant to try a solo game with 8 investigators

Hi Avi,

I take it you play mostly solo using multiple invetsigators (this isn't a criticism it is also how I play unless my daughter joins in).

I can't see many multiplayer groups enjoying the first tactic you mention.

I think a few folks on this list use the devouring trick, although I've mostly seen folks suggetsing it with multiple madnesses or injuries.

It is legal, but not something that appeals to me for the similar reasons to my previous post. (Again no value judgement implied)

- Chris

Avi_dreader said:

Avi_dreader said:

:-) This time I'm not going to disagree with you Avi, just point out my own tactical ineptness.

I don't know how many times I've read folks suggest strategies of chosing which gates to close based on frequency etc.

I always just go for the one where I don't have to sneal past a dhole.

The line of least intelliigen.. er, I mean resistance

- Chris

Hi Villain,

That is pretty much how I feel about the FB too (my daughter loves the FB & always wants to play through it even if we win).

I also handle devourings by just eliminating the invetsigator without replacement, but then I'm usually playing on my own.

I wouldn't enforce this on a multiplayer group unless it was thought as fun to then become the "mythos guy".

- Chris

Villain said:

jhaelen said:

That is perfect! Sso much so that it really should have been the official rule all along.

Of course in solo/multi-character games I'll still just not replace. But Whenever I have a rare group, I'll tell them that is the rule. They'll never know

- Chris

jhaelen said:

I did an 8 player solo with KH & DH once, partly for laughs & partly to try out my hidden sorcerors scenario "Sons of Yog-Sothoth" with the max number of players (I think it scaled quite well).

- Chris

Mariana the Ex-Nun Cultist said:

Joe D regular; 1 Clue = 2 dice

Joe D with +1 Will; 1 Clue = 3 dice (he started with +1 Will skill)

Joe D with +1 Will & +1 Will; 1 Clue = 4 dice, no? (he got 2 extra skills during the game, +1 Will and +1 Fight)