We just picked up the Signs of Carcosa expansion and our group will be playing against Hastur for the first time tomorrow. Any thoughts on the best investigators to use or strategy against him would be most welcome. We will be using the cards from Forsaken Lore as well. Which is all of the content we have. Thanks.

Gate control is your best friend. You are in for a long game and your sanity will be taking a battering. The less gates on the board the less of a battering you receive. Only played him once, but gate control is what saved me through-out the game. Good luck!

I would recommend high sanity investigators against Hastur. I'm actually playing against him now and his whole thing is about draining your sanity. I don't suppose this is exactly "news".

In the end Hastur proved to be too much for us and we lost. We did manage to get the first mystery down so we took it as a moral victory.

Sorry to hear it. I just finished and won, and got a score of -2. I wish I'd been recording my scores somewhere all along as I don't remember many better than that. As a strategy guide, I was going to suggest rolling the dice well. I did that, for the most part. Interestingly, Finn Edwards was the lead investigator (throughout the game) and due to "Sins of the Past" (prelude card) started with a Dark Pact, and there was a sense that things weren't right with him mentally and psychologically. He performed well though, and got out of the Dark Pact with only some skill impediments, some of which were repaired by Harvey Walters (great character and good against Hastur!)

Then, on the very last gasp of the game, Finn lost 2 Sanity to the Ravenous Hunger mythos card event and went insane. The investigators then won at the end of that mythos phase, having solved two mysteries... Yet another outstanding narrative element gets rung up in Eldritch Horror!

Congrats.

How is Walters that good against Hastur?

Maybe it's because we haven't played against him yet, but I don't see what makes him the man for the job

(just by looking at his abilities).

A couple of things were really helpful. First, his extreme high sanity was huge in terms of paying the cost of Hastur's reckoning effect. (Of course you could say the same thing about any 8 Sanity investigator..) Also, his ability to buff other investigator's skills (with his primary Action) was quite useful. I prioritized Will in that regard and having a higher Will made the others less vulnerable to the many effects that drain sanity, making them better able to withstand Hastur generally. Those two factors separate him from a majority of the other investigators, in my opinion. Otherwise, it was mostly an "anecdotal" thing as he was a key survivor on a very successful team overall. So I was making that comment with the benefit of hindsight.

We figured out pretty quick that having high sanity investigator's against Hastur was key. His reckoning effect is just brutal if you do not.

Gate control is your best friend. You are in for a long game and your sanity will be taking a battering. The less gates on the board the less of a battering you receive. Only played him once, but gate control is what saved me through-out the game. Good luck!

We ignored gate control and it came back to bite us on the arse when trying to solve the 2nd mystery. We will so keep in mind the next time we decide to go against Hastur.

The best counter to Hastur is to have Wendy be the Lead Investigator forever.

She can most of the time choose to gain the Blight Condition on his reckoning and use her ability to not gain it.

His reckoning makes your group lose sanity for the number of gates on the board. So high sanity does help in that you can take a beating, but I found keeping the gate count low the whole game meant that I didn't have to take 1 blight, just a tiny bit of sanity every reckoning. Wanting to keep the gate count low and doing it is two different things though . I must say I was very fortunate in my game, 1 more turn and 3 investigators would have died, Hastur woken up etc!

The best counter to Hastur is to have Wendy be the Lead Investigator forever.

She can most of the time choose to gain the Blight Condition on his reckoning and use her ability to not gain it.

we house rule that investigator abilities have no effect when resolving ancient one's text and reckonings. it seems quite stupid to me that every time you want to play against Hastur you have to break out Wendy too, because 9/10 people say you should.

we house rule that investigator abilities have no effect when resolving ancient one's text and reckonings. it seems quite stupid to me that every time you want to play against Hastur you have to break out Wendy too, because 9/10 people say you should.

If you want to have the best possible chance to win, use Wendy.

If you want a more challenging run, don't use her.

That's how we do it.

BTW I always use a starting Random Investigator in our group. Makes it most fun for me. If it's Wendy on Hastur, he's gonna have a bad time because I will not go easy on him.

Usually the Mythos deck decides if we win or lose anyway.

I like to use Wendy has lead investigator against any Old One. I just like the concept of the team being lead by a young "orphan" girl in the 1920's. Especially if you have characters like The Politican or The Soldier in the team.

Usually we randomize who starts as the lead investigator though.

Using Wendy is a double edged sword.

In order for her to save you from Hastur she has to a) Be Lead Investigator almost the whole time and b) you have to save her ability every turn.

Lead Investigator can have a lot of bad things happen to them so Wendy might be getting a S*%tstorm of stuff coming her way for being Lead and positioning herself to accept/cancel the blights.

As for b) it also means that whatever happens right up to the reckoning symbol on the Mythos card you CANNOT use her ability because you have to save it and if the text on the Mythos card does something to the Lead, her ability is already used.

Its not a bad strategy, its just not broken in that you assume new Risk's by going "All in on Wendy"

And you should be choosing Investigators prior to the AO!

LeRoux13, on 19 Dec 2016 - 12:43 PM, said:

And you should be choosing Investigators prior to the AO!

Another person who reads the fine print

In our group we do pay special care to determine the Expedition Token space only after everyone has picked their investigator, because that often correlated with the Investigator pick of one specific person

Great point!

I did not realize I had this extra little bit of information available to me until now!

Thank you, will need to cut the Expedition Deck after selection in future