OK,

We finally got around to trying our first game last night. We had 6 investigators. I'll say right now we didn't finish the game but got a good ways into it and got the basics down. But a few questions did come up and I just couldn't find the answers in the rules without taking 15 minutes or more....

1. In the Mythos phase, when a gate is opened, a monster (or in our case two) would be placed on the gate. In the next turn, when an investigator lands on the gate, is he immediately sucked into the gate or do you have to encounter (evade/fight) the monster first? It seems you would have to encounter the monster before going through the gate but I want to make sure on that.

2. The terror level track...I can't figure out what makes that go up other than the amount of monsters on the board. Are there other "events" which make the level go up?

I probably have more questions but those two popped up last night. Thanks!

1. In the Mythos phase, when a gate is opened, a monster (or in our case two) would be placed on the gate. In the next turn, when an investigator lands on the gate, is he immediately sucked into the gate or do you have to encounter (evade/fight) the monster first? It seems you would have to encounter the monster before going through the gate but I want to make sure on that.

In this case the investigator would have to evade/fight any monsters in the location before entering the gate. The key to determining the correct order of actions is the Turn Phase sequence. (A summary is printed on the back of the rule book.) Evasion and/or combat with monsters occurs during Phase II: Movement . Investigators don't get sucked into gates until Phase III: Arkham Encounters begins.

The exception to this rule is when a gate opens at a location already occupied by one or more investigators. ( Phase V: Mythos ) In that case the investigators are immediately pulled into the gate (delayed) before any monsters are spawned.

2. The terror level track...I can't figure out what makes that go up other than the amount of monsters on the board. Are there other "events" which make the level go up?

The most common cause of the Terror level rising is when the number of monsters in the Outskirts exceeds the limit. (A summary is on the back of the rule book.) In your 6 investigator game the maximum number of monsters in the Outskirts would be 2. Whenever this number is exceeded the Outskirts are cleared (those monsters are returned to the cup) and the Terror level is raised by 1 , and a random Ally card is discarded from the Ally deck.

Great, that certainly helps....

I think I'm gonna spend today going through the rule book thoroughly one more time before playing tonight.

Thanks for the help!

To get more technical, your Outskirts limit is 2. When it is exceeded by a single monster , empty it and raise the Terror Level by 1. I worded it this way because if you exceeded the limit by 3 (because multiple monsters got sent to the Outskirts at the same time), the first would trigger the TL increase and empty the Outskirts, and the next two that were supposed to go out there would then be placed in the Outskirts, bringing it back up to 2.

To complement Lee's answer (very well structured, btw):

- it's also important remember that investigators can be drawn into OW as a result of a "a monster and a gate appear" encounter. In this case, the gate appears on the board before the monsters, and the investigators is sucked in the OW before the monsters land on the board. The investigator sucked in the OW in this way is delayed, and thus he's generally forced to resolve three OW encounters before returning to Arkham (2 in the first area, 1 in the second)

- specific events can cause the terror level to rise; specifically, in the core set, there are Mythos card calling for a +X terror

Again, thank you all. This is very helpful info when playing the game. The rules book can get very overwhelming at times and sometimes the order of how things are resolved in the game gets very confusing. I think the more I play the easier this will get. It's a very fun game and even my teenage girls just love it. They really get into it.

Yep, play a few, check with us the rules, and in a very short time everything will be ok Unfortunately the rulebook attempts strongly at your Sanity, so, the beginning is hard. But I promise you, once the fatigue is behind you, you have a world of wonders at your feet