Abhoth - The Cultist Dilemma

By Lorinor, in General Discussion

Posted at

Greetings, fellow investigators,

we played our very first game against Abhoth last night and came across a pretty puzzling scenario.

We got a bit stuck on the first mystery, but managed to come back after two nasty rumors

and an "okay" second one. The reward was an easy third mystery.

However, before we could finish it, Abhoth awakened.

Here's where things got weird:

Abhoth tells you to spawn all but 3 set aside Cultists on a wilderness space each that does not contain one already.

Whenever Doom would advance, you instead spawn one of the remaining ones like that.

Should there be none left on his sheet afterwards, you lose the game.

We did that for the first two, however, when we got to the last one...

Thanks to other effects and encounters, we did not have any wilderness space left on the board

without a Cultist, therefor, we could not spawn the last one.

Does this mean we can not lose via this effect (for as long as the situation remains the same)

or am I missing something here?

Up until Signs of Carcosa, (We don't have Dreamlands yet.) there are 14 Cultist monsters,

but the main board only features 10 wilderness spaces.

Edited by Lorinor
Posted at

I would have played it as a loss, but perhaps more by story reasons than hard rule.

Otherwise Diana could guarantee safety as long as there were 2 Cultist monsters spawned from the cup.

Posted at

With the text as written, you cannot lose until the situation changes.

I have forwarded this situation to the designers, so I think we'll get an official patch errata at some point. (Or a ruling that proves me wrong.) Edit: The errata has arrived !

In the meantime, I would replace that effect with the following:

Quote

Each time Doom would advance, spawn 1 Cultist Monster on a Wilderness space that does not contain a Cultist Monster. If you can't, investigators lose the game.

You can't spawn a Cultist in two situations:

1) No Cultists left on the AO sheet (original condition)

2) All Wilderness spaces have a Cultist Monster (bug patched)

Edited by tsuma534
Posted at

Thanks for your effort and input. ^_^

We shall find out what they have to say about this matter.

Posted at

With the text as written, you cannot lose until the situation changes.

I have forwarded this situation to the designers, so I think we'll get an official patch errata at some point. (Or a ruling that proves me wrong.)

Confirmed. In the described situation you cannot lose due to that effect. This issue will be addressed in the next errata update.

Edited by tsuma534
Posted at

I was looking at this too while integrating Dreamlands into my collection. If I am not mistaken, doesn't the front of this AO say to remove all cultists from the cup and place 8 of them on the AO sheet? Perhaps the intention is that it would be this same 8 cultists should be spawned when the AO awakens?

It might be that they need to say remove all cultists from the monster cup, put x number on the AO (like maybe 8 which is the number I believe it mentions on the font of the AO) and then start spawning them on wilderness spaces. Once this number has run out and you can't spawn anymore, you loose.

I was looking at this too the other day while integrating Dreamlands into my set.

Edited by Otakuon