I have a question about the Yellow Sign Tokens, does anything other than the KiY Herald reference them? I can't seem to find anything like that. If not do they serve some purpouse that I'm missing? Wouldn't it just have been more efficient to word the herald "When the terror level rises either draw one corruption or add one doom token to the track"?

Veet said:

Just to add a bit of flavor for KiY games.

Well thats just silly, they need to add a line that reads "When a blight enters play discard mythos cards from the deck equal to the yellow sign tokens on the terror track resolving The Next Act Begins if discarded" Now THAT would make for a scary game.

Veet said:

What if a Blight never enters?

That would depend, either theres nothing to be done about it (I've played many games where the terror track never rose) or you're filling the doom track quicker than normal. If you want something done with THOSE yellow signs as well you could always change the "They act like doom tokens" line to something like "They act like doom tokens untill the Ancient One awakes then his doom track fills with real doom tokens and the yellow signs act like extra doom tokens" Paraphrasing of course.

I use them for gate checks. Toward the end of the game we check to see if the correct number of doom tokens is on the track. Whenever a doom token is add from other than a gate opening we put yellow tokens on the track to jog are memories. We also put elder signs on the Old One's sheet to indicate removed tokens and put the mythos card from a gate burst. We put anything else on the Old One sheet to indicate other removals. We return spent gate tokens on the sheet too. It may sound a little confusing, but it helps.

As to your original question. I don't think so.

In strange eons, you can print an Old One sheet with Yellow signs instead of "eyeballs" or reversed elder signs for the doom track.

I use them for all miscellaneous bookeeping. Which includes:

• Tracking number of rounds for final combat
• Marking which doom/terror levels will fail a personal story
• Tracking number of uses or steps on an item or task or mission or personal story

Since the Explored tokens are easy to do without, I use those to track whether or not a character has used his/her once-per-turn special ability.

Tibs said:

This reminded me, I just recently noticed there's only 3 explored tokens in the game. Is that an intentional limit? We never bothered to use them, so this never came up, but I now realize situations like this could be possible: 1 investigator sits on a gate with an explored token, having failed to close it on the previous turn, while 3 other investigators return to Arkham from Other Worlds - what happens? Who's left without an explored token?

-Villain

Everybody has an explored token. Give the first three to the first three characters out, and then just remember which other characters should also have them. I've never used the explored tokens the way they're intended and managed to remember who came out and who's going in.

There is no way that you're limited to 3 explored investigators at a time. Otherwise, there would be two insane consequences:

• The intended tactic to beating Atlach-Nacha would be more difficult, depending on how many investigators you're using
• If all three explored tokens are already in use, investigators returning from Other Worlds would just go right back in on the AE phase.

Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking... but then again, wouldn't such a limit make the game harder for large teams - which is exactly what people have wanted since day one, IIRC. Perhaps Kevin Wilson actually wanted to create such a limit? Otherwise, shouldn't there be 8 explored tokens, just like there are 8 Silver Twilight Memberships, etc?

Has this been officially clarified somewhere?

-Villain

It hasn't been clarified that I know about. It's only inferred that you're not limited to 3. And since day 1, everyone's been rallying to make the game harder overall, not just with larger teams.

Plus, when using multiple board expansions, game effects are counted as though there was 1 or 2 fewer investigators. A shortage of explored tokens could just complicate this matter further, and make the reduced investigator handicap ineffective in this regard.

Besides Monsters and the set amount of Gate per player number, tokens shouldn't be limited in this game.

I assume three was selected because it fit best on the sheet (and matched up with the three activity markers of the same shape). Playtesting probably demonstrated this was sufficient. I think I have had need for 3 at the time but never for 4 at the same time.

ColtsFan76 said:

Wait, does the new FAQ touch on Clues running out? Finite or infinite? Have only seen the bottom of the bag once (yeah, Patrice was in the game), been close on a few occasions, most recently when Diana Stanley was up to 16 Clues by turn 4 . Seem to recall reading interpretations for both sides.

Dam said:

jhaelen said:

I think it was clarified that in general, if you have to draw or place something but can't because there are none left, you just don't do it. The most common example of this (in my group, anyway) is with fixed items: if you draw a new investigator mid-game, and someone else already has your fixed items, you just don't get them.

In some cases there's also a specified consequence of the depletion (for example, I think the AO wakes up if you run out of gate markers).

However I'm not sure if you're meant to be able to run out of 'explored' markers at all. To tell you the truth, it wouldn't make that much difference to the game in my experience, since getting four or more investigators to return from gates at the same time is quite a difficult feat anyway. Of course the number of available explored markers would make a big difference on those rare occasions when you do manage to get everyone back at once.

As for the original question... yes, the Yellow Sign tokens are the game's most pointless tokens! On the other hand, it's nice to have a few spare kinds of tokens for the purposes of fan content, and I think there have been one or two fan-made AOs or heralds which use the Yellow Signs for something else.

thecorinthian said:

It stated that the player that currently owns the item (or was it the first player?) may choose to give the item to the new investigator that should get it as a fixed possession.

Maybe someone else remembers where this rule can be found?

Dam said:

I don't recall the FAQ touching on this. Now that you mention it, it sounds vaguely familiar.

But what was ruled for the League is not necessarily a rule for the game in general. I believe Clues were limited there specifically because of the scenario and so Clues were limtied to what came in the box.

ok just getting back to the yellow sign tokens proper. if for some insane reason there is only one yellow sign token on the ancient one and no actual doomers (possibly due to Mariet, or an elder sign seal), what happens if you want to use an elder sign to seal a gate? do you remove the yellow sign and put a reversed doomer on the location? the rules state it should act as a normal doom token so i presume the answer is yes thats what would happen

The herald says to treat them like doom tokens so for all intents and purpouses they are doom tokens, in a similar manner to the Child of the Goat being a cultist.

Veet said:

This is how I play. The rules do say, or at least imply, that they are functionally identical to doom tokens. So I just use doom tokens.