I started talking someone and I now suspect I've been doing it wrong?

I've placed them divided evenly among locations with no more than the number on the gate of the surge allowed on any other gate. I draw them one at a time and place them unseen on gates of my choice.

Is this the correct way. If not, what is? Cite the rulebook if possible.

Hey there, well I dont have the rulebook with me atm (a friend borrowed it to play it with some of her other friends) but when a gate surge happens just follow this:

Is the # of gates or players higher? Whichever, use the highest one. (I.e. 8 players with 5 gates open, use 8)

Draw that number of monsters, place as equally as possible, extras go on the gate that caused the said surge.

That should keep you set!

(Funny fact, for like the first times my usual group played, we spawned a monster at every open gate every turn, yeahhh that was a mistake)

Errr, no, the question is do you get to look at *all* the monsters you draw for a surge and cherry pick them and where they land, or do you draw them one at a time (so that way you can't just stick the hardest ones in the Outskirts), or do you draw them one at a time and place them unseen randomly?

The exact wording is:

"When a monster surge occurs, the number of monsters drawn and placed is equal to the number of open gates or the number of players, whichever is greater. The first player draws monster markers from the cup at random and places them on each location with an open gate. Whem placing monsters, they should be divided as evenly as possible among the open gates, with no gate having more monsters placed on it than the gate where the monster surge occurred this turn. If there are more monsters to be placed than allowed by the monster limit, the players should decide where the monsters will be placed. The decision must be made before the monsters are drawn from the cup"

So yes you have been doing it right.

Veet said:

::Laughter:: I'm glad that *someone* could answer my question ;'D

edit: this would probably be funnier to anyone who isn't Veet if they were reading the Heralds thread.

Considering it was my misunderstanding of the rule that brought up the question in the first place...

When placing monsters,
they should be divided as evenly as possible among the
open gates, with no gate having more monsters placed on
it than the gate where the monster surge occurred this
turn. If there are more monsters to be placed than
allowed by the monster limit (see “Monster Limits and
the Outskirts,” page 18), the players should decide
where monsters will be placed. The players must make
this decision before monsters have been drawn from the
cup. If the players cannot agree where the monsters are
to be placed, the first player decides the placement.

Copied from the rule book of monster surge. Can anyone explain the bottom part and why is it there?

teh-V1s1on said:

Certainly. Let's say, for whatever reason, you had a monster surge with 4 gates, and it produced 4 monsters. But there is only room for 3 of the monsters in town, as the 4th will go above the monster limit and wind up in the outskirts.

Well, the players have to decide from which three gates these three monsters will emerge. They must choose the three target gates before any monsters are drawn for the surge: that is, you can't draw the 4 monsters for the surge first, and then deliberately put the 3 easiest ones into town and the hardest into the outskirts.

Of course, the location that caused the monster surge must be one of the three that receive a monster.

so decide between the group ....1st monster this gate ....and so on ...i always end up with the weastest monster going to the outskirts...bad luck

This possibility may also crop up in games with town expansions included.

When another town board is in play care must be taken to review the number of monsters on the surging gate and the monster limit. If there are a lot of monsters on the surging gate when the Arkham monster limit has been reached then any extra monsters can be placed on gates in the other towns upto or equal to the number on the surging gate(limit applies to each gate in the other town). once this surge limit has been reached extra monsters will go to the outskirts as normal.

For example: 6 players, 2 open gates in Dunwich (each with 1 monster on), 2 gates open in arkham (the surging gate has 2 monsters and the other gate has 1 monster, and there are 5 other monsters on the board).

before drawing the 6 monsters needed for the surge players will decide where monsters are going however they will have to

• put 1 monster on the surging gate (arkham monster limit now reached and the surging gate limit is now set at 3 monsters)
• no monsters will be placed on the other arkham gate due to the monster limit.
• 2 monsters will appear at each of the gates in Dunwich thereby reaching the surge gate limit (no more monsters can be placed in Dunwich, even though there is no general monster limit there).
• 1 monster will now go to the arkham outskirts where the normal outskirts limit and rules are followed.

in the above example take out 1 gate from Dunwich and 3 monsters would be going to the outskirts.

The Thing In The Attic said:

Hmm. Do you mean monster from dot #1 goes to Arkham and in dot #3 each DH gate gets 2 monsters? If so, that's definately not kosher.

First off, monsters already on the gates mean diddly-squat for the monsters surging. So 4 gates open, 6 monsters, one monster allocated to each gate, period. Then the surging gate is allocated a second. The 6th monster can be allocated as per the First Player's choice. So monster #1 will appear on the surging gate, bringing Arkham to monster limit of 9 (if I read where the monsters were correctly). Dunwich gates get 1 each, there is nothing to prevent any of this. Fourth monster, assigned to the second Arkham gate goes to Outskirts, as does the 5th monster (2nd monster on the surging gate). Only question is the 6th monster, to one of the DH gates or Outskirts.

Dam said:

Correct, because the monsters technically appear at the gates before going to the outskirts and the number of monsters in Arkham technically does not change until the surge has totally occurred neither of these would affect the definition of how to evenly distribute the monsters.

Veet said:

If they technically appear at the gates before going to the outskirts, how do you chose which monsters then leave for the outskirts after all monsters have been placed?

You don't you chose before they are placed.

I always put one on the surging gate, then roll a dice for each additional monster. It gets a bit crazy this way.

hoffmandu said:

I place the number of monsters in my hand while in the bag (counting them by touch without seeing them). I put them in a stack (still unseen) and we determine the order of monster placement. Then we put monsters from top to bottom on the board in the order that was predetermined— the remainder go to the outskirts.

Avi_dreader said:

In my example there were 5 other monsters on the Arkham board.

Add 3 monsters on gates on the arkham board and there were a total of 8 monsters on the arkham board- so only one monster can go to arkham- the rest to dunwich or the outskirts?.

I thought the rules said something like

When placing monsters,
they should be divided as evenly as possible among the
open gates, with no gate having more monsters placed on
it than the gate where the monster surge occurred this
turn.

i interpreted this to mean that no gate should have more monsters on it than the surging gate, however now i read it again, and again, and again i see that it's talking only about the monsters being placed on gates. (i was reading 'placed' as an adjective rather than a verb)