As I counted the score of our latest game, I realized how poorly the scoring reflected what went on in the game. I had never before bothered scoring our games, and did so now only for the AH Statistics Report. Needless to say, I think the current rules suck. According to them, playing against Azathoth always gives you more points than playing against any other Ancient One, which is just downright silly.

So, I tried to design an alternative method of scoring AH games. I put emphasis on how well the investigators protected regular people from the horrors and how heavily the odds were against them. I decided to start with 100 points and mainly do reductions from there, so that in the end a percentile number would tell how close to a perfect game they were (although I had to give bonuses for using expansions, so the eventual score can theoretically exceed 100%).

Here's how it goes. If the investigators lose, their score becomes an automatic 0%. Otherwise start with 100% and add the following modifications:

-75% if the Ancient One woke up (only -50% if Epic Battle cards were used).
-5% for every Doom token on Ancient One's Doom Track at the end of the game.
-10% per step of Terror level at the end of the game.
-5% for each open gate at the end of the game.
-1% for each monster on board (Outskirts included) at the end of the game.
-25% for every devoured investigator.
-10% for every retired investigator.
-20% if a Guardian was used.
+25% per Herald used.
+25% for every board expansion (DH, KH, IH) used in full (all cards and mechanics sans Heralds).
+10% for every card expansion (CotDP, KiY, BGotW) used in full (all cards and mechanics sans Heralds).

What do you think?

-Villain

Villain said:

Why?

Why penalise the players so heavily for possibly winning? The Final Fight IS a valid way to win the game, it's right there in the rule book. Why give it so much less love than the other two ways of winning? I know certain people on this board don't like the Final Fight victories but the plain fact of the matter is, is that it IS a valid part of the game and it IS a victory. Why criticise it so much?

Now if you said -75% for LOSING the game ... that I'd agree with. :-)

Note that there's a penalty for every Doom Token on the Doom Track as well. If you have 10 Doom Tokens when you seal, you'll get -50%, but if you defeat the AO in final battle, there are no Doom Tokens left. Thus, the real penalty for going into final battle is much lower than you think. If you defeat the AO in Epic final battle you might actually get more points than sealing it late in the game.

I suppose you could just count the highest amount of Doom Tokens before the final battle begins, multiply it by -5% and modify your score with that instead of the -75% (or -50%), but that would make Yig net you more points than Atlach-Nacha. Thus, I stand by my earlier proposition.

I was wondering if I should add penalties for defaulted bank loans (say -5% each) and possibly bonuses/penalties for passed/failed rumors. Also, some sort of bonuses for completed Tasks or Missions might be nice.

Oh, and losing the game is already at -100%.

-Villain

As I counted the score of our latest game, I realized how poorly the scoring reflected what went on in the game. I had never before bothered scoring our games, and did so now only for the AH Statistics Report. Needless to say, I think the current rules suck. According to them, playing against Azathoth always gives you more points than playing against any other Ancient One, which is just downright silly.

I agree 100%

So, I tried to design an alternative method of scoring AH games. I put emphasis on how well the investigators protected regular people from the horrors and how heavily the odds were against them. I decided to start with 100 points and mainly do reductions from there, so that in the end a percentile number would tell how close to a perfect game they were (although I had to give bonuses for using expansions, so the eventual score can theoretically exceed 100%).

That's a good idea and a nice approach.

Here's how it goes. If the investigators lose, their score becomes an automatic 0%. Otherwise start with 100% and add the following modifications:

-75% if the Ancient One woke up (only -50% if Epic Battle cards were used).

This reflects a personal bias of yours (I happen to agree with it however). As far as AH is concerned, defeating the Old One is the same no matter how you do it.

-5% for every Doom token on Ancient One's Doom Track at the end of the game.
-10% per step of Terror level at the end of the game.
I'd be interested to know why you rate the Terror level raises as more important than the actual approach of the Ancient one? In game terms, one is more controllable than the other, so I can see that. The more I think about it the more I like it. Shouldn't the score reflect something the players can control. I don't think I'd use doom tokens. I think you score for open gates takes that into account.

-5% for each open gate at the end of the game.

I think this is a very important scoring point. But again it reflects a bias as to what the game is about. It makes a Closing Victory the best victory. Again I agree with your bias.

-1% for each monster on board (Outskirts included) at the end of the game.
-25% for every devoured investigator.

Being devoured shouldn't be punished. Granted many times it is the result of taking unnecessary chances, but sometimes its the most noble thing an investigator can do. Investigators are really just another resource than can freely be spent to move closer to the ultiimate goal.

Scoring for monsters doesn't reflect the real goal of the investigators keeping the Old One away.

-10% for every retired investigator.

Quitters never win and winners never quit. In game terms, I can see your point, but I probably wouldn't include it. Even though it is a choice of the investigators.

-20% if a Guardian was used.
+25% per Herald used.

I'd go so far as to rate the Guardians and Heralds with their own percentages. But FFG missed a really important scoring mechanic when they didn't include these.

+25% for every board expansion (DH, KH, IH) used in full (all cards and mechanics sans Heralds).
+10% for every card expansion (CotDP, KiY, BGotW) used in full (all cards and mechanics sans Heralds).

Again I'd rate the expansions. IH 30%' KH 25% DH 20% Kiy, BGotW 15%, CotDP 5% for example (and this is subjective of course) if you did not reduce the effect by the number of Investigators and only counted the top 2 expansions. Adding more expansions after 2 actually makes the game slightly easier IMO.

What I don't see is since you rate Closing so high, Sealing next and Final Battle next to nothing, you might need to have points for the number of investigators that reflect that. A single investigator that wins by FB or Closing either faces a large unfair penalty for winning by FB or high unfair reward for an early easy all gates closed. I'd scale it up and down based on the number of investigators with 4 and 5 investigators having 0% and adding maybe 5% or even 10% for each additional or less investigators.

And the investigators themselves make a difference. At least the 4 or so at the end of each spectrum. Vincent is a real drag while Patrice and Mandy are real benefits, for example.

I really like your approach. You should probably state the purpose of your scoring at the beginning. For example, I'd paraphrase your scoring like this: The goal of the game is to permanently close all the gates to other worlds or secondarily seal the Old One or defeat the Ancient One is some other manner and and to stop he influx of alien monsters while keep all the original investigators alive and healthy under the most adverse conditions (more expansions) they can handle while using the resouces at my disposal to the best advantage (Assuming that is why there's no penalty or bonus for spending trophies or using elder signs, bank loans, missions and tasks).

I'd paraphrase the actual scoring scheme for FFG to be: To defeat the Ancient One before it defeats the investigators in a final battle or renders them unusable during the game. In addition the investigators need to defeat enough monsters to keep the terror level to zero while actually using the trophies they've gathered and bonus resources (elder signs and bank loans) as little as possible under the easiest of conditions. (There's no bonus or penalty for expansions or heralds or guardians or expansions used) while doing tasks and missions of a dubious return on investment. (This is why most players don't give a hoot about scoring.)

I'd paraphrase the scoring scheme I'd acutally like: The goal is to close off or seal off the Ancient One and prevent the terrorizing of the citizens of Essex county using all the resources at my disposal (including spending trophies and spending investigators ie. no penalty).

So I'd only count sealed gates (2 pts) and closed gates (1 pt) to a lesser extent and emphasize the terror level (-2 points per level) under the most difficult conditions. (I'd score the use of expansions -1* (maximum 2) , heralds -1, guardians +1 and investigators as modifiers +/-1 for the best and worst 4 or so.*

To change it to your system of 100%: Each open gate at end of game -10%; Each terror level -10%, each number of investigators less than 4 +10% or great than 5 -10%, each expansion up to 2 -20%**, each expansion over 3 -10%**, herald +20%, guardian -20%. Defeat 0%. *

*If I were to actually implement this I'd do further modifications as I suggested earlier**.

**Clearly a debatable personal bias of mine.

So playing with base game only against Hasteur where you were forced to defeat him in combat two gates were left open, the terror track rose to 1 and a handful of monsters still on the board you get nothing? I disagree with your math.

Veet said:

I think you are responding to the OP. In any case, zero for defeating Hastur in final battle is about right. He's a pushover. I think Hastur is an example of the problems he (we) are attempting to address.

Many thanks for your thorough commentary and critique mageith! I can see your points and agree with some of them.

However, you seem to miscalculate the effect of the -75% (or -50%) for final battle. As I explained in my reply to Stenum, the fact that every Doom Token at the end of the game counts as -5% makes closing/sealing victories costly, whereas a victory by final battle suffers no such penalty. I'd say an average game that ends on close/seal victory has 8 to 10 Doom Tokens on the Ancient One's Doom Track; that's -40% to -50% right there. To score high with my system, you must somehow keep the Doom Track very low. I know succeeding in this might be out of the player's hands, but don't you feel like you've done exceptionally well if the Doom Track never rises above, say, 5? I know I do.

That said, I suppose I could lower the penalty for the final battle somewhat. How about -50% (-30% if Epic Battle cards are used)? Would that seem more balanced?

The reason Terror level weighs more than Doom Track is for two reasons, one of which is mechanical and the other thematical. First, Terror level can be somewhat controlled by the investigators, just like you said. Also, it represents the sufferings of the ordinary townsfolk - if the investigators can protect them from the Terror, they're doing their job.

While I see your point about investigators sacrificing themselves, devouring has always been a pet peeve of mine, simply because the game does not punish the players enough for it. I suppose I could lower the penalty for -20%, however.

As for scoring monsters, I just wanted them to weigh a bit here for thematical reasons - if the Ancient One is sealed away but there's still a Shoggoth on your roof you might not call it a good day. Note that they weigh very little compared to everything else, however.

As for individually rated Heralds, Guardians, Expansions, Investigators and above all, Ancient Ones, I fully agree - but that would require too much work for me to properly take all the varying aspects of each of them into account. Thus, I just decided to go with generic scores that aim to strike a balance somewhere.

About your comment on multiple expansions, you're probably right and that was clearly an oversight on my part - we play so rarely with more than 2 expansions that I just didn't consider it. How would this sound to you: +30% for the first big board expansion and +15% for every big board expansion after that; +10% for the first small card expansion and +5% for every small card expansion after that?

As for the number of investigators, you might be correct, but I'm not sure how much I should modify the score for smaller or larger teams. I'll think about that.

Oh, and I think Vincent is vastly underrated. You should try playing against Ithaqua with him.

Once again, thank you for the extensive comments.

-Villain

Villain said:

Exceptionally well or just a ridiculously lucky with draws? I know my 6-seal win over Bokrug with doom track ending at 2 of 12 didn't feel like I did much at all, every card I happened to need came up (Marie Lambeau, Elder Signs, Lure Monster + Barnabas Marsh to name some). It was a fun game and all (one of those "eh, at least I've seen it done", like Kate + Arcane Insight pre-IH), but I prefer to win by the narrowest of margins instead utter annihilation of the GOO.

Veet said:

Yes, as you can see, I don't rate base game victories against any Ancient One particularly high. Only when you use expansions and Heralds you may get a high score. This is intentional.

However, I understand it might feel a bit depressing to win and yet score 0%, so I might make a small change: start at 150% instead of 100%. This way, most games with just base AH would score somewhere in the 30% to 70% range, I suppose (although you could still be left close to zero if you had horrible luck). The problem with this is that now a game with multiple expansions and heralds could very well score above 100%, which makes the whole system seem a bit broken in my eyes. Still, such a score would require very good playing, so perhaps I shouldn't mind it...

Anyways, thank you for your disagreeing comment also! I've thought about this for only a couple of hours so it's obvious I haven't covered nearly all viewpoints yet.

-Villain

You can remove that wonkyness simply by removing the percentage sign, which I highly suggest since you are using a percentage against a variable quantity in the first place and that is broken. Also I'd like to point out that I used a relatively tame example, the terror track at 2 in my example would put you at -10 winning with a worse score than losing. I disagree strongly with how harshly you penalize the end combat, you are atempting to quantify a bias in this case and thats bad math and game design.

That being said I totaly agree with your quest to revamp the scoring. As is it totaly favors larger groups and that needs to be fixed.

Dam said:

Here you're touching an issue that makes scoring a game like Arkham Horror so abysmally difficult: luck often plays a huge part in the game. In the end, no matter how amazingly well or horribly poorly you play, the luck of the draw may have a much greater influence on the result than anything you do. It's the nature of the game - and I like it the way it is. I fully get what you're saying and I also like those nail-bitingly close games the most, but I'd say your point is really not a relevant matter in this discussion.

For if we choose to try to score the game, we must simply ignore all those lucky draws, and look at the skills required to cause similar results even with worse luck. I personally know many AH players who might not have fared nearly that well even with all those cards you mentioned, and I know there are players on this very forum that can achieve results at least close to what you describe even with relatively poor draws. It's that skill I'm trying to rate.

If each of us were to score our next 100 games, there would be several outrageous results simply due to ridiculous luck - but the average scores could still perhaps give us some indication of how well we actually play. I'd say that's my goal here.

-Villain

Veet said:

Ah, you're absolutely right about removing the percentages - I never should've used them in the first place.

I wouldn't count any lost games or negative scores, but if you wanted, you could start counting the loss down from 0 using all the same modifiers. That way, a lost game would probably score somewhere around -100.

Also, as for penalizing the final battle, please see my reply to mageith and the proposed -50 (or -30 if Epic Battle cards are used); would you agree with that? And note that a sealing/closing victory could score lower because of the Doom Tokens left on the Doom Track.

-Villain

Villain said:

You mean using your new alternative scoring or base AH scoring? I've been keeping tabs on my scores for some time now (104 logged plays at the stats site), haven't gotten any ridiculous scores. Certain GOOs (Tsathoggua in particular) are prone to giving a higher score for one reason or another, but if I only compared my scores between different games of the same GOO, I can't recall any major ups or downs.

Dam said:

I meant using new alternative scoring. As I said in my opening post, I don't think the AH scoring rules reflect much on the skills of the players; they mainly just take into account the amount of investigators and the Ancient One used - and have these pretty much upside down.

If you look at your scores, can you see when you played particularly well or when you made some serious mistakes? Unless those mistakes led to a loss, I don't think the existing scoring rules reflect these at all.

-Villain

The question I have first when considering the negative for fighting the ancient one is, why is it a lesser victory than the other ways? Is it easier?

Veet said:

Whether or not it is easier depends very much on what Ancient One you're fighting against, and I'll try to keep that out of the equation as much as I can.

However, it definitely requires more skill to constantly win by sealing/closing while keeping the Doom Track very low.

I'll give you three basic examples (from the 150 start score):

Example 1
Win by final battle against Shub-Niggurath, 4 gates + 5 monsters left on the board, 1 herald, no expansions, Terror at 2 = -20
-50 points for final battle (-30 if Epic Battle cards were used)
Total score: 80 (100 if Epic Battle cards were used)

Example 2
Win by seals late into game (Doom Track at 11), the same 4 gates + 5 monsters left on the board, 1 herald, no expansions, Terror at 2 = -20
-55 points for Doom Track
Total score: 75

Example 3
Win by seals early (Doom Track at 6), the same 4 gates + 5 monsters left on the board, 1 herald, no expansions, Terror at 2 = -20
-30 points for Doom Track
Total score: 100

Example 3 requires the most skill (or luck, as pointed out earlier).

As you can see, the game where the Ancient One almost wakes up is penalized the most, while defeating the Ancient One in Epic Battle actually nets you as much points as a relatively impressive victory by seals - assuming no investigators are devoured during the final battle, of course.

-Villain

Villain: If you look at your scores, can you see when you played particularly well or when you made some serious mistakes? Unless those mistakes led to a loss, I don't think the existing scoring rules reflect these at all.

Probably not. I most often look at #1: doom track status if the GOO didn't wake up and #2: what investigators were in. In recent times, I've started keeping track of # of Mythos cards and time the game took, so those add another indicator.

(grumble, grumble, quoting and editing)

Many thanks for your thorough commentary and critique mageith! I can see your points and agree with some of them.

You are Welcome

However, you seem to miscalculate the effect of the -75% (or -50%) for final battle. As I explained in my reply to Stenum, the fact that every Doom Token at the end of the game counts as -5% makes closing/sealing victories costly, whereas a victory by final battle suffers no such penalty. I'd say an average game that ends on close/seal victory has 8 to 10 Doom Tokens on the Ancient One's Doom Track; that's -40% to -50% right there. To score high with my system, you must somehow keep the Doom Track very low. I know succeeding in this might be out of the player's hands, but don't you feel like you've done exceptionally well if the Doom Track never rises above, say, 5? I know I do.

Interesting point. I usually don't much attention until the Doom track it is about 4 from the end. Then I feel bad and worried. Since the doom track is largely uncontrollable, I never considered it a scoring mechanism before. You have a good answer.

That said, I suppose I could lower the penalty for the final battle somewhat. How about -50% (-30% if Epic Battle cards are used)? Would that seem more balanced?

Perhaps just take the final battle scoring out of it all together and use the doom track level. 75 is 15x5. Of course the Old One can awaken in more than one way. Based on your explanation, you might make it 5 points per doomer on the Old One. Then it would range from 50 to 70 but for simplicity 75 is good and it slightly over penalizes final battle. I'm fine with that.

The reason Terror level weighs more than Doom Track is for two reasons, one of which is mechanical and the other thematical. First, Terror level can be somewhat controlled by the investigators, just like you said. Also, it represents the sufferings of the ordinary townsfolk - if the investigators can protect them from the Terror, they're doing their job.

I mostly agree. However the investigators are, for the most part, volunteers and except for the Politician their main goal is to push back the alien assault. And for the most part, the terror level is under represented in the game mostly. At any rate, I had pretty much come around to your point of view in my outloud rumininations in my first response.

While I see your point about investigators sacrificing themselves, devouring has always been a pet peeve of mine, simply because the game does not punish the players enough for it. I suppose I could lower the penalty for -20%, however.

I guess we'll just have to differ on this one.

As for individually rated Heralds, Guardians, Expansions, Investigators and above all, Ancient Ones, I fully agree - but that would require too much work for me to properly take all the varying aspects of each of them into account. Thus, I just decided to go with generic scores that aim to strike a balance somewhere.

Based on Tib's stats the guardians don't follow along with common sense anyway, however the heralds, expansions and investigators one uses do make a big difference. However coming to consensus on that is probably impossible but maybe 2 or 3 levels is doable. I think its essential to get a scoring scheme that actually reflects the difficulty of the battle.

About your comment on multiple expansions, you're probably right and that was clearly an oversight on my part - we play so rarely with more than 2 expansions that I just didn't consider it. How would this sound to you: +30% for the first big board expansion and +15% for every big board expansion after that; +10% for the first small card expansion and +5% for every small card expansion after that?

I think -5% or more for each expansion beyond the 2nd, but I'm a radical. The only exception really is Kingsport. Kingsport makes the game harder no matter what you do (but really fiddley and almost boring). Board and Mythos: +30 for Kingsport, +25 for Innsmouth +20 for Dunwich, +15 BGotW, +10 for KiY and +5 for CotDP. But only count the highest two and -5 (or even -10) for each after that. (Black Goat is tough not because of its theme, but because its the only small expansion that has gate bursts). So all expansions would be +35% tougher than the base game.

As for the number of investigators, you might be correct, but I'm not sure how much I should modify the score for smaller or larger teams. I'll think about that.

If you do something it will probably be better than doing nothing. I'm planning to run a AH tournament at Kublacon but I'm not going to include Patrice, Mandy, Daisy or Wendy (too good) and mercifully exclude Vincent and the Politician. Perhaps Jacqueline is too good and Darrell too. Pretty much everyone else falls into the middle tier IMO.

Oh, and I think Vincent is vastly underrated. You should try playing against Ithaqua with him.

Oops I guess you won't agree with me on Vincent.

Villain said:

OK I see where you're going with the negative for the ancient one verses the negative for doom tokens. Now I disagree for a diferent reason. In my experience where the doom track ends up in a game is as much luck as skill if not on occasion more so. I've sealed away an ancient one with one spot left when I could have done it sooner had "no one can help you" not shown up and stuck around for half the game. (For the record thats an environment that forbids you from sealing locations). I've also played games where we won with only 3 doom tokens on the track only because an investigator ran into two encounters that shuffled him from one other world to the next only to have a lucky gate opening right before he would have been lost in time and space allowing him to close the last gate on the board. Both were pure luck and both would have severely affected the score in this case.

Also this gives you a higher score if you can remove doom counters via elder signs an investigators power and a few lucky encounter draws. realy isn't much skill involved where removing the tokens is involved.

mageith said:

I think the problem with the stats for Guardians is that people use them pretty much only when playing against the hardest AOs. Only those who have Kingsport (arguably the most difficult expansion) have them, so the results are screwed when compared to games with just base AH. If people used Guardians against the likes of Nyarlathotep and Azathoth with just the base game, they'd win pretty much always. A similar effect is seen with some Heralds (Father Dagon appears somehow more difficult than Dagon and Hydra combined).

For now, I think I'll go with a generic score for Heralds and Guardians for the sake of simplicity. As for expansions, I would score them this way:

+25 points for the first big "board" expansion, +15 points for the second, no extra points for any additional expansions.

+10 points if one or more small expansions are used and no more than one board expansion is used.

This way, using all the expansions would net +40 points, but one could get the same bonus with just 2 big and 1 small expansion.

As for the investigators, I'm open for suggestions on who should be included with each group if they were divided into, say, three different categories: weak, average and powerful.

A simpler solution might be to simply lower the score if the investigators are chosen and not randomly drawn. This might bring another luck-related issue, but as I've tried to explain, luck is an inherent part of this game and there's no way to create an effective scoring system where the element of luck is fully negated (more about this in a later post).

Finally, as for the number of investigators, I think the following could work:

1. investigator = +15
2. investigators = +10
3. investigators = +5
4. investigators = no modifier
5. investigators = no modifier
6. investigators = -5
7. investigators = -10
8. investigators = -15

Thanks for all the comments this far, feel free to throw more ideas around.

-Villain

Villain said:

Overly powerful in order: Patrice, Daisy*, Wendy, Mandy and possibly Jacqueline and Darrell. I know all of this doesn't go along with the stats but the reason is that while Mandy and Patrice's advantages are obvious, Daisy's and Wendy's are more subtle but almost just as powerful and certainly more powerful. Daisy, Wendy were made less powerful (slowed down a bit) due to their PS and Patrice and Mandy have difficult stories (well maybe not Patrice in a very cooperative game). But you'll get lots of debate on this.

Too weak: Vincent and the politician (based on what I heard his interpretation will be in the proposed FAQ).

This is based on both with and without use of Personal stories. Other overly weak investigators have been improved by the their personal stories (Dexter, Sister, Jim Culver)

As to lowering the score using chosen investigators. That might be a fine solution. But there's some combos out there that make it almost a sure win so you couldn't lower it enough. Unfortuneately choosing investigators is a completely legal option (not that's relevant to your scoring scheme). Perhaps based on how many investigators were chosen as a opposed to how many were randomly selected. Often I'll play with a young girl (not Emily) who really wants to be either Mandy or Patrice but the rest of us will take either random or semi-random characters. So maybe if you had Completely Random (0) and/or -5 per Chosen investigator.

As to number of investigators. I suggested that when I misinterpreted your scoring system as having a major bias towards closing and sealing. Since that isn't the case, the number of investigators modifier is less important. Based on the stats, only 1 investigator games actually lose more than they win. (39%).

*I notice that Carolyn Fern, based on the stats, is the 4th best associate investigator. She starts with no spells, is slow but recovers 1 Sanity per turn. How much better can Daisy be who starts with 1 spell, can choose a spell, ignores 1 Sanity cost per spell cast, moves faster and can read tomes better than any one else to boot?

My apologies for the slight delay in responding, I've been busy these past couple of days.

Veet said:

A very good point about the Elder Signs; at first I didn't want to penalize using them, but as they effect the score in positive way by removing Doom tokens, I should add a -5 points for every Elder Sign item used.

As for the perceived luck issue, once again, those extreme examples are rare and just a part of the game. It can be argued that every time experienced players lose without making major blunders, they have just had bad luck. If in your first example No One Can Help You Now had stayed for a couple more turns and you had lost the whole game, your score would've been zero. Would you then complain about faulty scoring system or just accept it as a part of the game? There's no way to comepletely eliminate the element of luck in scoring this game.

I stand by my earlier proposition that on average the Doom Track at the end of the game represents the skill level of the players. Our earliest games with just base AH usually ended with only 1 or 2 empty spaces left on the Doom Track; not so anymore. Which in turn made us invest in expansions to increase the difficulty, because those very close games are often the best. I see a very clear correlation here.

If you disagree, I'd ask you to propose a different measurable way that represents the skill of the players. Terror Level I have already included (and it weighs more than the Doom Track). Amount of trophies remaining like the official scoring rules suggest? Very arbitrary at best, not to mention also very luck-dependent; as pointed out earlier, Tsathoggua suddenly becomes the worthiest Ancient One, and larger groups of investigators score higher than smaller ones. Amount of items or other cards? Even more luck-dependent, I'd say. Length of the game? Again, very luck-dependent and in my opinion the amount of Doom tokens represents this much better.

I'll try to combine all the earlier suggestions into a new draft of alternative scoring rules a bit later.

-Villain

EDIT: **** I hate the quote-function on this forum - there should be only one quote box above, with both paragraphs in it.