I must say, after almost winning our first game and playing poorly our second game, my hopes were not as high last night. Our 3 person group used the core set and the Mountains and Madness expansion and had a great time. I was surprised that the Rise of the Elder Things seemed so easy. Granted we had an amazing run of Mythos cards and for once my rolls were on point with closing gates. I was the handyman? The guy with the hat and the shotgun in his pic who came with the Madness set, My fiancé was the librarian and we had the actress as well. We really didn't seem to encounter too many combats and aside from the first mystery taking forever, I think we were at Doom 7 when we won. It almost felt anti-climatic after all the previous games, to kind of slide in with an easier win. The Focus mechanic was a nice touch and I am glad to have it. The librarian became pretty powerful by the end as she stayed on the sideboard and was closing gates and gaining clues to solves mysteries. I was bummed that we apparently chose the wrong AO to do the Antarctic Adventure as those seemed interesting.

So does anybody play with just the core and one expansion at a time, or is it always a matter of continuing to add to the game with each expansion? Oh I also recommend the wooden inserts made specifically for the Eldritch horror box, as they really have helped keep things better sorted.

Yes the RotET is actually a pretty easy AO. A bit disappointing in my view as Mountains of Madness is my favourite Lovecraft story...at least the theme is pretty cool, but it was a bit anticlimactic!

Adventures are not tied to AO's at all. You have the prelude cards for that.

I've only played two games with larger numbers against this AO so far and both
didn't go well at all, mainly because everything took sooo long that doom just
ran out on us and we lost very quickly afterwards.

You know the saying about personal preference...

And while it is possible to take out all the cards of the expansion/-s that
you don't want to use, I'd find that too tedious.

But I also like having every card available. Makes for great variance, because
you can never be sure which cards show up and which won't.

Though Eldritch does have the benefit that since you always have to chose an AO
to play against, that alone can drastically change every game you play.

Oh, I realize for the Artic Adventures I could have done the one prelude card and gone with any AO, just not the Elder Things one as it wouldn't allow for it for some reason, unless I read the setup rules wrong for the sideboard. I will say for all the grumbling I read online about the sideboard and movement, we found to pretty easy to get there and get around. I mean anybody can get there by acquiring assets and spending 2 successes. That doesn't seem all that restrictive to me.

True, using the prelude as written does exclude this AO, guess I forgot, because I hadn't read that card in a long time and we've already used both the antarctic adventures and the Elder Things together, there was not really any problem with that. [I guess the point is to have a reason for going to the sideboard more if you are not using the AO, but still...]

Just try it, it works fine, even though the card says you shouldn't.

As for the movement, the first games we played with this sideboard, I found myself constantly having to remind the other players about the acquiring assets possibility to get there.

I don't know why, but everyone but me kept forgetting about it. [Later games with the sideboard did not feature this problem anymore though.]

Though having played with the Egypt sideboard (Under the Pyramids Exp.) as well, I have to say that one if much more accessible, because it connects to multiple spaces on the main board and has useful local paths to move around faster.

12 hours ago, Lorinor said:

True, using the prelude as written does exclude this AO, guess I forgot, because I hadn't read that card in a long time and we've already used both the antarctic adventures and the Elder Things together, there was not really any problem with that. [I guess the point is to have a reason for going to the sideboard more if you are not using the AO, but still...]

Just try it, it works fine, even though the card says you shouldn't.

As for the movement, the first games we played with this sideboard, I found myself constantly having to remind the other players about the acquiring assets possibility to get there.

I don't know why, but everyone but me kept forgetting about it. [Later games with the sideboard did not feature this problem anymore though.]

Though having played with the Egypt sideboard (Under the Pyramids Exp.) as well, I have to say that one if much more accessible, because it connects to multiple spaces on the main board and has useful local paths to move around faster.

The only reason why the Adventures are not used when the AO with the same side board is in play is because under certain circumstances there would be a conflict when a certain Adventure card is in play and a certain Mystery.

Both spawn the same Epic Monster and there is only one included.

Well, it wouldn't be a struggle to use a proxy for that second monster, would it? [Good to know still.]

Ahh, very good to know. Well I will have an opportunity to try again. My fiancé loves that sideboard for some reason, so we will see it again. Not sure which AO yet though. Our first one was Shub Niggurath, which we lost on the turn we finished the last mystery and were expecting to win :(, game 2 was Azathoth and we got spanked, basically had rounds where doom advanced by 5 in one mythos phase. So I am not sure who our next AO will be. Also we are a 3 person group at present which presents its own unique challenges.

Well, with those 2 available, if I might make some suggestions... - We've already tried Ithaqua with 3 players and came to the conclusion that the difficulty was too high for that player count (at least for us) - so if you'd want to play against him, I'd say better add another investigator.

We've had multiple goes at Yog-S., but for some strange reason, right in the middle of the game, something always goes wrong and we lose. - Might also be tough with certain mysteries with only three investigators. Haven't tried it with 3 players yet.

As for Cthulhu, he's always a challenge. Last game (third try) with 4 players, we lost all our investigators in one turn due to a nasty combination of a rumor, monsters on board and the next mythos card. Still, we almost had him. One more turn, two failed tests less and we would've won... but nooooooooo - you just had to wake up...

8 hours ago, Lorinor said:

Well, with those 2 available, if I might make some suggestions... - We've already tried Ithaqua with 3 players and came to the conclusion that the difficulty was too high for that player count (at least for us) - so if you'd want to play against him, I'd say better add another investigator.

We've had multiple goes at Yog-S., but for some strange reason, right in the middle of the game, something always goes wrong and we lose. - Might also be tough with certain mysteries with only three investigators. Haven't tried it with 3 players yet.

As for Cthulhu, he's always a challenge. Last game (third try) with 4 players, we lost all our investigators in one turn due to a nasty combination of a rumor, monsters on board and the next mythos card. Still, we almost had him. One more turn, two failed tests less and we would've won... but nooooooooo - you just had to wake up...

I think we will forgo Ithaqua for now and try somebody else. We are still trying to get the game down, make sure we know how to play properly. In our 3 games, we have yet to have anybody even do an expedition, so I would say we still have a ways to go. I have heard Cthulhu is bad news and I am not in a hurry to approach him. One thing we are not doing, is looking ahead or learning all of the cards. Kind of fun sometimes being blown away by what a card does or how bad a rumor is and not being able to prepare for it before hand. Same with the AOs. This will likely lead us to some sound defeats and a change to our strategy, but for now we enjoy it.

So after winning a second game in a row against Hypnos, we lost again, this time to the Strange Remnants AO Syzygy. We played so bad for so much of this one, getting two rumors pretty quickly, one of which caused all of our assets ultimately to vanish. Despite poor play, we did manage to solve two mysteries and flip the AO, only to solve the third mystery but lose during that mythos when doom advanced to Zero. Twice now we have lost to an AO that we completed the mysteries, but could not make it to the end of the Mythos phase. The highlight was having an agreement condition and having to choose somebody's character to die. My group doesn't read the cards in advance, so when we take a condition or have to flip a spell or item, it is usually new to us. That one was a major surprise. Sadly I had to choose my best friend to die as my Fiance was my only other choice. Still loving this game!

Okay, so I have a new question. We played, utilizing the base game and the Under the Pyramid expansion, using Nephren Ka and the prelude card for that one as well. Although we were maybe a turn away from awakening him and did suffer with 2 rumors going at one time, we managed to solve our 3 mysteries fairly handily. In fact, our first two mysteries were epic monster battles, with the third being on the sideboard and involving having two clues, doing the encounter and then spending 2 clues to put an eldritch counter on the mystery. So my question is, was the just some serious luck on our part, or is this just an easier AO to play against? It was a 3 person group and while we have certainly gotten better the more we play together, it still felt somewhat easy. I think we only closed one gate, had one player on the sideboard, which spawned quite a few clues and combat was fairly limited outside of the epic monsters. Makes me wonder if we somehow mishandled the epic monster battles. My general sense is that any time I feel like we had an easy time, we were likely messing something up with the rules.

Our group took the Pharaoh down pretty handily too, though I can't say for general. CHeck the statistics thread, I suppose.

We've only faced him once so far, as a party of 4. The game was indeed (for the most part) more like a walk in the park and didn't really feel like the usual Eldritch Horror, though I have to say we did get very lucky that game concerning the Mythos cards, Assets, Encounters and so on. Everything just worked out great.

Also, I was pressed to take a risk I usually wouldn't have by two teammates, but it worked out and that ended up almost assuring our victory in the near future.

Though we did get a second rumor that would've lost us the game if I had not gotten rid of it at the exact last possible second. - The only tense turns of that session really.

Okay, so taking the advice I had been offered, our group of 3 took on Cthulhu. It was an interesting game for sure. We had some pretty lucky mythos phases and some even luckier monster draws on one of our rumors. At the end, we almost misread the final mystery, where you fight a deep on a space with an eldritch token. We did end up winning with 2 left on the doom counter. I was the only group member not to die at least once and have to draw a new character. Somehow I ended up as gate control, which I think helped our doom counter portion of the game. Looks like Cthulhu is almost impossible if you have to actually fight him. Unless you have the right equipment.

On 8/17/2017 at 9:53 AM, hengst2404 said:

In our 3 games, we have yet to have anybody even do an expedition, so I would say we still have a ways to go.

Mountains of Madness is a really good expansion. Introduces the Focus mechanic and expands the Expedition locations to include several cities and expands the Gate Tokens to include some of what were before only Expedition locations. Means you're more likely to do Expeditions and to have to travel to Expedition locations.

Congrats on taking the big bad down.

Took us 6 tries before we finally managed it.

After we knew what would happen when he wakes up (game 2), we've had 2 games where
we were working on getting the final mystery solved, but soon realized that we
wouldn't be able to keep him from waking.

Both games, we tried hard to get everything ready, but ran out of turns and were
not able to do both things in the relatively short amount of time we had left.

It was a combination of luck, manageable mythos rounds and selective gate control. One thing I was curious about, we had a rumor where every red comet icon, forget the name off hand, we had to put a monster on a space. Once there were 4 I think we either lost or doom went to zero. So we had rounds where the monster spawned had a green icon indicating that he had to move. So we would move him accordingly. This happened once or twice and at the end where we were in position to win already, but it did make me wonder if that was the proper rules sequence.

I'm guessing it was "Return of the Ancient Ones"? - Can't find anything more similar: : Spawn 1 Monster on space 19. Then, if there are 4 or more Monsters on space 19, advance Doom to 0 and solve this Rumor .

I just looked it up. Even if you have three monsters on that space and you have to spawn another one with a spawn effect, while the monster will temporarily be on that space, the spawn effect has to be resolved immediately after it was spawned, so when the rumor tries to trigger, it won't be there anymore. (At least that's how I see it.)

Edit: And I just realized - if it was this one - The rumor is supposed to spawn a monster every reckoning, not every time the omen goes to red. [Might be misinterpreting your description, but since I'm not sure, I thought it'd be better to make sure.]

I meant every reckoning, for some reason the term escaped me as I was posting yesterday. Our interpretation was that the effect that causes the spawned monster to move meant that we never actually added a monster to the space as he immediately moved. Never been so happy to see those green indicators in the game. Even the Hound of Tindalos was my friend for once.