Hey everybody!

Longtime lurker, First time poster!

While i've been a player in this lovely game for quite some time now I've always been just that- a player. Bigboard, every single expansion and some fairly hardmode rules! (my last group played it such that the 3 different environments would stack until replaced, you can imagine!) I recently moved to a new area and joined a board game meetup group. this facilitated my purchasing of my own copy of the game and spreading the word!

As one of the few fully co-op board games its been very well recieved! If they didn't know who big daddy Cthulhu was before, they certainly do now! Just basegame ATM, but My lovely GF Tamara has hinted that DH is coming my way for Valentines Day! I introduced AH to her and was pleasantly surprised she loves the everliving bejesus out of it. (score!)

Now that I'm the one expected to know whats going on- I had a couple of questions for the knowledgable folks around here. Sorry if any of these are face-slappingly obvious or answered elsewhere!

1. Do spells, skills and allies count as "items" for the purposes of discarding during insanity/unconsciousness? my original thought was yes to the first, no to the others. I had never questioned this, But I recently read Richard Launius' house rules (#5) and that made me wonder. Maybe i'm over-thinking? they are house rules after-all.
2. Can you trade spells, skills and allies? Skills and allies i'm almost certain are a no. For spells? I'd always been led to believe they were "a part of you." However I've seen some references to trading spells for fun and profit from people on these forums. This would be very handy as sometimes people who have no business casting -anything- end up with them. It'd be so much nicer to pass that DCoA or AI over to your 7/3 loremaster buddy!
3. When you are in the first area of an outworld, do you have an outworld encounter? This one i'm fairly certain on. I'd never thought about it before I was the guy "running" the game. Looking over the rulebook there is nothing that says that you do not. So unless I hear otherwise I'm chalking it up to my old groups' house rules. To me seeing twice the OEs would be nice and up the difficulty a bit. if its somehow a no, i'm houseruling it in.
4. How is getting devoured a tactic? Outside of Tommy and Silas' PS of course . This is less a question of rules and more of tactics. I like to think of myself as a strategically oriented gamer- but I haven't been able to puzzle out how getting eaten is beneficial? I must be missing something obvious.

Thanks so much for taking the time to read and post ! I wanted it to be formatted better for legibility but FFGs posting doesn't seem very friendly. I've found this to be a courteous, thoughtful and interested forum from my lurk time here. I'm excited to hear back on these questions and very happy to officially make all of your acquaintances!

Ai Ai! Cthulhu Ph'Tagen! **Blam** ...guess not!

1. this is mentioned in the rulebook, right under the section: Insane or Unconscious in an Other World:

"Important: When adding up items before discarding them, count all Common Items, Unique Items, and Spells. In addition, the Deputy’s Revolver and the Patrol Wagon both count as items. Allies, Skills, and other cards do not count towards this total."

We also include Exhibit Items (CotDF)

2. Trading i'm quite sure it's in the rulebook too :

"...investigator may trade money, Common Items, Unique Items, and Spells..."

We also include the Deputy’s Revolver and the Patrol Wagon and Exhibit Items, so basicly all items... and money...

Hi there. I got the feeling most of your questions are answered in the FAQ. Get it in the support page ! and go on BGG !

I am no pro, big AH rookie to say the truth, but I can answer simply while waiting for the fans for more precise answers :

1. Yes for spells, no for Skills or Allies.

2. Yes for spells, no for Skills or Allies. what, "copy and paste" ?

3. Why, yeah, sure, why wouldn't you ? you get it usually during the OW encounter phase, just after you got in during the previous (Arkham encounter) phase.

4. Join me ? I'll let that one to the pros, alright ?

cheers !

yo, I'm fairly new to the boards too but I'll take a swing at these since everyone was so nice with helping me out on my less straight forward questions =p

1, We've always played that items means items, common or unique and spells. So if you pass out or go nuts you lose half your items (ie if you have 3 common items and 2 unique items and a spell you have to give up 3 of them total broken up however you like) half your cash rounded down, and half your clues. You keep all your gate and monster trophies as well as skills, and allies however.

2, as I understand it, spells, common items, money, the "patrol wagon", "deputy's revolver" and unique items can be traded... clue, stamina, and sanity tokens as well as monster trophies and gate trophies, blessings, curses, bank loans, skills, silver lodge membership, retainers and the "deputy of arkham" card cannot be traded.

Anything that's a trophy, token is tied to the character it is on, as well as any special card other than patrol wagon and deputy's revolver. Everything else is tradeable except skills. That's how we've always played it by any means, although I could be wrong.

3, Assuming things are normal you move on movement phase onto a gate in arkham on a location, your arkham encounter phase is next so you move into OW, then your OW encounter phase is next at which point you have an encounter. Since all OW encounters happen on their own phase after the Arkham Enounters Phase you always have an encounter in the first part of OW.

4, the only way I can figure getting eaten is tactically sound outside of a taking one for the team situation (1stam and 1san left, just explored OW, have an elder sign in your inventory... goodbye cruel world!) is if you've bottomed out. Say you've died to the point that your only item left is a knife, you've got no spells, your characters got crap sneak and your skill allows you to reroll evade checks, which would be great except you never even try to evade, no gate or monster trophies etc etc etc... basically if you run into a wall and your character becomes dead weight it might be a good time to meet up with the crew, grab that flute of the outer gods, and tell your wife you love her? The key thing with a suicide devour is that you as a player get to redraw a fresh investigator, with that new-car smell and that mary tyler moore "we're gonna make it after all" attitude... until she throws her hat and it hits a nightgaunt... then the show goes in a whole different direction...

but yeah, getting back to the point, the only tactical use for allowing your self to be intentionally devoured is to redraw a fresh new character. However, there's plenty of tactically sound reasons that a player may take actions that cause him or her to be devoured as a side effect.

Hope that helps, and I'm sure that if I'm out in the tall grass on any of that someone with more experience than I will be along soon to give you, and by extension me, the right answer

@Nephilim

Doh! Such an unseemly oversight. S'alright, The AH manual might be comprehensive, bet well laid out out it ain't!

Thanks to all for fast, kind replies thus far!

D'ah! Got one more in my brain before I pass out.

Which locations (basegame or otherwise) provide ally cards? I want to try taking Darrel out for a board-reaping romp next time I pull him and am unsure where to come up on the info myself. Outside of reading ALL my cards that is (not likely.) Im not Not sure how productive it'll be for the team, but with a little luck I'd like to try turning him into an ally toting lolbeast for my own personal amusement.

off the top of my head you can only get specific allies, not random draws from locations

I know for sure there's one in the graveyard and one at the riverdocks. Also for sure there's one in the lodge. Aside from those there are various allies available at most of the unstable locations on the main board.

magnumopera said:

You also must discard all your retainers. And I don't think you have to discard half of the money. From the rulebook, pag 16: "He must immediately choose and discard half of his items and half of his Clue tokens (rounded down), along with all retainers (if any)", being items "all Common Items, Unique Items and Spells"

hmm somehow I missed that

well, that's going to break Darrell Simmons heart... but Jenny Barnes is gonna love it

guess it's true... when fate closes a door, it opens a portal to a hideous and foreboding underworld from which none return unscathed... err wait... I think I have that wrong...

The_Agro said:

Most of the locations in Arkham and in the nearby town provides you the opportunity to make allies. Just consider the amount of allies the game offers, there is at least one Arkham encounter for each of them offering you the chance to have them with you. In the graveyard you could meet Father Iwanicki or Richard Upton Pickman. And so on. You can spoil the game (just surf in the Arkham Horror Wiki, open the locations and search for the word "ally"), but I really suggest you to explore the game (with Darrell or whoever you wants), you'll definitely have a great time!

And yes, Darrell is quite good at getting allies!

magnumopera said:

Yes... I'm aware of that... I was more of looking for a "Mountain" Murphey comes from the Graveyard(or was it the Black Cave?) and so on.

Julia said:

Now thats the stuff! I think calling it "spoiling" is a little unfair though. Its not as though this is my first spin around the board. Did you read my opening post? And searching every location for the word "ally" is still a bit too much heavy lifting. I imagine someone must have compiled this by now, somewhere.

I do Luvva me some AH wiki though! Ive been reading back through the investigators I don't have access to at the moment. So tasty. It makes me want to hide my credit cards from myself.

Base game has 11 Allies and 11 unstable locations, you do the math . Dunwich adds 5 more Allies and, what do you know, 5 unstable locations. Curse of the Dark Pharaoh adds ally-opportunities for some (7) Arkham unstable locations. And then there is Kingsport, which adds 11 Allies, all but one (which is available via an OW encounter) I think available in STABLE locations . Bull-effing-crap I say.

The_Agro said:

Check Arkhamhorrorwiki.com, http://www.arkhamhorrorwiki.com/Location specifically, or read your cards :')

The_Agro said:

Okay, it seems like the other players haven't given devouring it's due :') so it's time for me to make the case, yet again. In base game Arkham, it's actually fairly difficult to use devouring as a tactic, since there are hardly any ways of being consistantly devoured (pretty much The Black Man— Nyarlethotep only, assuming you draw him, and Lost in Time in Space with Yog Sothoth— you can have this happen fairly easily if you are short on sanity and cast spells while in Another World). All in all, I'd say that getting devoured is a bad tactic in the base game. The one occasion I'd say it might be useful in the base game is if a mythos card pops out that allows you to potentially be devoured (there might be two of them, it's been a while since I've seen one pop up).

If you ever get Kingsport, you'll find that getting devoured is much easier (thanks to the inclusion of the Shans and Moonbeasts). Innsmouth also makes getting devoured fairly easy (although it sometimes takes a few turns there, since first you have to get arrested, and sometimes you get so unlucky you don't get eaten immediately!).

Tactical devouring isn't necessarily the best method for getting a new investigator, you can do the same with tactical retiring (once you get Dunwich). Just charge two monsters, lose, and three turns later you have a new character— or two if you already have an injury.

There are two purposes to getting devoured, one is if for whatever reason your investigator has become so crippled that they are a liability to the team (let's say they have horrible starting stats and then they got a madness or an injury that makes them practically worthless). Or, let's say you're desperate for new resources, money, clues, items, whatever. You can trade away all your spells, commons, uniques and cash, you can then get your guy killed and get a new character with full resources (including normally non-tradable items such as clues). Personally, I'd suggest you sacrifice either a very weak character, or an average character who had just used all their clues (so you don't waste much). Also, when a character is devoured, they transfer their monster and gate trophies to the new character replacing them. Anyways, you see the point? You get a fully healed player, potentially much stronger than the one you lost, you also get a load of new items and cash for item purchasing, hopefully a better skill, and possibly some clue tokens. All in all, a very good deal, if you're the kind of merciless player who will send his pawns screaming to their deaths for your fun and profit ;') or arguably to save the world (that's what you tell the judge anyways).

I'm not entirely sure if retiring an investigator allows you to transfer trophies (I'd imagine it does, but I'd need to check— I'll ask the board in a minute).

And devouring... SPOILER ALERT:

There's an outer world encounter where you can choose to get devoured and seal the gate you came in. I did that once. I don't think my friends were too amused with that. They didn't want me too, but I think I was playing Jim Culver, and I really hate the guy.

johnwatersfan said:

Vincent Lee won my first Glaaki seal-win with that encounter. Couldn't have happened to a more "worthy" investigator .

@Dam RE Allies/unstables

Now THAT is useful information. I hadn't made the correlation, thanks!

@Avi_dreader RE getting eated as a tactic

See, now it makes sense! We generally play pick by pile, so its fairly unusual that someone comes up with a handful of truly terrible investigators. Once I get DH I'll certainly try it out if the circumstances arise.

Nice to see some answers from the established crowd!
I suppose if none of you have it done already; it'll fall on me to do my own dang work on sorting out who comes from where. S'alright. I like projects!

... Maybe i'll even share!

Dam said:

I'd pay to see crap eff a bull ;'D if only to say that I have.

The_Agro said:

Heh... I have a vague idea of where about 3/4th of the allies can be found. The truth is, I think it's generally inefficient to go ally hunting (if there's an ally I really want I'll trade for it at the boarding house, it's less time consuming). Even if you have darrell... I still don't think it's worth it. Anyways, I'd advise that you should know where a few of the best allies are (primarily for drawing Darrell or the Dragon's Eye), and that's it.

When I get Darrell, I might send him after Mountain Man Murphy, or Professor Rice, or if I was really in the mood to be a cheap bastard, after the alchemy encounter, or the remove doom token encounter in Kingsport. Removing this latter temptation is one reason I removed the Kingsport board. That, and it bores me, and I hate how scarce it makes monsters in Arkham proper, AND how it dilutes the other two towns although I'll probably bump it back in for games against aquatic monster boosting heralds).

Heh... I still think Dam's crazy for not buying it though (this is my preemptive comment, Dam, seriously, buy Kingsport already, no one will force you to use the board, Daisy, or Wendy).

Oh, yes, I get players eaten as a tactic ::darting eyes:: don't believe those people who tell you I do it for fun ::darting eyes::

Avi_dreader said:

When aren't you in cheap bastard mode ?

Avi_dreader said:

Then my question is: why buy at all if you're not going to use it in full? I'm an all or nothing kinda guy.

Avi_dreader said:

lmao! Consider me advised on the ups and downs on being devoured.

M2 Is probably my fav ally in many ways. You could do SO much worse than having a guy nicknamed "Mountain" at your back. Though any who prevent Nightmarish are slightly more beneficial in some ways as I generally prefer hunters, unless the "party" needs otherwise. Basegame I've gotten very lucky and pulled him on numerous occasions, even without Darrel. (But then, thats what, a 1/15? Not bad odds, in this game.)

This was less a serious consideration of tactics and more of my own personal curiosity. Sure, it's -easier- in many ways (And if only I had thought to count those cultists as 6's all those games with Yig! ) to hit up Ma's. But this is all personal curiosity as to how far I can "push my luck."

I know it's all hoodoo, But I am -lucky-. Some people just... Don't have it? The owner of my last played copy wasn't exactly a fatalist... But he enjoyed the Lovecraftian ideal that we were all going to go insane and die! Lo and behold his shuffles never held anything but acrid death. (but then if you're stacking 3 environments...) AND SO! I insist on putting the last shuffles on all of the decks, just because I can generally charge them with that good mojo. (it backfires once in a while, but not often.)

Silly? Maybe. But I'm sure everyone has their own little rituals. And when it comes down to it, no one can make or break a playthrough like I can.. (cept my Tammy, but she's in love with Mandy and seems to draw her in her pile often.)

P.S. I was waiting till you showed up Avi, So I could agree with your Sig! wtf mate! at -least- they could make avatars out of all the investigators. How hard would that be, exactly!?

P.P.S. Another Question for the board! I'm in some severe need of some AH themed music! Help? I have the CoC soundtrack (2005) but thats only 50+ minutes. your typical game with a larger group lasts 2+ hours. Does anyone else think that mood music really helps make the game? when I play BS:G I have the entire soundtrack, and it ups the tension and enjoyment SO MUCH. What other options do I have?

P.P.P.S.! Which expansion should I pick up next? Bigboard and Small? If you bothered reading above- my lovely mate is getting me DH for teh Vday. When the itch comes back, what would be the best BANG? I was thinking CotDP or KiY for small and Insmouth for large. Mostly for the PS(s) though. I -hate- the insmouth board. (and that is totally not because I got eaten via insmouth look as Silas right as I was about to win our haggaring 4+ hour all expansion game ages ago, not at all)

Whew! Thats it for now. Keep it coming! Read my top 5 Investigators/GOOs when I manage to get it posted! It'll be funneh! (hopefully.)

Dam said:

You can use it in full on holidays, or when the moon is full. Yeesh, seriously. You bought KiY, CotDP, and BGotW. Their added components aren't *nearly* as good.

The_Agro said:

Wait what? What are you talking about with the cultists? They only have toughness one, even with Yig

Second, are you implying that you used to play with someone who *stacked* environments? Environments don't stack, they replace each other when new ones come out (unless you make a weird herald or play a house rule).

Yeaaah... I'm still not sure why they got rid of the custom avatars and never put a decent system in as a replacement. It annoys me every time I see multiple people wearing the same face.

Avi_dreader said:

KiY is so-so for me. CotDP is my fav small-box (though gets a hefty nostalgia boost for being my first small-box). And BGotW is worth the price just for the Herald. I love the BGotW Herald . No more "ooh, monster surge, free turn" crap. Pressure, pressure and more pressure with that Herald.

Still, KH is €50 listed, could of course shop around for cheaper but still, all that for basically 4 GOOs? Meh. 4 GOOs since those are the only things I'd really want from KH.

Dam said:

Hrm... That's a pretty crazy price I have to admit... That's like what, 75 dollars? Gulp... Shop around.

Feh! Epic Battles! New monsters, investigators, skills, items, allies. So what if you don't get board use. I think you're the only person I know who likes the BGotW herald btw ;')