Hi Galls and Guys,

We will be starting in a couple of weeks with 4 players and two core sets. It will be the first time for all our players. All of us have played plenty of other card and board games. I will probably try to play a couple of solo games to get the hang of it before we start. Any tips on which investigators we should use in our first starting campaign? Simply use the starting decks on the website or maybe try a bit of deck building? Are we missing anything by just playing the core set's for the first couple of times? Anything that's weirder or more complicated when starting with 4 instead of 2? Any tips or tricks for the first game? Read a couple of newby guides but they are mostly focused on 1 or two players. Let me know!

I would expect to lose. I would also expect to get many rules wrong.

The big issue I see new players make (especially card game players) is that they end up playing the deck and not the board. eg. People spend to many actions pulling cards and not enough investigating or managing board state. Its a good statement to make to new players.

I would suggest doing some deck building. There does need to be some give an take in that as when you want to add a second copy of a card to a deck, someone else will most likely need to pull one out. A good method might be to let the characters who have primary grab the cards that they want from their class and then let the people that have secondaries grab through the remainder. Mystics basically need doubles to be useful.

The core decks are basically one of each card from the primary class, one of each card from the secondary class, 2 knifes, 2 emergency caches and a smattering of skills based on what the character is good and bad at.

In a 4, I generally like to have a Guardian or a Seeker and the remaining two as player choice, but I don't think that's a hard requirement.

With only 2 cores you are still going to be restricted in what decks you can build and what investigators you can play together, so I would probably just build what starter decks you can. After you play a few games it will become more clear what cards you want to swap out and what your deck is missing.

My second opinion. Play a game with the base decks. See what people want to do after that.

You can't build a deck effectively if you don't understand the game well and this will be a much quicker jump in.

Don't be disheartened when you lose, the game is designed to be difficult. Try to enjoy it, for me some of the most fun we have had is when everything is going wrong. I would also recommend the starter decks just to see what everyone would like to do. Then deck build from there, I would also recommend watching a tutorial video first it will help the game go smoother.

The starter decks give a nice direction, but I would recommend altering the decks with the cards from your second core set. The starter decks are designed around a single core set, so they tend to have a lot of filler.

It is a difficult game like others have said. Don't be afraid to ditch assets or events for the skill icon, if you're looking at a difficult skill check.

As far as roles, I recommend having a good seeker and an above average seeker as backup. With four players you need a lot of clues.

23 minutes ago, Vindictae said:

The starter decks give a nice direction, but I would recommend altering the decks with the cards from your second core set. The starter decks are designed around a single core set, so they tend to have a lot of filler.

It is a difficult game like others have said. Don't be afraid to ditch assets or events for the skill icon, if you're looking at a difficult skill check.

As far as roles, I recommend having a good seeker and an above average seeker as backup. With four players you need a lot of clues.

The problem stays the same with 2 core sets for 4 players. You can't fill out the decks, except with the cards that would go into the left-out investigator's deck. What you can do is move some cards around to make the decks more consistent.

Thanks guys! Definitely not expecting to win or play flawlessly the first couple of times. Just now setting up for my first solo play through. Sounds exciting and I'll let you know how it went

I like the starter decks for beginners. They showcase a lot of cards during play when you are not yet familiar with them. Also I find that they promote deckbuilding, since there is lots of obvious optimization potential and even a novice player will easily find cards they want to swap out for others. And since I usually play the core set campaign as a loose tutorial, I have no problem with players exchanging cards from their decks, because it gets them discussing these cards.

Starter decks with douple the Main fighting cards to each character.

So guardian, douple .45 pistols and douple machetes. Mystic, double fighting spells and so on...

it is much more nices to have something to hit back when meeting monsters than just wait to be eaten alive.

But guardian and Seeker should be Main characters, after that anyone is fine. Maybe survival and mystic?

Oké, this game is awesome! Played a couple of games with Roland, Agnes and Wendy.

Easily won my first game with Roland. Probably missed a couple of rules. Second game with him went quite oké. Almost failed at the last round. Didn't get to rescue the girl in the parlor. That's probably bad in a campaign.

Wendy is also a great investigator. Slightly more supportive and intriguing than Roland who is a murder machine.

Agnes is **** intriguing! I really like her. I think she will shine even more in 2 to 4 player sessions.

First scenario is definitely a tutorial round. Do I dare try the second scenario? I collected all the cards for the second scenario and even just slightly gazing at them while sleeving made me afraid

If you want to try the second scenario, you should read the resolution you reached in the first (if you defeated the Ghoul Priest, you get a choice on the back of the last act). And yeah, the other 2 scenarios in the core set are harder (and the difficulty in the third depends on how well you did in the second).

Tip 1. Ditch a player. 2 core sets feels constrained with just 2 players, it's doable with 3, god help you at 4. You're gonna need to play at easy.

Tip 2. Play the table, play your strengths. Your character's have printed statistics not so you can ignore all but the highest one that you then try to multiply with cards. Don't be averse to picking up clues with your raw Intellect. Don't worry if you sometimes gotta kill the rats with just your printed strength value.

Oh, it's ok to redraw weaknesses, just once tho <-(During deck setup)

Scenario specific tips:

Scenario 1 is definitely a tutorial mission.

Scenario 2 feels like what most proper Arkham Horror scenarios feel like. You'll be pressed for time and have several valid strategic decisions to make. In scenario 2 you will realize that winning is by no means a given, and a perfect win is rare. Some of my completionist friends have yet to come to terms with the fact that loosing a couple scenarios in a campaign (especially on hard) is a given, but the campaign isn't necessarily over.

Scenario 3 is.... Lets leave it a surprise

12 hours ago, tsuruki said:

Tip 1. Ditch a player. 2 core sets feels constrained with just 2 players, it's doable with 3, god help you at 4. You're gonna need to play at easy.

With only 1 core set, you cannot make 3 legal decks, let alone 4 (making 2 decks out of 1 core set leaves you with 10 class-specific cards and 2 neutral skills). You need either a deluxe (allowing a 3rd player) or a 2nd core set (allowing a 4th player as well), just to make legal decks. To make consistent decks, I recommand 2 core sets up to 2 players and 4 core sets up to 4 players.