So I'm pretty new to "Epic" board games that take huge time investments and learning curve, but when I saw some classmates playing this game I had to get it! The day I got it I took a couple hours to pick apart the rule book paying careful attention to the wording then came here to check out the FAQs and for some reason the game kinda made a lot of sense to me.

The first game was with 2 people against Ithaqua, who killed me as he woke up cause I was Lost in Space in time, and my partner had to kill him alone, but he was pretty pimped out with items and manage to take him out in time.

The next couple games was with 5 people (never any shortage of people to play with when you go to a school for video game design ) Won against Hastr cause the Terror Track was only at 1 when he woke up and he easily went down while only killing one of us. Later we realized we totally forgot about the 2 monsters per gate open instead of 1 with 5 players ... whoops! Since that would probably have greatly effected the terror track ...

The 2nd game was against Cthulhu who woke up and kicked our asses for the love of god we just couldn't get past his -6 modifier & his doom token regeneration ...

Afterwards I got the urge to play solo, without expecting much, but it turned out I like it almost as much as I did in a group. I got to take my time to read cards without getting rushed by everyone, and each turn was like turning the page in book I just wanted to keep seeing what would happen next!!

Picking 1 of 3 random investigators, my first 4 fights was against Yog-Sothoth, Hastr, Yig, & Cthuhlu, and lost to each of them in the final fight. Always losing with 3 - 5 on the doom track left ... then I had a rematch against Yog with "Ashcan" Pete and managed to seal 3 gates an get some trophies then proceeded to shotgun him in the face with a handful of 6's and won my first solo match with 1 gate trophy left!!

All-in-all I guess all I can really say is this game ROCKS!! An all the people I played with love it so far too! I'll probably pick up the Insmouth expansion at some point cause the Personal Story cards look pretty sweet but I'm happy with what I got now and looking forward to see how the game evolves with the next expansion.

However I was curious about one thing if anyone could answer is what is the point of the 2 Mythos and Gate cards that just instruct you to reshuffle the deck? I felt the concept of these were kind of silly ... but if there is any greater purpose to them that I'm not seeing then I'd be interested t to know. (I'm guessing it's so that it's possible to redraw mythos and gate cards that you've already drawn in the game so far?)

Anyways, I'm out to fight another Ancient One, and just wanted to shout out what an awesome game this is and I hope it stays alive for some time to come! Peace!

Redgurr said:

That's basically it. You only reshuffle those decks when those specific cards come up, and the only purpose of those cards is to have you reshuffle the deck.

Welcome to the carnival, first off. Always nice to have fresh (human) meat.

I notice you submitted the 1p victory against Yog-Sothoth. I hope you're going to submit the games where you were defeated too!

I feel the same as you do, Redgurr. I've removed both "The Story Continues ..." and "The Stars are Right" from my Mythos and Gate decks. Silly!

It's impractical to think that you'd go through all 66 Mythos cards before needing to reshuffle, but you very well could go through all 48 Gate cards.

However, The Story Continues and The Stars Are Right have an important job: when drawn, they re-shuffle the deck, so that you may not necessarily see all of the cards. But more importantly, you could see some cards more than once in a game!

Maybe you thought you were in the clear because "No One Can Help You Now" finally got replaced by another Environment card. But uh oh, you've drawn The Story Continues! Now, you can't be certain that NOCHYN isn't just around the corner again...

Yeah, that was one of my beefs, to be honest. I don't want to see the same card twice in one game! I realize it potentially creates tension ("OMG, what if that **** Mirage card comes up again?!"), but I'd rather err on the side of variance.

I think it makes sense if you're playing with only the base game and maybe one small box, though. Especially with regard to Gate cards.

That's true. You could probably get away with it when using just the base game (but not Kingsport if you're using Bast!)

I play with all expansions, so I only get them rarely.

Yeah, I'll report the loses too Tibs, LoL for some reason I never thought of it . An I'll skip the 5 vs Hastur win as well since we forgot about the 2 monsters per gate rule (thus his combat modifier would have been higher most likely) Halfway through that game we were starting to wonder why there was never any monsters on the board ... and if a surge happened we'd clear it pretty fast and be back to a monster'less board.

but yeah having a 4 + player game tonight so we'll see how it goes...