Dam said:

You're like one of those people who checks rooms for exits every time they enter a new room, just in case of invasion, or zombies.

Rovin said:

5 seals in 8 turns ? Dam(n), that pretty darn effective. A few Elder Signs mean no need to collect Clues, so you can seal earlier, but still, takes 3 turns normally just to go through an OW. Hmmm, enter on turn 1, exit on 3 (seal #1), enter turn 2, exit turn 4 (#2), 3 and 5 (#3), 4 and 6 (#4), finally 5 and 7 (#5). Doable I suppose, though need a lot of breaks to go your way. Guess you're not playing vs Hastur and his 8 Clues to seal ?

Dam said:

Eh.... They have six investigators. Why not eight turns?

That's still quite a few Clues you need to collect (5 seals = 25 Clues), unless everyone starts with 3+, which they probably didn't (looking at you Dexter "Douchebag" Drake). There is also mention of LiTaS/bouncing for a couple of investigators, meaning even more time would be needed. But mainly a Clue issue, which multiple Elder Signs of course would take care of.

Dam said:

Nah, good ol' Cthulhu. The Shaman only requires four clue tokens to seal, and we focused the first couple of rounds on token gathering for two or three characters that started the game with a bit higher CT ratio - say, 3 or 4 - while I sent the Fed to Innsmouth to control that board and had the gravedigger guy keeping initial monsters busy. It was a focused attempt from the beginning, and on top of that we've had at least one "Hey, you drew a card that, if you pass the check, lets you go back to town so you can close and seal in the next round" card.

Dam said:

Gravedigger has monster trophies function interchangably with clue tokens, and I accomplished the Fed's personal story, so he regenerates clue tokens if he goes under 4. The Fed got a lucky encounter at Esoteric Order of Dagon and made a check that gave him... three or four?... CTs, whatever fulfilled his personal story quota, and he closed and sealed a gate in Innsmouth.

Roland is very nice I agree, but his Clue-regeneration never gets him to seal-level (barring Noden's Favor Mythos).

I actually don't think Roland's ability is all that special. It only activates if he's severely low in funds or clues, and never really gives him enough to seal. The bonus two focus points were deserved, I feel.

Dam said:

No, but it gets him CLOSE, so when a gate opened at Innsmouth he'd kicked around there long enough between locations and encounters to deal with monsters and hop in the gate with enough clue tokens for a seal if he made it out alright. To REBUILD 5 would take too long, so he's basically being used now to keep monsters in check and try to keep the terror/deep one rising track down.

Here's a question I've got for ye forumite powers that be...

We have the ex-cultist girl in our game (I want to say her name's Diana, but I'm not totally certain) and one of her abilities is to regain either one stamina or one sanity per doom token applied to the A.O. card. One of Cthulhu's innate abilities is to knock down investigator sanity and stamina both by one constantly throughout the game, so everyone is essentially one less in stamina and sanity as a max. I've played this with the ex-cultist that, in the Upkeep phase her doom token ability allows her then to take either a sanity or stamina token, allowing one of her stats to be able to max. Is this the correct interpretation of how to handle this character's ability given Cthulhu's penalty during Mythos Phase?

Cthulhu's ability is simply that everyone's maximum sanity and stamina are reduced by 1 for the whole game. This means that instead of being 4/6 sanity/stamina, Diana Stanley is 3/5. So she can't go above 3 sanity or 5 stamina in the same way that she can't go above 4/6 in non-Cthulhu games.

Tibs said:

Ah, okay, I was playing that on a round per round basis. Thanks a ton for the help, Tibs.