Avi_dreader said:

Not even started Scenario 1, yet... no time... 5 weeks without playing AH... so sad ::crying::

You know Avi,

I think every three weeks would be much better for me. Like Julia, I have not started the scenario 1 (but have printed all the components :-). Though if people are really pushing for bi-weekly that is OK since we can go our own paste.

Alright Jerusalem Jones, it's all up to you. Bi or tri-weekly?

Posted :'D

Okay, tell me what you think of the Corruption distribution mechanic.

I finally managed to play the first scenario. It was very fun, even though I lost by a bit. The game started really badly (the doom track was at 5 before I did anything :-), but I finally managed the game almost through but lost by a bit (unexpectedly LiTaS while I was suppose to seal the last one).

I played it with 4 investigators and it was the right size (Sister Mary, Yorrick, Dexter Drake and Zoe, the cook). I played with Innsmouth only (I do not like games with many boards) but I think that is OK, right ?

Several minor questions popped out during the game.

First, the handcuffs, Yorrick started with some. Since nothing was mentioned about them, I jailed the first vampire-cultist and another one later in the game.

I am not clear on what are the cultist/maniacs "basic statistics" ? Does this include the awareness ? does this include physical resistance ? Do maniac loss their ability about terror ? I did not find particularly easy to always look for Dracula to check the cultist stats. (though it is a minor trouble :-)).

All in all, it is challenging and fun but doable. In a typical game it will be less of a bad start :-). I will certainly give it a second shot (maybe next week ?). If I loose again, I will move to the next.

On another tone. What about making Dracula a Herald rather than an AO ? (I liked very much the powerfull flying vampire, but had the feeling of a nasty bastard and not so much of a cosmic entity that wait in the dark to devour the eart )

amikezor said:

Heh... You can't use the Handcuffs. There are no cultists in that game, just Vampires. I only used the phrase vampire-cultists to differentiate between proxy vampires and Dracula. I'll add an extra bit to the clarification though. Why should it be difficult to check the vampire for stats? Instead of checking a cultist/maniac/whatever for its stats, just look at the Vampire instead (those exact stats and name on the front and back of it are the stats and name on the lesser vampires).

You can play just one board if you want. Hell :') you can even skip scenarios or preitems of any type you want, if you want ;'D I won't break down your door screaming "FREEZE, ARKHAM POLICE!" Or will I?

Making your one board Innsmouth will probably make the game more difficult, making it Dunwich will probably make it easier. I should warn you, I haven't playtested with one board, so if it's buggy— too easy or too hard, don't blame me :') Both boards gives you a higher gate limit, and a 5th investigator without raising monsters from gates to two. (I'd go for Innsmouth if you only want to play one board), but some of the scenarios will require Dunwich (there are a few that start off with monsters or gates there). Actually, I think the second scenario will be more difficult if you only play Dunwich (and Dunwich is required for it).

I'm shocked you didn't use Wendy (she's one of the best investigators— I didn't make her mandatory in the first investigator pool, but I have to admit, I didn't think anyone wouldn't use her). I think if you were playing the vampires properly you would have been massacred :')

::Sigh:: the real problem is I ought to have carefully re-written Dracula's cultist modification before doing the scenario. Instead I got lazy and tried to take care of it in a clarification. Oh well. Too late now.

Clearly everyone else playing these scenarios is braver than me ;') because I always use Jacqueline. Apparently I'm more scared of myself than you guys are ;'D

Just curious, what was your rationale for using Dexter instead of Carolyn?

----

Heh... I can't wait to test scenario 4. I'm quite pleased with it. I might end up releasing it in two weeks instead of three weeks (if I don't feel pressed for time), just so I can talk about it sooner ;'D

Avi_dreader said:

but they are not undead ?? (since you mention they do benefit the +2 toughness somewhere). So basically they are just copy of the vamp

Avi_dreader said:

You never know people enough... especially some you only communicate through computers...

Avi_dreader said:

I played it with Innsmouth cause I haven't played this board for a while. But I will change as my mood will. :-)

Avi_dreader said:

no rationale, I chose them randomly from the pool :-) So you can choose ? Ummm, that is different. I sure like Wendy, you bet.

Yeah. They've normal vampires. Unmodified. They're still undead (but they don't get the +2 toughness bonus).

Yeah you can choose :') it's in the rules section.

http://arkhamleague.blogspot.com/2010/03/arkham-horror-fan-creation-league.html

It's the line "The investigator pool from which you may select investigators is..." It doesn't say randomly select.

Heh... I'd imagine your second game of this scenario is going to be very different. Who do you think your team might be?

Hm... I just beat scenario four on my first try, I can't tell if I was lucky or unlucky. (I had a bad start, but a pretty good end). I can't say any more than that. Heh... Except that I'm dreading the fifth scenario. Seriously. It's quite scary. On the other hand, people should be able to deal with it, if they drastically alter their tactics ::shrug:: I think ;'D

How many investigators do you intend these sceanrios for? Last night we played scenario one twice and lost both times by the fifth mythos card. Eight players (as per always), and experienced. Pretty much everybody has given up on the scenario by this point. Part of it is bad draws, but crap. Nothing like getting thrown into the outer worlds by an encounter and there is no gate back, or failing a skill check and getting LiT&S. Or having to sneak by a dark young and needing 4 of your 8 clue tokens to do it (and enter the gate).

It may be some time before we even attempt scenario 2.

JerusalemJones said:

I really don't understand why your team is having so much trouble. I beat it on my first try (I think with six investigators). I think it'd be even easier if I had eight investigators (because I could blitz easier, the trick to dominating Arkham is hitting it hard and fast with a few well equipped characters, while the rest of the characters seek resources to supply the next strike). I originally designed these scenarios thinking that people would add in or subtract numbers of players from their team according to what they thought was appropriate for a scenario. Hrm... Okay, are you having problems with your terror track? Raise your outskirts limit by one. And I guess you could do the same for your gate limit. If you're still having problems after that, then ::shrug:: I don't know what to say. You could skip a scenario if it was causing you too much trouble and maybe start the next scenario with two preselected items for two investigators of your choice. I suspect you might need the terror buffer for scenario two (I have a feeling it will eat you alive otherwise— I was able to get through all the scenarios with difficulty, but on the first try, except for that one).

Please don't try to make these scenarios difficult for yourself. That's *my* job :') Don't play random investigators. Don't play weak investigators. They're only in the investigator pools in case you have devourings and need replacements (although they can theoretically be useful in certain circumstances).

Also, if you're having a horrible start, you may want to just abort the game and start again (save yourself some time).

I'm going to give a few strategy pointers that you might want to try first, since you guys seem to be having a lot of trouble with it:

1. Wendy and The Patrol Wagon are both great for distracting (and escaping) Dracula.

2. Get Wendy, Jacqueline, Norman, William, Zoey and possibly Carolyn (only because she's a good spellcaster). Between Wendy, Norman, Zoey, and William (don't spend his starting monster trophies for blessing), you essentially start with 18 clue tokens. That's basically enough to take out four gates. The rest of your team should be hunting for cash and elder signs (and other neat Unique goodies), and keeping the street clean. That'll be enough resources for you to get to six gates. Make use of Norman's Find Gate. Pair Zoey's cross with Mary's cross to make a really good fighter (don't worry about failing missions, unless you absolutely *need* a pass condition— pretty much the only pass condition that's somewhat important on the first scenario is Mary's— only because it allows you to shield your investigators against Death's curses.

Um... Eighth investigator... Um... Probably Gloria (she starts with money, a couple clues, some spells— which you can pass around— and unlike Dexter, her combat stats don't suck, just don't send her into any gates with more than a -1 modifier unless she has an elder sign or something that boosts lore).

3. I still don't understand why you're losing :' I thought the first scenario was fairly easy (I had several slots left in the Doom Track). This might be the most crucial point, but before starting a scenario, you should probably carefully think about what you are facing, and plan a strategy against it for five or ten minutes (including discussion of which investigators to pick). I get the sense that you're just being sentimental about who you're selecting as opposed to strategic. That will cost you. I didn't design these scenarios with the intention that players would actually pick Amanda, for instance (especially since Mary starts broke too).

4.I gave a more detailed strategy post on the first page of this thread. Third post, I think.

5.If you just rush into these scenarios without thinking, and play them like you would normally play, you will probably lose. Many of them change the game structure significantly. It's important to contemplate what new challenges the scenarios will create, and how you'll get around them. (I have to admit, I haven't even figured them out perfectly in some cases— like scenario four had a feature which was I completely didn't think about, that nearly destroyed my team, fortunately I had visions on one of my characters).

As a fellow player of JerusalemJones, I can say a fair part of our failure has been bad luck. IE Lets see how many tasks and missions we start this game with. Yippee, its a rumor on turn two again. Did anyone start with a weapon better than the knife? Never mind bad rolling (2 successes on 23 dice) or bad encounters (You sure like spilling ink at the Newspaper). One laughable moment in one of the games was when a player passed a task and got a mission as a reward. As for me, spending an entire game without weapons, useful spells or useful skills and no money beyond starting cash has put a bad taste in my mouth.

I think if we play the scenario again we should go through the unique item deck and remove the missions, perform a few dicercisms and not let a certain person shuffle any of the decks. That should increase our odds of success significantly. You'd think with eight players we'd have been able to trade items around to build a few solid characters, and we did the first three tries, but the last two tries the game was just 100% against us. The best example was Wendy getting sucked through a gate during the mythos phase at the end of the first turn and getting delayed twice in outworld, unable to return to Arkham before the game ended.

Strategically, there was little more we could have done to win without making choices that would remove most or all fun from the game for certain players. Your idea of using Wendy to corral Dracula is sound strategy, but try playing her as your only character and see if its worth it. "Ooo, I'll just spent the entire game in the streets, have no encounters and fight no monsters! Can you move her occasionally while I go play WoW?" Maybe I'm exaggerating a bit on the last example, but the premise holds. Also, with all the expansions thrown in it makes it a lot harder to "mill" for items and encounters. Milling the South Church for mass is not a viable strategy for removing doom tokens anymore and finding additional elder signs got a lot more time consuming.

On the other side of it are the dual ancient ones that are not meant to be fought. The one game where we thought we might have a chance we tried to fight them, but Dracula killed the first investigator and gained back all the doom tokens we removed that turn based off of a single die roll (note: one investigator combined the shotgun with his 10 clues and got 14 hits that round). As much fun as fighting Azathoth. I like my ancient ones with at least a 5% chance of survival.

Well, that's enough complaining for one day. Now for positive memories. In a recent game of arkham with just the base game we went through the entire unique item deck, had only two skills remaining in the skill deck and almost ran out of common items in that deck. Yes, we won that game.

Redclock said:

Oh, there's at least a five percent chance of survival fighting Dracula or Death ;'D but you're going to need to be armed to the teeth (I was pretty amused by your telling of what happened when you fought Dracula). Most of the scenarios will be designed to make victory by final combat impossible (or extremely difficult). One of the problems with the FFG leagues was that it was far too easy to get around a difficult scenario by skipping to final battle.

Well... I wouldn't honestly suggest using Wendy with perfect strategy in an eight player game (yes I would, but I know the suggestion would be rejected); however, you can still use her for a first seal, and you can use other investigators as occasional human sacrifices if you really want. Um... or you could go through the spell deck a bit (there are quite a few good evasion spells there, or that one spell that moves a monster). And of course, once you pull Dracula down from the sky, all you have to do is move away, and his next move will be back to the sky, not onto a player (in other words, statistically speaking, he should only be moving onto a player once every six turns). Of course, you can use Wendy *and* the patrol wagon... So Wendy won't be tied down the whole game, or even half the game. But, uh... If you're going to have a consistent gaming group, maybe you shouldn't have fixed characters, that way one player won't feel bogged down with a certain style every week or however often you play, over the course of the scenarios (while I like Wendy, I'd hate having to play her exclusively for the entire set of the first scenarios— the first two scenarios were designed with her ability in mind, and so was the fourth to a lesser extent).

These scenarios aren't intended to allow for hunting for exploitative encounters— I'm pretty sure I plugged all the major holes. I don't think it shows anything about a team's skill that it can off all its investigators at the South Church or the Lighthouse and just win by default.

I'm still kind of shocked (and mortified) that your team keeps losing on the first scenario. It's really not that hard... The starting resources are excellent (so many clues, a find gate, and an elder sign). I'm worried about what you'll think of scenario two (which actually is difficult).

There's nothing I can say about your cursed dice, clearly that was Death's fault :')

I don't understand why most of your team doesn't spend a couple of the first two turns at the newspaper (with maybe one person at the curiosity shop). I mean, even with bad starting items, Carolyn and Jaqueline have 14 bucks between them, and you could scrounge together another ten from the rest of the team, taking out a bank loan if absolutely necessary. But, with an eight player team, it should be very easy to dig up money from the newspaper.

Thar's GOOOOOOLD in them papars!

WE had three investigators parked at the newspaper, some for multiple turns. Just because there is money there doesn't mean we get it. We spill ink far too often, watch guys get caught in the presses, and occasionally get a rid with the morning delivery guy. You would think we'd get more money, but no such luck.

As for farming the unique item deck, we did that too. Didn't work out too well.

The first game we played, I played Norman. I started with the Ythian Rifle and the regular rifle. I moved to a gate, wasted the monsters there, passed off the weapons to a monster hunter...and got Lost in Time and Space. Wasn't nice.

And we rotate characters every time we play. We roll dice highest roll picks first character (clockwise) and lowest roll is first player.

JerusalemJones said:

...

Evidently your board game gates you ;'D

Three's not that much though, you could bump it up to five in an eight player game (assuming you break ones with retainers off to do shopping), and have two characters to deal with gates and one with monsters basically (although I tend to have gate sealers also deal with monsters).

Well... All I can say is don't despair! And if you guys are really getting sick of losing ;') just play with normal bank loan rules for a round. I won't tell. How about every time you lose to a scenario at least twice, you can get bank loans with normal rules? I think I might actually add in that as an official rule, along with a bumping down of gate limit and monster limit.

Uh... I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to post another scenario today. Err... It'll be a few hours late (I want to do a few things before finishing the write up, like, eat a meal and relax). I don't think there's any rush though :')

I'll post it in a minute.

Alright. Done.

Personally, I thought it was really cool. I enjoyed play testing it very much. I'd love to talk about the effects, but, heh... I should probably wait until at least *someone* tries it ;'D

My portfolio is due this week, a research paper a few days later (there's a good chance I'll be posting scenario five a few days, or up to a week late, just because I haven't had time to playtest it, and I'm really nervous about posting it without playtesting).

Scratch that last comment :') the research paper has been given a week extension. I may be able to playtest scenario 5 tomorrow night or Saturday. Assuming I can beat it in my first or second try, I'll probably have it posted by Sunday or Monday.

I'm going to playtest scenario five now... I'm... Mildly anxious...

Alright... I just crushed a seven toughness monster on my first roll (no lucky cigarette case needed), it looks like the final scenario of the first group is doable. Now if only I could seal a **** gate...

****... I let the gates get out of control... Ugh... And I was doing well too... Oh well...

Edit: oh wait, what am I saying ;'D I'm playtesting this, I can tweak the game constraints. Heh... I guess scenario five gets one extra gate ;'D (it's appropriate, you'll see why soon enough— I'm worried that without it eight player teams will find it extremely difficult).

::Sigh:: Jerusalem Jones... I hate playing eight player team solitaire, but, I want to make sure you guys will find scenario five doable (it's quite a different creature than the first four).

Okay... It's playtested now... And an eight player team can definitely do it. Not that it will be easy.

I've finally found the time to try scenario one today (I know, I'm a little late on the timetable). 5 investigators (Mary, William, Carolyn, Wendy and Norman - am I the only one who thinks about George Wendt's character in Cheers every time Norman is in play? Wanna fight some monster, Norm? Yeah, but gimme a beer for a nice start) and all expansions but Kingsport in (first remarkable note: mixing all the bloody Mythos card from all expansions is Sanity exausting, my hands are too little for all that cards).

A horrible starting equipment for almost all the characters involved, apart from William, who recieved a couple of Gladium of Carcosa, allowing him to easy eliminate the Cultist in front of the South Church. First gate in Innsmouth at the Esoteric Order of Dagon (with fortunately a stationary monster on it, a Dark young of Shub-nigurrath ), second one in Dunwhich, most investigator with few movement points and none, apart from William, equipped with a weapon.

So, basically the first rounds were a little frustrating, too tough monsters (most of them were undead, so modified toughness) blocking gates, and characters moving to slowly. With some nasty Enviroment cards pacing down even more the characters. Nevertheless, something good happened, William had a gate opening under his feet, and fell into Another time with two monsters trophies and 2 clues, but fortunately in the second area of the other world he managed to destroy another monster, having de factu enough clues to seal. So, basically around round 4, both William and Norm returned from thee OW and sealed the Science building and The historical society . While the others were trying to avoid fighting the *original* (Avi-trademark) Vampire, always too ready to hunt people everywhere (we weren't able to beat him (it?) for the whole gameplay)

Then we went for some shopping at the Curiosity shoppe and Norm bought the Mi-go brain case . This basically was the turning point of the game: with this little object, he started swapping places with the toughest monsters on the board, allowing the others to enter some gates. Catherine sealed the gate in Dunwich, while Norm entered and sealed a gate appeared at the Woods .

We won the game by sealing 6 gates when Death's doom track was still at nine doomers. The game was great, and it was really cool seeing how some custom stuff could really work *well* (so, thank you, Avi!). Monsters were tough, but the +1 Sneak given to investigators by Death helped a lot in dealing with them during the first rounds. None was devoured, nor retired, even if in the end, William was burdened by two injuries and one madness.

Can't wait for trying Scenario 2, now.

You can't really beat Dracula (at least not before final combat). At best you can distract him or temporarily drive him off. There's usually no point in fighting him (unless you're in the mood for human sacrifice).

I'm really excited that you liked it :') and I can't wait for you to get to scenario two too! Which items did you have your investigators carry over? Good luck with the next scenario it's quite tough (I felt like it was much harder than the first scenario, which I made deliberately soft so people could get their teams a few preselected items).

I just posted scenario five... It's also quite tough, but doable (I did playtest it after all).

Heh... Soon I'll post scenario six. New investigator pool!

I hope people are enjoying the story (since writing that takes me longer than anything but playtesting)...