Played first game last night. 3 player. Not my copy - so I had nothing to do with set up or learning/teaching the game. All 3 of us did not have a handle on the rules and we were in and out of the rulebooks constantly.

Is it correct that there is no way to gain clues? In the sense that there is no investigate action or equivalent that says 'Test X: gain a clue'?

It seems the only way to gain a clue is to be in a neighbourhood with clues and then hope that you hit an encounter card that gives a clue and that you can actually gain one from it. Is that right?

We only gained 4 clues between us the whole game. Something feels off...

That is correct. When a clue is spawned you draw the front card of the event deck, place a clue in the appropriate neighborhood, and shuffle the card in with the top two cards in the neighborhood deck, so you know it will be in the top three. To gain the clue you do encounters in that neighborhood until you get the event deck card that can give you the clue. If you do not succeed at getting the clue, you shuffle the card back in with the top two cards of the neighborhood deck again so it is still available.

That action related to clues is the Research action to allow you to place clues you have already acquired onto the scenario card.

OK thanks - ugh, I generally found that part of the game really frustrating. It seems like gaining and then researching clues is what you need to do to drive the game forward, and yet you've got very little agency in doing that...

If you've got multiple players, even with just one clue on a neighborhood, with two players you're more likely than not to encounter it in a single turn and if you have three players in a neighborhood doing encounters, you're absolutely guaranteed to get the encounter card. Technically speaking if the first person gets it and fails you still have a chance to encounter it again on the same turn

Also, as you get more clues in the same neighborhood, your chances increase dramatically. Maybe don't pick up clues until there are 2 in the neighborhood, and instead of aiming for both, swing by the other neighborhood that has 2 as well.

1 hour ago, Soakman said:

Also, as you get more clues in the same neighborhood, your chances increase dramatically. Maybe don't pick up clues until there are 2 in the neighborhood, and instead of aiming for both, swing by the other neighborhood that has 2 as well.

How does the chance go up?

26 minutes ago, jonboyjon1990 said:

How does the chance go up?

When the first clue is added, your chance of pulling the card is 1 in 3. With two clues, even if you haven't had an encounter there, your chances are 2 in 4, or half and half. With three clues, 3 in 5. Because you're shuffling them with the top two, so even if there are still two regular encounters on top, you will encounter all the clue cards before a third regular neighborhood card.

2 hours ago, Soakman said:

Also, as you get more clues in the same neighborhood, your chances increase dramatically. Maybe don't pick up clues until there are 2 in the neighborhood, and instead of aiming for both, swing by the other neighborhood that has 2 as well.

28 minutes ago, jonboyjon1990 said:

How does the chance go up?

You end up with two clue cards in the top four cards of the deck instead of one clue card in the top three cards of the deck.

Which is a bit misleading, because the odds of any one card being a clue card instead of a real encounter aren't precisely 50% per card. The actual odds of a clue card being in each spot are:
1-3: 55.6%
4: 33.3%

Also, and this is something I missed my first few games, you spawn 3 clues (and 1 doom) as the last step in setup. So you always start with 3 clues in play, then 2 more are added every time you cycle through the Chaos Bag Mythos Cup. I can tell you it's hard to get enough clues early in the game if you don't spawn them.

Secondly, there is a piece to watch out for (and consider in your strategies): you spawn clues from the other end of the deck than you do spawning doom. As more clues mount in a neighborhood, there are fewer and fewer opportunities to spawn doom there. Conversely, as you gather those clues, they get added to the discard pile (which is eventual cycled back with the Gate Burst token) to once more spawn clues. So, if you want a neighborhood which already has 3 clues on it to stay relatively quiet, don't grab those clues. If instead you want to gain clues and advance your agenda, go get those clues.

I'm not sure how much of that was initially intentional, but I have to assume they noticed it as they developed the game. It's very interesting.

Thirdly, you actually can't do a number of things in the game at your own leisure: spawn clues, buy items, gain allies, learn spells. Think of the deck as a different set of dice - the same way you can't guarantee clearing doom with Ward - you should be able to gauge your odds of performing a given action at a location (either one of the given options on the board or gaining a clue), but not securing them.

Lastly, if you fail to get the clue after encountering the clue card, it gets shuffled back into the neighborhood deck with the top 2.

Another interesting fact (which is supposition at the moment, but at some point I'll check the cards to confirm): when a event card is shuffled into a neighborhood, each space in the neighborhood for that card grants you the opportunity to get a clue. So, all things created equal (e.g. there is no monster to avoid or all spaces have the same amount of doom), select your space based on what you main gain in case you don't draw the event card with an opportunity to get a clue - this way you still get an acceptable backup option. For example, if the space is likely to heal damage, don't stop there if you are already at full health - pick a spot where you may get an asset instead.

The drawing from the event deck is certainly designed that way:

a) clues and gate bursts are resolved from the top of the deck: in this way you can plan movement and be ready to gain clues / remove the anomaly if the gate burst strikes (this is of course very difficult metagaming because in the end you don't know in general whether you'll have a clue or a gate bursting, but in some cases, since what's in the mythos cup is deterministic, you could know that there's no clues to spawn and a gate burst coming for that cup)

b) doom is seeded from the bottom of the event deck for the same reasons: it's just one token, and it's unpredictable

This part in the design of the game is pretty clever. I'm having a harder time with rules about drawing monsters from the bottom of the deck (also, it's kinda nonsensical that we have a tool hosting encounter cards, but not one for the monsters)

14 hours ago, ricedwlit said:

Another interesting fact (which is supposition at the moment, but at some point I'll check the cards to confirm): when a event card is shuffled into a neighborhood, each space in the neighborhood for that card grants you the opportunity to get a clue. So, all things created equal (e.g. there is no monster to avoid or all spaces have the same amount of doom), select your space based on what you main gain in case you don't draw the event card with an opportunity to get a clue - this way you still get an acceptable backup option. For example, if the space is likely to heal damage, don't stop there if you are already at full health - pick a spot where you may get an asset instead.

That's accurate, except that you are more likely to gain both. Often, one or the other (the clue or the location reward) will be available without a test while the other requires it. They can also both be dependent upon the test. I have not seen all of the cards, so I can only speculate that this is universally true about the event cards.

On 11/5/2018 at 10:04 PM, ricedwlit said:

Another interesting fact (which is supposition at the moment, but at some point I'll check the cards to confirm): when a event card is shuffled into a neighborhood, each space in the neighborhood for that card grants you the opportunity to get a clue. So, all things created equal (e.g. there is no monster to avoid or all spaces have the same amount of doom), select your space based on what you main gain in case you don't draw the event card with an opportunity to get a clue - this way you still get an acceptable backup option. For example, if the space is likely to heal damage, don't stop there if you are already at full health - pick a spot where you may get an asset instead.

The spots also influence what you need to do to get the clue. We had a spit that did remnants for money, And you needed a remnant to get that clue.