My group has played Arkham 3e twice now. Both games were with three players and both used the recommended starting scenario "Approach of Azathoth." In both games we were completely overwhelmed towards the end of the game and I'm looking for some recommendations and discussion of some good strategies to be successful in Arkham 3e.
In game one we had Agnes with Storm of Spirits, Daniela with wrench, and Muldoon with motorcycle. We did a lot of stumbling in this game because we were learning the rules as we played. Muldoon pretty quickly got bogged down with monsters and spent most of the game fighting and not much else. Daniela did a decent job warding doom but was completely stopped trying to research due to bad dice luck and low Observation skill. She didn't get to do much with the wrench so it felt a bit wasted. Agnes was a total badass. She was our number one doom warder and researcher that game and managed to find a Silver key so she was re-rolling the most important rolls she needed to make every turn. Unfortunately even with those advantages we quickly fell behind and in the end we were "Pandemic'd" when we drew three gate bursts in a row during the mythos phase and two of them hit open anomalies and there was nothing we could do at that point to stop it.
The second game we played Norman with Precious Memento, Agnes with Flesh Ward, and Daniela with Ace of Swords. This time we were aggressively going after doom out of the gate and managed to do well through the first 2/3rds of the game. Unfortunately our lack of a dedicated beat stick character ended up biting us in the tail. Agnes and Daniela both got bogged down with monsters while trying to close an anomaly and Norman became the sole warder/researcher for a few turns and that ended up destroying us. We were one clue away from stopping the ritual on Codex card six when a gate burst hit us and placed enough doom on the scenario sheet to add codex cards 8 and 9 and after that we never recovered. In the end we had three open anomalies on the board and just got flooded with doom until we lost. In the second game we could at least see victory on the horizon but still got overwhelmed.
But onto strategy - anyone know some good investigator team synergies? Both Agnes (at least with Storm of Spirits) and Norman with his Memento performed well overall but other than that I am at a loss. It seems like having a dedicated monster slayer is really useful as well but it limits that player's ability to do anything else. Daniela seems fairly middle of the road to me. Her mobility and general well-roundedness are great but her limited Observation limits her research ability which hurt us overall.
Also, it seems like if you are engaged with multiple monsters at once then trying to evade them first is the best option, then attack or move on once the results of the evade are in. I suppose it would depend on the type of monsters you are engaged with but since you can only attack one monster a turn attacking first seems like a good way to limit your available options.
What other thoughts or ideas do you have for being successful at this game?