So my friends and I have been playing on Standard, because we want a "it feels like we could lose but mostly we win" sort of experience.

It has, throughout, felt harder than Standard seems like it should feel; we're all experienced gamers, in particular at co-op games, but like the 2nd and 3rd scenarios in The Night Of The Zealot were unpleasantly hard, as was The Essex County Express. (Indeed, I posted about this at one point, wondering what we were doing wrong).

It turns out we *were* doing something wrong.

Two things, actually. Hilariously wrong.

1. We were advancing the Agenda as soon as the Doom number was reached, no matter what phase it was. In particular, we advance the Agenda on at least one occasion when a monster with doom came out, when in fact we had an *entire turn* to kill it.

And much much worse:

2. We didn't realize that flipping the Agenda clears *all* doom. I'm pretty sure we had at least one case where we flipped the Agenda and *left 3 doom out* on monsters.

So, uh.

Yeah.

I'm not sure what difficulty we were playing on, but sure as Shub-Niggurath hungers to feed her young, it was *not* Standard.

Yeah... I wonder just how common tales like this really are. There's really no way of knowing. I just hear that the game is "too hard" a lot, and I usually ask something to the effect of "are you sure you are doing everything right?" to which the answer is always "of course we are". And there isn't much else you can do at that point. Well, good luck with the rest of your games anyway. I imagine they will go better.

Just out of curiosity, why do you feel you missed this rule? Was it in a place that you felt was hard to find? Did you just gloss over it? I tend to feel the rulebook is pretty explicit and it even bolds the words "important note" for you in the Learn to Play Guide, and puts a similar rule in italics in the main rulebook. But sometimes I personally find things in italics easier to miss than if it were in regular font. I think this is because I've been conditioned by games that italics is flavortext, and not gameplay related. But I often miss things in bold too =p.

I suspect that it's as much an issue of working from memory as anything else. I mean, after the first game, we mostly played without the rule books; more relying on the turn order cards and our general understanding of how things should go.

But yeah, this makes me think I should read both rule books cover-to-cover.

I didn't know about the "advancing the agenda removed all Doom" rule until after I finished two play thoughts of Night of the Zealot, 2 play thoughs of Dunwich Legacy, and one of Carcossa.

Mostly it was because we didn't play many mystics that dealt with Doom. We also played that you could discard assets at any time. We have since fixed those mistakes. We had a few scenarios where we lost because the agenda kept advancing quicly due to Doom on Cultists.

Even when knowing all the rules, games can still go wrong. My partner and I have played Zealot, Dunwich and Carcosa multiple times each. We almost always win and when we do lose it's mostly bad luck and choas bag shenanigans rather than poor choices on our part.

But 2 days ago, we played Zealot on Standard to try out new Forgotten Age characters. I played Finn, he played Mateo. We were annihilated. First time we'd ever lost The Gathering. The Auto fail came out more times than I can count. Finn was Frozen in Fear all game and he couldn't shake it. Mateo couldn't find the cards he needed. It was rough.

Sometimes the game decides to kick you and you can't do anything about it.

Yeah, I had quite a few games before I caught the all doom gets cleared rule myself.

As I have said in the past, when someone once asked my group we if played right last time the answer was, "Well we always think we played right, its only later that we find out we were wrong."

15 hours ago, rlpowell said:

So my friends and I have been playing on Standard, because we want a "it feels like we could lose but mostly we win" sort of experience.

That would be Easy.

Standard is a stiff co-op challenge for anyone without rigorously optimized decks from a generous card pool.

32 minutes ago, Carthoris said:

That would be Easy.

Standard is a stiff co-op challenge for anyone without rigorously optimized decks from a generous card pool.

Huh. That's interesting, because for at least half the scenarios it's felt about right. I *did* take other people's deck designs from arkhamdb, and I've worked hard to fit those designs to our 4 person set up.

19 hours ago, awp832 said:

Just out of curiosity, why do you feel you missed this rule? Was it in a place that you felt was hard to find? Did you just gloss over it? I tend to feel the rulebook is pretty explicit and it even bolds the words "important note" for you in the Learn to Play Guide, and puts a similar rule in italics in the main rulebook. But sometimes I personally find things in italics easier to miss than if it were in regular font. I think this is because I've been conditioned by games that italics is flavortext, and not gameplay related. But I often miss things in bold too =p.

It is perhaps worth noting that the rules on the "Act Deck And Agenda Deck" say:

Quote

The agenda deck advances if the requisite number of doom is in play (doom on the agenda card as well as doom on any other cards in play), as indicated by the agenda card. An agenda card may indicate a flat value or a per investigator value. If the agenda has an “Objective –” instruction, that instruction overrides or adds additional requirements to meeting this doom requirement.

, which pretty strongly implies that it can happen at any time. This seems worth an errata; how would I submit that?

Having said that, the relevant Learn To Play section is *super* clear, as is the Doom section in the Reference.

Contrariwise, however, the Doom section in the reference says when to advance the Agenda, but doesn't mention the bit about all doom being removed. So you have to read 2 sections to actually get it right, although again the Learn To Play bits are all in one place and correct.

The Framework Event Details appendix is also both complete and correct.

Hey @rlpowell I'd suggest writing in a rules query to FFG using their form and just flagging up what you've found. It may be that they are happy with how the rules look, but your situation certainly isn't the first time it's happened, and if it means they adjust the rules for the future, no harm done (apart from anyone who wails that their rules are now out of date, etc!).

Live and learn!

On 1/6/2019 at 3:52 AM, rlpowell said:

1. We were advancing the Agenda as soon as the Doom number was reached, no matter what phase it was. In particular, we advance the Agenda on at least one occasion when a monster with doom came out, when in fact we had an *entire turn* to kill it.

And much much worse:

2. We didn't realize that flipping the Agenda clears *all* doom. I'm pretty sure we had at least one case where we flipped the Agenda and *left 3 doom out* on monsters. 

Interestingly, that's how my group handled doom as well. After a re-read of the rules it baffled me how this slipped my attention. Fascinating to hear others having the same misreadings of the rules

I drill this point as hard as I can every playgroup I've played with: "Investigate uses Intellect, which for some reason does not look like a head but rather a book!"

I got that wrong the first scenario or two I played (fixed it by the time Umordhoth showed up and ate us).

Every subsequent group I've taught the game to (except the very last guy) I thought I'd made it clear, but then caught them using the other.

47 minutes ago, Duciris said:

I drill this point as hard as I can every playgroup I've played with: "Investigate uses Intellect, which for some reason does not look like a head but rather a book!"

I got that wrong the first scenario or two I played (fixed it by the time Umordhoth showed up and ate us).

Every subsequent group I've taught the game to (except the very last guy) I thought I'd made it clear, but then caught them using the other.

We have a problem of getting over excited by the advancing act and agenda decks that we forget to read the entire thing. So it'll say advance to agenda 2A.... And then we'll miss that it's agenda 2A (Not the first one you picked).

53 minutes ago, Duciris said:

I drill this point as hard as I can every playgroup I've played with: "Investigate uses Intellect, which for some reason does not look like a head but rather a book!"

I got that wrong the first scenario or two I played (fixed it by the time Umordhoth showed up and ate us).

Every subsequent group I've taught the game to (except the very last guy) I thought I'd made it clear, but then caught them using the other.

There is a guy I play with. We have played NotZ multiple times. Dunwich Legacy twice and Carcosa twice. He keeps trying to investigate with Will.

2 minutes ago, Jobu said:

There is a guy I play with. We have played NotZ multiple times. Dunwich Legacy twice and Carcosa twice. He keeps trying to investigate with Will.

Suggest he plays Mystic with Rite of Seeking. That way, he'll have a good reason to do it.

I went through *all* the rules and wrote out everything that surprised me; perhaps it will be useful to people besides me:

http://rlpowell.name/hobbies/gaming/arkham_horror_lcg_notes.html