A possible "dead end" situation in For the Greater Good

By yeeshkul, in Arkham Horror: The Card Game

The following cards can help you get the key

1)August Lindquist
2)Cellar or Lobby depending on your membership status
3)Lodge Jailor
4)The Vault location

5) Cell Keeper
6) Inner Sanctum

We removed Lodge Jailor during the Setup, and we milled off Cell Keeper to the discard pile with Centuries of Secrets.
And so we ended up with 4 cards to get 4 keys.

We gained all keys but the "cultist face" one, however because we didn't have a "cultist face" key, we couldn't open Inner Sanctum that would bring the last key in. And thus we got stuck and couldn't advance.

It almost looks like a glitch ...



It's not: you just need to explore a little more. Head on into the Holding Cells https://arkhamdb.com/card/05215 and pick the Cell Keeper out of the discard pile, and you're sorted.

Whether you have Lodge Jailor / Cell Keeper is also dependent on Membership status, it's always only one or the other.

Edited by mwmcintyre
On 6/27/2019 at 11:42 AM, zooeyglass said:

It's not: you just need to explore a little more. Head on into the Holding Cells https://arkhamdb.com/card/05215 and pick the Cell Keeper out of the discard pile, and you're sorted.

Yes ... but it's quite clumsy and can lock the game if you don't know this before entering the Cells...

If you lack both the cultist and elder keys (after Lindqvist and the lodge / lobby), you MUST spawn the Cell Keeper / Lodge Sailor.

In fact, without the "keys keeper", there's 12 in 24 chances of getting a dead end situation.

Should he be discarded (or at the end of the encounter deck), your only option lie in the cells ...

If you don't know this (sadly for us), you may choose an acolyte (as we did), or any other cultist, and it's a one way trip :(

I think, the Cell Keeper / Lodge sailor should be put aside during setup and spawned (not a random cultist) when Holding Cells is revealed.

You should not need to know mythos before playing...

7 hours ago, Fatal Justice said:

In fact, without the "keys keeper", there's 12 in 24 chances of getting a dead end situation.

How do you figure? By my math, you've got a 1-in-6 chance of needing to get a key from an enemy.

First time we played For The Greater Good, we got into a potentially unwinnable situation:

We didn't have the Elder Thing key. We drew Call to Order. The only valid target location was the Vault. Call to Order pulled the Lodge Jailor our of the discard pile. Call to Order overrode his spawn instructions, spawning him in the Vault instead. The Jailor's forced effect triggered, and we placed the set-aside Elder Thing key on him. So now the Jailor had the key to his own location.

Ultimately, I threw a Dynamite Blast into the location and picked up the key that way, but short of that (or I guess like Marksmanship/Telescopic Sight etc.) it would have been completely impossible to win the scenario (well, we would have had to wait out the agenda and kill the Summoned Beast but you know what I mean).

A rather specific sequence of events, for sure, but still very poor design.

29 minutes ago, Allonym said:

Ultimately, I threw a Dynamite Blast into the location and picked up the key that way...

Good thinking!

In retrospect, the Jailer and Keeper should have had their own extra trait. Then, Call to Order should have excluded them, and Holding Cells could have given them priority (per Fatal Justice's idea). An alternative would be to give them Patrol (from Excelsior), so they'd automatically head towards the Catacombs if they spawned elsewhere. Or maybe give the locked rooms "Forced: At the start of the enemy phase, if an enemy here has any keys: Move that enemy to [connecting location]" so you couldn't even screw yourself over with Expulsion + Warning Shot (though if you pull that off, you kind of deserve it).

Ah, well. At least there's an alternate resolution.

14 hours ago, rsdockery said:

How do you figure? By my math, you've got a 1-in-6 chance of needing to get a key from an enemy.

Without the cultist --> 4 keys in 4 places

- Number of permutations : 4! (24)

- "locked" keys permutation : cultist in inner sanctum (C(4,1)=6), elder in vault (6, with 2 commons with last), cultist in vault and elder in sanctum (2) therefore 12 in 24.

13 hours ago, Soakman said:

Good thinking!

indeed!

11 hours ago, rsdockery said:

In retrospect, the Jailer and Keeper should have had their own extra trait. Then, Call to Order should have excluded them, and Holding Cells could have given them priority (per Fatal Justice's idea). An alternative would be to give them Patrol (from Excelsior), so they'd automatically head towards the Catacombs if they spawned elsewhere. Or maybe give the locked rooms "Forced: At the start of the enemy phase, if an enemy here has any keys: Move that enemy to [connecting location]" so you couldn't even screw yourself over with Expulsion + Warning Shot (though if you pull that off, you kind of deserve it).

Ah, well. At least there's an alternate resolution.

Quite complex ...

No. I just think that locked locations ought to have a shared trait and the enemies: "when at -trait- location gain: hunter.

9 hours ago, Fatal Justice said:

Without the cultist --> 4 keys in 4 places

- Number of permutations : 4! (24)

- "locked" keys permutation : cultist in inner sanctum (C(4,1)=6), elder in vault (6, with 2 commons with last), cultist in vault and elder in sanctum (2) therefore 12 in 24.

My bad; I see where I messed up the calculations there. It is indeed a 50-50 chance of needing the enemy.