Extracurricular Activity - A few questions

By Sir_Blacksoutalot, in Arkham Horror: The Card Game

*** Potential Spoilers Below ***

After my first playthrough of the Extracurricular Activities scenario (Dunwich campaign), I find myself scratching my head on a few things.

QUESTION 1: The agenda directs to move Massive Enemy X toward Location Y on essentially every other round (well that's how it works, if I'm interpreting instructions correctly). The rules state: "A ready enemy with the massive keyword is considered to be engaged with each investigator at the same location as it." So if an investigator engages and attacks a massive enemy, does that engagement prevent Massive Enemy X from moving? Or does the enemy continue to push forward toward its destination, forcing the attacking investigator to chase after it?

QUESTION 2: Tacking on to question above, let's say Location Y is locked to Investigators until they complete a certain task. If Massive Enemy X's instructions state to move it to Location Y, is that location locked to the enemy as well? I'm assuming not, but the instructions leave room for doubt.

QUESTION 3: I drew a second Beyond the Veil card after I already had one placed in my threat area. Do I discard the second copy of Beyond the Veil? And if so, do I have to draw another encounter card?

QUESTION 4: Similar to previous question, I drew a second copy of Light of Aforgomon while one was already placed on the current Act. The card says "Limit 1 per agenda/act." The way that's written, the slash can be interpreted as "Limit 1 per act OR agenda." Which suggest it might be within the rules to have 1 copy on the Act and one on the Agenda. Anyone know how to properly apply this rule?

Thanks guys, I appreciate the help.

And btw, Merry Christmas Eve to all!! :)

FYI: These forums are shutting down on Feb 1, so you may want to ask future questions on another forum (perhaps BGG, Board Game Geek, which has an active Arkham community).

Here's my crack at this:

Q1: Investigators never need to engage a ready massive enemy, they are always engaged with it if they are at that location. Engagement will not prevent the enemy from moving (and so the investigators will need to give chase). I think this is true in general, if the rules say "move this enemy", the enemy moves whether engaged, exhausted, or otherwise indisposed.

Q2: I think the enemy moves to the location whether it is revealed or not. Unless specifically called out, enemies don't care about whether a location is revealed or not.

Q3: It just gets discarded (and not replaced). However, Beyond the Veil has surge, which means you should always be drawing another encounter card when you draw Beyond the Veil.

Q4: Not sure.

Edited by Eeyogre
1 hour ago, Sir_Blacksoutalot said:

*** Potential Spoilers Below ***

After my first playthrough of the Extracurricular Activities scenario (Dunwich campaign), I find myself scratching my head on a few things.

QUESTION 1: The agenda directs to move Massive Enemy X toward Location Y on essentially every other round (well that's how it works, if I'm interpreting instructions correctly). The rules state: "A ready enemy with the massive keyword is considered to be engaged with each investigator at the same location as it." So if an investigator engages and attacks a massive enemy, does that engagement prevent Massive Enemy X from moving? Or does the enemy continue to push forward toward its destination, forcing the attacking investigator to chase after it?

QUESTION 2: Tacking on to question above, let's say Location Y is locked to Investigators until they complete a certain task. If Massive Enemy X's instructions state to move it to Location Y, is that location locked to the enemy as well? I'm assuming not, but the instructions leave room for doubt.

QUESTION 3: I drew a second Beyond the Veil card after I already had one placed in my threat area. Do I discard the second copy of Beyond the Veil? And if so, do I have to draw another encounter card?

QUESTION 4: Similar to previous question, I drew a second copy of Light of Aforgomon while one was already placed on the current Act. The card says "Limit 1 per agenda/act." The way that's written, the slash can be interpreted as "Limit 1 per act OR agenda." Which suggest it might be within the rules to have 1 copy on the Act and one on the Agenda. Anyone know how to properly apply this rule?

Thanks guys, I appreciate the help.

And btw, Merry Christmas Eve to all!! :)

Question 4.
There are two LoA in the encounter deck. If you have one on the Act and draw the other one, it has to go on the Agenda since the Agenda is the only choice of the two options left.
This holds true for other cards that have the “either” key word. For example, if you have to choose between losing actions or resources and have no resources, you have to lose the action. Or if you draw a card that makes you choose either fight, evade, move, or investigate as something that can’t be done the following round and you choose evade, then the next person draws the same card, they have to choose something other than evade.

Edited by Mimi61
1 hour ago, Eeyogre said:

Q2: I think the enemy moves to the location whether it is revealed or not. Unless specifically called out, enemies don't care about whether a location is revealed or not.

To clarify: The question isn't about the location being revealed, it's about the text on Dormitories ("You cannot move into the Dormitories"). In that case, "you" prevents investigators from entering Dormitories, but it has no effect on enemies.

Another question related to Dunwich cards, por favor. For her random basic weakness, Zoey got assigned Indebted .

Since it is my first scenario in the Dunwich campaign, I drew the random basic weakness from the pool of other weaknesses, but I didn't look at the card. I put it in my Investigator Deck and shuffled. I ended up drawing Indebted during the scenario, at which point I discovered which basic weakness Zoey would need to deal with throughout the campaign.

Is that the right way to reveal basic weaknesses when starting a campaign? Or should I have looked at the basic weakness before shuffling it into my Investigator Deck?

This has been asked before and I think the answer was that you do reveal your basic weaknesses when you select them, so that things like Indebted can be played correctly. Here's an early (2016) thread discussing it with some feedback from the designer: Is the random basic weakness drawn face down? There are a number of other threads on BGG with similar discussion. If you want to keep them somewhat secret, I think you just need to check the upper left corner of the card to check if it is a permanent. That only gives away a small amount of information.

Edited by Eeyogre
minor clarification

Thanks Eeyogre, I appreciate your quick reply.

I read through that post and the linked tweet at the bottom. Matt Newman seems to indicate it's a player choice, per the linked tweet at bottom of that BGG thread: "You don't have to keep it a secret... but it is pretty fun if you choose to."

Edited by Sir_Blacksoutalot

To be clear, there's nothing in the rules indicating that your basic weakness should be unknown to you; by default you know what it is. Unknown basic weakness can be fun, though from experience the impact tends to be minimal (your first scenario is slightly more difficult, basically) and in many cases it makes little sense flavour-wise - suddenly finding out that a Stubborn Detective is after you could make sense, but you're not likely to have simply forgotten that you are reckless or have an internal injury.

A simple fix is to take all the basic weaknesses, shuffle them together but with Indebted upside down, and deal face down as usual. So if someone does get Indebted it will be face up and can be added to the deck that way, and otherwise you can add the facedown card to your deck before shuffling for the first scenario.

I have a fresh take on this question about Indebted. It's a Permanent card, and the Rules Ref says "A card with the permanent keyword does not count toward your deck size."

So if I'm understanding correctly, once I know I have a Permanent weakness card, I should then add another Investigator card to bring my deck to full count. Is that correct? If so, that means I really would need to know that I have Indebted at the very start of Campaign so that I could build appropriately.

On a similar note, I just spent XP to acquire Higher Education. This is another Permanent card, so it doesn't count toward deck size. I think this means I don't need to remove another card in my deck when adding Higher Education, as would be the case if the card did not include the Permanent keyword. Does that sound correct?

Basic weakness cards don't count toward your deck size to begin with, so Indebted doesn't allow you to take another card.

Higher Education (permanent version) will not count toward your deck size, which means you won't need to replace an existing card to include it.

Yes. All Permanent cards do not count toward your deck size. Investigator signature cards/weakness, plus random basic weaknesses don’t either, which is why most investigators actually start with 33 cards in their decks. If an investigator has more than one copy of a signature card, it doesn’t count toward the deck size either, or if another weakness has to be drawn during a campaign.

Edited by Mimi61

Thanks guys, I appreciate the clarification.