I've only been playing AHLCG for about 4 months now. Totally loving it, of course. Initially, being caught up in the fervor of it all, I kind of went nuts and purchased as many campaigns as I could get my hands on. Much of this was anxiety about not being able to find campaigns or certain scenarios due to all the dreaded "Out of Stock" problems. I pretty much have everything now except for the Dream Eaters cycle (had to draw the line somewhere) and Innsmouth Conspiracy cycles yet to be published.

I intend to work through each campaign in the order it was released. I only manage to fit in one or two games each weekend, so definitely not going too fast. The thing is, I very naively believed that I would be able to fluidly play through from scenario to the next without interruption. NOPE.

I'm finding that very few of these scenarios let you achieve a satisfying outcome on the first play (Miskatonic Museum seems the only exception, or maybe I just got lucky). Sometimes it's the case of realizing I made a bonehead move due to not interpreting the card correctly--and thus my frequent not to self: Read every **** word, dummy. But mostly it's a case of drawing unlucky cards and getting ravaged by intensifying horrible results. When things start to go bad, well...

I'm sure we've all been in that situation, about five rounds in saying to ourselves, "Hey, this is going pretty well. Got my key assets in play, scooping up clues, defensive event cards in hand just in case. I might just own this one." Only to have things almost instantly go awry and end up being owned by the game instead. Has happened far too many times. Always a humbling--and oddly entertaining--experience.

So I've come to appreciate the replay value of each scenario. I'll be undertaking Essex County Express for attempt #3 this weekend. In my last play through, I twice had Daisy using playing Shortcut to fling Zoey to next location because she was engaged with an enemy could not afford to be slapped with an AoO. That one did not end well, but certainly was fun till we finally crashed out. Already looking forward to next go around, with more than a few lessons learned.

Just figured I'd share with the group. Hoping this general experience is pretty common and that I'm not the only dimwit who has to play The House Always Wins six times before getting a decent outcome.

IMHO Arkham shifts so strongly on the replay experience that it's almost a new game. Your first blind playthrough is usually an exercise in generalization and bracing for whatever the game throws at you. Later runs are far more about optimization and specialization - knowing that Quantum Flux or Deny Existence are key for a mystic in Dunwich or being aware what taking Leo into Forgotten Age means for the group, that sort of thing.

It's important to remember that the game really isn't built for you to get the ideal outcome from every scenario. There are even mechanics scenario-to-scenario which doing well in one makes the next one harder, and bad outcomes can make later ones easier (House Always Wins is actually one of these). Generally speaking there are only a handful of "Must succeed" moments through the entire game, and the scenarios for those are honestly annoyingly easy to compensate.

It's a hard thing to appreciate, and there are a lot of people who dislike Arkham because in their mind the only "winning" path is to R1 every scenario (so to speak). But it's a campaign game, and the only true "win" or "lose" is at the end of the campaign. Doing badly in some scenarios may make your life harder (or easier) in the future, but pulling out a campaign win even with poor previous performance is just that much more satisfying.

Exactly. There are campaigns that we have won and yet it felt like we lost at the same time. Sometimes choices you make early on, can set you on a path that you can’t change the outcome of at the end, no matter how many clues you gathered or enemies you defeated or XP you earned in between.
There was even one outcome where we as investigators won the campaign, but are pretty sure we only saved ourselves and the world lost. That was unsettling!

I like the fact that things aren’t always tied up in a nice little bow and that each scenario isn’t it’s own universe. Everything isn’t black and white.

For us, part of the replayability happens when we allow our investigators to choose what we think they would do, even if we are screaming “no” inside. That is one reason why we try not to take the same investigators though a campaign when re-playing them. Different choices have different paths. We’ve made choices in one scenario, that the next scenario punishes us for, only to discover that even further down the line, that same choice works in our favor. Or the other way around. Or some choices just made it harder all the way though, or easier. There’s always more than one path to victory, but there is a price to pay and some sort of sacrifice to make every time too.

And winning isn’t everything. Some of your losses may actually become more epic than your wins. We have an investigator that paid the ultimate price in the first play through of a campaign a while back, who we still pay homage to.
Norman Withers allowed himself to be driven insane, to save the rest of us in an epic contest of wills, never to be forgotten. So now, no matter who we are playing or what campaign we are in, if we are in Arkham and the Arkham Asylum is a location, we go there and sacrifice an action to “visit” him. His descent into madness was a sacrifice that is legendary in our version of Arkham, so we keep it alive and he gets visited fairly regularly by Investigators who may be friends or acquaintances, or complete strangers. He is bewildered as to why these people keep showing up, but we know why.

1 hour ago, Mimi61 said:

And winning isn’t everything. Some of your losses may actually become more epic than your wins.

This.

Some of my best experiences in this game are those where I felt completely drawn in by the adversity your character faces, much of which has to do with poor choices and bad luck. I remember struggling through to the end of TFA, my second character (first met a grisly end) had accumulated so many weaknesses in the deck and suffered high levels of trauma, but the story it created felt epic.

I laughed to myself when I read your post. This is exactly how I played when I started out, largely because of crippling perfectionist tendencies (when will that be released as a basic weakness?), but also I felt like I was still learning the game, and replaying helped me reevaluate my decks and strategies.

Now that I have more experience with the game in general, I am definitely less uptight about which resolution I get, and play more for the experience and the story, much like the others have expressed. It seems like there are always 1-2 scenarios in each campaign that are extremely difficult to get the perfect outcome (looking at you, Boundary Beyond among others). Replaying them to see if you can improve your outcome just for the challenge can be fun, but constant replaying to convince yourself that there’s a reliable way to ace the scenario can be maddening.

21 hours ago, Mimi61 said:

Norman Withers allowed himself to be driven insane, to save the rest of us in an epic contest of wills, never to be forgotten. So now, no matter who we are playing or what campaign we are in, if we are in Arkham and the Arkham Asylum is a location, we go there and sacrifice an action to “visit” him. His descent into madness was a sacrifice that is legendary in our version of Arkham, so we keep it alive and he gets visited fairly regularly by Investigators who may be friends or acquaintances, or complete strangers. He is bewildered as to why these people keep showing up, but we know why.

Haha, that's funny. But really, this is why cards like Ghastly Revelation and "I'll See You in ****!" exist. This game is truly about the journey and not so much the destination. I love that aspect, and if you have to go down, go down swinging. And move on. It only enriches the story and also can force you to reconsider upgrades in a way you weren't planning. Is your mystic severely mentally traumatized? Welllll perhaps you should stop upgrading Shriveling and move into Azure Flame or Storm of Spirits? Or maybe swap out that St. Hubert's key or Pendulum for a Rosary or Elder Sign amulet. If you're Agnes, cling to Mr. Pawterson for dear life!

14 minutes ago, Soakman said:

Haha, that's funny. But really, this is why cards like Ghastly Revelation and "I'll See You in ****!" exist. This game is truly about the journey and not so much the destination. I love that aspect, and if you have to go down, go down swinging. And move on. It only enriches the story and also can force you to reconsider upgrades in a way you weren't planning. Is your mystic severely mentally traumatized? Welllll perhaps you should stop upgrading Shriveling and move into Azure Flame or Storm of Spirits? Or maybe swap out that St. Hubert's key or Pendulum for a Rosary or Elder Sign amulet. If you're Agnes, cling to Mr. Pawterson for dear life!

Well said!

Thanks all, I appreciate the shared insights!

I haven't been striving for perfect outcomes in my scenarios. I'm aiming for "acceptable" outcomes where I don't take too much trauma in the early scenarios of the campaign, so as to improve my chances of survival as I push toward end. It's comforting to know that I should expect to be hit with a degree of hardship, and to appreciate that as part of the storyline.

Each of your perspectives is really helping me to rejigger my expectations. Much appreciated.

My most memorable experience with the game is the penultimate scenario of Dunwich. It's a scenario with a potential campaign fail. I didn't know the game well, and my decks weren't well built, so my two characters (Rex and Jim), both had a ton of trauma. Jim was eliminated, and Rex was close to it, but it came down to one last skill test to win the scenario. But he failed - the scenario, and whole run, ended with a campaign fail, and the end of the world. But, it was such a strong narrative fit for the journey that they'd been on, of failure and trauma and despair, that I accepted it, and never played the last scenario.

It's really a game about emergent narrative, partly from luck, partly from decisions made largely in the dark, partly from deckbuilding skill. At least in a first run through a campaign, my feeling is it's usually best not to try to 'win' a scenario. It may be that the story that you're playing is a tragedy, not a hero's journey.

Failure also is often the best tool to learn how to succeed - I'm way better at building decks than I used to be, in large part b/c of the struggles with those bad earlier decks. Just replaying a scenario with a weak deck isn't necessarily going to yield a better result, even knowing what's coming.

THAT SAID - we do replay the early- and mid-campaign scenarios that have campaign fail resolutions. These are just too **** frustrating, and often feel like the designers being cruel to the players rather than the results of bad luck. And they otherwise put you in the position of having to restart the whole campaign to play the rest of the scenarios, which just isn't realistic. I have a whole thread on here ******* about that **** Asylum in Carcosa (which has a lot of good advice form more experienced players