New playing here, only played one game. I have watched videos, read the rules. look at the forum but somehow I still do not quite understand the difference between sealing a gate and closing.

I have played one game with my wife. We did seal 6 gates with the Elder Sign after we closed them. We had either the clue tokens or the Elder Sign cards. However we took the Gate Token after we SEALED the gate. Re-reading the rules after the game I see we could have taken the token after we closed the gate with the dice rolls. I just don't understand about closing a gate and not sealing it. What do you put on a closed gate? Could it be re-opened? How would you keep track of a closed gate? I am sure I am missing something simple but right now I am just not seeing it?

I think I have the other rules down pretty well. I just have the base game now. I really like this game. First game took about 7 hours over 3 days between reading the rules etc. I think the next one will be about 3 hours with the both of us. I am going to get some expansions later because both of us cannot stop talking about this game. Quite frankly I like the Innsmouth expansion and the Black Goat interest me, althouth I have been told the Dunnwich is the best first expansion to get because of some rule changes.

Any help will be appreciated?

You've got it right for the most part. Closing a gate just means that you collect the gate token. It can re-open if a Mythos card shows that location. If too many gates are open and you don't have a means to seal, then simply closing a gate or two will help keep the Ancient One from waking up. But if you can seal, then absolutely seal.

Yep, what Brine said. A sealed gate, marked with an Elder sign on the board, is now a safe location. No gates can be opened there any further (at least, according to the base game rules; as soon as you acquire some expansion, you'll see things changing quite a lot). A closed gate makes the location remains unstable: in case another Mythos is drawn showing that location, a new gate will be opened, a monster spawn and a doom token added to the AO's doom track.

Besides, the victory conditions are very different if you seal or do not seal the locations: for a sealing victory, you need 6 seals on the board and that's it, you can still have some open gates here and there, it doesn't matter. Just 6 seals, and the AO is gone. For a closing victory, you need ALL gates on the board closed AND having a certain number of unspent gate trophies in possession of your investigators (a number equal or greater than the number of investigators actually playing). This second condition is quite difficult to obtain, so generally speaking, going for sealing is probably the most effective strategy for beating the game and avoiding a final battle (btw, what investigators / AO you used for the first game? I remember you asking some advice in a different thread... I'm glad you had fun with this game)

As far as the expansions are concerned... well, Dunwich is by far the best thing you can start with. The board will be expanded, adding new areas to investigate in, and introducing some mechanics that will return later in other expansions. And in addiction to this, it has the Madnesses / Injuries cards that are really helpful in all games. Innsmouth is probably the best expansion ever (at least, in my opinion), but it's *really* difficult (not only from a rules point of view, but under any point of view), so if you want to enjoy the game at its best, it's probably better if you go step by step, exploring everything and increasing progressively the difficulty of your games). Anyway, the most important thing is playing. And having fun :-)

Julia said:

Freudian slip?

avec said:

Uops ::blushing:: do not smoke Arkham cards, sometimes they can have secondary, uncontrollable effects ::?::

One uncontrollable side effect is that you'll be missing cards from your set. That would definitely cause me to lose my last sanity point.

Personally I find that playing the game is addictive. But yeah, smoking the game, that could be fun too.

Julie, thanks for answering again. Yes I did ask in another post about starting to play my first game. I took your advice and my wife played with Mandy Thompson and I played with Darrell. ( I wasn't quite ready to play a girl investigator yet). I also liked that Darrell started with a retainer so I got some money faster. We also used your excellent advice and played with Azathoth.

We started the game determined to do as many things as possible for the experience of playing by many different rules. I attacked the monster and closed the first gate and sealed it the first time it opened. That first night we spent about 2 hours for the first few turns, reading rules etc and then just got tired. That night I reread the rules again and watched videos on You Tube with Grundunza and picked up some ideas of what we could improve on. We played another 21/2 hours the next day. Got tired again since we were still looking up a lot of rules. That night I reread the rules again, watched some more Grudunza videos since I had some expeerience and things started clicking. The next day things went much faster. I realized some of the stratedy like buying things, trading etc, and we played about another 1/1/2 hours as we put a time limit on it and was going to quit to read rules again and play next weekend. However, when things started clicking for us I saw where we might be able to win by closing ALL the gates and we had enough gate tokens even though I had cashed one in the first day. As were we closing the 6 I realized the folly as 2 others had opened and then realized we needed to SEAL six gates. Fortunately we had unknowingly been doing that anyway so we sealed the 6th gate with a card we had been saving incase we ran out of tokens (which we did).

That night I reread the rules, watched the Videos again, read the forums and tried to look up things instead of just asking. With yours and everyone else who answered I think I got a hang of it pretty well now. Starting another game tomorror (thursday).

I am ordering some expansions just to make my order go over the free shipping limit. I think I will get Dunwich as your suggested but also Innsmouth. I will continue to play the core game and study the expansions and only add them when I know the rules well. I like the game going a little faster playing instead of having to look up rules each turn.

BTW I do not think the ADDICTION was a freudian slip, I think it was the correct word. I do not smoke the cards however as that would be bad for my health.

Drakson said:

Btw, I'm glad you had such a great time with your first game ::smiling:: Hope you could enjoy all your games to come at least in the same way