Okay, we just completed our first play with Lurker of the Threshold and all of the Horror expansions. Here are my impressions:

The Lurker Herald's additional -1 is, as might be expected, a pretty serious handicap. It makes the Pacts more tempting, as does facing Hastur as your AO

We saw a a couple of interesting Items and spells, such as a spell that, if successfully cast, gives another player a +2 on the roll to seal or close a gate.

I found the Mythos cards are somewhat mediocore-better than those of BGotW, but that's faint praise.

The Relationship cards did prove quite advantageous, especially when Roland got the one that gives one partner a dollar if the other partner gains one.

I liked the Reckoning cards, and be warned: The Lurker may indeed force his gifts upon you.

One big question about Soul Pact: Can you spend Power when it is exhausted? It says in "Any Phase" that while this card is refreshed, any time you would gain any amount of sanity, you can instead gain Power. Then in the next paragraph, it says you may spend a Power token as a clue token. So you can spend Power as a clue token while the card is exhausted, correct? You simply can't gain Power instead of Sanity.

The new gates can be quite frustrating, esecially the freaking moving ones!

I did have to take a Soul Pact in the end to win, and I hope I was correct in believing I could spend Power the same turn I gained it.

Any specific questions?

Yes, one obvious question:

What are the names of the rumors?

If you don't want to post them here, email me: [email protected]

If you don't want to look through your set to find out what they are, then I can wait until I get the expansion myself or for you to run into them during a game.

I'm going to update the stats form. Congrats!

Yeah. *What* additional minus one ;'D We haven't seen the herald yet, remember?

Yes we have.

Solan said:

The new items are actually very nice. A lot of them fit with the "you will need to deal with gates" theme well, too, such as the improved Find Gate spell, or the Key Unique.

Solan said:

Lurker's equivalent to the double-doom cards of previous expansions is interesting, though. Could be very nasty with Innsmouth in play.

Solan said:

Getting the R'yleh-Abyss -4 split gate on the Science Building just as your clue supply runs out is worse... (and we didn't have the herald and Yog Sothoth to make it a -5 [2] gate)

That Endless gate is a pain, too (though at least it's on a symbol you might want to recur)

It's surprising how much difference they make - with 2 investigators on Arkham board only we normally win quite easily, but Azathoth managed to win by opening 8 gates at once, and it took 39 turns to seal Ithaqua. (This without the herald)

Other impressions...

There seem to be a lot of relatively easy "gain 3 clues" encounters added to several locations. It'll make Trish's story much easier.

Agreed that the encounters, OW encounters and Mythos are largely nothing special. "Yuggoth in retrograde" is a nice "please stick around" environment, though.

Haven't seen the Lurker rumours in action yet. One went past while we were trying to beat down the Terrible Experiment that looked like it had an interesting mechanic, but wouldn't have been especially difficult for most teams.

cim said:

Are the dual gates treated as gate to both OWs for Mythos cards like "Another Time, Another Place!" and "R'lyeh Rising"? I could see a lot of fun from the -4 gate, throw in Yog, Lurker Herald and that Environment, net total: -5 [4] ?

Veet said:

The I in We hadn't ;'D

cim said:

-4 Modifier? Rotflmao. Sweet ;'D Hrm...

It sounds like the game dynamics are going to change quite a bit. How fun :')

Dam said:

It doesn't say explicitly, but I would expect so, since they're treated as gates to both worlds for leaving and returning purposes. (Returning is especially useful, since a lot of the new OW encounters seem to be "move to a different OW")

The new gates are great. Well worth buying the expansion just for them, I think, though the rest of the expansion (Herald aside) is useful to take the edge off them slightly by giving the Relationship cards, a slight increase in the ease of clue collection, and a few nice items and spells to assist in gate closing. (Don't worry, the difficulty still goes noticeably up overall)

cim said:

Of course, playing solo, remains to be seen how, if at all, there is any point/use for the Relationship cards. Easier clue collection? Ewww. Spells, coming 12x I can see popping up here and there, though apart from Marie I don't buy those, 4x CI and UI though should be very few and far between. Still, even extra 4 UI lowers the odds of Elder Signs by a pip (1 in 24.5 to 1 in 25.5 ).

Dam said:

Well, not that much easier. Some of the locations have opportunities to get 3 clues, either for a difficult check or another cost (in some cases, then 3 clues probably isn't enough compensation for one of the costs...). It was great with Darrell, who kept drawing them and sometimes being able to pass them, but it's only marginal.

We took all the non-Lurker non-base cards out, so the new cards came up slightly more often than that.

The relationship cards are decent - exhaust to get +1 to a check in particular circumstances is common - not good enough to break things (certainly nowhere near as good for the Investigators as Injury/Madness cards) but just good enough to make devouring hurt.

Tibs said:

Normally I wouldn't want to look through the set to find out what they are, but ironically in my very first game with Lurker I got the Curiousity Shop encounter that lets you remove one Mythos card from the deck; I HAD to look through all of them, so I'm not spoiling anything for myself (I the end I still chose to remove "Plans in Motion").

The two new Rumors are "The Unraveling Tapestry" and "The Key and the Gate".

And to repeat my question, can you still spend Power when a Soul Pact is tapped?

Solan said:

I'd say yes, though if you really needed to you could take a Bound Ally and spend the power from that one instead.

I would think you could spend power even with the pact exhausted, because with the order that things happen in upkeep, the pact will pretty much always be exhausted. In upkeep, you first refresh cards, than you perform upkeep actions, which for the soul and blood pact is exhaust. Kind of like the allies that you can exhaust, you still get the bonus they provide.

Although, if the card has to be exhausted every upkeep, then the "while this card is refreshed" power can't really come into play except during upkeep or when you first obtain it. I wonder if they meant to put "You may exhaust" under the upkeep portion.

I think it means "Exhaust and lose X sanity to gain X power" in the same way that Ancient Spear says "Exhaust to change Ancient Spear to a Magical weapon until the end of this combat." - if you want to gain that particular benefit, you must exhaust the card, but you don't have to do so if you don't want the benefit. So if you didn't want to swap sanity for power in a particular turn, you could keep it refreshed for the ability to put sanity gains into power.

What about the Lurker Gate Bursts? I may not be fond of Black Goat, but so far, it's the ONLY expansion that has the Mythos cards that provide Arkham Location Gate Bursts without requiring Dunwich or Kingsport in play. (This is CRITICAL for those of us that don't use everything we own in every game.) Combining the BG Mythos with just Innsmouth balances overall Gate Bursting in the whole deck.

I would like to know if I can retire an AH-IH-BG Mythos Deck in favor of an AH-IH-LT Mythos Deck.

cim said:

That's what I'm guessing, which is why I said they probably want it to say "You may exhaust and lose blah blah blah...". Because the rules under perform upkeep actions says this "Each player must perform all Upkeep actions listed on his investigator’s cards every turn." Which means, you must roll for blessings, curses, retainers, etc. every turn except the first after you receive one as the book specifies. But technically, you must also use all spells and items that are upkeep also, since they are investigator cards. That is why most spells and items that only work in the upkeep phase have the word MAY in it (as you'll notice items/spells for other phases don't have the word MAY, such as the Ancient Spear, because actions in those phases are always optional), which means you must perform the upkeep action, but that action is deciding to use or not use.

The problem with this rule is that a very few upkeep items and spells (and now pacts) don't have the word MAY, but it is pretty clear that you were supposed to be given the option, such as the Unique Item, Soul Gem. I just wish they would be more clear about something like this, when a rule says something MUST be done and most cards that are clearly supposed to be optional use the word MAY to give you that option, but some slip by which clearly should be optional, but don't say MAY which compromises the MUST PERFORM rule in the first place.

They should have either been more careful to add MAY to everything that is optional in upkeep, or taken the much easier route by not specifying that upkeep actions MUST be performed unless the specified on the card itself. That way, instead of having dozens of cards that may or may not have the word MAY on it, they could have just put the word MUST on the very few that are necessary (blessing, curse, retainer, etc). Hindsight I guess.

Solan said:

What an awesome turn of events! Thank you so much Solan. I'm almost as pleased as if I owned the expansion myself.

I wish I could remember the two rumor names I chose when I did the April Fools stats report... I'm pretty sure one of them was "The Billingston Curse."

As for the Dark Pact question... I'd assume that you can still spend Power tokens when it is exhausted. Some Dunwich and Kingsport allies have an "exhaust" ability, but they still provide their stat bonuses when exhausted. This strikes me as being closer to that example than to spells or exhausted weapons, because those spells and weapons don't give you a universal bonus.

You're most welcome, Tibs.

I was unsure about being able to spend Power from a Soul Pact when exhausted because the above paragraph talks about how if the Pact is refreshed, you can gain Power instead of Sanity; I wasn't sure whether the "refreshed" provisio was meant to carry down into the spending paragraph. Since everyone seems to agree it doesn't, however, I've reported what I hope is the first Lurker Herald victory to your site, against Hastur

Oh, and Tibs, have you considered adding "Pact or Bound Ally" to the "Special Acquisitions" section?

Okay, JGT, I took a quick look through the Mythos cards. There are seven Gate Bursts, one for every non-rare Arkham unstable location, plus an additional gate burst for a certain Rumor . Is that enough for you to replace the Black Goat cards with Lurker cards in your deck?

Solan said:

Okay, JGT, I took a quick look through the Mythos cards. There are seven Gate Bursts, one for every non-rare Arkham unstable location, plus an additional gate burst for a certain Rumor . Is that enough for you to replace the Black Goat cards with Lurker cards in your deck?

LIKELY.