Do many of you more experienced players use Spells alot? I have played about 20 games so far but only occasionally use Spells. I know they must be a big part of the game or there would not be so many of them. This weekend my wife and I will start with 2 investigators each and perhaps the spells may come into play more. We have just been playing with one each and mainly running around trying to close gates and not having time to do much shopping etc.

I have been reading the Lurker impressions thread and see that spells come into play more often with Blood Pacs etc.

What are some of your favorite Spells and your favorite way to use them? Are they more useful fighting some of the Ancient Ones in Final Combat?

Tell some of your favorite stories and close finishes or near finishes.

Drakson said:

Ehhh... Spells tend to be useful when they pop up and are useful. I tend not to hunt for them though, unless I need them to pass some condition, or if I have a character who is an excellent spell caster (having regenerating sanity or no costs for spell casting), or if they're needed for a personal story. Generally speaking though, I'd rather spend money on Unique Items in the hope of getting an Elder Sign.

My favorite spells are alchemical process (makes loads of money), find gate (saves loads of time, and reduces risk in Other Worlds), mists of releh (allows one investigator to not need weapons to deal with monsters), and Revelation of Script (it's surprising how often I find that +3 lore useful). I can often find use for a Shrivelling, but I really only get excited when drawing one if there's a good spellcasting character (I don't like having my combat checks dependent on sanity).

Drakson said:

I must say that from my limited experience, I too feel that spells are a bit underused. The ones I use tend to be for accomplishing challenges more easily than I could otherwise have done (autmatically passing checks, large combat bonuses, or 'find gate' for speeding up the process of closing gates), rather than for doing something that could only be done with a spell. I certainly can't see myself spending any time on shopping for spells. You may find that you get more use out of them if you make sure to swap items, so that the spells go to the person best able to use them (assuming you're not already doing that).

Spells are cool Spice. I use them sparingly, but often with huge effect. This is usually situational; for example, Ive used Call Friend to win the game when the final Gate closer was sapped of clues in an Otherworld, calling someone with 5 to win the game before the Doom clock struck. Using Astral Travel to bypass the mountain of monsters and dive immediately into the threatening Gate in Innsmouth or Dunwich is another life saver Ive clung to several times. Find Gate has won me more games than any other card. Another one with good general utility is Voice of Ra, especially if you have 2 copies. Revelation of Script and Markings of Isis also work well for me. And the new spell Sigil of Hermes is always welcome when the Lurker is in play. And do I even need to mention the obvious benefits of having Arcane Insight with a truckload of tomes all in one place?

So, most of the time spells are fodder for item discrard encounters and the like, and I will sometimes use them as weapons when I have no other choice or a good spellcaster, but the real benefit for me, after years of play, is the situational one, when they turn out to be exactly what you need.

Of course a lot of this depends on luck - the spell deck is the biggest item deck, and is full of situational spells that wont help the situation, and drek. But that feels thematic to me and makes a cool discovery even more of a bonus, so I dont cut it.

I find the cheap attack spells often come in handy (for example the one that only gives three dice, is one-handed and costs nothing), especially in combination with one-handed physical weapons if you don't have anything stronger or as a backup when you run into a PI monster. The bigger one (I forget the names, I mean the six-dice one that costs one sanity) is great in some situations but must be used sparingly because of the sanity cost, so, like Avi said, I prefer buying Uniques, but more for the weapons than for the elder signs. A magic weapon sometimes gives you more dice than a spell, can be used every round with no cost and doesn't eat your sanity.

That said, "Find Gate" is obviously useful, as is "Mists of Releh". But in our group, we also don't often shop for spells. Make that almost never, except if we need two or three in a hurry to defeat a rumour. The spells you find in encounters are usually enough. And lastly, there is almost no character who has enough sanity and means of recovering it to rely on the hotter spells to get them through the game. Even the psychiatrist can't regain enough sanity quickly to keep using spells that cost two or three sanity a pop.

A lot? I don't know. I probably use Spells more than others (I like Spells), but I would never say I use them more than a gun or sword. Gotta agree with Avi there: nothing beats having a combat card that doesn't need to be rolled or refreshed. That said, I can't remember a game where there wasn't at least one Spell that came in handy.

If I have one of the "Spellcasters", I use them much more often: Carolyn, Daisy, Harvey, Agnes. Diana or Lily, sometimes. Vincent is as good as Carolyn with a Cloud Memory or Feeding the Mind, and anyone with a decent Lore can be that good with a Healing Stone. Obviously, I'm much more inclined to cast 0-cost Spells more frequently, but with a high-Sanity Investigator, I'll risk more.

I prefer Spells cast outside of Combat. Those tend to be more game-bending, and feel more dramatic, as if the Investigator has to lay out a complicated ritual and wave a dagger around a chalked circle. Voice of Ra (+1 to Skill Checks), Find Gate ("Return to Arkham"), Alchemical Process ($3), Greater Banishment (remove one symbol to the Cup), Summon Shantak (uninterrupted movement), Astral Travel (insta-gating), Forced Learning (Skill!): any game these are available, they will be cast. In combat, I kinda favor the ones that help without being straight-out combat spells, like the Red Sign of Shudde M'ell or Intervene, but I LOVE Storm of Spirits for the high-Lore Investigators. I will usually find a way to cast Inner Beast (on the high-Sanity slowpokes: George, Jenny, Norman) or Third Eye (on the high-Stamina Will-deficient street sweepers: Michael, Mark) on someone, and there's nothing like an Azure Flame to PROPERLY "shotgun" a Ghost or Lloigor.

I rather liked my latest game where we used Control Gate to save Darrell from being Lost in Time and Space: Akachi had already gone through a gate to close it, when the Lurker tossed Darrell in after her. And then Darrell got delayed TWICE (left behind), and was facing LiTaS with no gate open to his dimension. So with Control Gate, we reopened an exit for him, which worked out on an immediate level, since Darrell entered through an unsealable Moving Gate, and exited on a sealable location.

Arcane Insight can make your game if you have the right characters.

HyeJinx1984 said:

Heh... Yes... That's why so many people hate it ;'D

We had a horrible game last night where we played against two Ancient Ones (using a modified Janus) and The Dunwich Horror and The Lurker. Cthulhu and Yog Sothoth... We even tweaked injury/madness so drawing one did not restore your sanity/stamina... We made it so gate openings and monster surges produce an additional monster on each Dunwich Gate. We made it so gate reckonings trigger on gate surges and not just gate openings. And we didn't draw a single Elder Sign. All game. After spending somewhere between $40-60 on shopping. We barely drew a King in Yellow at the end. It was utterly ridiculous. And we won. Without any significant sense of threat. We won with the doom track at seven or eight? I can't remember, I was half asleep, thanks to the help of everyone's favorite Guardian, The Lurker at the Threshold (and Jacqueline/Arcane Insight—how I hate them all).

I hope the game wreaks a horrible revenge for my saying that next time we play :')

... I'm thinking of capping max power at three and implementing the no spend for a turn rule. This is utterly ridiculous, especially while playing Relationships. The added gate difficulties aren't *that* hard. I don't need this game to get easier the more I play it. Quite the opposite... :'/

More! Give me more challenge! Blaaaaarg!

Sigh. Okay. Rant over.

For the record, this is what happens when I wake up in the middle of the night with a work/family related nightmare and can't get back to sleep. I rant about Arkham difficulty levels ;'D

In all the games I've played I can't recall even once where we've used Spells.

I never go out looking for spells, but if a nice one drops in my lap I'll use it. A number of folks in my gaming group dislike them though. They're more complicated to use, in a game that's already complicated, and they'd rather just forget stuff like spell checks and stick to a weapon.

Magic Pink said:

Avi_dreader said:

First, I understand that this may have come from an Intrusion Upon Real Life, and I'm sorry that anyone can be inflicted with such nightmares. I hope it resolves itself quickly and painlessly.

As for the rant contents...y'know Avi, no one is forcing you to exploit the holes with such total comprehensiveness. Why do you play with Arcane Insight if all it does it ruin the game? Or the Lurker? I mean, do these phrases happen during your games:

"Arcane Insight? Nuts! Now I have to give it to Jacqueline with all my Tomes...well, there goes THAT game!"

"Okay, Lurker...I'm going to take my full complement of free Allies now, before the game starts...could you maybe TRY to make things challenging this time?! Oh, why do I even bother?"

"Oh darn it, a devouring! Now I have to pick Tommy or Silas, and this victory will be SO EMPTY!!!"

Really, it's just WEIRD. You're blaming the game for your personal playing style. I don't share your specific issues, because we don't play the same way. We're driving the same car, and you're driving it much harder than I am; when your engine collapses from burnout, is that the car's fault? I have tried a few of your custom game elements (mostly Heralds, a couple Scenarios), and they've, more or less, beaten my entire digestive tract into a bloody pulp. I am simply not ready or willing to play under such brutal conditions. But I hardly think it's fair to slam the Lurker (or Jacqueline/Arcane Insight, or whatever) so much for foiling your attempts to eviscerate yourself.

You keep playing with the Lurker in an effort to smother it with House Rules to suit your games, when the answer is probably simpler: if you think it's a Guardian, PUT IT AWAY.

Okay...I conclude my rant as well. We are each who we are, and the best thing about Arkham is it supports us all, whoever we is. We will now reduce the tension by drawing a Relationship Card...Friendly Rivals? Probably Skullcrackers, eh?

jgt7771 said:

Well... I actually tried to veto the drawing of Jacqueline, but the person I was playing with was against it... Next time I will be more emphatic.

Jacqueline isn't what gave us the game on a silver platter (although she certainly didn't help make a mood of suspense). The Lurker itself is the problem.

Anyways, since you've given my playing style from your point of view, now it's my turn to straw man your playing style from my point of view :'D

"Two good one handed weapons, I don't really think it's fair to those Cthonians to use them both. On second though, I'm a gambling man, I do have two clue tokens after all. I'll just crank my fight up to the max and trade my guns to another investigator. Or better yet, I'll fight without using my guns! That way I'll increase the stakes if I lose. I mean, just because I have a gun doesn't mean I *need* to use it, it doesn't say I have to in the rules."

"Ahhh, the Lurker at the Threshold, it's so hard. A real herald. Every time I play it I only get blood and soul pacts on all my characters and immediately trade all my sanity and stamina for power tokens. Then I don't spend them. For some reason I seem to lose a lot of combats though... Also, those reckoning cards are so hard!"

More seriously though, why shouldn't I modify Lurker with house rules so it's actually the challenge I want it to be. Why should I not use a bunch of game components that are potentially quite fun, just because the way they were designed they're way too easy and they make the game simple in a way I don't want.

P.S. I don't pick investigators (with a few exceptions for theme games). I randomly, and sometimes I veto strong investigators. Unfortunately this doesn't always work with others (see above).

Also, the collapsed car metaphor doesn't quite work because you're not driving it hard and it collapses, whereas I want it to collapse but I am driving it hard so it doesn't. Sigh.

so, if you like to use house rules to increase your challenge, house rule Jacqueline's skill to cost more clues and make arcane insight a ONE shot spell? given how strong the spell is if it's a challenge you want to have that seems like a good way to do it with out removing it. Also, your play group must be a crack team of ninjas, my last game by the end of turn 2 we had 5 doom tokens 3 gates and a terror level of 4! and all i did was just use the Curse of the Pharaoh and base sets.

The problem is not with Avi's use of a loophole, it's the existence of the loophole in the first place. Loopholes need to be tied. And we've kind of taken it upon ourselves to tease them out. The most threatening loopholes are ones where the AO cannot be lost to in final combat, and I've made it my personal mission to head these off whenever possible. The Lurker "herald" does this (without even the excuse of expansion interaction), so there's an intrinsic problem with that herald.

cartoonsniper said:

Well... Another problem I didn't mention (I think) was that the person I was playing with didn't own Innsmouth so we were able to seal high frequency gates with little consequence... And he was playing Kingsport (ugh).

Base and CotDP can accelerate the doom track quickly if you get double doom twice ;') but that's unlikely.

Avi_dreader said:

i must not have shuffled well, or exactly well enough cause that totally happened in the very first 2 turns of adding Curse to my set. My team of friends at first expecting a new board cause i didn't mention i only got a small box, quickly came to respect the new (to us) expansion.

cartoonsniper said:

Yeah, it could be chance, or you could have left the double doom cards clustered by not shuffling enough :')