Had one of the best AH games I've ever played the other day, and it was just the base game only (well, including expansion items, location cards, etc.). I had meant to play with Innsmouth, which is usually my favorite way to play, but realized after a few turns that I had forgotten to shuffle in the Innsmouth Mythos cards. But regardless, it turned out to be amazing. It was solo 4 investigators against Quachil Uttaus, who I hadn't played against before. Dude is tough, and his Dust cards can really mess with you. There's almost no chance at all to beat him in Final Battle, and I knew that, but I just barely squeaked out a seal victory in dramatic fashion... you know the kind, where you're hanging on for a few turns with only one doom token left to add, desperately doing what you can to scrape together the last Clues you'll need to seal Gate #6. Yes, at that point, you need a little luck so the wrong Mythos card isn't drawn to add the last doom token, but I really felt, more than many games of AH, that my decisions throughout had a big effect on winning, or even having a chance to win. Every spell and weapon was exploited when possible, and I really tried to think more carefully about some of the character and item abilities and how they could be used most effectively.
One thing I had never tried before in a game was to retire someone. I knew it was tucked away in the rules amongst the other chrome, but for some reason hadn't thought to use it before. Well, halfway through this game I had an investigator riddled with injury and madness and otherwise incapacitated with no good items left and no real prospects for accomplishing anything useful, and suddenly I remembered the retiring thing, and off to Florida he went. And two other investigators were retired as well (I burned through Injury/Madness cards in this game), including one who had drawn much of the Corruption deck herself (this was also a first for me, as Corruption had never come up before in a game, even though I've played with the Black Goat of the Woods expansion included several times). With three investigators devoured, that meant that a total of 10 saw action, but without the option of retiring and starting with some fresh meat every so often, I'd never have won. Gotta remember that from now on.
Something else I tried in this game, just to try something different, was to randomly select the 4 characters, but limit it to one each from each expansion, replacing devoured/retired investigators only with ones from the same expansion. I don't think that really makes any difference... they're all supposed to be compatible with each other, anyway... but just thought I'd try that for variety's sake. Indeed, they all work well together.
Anyway, I've played a lot of games of AH now, and not all of them are nearly that interesting, but this one reminds me of why it's so great. Challenging, immersive, incredible.
