Investigator Status

6. Devoured Discard all cards except unspent trophies. Shuffle investigator
sheet with unused sheets. Draw new investigator at random
and set up as in Game Setup.

Is there a reason why, if your devoured "your investigator killed" you chose another investigator, why wouldnt that player be out of the game? Or is this a stupid question

It's no fun to sit out, besides the way I always take it is that ALL investigators are active, but if you the one you are playing as is devoured you just start on from the prospective of some one else. Kind of like in a movie. If one character dies you carry on watching another person entirely.

Thematically there's not much sense to it but mechanically, player elimination sucks. Imagine getting devoured at setup or during the first couple turns! You'd be forced to sit out for the rest of the game. FFG is good at eliminating player elimination, as it were.

If you get the Lurker expansion, one added penalty to being devoured and replaced is that the new guy has no relationship cards with the others. It's as if he literally is the newcomer (even though he somehow keeps the departed's monster and gate trophies).

While being devoured midgame is a bit rare(depends on many factors ), it can still happen just like that-say your investigator was reduced to zero sanity and zero stamina simultaneously, or was Lost in Time and Space in a game against Yog-Sothoth, some unlucky encounter, etc. Devoured does not always mean dead in Arkham. For instance you could have an encounter in the Dreamlands saying something like: this place is so peaceful and quiet that you feel compelled to remain here forever. You're devoured.Basically, the investigator is simply removed from the game, but since it's important to preserve the number of players in the game, as it affects the monster limit and maximal number of open gates, and the difficulty of the final battle, among other things, you get to draw a replacement.

Strangely, despite playing the game for several years now, we've only recently discovered that replacement investigators get to keep the devoured ones' trophies. Kinda skipped that rule while reading...

So the game basically wouldn't work, or would be impossible to beat if players were eliminated from a game? If one were so inclined could they play the game in that manner, say if every person was playing two investigators at a time, or is it so rare that one gets devoured, it really wouldn't matter.

How many investigators are needed to defeat an Ancient One?

To achieve a sealing victory, I'd say 3-4 investigators. To defeat an AO in battle=the difficulty to clear the AO's doom track scales with the number of players. If you're playing with only one investigator, one success is required to remove each doom token(so in a game with two investigators, it increases to 2 successes, and so on).If one or more investigators get devoured during final battle, they're removed from the game for good and the remaining players still have to score successes equal to the initial number of players. The AOs in the expansions are much more difficult than the ones in the base game, so you'll need a bigger group of players to defeat one in final battle. I think three is the optimal number of investigators needed(you can also play solo with all three if you want; it's not hard, though may seem so at first.).

I think it's less that it wouldn't work, and more that it's no fun if you're eliminated from a game and have to sit out while everyone else keeps playing.

Well, if you ever get the Innsmouth Horror expansion, devouring becomes more likely with the Innsmouth Look.

Also, I don't know about everyone else, but our Arkham games can last quite awhile, and if you have a large group of people (more than 4) you're not going to be able to give everyone two investigators. If one of them gets devoured, the game is likely to be quite boring for them...

Im playing my first game right now, started with two, I guess Ill use 3 investigators, gonna be hard being my first time though Id imagine. Was even the first time setting up the board, which took me the better part of an hour

Innsmouth also adds the deadliness of our Jail Cell.