Hi,

I`m new here and this is my first post.

A couple of years ago, I bought Arhkam Horror and the first five expansions pretty much at the same time (as a solo gamer and a lover of Lovecraft, FFG, games, and horror in general... I knew I was in for the long haul with this one). However, due to a series of events, moving house, changing job, separating from a partner, etc etc, I was only able to play a few games of Arkham Horror - LOVED it.... but barely scratched the surface of its potential. So decided (painfully) to put it aside until I had leisure to do it all properly.

Now, finally, I have the time and inkling to get back to it again, and I have a few questions I`d dearly like to ask please.

Is there an essential order adding to the expansions. Or can I open them in any order that appeals to me? All mine are still sealed and I`m loathe to open them prematurely (its like Christmas to me when I open a new box).

Are there any plans for FFG to do The Shadow over Innsmouth expansion (my all time favourite Cthulhu story)?

And thirdly, an in game question. Once I open the expansions, do I need to keep the cards separate; or do the new cards all just mix together into one nice big pile? I`m just wondering how I`d keep them all apart if that’s how its meant to be done?

Cheers, and sorry my questions are so lame... bear with me, I`m still an AH Noobie :-)

Joy of Joys.... I`ve just found out one of my questions for myself. Innsmouth is already in print, yeeey to FFG (its now on my Christmas wish list for my wife to buy me lol).

Mabinogian :-)

The Innsmouth and Dunwich big-box expansions are fan favorites.

As for mixing expansion components, you can(and should) add all the new items/spells/allies/skills(i.e. investigator cards) and the new Mythos, Gate encounters and Arkham Location cards to their respective decks. Each big-box expansion also adds a small game board depicting the various neighboring towns of Arkham(these are Dunwich, Innsmouth and Kingsport), each complete with their own encounters decks and new gameplay mechanics, unique to each board. If you combine several big-box expansions, you can still choose to play with only one expansion board at a time but still use all the new items from those expansions.

The Dunwich big-box is good for fattening up those investigator card decks, as well as the Mythos deck. The Innsmouth expansion ups the challenge by adding tough Ancient Ones, more Mythos cards, as well as personal stories(mini-rumors of sorts) for all investigators(from the base game and all expansions) and introduces a gameplay mechanic that makes sealing victories more difficult.

Kingsport introduces Epic battle cards that make final battles more challenging.

I'd say, go with Dunwich and Innsmouth.

Mabinogian said:

Hi Mabinogian, and welcome to the Carnival!

It's lovely to witness the love people have for this game ::nodding:: We now have 7 expansions (Innsmouth Horror and The Lurker at the Treshold were released after you bought the initial five), and hopefully more will see the light with the passing of time.

As far as your question is concerned... well. You could theoretically start from whatever you want, obviously all component are interchangeble and there is absolute freedom on how to use them. There are a couple of suggestion I can give you, anyway.

Try to learn the basics of the game with just the base game. Most of the rules seems to be easy, but in fact they imply a lot more than one could suspect at a first glance. Then start adding the expansions. Go with Dunwich first, just to meet the Gate bursts and Injuries and Madnesses, that are a very important part of the game. And you have to cover a greater board, and facing some more challenging Ancient Ones. Then I'd say go with Kingsport. Seems to be a boring expansion but indeed it is not. It changes in some way the equilibrium of the game, and introduces the rift mechanic (which is absolutely brilliant), epic battle cards and some Ancient Ones that are really *strong*. Innsmouth is the most difficult expansion board of all, and probably should be added as the last one. Combination of expansion boards working particularly well are: Dunwich + Kingsport or Innsmouth + Kingsport. Some people like using all the expansions together (the so called "speed Arkham"), but I personally dislike it, since too many unstable locations does not gove you much time to explore locations or whatelse, it's just a rush to finish the game on time (and I find life stressful enough to search for deadlines even when I play).

You can add small card expansion whenever you like it (beware, the Black Goat of the Woods is particularly difficult when played with the Herald), but my suggestion, in order to taste the flavor of every game component, is to play with just the base game + one expansion board + a small card expansion at once.

Don't be afraid to shuffle together all the cards; they have a small symbol printed on their front face, so you can divide the decks again, whenever you want (and have time), but again, maybe it's wiser to play with the cards from the expansions used and stop. You can understand better the almost infinite implications and relations between items, in this way.

And you can add the personal stories from Innsmouth at any point during your gaming experience. They add flavor to the game, and they are quite intresting, since they fix some flaws of the game (for example, Dexter Drake is by far a better magician in case he passes his personal story)

And enjoy your voyage. It's a long journey, but every minute of it is worth lving.

If you have questions, or want to tell us your adventures, the Carnival is always here :.party::

And the last suggestion: open all your boxes. Look at the cards. Read something here and there even before start playing. Enjoy the insanity

THANK you so much, zealot12: your read your words of advice carefully, respectful of listening to all the veteran "investigators" (like yourself) can teach me about this truly amazing experience. I thought at first my questions were foolish to ask.. but seeing the response alone, I begin to see just how much I have to learn and how much I need to listen to any clues and snippets of advice I can lay my hands on.

Julia, your thorough reply to my thread was like wine poured over fine crystal, and your easy to understand advice and suggestions has left me a little less in the dark and has illuminated my path a little more clearly now, thank you *smiles happily*

Ah I see, so I can tell the cards that come from each respective box, by symbols printed on the face of each one one - sweeeeet.

Yes you are quite amazingly accurate, I did indeed buy Arkham Horror, Dunwich Horror, Kingsport, The King in Yellow, Curse of the Pharaoh, and The Black Goat of the Woods as my early purchases; the latest two: Innsmouth Horror and The Lurker at the Threshold came out AFTER I picked up the others a few years back.

hmmmm, I`ll watch out for Black Goat, and maybe save that one `til last.

So you reckon open the lot and feast my mind on all the Cthulhu madness just waiting to leap into the story? Hehe.. it is very tempting ^^

Once again, thank you so much for your help. I must say, in all my years of gaming I have seldom been struck so quickly and so poignantly by the friendliness I see here. What an amazingly pleasant, knowledgeable, and mature group of individuals I have just gotten myself embroiled with here on the forums.

Mabinogian :-)

Mabinogian said:

Oh, flattery will get you everywhere. Naturally, I will hog all the flattery to myself and assume that when you say "group of individuals" you just mean me ;')

On a more serious note, you could go with the mix everything in approach (I play with most components, although I rarely use the Kingsport board). But I'd advise you play each expansion separately, at least in terms of the mythos and encounters decks. Otherwise you're going to have trouble getting a feeling for the various expansion effects. Although some of the custom heralds and game variants are designed to recreate those effects to some extent. It'd be nice if you felt what a highly active Dunwich is like, or King in Yellow with the constant threat of Act cards. Curse of the Dark Pharoah will have many of its special components languishing in limbo once you combine it with other expansions (unless you use heralds or other variants like I said before).

If I were only playing one expansion at a time, I'd probably still play a full monster cup. And I'd want to dilute the unique item deck as much as possible (just to spread out those Elder Signs). So... Consider fluffing up the unique item deck at least.

Hi there Avi_dreader,

... even more useful and informative information - thanks for that, all taken in and stored in my little ol`brain *dribbles with the opening signs of insanity at all there is to learn*.

I hear you and agree totally about savouring the expansions one at a time, to take in the changes and feel the atmosphere each provokes.

Okay, back to my game. I`ve been playing a game over the last few hours (my girl is at her house tonight, so tonight the lounge and kitchen are all mine... mine... MINE.... HAhahahaa !!! Having a ball here

Oh, one last thing. The 11 part Arkham Horror Tutorial on You Tube (by Grudunza) is amazingly useful to a new player like me.

Mabinogian said:

::blushing:: you're very welcome ::smiling:: and you're right... these forums (all the forumites, not just you, Avi ::laughing: are something special

Julia said:

I should have preempted this by insisting that an individual can be a group. Then it would have been indisputable ;')

Avi_dreader said:

Ugh. I cannot escape work

{{ Oh, flattery will get you everywhere. Naturally, I will hog all the flattery to myself and assume that when you say "group of individuals" you just mean me ;') }}

Hehe.... awww bless. Course I meant just YOU ..... and the others

As for Arkham, its all starting to come together and make sense. But my goodness the rules, simply written as they are, are complex by their intrinsic myriad of extrapolation and open ended possibilities. I LOVE it.

Cheers guys.

Mab

Just a quickie question (don`t really want to start a thread just for this simple "yes" "no" thing) as the ball is already rolling here - If on the initial set up during the Mythos phase, a gate and a monster is placed on the starting position of one of the investigstors.. does that investigator get sucked into the other world per normal?

I`ll make a list of all questons from now on, and when I have enough, I`ll post a seperate thread :-)

Mab

Yes, and he/she is delayed.

Mabinogian said:

Yes, as Zealot said, even if I have to add that it's very unlikely to happen. All investigators (with a couple of exceptions) start in stable location, so no gate opening possible there. From the base set, the only investigator starting in an unstable location is Kate, but her power prevents a gate to be opened under her feet. As far as expansions investigators is concerned, the only one that can possibly start on an unstable location is Ursula (she's from Innsmouth, so probably you don't have to bother with this part of my answer, now). Anyway, when playing Ursula, you choose the place where she starts, so, in this case, a gate can be opened under her feet; in this case she gets sucked through the gate and delayed

Yes, there are only two that can start at unstable locations-Kate and Ursula(the latter can start at any non-Other world location, as for Kate-gates can never open at her current location). There's also Luke Robinson, the Dreamer who starts the game at the Dreamlands other world. These are the three investigators who start their game in "unusual" locations.

Aaah thanks guys.... my bad. Yes it was kate (opening set up move), but I completely failed to spot her special ability which should have prevented a gate appearing underneath her.

Incidentally, opening game was truly and utterly amazing, and played like a Lovecraft story, or did in my head, lol... can`t wait to start writing prose batreps (with photos) for AH - which is p-r-o-b-a-b-l-y what I do best. It was so intense. Mistakes by the plenty, but I learned so much by the mistakes; and I`m sure I missed even more things I did wrong than the mistakes I spotted.

A rumour card "The Terrible Experiment" was the first nail in the coffin for my three intrepid investigators (Mandy Thompson, Darell Simmons, and Kate Winthrop). I had two of my guys desperately trying to stem the tide of monsters and avert the rumour card`s effects, while Kate tried frantically to run about avoiding wandering monsters so she could get to, travel through, and then attempt to close the gates. Only trouble was she kept losing clue tokens in combat as she repeatedly failed to avoid the monsters lol.

In the end, too many gates opened up and the final battle against Nyarlathotep began – and oh so very badly :-(

Both Darrell and Mandy were utterly devoured on the start of the battle because neither of them had any clue tokens; and poor kate didn`t stand a chance on her own... the final result was kinda a foregone conclusion, and ended rather abruptly.

All in all, mistakes and all, I had an incredible game; proving that AH really is ideal for solo play.

Will learn to play smoothly and properly (and enjoy every second of that journey) before introducing others to it I think ^^

Mab

Sounds like you had a great time ::smiling::

Just a suggestion: a good AO to start with is Azathoth. His Doom track is very long and thus he allows you a lot of time to investigate with very few pressure on. Beseides, his special powers do influence the game very little, so you have less things to consider and you can focus on movement / action / sealing. Otherwise, yeah, Nyarly o Yig for a decent start.

Yes Julia, the game was truly awesome. You know thosed moments of euphoria when everything feels so right? Thats how the game went for me.

Ah okay, Azathoth it is then for my next adventure. I pulled randomly last time, but had already decided to fudge things a bit in future on occasion for a decent choice of items etc. The notion of playing just a couple of investigators at a time really appeals to me, so I might have to give them a decent head start now and again *grin*

Already I have a bit of a `thing` going on for Mandy Thompson, and I can see her appearing in a number of my future games. Maybe it was just beginners luck, but she certainly dominated most of the last game. Already in the Role Play part of my mind, I have it that she fled the final battle (was never devoured) and now carries the burdon of that guilt on her shoulders.... redemption time :-)

Mab

Your instinct is right. If you look at Tibs' statistics here, you'll notice that Mandy is the most winning investigator ever (I don't say she's the best, but she's definitely versatile). 761 games with Mandy, 78% victories. Not that bad ::laughing::

OOOoooo Thanks Julia, thats awesome

Okay, now I just have to try and locate whether Mandy is on the list of investigator miniatures... if she is - ME WANTS ONE

Mab