I am just about to sit down (still as a noobie) and play another game of Arkham Horror; this time writing the game as a prose story as I go to add to my web site and hopefully get others interested in the game too. Just to brush up, I`m sitting down (one more time) to watch the the You Tube tutorial (amazingly helpful) and a question popped into my head which made me pause the DVD and look blankly at the wall as total lack of understanding of a concept crept into my brain like a pea rattling round an empty pod.

There are three ways of winning the game, right? Close enough gamte, seal enough gates, or defeat the ancient one.

But this is my confusion... it lies with the first option:

How can you close all the gates to win because there will always be one more gate on the board than you can get to close in time to meet the conditions of a win...while you travel through the other worlds, mythos cards will always pull another gate at the end of each move; so it is like a cat chasing its tail, you can never catch up with that last gate - or am I missing something?

Mab :-)

A gate could open where you put an elder sign => no new gate.

A gate could open where there is an open gate => no new gate.

You can spend just one turn in an other world with the good items or spells.

Could be done.

Gotcha!

thanks for that Hugues.

Goodness me, they don`t make it easy do they lol.

Cheers,

Mab

It usually happens by accident.

Winning by closing all gates is one of those things you only really accomplish with a coordinated, albeit very lucky, effort. Most of the time this type of win is accidental: perhaps you've been sealing gates as normal, and then all of a sudden you notice that all the gates have been closed. However, having elder signs on the board certainly helps because it makes new gates less likely to open. Finally, this mode of victory is increasingly unlikely when you have fewer players:

Games won by closing all gates as a function of number of simultaneous investigators in the game:

1. 3%
2. 4%
3. 7%
4. 11%
5. 17%
6. 16%
7. 16%
8. 23%

The game seems to be designed so that the smaller investigator teams are more likely to do final combat, but the final combat is easier. The larger investigator teams may have to scramble to keep gates closed because the "ancient one awakens by too many gates" condition is so low, but during the scramble you could very plausibly close every gate on the board.

actually with (1) a find gate on one investigator, (2) a gate box on another, and (3) good timing, (4) in large games (i'd say 5+ investigators cause with less you won't be able to keep the number of total open gates low enough), it should be possible to play somewhat reliably (as far as reliability goes in Arkham) on closing all gates.

A gate doesn't have to open on every Mythos phase.There are quite a few no-gate Mythos cards in the deck(with expansions) and monster surges are not a rare phenomenon. If you play with three or more investigators and Mythos cards from all expansions it is actually somewhat likely to accomplish a closing victory with some lucky draws and good coordination.All your team needs is acquire a total of gate trophies equal to the number of players and seal a couple of key locations.

I've done it twice now in about 35-40 games. It definitely can be done. There will probably be some luck involved as far as the Mythos card draws, but there might come a point when you realize you have a chance at a closing victory and should go for it, as opposed to sealing. Sometimes in games you get to a point where you're so concerned about sealing gates and how do I get enough Clues to seal? But you don't need any Clues to close a gate (well, they often help to get through the OW), so you can send a few people in at once to close them.

I've done it once, but by complete accident. Three of the investigators happened to all come out of the last three gates at the same time and close them. It wasn't coordinated, it's just how it turned out. We obviously got lucky with mythos cards during those few turns we were in the Other Worlds.

Going over my stats, I have 8 wins by closing gates, out of 59 wins total from 104 plays. That leaves 50 wins via sealing and 1 by Join the Winning Team .

It's SO a win Tibs !

It's a loss with extreme bragging rights. It's an honorary loss, in the same way that Bokrug walking away is an embarassing win.

Hehe,thanks guys, I really enjoyed reading all your replies..... and found it most useful. You coevered all the eventualities I myself figured out by sitting and thinking about it a bit more. But hearing it from others was nice to hear conformed.

Wow, I didn`t realise it was so hard to win by going for the first or second opton. I`m going to make it a pet goal to try and achieve a win by this method at least once, even if it kills me - probably will many times lol.

Mab :-)

Confirmed... not conformed.... uuuuugh my minds beginning to become warped by all this horror.

In my experience, if you're not playing with Innsmouth or Dunwich, winning the game by closing gates isn't uncommon. I've won a number of times by closing gates. I always had 5 gates sealed, and then while digging around for more clues, it occurs to me that I could just close the dumb gate(s) off and win that way. And if the 2 Mythos cards come up in your favor, then there you go.

There`s hope for me yet Partizan lol

Dam said:

JtWT? Wow Dam, that's low, even for you ;'D

Holy hell... I just realized how powerful that card is (in a non-competitive sense). It allows for multiple uses of Professor Rice or William Bain. Crazy, yeah?

Well... It gets crazier, because you can clear it by trading it to another investigator. Basically if you can control the terror level in a Bain game, you have near infinite time. And with Rice, clues up the wazoo. Heh...

I'm going to see if this "sacrifice" can mean return to the box instead of discard...

I assume, Avi, that you're talking about the Lurker herald? I'd say that once an investigator takes out a pact, he's stuck with that pact card, regardless what happens to the associated ally in the case of "Bound Ally."

If that's not what you're referring to, then I apologize.

Also, a retiring/devoured investigator should transfer his pacts (or at least the bound ally) to his successor, to minimize the chance of exploits.

No. It's not at all :') I just figured out how to *really* abuse this card this morning. It depends on how "sacrifice" is defined in it though. If it's discard, then, heh, Bain and Rice are coming back multiple times. If it's return to the box, it can't really be exploited.

http://www.arkhamhorrorwiki.com/Joining_the_Winning_Team

Realistically, I'm sure the original intent of the card was discard, but I want to ask the question anyway to give them the ability to clarify the terminology (and to potentially close the loophole). Just say no to Riceycling! Reusing Rice is even more problematic given one of the other proto-FAQ rulings...

Well yeah, I'd say that "sacrificing" is "discarding," since that's how it works with other rumors. But, exactly how exploitable is this situation? You either have to get Bain's or Rice's encounter (which is probably like 1 in 7), or you need to buy them straight-up, which costs a bunch of trophies. Plus, to make headway on the Mission you'd need to make sure that the person doing the rumor is the one who's acquiring the allies, and Wizard's Hill and the Strange High House aren't exactly along the way.

Not to mention, either of those allies has to be in the available deck in the first place.

Lastly, the player attempting JtWt is working against the other players, who are the ones who benefit from Rice's and Bains's abilities. I wouldn't stress any perceived exploit too much.

Tibs said:

It's not at all hard to trade in a few monster trophies and a gate trophy at Ma's. And you're still thinking of JtWt as a non-tradable item (you're still thinking of it thematically, not strategically). The key to really exploiting this as a team is trading it so that each investigator can repurchase Rice or Bain. By the time it's passed around 4 or 5 times, there will probably be enough resources to begin starting the cycle over.

It's true that you'll only get one of these two every third game, but you'll get at least one of them 2/3rds of the time. That's enough consistency for it to be an issue.

Tibs said:

Not if you're playing solo and using your Investigators like a puppetmaster. Which is the only way Dam pulled off his "win": the "good" players just sat there and took it, possibly even assisting the "bad" player in finishing the Mission. Accomplishment, absolutely. Win, hardly.

JtWT card buried in my forgotten Dark Pharaoh box, deep in the bowels of my closet. With "Call Ancient One" and "Massa di Requiem per Shuggay". Where they shall stay until death dies.

jgt7771 said:

Ach... That's not what I'm talking about at all. Remember, when you trade a mission, it clears all its tokens.

Avi_dreader said:

No, I suppose it's not. What you're talking about getting the "good guys" together and agreeing to exploit a "bad guy" card as a group for pure mechanics. (Much easier to get that covenant amongst Investigators when there's only one brain at the table, eh?) It's actually worse than just violating the spirit of the game, because you're not even trying to finish the Mission; you're just playing with it like a cat bats at a mouse.

What should be done is everyone who owns Dunwich should BURN IT. Including the FFG Warehouses.

What Avi is getting at is that since both these allies have a "when they join you" clause JtWT can be used to send them back into the ally deck to activate their "join" clause multiple times. This either removes a bunch of doom from the AO or plops down a bunch of clues on the board to be snatched up by everyone for sealing. It's not about actually joining the bad side it's about using it to tip the scales towards the good side.

I know exactly what it is. It's metagaming with a card that shouldn't exist. There are a few Encounters that allow you to change an Ally or discard an Ally; you could use them to do the exact same thing. But that requires an Investigator to dig out one of those Encounters. JtWT cuts out that random element and makes Avi's procedure a snap. (Psst! Avi, don't forget about Charlie.)

The idea SHOULD BE that Allies are to be preserved from harm. That voluntarily sacrificing them even once is repugnant. But this exploit reduces them to words and paper to be recycled through an ever-rotating Ally deck, only allowed by a small set of words and paper that never should have been created in the first place.

Avi's solution to prevent this exploit is FAQing it. That allows him to keep this vile card in the game. My solution is to shove it into a wood chipper. Almost the same result...but my way gets you celebratory confetti.