I currently play with Dunwich and Lurker (I've got Innsmouth coming in the mail and kingsport too) -

But I wonder, as another poster pointed out-- Will too many expansions dilute the decks to some degree>

How many do you all use?

Do you ever play with them all?

Thoughts?

Playing with too many expansions does tend to dilute things a bit. For example, counting the one that comes with the Kingsport expansion, there's only 5 Elder Signs in the Unique Item deck. My group and I have played a couple of games using all the main boards at once (one using just the boards, the more recent involving Lurker as well), and usually, one board has no activity whatsoever. One game involved Kingsport being ignored, another Dunwich. The only upside with the Kingsport board is the constant threat of the rifts, but none of the items, gate, or mythos cards from that expansion were used. In the last game, Dunwich got skipped over entirely.

Granted, both games were rushed in setup, as we don't have much time to play due to work schedules. Perhaps with a bit more shuffling of all the decks involved, the game might have turned out more variety. It's hard to say. I'm planning on running a campaign of sorts with the system, starting with the base set and gradually adding more and more to it, so we'll see how things change.

In general, though, I'd say maybe stick to one board expansion and one card expansion to get a good mix of satisfying variety. Add more as needed/wanted.

As long you play with only one expansion board each session, things should go well. We play with all card components of all expansions(both small and big), with the exception of Mythos cards. Mythos cards that require a board we're not using for the current session are ignored and a replacement card is drawn.

To play with them all, you will certainly lose themes introduced by at least one expansion, likely more, perhaps all. Its a mystery bag, which increases the unpredictability of the game. But what you have to remember is that in the average game you are only going to turn over 13 or so mythos cards.

Yeah, dilution and losing themes is a major issue while playing with all expansions together, not to mention that too many unstable locations, as dj said, makes the game often too quick. I generally play with a maximum of 2 expansion boards; one of those is always the Kingsport board, adding a small card expansion at once. 1 board expansion + a small card expansion works very well too.

If you want to try something different (and nightmarish), follow JGT advices and a tough AO and then go with a game with only the base game + Kingsport + Lurker (or Black goat). You'll experience something different.

In case you want to play with all expansions mixed in, try to use some anti-dilution house rules, like the ones Tibs created some time ago (cannot find the proper thread right now, but it shouldn't be too difficult to resume from the old pages of this forum)

Our group has finally found what we consider to be the perfect balance between inclusion and dilution. We use all three of the board expansions and none of the small box expansions (well, except for the Lurker Spells, Unique Items and Common Items). This almost always makes for a very fun and extremely challenging game, with the Doom Track, Deep One Rising Track, and Rift Track a constant threat. Even the Dunwich Horror shows up every once in a while. Of course with all of the ground we have to cover and all of the potential dangers this combination is definitely advanced Arkham. We'd have gotten absolutely crushed attempting this if we didn't have four Investigators and if we hadn't first gotten used to Dunwich, then Dunwich and Kingsport. Even now we lose considerably more than we win, though our defeat often comes down to taking a single turn too many before completing the sixth seal. Win or lose, you have to love it when the game is that close.

Well, personally I always play with all the big box expansions (board, card, and all). I just like to experience all three expansion boards at once. However, when drawing mythos cards, I randomly decide two small box mythos cards to play with. If the herald is related to one of them, such as the King in Yellow, I use KiY mythos cards. Then, with a roll of a dice, I decide the other one. Once I have decided which two I shall play with, I discard all other mythos cards and draw a new one. Example: KiY and Lurker in the Threshold small boxes were determined. Therefore, I only obey those mythos cards and the base set and expansion board cards. If, lets say, a BgotW or CotDP mythos card appears. I simply discard it and draw a new one until I get a mythos card I'm playing with. I hope this helps.

In order to see more cards enter play we also decided that from time to time one of the investigators(on a roll of 1 or 2) starts the game with a Cult Membership from the Black Goat expansion , so he'll have Cult Encounters.

Although adding just 1 one expansion helps many of the game mechanics & themes to shine - despite the dilution caused by all expansions, I prefer the whole lot. No such thing as too many expansions - waiting to add the next one into the mix!

I made this diagram based on votes from players:

Essentially what the diagram is saying is that the absolute maximum number of expansions you should use is 4, unless King in Yellow is included, in which case your absolute maximum should be 3 (including King in Yellow).

Tibs, I have no idea what your diagram means, but the correct answer to the question is one hundred billion.

Seriously, I have no idea why your diagram doesn't indicate that any of the big box expansions go well together.

It's based on votes. It seems that the voters mostly prefer to pair their big-box expansions with small boxes. The diagram is therefore recommending that if you want to use two big boxes, you should "link" them with a small-box. It also implies that the only time you should use all three big-box expansions together is if you're using Lurker at the Threshold specifically.

Tibs said:

Isn't this a little odd? I mean, with all big boxes in play, you have quite a huge area to cover and, yeah, you're playing "speed Arkham". Having moving gates should make the Doom Track increase even quicker!

Yes, but Lurker is the only small-box that doesn't dilute out with that many expansions. King in Yellow has act cards, Black Goat has Corruptions, Dark Pharaoh has Exhibit items. Lurker's principle components are special gates and relationship cards, which don't get diluted. So it kind of makes sense.

Tibs said:

Not just that, but reckoning cards are drawn when a gate opens, and having Dunwich and Innsmouth in play with the Lurker Herald makes it occur more often than without them.

Hey, so I forget whether I've asked this already, but one thing that I'm continually trying to figure out is which parts of each expansion to always include, and I was wondering where the rest of you stand on this. Right now my "expanded base set" includes:

All Investigators, AOs, monsters, etc; Madness, Personal Story, Relationships, (Epic Battles would be here too if I had Kingsport)

Arhkam Encounters, Other World Encounters, Monsters, and Items from the Base Set, Dunwich, and Innsmouth

Base Set mythos cards only.

Such that including an expansion basically consists of adding in the Encounters and Mythos cards for a small box, and the board and Mythos cards for a big box. But there are still a few dilemmas: 1) Should I not be including the Dunwich OW Encounters if I'm not playing with the board? 2) Should I always include the small box items (some of which are great, but three Milks of Shub-Niggurath is just useless and theme-distorting outside of a Black Goat context. I could just leave one or two of them out, but I'm sort of ideologically opposed to cherry-picking the item decks. Tearing up and swallowing the Massa di Requiem is one thing, but there's kind of a slippery slope to having a unique item deck that's nothing but Swords and Elder Signs)? 3) What about the monsters?...it feels like there are unthematically many deep ones and goat critters in here, though I'm tempted to leave them for no other reason than the inconvenience of sorting the monster cup

subochre said:

1. I'd say leave in play only OW encounters belonging to the big box you're playing with (unless that big box is Kingsport): both Dunwich and Innsmouth came with new other worlds, and having their cards mixed in while playing without them alters the balance for the "in play" OW, forcing more "other" encounters to appear

2. I generally leave all items mixed in. There are enough Unique items to be ok even with three Milks inside; not to mention that some items from small card expansions allow you a more interesting play and dilute the ES, which is not bad. The Messa da Requiem card should stay with Shuggay, buried somewhere on an unconsacrated ground, but this is only my opinion, of course ::laughing::

3. I play with the complete bag too, even if I generally play with two expansions board at once. It's a mess sorting monsters out, simply because there are no "expansion identifiers" on the back side, so you should have the list of monsters by expansion in front of you and patiently divide everything... the set-up is long enough as it is for having another 20 minutes of pain sorting the monsters out!

Another thing: I generally do not allow to choose from the complete investigators pool regardless of the expansions used. Innsmouth characters tend to be very powerful, and so they can be unbalancing the game a little while playing without the Innsmouth board. I generally follow the following scheme:

Arkham base -> only core set investigators
Arkham base + Dunwhich -> core set + Dunwich investigators
Arkham base + Kingsport (with or without Dunwich) -> core set + Dunwich + Kingsport investigators
Arkham base + Innsmouth (with or without any of the other board) -> all investigators

Just my two cents, anyway! hope it helps!

Cool, thanks. Good point about the "Other" Other Worlds, I had suspected there might be some weird mathematical consequence of including the encounter cards for unused worlds, but wasn't sure what.

The thing about the investigators is an interesting idea too, although I don't think my group would appreciate limiting their variety. In general we just balance things out informally, declaring a re-draw of either the investigators or the AO if it turns out that we get, for example, Mandy, Patrice, and Carolyn against poor Hastur.

subochre said:

Yeah, it has sense :-)