1. Deputy - Do you have to use the Deputy's gun when you become deputized or can you use your own weapon such as the shotgun or machine gun? Does the deputy become an additional ally firing his own weapon?
2. Call Friend Spell - What is the purpose behind this spell?
leoj said:
1. Deputy - Do you have to use the Deputy's gun when you become deputized or can you use your own weapon such as the shotgun or machine gun? Does the deputy become an additional ally firing his own weapon?
2. Call Friend Spell - What is the purpose behind this spell?
The Deputy's gun is just another weapon in your arsenal. You can use it as you please, along with other you might have. The main advantage it has it's that you can't lose it.
Call friend basically teleports another player to your location, consuming his movement for the current turn. You know, misery loves company.
leoj said:
1. Deputy - Do you have to use the Deputy's gun when you become deputized or can you use your own weapon such as the shotgun or machine gun? Does the deputy become an additional ally firing his own weapon?
The Deputy is not an ally. The player who completed the encounter becomes the deputy.
The Deputy can choose to give up the Patrol Wagon and Deputy's Revolver, and can even give them to another player.
leoj said:
2. Call Friend Spell - What is the purpose behind this spell?
Are you asking when the spell is useful? It's not. If you're lucky it might be mildly useful once per game. But probably not.
Call Friend might be useful for pulling an investigator out of an Other World with no open gates on the board, or into an other world when the target investigator has at least 5 clue tokens and the casting investigator doesn't have enough clues to seal the gate he's about to emerge from.
Also, saving an investigator from a nasty critter (or rescuing him from a dangerous location) if he's too remote to reach. It's a highly situational spell, but it has its uses, and once even won the game for us.
zealot12 said:
Call Friend might be useful for pulling an investigator out of an Other World with no open gates on the board,
Well, not quite for this.
Call Friend:
"Cast and exhaust to choose an investigator in Arkham..."
Oops, right you are. I didn't have the card in front of me when I posted that. I stand corrected.
More uses for Call friend: since it's cast during the movement phases , it's good for for trading purposes, when the target investigator is too far away, or in general, for quick travel of one of your teammates. In the latter case, it can be effective when dealing with rumors.
Eh, it's still pretty underpowered. I'd like it better if you could either move a friend to your location, or move yourself to a friend's location.
Call Friend: For getting someone out of Devil Reef or Y'ha-nthlei without risking being in Innsmouth. For getting a partner into Kingsport to quickly shut down an open Rift. For getting someone into the Asylum or the Hospital when conventional movement would likely get them insane or unconscious, i.e. trapped behind a stubborn Dhole or Cthonian in their Street.
Yes, it's a wildly conditional Spell that will more likely just take up inventory space than be used. But you can say that about more than half the Spells in the game. Just because Astral Travel and Flesh Ward are more "useful" doesn't mean they're going to end up getting used any more than Call Friend.
jgt7771 said:
Yes, it's a wildly conditional Spell that will more likely just take up inventory space than be used. But you can say that about more than half the Spells in the game. Just because Astral Travel and Flesh Ward are more "useful" doesn't mean they're going to end up getting used any more than Call Friend.
Bleh, I actually don't like Astral Travel. It has a sanity cost of 2, and the effect is that you can enter a gate. Big deal. In addition, you have to discard it after use. I can think of numerous useless spells, such as Summon Monster, Fist of Yog-Sothoth, and many more. I never liked spells very much. Unless, hehe, I get Arcane Insight.
Especially in 5+ player games, the gates fill up with monsters pretty quick, and it's often very inefficient to send one of your brawlers in to clear a path and get sucked through first just because Akachi couldn't beat or sneak past a Dark Young and a Warlock.
Speaking in terms of how excited I'll probably be to draw it, Astral Travel definitely ranks above Call Friend while still falling well short of Find Gate, but in any case it usually gets put to good use by the end of the game.
I don't think we should say a spell is useless only because we have the chance to use it rarely. Some spells have a very limited range of utility, but having that spell ready at the right moment is the difference between victory and loss. Honestly, Astral travel is a great spell. First of all, it is casted during the Arkham Encounters phase. So you have the entire Movement Phase for doing something else. Like reading the King in Yellow or some other Tomes or whatelse. Then, it allows you not to deal with monsters on a gate, which sometimes is *great* especially if you're low with equipment or sanity. Third, it allows you to reach the most distant parts of the board without caring about anything else (like the "The rails are washed out" Mythos card, or tons of monsters swarming the streets of Innsmouth or Dunwich, blocking your way ot the gate). Dont' know if you can reach Devil reef with it (I'd say yes, but I hope the FAQ will clarify all the possible ways to reach that dam(n) place), but anyway, it could be great. Not to use in every game, but... you know. Sometimes "utility items" are by far more useful than "combat boosting" items. After all, the game is about gates.
As far as the Fist of Yog-Sothoth is concerned... I won a final battle against Daoloth thanks to that spell. It works very well with characters with a higher Lore skill. Again, not as useful as other things, but sometimes..
Well, I might have been exaggerating when I said that Call Friend was useless. But still, everyone in my game group groans when they draw it.