Playing for the 2nd time yesterday and today, boy do I need help, Im skipping phases like crazy, keep forgetting horror checks, will checks etc. I need serious help, I was thinking of filming myself playing the game next time, thought I might post it here and would appreciate any help you guys can give me.

That's ok if you keep forgetting what to do. It happens to all newbies (trust me, I got countless rules worng when I started out). If you forget the phases, I think there's a handy reference on the back of the rulebook that lists all the phases and what to do on each phase. Remember, there's:

Upkeep: All investigators refresh their cards and adjust their skill sliders. In addition, roll for blessings, curses, retainers, etc.

Movement: This is easy. Just move the number of spaces equal to your speed. If you are in an other world, move to the next area.

Arkham Encounters: Every investigator in a location draws an encounter card from the corresponding deck and follows its instructions.

Other World Encounters: Draw from the OW deck until you find one matching the color of the world.

Mythos: Draw from the mythos deck and: draw a gate marker at the location shown, add a clue token at the listed location, move all monsters on black or white arrows according to dimensional symbol, then follow any special effects on the card.

And in combat, just remember to first make a Horror check using the modifier and your current Will. If you pass, you proceed to combat. If you fail, you lose the appropriate amount of sanity and, if you're not insane, proceed to combat. The Combat check is the same thing using your current fight and any weapons you have minus the modifier, except you keep fighting the monster until you are knocked unconscious or defeat it. Remember that you can Evade this monster anytime after you make a Combat check.

As I said before, you can use the reference on the back of the rulebook if you forget any of this. Also proceed slowly when you play. If you play too rushed, you are bound to miss something. Just do everything methodical, phase by phase, one at a time. Then after a while, you can do this smoothly and without any problems.

Its not so much the major phases but all the little things that go with then.

I just got this game on Sunday (For Christmas, early exchange ) and attempted to play it last night. It was a disaster because i had only read the rule book once. The four of us playing quit after 2 rounds. I kept missing stuff and had to reference the rule book A LOT! It was slow and pain full. I decided that i needed to reread the rule book again this morning. That was the best thing I could do.

This morning, I played with my brother and although I still had to reference the rule book, it was so much smoother. We played again this afternoon and it was even better. I missed less of the little intricacies and subtleties of the game as time went on. I really think this game just takes time to learn, but it is so worth it. This third time I played we got destroyed by the ancient one, but man it was a lot funner and faster. Be patient, it's worth it!

Here are the four things that seemed hardest to remember when I was first learning:

1) Upkeep. You might just want to write down a list of everything to check on; upkeep effects are uncommon enough that once you get one you're totally likely to forget that you were supposed to roll for that bank loan or whatever. Luckily it's usually not a big deal if you catch it soon enough (e.g. before movement is over (with one exception: if anyone has gotten into monster combat))

2) Yeah so movement is generally when combat happens. Fighting monsters might seem sort of encountery, and entering a gate might seem sort of movementy, but no, it's the other way around. Go figure.

3) Other world encounters are a separate phase; wait until everyone in town has had their encounter

4) The order in which things happen on the mythos card completely defies intuition. It might help to visualize a curved arrow starting in the lower left, pointing from the gate opening to the clue appearing to the monster movement, and after all of that the text happens. (Or, having actually put it into words, it seems like this might not help at all, but it worked for me.)

Anyways, like the others said, it mostly just takes practice, but you'll pick it up a lot sooner than you expect

I would recommend having whoever knows the rules best draw and read all the cards. That way players can focus on their character and strategy (or in this case, the rules & phases) without getting thrown off. Keep passing around the First Player button, but have one person in charge of game effects. We usually have one person (me) read and draw the cards, one person take care of tokens, and another take care of monsters (drawing from cup, movement, gate placement, doom counters, etc).

I would also print out a cheat sheet of the phases (especially steps to the Mythos phase) and follow it closely.

Good luck, and have fun!

A good, high quality rules summary can also help get you going after you've read through the manual. My favorite, by far, is Zebulon's annotated rules. He has a 4-page non-annotated version as well (and I keep both with my game sets), but with his it goes step by step. It accounts for almost every standard situation in some form, helps you remember **** if you read it out loud, and it's color coded so you can skip the rules that don't apply to your game environment.

BGG has 'em, and I'm sure he's around somewhere to post 'em. Just look for the Bastile Day rules. They are on page 3 or so if you sort the files on BGG by "hot," as the universal head rules are much more popular (and bloated in my opinion).

themagichobo said:

You played 3 times in one day? Man my game lasted over 6 hours

H.P. Lovecraft said:

Well... on the third game it was over before I knew it. I swear we each got delayed at least twice and lost our sanity and stamina at least once. 2 rounds (not consecutively mind you) took only a couple of minutes each.