Your welcome

Some more questions as I look over the footage of the first game that I filmed.

Bob Jenkins is on a street location with a monster, it is the encounters phase, he is not in a location so he cant have an encounter, does he immediately try to evade/fight the monster instead? or does the next phase take place instead? [v14]

H.P. Lovecraft said:

Generally, you have to deal with monsters during the Movement Phase. So, in your case, Bob doesn't have to have any enocunter (since he is in a street area) nor he has to fight the monster (since it's not the proper phase). During the movement phase of the following round, he'll have to deal with the monster in the usual way (fight or flee, basically)

Just to clarify, 3 investigators battling against the AO (4th investigator devoured), so need 3 successes of 5 or 6 to remove 1 doom token, player rolls gets 3 successes, rolls another 5 dice and gets 1 success, that 1 success carries over to the next player?

Your allowed to heal yourself (use healing spell) in a battle with the AO?

Can clue tokens still be used for extra roll?

Fighting Shub-Niggurath, sneak gets reduced with each combat round, reaches -2 sneak, player only has 2 sneak, he automatically fails and is devoured?

What do you do if you don't have enough clue tokens to cloase a gate, can you stay at the location untill the upkeep phase and have another player give you the rest of the tokens that you need, what other options are there with not enough clue tokens and no elder signs?

H.P. Lovecraft said:

First of all, in a 4-investigators game, you still need 4 successes to remove a doom token from the AO's doom track, regardless of the number of investigators devoured. For example, you're playing against Shub with 4 investigators, and you have 2 investigators LiTaS when the little Shub wakes up, hungry. The investigators LiTaS are instantly devoured, you are not allowed to redraw any of them. Besides, the investigators survived have still to inflict 4 successes to remove a doomer during final battle. It's better to talk about successes instead of '5' and '6' for many reasons, one of those being the fact you can be Blessed or Cursed when Final battle starts, and under these conditions successes happen with 4 to 6 or 6 only, respectively. Nonetheless, yeah, you got the point, successes do carry over. If one of your characters scores 5 successes, remove 1 doomer (4 successes) and 1 success is carried over, so you need only 3 successes to remove the next doomer.

You're certainly allowed to cast a Heal spell during the Final battle; nonetheless, remember that in case you have the Healing stone , you have to discard it when the AO awakens

You can use clues for having extra dice during Final combat. A suggested good houserule is the so called "Kevin Wilson clue-per-seal" limit: basically, a single investigator is not allowed to spend on a single skill check during Final battle more clues than the number of seals on the board. You've got four seals on the board? Then no more than 4 clues to be added to a skill check. This was done to avoid people starting collecting clues instead of caring about sealing and to limit in some way some otherwise very overpowered characters ability (like Joe Diamond's Hunches)

Shub question: no. Failing the skill check is not something causing you to be devoured, you're devoured when you run out of monster trophies. So: player with 2 Sneak, -2 check implies zero dice to roll. In case he has not clues to spend, or simply doesn't want to waste them on this check, he can discard a monster trophy. When he has no monster trophies left, he is devoured (there is a huge debate on this point that hopefully will be clarified y the new FAQ. Some people think that when you have to discard a monster trophy and you have none, then you're devoured. Some others think that when you're supposed to do the skill check and you're without trophies, you're devoured, regardless of the result of the skill check. I think there is no official ruling, so far, so go for whichever way you like the most)

Clues cannot be traded, unfortunately. But yes, you can squat on a gate, and yes, your mates can give you some stuff to obtain the remaining clues. They can toss you an Elder Sign, or a King in Yellow, or other clue generating items.

Hope this helps!

Something just occurred to me. Finn must discard cards that say "discard when the Ancient One awakens." Those cards were given that clause to prevent broken scenarios, and Finn's Holdout naturally should not circumvent that.

Yes your comments are very helpful, but frankly I gave up on this **** game. You may all find it easy but its confusing as hell to me, by game I mean the current one, which I had left set up for nearly a week. Too many mistakes, I need to create a game sheet for myself detailing every phase move by move in greater detail. I'm now starting a new game and I'm going to play it very slowly and write everything that I do down.

As a game this particular one sucked, but for my "stories based on gameplay" idea it will work well.................STORY: 3 investigators go to Arkham to face the creatures there and get completely overwhelmed by their own mistakes. So at least something good will come out of the aggravation of the past days and hours.

Hey, remember, number one Ancient One: the rulebook. Once you defeat it, everything's easier ::smiling::

I'm sorry you have such big problems during your first games; have you tried following Zeb's flowchart? It's very accurate! In case you don't have it and you don't find the thread where it was originally posted, send me a private message with your e-mail, and I'll e-mail you the pdf. It's very clear!

Think I do, I have the one I got from gameboardgeeks, the game turn sheet and combat sheet, still tough, going through pages as I play, so I thought Id write it all down myself in one place. Eventaully have the ultimate game sheet, so that there is no possible way to mess anything up

Think Id be better off switching from the 1.17 moduar sheet to the quick rules sheet

Tibs said:

I agree. But that really ought to have been included in the FAQ ::eyeroll::

Tibs said:

Hey Tibs, didn't you say something about not mentioning things about expansions to base-game people

Yes, you're right Ecno. What was the original topic again? Sorry all...

Julia's comment got the ol' gears turning.

Well there wasnt really a topic, it was just various questions that I have had

Which reminds me, do you do only one OW encounter (pick a card) while in the left part of the OW, or do you choose an OW card for each

H.P. Lovecraft said:

You've been posting very basic rules questions for months now. Now, everyone (almost without exception) here is always happy to help people out in getting the rules right since they can get pretty tricky to figure out once you start piling on all expansions.

But questions that could easily be answered by consulting the rules and/or the FAQ? I'm getting the impression you're just too lazy to make any attempt to try figuring out things for yourself.

Getting everything right might be difficult, but it's not THAT difficult!

jhaelen said:

Well... To be fair, the manual is a real pain to read. Especially if you're the first one in your group to try and master it. That being said, a few careful reads of the manual is often a good idea ;') I was giving it occasional rereads for the first two years.

Sorry you feel that way and your certainly free not to answer any questions of mine that you feel is stupid etc, but I have three sources in front of me right now, rulebook, modular sheet, turn phase sheet, and they are all surprisingly vague as to certain questions. Looking in "other world movement' and "phase IV other world encounter" not only is there no mention of my question, but nothing that says that "only when in the first spot of the ow you choose a card " it sort of trails off into talking about monsters appearing.

Of course I never claimed to be smart, and Ive never played games like this, I never played any type of card game (if you know what I mean? you know those games where you battle each other with special cards or what have you, see I don't even know what that type of game is called) the last time I played a traditional board game even was about 15 years ago. But I do tend to mention that certain questions of mine may seem stupid when I ask them. Difficulty is relative.

I don't take it the wrong way, and I'm assuming that the answer is NO

i'd say the phase iv: other worlds encounters part of the rulebook exactly answers the question. it's in three paragraphs.

1: draw a card matching the color.
2: resolve the encounter.
3: discard the card.

if you discard the card you cannot encounter it again as you have already .. encountered it. thus, next encounter you have a new encounter, like on every other location/other world area.

Well Amanda, Ashcan,Mandy and Gloria just got devoured by Yig, I had left the game up for nearly two weeks, playing once a week (2 times) on my day off, this being the second. Officially its my 6th time playing and I'm still making many mistakes......so much for the notion that the game ISN'T THAT HARD to learn, cause it sure as hell is for me. But I guess when your playing a game based on Lovecraft, you cant really expect to win, now I know the hopelessness of the characters that appear in his stories.

And that's half the fun

Yeah and being someone who leans toward Gnostic beliefs, Im use to hopelessness

H.P. Lovecraft said:

Yeah and being someone who leans toward Gnostic beliefs, Im use to hopelessness

Well at least someone got it

H.P. Lovecraft said:

i bet you'd find it easier to learn the rules if you play a game per session instead of spreading out the game. take time and go through one game. learning by repetition works for most people, and if the repetition isn't split up to continue from a week before..