So lately gotten away from AH for other games (Dominion, Ravenloft etc) however played a game this weekend with only Orginal and DH expansion. So my question to you faithful gamers is that when playing with only expansion which cards do you use?

We used the gate markers from Lurker because its exciting to know if your on a unstable location you could be devoured. Simply played the rule that if someone drew a location in outer world we didnt have it was a new gate draw.

We also used all items,spells,uniques from all expansions. This is really the important part of this discussion. I am at work right now so I cannot check but are they items etc labeled with the different types of expansions like the mythos and location cards are? If so do you remove them from the game while you are not playing that expansion?

It seems that the more dilluted the unique deck becomes the more difficult to draw the limited number of elder signs etc...

Just curious what people thought. Also the results of the game was that the investigators (4) were successful in stopping old Cthulu from crushing the world... Woo Hoo!

Mike

msmithamp said:

Why does that sound like a bad thing? Maybe I'm just reading too much into it, but diluting elder signs is not just a huge positive, IMO it's an absolute MUST. Any game where you get 2+ ES tends to fall under category too easy. Winning while sealing 8 gates (after two got gate bursts) all with Clues, breathtakingly glorious (and none of those silly Hypnos clue-sugar-daddy additional clues either).

All expansion cards have the expansion symbol labelled somewhere on the card, so you can separate everything whenever you want. The only ones not labelled are monsters chits. But it's pretty easy to find an updated list of monsters divided by expansions, so, it shouldn't be a major issue. Anyway, having big decks of small cards for me is a plus. It adds a lot of variety and strategy to the game, which is always good. Yeah, ES become rarer, but again, there are many other useful items in the game.

Of all the expansion elements that are "perma-mixed," the investigator cards (except maybe not allies) are the second-most common. Maybe a close third is the Injury and Madness cards. The most common perma-mixed stuff would probably be the Investigators, themselves, and/or GOOs. Most of the investigator cards don't seem out of place, theme-wise, so they won't take away from the overall play (I say "most" because there's always cards like "Milk of Shub Niggurath" and certain spells) if you play with mixed expansions in this way only. I also leave OW Encounters in, too, as well as Arkham encounters. I don't own too many expansions yet, so it's not a problem, but, of course, if I'm not playing with a certain board, I ignore the boards' Mythos cards.

(for the record, I have Dark Pharaoh, King in Yellow, Dunwich, and just got Innsmouth).

The only element that you really have to worry about diluting is the mythos deck, and how many board expansions you would use at one time. If you prefer a very Dunwich-focused game, then you should ditch the other boards and try to dilute the mythos deck so that gates would open at that town more often. OW encounters, Arkham encounters, items, etc. don't matter that much. In that case, more is good as it increases the unpredictability of the game!

Completely agree that dilution adds a certain flavor to the game and increases the size of the RNG monster (Random Number Generator). However I realized that since my gaming group has been playing dunwhich the thing has never even spawned! Which might be a testment to our awesome gaming skills (completely sarcastic).

More over I was wondering what people's favorite expansions combos are... We own all the expansions and have yet to use the extra rules from goat or lurker... Just curoius which people have enjoyed... Also we have never used a herald either.

Cheers all,

Mike

Heralds are a big plus to the game. The widen a lot the spectrum of possible games, and they grant you quite a lot of fun (read "troubles" ::laughing:.

As far as the expansions thing is concerned... well, I generally play with 2 additional boards (always with Kingsport, sometimes with Innsmouth, sometimes with Dunwich) & 1 small box expansion at the time. Sometimes I do some crazy games with only Kingsport + Black goat & Lurker mixed in, and they're a Hell, since they force all the main activity on Arkham and you have to be very good to be able to win by sealing. Tons of gates bursts destroying Elder Signs and so on. With some nasty AOs can be something worth of trying.

And sometimes I play with everything mixed in. This happens basically only in Leagues games; in case you want to try something different and you don't mind playing with custom material, try to play a couple of Scenarios of Avi's fan league. They are good ;-)

Julia said:

Not a couple, all ;') Okay, well, start by trying two or three.