My gaming circle just made pretty easy work of Nyarlathotep and his minions. Is cthullu the hardest ancient one in the base Arkham horror? We have the king in yellow and were wondering how long it would be we are ready to implement this. what is the order of difficulty for expansions easiest to hardest?

the difficulty of the game depends... sometimes it is more difficult if you mix in another expansion, but some combinations can even lead to an easier overall difficulty.

you may have a look at these statistics (they are also topic in an sticky thread in this board):

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AliZyklaTCWzdEszdXpoRVJQNGltTU5wMi1qWEJnQkE&hl=en#gid=2

there you find some interesting statistics about tracked games ant their win/lost counts using different ancient ones/expansions. (see the tabs on the bottom to switch between different tables)

programdude said:

The toughest AO from the base game is probably Yog-Sothoth. The difficulty increase for closing gates is something that can be problematic to face, not to mention that every time you go LiTaS you're devoured. So the chance of losing well equipped investigators is high; besides losing an investigator & his clues is pretty time consuming.

Another AO to be mentioned between the toughest is Shub, basically because of his boost on monsters toughness. 1 toughness monsters becoming 2 toughness monsters is not a big deal, but 3 toughness upgraded to 4 *is* something a little harsher.

Anyway, since the game is about gates and not monsters, Yog is probably the most difficult to bit from the base set.

Last night, we drew Yog-Sothoth with the King in Yellow in play. The game went downhill immediately. Every one rolled bad. The Terrible Experiment came into play. I was playing Dexter Drake, had horrible items for combat, so I took out a loan to buy items. Once I had a decent collection, INCLUDING AND ELDER SIGN AND AN ELDER SIGN PENDANT, I defaulted on my loan and lost everything. Our strategy in the game was to just keep closing gates since all of us were incapable of sealing any. We kept getting monster surges and kept deciding on putting blight tokens on the Terror Track. The Terrible Experiment maxed out with 8 monsters and we had the option of putting 5 Blight Tokens on the Terror Track or awakening Yog-Sothoth because he also had 5 doom spots left. We just said DEAL WITH IT. He killed us in a matter of 4 rounds.

By the way, my gaming circle has YET to win with The King in Yellow in play.

Well, Nyarlathotep is a weak ancient one. What you need is expansions (particularly Kingsport) because they give him new Mask monsters. Kingsport gives one particularly awesome Mask monster, and also adds wretched Epic Battle cards that'll make Nyar much more formidable.

I like my stats page, but the results are weighted. For example, Innsmouth is a harder expansion, so the Innsmouth investigators are near the bottom of the list in victories.

In my personal experience, Yog-Sothoth is the nastiest Ancient One in the base set. But Cthulhu is in second place. It's not TOO hard to seal him away, but if he awakens it's pretty much all over.

There has been an official revision to Cthulhu that was handed out at the Arkham Nights event. He works exactly the same as in the base game, but with a couple new added abilities:

www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp

In my personal opinion, the difficulty of expansions from least to most is:

1. Curse of the Dark Pharaoh
2. Black Goat (without the herald)
3. King in Yellow
4. Lurker at the Threshold (without the herald)
5. Dunwich Horror
6. Kingsport Horror (the board isn't too bad; the Ancient Ones are!)
7. Innsmouth Horror

This is kind of funny, since I just recently addressed what I felt were the flaws of the KiY expansion in this thread: http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=5&efcid=1&efidt=437534 . Suffice it to say for the moment that you'll definitely need to use the Herald if you want to increase the difficulty.

I'd say you're ready for KiY once you start consistently sealing the AO's away in basic Arkham. That demonstrates that you've come to understand the basic game and are in need of a difficulty upgrade.

It's hard to rate the difficulty from easiest to hardest because I've never used many of the expansions with just basic Arkham, though I think you'll find that CotDP is quite hard if you use the Visiting Exhibit mode given in the rules. Innsmouth is definitely the crown jewel of difficulty and for that and a few other reasons should be saved unti near the end of your expansion additions. In general I'd recommend trying a small box expansion or two, then purchasing Dunwich when you feel you're ready for a major increase in difficulty.

Hey, Tibs, which of the two Mask monsters in Kingsport were you calling "particularly awesome"? I think they're both pretty great.

I was referring to the Shadowy Figure, because he's the only monster, including non-masks, who actively screws over the players without confrontation or by not hurting them. Plus, he helps to make Nyarlathotep harder in final combat.

For those who are unfamiliar with the Shadowy Figure, have a look:

"Elusive" means you have to pass the evade check in order to fight him . And his awareness modifier is -3.

Here is the other mask in question. Nothing to scoff at, but it's just your ordinary, mess-you-up-in-combat monster:

Leave the Skinless One alone and he'll eventually move out of the way. Leave the Shadowy Figure alone, and he'll eat all your clues!

With the shadowy figure, does he ALWAYS move to the nearest clue? Meaning does he completely disregard how far it is ect?

programdude said:

Yes, whenever a Crescent Moom movement symbol comes up, he always moves to the nearest clue, no matter how far away it is. I've had him go from the main Arkham board to Innsmouth in one of my games. And since he is a crescent monster, he can never be sent back to the cup by a closed gate (the one virture of his you forgot to mention, Tibs)!

I figured the Shadowy Figure was who you were talking about, Tibs, but I wasn't sure. I rate the Skinless One pretty highly among the Masks, but I agree the Shadowy Figure deserves to be considered #1, especially given how in character he is thematically with Nyarlathotep's cleverness and cunning.

I did forget to mention that the penalty for failing an Evade check is the same as failing a Combat check. So failing to evade the Skinless One will also get you devoured.

Oh yeah, good call. Crescent symbol keeps the Shadowy Figure from a premature return. If you want to get rid of this guy you probably have to spend clues to engage him. Otherwise you're at the mercy of "removal-of-monster" Mythos effects.

While we're on the topic, here are the other expansion Masks:

(From Dunwich):

(From Innsmouth):

Yup, they cover every dimensional symbol and every movement type (unless you count white, which is "null").