For the benefit of those who are nt familiar with this spell, Summon Monster is a spell from the Black Goat expansion.

I drew Summon Monster during the setup of my last game.

Casting Modifier: +0

Sanity Cost: 1

Casting phase: Movement

Effect: Cast and exhaust to draw a monster from the cup and place it in your current location.

What exactly is the point of this spell? Maybe if the outskirts were full and you had a Rumour in play that did not allow the terror level to increase...

Has there been any errata/clarification on this spell? If I could choose what monster I wanted it could be useful (but abusive because I'd want a Mi-go most of the time).

Some spells have their uses, many of which people just haven't run in to just yet, like Call Friend or Lure Monster. You may not use it much, but you can do some neat things if you've got the right spell in the right situation!

I...just haven't found a use for this spell yet (other than feeding it to a Rat-Thing, I suppose). Then again, I don't have Black Goat, so that doesn't help!

Krawhitham said:

Offhand? For trophies. The Investigator needs a trophy, but doesn't really like the monsters already out there, because of toughness or proximity. Some Personal Stories require specific monster trophies; it might be easier than waiting for another gate or surge. Choosing your monster would indeed be abused: you say Mi-Go now, but what if you had Barnabas Marsh? (In that alternate reality, Avi's head would explode.)

I agree with Ecno. Some Arkham Spells are like insurance: most of the time, stupid and useless...until that one time you need it.

I did try this spell once just for the heck of it. I ended up summoning a Cthonian. Oops.

This spell can be quite useful, but it needs to be used properly (i.e. by an investigator who is equipped for the worst possible draws). Basically it lets you get an extra monster trophy each turn (and if you're moving onto a monster also, you can get them pretty fast this way, at least two per turn).

Black Goat had some items that are presumably intended for cultists to use. I guess you "infiltrated" the cult of the Black Goat, so now you have secret spells for summoning monsters, summoning gates (Naacal Key), or even summoning the Ancient One. Trouble is, unless you've really joined the cult, you probably wouldn't want to do any of these things.

Avec, that's a good way of looking at it. I never thought about that... Black Goat has items that "aid" the cult. Too bad there isn't much of a net benefit to the investigators. Well, I guess that goes for the cult encounters as well.

Avi_dreader said:

Yeah, actually...I've been in situations where this spell would be terrific. We've had some investigators just set up very well for monster-slaying who could really benefit from being able to grab another trophy sometimes.

Plus, with this, couldn't you for instance sit on Arkham Asylum and summon a monster there to be able to quickly undo the sanity damage it caused? That could be a powerful tactic (as could sitting on St. Mary's). Good way of getting more monster trophies for more cool stuff without having to run all over town because your Sanity zipped down to 1 during your hunting.

avec said:

I think it has been pointed out elsewhere, though, that sometimes summoning the AO would be a viable tactic. For instance, summoning Yig when you're all blessed (so you cancel out the curse), or summoning Hastur while the Terror level is very low, or summoning any of the AOs while you've got a lot of what they attack (full stamina, full sanity, high clue tokens, etc.). Obviously there are other cases where it doesn't help much, or where you'd have to be an idiot to use it (Azathoth), but... Kind of an "if we have to fight it anyway, might as well do it on our terms" kind of thing that you'd pull out if you didn't look like you could get a seals victory.

Sdrolion said:

Very true! However, this does waste time, since you can't move after fighting a monster. But! Still a good way to use this. Though, generally, there's no dilly-dallying in my games (but it does happen on occasion!)

the obvious use is for the poor guy who have to be locked up in kingsport to use this to get at least some action instead of tea time with Gladys and locked doors on water street.

Combine this spell with another from this expansion, summon ancient one . A stack of monster trophies applied to this spell can bring in an ancient one with many doom tokens taken from the track. Summoning one monster/turn is perfect for spellcasters, as many spells apply to only one combat/turn. It can tax your sanity rather quickly though.

Basically if you're willing to take a major sanity hit you can go insane and let the other investigators deal with a half-dead ancient one. There's no limit on how much sanity damage you can force yourself to take from a spell. Also, if you have the skill which allows you to add +1 success to any spell attempt, your only limitation is the number of monster tropies you can collect. Summon monster makes this that much easier.

eriktheguy said:

This is something I should be very careful about saying. It was debated for quite a long time on these forums (during 2010, IIRC), and the common interpretation of the spell was that you cannot sacrifice more Sanity than the Sanity you actually have. In the worse case possible, you can go insane. Hence, there is a cap to the number of doomers you can remove via this spell. This will hopefully be confirmed in the coming FAQs.

(If you think about it, it has sense: you are not allowed to spend more than you have. You cannot fire 7 bullets with a 6 bullet gun, you cannot walk 25 hours / day, you cannot sacrifice 6 Sanity if your max is 5)

Somewhat spuriously in the game I ran to try for maximum points, Daisy Walker with Zebulon Whateley and Summon Monster ripped throught monster cup. I think if you check the transcript you'll see she pulled ~30 monsters out that way.

Arguabely, every monster she took out that way was one more that another, less prepared, investigator would have to deal with.

Also Summon Monster/Naacal Key was used to finesse the final gate opening so the gate trophies and monster trophies ran out at exactly the same time.

But generally, lining up more trophies for exchanges or getting desperate on a personal story is about he only use. Though versus SN, given her attack in the Final Combat it could be seen as a good way to try and prepare, which is not unreasonable as Black Goat is the SN flavoured expansion.

VinceT said:

But the game doesn't stop spawning monsters just because Daisy was killing them. Whenever Daisy kills a weak monster, she's making the cup worse for the less-prepared investigators.

In this case specifically, the intent was to draw every monster.

More generally, I guess it depends on how comabt prepared you are. With 0 itmes/skills applicable, pretty much anything other than a Cultist/Maniac is a significant challenge to many investigators so the odds are massively in your favour to remove something too difficult rather than someting too easy. Of course, if you're not going to empty the cup that's mostly a moot argument as there's no difference between an nth pull and an nth +1 - except through token expendtiure you can repopulate the cup with easy monsters whilst keeping the hard in hand shifting the odds in your favour.

Yeah, if you're deliberately spending the easier ones to get them back into the cup, then that argument holds. But just summoning them for the sake of summoning them is itself not a valid argument that it's helping out the ill-equipped. I know WHY you were doing it, but just wanted to point that out.