Hello all!

I am new to the boards here and relatively new to playing Arkham Horror. In short time, my roommates, friends, and I have become addicted to AH playing every week. We purchased the Dunwich, Innsmouth, and Lurker expansions. After we had played with all the new characters, we came up with a new way of playing and challenging ourselves, and I thought I would share this with the community.

The challenge is to defeat all the Ancient Ones before we run out of characters. This means if a character is devoured during the game (or all the characters are devoured during the final battle) we can never use that character again. If we win by any means, then we never have to play that Ancient One again and we stay those characters for the next battle. To make things spicier, certain cards have cumulative effects. On the good side, any Allies acquired are kept until they are either sacrificed or the character dies (in which they return to the Ally deck). On the bad side, Injury and Madness cards carry over (and this cost us a character!) Personal Stories reset that way one game it might be good, the next bad.

So far we have played 8 times with these results:

1. Cthuga sealed, 1 Ally devoured through encounter card I believe
2. Tsathoggua sealed, Tommy Muldoon devoured in Y'Ha-Nthlei
3. Then the worst game ever: first mythos card gives the Shaman the Innsmouth Look, a Shoggoth gives Agnes Baker he second Broken Hand and Abhoth devours Fern, Anderson and Richards.
4. Abhoth devours another set of investigators: Diamond, Thompson, Simmons, Banks and we had 4 Allies strangled due to a Mythos card.
5. Zhar sealed
6. Ghatanothoa sealed with Hank Samson being devoured in a Devouring Gate Burst at the Witch House
7. Bokrug devoured the Bootlegger, Violinist, and Sailor
8. Abhoth sealed in the closest game we have played yet.

[sorry this post was so long; I was excited.]

HorrorfromBuffalo said:

It's similar to the way the Second Spanish League works (which is currently being run over at the French Community site).

In it you also permanently lose the equipment of devoured investigators. The rule doesn't apply to investigators devoured during Final Combat, though.

It was not too long. When I read the title, about making the game more difficult, I just came up with a wacked idea: How do the investiagtors communicate so easily? It seems to be a rather spread out small town. You'd have to use the telephone. Most likely the system where you have to ask for the operator. Seems to me you have to each have your own board and sit where you couldn't see each others. Then try to communicate by late 1920's unreliable "phone" service, i.e. IM. Of course you'd loose track of someone when they go to the OW. Haven't worked out the details yet, just thought of it.

The Old Man said:

You're assuming that there is a short time between turns, rather than days or weeks (plenty of time to exchange messages by mail or messenger :') or telegraph.

Avi_dreader said:

I always think of it more as a full-fledged investigation lasting weeks or months, like a full RPG campaign in Call of Cthulhu or something (especially since in that reading in a tome can take months or even over a year, and in AH you might do that multiple times). That seems to work more with the fact that you get so many "Headlines," which imply multiple newspaper releases, as well as a few other aspects of the game's portrayal.

In my actual 1920s-era RPG set in this theme, though, I do enforce the fact that players can't communicate easily over long distances. The players have run into trouble a couple times in the early going because they forget to set a meeting place and time or something, and then realize much later that they have no idea where the others are. They've gotten smarter about it now.

Sdrolion said:

Don't forget, though, that often in that era, sometimes as many as 3 different publishings of a newspaper would happen in a day! Though...probably just 1 on Sunday...

But yeah, I like to think things take time. It helps when Encounters talk about passage of time (or imply it), as do certain game mechanics like trains and such. And, of course, there's always OWs that can take a loooong time. Or no time at all. Or so little time you actually come back before you even left in the first place o_O

Oh, and don't underestimate the power of the telegraph Or your local postal service :-D Yay 4 cent stamps!

I didn't mean to hijack the thread, but I did like hearing the different thoughts and rational for game play. I like discussing these types of varients more than the simple type like 6 clue tokens to close a gate.