I'd been locked in battle with Shub-Niggurath for about four hours playing a solitaire game with three investigators: Joe Diamond, Mandy Thompson and Sister Mary. This is the first game I've played with my own personal set. Before this, I had played dozens of games with my friend but this was the christening game on my own set.

I worked out a pretty solid system that and managed to keep the board fairly locked down with my three investigators, coming close to winning at the two hour mark but I got overzealous with the last portal on the board and sent two investigators in leaving Sister Mary to contend with Arkham by herself. My mistake as over the next few turns it was portal opening after portal opening and for the next hour or so I slowly started to fight an uphill battle as each of my characters kept getting knocked out or getting lost in time and space. Slowly I managed to regain control of the board and get five sealed portals. One last portal away but my characters were all battered and hurting. Sister Mary's Bank Loan finally caught up to her and I lost everything. All of her spells, and ways to defend herself in anyway. Clues were scarce as they kept spawning on locations with portals. Meanwhile the doom ticker was set to only a few more turns. I struggled and fought to get clues but the monsters on the board just kept overwhelming me and sending me packing. Finally as i'm sitting on the seesaw of the last doom ticker, and one turn away from victory. I rolled a bad dice roll on a rumor which added a doom ticker. Ouch.

Shub Niggurath awakens and the only guy who can fight is Joe Diamond err but he's got Physical Immunity. $#!&. Everyone had lots of monster trophies so he took his time picking my investigators clean. All I could do was scream! All those hours of fighting and coming close to victory so many times only to have it snatched away at the last possible moment. Blargh.

Next time, Shub, Next time you'll be mine. I have to say that even though I lost, I still have a lot of fun fighting against the game and working my investigators tactically. I made a few mistakes and next time I'll have to pay more attention, I kept forgetting that Sister Mary never gets lost in space and time. Ah well. Does anyone else have any epic failures they'd like to share?

Oh boy! Do I !? 50% of the games I playied ended like that. I mean, at the last possible second, when you feel like you might as well wrap up the board because there is NO WAY you can lose. Something happens. Something VERY NASTY happens. And you say...I'll live...it's just one BAD event, that's all. Then another bad thing happens...and another...and another...and another...and before you know it, you are one seal away from victory and the Ancient One awakens and mopps the floor with you investigators. It's almost as if the game is making fun of you. For example:

We were playing against Yig (of all 'people') and to my BIG surprise, the game lasted about 4 or 5 hours! :| Yeah, WTF? We were 3 players each with only ONE investigator. How the game dragged out so mutch is beyond me. But BY GOD, was it entertaining. The players were me, my girlfriend and my girlfriend's cousin (a 20-something year-old guy playing his 3rd AH game). Don't remember what investigator each of us had.

Yig was about three Doom Tokens away from awakening and there was a preety nasty rumor in town. But we had what we needed to get rid of it. I don't remember the name of the rumor, but I remember we needed Clue Tokens in order to close it. The funny part was, that we couldn't get to it. Ah, why? Well...picture this: The only two streets connected to the street we needed to get to...were blocked by CULTISTS! CULTIST OF ALL PEOPLE! It was like the game itself was moking us. The pulled on....and when we needed to seal just one more gate...just ONE MORE bloody gate...one of us decided to go into the portal. I did the biggest possible mistake at that moment...Yig was one Doom Token away from awakening and...I SENT THE NEW GUY IN! (Yeah...I know) Obviously he got Lost In Time And Space and Yig got that birthday gift he always wanted...THE FINAL DOOM TOKEN. Of course he awakened, Cursed me and my gf (since her cousin was devoured by being LITAS when the Ancient One awakens) and then started ripping us to pieces. The funny part was that my gf had a shootgun that she used to take half of the AO's...ahm..'health' (?) with just one shot. Yig first killed me, then her...and that was it...the game was over. Also, you might be curious why we weren't blessed. Well, whenever we got cursed it took at LEAST 5-6 turns to roll a 1...where as when we are blessed, it took 1 turn and SOMETIMES 2 turns to roll a 1. :| Also, each time one of us was sent to the hospital or asylum, monsters that didn't move for 5 turns ALL end up in front of the asylum or hospital. Does this game have a soul or something? Anyway...even tho we lost to YIG (wich is preety embarassing) the game was still fun. REALLY fun!

Well, we had a similar situation in a 5 player game against Tsathoggua. Here's what I remember:

We'd been playing for about two hours and everything was running smoothly. We had sealed three gates and there was only one left open. Joe who had plenty of clue tokens and good equipment went in. Then we had a lunch break during which we were already discussing what we wanted to do in the next game.

After the break things went downhill real fast. Joe had the encounter where you have to roll one die for each point of sanity you've got. No success, so Joe went LiTaS, losing a lot of his stuff. Then one of our seals broke. And then we really started to struggle. After another two hours the GOO awakened. Two of us were immediately devoured. The rest was rolling pretty badly and soon joined the others in Tsathoggua's belly.

Lesson learned: Never get overconfident - a single bad turn can ruin the whole game.

First Mythos card forced the first player to draw a single Innsmouth Look card. Guess what happened? Things started bad and only got worse by round three or four. I managed to get my character, the Waitress, into a gate but drew an Outer World card which caused a monster to attack me. I drew out of the cup: a shoggoth. And somehow my stats were set so I couldn't run away and couldn't defeat it in combat. So I took an injury card (already had a Broken Hand). Yep, the game mocks. Drew a second broken handgoodbye Agnes. The Abhoth, the Ancient One, awakes on a Mythos card dealing two doom tokens...or this might have been the time he awoke from the deep one rising track...I have lots of bad games against Abhoth...anyways, we get devoured pretty quickly. But we have won some really close ones. Every game I dread drawing those last 3 or 4 Mythos cards. You know everything has gone insane when you start rooting for monster surges!

Jenny Barnes and Mike McGlenn just lost to Ithaqua. I thought I was lucky when I draw 3 Elder Signs (!!!) after a few lucky encounters and one visit to the Cur.Shop. But then all hell broke loose. I only managed to seal one (1) gate (Woods) before Ithaqua awoke. Here are some facts:

- Draw "The stars are right". It was on for 3 turns and added 3 DTs, I mean, c'mon! And right as Jenny discarded Ducke, she was dropped unconscious by loosing 1 Stam. to Icy Winds and another Stam. by a Cthonian that just appeared and "moved". Aaaaarg!

- Draw a second "Sience Building" gate, few turns after I closed the first gate and while Mike was there dissecting.

- Jenny had the "find gate" box so she entered the Dreamlands for an easy ride, planning to return to Idny Sqr. where a gate to Uggoth was. First encounter, a shoggoth appears and Jenny goes LiTaS.

- Mike got LiTaS after rolling 4 dice and not scoring one (1) success for a fight check at the Plateau of Leng. He was in full stam and san, but it didn t help him anyway.

Btw, the Elder Signs are of no use if the AO awakens.

This game is cruel and hates Investigators.