Has anyone ever played with more than 8 players? I have a bunch of people who want to play and I don't want to have to turn anyone down... if i'm using board expansions will the game work with 9-10 players? will the game be too easy/hard? share your tweaked rules if you have any

It will be a very long game... and a lot of time to wait between 2 of your turns. Otherwise, no idea about doable or not.

It's been done, but I'm not sure if I'd recommend it considering how long the game can already take with fewer players. I definitely wouldn't try it if the players are new to the game. Note also that you'll run out of certain resources (markers etc.) in a ten player game.

RocksLikeToast said:

If you use the proper amount of big board expanions (2 for 9, 3 for 10) then you can more easily play by the actual rules.Anything less than that, though, and you might be breaking some rumors and other cards (especially monster limits, outskirts, gates open for when the AO awakens, etc). But! If you play the pseudo-official way, the only thing you'll have to worry about is running out of some components (like sliders, retainers if everyone gets one, etc). That's not much to worry about, though! I say go for it. Once I get Kingsport I plan on solo-ing a 10 investigator game, just for giggles

(seems suicidal, I know...)

EcnoTheNeato said:

wait so 2 extra boards for 9 and 3 for 10 is accepted?...i noticed when i was posting stats last week for the first time it said under # of investigators 9 and 10...so i was a little confused... problem is though...most people i will be playing with will be on only their 2nd or first game lol....so it may take eons to finish the game....i don't think its really the proper way to learn the game with all expansions but.... the problem is my g/f keeps telling people about the game at her work and they are like "i wanna play... i wanna play... i wanna play...." and then we have already had about 5 others play on separate occasions and they all want to play again... keep in mind MOST of these people have never played any games beyond the Milton Bradley classics... but for some reason the people we have played with all want more lol... maybe because the games we have played with them have all actually been nail-biters (one game decided on a final die that ended with very geeky rejoicing )...it also could be that people are just starting to get into the full swing of things by then end of the game and want to play a game where they feel they know what they are doing for the whole game... or maybe me and my g/f are just too cool and they all just want to hang out with us whatever it is AH seems to do a good job roping in people...anyways...

other than time and space constraints i guess we could give it a try...

Well, it depends what you mean by "accepted". I don't think it's 100% allowed by the rules, and there aren't enough player-related tokens for more than 8 characters (focus sliders are the first thing you'd notice, but you might run into problems with other tokens as well).

However, since each expansion board beyond the first reduces the effective number of players by one, playing with all 3 board expansions keeps 10 players down to an effective player count of 8. So you might have a long but workable game.

Well, if they're newbies or in their second (or even third or fourth...) playing, DON'T use expansions. Or, at least, don't use anything particularly nasty. You can probably get away with the simple things (Injury/madness, exhibit items, benefit/detriments, or even epic battle), but new "mechanics" might give them an overload, or the false impression that that is how it works every time (say a certain herald, or the Dunwich Horror awakening). My suggestion? No matter how many people play, you should serve as a GM of sorts. You handle all the monsters, adding the doom tokens, drawing the mythos cards, letting them from the location cards, informing people what phase they're in, and letting people know when it's their turn to act. Why? Because if you have 8 people, and half are either new or in their 2nd game, it's gonna get messy. Real messy. BUT! That's what you're there for, to clean up the mess! I did this when my family decided they wanted to try out what they got me for Christmas, so I acted as the GM, explaining the rules to them and such. 5 people playing 6 investigators (one of the more "board game savvy" players played as 2 people) were all new to the game, and it went off just fine!

And per your question: If you look at the rules in the expansion booklets, it says that for every big box expansion beyond the first, to subtract the "effective" amount of players for game effects by 1. This applies to things like rumors, monster limits, gate limits, and pretty much everything one could think of EXCEPT the final battle. You still have to hit him 9 times if you use 9 people. So keep that in mind if one day you dare to play with 9-10 people. So yes, it is 100% allowed by the rules. You'll just need to make some adjustments to do so (as I mentioned before)

And once again, I must insist, don't use new boards or crazy-new mechanics! If anything, you might want to use a Guardian, but that's about the most I'd go for :-x

@Rocks: if you're going to introduce noobs to the game, my strong advice is to keep parties smaller and play Tibs' league scenarios. They're very fun, and are a perfect introduction to all components and mechanics of the game by progressivel boosting the difficulty of the game

I have played one game with nine players and one game with ten. The nine player game was with Kingsport and Dunwich against Yog-Sothoth and Ghroth. As mentioned, you'll run out of skill sliders, but they are easy to replicate. I've been thinking about calling FFG Customer Support and see if I can order a sheet of markers that have the skill sliders so I would be able to accomidate more players. There is much time between turns.

If you have players who are familiar with the game and want to do a 9 or 10 player game, go for it. It'll be fun. It takes about twice the normal length of a game. Another problem is you will need quite a bit of space for all these people.

The 10 player game we played was 10 players, all expansion boards, against Cthulhu and Dagon & Hydra. We were in epic combat before we even had 10 turns. It was brutal. If you wanted to play with 10 players and have a full experience, I would not recommend Dagon, Hydra, or Dagon and Hydra.

...you've found more than 8 people who want to play Arkham Horror at the same time?

Acebob said:

IF MH uses and additional tokens, it might be quite nice for them to use spare portions of the card for extra skill sliders, Sanity and stamina tokens, Clues, etc.