The situation:

12 doom counters on Cthuhulhu

Black goat of the wood as the herald

And a team in a poor shape and very poorly stuffed, that would not stand a chance at all in the final battle.

2 open gates, only one seal on the table ... and not a single useful card on the 4 investigators.

Practically any Mythos card would kill us (except the one involving a gate opening at our only sealed location), as both a gate opening or a surge with the Goat would kill us.

So what to do ?

Turn 1:

Lola goes for the science building hoping for the dimensional beam machine and the one chance out of nine that would shut the two doors (provided she draws the right card and succeeds the check first) ...

That is a miss, we just move Kate Winthrop, the scientist, to the Independence square hoping her science would save us ...

YES ! gate opens at independence square. One turn to hope !

Turn 2:

The two other investigators both go for one of the two gates left

Lola stays at the science building and draws : "flip over the top three myhtos cards and flip one of them. If there is an open gate opening location on that card, that gate is sealed." It is not the case, but we understand that we should put back the card in the same order

So here is my question : do we put back the card in the same order ?

That's what we did ... which just left Kate the time to go to the three locations we knew that a gate would come ... which saved the two turns needed to close the final 2 gates. Luckiest ending we had since we bought the game ! (We got Kate the Deputy's car in case)

Another question: I just ordered Innsmouth, but I can't find a place where to order Dunwich expansion. Any advice ? Thank you !

The Dunwich expansion is out of print, and thus I haven't found anywhere to get it online that doesn't charge $180+ for it as a collectible. This said, I managed to pick it up for list price last weekend at a local game store it might be worth calling around if you live in a major city, somebody might actually still have a copy.

Supposedly, FFG is going to be reprinting it sometime soon, but I'm not sure when. I still need to get myself a copy of CotDP, which is also out of print.

Yes, that was as good of a conclusion you could have asked for. And yes, when something says "flip over the top three cards..." it means, "look at the next three cards." If it doesn't say you can put them back in any order, you can't put them back in any order.

But I do have a couple questions of my own:

Fanfan said:

1. Did you remember that you need at least 4 gate trophies to win by closing all gates, since there were four investigators?
2. It looked as though you moved one investigator and then had an encounter, then moved another investigator and had an encounter. You're not supposed to do this: you're supposed to move everyone first, and then have everyone's encounter. This is important because Kate should have moved without knowing what Lola's encounter was going to be, for example.

The encounter itself doesn't really point to one way or another with regard to the cards:

"The professor of arcane studies tells you of a sealed tomb that only the enlightened may open. Pass a Lore (-2) check to flip over the top three mythos cards and choose one of them. If there is an open gate at the gate opening location on that card, that gate is sealed. "

Tibs said:

1. Yes we did, we ended the game with 6 or 7 trophies in hand. We are usually only using gate trophies when we know we will have enough left for a 'close gates victory'

2. In fact, the first Mythos card revealed by Lola was a gate on our elder sign location, but it allowed Kate to knowwhere to move on the 2 following turns, when she got an sms from Lola on her I-phone.

Vylanis said:

Thank you for the clarification !

We like the game so much that we are considering buying the french version if we can't find Dunwich soon. (We are french and living in Boston)

Can someone confirm if foreign versions are completely compatible in terms of cards color, size, and the rest?

I also like the fact that fightling Tsathoggua is actually doable in the French version (it says 2 monster trophies OR 1gate trophy: very tough but doable - I really wonder if this translation/change is intentional, I like to think it is) ... I must say I don't really like Ancient Ones were the difficulty is such that you wonder why they have put any other text than the one of Azathoth. It is very fine to me if your chance of winning is anywhere between 5 % and 25 % in normal conditions (investigators fairly prepared in case things go wrong when also trying closing the gates), but what they have put in Tsathoggua or Quachil Uttaus is excessive.

I am conscious that in the right conditions, you can call Call Ancient One and awake him up with personal stories with only a few doom tokens to burn, but a few AOs are excessively difficult in normal conditions : they remove the very interesting point in the game where you have to bargain between closing gates at all costs or trying to get the tools that would give your team of random investigators a small chance. I really like to optimize my investigators going for the tools/advantages that would both help them short term and could be useful during the epic battle.

Unfortunately, in a normal game with 3-4 random investigators, Tsathoggua or Quachil Uttaus are litterally 13-doom and 12-doom Azathoths with additional 'stirs in his slumber' powers. That is unfortunate. They have to design Ancient Ones strong enough to scare even well-prepared investigators, but it is also a design flaw if investigators do not even stand a small chance.

I always thought that after drawing the three cards, you discarded them to the bottom of the deck. It doesn't say to put them back and the rule when taking the first tome in the Unique Item deck, for example, is to discard all of the cards you had to draw to get to the tome. Shouldn't a similar logic apply to this Science Building Encounter and to the Mythos cards you draw to place Servants of Glaaki?

I would probably do what Tibs said. Mainly because it uses such different language that it implies (to me) that the wording is intentional. It says to "flip over" the first three cards, not draw. It also does not say to discard the cards, either. This leads me to believe that you put them back in the same order. Is this a definite? Nah. But it's my best guess. However! I can definitely see how people discard them to the bottom, because that's usualy the way things are done.

Fanfan said:

That's very funny, but unless all the people you play the game with are French speakers, you might be better off wallowing in misery a few months until it's available in English again. I know, the pain, the agony, the... HORROR!