Well I'm bored so I'll start a topic that we should all get some good laughs out of.

Your biggest failure ever. You may also include stupid mistakes and funny outcomes.

Here's one. We decided to play a game against Cthullu. Turn 5 opened our 6th gate and we got clobbered.

In our very next game we were playing Yoggy. Turn 4 opened our 6th gate. Naturally no one had a trophy so we all were instantly devoured.

The bad thing about the second game is the 3rd mythos card was "You may trade items with investigators w/out being on the same square as them" and we forgot to give the elder sign to the person in a gate. Also the person in the gate rolled to seal got 1 success so he started spending clue tokens. All 5 failed.

After this we decided not to draw an inicial mythos card to give us all one grace turn where we didn't have to worry about anything. At the time were weren't vewry happy though.

I just HAVE to reply on this topic. My girlfriend is the one who did this little SCREW UP even tho I told her it was going to happen (most likely)
She was sent to the hospital. Decided to chill there a little and I was telling her that there are too many monsters around (including 2 in the sky) but she still wouldn't leave just yet. She had NO weapons, and exactly on the turn she decides to exit, MOST of the monsters move in and block the hospital exit.

But she made up for it in a more recent game where weilding the shotgun she attacked the ancient one and rolled 5 successes. All 5 succesful dice had 6 on them.

Another funny thing happened once when one of our players decided to make a very DUMB decision, by going through a gate, when Yig had 9 on the Doom Track. He of course got Lost in Time and Space and Yig appeared, devored him, and then attacked us. When we should of infact gone to the church to get blessed.

allstar64 said:

I'm afraid I don't understand this statement. You only roll to close a gate, not to seal it. Only one success is needed to close the gate. Spending 5 clue tokens automatically seals the gate, no roll required. Of course there are a few special rules for certain AOs or mythos effects that require more than 5 clues to seal, but I have never seen anything that requires a roll to seal.

I'm sorry Nghtflame, you've been playing the game wrong.

Under the rules for sealing a gate it starts with the statement, "If an investigator successfully closes a gate, he may immediately spend five clue tokens to seal it."

With certain exceptions (Elder sign being one of them) you must roll to close the gate first, then you spend the clues to seal it.

It's going to make your Arkham games much harder from here on out....

Also, for Yog-Sothoth, it requires two successes to close a gate. It's one of the special abilities of the Ancient One.

johnwatersfan said:

Nightflame was aware of that. His question was "Why did the initial poster not close the gate allthough he's been having rolled one success?"

He said they were spending clue tokens for something ... pretty confusing posting in the first place

Okay just checking, because the way it was phrased, he said that you didn't need to roll to seal a gate.

And I thought it was pretty clear. With Yog-Sothoth you need 2 success to close a gate. And that was who the Ancient One was that was in the original post.

We lost a game against Cthulhu after three rounds on New Year's Eve. We were six players and two of us had an "A Gate and a Monster appears" encounter first round, so we had four gates open after the first round. Two turns later, Cthulhu woke due to six open gates and ate us after a short Final Battle.

Morgaln said:

He's pulled this stunt on me before. I thought things were going well—hey...are there seven gates open?

We sure learned a slimy, non-euclidean lesson.

That sounds a lot like one of the league scenarios. Our team lost in less than an hour including set-up time. I think it was 4-5 turns total before the AO woke up and devoured us all.

I once had a failure so bad that I had to take a picture of it and upload it to BGG for posterity...

Amanda Sharpe was visiting Wizard's Hill, when the encounter asked her to make a Will -1 check or be devoured. I failed the roll, but didn't sweat too much since I had five clue tokens. Spent one, and rolled a 1. Spent another, rolled a 1... I rolled 1's for all five clue tokens. Wizard Whateley had himself a fresh dinner that night.

Our three failed stabs at Scenario 10 yesterday come close in hurt, but this one incident is just burned in my mind.

I just remembered another one of mine. My cousin went to sentinal hill to get away from some monsters. The mythos card perfectly moved the 2 monsters into 2 different portals and the DH ploped down on top of him. We were highly amused.

Not a game-losing event, but I do remember one particularly horrific run of bad dice juju that triggered ten minutes of life-shortening ranting and exasperation. The Dunwich Horror had awoken, I went at it with Leo Anderson toting an arsenal of death-dealing hardware, the combat re-roll skill and then Mandy's reroll on top of that, all of which tallied up to 24 attack dice... All of which failed.

Twenty. Four. Failed. Rolls. What's the chances on that? 1 in 3 trillion? Somebody explain that, short of dire sorceries.

I attribute my dice-related OCD to that single, inexplicably awful event. Now I never roll on the table, always the floor, to the right of my chair for most rolls, but going to the left for especially dire situations. If the dice hits a table or chair leg before settling, that's good luck.

A bit later, validating my OCD a bit I think, I came across the below video in which Lou Zocchi of GameScience talks about the flaws that can exist in dice models - albeit he focuses primarily on the horrible state of polyhedrals, but he makes mention of how six-siders can be messed up too. I quickly ditched my AH dice (surely those dimples affect the outcome somehow? The six face is lighter than the one face!) and picked up some Federally-approved, accurate-to-within-one 50,000th-of-an-inch casino dice, guaranteed proof against all known gypsy curses and other such eldritch meddling

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=bR2fxoNHIuU

Criswell said:

If you weren't blessed? About 1 in 16,800. If you were Blessed, it would have been 1 in 16,777,216.

Once we needed a character to sneak a Chthonian that was at the Science building in order to drop a gate trophy and get 2 clues. Chthonian is +1 to sneak, right? No problem. Well we spent all our clues and still failed: 23 failed dice.

It was late. That was a huge setback. We gave up and went to bed. Azathoth defeated us!

Tibs said:

If the character had 23 clues, why would you need to go to the science building to get more? Get in some gates and start sealing!

Greed. It then became desperation.

I forget the exact circumstance.

Also we had Mandy's re-roll, so it wasn't 23 clues. But it was still epic failure. That Chthonian was determined.

I remember one game where we were doing rather well. I forget who we were up against. Anyway I looked at the board and said

'I don't want to jinx it but'

My friend said 'no jinx it'

'I don't want to jinx it'

'I want you to go on jinx it'

'You want me to?'

'I want you to'

'Alright then I will. We're doing pretty well.' The moment I finished saying it the htird player who was just reading his encounter whilst this little exchange went on said 'I've been arrested.'

It was just downhill from there.

Mark the Soldier, Marie the Entertainer, Pete the Drifter, and Kate the Scientist...no, wait...Kate ended up drawing the Shub Fight card in Yuggoth while having no monster trophies. >SLURP<

Mark, Marie, Pete, Joe. Five Seals. Very close to winning the game. And that's when The Terrible Experiment came out...with some BAD draws: Gug, Byakhee, Hound, Cthonian, Shoggoth.

The clock started ticking, because failure of the Terrible Experiment seemed inevitable (Marie just wasn’t strong or sane enough, and Pete and Mark were pretty battered in body and mind). We figured the only way we could win this, was to dive Joe into R’lyeh to seal our sixth Gate, and, if we were lucky, Marie could keep fighting the upcoming "wussy monsters" to keep the Experiment at bay long enough to be relieved by Mark and Pete, and hope to God that Cthulhu left Joe alone.

The OTHER Shoggoth popped out of the Unvisited Isle, and ran directly to Marie (at least she had whacked the "TE" Byakhee). Uncaring about her own life—all that mattered now was giving Joe the time to exit and seal—she snuck past the Shoggoth and took on the newest weakest creature currently in the Experiment: the Vampire. It beat her up (she drew Consumption).

Mark ran over to cover, wildly defeating the Shoggoth by the skin of his teeth. Then the Vampire drove him insane (Depression).

This was it. Last turn. SOMEONE had to “success” SOMETHING or it was all over. The weakest creature at the University was still the Vampire (the new ones were a Color Out of Space and a Dimensional Shambler).

Marie ran back to Miskatonic. Pete met her there. Joe exited R’lyeh. Mark joined the gang on campus. Everyone ready to roll.

It seems God was busy elsewhere.

Marie was driven insane by the Vampire (Addiction). Pete was driven insane by the Vampire (the other Addiction—hey, who’s shuffling this stuff anyway???). Joe failed his Gate roll, even after dumping three Clues into it. Mark was beaten senseless by the Vampire (oh, what difference does it make?).

You're probably wondering why the hell I'm treating a failed Terrible Experiment like it's the end of the world. "It's just a maxed-out Terror Track...that's bad, but not game-breaking."

It is if you're playing against Glaaki. Did I not mention Glaaki?

Terror level rises from 2...discard Allies 1-2-3-4-5...spawn Servants of Glaaki 1-2-3-4-5...all Servants on board...Glaaki awakens...Terror level reaches 10...Glaaki devours the whole stinkin’ sorry lot of us.

We did run one round of the Final Battle, just to be sure we weren’t supposed to just hand the victory away...but the Servants had pretty much fleeced us down to our undershorts. We pitifully managed to remove one Doom Token.

.............................does that qualify?

One time at band camp Jim Culiver...you guys heard this one before?

We had a pretty spectacular failure yesterday against Cthulhu. There was an attempt at first to lull us into a false sense of security by giving us great weapons at the beginning. Charlie got a Tommy gun and .45 automatic, Daisy had a Whithering and Flamethrower, Jenny had two revolvers and a Sword of Glory, while Wilson had his trademark shotgun.

The first monster out was a Color from Outer Space at the Historical Society. I intended to kill it with Charlie and the Red Sign, but various circumstances thwarted me, much to our detriment (we got a lot of square movement symbols). The reall trouble started when we failed the Nightmare Pool Rumor. One of the three Mythos cards we had to draw and resolve was the Terrible Experiment rumor! And this experiment was the most terrible one I have ever seen. It started off with the Dhole, the Star Vampire, a Star Spawn, a Dark Young and a Formless Spawn. During our efforts to keep it in check we killed the Formless Spawn, a Hound of Tindalos, a Crawling One, a Cultist and I think a Gug. We also had to kill a Fire Vampire, a Ghoul, a Nightgaunt, another Crawling One and the Gnoph-Ka, all of which moved to the Miskatonic University street space.

A total of three gates opened in Dunwich. We managed to shut one, but Dunwich Horror awoke at about the same time a Rift opened. Then a little later the Color sent every one of our characters to the Asylum at once and yet another Rift opened! After that it wasn't long before the third Rift opened. We had three gates sealed, but there was no way we were going to get the last three. I let the Terrible Experiment go off and we faced our destiny (a quick and horrible death).

Rex the Reporter, Luke the Dreamer, Mark the Soldier and Bob the Salesman. We were playing Kingsport and the Black Goat . Abhoth was the Ancient One.

The first two gates were Historical Society and Science Building. I hate when minor gates open early. That means that there are still seven common gates to open that are beyond our control.

Luke promised Rex that he'd come through one of the gates and Bless him. Third card was a Kingsport rumor that dropped two more doom tokens that would cost a skill and Blessing to remove, so Rex's blessing went to Bob who bravely gave up his Bravery (everyone had great skills) for the cause.

Rex had an Elder sign from the beginning but because of his Curse could never get close enough the a gate to go in. Mark was forever up in the Other Worlds as Gates opened on him everytime, so he was never around to clear.

Still we seemed to be getting the game under control.

Toward the end Rex was was Lost in Time and Space and decided to come back to Kingsport, which were had been ignoring until then to gather the clues that hand landed there and slow down a rift that was about the pop. He obtained the only Ally of the game Asenath Waite. At that point we had two gates sealed, Mark and Luke were in the Other Worlds with enough clue tokens to seal and two doom tokens left on the Abhoth.

Luke was first player and drew a Kingsport Mythos that brought on the 10th gate. But worse yet was the Headline. If Asenath Waite is in play, discard and add a doom token! I now better understand the meaning of Sudden Death!

Solan said:

Played a game with four players (later five) going against Nyarlathotep that didn't end in epic failure but really did not go easy on the new guys. The first one was playing the proffesor (Harvey?) and started with Voice of Ra, Flesh Ward, and Withering for combat. That's all he had until near the end of the game when he managed to become the deputy. Since the rest of us were the Magician, the Psychiatrist, and Jenny we had a tough time trying to get clue tokens with a number of magical resistors that were spawning and getting the Formless Spawn and Bloody Tongue coming out on the first turn (to make the game challenging) and a Starspawn and Warlock on the second. Harvey on the other hand got sucked through a gate virtually every time he closed one (having spent what tokens he had on rerolls so he could sneak by monsters and get sucked into the gate and its relative safety). Then when he found the Find Gate spell he got delayed roughly every other time he got sucked in.

For the other new player, he played Joe and decided to take on the Black Man. his chances were good but he failed miserably. His next character was the doctor and he decided to stay there since he had no weapons to fight the Witch in the street. That Mythos phase the Hound moved to him. And KO'd him. Twice. The third time (two of us were in Other worlds, one delayed, another lost in time and space after getting whipped by the Pharoh in the Abyss, and Jenny didn't have the items to deal with it) he was driven insane and went to the asylum. That turn the bloody tongue (respawn number three) moved to the streets from Independence Square. Since failing to sneak by meant going back to the hound or staying where he was, he decided to stay there until someone killed the toungue.

Needless to say, the newbies weren't pleased at being bombarded with monsters and bad encounters while the rest of us found items and racked in trophies without much difficulty.

Gatha said:

You mean he drew a new char, Vincent "I Totally Suck" Lee, the Doctor and didn't move away from the Hospital because a Witch was on the red street (Uptown?) and then Hound moved on to him? Hound of Tindalos can't pop in at Asylum or Hospital IIRC.

first and so far only time playing with the Black Goat expansion (all the others were in there too), 8 players. on the first turn 6 of those players got "a gate and a monster appear" and it was gg