Okay, so the objective (1B, I think) says (paraphrased):

"If four cultists are in the chapel, spawn a cthonian and reveal this objective"

"If the cthonian is not killed within four turns, the Keeper wins."

"If Event 5 is resolved and an investigator has Clue 1, the investigators win."

So, what happens if both criteria are fulfilled? Last night, I spawned the Cthonian in the last round of Event four. That left four rounds until Event 5 would be resolved . The investigators did not kill the cthonian. At the end of the fourth round, Event 5 was revealed, and the investigators had Clue 1. So... who the heck wins? Sure seems like it should be the Keeper, but the cards aren't exactly clear.

Some guy asked this question in BGG and claimed to have answer from Designer :

- If the Last Event card is drawn Investigators win if they have Clue 1 (even if Cthonian has been summoned)

So that means you summoned the Cthonian just one turn too late. Your only hope at winning the scenario at that time (not bad, considering you had a Cthonian at your disposal) was to kill ALL investigators, which is always a Keeper victory after Objective is revealed.

Acererak said:

If this is truly a response from the designed, I find it pretty disappointing. The flavor text on the 'investigators win' objective and on the fifth event card indicate that the investigators are successful because they prevented the ceremony from taking place. That completely doesn't jive with a chtonian already being present on the board. How in heck are you supposed to tell a good story if the cards themselves don't make any sense? Here's the basic flow of what happened:

Event 4 was resolved (paraphrased): "The ceremony is about to begin!" Move each cultist one space.

- So, I moved the fourth cultist into the chapel. Bing! The Cthonian is summoned.

Four turns pass, which triggers Event 5.

- Now, after *four* turns, the investigators have prevented the ceremony to summon the Cthonian? But, didn't it appear four turns ago? It doesn't make any sense, at all.

Acererak said:

Not possible. The Cthonian, just like all other monsters, can only move two spaces per turn. Investigators can move three. Even if they're in the chapel when the Chtonian is summoned, they just have to run away and the Keeper can never catch them. The investigators were well aware of this. After the Cthonian was revealed, they read the objective card and saw that they needed to have Clue 1 when Event 5 was resolved. So, they just walked away from the Cthonian and went to get the clue. Which makes no thematic sense, because the only thing the clue tells them is that the cultists are trying to summon a Cthonian and it must be prevented. "Uh, no, really? We just left the Cthonian in the other room." The next four rounds might as well not have been playedthe investigator win was inevitable (even though a big, honking Cthonian is sitting in the chapel, growing for four rounds).

So far, I have to say that I really like the game system, but the end game in every scenario I've played has been pretty poor (scenario 1, objectives 1A and 1B, and scenario 2, with this objective). For S1.1A and this game with S2, the cards just don't make sense (in S1.1A, the objective to kill Walter was revealed, but Walter hadn't even appeared on the board yet). For S1.1B, none of the underlying story is revealed to the investigators by the text on the cards. All they know is they're looking for clues for awhile, then a shoggoth spawns and they're told they have to kill it to win. None of the backstory about alternate dimensions in the basement is ever detailed or explained. Really, really disappointing that the end game is not living up to the rest of the game... :-(

Well, I believe your problem is one that I am afraid many people will have when playing the game. I think this game is not good at telling the story. Actually, the story does not matter at all. Like you say, in most scenarios the Investigators, even if gathering all the clues, won´t have a clear idea of what was going on. The abundant flavor text in the cards is there to help you create a good atmosphere and make for a very good narrative during gameplay. But the story is just a setting, it does not drive the game. The clue following process has no deduction at all, is just a very basic mechanic of keys and locks.

Now the discussion would be wether you were expecting this to be different, and feel disappointed (fair enough, but be ready to keep getting disappointed as you keep playing) or try to understand why the design was made like this. For me, there are two good answers for it :

1. Replayability. If the game just told one story per scenario, with a clear ending to that story, once you played it, you would probably never enjoy playing it again (you know all the details, like reading a book), so what is the point?). Since this game aims at having some replayability (like any boardgame) it had to drop the story telling stuff at some point of the design process. But to get a cool effect : if you try the adventures again,you will find the game turns into something more deceiving when everyone knows what could happen (story obejctives), but is not sure what will do happen (which one picked the Keeper). This is another reason for having Keeper Action cards always provide a bonus (besides sometimes being the way to win the scenario). You can deceive players by making them think you were going for one thing, while you eere actually going for another...

2. Lovecraftian atmosphere. In HP Lovecraft books (and to a certain extent, in the RPG), most of the times the Investigators don´t understand what´s going on (because their puny minds never were meant to), and end up going mad or even comitting suicide. At the end, they realize that it would probably have been much more wise to stay blind and deaf, to not know what was buolding in the shadowy corners of the world. and quite often, they have no chance at all of winning or even just surviving.

I have learnt to love the game for what it really is, and not for what I was expecting it to be. If you want to have a great story told, then pick up any RPG out there. This is a boardgame, don´t forget.

Or you could be super ambitious and rewrite the clue cards and add some flavor text to various rooms to have the ending work better. But that's just what I would do (and did for one scenario ending already)

This same thing happened to me in the last game, there needs to be an errata saying that the '4 rounds to kill the cthonian' overrides the investigator objective - otherwise the win text for the investigators is totally contradictory as the OP noted.

Acererak said:

The designers may not have considered the specific case when there are *exactly* 4 turns left. They may have been addressing situations where there are fewer than 4 turns left. In this case, as written, the investigators clearly have the win. Event IV (1B) reads:

"The ritual is about to begin" The keeper may move each cultist 1 space.

This indicates an design oversight. This clearly is intended to move cultists into the Chapel during the normal course of events. One fix might be to have event V take 5 turns to be revealed instead of 4.

This really needs some kind of eratta.