When you reach into the Monster Cup, you want to draw something easy to defeat, like a Maniac or a Cultist or maybe (if you're kitted out correctly) a treasure monster, like a Mi-Go or a Tcho-Tcho . Which the monster do you hate to draw and why?

Colour out of Space is my bogey-man. Immune to all physical and magical weapons, hurrendous Sanity damage and a movement effect that you really don't want hanging around in Arkham.

Mummy. Virtually indestructible unless you're armed to the teeth since it has three toughness and double resistance, does quite a bit of damage, crescent symbol so you can't banish it, stalker movement so it almost always ends up in an inconvenient place, and an evade modifier that's difficult for many investigators to get past.

(Star vampire is even worse in most regards, but it's not magically resistant and it can be banished)

Rat-Things came close - easy enough to kill, but if one is in the way you can't really evade it, and if you don't have any useless items you can't fight it either.

The Star Vampire heads our list of monsters we hate to draw. -3 Awareness, -3 to the Horror check, 3 Sanity damage for failing, -3 to the Combat check, three Stamina damage for failing, three toughness, physical resistance and he's a stalker! As the prior poster noted he is magically vulnerable, but unlike the Mummy and the Dhole, he is extremely difficult to evade and that's what guarantees him his place at the top.

The Colour and Hound of Tindalos also generally draw groans, and I absolutely despise the Crawling Ones! Most powerful one toughness monster ever!

Dark Youngs early on, when investigators are not able to deal with them efficiently. Other monsters may be more resistant or damaging, but there are a lot of Dark Youngs so they are drawn more often (I currently play with BGotW, KiY and DH). Although I'm about to mix in Innsmouth and Kingsport monsters too, so that should dilute them somehow, hoping those expansions don't add more of them to the cup!

I tend to remove the monsters that came with black goat unless I am actually playing with the black goat expansion. I too hate the frequency of the dark young.

Veet said:

Huh. I * love* dark young. Is it just me?

Avi_dreader said:

I'm more of a Shoggoth person myself.

The square monsters in general piss me off.

Cthonian! I always play stamina 3 players, and he always pops up on an early gate. I don't mind him for random encounters, though, as he's pretty easy to avoid.

Yithian .

As far as relatively tough monsters go, those guys are on the lower end of the spectrum. But seriously, somehow, someway a Yithian always manages to screw us over somehow every game one is drawn in. Me and someone I play with often like to joke that every time a Yithian has an encounter with an investigator, they get a +4 Luck check to immediately have the encounter go the worst way it possibly can for the investigator.

Shoggoth gets honorable mention. If only because it seems like Innsmouth added like 12 of them to the cup instead of 2 sometimes.

Hound of Tindalos gets honorable mention as well. A few people I play with a lot always groan, but I have a love-hate relationship going with him. He's by far the most interesting monster to draw. Every time one comes out, things get real, so to speak, and everyone at the table is like "ok, A-game people!" Haha. ^^

We love Shoggoths, but in a 'oh $h1t, its a shoggoth' sorta way. Past coupla games we seem to have had an A.I. Shoggy coz as soon as anyone went after it who stood a chance, it moved out of reach, only returning when some poor sap with a knife was vulnerable. /facepalm

On a different but related note, we have been moaking fun of monster names, such as annoucning 'CTHOOOONIAN' in a Kovonia stylee, and drawling out 'hey...Mi-Go...' in a mexican stylee.

Mature, arent we?

b

Avi_dreader said:

Nope

MustardTheTroops said:

In today's game I had a Cthonian stucked at Devil reef since Mythos zero. The problem? I was playing with Tsathogghua + King in Yellow + a custom herald, and the gate at Devil reef lead to R'lyeh (so Silas couldn't reach that location to get rid of that monster). What a marvellous game it has been ::laughter::

As a guy who still only has Vanilla Arkham, I Dread the Hounds of Tindalos. Evil, evil vile creatures.

But other things surprise and destroy you. Yesterday one of my low-willed invetigators was reading in the library, fell asleep and went to the dreamlands, and encountered a Shoggoth - and was lost in time and space immediately.

Trying to imagine that in-universe was hilarious.

The Colour Out of Space sure is in my top 3.
Easy to sneak past but still remains one tough b*tch.

No-one who hates it to see a Dhole end up on the board?
I usually end up avoiding these unless armed to the teeth ...

For my group it is the colour out of space, it's movement is nasty and the only investigators able to handle it in combat cant because of the high sanity damage. actually green-bordered monsters tend to get the most pain-inducing stares in general. following them seems to be the yellow-bordered, mostly because of them being stationary as well as fairly difficult to evade and their relatively high toughness. This is probably also related to them popping up ontop of gates appearing and the guys who want to go in and close the gate arent really equipped to deal with these monsters, while the monster hunters dont really want to enter the other worlds.

The rest are frightening but evadeable in many instances, honourable mention has to go to the shoggoth, which has surprised many an investigator by its double movement.

Related to this we have a very hard time trading in certain monster trophies, hounds, colours and shoggoths seem to be permanent trophies, since we do our best to not drawing them from the cup again.

Racso said:

Another reason why I don't specialise investigators into set roles, well, apart from everyone being a jack-of-all-trades. Each investigator is expected to seal at least one gate over the course of the game, taking on and out any such monsters that are in their way or they encounter.

Yeah I agree, but I suppose whenever one of us draws one of the fighters(gangster,soldier, PI and so on) that guy tends to roam the streets and have a strong aversion to anything otherworldly

Racso said:

Oh, you're still in the Mark Harrigan is a Fighter phase of AH ? Marky-Mark is special ops, going in covert.

But all those you listed have a high stat for gate-closing and I can't imagine what could possibly be the reason for Joe Diamond not to hit OWs. Any check he's coming up against, each Clue buys him 2 dice for it and has Focus 3 to boot. Out of those three, Joe would by my first choice to hit OWs.

Gugs and Dholes. The former not so much because it's actually that bad in the grand scheme of things, but because we always draw them at the worst possible time . And they always hang around exactly where we don't want them to. The latter because, well...they're dholes. They tend to sit right in front of the investigator with the worst chance of fighting them, too.

Though there was the time one poor guy got jumped by two Hounds of Tindalos. Ow. (Somehow, he actually survived, but that was not a good situation...)

Least favorite monsters (in no particular order)

Servitor of the Outer Gods, Lloligor, Dhole, Tcho-Tcho Priest, and Star Vampire

I hate to draw the Star Vampire, more as an Encounter than as a Gate Incursion. At least if it's on the board, you can try to avoid it; if it lands on top of you...the ill-prepared usually go down.

My Cultists (especially Pizza) choose the Color Out of Space, and I don't disagree. Investigators are often stuck wandering for several turns on low Sanity; every Mythos card becomes a nail-biter, because even a "good" Mythos card can put you down if the wrong symbol's on it.

For Street Incursions, I hate Lloigors. Very difficult to get rid of, especially if you lack respect for the Spell deck. A Lloigor on a Gate still has a chance to hurt you, even if you get to ignore it while closing that Gate, but a Lloigor in the Streets adjacent to multiple spaces is a pain. Had a Lloigor in the Merchant District once (maximum possible 8 targeted spaces!); it was like trying to avoid a toxic gas cloud in the middle of the board.

I think the Color Out of Space is the best designed monster in the game. Everything about it is perfect. It doesn't have any unnecessary powers. It doesn't need a great Awareness. It doesn't need a Toughness of three. It has everything it needs to make a big splash in the game. It's only flaw is that you can max out your fight and use Clue tokens to overcome the Horror modifier. If you have a decent Fight and three Clue tokens, you can probably take the Color as a trophy and effectively keep it out of play for the rest of the game. But even so, it's a great monster.

Some monsters like the Dhole and Star Vampire are like, "Look at me! I've got stats from hell!" But the Color demonstrates that awesome stats are less important than stats that are balanced well.

avec said:

Heh... It still costs 2-3 clues though ;'D and sometimes it nails the investigator anyway (those are the funniest times).

Dam: Yeah I suppose we are too entrenched in designating people for specific roles. regarding their gate-closing abilities I think we are more concerned with getting through the other world than closing the gates afterwards and luck/lore and speed/sneak seems to be the most important stats for surviving in there(I recall those with high stamina not being that good in that regard)