http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=2169

I'm uncertain about the the idea of these Battle Events and Battle Conditions; I wish they'd explained exactly how those cards will be added to the existing Epic Battle deck. The new Guardian cards were fine, though my group never uses Guardians. Finally, I am very pleased at the ending promise that Miskatonic Horror will be released this quarter, but considering its status is still listed as at the printer, I don't see how they hope to get it in stores before the end of June.

Seems (almost) self-explanatory to me. The question remains, though, are these shuffled in and then a certain number (8 or so) drawn as the final deck from each color? They seem to all be "do this, then draw again," so if they are all like that, they will most likely keep the number the same. And people with custom Epic Battle Variants (based off of seals, rolling a die, shuffling in the red cards, etc) can include some, all, or none of these specialty cards.

My guess, include these with the epic battle cards.

Since the cards are "do this, draw again," my guess is that they are simply added to the epic battle cards, but the deck is not then whittled down to 16 cards.

Unfortunately for me, I'll have to revise my final combat house rules a bit to accommodate these new cards.

I thought of you while posting, Tibs. Depending on the amount of added cards, maybe add the same amount of "those" cards to the deck. So sometimes when you roll, you draw a regular card, and other times you draw one of those (And draw again). You'll have to experiment with the proper amount of what to add. Maybe 1 per seal, or, as mentioned, 1 per Epic Battle card added...

You'll have to see how their fully utilized, but I think that's a good jumping point!

So - the final battle environment previewed makes sixes count one extra, and ones count even less.

It says "not including any bonuses or penalties to the die", but does that include George Barnaby's "increase result by 1 with a clue" power, and if Mandy Thompson or the Marksman skill causes the die to be re-rolled, does the 1 still count?

I'd say no, it doesn't count if Mandy/Marksman/Bullwhip/Darke's Blessing causes it to be rerolled (and the same with any sixes rerolled), and I'm really not sure about George.

(I'm reading "bonus/penalty" to refer to things like the Grapple skill, or the Taint of Evil green epic battle card, but it could also apply to George's shifting power)

I'm really happy to see that Hypnos deck will provide some interaction between boards. Even if I'm not a big fan of Guardians, it seems like they're trying really to give a deeper dimension of playing to multiboard games. And the new Nodens card is great too.

Unfortunately I almost never play a multiboard game. I simply don't have the space to support a table of that size! I have a foldout picnic table which can hold the main board, the decks, and one, maybe two expansion boards at once.

For those of you who are fond of three expansion boards at once, how do you manage? Do you just have a single massive table, or do you use supplemental card tables for other boards? I'm apartmenting it up right now, splitting a single with my fiance so space is very limited. Maybe in the future we'll have a game room, with a massive table that can fit this entire three board game on it.

As for the new decks, I'm very excited for them. Like most other forum-goers, I have finally organized all decks conveniently and have no more room, but I'm more than willing to buy another ribbon sorting box or two if it means awesome increases of new decks like this. My guess is the final battle conditions and effects will be shuffled into the main green deck, and maybe some more dire ones for the red deck. That way you won't know whether you'll draw a condition or a battle card until you pick up the next one. Maybe only one or two per game, out of a wider selection of eight or so.

MustardTheTroops said:

Yeah...I can support Arkham and one expansion board on my table (as long as there's only 3 players :-P). If I go more than that, I'll have to set up on the floor...and maybe move my couch.

Same, one expansion board maximum due to space limitations, with 4 investigators, one herald and one guardian. I still have to keep some things in a box on a chair next to me

I was hoping they were going to add more AO Plot cards!

More, new Guardians and Heralds maybe? Actually, new AOs and Investigators would be very nice too...

Tox said:

Heh...we use 3 chairs in addition to the table to hold everything. :-P

I have two gaming groups now (just introduced it to my second group last weekeknd).

For the first we're barely fitting it on the table as it is - and this is using several business card holders to reduce the footprint!

I'm trying to convince my mate and his wife to invest in a bigger dinner table!

Nameless1 said:

Hm...that's an idea (the business card holders, that is). I'll have to look into that and see if it would help.

Also I'm not entirely clear on interpreting this epic battle cards - lacking the Kingsport expansion.

Still, I'm hopeful that it updates KiY - which I still have to introduce to the mix once we have the fundamentals down.

Also like the theme of CotDP might pick that up as well.

I was reading just the other day a thread about spells being about 60% impractical (either unbalanced, underpowered for sanity loss, etc).

I don't suppose spell cards would be revised in MH as well?

Thanks Sdrolion! Not sure where I got the idea. Maybe BGG or from seeing one in a store.

You can try to get some 8 business card stands. I have 2 of them and they hold 8 location decks and the upper half of the mythos and gate decks (being a bit thicker I shuffle and put the upper half on there).

The smaller card can double up 2 to a pocket.

Of course with expansions you have more decks. I think I have an image of the setup somewhere. I can try to dig it up if you'd like a look.

Sdrolion said:

Yeah we use something similar. What's cool is the the length of the small cards is the width of the large cards. This means that if you find an adjustable box in which to store your small cards, when you take them out, you can stand the location cards upright in them.

With experienced players I'd also recommend putting the small cards on the board at the most suitable location. Common Items go onto the General Store, Unique Items at the Curiosity Shop, Madness at the Asylum, Silver Twilight at the StL, blessings at the church, etc. Players who are familair with the game don't need to read the board text, and it makes finding the right cards a lot easier.

Nameless1 said:

Depends which expansions. Base game, Dunwich, King in Yellow, and Lurker all add far more useful spells than useless ones. Kingsport's spells are mostly terrible. Black Goat's spells are entirely terrible - but hey, it's only four cards out of the entire deck, so it doesn't really matter. Original Dark Pharaoh's spells are strange, but mostly not great - but the spells are almost certainly going to be revised or completely rewritten for the new version, so we'll see.

Spells are certainly harder to use than items - and you need an Investigator who is actually good at spellcasting - but they're generally pretty useful in the right hands.

cim said:

Agreed. Even though I almost never shop for spells ;'D

cim said:

Yeah, spells seems to be best used for the utility purposes, and only for combat if you don't have any better solution (it's easy to get "stranded" in combat by a failed spell roll, for one thing...a buddy of mine recently failed 3 attack spell castings in a row, in the same combat, leaving him with no hope whatsoever of victory and a sneak rating too low to escape O_O).

I don't know about all the Kingsport spells being bad, though. It does have Forced Learning, and while I wouldn't go out of my way to get that one, it's very handy if you happen to end up with it.

Thanks to everyone for the neat arrangement ideas...I'll see about getting some card holders or something and see if that helps the table situation. (Putting the item cards on the board isn't a bad idea either!)

Sdrolion said:

Heh... I often forget that not everyone does that. It freaks me out when people have non-maximally efficient storage methods for their decks ;'D

I play on my floor, and leave it out...

Also, I put the encounter card decks close to the neighborhoods, on the boards. Sure it covers some of the "lines" from location to streets (Some of them, anyway), but we all know that the locations go to the corresponding street!

EcnoTheNeato said:

Yeah, I'll probably be popping the cards onto the proper locations next time I play. That sounds good.

Sorry, I seem to have derailed this thread a bit. O_O

Sdrolion said:

Even for combat they're pretty good for the Lore 5/6 types who probably won't fail too many spell checks. Shrivelling is by far the best attack in the base game, especially with two. Wither is as good as an enchanted knife and considerably easier to get. Storm of Spirits (KiY) is fairly good for high Lore, low Fight investigators (which is most of the spellcasters) and ridiculously good in Agnes' hands. And then of course there's the Lloigor which can only be harmed by spells!

Forced Learning's okay, true, but probably half the time the skill you get won't actually be very useful. On a spellcaster I'd usually rather have another random spell than a random skill (and for a non spell-caster Forced Learning is expensive to cast). Implant Suggestion isn't bad - potentially better than Mists of Releh against some monsters. That still leaves well over half the Kingsport spell cards being the dreadful combat spells, though.

Thinking about it, even with all the expansions so far in, for raw dice two Shrivellings [1] is still the best attack in the game if you can reliably cast it.

Cursed Sphere is also one-handed +6 exhaust and takes a sanity or stamina, and is more reliable than spellcasting ... but there's only one of it so you can't use two at once.

Molotov Cocktail is +6 one-handed, but is physical rather than magical (so more resists it) and is discarded after a single use. Other than that the best magical weapons are +5 one-handed or +9 two-handed.

Staff of the Pharaoh + Dread Curse is as good, and it may be easier to make one -2 check than two -1 checks, in the right circumstances, I suppose.

[1] Okay, technically Marie using three Shrivellings is even better.

cim said:

cim said:

The friend of mine who failed 3 spell checks in a row was playing a Lore 5 character. Just really bad luck. But yeah...Shrivelingx2 is awesome.

Forced Learning + Lola's skill-switching could be quite good. Honestly, I don't think 2 Sanity is all that expensive, though. Even if you have to go to the asylum afterwards, that's $2 for a skill as opposed to $8 at the Administration building.

That's 2 sanity for every time you try to cast it, though. For a Lore 3/4 character it's not necessarily going to work first time. (But yes, for Lola, it's great)