arkham horror is a fun and exciting game... i love every bit of the core game .... i sometimes feel like adding some expansion to the game but thinking that the game will drag on for too long??? do i miss anything important if i just stick with the core game????

YMMV, as you only need to add as many parts of an expansion as you care to use.

My current setup is to play base Arkham with the "personal stories" option from Innsmouth Horror added in, which tends to make things slightly faster than base Arkham alone since there are conditions that would let you instantly seal gates or cause the Ancient One to be summoned quicker.

If you want a quick and challenging expansion game, try The King In Yellow. There are a number of cards that will speed along the doom track and the terror track, along with an instant loss if the Act III card is played.

The expansion pieces most likely to make the game take forever would be adding the board from one or more large expansions such as Dunwich, Innsmouth, and/or Kingsport.

If you don't add new mechanics the game shouldn't really take any longer. You can easily buy an expansion and just use the new cards or new investigators, without adding new complications, if you're interested in that. (Also, if all you want is new investigators/AOs/Heralds, may I suggest our "Fan Creations" board?)

Arkham Horror expansions are delightfully modular. You can really use just about whatever you want from each expansion.

I have Kingsport and Lurker right now...Lurker does not add much in the way of complication even if you are using all of it, so it might be a good one to go with if you just want to spice things up a little (plus, relationship cards are very cool). Kingsport likewise adds a bunch of things that can be easily used even if you aren't using the new board, like a few heralds, a few guardians, and the epic battle cards. Aside from some initial slowdown in learning how the new stuff works, probably, I don't think you'd have much added time from incorporating any of that.

Really, it's probably just actually using the new boards that could add some significant time (and in some cases, if you do very badly, significantly shorten your games, too O_O). But you never have to use the boards (though they can be fun), so I wouldn't worry too much about added time, overall.

The only real concern on added time I've had from expansions has been from gate bursts, which can remove your seals. These do add challenge but I found them to add too much time to the game since we tend to be playing later in the day and having to get up early. I have some suggested alternate rules for those in the google doc accessible from my signature, or I'm sure others on the forums can provide alternative rules if you search. Use them in their default rules first, though...you may find they aren't too time-consuming for you.

This kind of brings up a related point I've wanted to ask. I've acquired my first two expansions - King in Yellow and Lurker at the Threshold, and my question is this: How do you guys integrate things into the base game? I'm asking for personal opinions, because here's my dilema. I want to be able to play 'themed' games - a King in Yellow Game, for example. And when I play that, I want to get King in Yellow themed items and cards. But not all the cards in the KIY expansion are so themed - so I want to know what you guys do to separate them.

Does that make sense or thereabouts? I'm looking for any advice, comments or opinions.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean.

What you're describing sounds vaguely like the "touring production" of King In Yellow described in that expansion's rules. "Touring Production" puts the location, mythos, and gate cards for King In Yellow on top of the relevant decks to ensure that it moves that expansion's plot along. The rules spell out in big, bold letters that it is for advanced Arkham Horror players because of the tendency for the game to move along quickly due to actions that affect the terror track and doom track.

If that's not what you mean, then you may want to start playing with the decks for the various items and spells to ensure that things like the King In Yellow book, the understudy copy of the play, etc., come up more often.

Master Fwiffo said:

My item decks include all the item cards from all expansions. For me, it would be way too much of a hassle to separate the item decks every game, and to segregate for every expansion during storage.

Playing with Innsmouth + Dunwitch alone can speed the game quite a bit as you have lots of new unstable locations lowering the likelyhood of monster surges or gate seals preventing the doom track from advancing. Also there are gate bursts which can do the same thing, but you can get the gate burst effect with Lurker and Black Goat as well.

Master Fwiffo said:

Well... It depends on how much time you're willing to spend on mythos and encounter deck assembly... I tend to mix everything in, and usually when a new expansion comes out, I either play that in a more limited form (like I'll just cut out some random part of the mythos deck so it has about the same number of mythos cards in the base game and mix in the new cards after studying them). It depends on how fastidious or time effective you're willing to be. If you want to play themed games, I'd suggest playing several themed games of the same theme in a row, otherwise you're going to have to be constantly constructing and reconstructing your decks.

Actually I should probably ask this here on the topic of expansions.

I own the King in Yellow expansion and have yet to incorporate it into the base game setup.

I get the two modes (Touring and Performance).

Touring mode being a harder variant where the various decks (investigator, mythos, gate, etc) are NOT shuffled into the general AH deck, whereas in Performance mode they are (and accordingly more suceptible to dilution due to the reliance on the Mythos deck).

Questions:

1) With Miskatonic Horror apparently replacing the Act cards, wouldn't the distinction in terms of difficultly between these two modes be eliminated?

2) I've never run a herald before or a game with a herald variant. Does one run the KiY herald alone with the base AH or in conjunction with either the Touring/Performance mode?

If you do it sounds really difficult. If you don't then it sounds like you effectively have some decks unused in a KiY themed game. Either you use the new decks and leave the herald and blight cards alone, or the reverse.

What do KiY veterans usually run during their games?

Clarification on this would be most appreciated!

Nameless1 said:

1) It's not possible for us to fully answer that question as we have only seen the Overture card. Without fully seeing the rules and cards, this is a matter of speculation. However having both sets of Act decks may allow you to set your own difficulty by using the Act cards you feel are most appropriate for your environment. Hence Act III might always require a Next Act Begins card, whereas Acts I and II might be triggered by Environment (Mystic) or whatever curveball MH will throw at us.

Playing with separate Mythos decks will preserve the theme however, as events which relate to the accursed play and it's effects on Arkham will come up more often. The value of this will be dependent on how strongly your cultists welcome narrative into their games.

2) You can use the Herald independently of all the King in Yellow cards, or you can mix all your cards in. It's really up to you.