Am new to Arkham Horror and have played only a few games, but are membership to the silver lodge and retainers meant to be really rare?

Of the other special cards blessings/deputy are all easy to get once you reach the pre reqs and bank loan you can have one any time you want (pretty much), think in about 3 games only 2 retainers have come up (one on the photographer and one from newpaper) and silver lodge membership has not come up at all, although i did have a quick look through the cards and only 2 of the cards for that location give you chance to get membership.

Only have the base set at the moment, waiting for the re-print of pharoh to come out.

Thanks in advance for any responses.

Ryan

Yup. The only time I get a membership is when there is nothing else to do and I'm near the lodge. I just go hang out in the Silver Twilight Lodge with 3$ and hope I run into Carl.

On the plus side, some of the encounters in the inner sanctum are really good. Other times, you just get cursed.

As for the retainers, hang out by the newspaper long enough and someone will offer you one. Not quite as hard to get, as I think all but one of the base-set newspaper encounters are good.

Hello, welcome to the game. Yes, Silver Twilight membership is quite rare, but not *THAT* rare. In my opinion Sheldon's Gang is more rare (I've never counted the cards that give membership), but maybe that's because I tend to hang out at the Lodge more often than the Woods.

But what is really rare is a railpass . I've never been offered one of those (29 games since I added the first expansion board)

Tox said:

Almost 90 games under my belt and I had the chance to activate coded messages only twice. Both without having any chance to activate them really. Never ever drawn encoutners for any of the other DH special cards, though.

Anyway, considering the original poster probably plays with only the base games... start farming the Newspaper, you'll find quite easily a retainer (even if you can get one in a couple of other places too). As for the STL membership... it's a little rare... in case you will pick up Dunwhich, there is a character starting with a Membership. An interesting lady to play with!

Note: dont hang out too long with encounters since its not a RPG but a Survival. We have a players who like to build things around his investigator and often cost us the game since he SO like to do enounters and wastes precious turns taking ''guess'''....make it clear at start of the game what kind of strategy you'll use to defeat the evil one.

Rare Book Collection. I find the dread necronomicon extremely rarely, and almost never go to the library. I don't think I've ever flipped up that card. All the conditions are kinda hard to get, I guess.

Also, I've never once made the trek to get Changed on the Kingsport board. A potential five turns of doing nothing is often fatal, unless all the major portals are sealed, and even then Kingsport has too many gate bursts for comfort.

And freakin' Blessing of Bast! I've actually had a kitty-cat token when "The story continues..." is drawn, but I wasn't first player! Argh!

MustardTheTroops said:

we've got changed alot.

there's the great mirror card in CotDP that lets you use the encounter-replacer text from a location without having to go there (changed!), the mythos card when first player gets lost in the fog and ends up at the house (changed!), also, the deputy's car takes you there, albeit ending movement.. like usual (changed!).

my personal goal is to get the sheldon gang membership with mark harrigan to be immune to the arrest-part of the card. however, we have since we got the game never ever managed to get the membership on a single investigator..

Lodge membership as a big trap, you can guarantee that as soon as anybody get's membership a gate opens there the very next turn! It's almost as if the Lodge do retuals or something...

The inner sanctum cards from the base game are not all that great IIRC, although I'm not in the habit of reading all of the encounter cards. The expansions I have (Innsmouth, Curse and Black Goat) have seemed to make pursuit of Lodge membership a little more rewarding.

I wouldn't spend my time 'chasing' lodge membership. The chances of gaining one are slim, then the chances of being able to use it are even slimmer. Either the location itself becomes unstable or other events around Arkham draw you away.

STL is almost always stop 1 or 2 for people starting in the lower-right (Mark and Mary in particular). Even better if it has gotten a second clue. As such, STL Membership isn't uncommon at all.

Thanks for your help, lots to look forward to by the sound of it.

Ironically i did manage to get membership last night, went there to pick up some clue tokens and got it as the encounter, had 3 inner sanctum encounters (2 nice to very nice and one monster). Was ok as i stumbled upon it, but i agree i would not have gone searching for it, thanks again.

Despite frequently spending a few turns hanging out at the newspaper, I have never once managed to actually get a retainer. O_O Terrible drawing luck, I guess.

Dam said:

Mary doesn't start with enough money to join the order. If she's asked to join, she won't be able to pay, which means she'll need to pass a Will -1 check or lose 3 Stamina. Since she only has 3 Stamina, this knocks her unconscious and causes her to lose half of her items and clues. So sending Mary to the STL isn't necessarily a good idea.

avec said:

and mark is better off to be sent to historical (for fourth clue) and then to woods (for fifth clue) so that when next mythos opens a gate at woods, he gets sucked in, isn't delayed, has only one encounter in there, doesn't have to evade monsters and can seal on the way out.

the only character we go to twilight lodge with at the start at close to every game is Diana.

avec said:

She starts Blessed and knowing she'll head there, maxed Will of course. And with Injury/Madness, she loses nothing but her turn should she get knocked out.

As for Mark, I prefer to avoid the big-4 before they open if I can, because they pack "a gate and a monster appears" encounters. STL/Hist Society, then the other place, then a gate for Mark.

Dam said:

I'd be pretty leery about maxing Mary's Will, since her Sanity is 7, her Stamina is 3, and her Focus is 1. If a monster appeared, she'd have her Holy Water, but after that's gone she's screwed.

I don't mean to be pedantic. I've gotten burned sending Mary to the STL. I usually don't send her there unless she's got $3.

Bah, Mary always does well for me . If you leave her Will at 3, it's still 2 dice needing on 4+ to not get beaten bad. Sure, ideally I'd want whoever goes there to have $3, but that's not always the case, then you just have to be prepared for the Will check.

Sure, she'll do well if Sanford asks her to join the order. But if her Will is 3, then her Fight is 1. She's not going to do very well if a monster appears. With a Sanity of 7, she doesn't really need a high Will, since she can afford to fail a couple Horror checks. But with a Stamina of 3, she's needs to make almost every Combat check. That's going to be hard to do if her Fight is 1 and she has only one weapon, which she discards after a single use. If her Fight is 1, I'd be reluctant to send her to an unstable location. Also, her Focus is 1, so if her Fight is set at 1, it's going to be 2-3 turns before she can cope against even the weaker monsters.

As I recall, you play speed Arkham. If Mary's initial Fight is set at 1, and the average game is only 12-15 turns, it's got to really hurt if Mary has virtually no chance against monsters for the first 2-3 turns.

Then it's a good thing monsters are irrelevant to winning games, isn't it ? Gates, gates, gates. By the time she collects 5 Clues there will be some gate unguarded and within reach, so jump into that one. That's assuming she didn't luck out and draw a combat spell at the start. If can go a game without initiating combat vs a monster (so those already on the board), so much the better. I don't care about Terror, only Terror 6 hurts in general, closing Curiositie Shoppe, so monsters can flood Outskirts and overflow all they want for all I care. Closing gates or having one of the others hit a guarded gate and take out a monster removes all the monsters I need, there are almost always unguarded gates to jump into. And that really only leaves "a monster appears" OW encounters as the biggest concern (same ones in Arkham only really cost a turn + Injury unless you draw a really nasty devouring one). No way to dodge those (barring Gloria), but you're not really getting one each OW trip even.

It's the monsters that appear during encounters that I'd fear the most. Maybe they're less of a problem than I recall.