Today I played my first game using the Kingsport board. To make it special, I decided to use only female investigators, while the AO was randomly chosen to be Atlach-Nacha. I chose Tulzscha as an Herald, and the investigators were Ursula, Carolyn, Minh and Daisy. Ursula started in Kingsport.

On the first turn a gate opened in the Woods and it was R'lyeh, which was also the location of the second gate opening. Yes, on the second turn there were already 6 monsters on the table...fortunately not too strong, but still. I waited and gathered clues, and Minh made an attempt to blow all those monsters out of the Residential streets with a timed bomb, but failed because when it went off all monsters had moved.I also explored Kingsport with Ursula in order to keep Rift markers to a minimum. Eventually Ursula was driven crazy by a couple of nasty encounters, the first with the pendulums in the bottles which reduced her to 1 sanity, the second when she failed to look away in time while crossing an artist (**** you artists!). At this point there were 4 gates open, 4 investigators in Arkham, so I realized it was time to put forth the PLAN. With fingers crossed, all of them entered an Other World...

First area, all smooth, and the Mythos card did not open another gate but caused a surge! The plan was still in effect...

Second OW area, again all smooth, amazing considering that some of the investigators had very low sanity/stamina. Again, there was a surge at the Woods!

The investigators emerged, and started closing the gates...First Carolyn succeeded, then Ursula, then Daisy...last was Minh, with 3 clues and trying to seal the R'lyeh gate...1 die to roll, failed, spent all clues and didn't get a single success. I was very dissapointed, but the game gave me another chance by causing only another surge! Unfortunately, on the next turn Minh only managed to evade the Dhole that was sitting in the Woods, but not the Tcho-Tcho, which sent her to the hospital. Goodbye plan, it was too good to be true. Later on in the game, Daisy (the best performer in this game) was devoured while in the Abyss and was replaced by Marie. I only came close once when I had two investigators in the only two gates open, but more gates opened before I could close them. In the end, after failing World Torn Asunder (Mythos caused it to fail in two turns...but I only needed one more turn to pass it), the spider awoke and everyone was dead by the end of turn 2 of the Epic Battle. Yes, 3 investigators were devoured in the first turn, and the whole group managed to inflict only 3 successes against the AO. Not even one doom token was removed...quite humiliating I will have my revenge against Atlach-Nacha...someday.

Now on to the questions: I had Ursula have an encounter at St. Erasmus' (a RIft marker corresponded) but the encounter said to move to the lighthouse and have another one. Does that count as having explored Erasmus' (so the Rift marker is removed), as having explored the lighthouse (so that marker is removed) or as having explored both since I drew encounters for both locations? Also, what happens if the lighthouse closes for the rest of the game (that's what happened): how do you remove the lighthouse Rift marker? You can't?

To investigate a rift, you have to have an encounter in the depicted location. So whether or not you left the location, it was still investigated. Note that an "instead of" encounter does not count. You can't pay for restoration and count that towards investigation.

You also had an encounter at the Light House, so you get to remove one there, too!

If the lighthouse closes, you can't investigate it. You'll have to remove the corresponding rift tokens using very lucky encounters that let you remove some of your choice.

Tibs said:

Ok, thanks, having played just once with the board, I didn't even know there were those kind of encounters (remove a choice of markers). Thanks, you also managed to answer one more question I forgot to ask, what happens if you take the "instead of an encounter" option. Guess all these questions come up often, eh?

Let me clarify: the encounter that closes the lighthouse still counts as investigating it. You just can't investigate it from then on.

Tox,

you started with a tough one, uh? Atlach is a strange little creature, so lovable, so deadly ::laughter:: just an advice (apologies if it's redundant or do not need it): many people playing Kingsport tend to believe they must have an investigator in Kingsport for the whole game dealing with rifts. This is quite an incredible waste of time, mental energies, resources (some of the Kingsport encounters are quite nasty for your Stamina / Sanity). And probably this is the reason why that board is the least loved of the three expansion boards. You basically should send in Kingsport only when you have three markers on a track (and thus you have 1 out of 6 chances - well, actually something less, since you have cards like Strange sightings - of having it open in the next turn). As for me, even a rift opening is not such a big deal, if you could manage to send two investigators over there in two rounds you'll close it, so you have only 1 out of 6 chances of adding a doomer.

Anyway, thank you for the report! I love Atlach stories :-)

Julia said:

I'd also send a person over if all the tracks are at two in certain configurations (since you'll know that there's going to almost definitely be a track at three the next turn). Especially if you have slow investigators.

Yeah...if we can manage it we tend to try to hold out until there's 3 on one track or 2 on all of them, and then send 2 people over if we can for a couple turns to really take the rifts down (or 1 if we can't manage 2, just to maintain). It seems to work better if you can send 2 people over for a turn or two since with 1 person all you're likely to do is prevent progress...with 2 you can actually push the tracks back.

Sdrolion said:

Ah, but you don't want to push the tracks completely back, it's wasting time. If you have tracks that are half full at two, they bounce mythos cards. By completely draining away the tracks, you are wasting those potential mythos bounces (i.e. about 50% of turns).

Avi_dreader said:

Sorry, but by "bounce mythos cards" do you mean just that you have a chance of preventing a rift track add? Or do you mean something about stopping the card entirely? I'm assuming just the first, but wasn't clear.

Sdrolion said:

If the top row or bottom row of a rift track is completely full and another card showing that movement pattern is drawn, it has no effect since that track is already full (i.e. + 50% of draws will bounce).