Hi,

I wish to start using the Innsmouth expansion but before doing so want to clarify exactly what evemts cause the track to increase apart from monsters exiting through the vortices. The rulebook mentions anytime a gate is prevented from opening such as an elder sign or investigator ability but what abilities and other situations could come into play here?

Does a monster surge event place a token on the track?

Cheers

GrimGuvna said:

There are indeed 2 events which can cause one to add an uprising token to the deep one rising track.

1. whenever a gate is prevented form opening
2. whenever a monster enters a vortex

I think 2 is clear enough.

Regarding 1, the rulebook lists 2 examples. Prevented by an elder sign and by an investigator ability.
Another one can be indeed be a monster surge.

Maybe mythos 'environment' cards? But haven't seen one preventing a gate from opening yet ...

Can someone think of other examples?

Wait wait wait wait... I've been playing monster surges don't cause deep one uprising track additions. Have I been doing it wrong? I hope not, it's already terribly difficult to keep that track from filling.

MustardTheTroops said:

Iv I had to make an educated decision, I would say no. A monster surge feels like an event rather than a conequence of a gate not opening. Would be good to get some clarification though. I just cant recall seeing any other event preventing a gate from opening elsewhere in the huge collection of game cards i seems to have amassed.

MustardTheTroops said:

MustardTheTroops said:

I have only had to stop the track filling once, and that was because of a rumour.

I don't believe you are doing it wrong. Monster surges don't prevent a gate from opening.

The way I interpret the rules is essentially: If something bad is happening as a result of a gate mythos card then don't add a Deep One token.

It would not be too hard for an exhaustive list of Deep One Rising Track triggers to be made... A few grey areas to resolve.

eg. If I were to use a Lucky Rabbit's Foot

Arkham Encounters: After you draw an encounter card, exhaust and discard Lucky Rabbit's Foot to draw a different encounter card.

If I used this to change A gate and a monster appears! then have I prevented a gate from opening?

Aye, thats an interesting consideration with the lucky rabbits foot, though some could say that the gate event never actually took place to be considered due to being discarded and therefore the rising track wouldnt have a token added, this is pure metagame physics coming into play. By that i mean can a discarded card still have an effect on the game even though it technically hasnt come into play?!! I would be inclined to adda token as the card WOULD have come intoplay otherwise.

From my experiences so far it seems that some unstable locations are far more common than others when appearing on mythos cards and lead to that situation where they become sealed and you get that lull in the game where gates are not opening or monsters surging (which has become a blesed relief for our games where we start turning the tables on the AO) The Innsmouth expansion feels like it will add some tension during these moments where we have to keep one eye on the Innsmouth rising track whilst trying to seal the last few gates unless all the hard work be undone. Thats a nasty expansion what with the gate bursts lurking in the deck as well.

Hmm ****, it all depends on how you interpret it.
Both explanations make sense ...

Any other thoughts?

Officially: a monster surge is not a gate opening (it is an effect that occurs instead), and so does not cause a Deep One token to be added.

Tibs said:

Alright that clears things up :-)

Thanks Tibs!

GrimGuvna said:

With just the base game I was concentrating on sealing the most unstable locations first, with the Innsmouth Board it is almost better to leave the unstable locations as open gates and sealing the least common gates. Sealing the most unstable locations very early means that you are more likely to add Deep One tokens or have the seal be burst. I'd rather have a few terror level increases than have to spend 6 clue tokens to get help from the Feds.

Although in saying that, the Innsmouth board has been kicking my backside so hard that I have decided to ignore gate bursts until I can develop better strategies to deal with Innsmouth. Out of 7 games so far with the Innsmouth Board I have only 2 wins.

If only Dunwich hadn't been out of print!

While Dunwich as a whole is not as difficult as Innsmouth, the gate burst problem is much worse.

Krawhitham said:

Keeping the common locations gates open would be a problem when using dunwich as you would have a horde of beasties rampaging around dunwich from any open gates there from monster surges. And and soon as ol Dunny h comes along you have a major problem....

Come to think of it combining Innsmouth and Dunwich in the same game is frankly well nasty

If you're having significant trouble with gate bursts (especially if you find they cause your game to run looooong ), you may want to try my alternate rule for them: instead of breaking a seal, when a gate burst happens on a sealed location, you add a doom token to the doom track and spawn a monster there, but don't open a gate and don't remove the seal.

This has actually become our preferred way of using those since I came up with the rule, since we just couldn't handle the increased play length caused by actually removing seals. We've used it in I think 6 or 7 games or more so far against a variety of AOs and it seems to work pretty well. Not sure it's actually easier...just different.

Note: I've been treating this alternate rule as that the gate was prevented from opening by a seal...thus, this would cause adding to the DOR track if I understand the Innsmouth rules properly. Feel free to rule otherwise, though. It's your game.