I'm thinking about trying to give this ago. The rules specifically state that for each board expansion over one that you play with you should count the board as having one less player than is actually in play. This means you could potentially play a 9 player game but still have the same stats as an 8 player game so long as you have both Kingsport and Dunwhich in play. Has anybody else tried this?

I have not tried it. But playing with KH and DH, your interpretation is correct.

Many have tried playing more than 8 over the years. the major sticking point was how you handle the limits and other game-ending conditions. So this new combo and rule set should make it feasible. Might be too easy, but it should work well.

Noting that both boards effectively count your investigators as 8, there are only three things to bear in mind:

• Tracking 9 strikes against the AO in final battle can be annoying, but not hard

• In the RARE EVENT that everyone gets a STL membership or Rail Pass or whatever, you'll be one short (that'll be the day)

• You won't have enough sliders to accommodate everyone

That said, go to it, and tell everyone how it went! Should I update the Stats page to accept 9-player entries?

You could update the stats page but no rush. It's going to be a little while before I can get everyone together for that many players but I'll be interested to see how it plays out. Certainly I'll let you all know when I do.

The sliders wont really be a problem. It's easy enough to mock up something usable or I'll just get one of my friends who has there own copy of the game to bring some extra's. Neither will tracking the AO horror track as we use dice anyway. Just use a D8 and on the ninth simply remove a token.

You really have Nine people to play with or is this just you with Nine characters?

If the game limit was Nine people you would want to play Ten and So on and So forth! lol

Try 16+ investigators...the AO shows up beofre the game even starts! and Yoggy devours everyone Ha Ha

If the maximum monsters in the outskirts for 8 investigators is zero, then the maximum for 9 players is -1. Some new rule will need to be made there. Of course, maybe it breaks down altogether. "When the number of monsters in the Outskirts exceeds the limit, return all the monsters in the Outskirts to the monster cup and increase the terror level by 1."

So from the beginning, you'll be exceeding the limit, but there will be no monsters to return, but the terror level will rise quite rapidly--like all at once.

mageith said:

Not so. As already stated. If you're playing with more than one expansion board i.e Dunwich & Kingsport then you play as if you have one less character. That would mean that a 9 player game is in fact counted as an 8 player game.

And yes I have 9 people who will happily play Arkham Horror with me. Unfortunately they're scattered all over the country so we only get to meet up for the massive gaming session 3 or 4 times a year.

spirit said:

Oh yeah. That was kind of the point of the thread in the first place. Sorry.

However there is a card in the Blight deck that lowers the Outskirts level by 1. Chances are that will never happen.

The Blight card is Sheriff Engle. All Deputy of Arkham cards are returned to the box, and the Outskirts is lowered by 2, to a minimum of 0 .

Otherwise this would have been an issue in ordinary 7- and 8-player games.

Good luck! Have only tried a 7 player game where 3 of them were newbies. Went ok but took some time... Played in a weekday so we didn`t mange to finish off. My main concearn was actually space. The kitchen table was barely big enough...

kennetten said:

Fortunately I have a massive dining room table which happily fits everything 'so far'. I might try the game with a couple of noobs but I don't think that trying a 9 player game would be a great plan as a first off game so I'll probably wait to get my normal group together.

did this ever come to fruition?

You know, if you have 9 players, see if you can get someone to 'play the DM'. Have him draw two and choose 1 for Mythos, monsters, ect. and have him make all decisions made by the first player. Also have him read Encounters and such, and he can help keep track of various other board elements (as those are easily lost).

I've done that varient a couple times (always volunteering as the DM) and honestly, it's pretty fun. Let the competitive member of your group do it, and it should be pretty fun.

juz4kix said:

Yes. On the Arkham Stats report you'll see that there has been one 9-investigator game, and four 10-investigator games! All of those games except one 10p won, all by closing or sealing.

I am one who submitted two of the entries for 10 investigator games on the statistics report. One was a game with just me controlling all 10 Investigators, the other was with four other players, each of us controlling two Investigators each. In short, it is too easy. You have too many investigators covering what becomes very little ground, you have great starting equipment to pass around and move quickly through the decks to find what equipment you need/want. In the game with five of us playing, half of the investigators were bored, had nothing to do, and were aimlessly moving about having random encounters. Sure, go ahead and try it for the sake of trying, but it really becomes too easy and not as enjoyable as I originally thought it would be. But it's still Arkham, so it's still fun.

Donut said:

I could have told you that ;') You'd need to modify the game structure. I'd recommend three monsters per gate opening, and after the doom track is at two, start drawing two mythos cards per turn. That'd scale up the difficulty a bit.

Avi_dreader said:

Yeah. That's similar to the "Streets of Insanity" Scenario:

- 8 seals wins the game

- Outskirts limit is 0

- Gate opening = 2 monsters spawn

- 9-16 players: Draw 2 Mythos end of each round with the last Environment drawn remaining in play; AO wakes up if 7 gates are open at once

Julia said:

Wellll... Slight difference being the extra mythos wouldn't be from the start (to prevent potential overwhelming by gates in the early rounds). I probably subconsciously plagiarized that scenario idea though. I have a tendency to copy without realizing it.

Avi_dreader said:

Yeah, sure. But probably, the risk of being overwhelmed by gates in the early round is the only threatening thing in the whole Scenario nonetheless. The more I thought about this, the more it seems to me ridicolously easy. You don't have even penalties for devourings / retirements, so basically you can throw into the game all the extra equipment you need. Plus 9 or 10 players? 1 seal each, and you still have fresh meat to clear the streets. Sigh

Julia said:

;') You have clearly been permanently corrupted by the scenarios. Good ;'D

Avi_dreader said:

::laughter:: as I told you some months ago, normal Arkham is kinda too easy now. But nevertheless, you'll receive a *very* *long* letter of constructive criticism (read: complaint) regarding the latest Scenario ::laughter::

(jokes aside, I think it's great, but has a couple of flaws we possibly can correct before I play it. Boosting the difficulty in a new way. I'll write you later some ideas, at the moment I'm dead and I still have to finish the bloody ppt for my computer science test next tuesday. What a waste of time)