Hi folks,

I am new here, so if I am writing this in the wrong place, call me names, and (insist that I) move this thread.

I have played Arkham Horror 3½ times.

• First time we were 2 players. We were still learning the rules. Arkham swarmed with monsters, Yig awoke, and we were crushed.
• Second time we were 3 players. Yig awoke, and we just barely lost.
• The third time we were 3 players. We prevented Nyarlathotep from awakening through responsibility assignment (1 main gate sealer, 1 street sweep, 1 both / errand boy).
• The fourth time we were 4 players. I had to leave early, but we had Arkham under control when I left.

I am organising a session on Friday, and we will possibly be 8 players. Given that I know the rules, and this is a cooperative game, naturally, I will give suggestions to my fellow investigators. I fear the game will be too easy. I felt Arkham Horror was most fun when you just barely won, or just barely lost (creating the familiar atmosphere of hopelessness that we know so well from Lovecraft's stories). I want to reproduce that experience on Friday for my friends.

I am here to ask you for some pointers in this regard. I have already weeded out some of the easier ancient ones, keeping only those that have a nasty "while sleeping" effect, and a short doom track.

Are there known, tried and tested tweaks for improved game difficulty around? Like more mythos cards drawn, more gates opening, more monsters storming Arkham, and so on? Or should I add an expansion board or two to keep the players busy in the Arkham suburbs as well?

(I am hoping to avoid adding expansion boards, as my guests are all playing the game for the first time, and I don't want them to be intimidated (they are not seasoned board gamers). But maybe one major expansion is a good idea? Dunwich?)

(feel free to be technical in your justification for your suggestions; I can take it)

Thanks in advance,

Willard.

A few ideas:

Add a herald (if you have access), these guys are easy ways to adjust the difficulty of the game some moreso than others.

Go through some of the small expansion mythos decks and add in the gate bursts (if you have access), you will find that occasionally some of your hard work will get undone making you all scramble to fix it.

Draw 2 mythos cards per turn, this will result in more gates and monsters requiring the attention of more players.

Veet said:

I'll send you some of my variants in a few hours if I remember. (I don't have them here without digging through the archives, not enough time for that).

So far it looks like you've fought fairly easy Great Old Ones. Try a round against Cthulhu, Shub-Nigaruath or Hastur and see if that makes it harder.

Thanks for the replies :-)

@ Opening two gates per turn: It seems that the most convenient way for players to win, since there won't be many clue tokens to go around, is to collect a whole bunch of gate tokens. Perhaps I should raise the limit of how many gate tokens are required to win the game, slightly.

Seeing as Arkham will be crawling with investigators, I just bought the nasty Innsmouth to give the players more board space to cover.

Veet said:

I have the Father Dragon and Mother Hydra. I also have the King in Yellow. Thematically, I think the King in Yellow fits best with Hastur; should the players draw him, then I will definitely include the King in Yellow.

Veet said:

Sounds fun :-)

But, in your experience, do players in a 7-8 player game often *seal* gates instead of just *closing* them? (I guess they will if I open two gates on them per turn)

Veet said:

I should then place 2 clue tokens as well, to be fair, no?

Avi_dreader said:

*poke* :-)

Master Fwiffo said:

So far it looks like you've fought fairly easy Great Old Ones. Try a round against Cthulhu, Shub-Nigaruath or Hastur and see if that makes it harder.

I read somewhere that Yig and others were fairly hard, due to their tiny doom track.

But I like the nasty "while sleeping" effect of the three Ancient Ones you mentioned :-) Does the difficulty of the game vary that greatly depending on which Ancient One you pick?

***

Here is a proposal:

• Add the Innsmouth board,
• Open 2 gates per turn,
• Place 2 clue tokens per turn,
• Use only an Ancient One with a fairly short doom track and a nasty "while sleeping" ability,
• Possibly add a Herald.

Will this make an 8-player game hard enough, without making it too complicated for beginners? :-)

willardthor said:

Thanks for the replies :-)

@ Opening two gates per turn: It seems that the most convenient way for players to win, since there won't be many clue tokens to go around, is to collect a whole bunch of gate tokens. Perhaps I should raise the limit of how many gate tokens are required to win the game, slightly.

Seeing as Arkham will be crawling with investigators, I just bought the nasty Innsmouth to give the players more board space to cover.

Veet said:

A few ideas:

Add a herald (if you have access), these guys are easy ways to adjust the difficulty of the game some moreso than others.

I have the Father Dragon and Mother Hydra. I also have the King in Yellow. Thematically, I think the King in Yellow fits best with Hastur; should the players draw him, then I will definitely include the King in Yellow.

Veet said:

Go through some of the small expansion mythos decks and add in the gate bursts (if you have access), you will find that occasionally some of your hard work will get undone making you all scramble to fix it.

Sounds fun :-)

But, in your experience, do players in a 7-8 player game often *seal* gates instead of just *closing* them? (I guess they will if I open two gates on them per turn)

Veet said:

Draw 2 mythos cards per turn, this will result in more gates and monsters requiring the attention of more players.

I should then place 2 clue tokens as well, to be fair, no?

Avi_dreader said:

I'll send you some of my variants in a few hours if I remember. (I don't have them here without digging through the archives, not enough time for that).

*poke* :-)

Master Fwiffo said:

So far it looks like you've fought fairly easy Great Old Ones. Try a round against Cthulhu, Shub-Nigaruath or Hastur and see if that makes it harder.

I read somewhere that Yig and others were fairly hard, due to their tiny doom track.

But I like the nasty "while sleeping" effect of the three Ancient Ones you mentioned :-) Does the difficulty of the game vary that greatly depending on which Ancient One you pick?

***

Here is a proposal:

• Add the Innsmouth board,
• Open 2 gates per turn,
• Place 2 clue tokens per turn,
• Use only an Ancient One with a fairly short doom track and a nasty "while sleeping" ability,
• Possibly add a Herald.

Will this make an 8-player game hard enough, without making it too complicated for beginners? :-)

You don't win by collecting gate trophies. You win by closing all the gates *while* having gate trophies equal to the total number of investigators.

I'd probably just go for Hastur and The King in Yellow. I.e. select them, don't draw randomly.

If you're playing an expansion board, not sealing gates is a bad idea. Probably. Although a closing victory with eight investigators is possible (and not too difficult if everyone understands what to do, which, if I understand correctly, they don't). With two mythos cards per turn... Well... You'll see :')

Eep... I had a... Very odd, difficult, and busy day yesterday, I'll try to dig through the archives and link the variants.

Come to think of it... The one issue with using Hastur and King in Yellow is it will add on a load of game effects (although I also think it's quite fun). So maybe that's not the best approach. Dagon/Hydra would be tough (though they're not nearly as interesting) and are easier to keep track of.

Several minutes later... Here's a variant list. If you want to go with Nyarlathotep for any of the variants, add in his masks from Innsmouth (and Kingsport if you have it). If you use something from the first link, an expansion board won't be necessary (just make sure you don't have Elder Signs removing doom tokens). But you might still want to go for double mythos. 8 player teams tend to be able to dominate the board if they know what they're doing. Of course, if they don't... A couple monster surges basically end the game.

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efpag=48&efid=113&efcid=1&efidt=22867

Here's an Ancient One enhancement list for the expansion AOs.

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=113&efcid=1&efidt=429152

Here's a really nasty Nyarlathotep variant I made (should be fun though). Read through my comments in the entire thread (I have a few comments in it that modified the variant after I posted it there):

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=113&efcid=1&efidt=407250&efpag=0

Avi_dreader said:

Ah, right. Thank you for the clarification.

Avi_dreader said:

While the group does not consist of experienced gamers, it does consist entirely of computer science Ph.D students :-) I will explain to them what to do. It is still possible that some of them will goof around, having encounters and trying out their luck at shops, only to realize too late that there are too many gates open. Maybe I should try a small solo game with 2 gates opening to see how quickly things get out of hand...

Avi_dreader said:

Avi_dreader said:

Nice; thanks a lot :-) some of these Ancient Ones are really nasty :-) I'll look into this.

You're welcome. I hope you enjoy it. The first link was mainly designed to make a base game be a little more like a multi-board expansion game in difficulty. Although even still, some of these enhanced Ancient Ones aren't *too* difficult. Nyarlathotep isn't *too* hard with this variant (although if you combined it with the Nyarlathotep variant, it would become a nightmare) particularly with an eight player team.

Anyhoo, enjoy :') I'm just slightly concerned about your double drawing mythos with an eight player game (the terror track will go insane unless you constantly and effectively monster hunt). Remember, just one surge while the monsters are at the limit and you have a terror level at eight ;'D

Hrm... If you're going to do double mythos cards, you might want to alter the monster limit so that it is either one or two. I'm a little concerned it will break your team otherwise.

willardthor said:

Yeah, just to be sure: you can win by closing all gates while you have gate trophies equal to the number of investigators, or by sealing 6 gates. (So yes, I'd still go for seals...just try to prioritize who goes for the clue tokens by what your present need is and primarily by who is best suited to go for the next gate). Aside from bringing you closer to a seal victory, sealing gates will make managing monsters easier, keep clue tokens safe, and slow down the doom track. Even in an 8-player game I'd still really try hard to go for those, especially if you're opening more than one place a turn.

And to clarify, as well: for the "close and have trophies" victory, you have to actually have the trophies still. They can't have been spent. So, to go for that, you can't be using the trophies to help you. For comparison: 8 trophies, spent over the course of the game at the science building, would give you 16 clue tokens, which would seal 3 gates.

Just thought I would give some feedback,

I decided to drop Innsmouth; I ran out of table space :-P We were 7 players, and then over time, decreased to 4 players (people had to go home). I picked Hastur as ancient one, but left out the King in Yellow to keep things simple. The players were on top of things throughout the entire game, and instead of the Ancient One ability making things challenging as I had hoped, it instead just made the game drag (8 hours...). The doom track only reached 5. The terror track didn't move. There was a severe shortage of clue tokens, so a player was issued to camp the Curiosite Shoppe to buy Elder Signs. The other players were sometimes arguing about who should kill a monster or go through a gate, not because of risk of death, but because they wanted the trophies. When they won by sealing the last gate on the board (two winning conditions met), the players were slightly disappointed at the anticlimactic nature of the win, saying they would have liked to fight the Ancient One.

In the future, I think a few more gates, and thus more monster surges, and thus more panic and hopelessness, would keep the players on their toes. I came up with a few house rules which a) take the game difficulty up a notch, b) prevents the game from dragging, increasing the chance of the Ancient One awakening, but c) still giving the players a breather in the beginning, and at the same time d) simplifying some parts of the rules.

Limit changes:

• Gate limit: 8 (always)
• Outskirts limit: 8 (always) (decrease?),
• Monster limit: 8 (always) (increase?)

All ancient ones have: When his/her doom track reaches 10 - number_of_players, draw 1 extra mythos card, and, for that card,

• Follow standard procedure for opening a gate, without incrementing the doom track.
• Exception: If the location on this extra mythos card is the same as the location on the mythos card drawn just before it, treat this as a gate burst at that location.
• Place a clue as indicated,
• Ignore all other text on the mythos card.

Thoughts? I'll let you guys know how this plays out if I get around to try these rules. If anyone else tries this, please let me know how it went :-)

willardthor said:

What? You changed the outskirts limit to 8? It should have been zero with eight players. And the monster limit should have been 11. What is the rationale for changing this, or did you misunderstand the rules?

Making extra gates not add doom is going to be an even bigger problem for making the game drag if you only have one board...

Avi_dreader said:

When I ran the game on Friday, I changed nothing.

So the monster limit was 11, and the outskirts limit was 0.

And that game was too easy.

All that follows "In the future..." in my last post is a house rule which I cooked up which I believe could make the game more challenging. I have not tried this house rule yet.

I do not have a rigorous justification for these choices, particularly since I haven't tried these changes. I will try to explain why I think they will make the game challenging-yet-playable, without dragging too long, with any-number-of-players. The key to this change is to increase the number of monster surges after a certain amount of time has passed (shorter for many players, longer for few players; appropriate since turns are longer for many players, and many players can close/seal gates faster), by opening more gates, which then also pressures investigators to seal gates early. More monster surges accelerate the Ancient One's awakening since eventually, the terror track will raise, shops will close (no more camping), and the Ancient One awakens (monster limit exceeded with a terror track of 10).

• Why fix the gate limit: Because a big gate limit does not help when you are few players. The scenario explained above is bound to happen. Also, a slightly smaller gate limit does not increase the game difficulty significantly when there are many players, since there are by far enough players to jump into a gate as soon as it appears. The streets are kept clean of monsters, as monster spawns are too slow.
• Why fix the outskirts limit: If two gate openings are resolved each turn, monster surges will happen. Having an outskirts limit of 0 for 8 players in this case is a bit unfair. Note that I do think 8 is too much; I just picked 8 because that is a nice round number. Perhaps 5 would be better.
• Why fix the monster limit: Because a large monster limit is useless for many players. They kill monsters too quickly, so nothing hits the outskirts. Note that I do think 8 is too little; I just picked 8 because that is a nice round number. Perhaps 10 would be better.
• Why not let the second gate raise the doom track: I worried that the game would end too quickly with few players. Maybe this is a good thing, since, for instance, in 2-player mode, the investigators have finished 7 turns when this ability kicks in. And if a monster surge occurs (the point is to make that happen), then the doom track doesn't increase anyway.

willardthor said:

Why not make different rules variants for 6-8 player teams, 1-2 player teams, and just use more or less normal rules for 3-5? It's not a perfect division of how the game plays... But typically 1-2 can't get a sealing victory, and a 3-5 can with effort, while teams of 5-8 often can't kill the Ancient One in final combat, but find sealing or closing victories fairly easy (if they know what they're doing).

i posted a hidden traitor variant for large people games here: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/605549/traitor-variant-mostly-for-7-9-players
(that definitely makes it harder)

If you want to make an 8 player game hard, play with harder GOOs and add heralds (ideally BGotW, the King in Yellow, or Dagon + Hydra). Adding the Innsmouth board will make things considerably harder. Dagon + Hydra really punish games with many players. Their abilities synchronize well and soon you will find terror at 10 and no clue tokens for anyone.