I'll tell you what I'll do if someone 'wins' by joining the winning team. I will add our names as so:

Knuckles Eki (traitor), Firefly, Lost Prophet, Thecheeseking

Hence I'll add (traitor) after the name of the traitor, sounds good?

Firefly, Lost Prophet and Thecheeseking: my Arkham Horror crew.

Woo, first game with Dunwich, won vs Abhoth. An overabundance of clues let us live for quite a bit against the onslaught of goo, and thanks to our Flamethrower and Shotgun (and good ol' Tom Murphy). Only 1 Dunwich Horror Token managed to appear, and that was 1 mythos generated monster. No gates appeared in Dunwich at all. I also had a first taste of an Injury card. Consumption isn't that bad for someone with 7 stamina.

I'd be curious as to how many players were involved in any wins against Atlach-Nacha. I usually play with 2-3 players total and he's pretty much impossible. There's no way you can win by sealing, and it seems like the bare minimum number of players to have a chance at closing all gates is 4. Usually the lower number of players, the better chance you have at winning the final battle, but not the case with Atlach.

Personally I think they went super overboard with him. Gate burst every turn, auto-devour, resistences to both weapon types, and a -5 combat rating? Geez. He's right up there with the Black Goat herald for "what were they thinking?" In our small games he's an automatic AO redeal.

GrooveChamp said:

Gate burst every turn is a bit of an overstatement. Monster surges don't pop seals . Nor do double-doomers.

Anyway, I think you have to flip your thinking with ol' A-N, seal the low priority gates first, leave the big 'uns open, then simu-slam the last seals. At least, if going for the seal win. Adding DH and/or IH helps, as if you seal a really low priority gate (Devil's Hopyard of Y'ha-nthlei), that's an almost guaranteed sticker-seal, burst chance very small. Of course, this is SPARTA, err, Arkham, so odds, smodds.

Well that's the thing. We don't go through the deck memorizing cards and every possible statistic and gate probability, only "which locations have already come up a ton?" The only thing we know is that Wizard's Hill comes up an awful lot. We also always go random investigators and never cull the item deck for "undesirable" cards.

And that I think is the problem. Every post Dunwich/Kingsport expansion seems to cater more towards the super hardcore stat memorizers while leaving a very frustrating experience for more casual players. I always figured the optional difficulty setting cards in Black Goat was a better solution than making ancient ones that are literally impossible to beat sometimes (Chaugnar Faugn with large number of players).

We're hardly newbie players, probably played about 50 games by now, but our current record with Black Goat/Innsmouth is 1-5, and that one win was only due to wiping the floor with Ithaqua in final battle. Haven't come close to seal win (most was 3) or winning the final battle with Yog Sothoth, Chaugnar, or Atach (impossible with 2-3 players). Seriously how are 2 players conceivably supposed to win a seal victory against Atach? They certainly can't win the final battle short of one-shot clue shotgun cheese. How were they expecting anyone to win final battle against Chaugnar: solo game clue hording?

That's why I suspect the stat page isn't quite the most accurate representation of your average game with average players. How many of the reported games were with "optimal win" strategies like picking Mandy, culling item decks, and gearing up for final combat from the first turn? How many were casual games with random investigators/AOs for variety and fun instead of spending the whole game camping the shotgun? (I doubt the 70% random selection is truly random since Mandy and other "good" investigators are picked far more often than the "bad" ones)

Depends how you define "Random".

Some players, myself included, often randomly select three Investigators and then pick one of those three. This is a good way of playing as you make sure you don't just stick with one or two Investigators and still gives the team a chance of amking sure they have a good fighter, a good gate-hopper, a spell caster, etc.

Also, I think that really hard Ancient Ones aren't necessarily a bad thing. My usual group of players can beat certain Ancient Ones ridiculously easily and even more Ancient Ones than that assuming we don't get a bad run of dice results and Mythos cards. Hard Ancient Ones keep the game a challenge.

Pure randomness is a house ruling anyway: Two alternatives are given. In between these two are many other possibilities (all of which would be a house rule apparently).

Here's the rule from page 5.

4. DETERMINE INVESTIGATORS
The first player shuffles the 16 investigator sheets. Then,
without looking, he randomly deals out one investigator
sheet in front of each player, including himself.

Alternately, the players may agree to choose their investigators,
starting with the first player and continuing
clockwise until every player has selected an investigator.

If you can't beat the Old One with randomness, choose Patrice. She'll give you a really good chance.

Same is true for the Old One:

5. REVEAL ANCIENT ONE
The first player shuffles the eight Ancient One sheets.
Then, without looking, he selects one at random and
places it face up near the board. This is the Ancient One
that is threatening Arkham for this game. If the Ancient
One’s ability lists any actions that take place at the start
of the game, such as Nyarlathotep’s “Thousand Masks”
ability, they are resolved now.

Alternatively, the players may choose which Ancient
One they face. This is often helpful if there are time
constraints or other considerations involved. (Yig makes
for a shorter game, for instance, while Cthulhu makes
for a particularly challenging game.)

I've only played against Atlach Nacha once in a group game. He's just completely boring. In solo games (with 4 investigators, I've won more than I've lost) I've played him several times. He's not much more fun that way, but I'd least his boringness isn't imposed on unwilling victims.

Stenun said:

To me, random = single-random, where you have no say in which investigator you draw. Draw 3, pick 1 gives you a lot of choice, instead of seeing 1/12th (4 investigator game with every investigator available) of the investigator deck, you get to pick from 1/4th.

I allow a mulligan if the investigator(s) drawn was in the previous game. That way, no two games will have the same investigators. Of course, also means you might not see certain investigators in a while. Zoey has not yet been drawn once in 24 IH games, Harvey only once. Crap-squad members have been in about 3-4 games at least. But I prefer a challenge to cherry-picking the best.

GrooveChamp said:

In my experience 4+ players is easiest. More players seems to eliminate any threat monsters might pose, making it easier to concentrate on winning the game. Our games are anything but optimized, we always use the random method to determine investigators (exceptions being the league scenarios) and use all components of the expansions we include in a game.

I think it's okay that there are AOs that are easier to beat than others and that there also some, like Atlach-Nacha that probably will only ever be beaten by the hardcore-know-it-all players (barring sheer luck). Atlach-Nacha, imho, is mostly interesting for solo play. With a group of players it's probably too frustrating to lose game after game.

While we randomly choose the AO, we also remove the ones we've already played against until we're through wth all of them, so an individual AO doesn't turn up all that often.

seeing as how i've been in a sizeable number of those games reported, I suppose I can just tell you.

Random: deal 2/3 choose 1. Or deal 5 choose 2 (when only 2 players run 4 investigators)

Cherry pick people/AO?: nope.

Plan for final combat from early game?: Nope. We attempt to seal every game.

Stubbornly refuse to prep for combat at all, even if it is clearly invevitable, like having 1 seal on the board with 9 doom against Yig and the DOR track at 5/6, like Dam does? : Nope. =)

Expansions: Big Boxes: Means I used the board. If the game says DH, it means I used the DH board. If it doesnt, I still used the stuff from DH, but not the board.

Small Boxes: Used the Mythos/stuff. I probably should stop listing KiY as being used, since I generally dont play with the mythos (to increase IH concentration).

-note: yeah, this system yeilds some weirdness. You'll see games where we were supposedly not using DH, but have Mark Harrigan in the game, a rail pass, and coded messages or something like that. This is cause we use all the encounter cards and all the investigators/ stuff is available. Still, I think this system is the best way to avoid throwing off the stats too bad for things like "the DH awoke".

Item Decks: All stuff from all expansions I own. 'culling' the item deck is kept to a minimum. We only remove items that we feel reduce the fun of the game by being so completely useless as to have no application or actively remove the fun. 6 cards are removed: Join the Winning Team, Walking the Ley Lines, Shrine to an Elder God, Throne of Carcosa, Wrack x2 are removed, everything else from CotDP, DH, KiY, AH are in.

Monsters: all in.

Why doesn't anyone like to join the Winning Team?

Knuckles Eki said:

No idea. I've done it myself. Okay, in a solo game, but that Mission is HARD !

I never trim my decks, item decks included. So you have crap in there, deal with it. I put the replacement cards from DH into the item deck even though I have the Revised printing base, so the cards were already correct. Sure, that means there is now what, 8x Flesh Ward in there. Big deal.

Nobody likes it becasue 1: it is extrodinarily difficult to complete. Even if you draw it as starting equipment with Pete or somebody who starts with an ally (best case scenario), it's still terribly difficult.

And more importantly, 2: one of Arkham's major selling points is that the team all wins or loses together. JtWT is fine for 'solo' games using multiple investigators or whatever, and kind of cool to complete. But for those of us who actually play the game with other people, it's no fun. It will be very difficult for the rest of the team to pick up the other investigator's slack as they focus all their efforts to JtWT, and likely the game is already going poorly, or else JtWT wouldn't be attempted.

3: there is no penalty for failure. More accureately, the penalty for failure is not specific enough. if an investigator attempts it, and the team seals the AO out in spite of this 'traitor', the JtWT-attempting-bastard has just won the game anyway. That's dumb. They should have added a line of text that said something like: "If this card has at least one clue token on it, you can't win the game by any means other than this mission."

awp832 said:

Sounds like a good idea, that.

I can just imagine someone having it and trying to explain he had to do it for the good of the team, then I turn around with my finger pointing at him... "Silence... traitor"

mageith said:

How in the world was the Black Goat herald considered balanced just playing the base board? o_O

GrooveChamp said:

Mageith's comment was directed at Dam, who scoffs at the difficulty of the Black Goat. Since Dam plays all of his games with Innsmouth and Dunwich, he has fewer monster surges than those who do not. Mageith was not claiming that the Black Goat is a balanced herald (anybody who does claim that is on something). The "respect for the Black Goat" comment was a plea to Dam to understand how hard the herald can be.

How the people who playtested it could have considered that balanced? (This was probably your question in the first place. In that case, I apologize for the above, but I'm not going to erase it now.) More than likely, they knew it wasn't, and liked it that way. The same should not be said of Patrice, however.

Hah, Dam thinks everything is too easy in Arkham Horror with all expansions.

flamethrower49 said:

I don't scoff at the BGotW, but I do think people are over-hyping him. BGotW isn't anywhere close to Ghroth in difficulty, as the stats reveal (10% edge for Ghroth), but nobody is whining about Ghroth, that's my point. KH GOOs are hard, but since BGotW didn't come with any GOOs, you gotta pick some GOO and Ghroth sees burn with non-KH GOOs as well. I do think BGotW is the hardest Herald, but that's fine by me.

Less monster surges = more doomers, so can't say how that's better for my games. Monster surges without BGotW are a free turn (unless you have D. Reef as only open gate and draw another D. Reef Mythos; Strange Sightings seems so-so now, IF you move first, surge second), doom token brings the end closer. My games last on average 14 Mythos cards, because that is the time in which I have to win (close or seal), otherwise the GOO will wake from the doom track filling, and yes, that includes 13 doom track GOOs as well. Elder Signs are rare, even 1 feels like a true Blessing.

Dam said:

Agreed, which is why I will not be playing that way.

flamethrower49 said:

Yeah, I've so far played it that the surge on the card = step 1 of the Mythos phase, so in effect, the card has no actual text (step 4).

Dam said:

You say this phrase a lot--surges vs Doom Tokens--and it makes me wonder how many monsters you pull out of the Cup (and place on the Board) during a game (non-BGotW).

With all your unstable locations, and your win-in-14-turns pace, it sounds like your games are all "speed games". Not that that's a bad thing, by any means, but you've also stated before that "fighting monsters don't win games; sealing gates wins games." So (speculation) your turns are spent getting Clues, diving offworld, and sealing as fast as possible, because you have a very real threat of "too many Open Gates". (Although even that's diminished by all those boards you have in play.)

So maybe you rely on Evasion over Combat because you don't have the time to waste dawdling in the Streets? But if 1 Gate = 1 Monster, and we can assume that, with your Speed-Sealing, a few of those turns are blocked by Elder Signs, or maybe even double-Doom-Token Mythos, do you get more than 15-20 Cup pulls per game? (It is a safe estimate that my games tend to average 30+.) Do you ever fight monsters to try to stop the Dunwich Horror, or do you ever have to? Do you try to stop the Innsmouth Vortex-runners, or do you just drop your Clues to the Feds?

My point is somewhere in the vicinity of...less monster surges = less monsters in the Streets. Even if your game clock runs a lot faster than most, you don't have so much getting in the way of your Street Speeding. The question constantly alluded to in other posts is: which is the "harder" game: the 14-Turn Dash or the Obstacle Course?

To be fair, Dam, I don't really think there's a good answer since the game is too unpredictable. On the other hand, you always seem to sound like you know EXACTLY what that answer is.

jgt7771 said:

TBH, it's win or lose or draw in 14.

jgt7771 said:

Actually, I'd say I bounce a seal normally 0 times, max is 2. Maybe I shuffle too well.

jgt7771 said:

For DH, unless Dagon, DH or KiY Herald is in (still on IH rotations, so less worry about GOOs with regard to Terror), I don't mind letting 2 tokens get up there (it gets 2 tokens pretty much every game though), even 3 if I'm about to win in the next couple of turns and can spare the doomers should the DH move.

For IH, it's all about D. Reef. If a gate opens there, it's very high priority. As I've, well, bitched about in another thread, the IH movement arrows don't do a bang-up job of funneling monsters into the vortex off Joe Sargent's (DH does it better). There was a game where the pre-game opened a gate at Marsh Ref and dropped 2 monsters onto IH street, first turn Mythos at EOoD and another 2 monsters to another IH street, so 6 monsters in IH at the end of the first turn. None of the monsters made it to a vortex. Okay, so I killed a couple at Joe Sargent's, but still.

For Feds, I rarely bother with them, not even the early ground-work. I can usually get someone up there should the DOR track start getting up there. Normally I'd say when it hits 3, I'll look at the situation overall to see if I should send someone in there. It's woken the GOO once and I've called in the Feds at least once, not sure if I've done it more than that. DOR has been at 4-5 several times, but I've pushed on instead of calling the Feds.

jgt7771 said:

Even with the Obstacle Course, there should be at least 1, most likely more gates that have a weaker monster that hasn't moved off of it, so you can hit that gate. In the Dash game, there is less room for mistakes as the doom track climbs steadily, almost every turn.

jgt7771 said:

Dam(n), you revealed my secret !

Hey Dam, you're probably the First and Only person I've seen that declines a win. The very first person I seen, when given a win, you decide to make it a draw. You're a strange one, Dam, you sure you're not having the Innsmouth Look that prevents you from basking in the win of seeing the Ancient One DIE?

Knuckles Eki said:

What do you mean by "declines a win"? You mean counting final combat as draw? To me final combat "win" is the same as Military Victory in LotR: Friends & Foes, cheap and unthematic.

It's still a win, and if things look hopeless (only 1 seal and ancient one is 2 doomers from awakening), I think it is wiser to just prepare for the inevitable.