Oh I seeeee ... oh well in that case I've never actually failed it, despite all the forms I've submitted in the past saying I have.

Oh well, never mind. :-)

Tibs said:

Or there is very little reason to even try to "pass" the Rumor, just take the hit and move on. Now, if Virulent Disease dropped a failing investigator's max Sta + San to 1...

You and your 'I wants da game harderz' attitude Dam. When I offer a game with Dunwich, King in Yellow, etc, my friends decline. My friends prefer easier games, which is why I might get Kingsport for the Guardians.

Knuckles Eki said:

jhaelen said:

See, solo rocks. You can abuse the player all they can take ! I

Honestly, I think if you're having trouble without Heralds (slightly GOO-dependant), your min-maxing isn't as good as it should be. Of course, if you want to browse around the town(s), having encounters for no apparent reason and such "nonsense" , then naturally you're not as focused on gates, thus game seems too hard.

Speaking of abuse, in all forms, you may notice that I've cut down the investigator names on the stats site to just their first names. This is entirely to reduce the filesize and to speed up download and display time. Sorry if this has disappointed anyone, but if you used my unbelievably slow computer all the time you'd be as sympathetic as humanly possible.

Tibs said:

Dam said:

Solo gets boring, there's nobody to strategize with (one time I had a player (it was 4 player game) who wasted the entire game using Wilson's odd jobs ability, whose money is not worth feeding Abhoth). 4 player games = fun.

Knuckles Eki said:

Then you're not doing it right .

Dam said:

Multiplayer > Solo. Games are for friends to play together, not for 1 person to be alone (except games that are actually meant to be solo like Solitaire, they get boring for me though)

Solo >>>>> Multiplayer. Can play whenever, wherever and game duration doesn't generally matter either .

I prefer to play with others, but it's very difficult to find people both willing and able. Therefore, 80-90% of my games are solo, which is fine. Though sometimes I botch up the strategy because I forget about things that other players would have remembered, I've found.

Assuming I have enough set-up time available, I'd rather play this solo than Agricola, if not solely because of the adventure element.

Also, I can record AH stats, and playing Agricola solo you don't really win or lose, you just aim for the highest score you can manage.

How can this be an argument? Isn't really just a preference?

Personally I much prefer group play and probably 90% of may games are played with 3+ people. I'm very lucky in that both my wife and daughter are in the house and like/love to play. We play nearly every weekend and both days of the weekend. In addition I have several friends who can join us from time to time for slightly bigger games.

However this game is definitely one of the top 2 sole board games in existence. Others I've often played solo is Civilization basic and Knights of Camelot (TSR). I only play solo because there are few as willing as I to play.

Now if Arkham Horror were on a computer, that might a different story. I'd probably play that a lot.

I might get a solo game or two in during the week, but usually I have to be motivated to do that to test some houserule I want to invoke.

If I were crusty like Dam, I'd probably prefer to play solo and probably the world would prefer him to play solo,too.

I always forget things whether I play as a group or solo and sometimes what I know to be a winning strategy is foiled by some of my cohorts. OTOH, a few of my friends are much more willing to maximize to win than I am so maybe it evens out. I'm always playing for the experience, not the victory.

In short, chalk be up for group play. Any size group is better than one.

So many different ways to play, and at least twice as many opinions about it. And all of them are valid. That undoubtedly contributes to AH's popularity. We might love only our personal version of AH, but that's still loving AH.

Just because he and his style are so well known, I borrow Dam again. Dam plays with a purpose: he is trying to get to the end of the freeway before it gets dark. The other cars are just obstacles: ignore them. The billboards are extraneous fluff: ignore them. He needs to get on and off the freeway only six times (if he's fortunate), and he's only off long enough to get gas and a drink. The souvenir shops are just distractions: ignore them. But the way you see Dam talk about it, he still gets a charge out of getting to the end of that freeway. So much so that he has mapped every possible route to the end of that freeway, just to pit his speed against them all.

I love playing with others, because they love playing the game even more than I do, and it shows while they play. Some of them aren't as "weird" as I am, and things like Cthulhu, Miskatonic University, and Shoggoths haven't been with them for twenty years. Nothing in Lovecraft Country scrapes anywhere near anything else in their lives, and it's hard to eat just one potato chip...mwahahahaha.

So when I play with others, it just isn't about the rules, or the win, or the must-dos. It's about being IN Arkham, and getting the hell away from the job, and the bills, and the GRIND. So our games are more like an amusement park, where there are things to see and do and ride all over the place. We're suppsed to meet up for lunch, but that might not happen. There's a parade at a specific time...sorry, I'm on the other side of the park. Park's closing? Just one more ride! It is not uncommon for the night to end with the park swallowed by the Ancient One, but everyone still enjoyed the rides during the day.

When I play solo, I understand Dam's freeway, and generally try to stay on it. My Investigators are just the drivers I use to keep the car moving, and if I lose one, I just get another one to take over. It is a different kind of thrill to try to keep that car moving...but I would bet that I still spend a few more minutes than I should looking for some burger at some roadside cafe.

I prefer going to the park rather than challenging myself to beat the freeway. And Kingsport is a nifty park with crowd-control issues and no off-ramps...HEH!

Okay, I just finished reporting our first game. I thought it was fitting that the game was played by a group of genuine AH-virgins, to whom I taught the game while they played (I didn't play). As I wanted them to have it somewhat easy for their first game I gave them strong investigators with simple abilities (Michael, Joe, Harvey and Jenny) and ended up with Azathoth as the Ancient One (I was going for Nyarlathotep at first, but was afraid they might defeat him in final battle, so chose Azathoth instead). No expansions were used.

As usual for beginners, they wasted some time wandering around taking encounters and had some truly odds-defying rolls (for both good and bad). I gave them some tips early on, like plan ahead, trade items, seal gates instead of just closing and remember to shop at the Curiositie Shoppe with their extra cash (which they had plenty, thanks to Jenny). They played very well as a team, planning their moves together and helping each other. Still, there were some clear oversights more experienced players probably wouldn't have made that cost them plenty of Clues and had some investigators knocked unconscious.

They also had some abysmal luck occasionally. A few examples:
- Michael was cursed by the pre-game Mythos card and spent the first tens turns failing nearly every roll and accomplishing nothing.
- Jenny was sucked into City of the Great Race by an Independence Square encounter. She got back and closed the gate (not enough Clues for sealing) - only to be sucked right into R'lyeh by the next Mythos card! She eventually got out of R'lyeh as well, and closed that gate too - and was then knocked unconscious by a Dark Young guarding the gate.
- Disturbing the Dead popped up right after Jenny had dissected her second gate trophy for Clues. For the next four turns straight, the rumor raised the Terror level.
- Harvey used an Elder Sign to seal a gate at Woods to gain his second gate trophy. He wanted to go to Rivertown to finally pass Disturbing the Dead, but didn't have enough movement to get that far, so he stopped at the library for a presumably easy encounter - only to end up unconscious after failing a Lore check with four dice (having just lost his Blessing the previous turn). But that's not all! The next Mythos phase moves a freaking Dhole to the Uptown streets, blocking Harvey's way out of the Hospital!

All that said, their luck turned when Noden's Favor came up, and eventually they won the game when Joe sealed the sixth location on turn 19. They had great luck with their item draws and got expensive stuff like Lamp of Alhazred and Healing Stone rather early. Harvey got an Elder Sign when Ruby Standish joined him, and blasted through several monsters using Powder of Ibn-Ghazi and various spells (with some help from Planetary Alignment). And when Michael finally got rid of his Curse he went on a rampage sealing gates left and right.

The Doom Track ended up at 9, while the Terror level climbed as high as 6, thanks to Disturbing the Dead and Family Found Butchered (the Outskirts didn't pop once).

All in all, the players were happy and want to play the game again. I'll probably give them one more session of plain vanilla Arkham Horror before adding any expansions.

-Villain

Hey everyone! Today's report is up:

Results

• There was a second completion of "For the Greater Good" by mageith . Well done!
• There have been enough uses of Kevin Wilson's "clue-per-seal" limit to include its results!
• Daisy Walker's win percentage has been fixed. Last time she was ranked much lower than she should have been.

Tibs said:

Many things happened in that weird game. The first weird thingswas that may wife chose Zhar as the Old One. (I give her a choice of few Old Ones.) She had no idea what she was doing by picking IT but it keeps peace in the house because she thinks I'm always trying to make it too difficult. In addition, she was willing to play 2 investigators. Both coded messages and Velma's Graditude were activated and we had a deputy that wasn't Emily's character. We were also trying out some homegrown characters. That's why no investigator names are listed.

One thing that didn't happen was completion of "For the Greater Good". Alas is was merely a Closing Victory. In all the excitement I must have clicked the wrong button. Sorry. Please make that correction.

Thanks again for you good work on these statistics. I love them.

Tibs, a quick questions on the statistics (sorry if it has been asked before, tried to surf the 25 pages of this thread but haven't found it): if I play a game with a custom herald, may I add my statistics anyway? selecting no herald? or not? or only games with only original component are considered relevant to the statistics?

There's not really support for custom heralds and investigators, but you can probably submit games anyway (you just won't have a checkbox for them).

You can't really submit a game that uses a custom AO though.

Yep, clear! Thx for answering!

Tibs,

First of all ~ this is an outstanding venue for players to share their thoughts, experiences, successes and failures...thank you!

As a relative newbie (I've only had the game for a little over a year), and have played less than two dozen games, most of which are uploaded on the spreadsheet, I'm continually amazed how rich in theme the game remains after so many sessions. Okay, while I had my entire group devoured by Tsathoggua after only 8 turns ~ yes, 8 turns, I had to redeem myself and the people of Arkham by challenging a different GOO. The next game, played over a 2.5 hour period consisted of the following Investigators: Carolyn Fern , Sister Mary , Dexter Drake , and Michael McGlen ; both the Arkham and the Dunwich town boards; the GOO, Glaaki ; and the King in Yellow Herald. [My goal is to play all 12 GOOs, with random Investigator selection (4/game), with no Investigator playing more than twice. Everyone will have an opportunity to save Arkham or condemn it to ruin.]

In this latest game, the Investigators moved quickly around the board, but I found myself always short on clues (does anyone else experience this phenomenon?). Michael did a fine job of clearing the streets so Monster Surges didn't plague the city, and Dexter's Speed allowed him to travel to Dunwich with enough alacrity to make the trip worthwhile. Additionally, both Sister Mary and Dexter pulled the Spell " Vision Quest " which allowed them to avoid some of the locations, and reap the clues. While the Investigators benefited from not seeing any Rumors or the Dunwich Horror during the session, the Doom Track filled-up every other turn, and we experienced four different Blights, including Nurse Sharon , Joey "The Rat" , Abigail Foreman , and Father Michael .

The Doom Track steadily moved forward, and the Mythos Cards triggered the Terror Track's advance by two separate appearances of the card, " The Next Act Begins! " As we couldn't afford to toss Doom Tokens on the Doom Track, and by the second occurrence, we couldn't afford to pull two seals from the locations, we knew that we were on borrowed time. The two Servants making an appearance during the game, stripped the Investigators of Spells, Unique Items, and Clues, each of which caused us no end of difficulty as we attempted to enter gates and move through the OW as quickly as possible. Not possessing the Spell " Find Gate " also caused us to move slowly through the OW.

In the end, the Doom Track reached 11 (out of 12), Father Michael 's Blight stripped Sister Mary of her Blessing (which she miraculously kept throughout the game), and the Terror Track had reached 4, which had already closed the General Store and was closing-in on the Curiosity Shoppe. On the 22nd Mythos Card/21st Turn, Sister Mary and Michael McGlen emerged from their respective gates, closing them and sealing them on the Arkham Encounter Phase, ending the adventure.

The Professor

The Professor said:

Yes. And no. No personally. Yes impersonally. There are two ways to consistently keep from being clue short. Play a game where you seek lots of cash and have an investigator or two shop at the Curiosity Shop (Elder Signs make up for clue shortages, as do Kings in Yellow), and two, trade corpses and gates at the Science Building. I use a mix of both methods, but I know some people go almost entirely for Science Building and have successful games.

Avi,

I agree with you on the ways to gain Clues, but I feel as though I never have enough time. Interestingly, at the beginning of every game...after I've selected the Investigators, picked the GOO, and received the set-up items, I have a moment of overwhelming dread (Avi_dread, that is) considering the magnitude of the task before us . . .

The Professor

The Professor said:

Well, I can't help you with that ;') I'm a strategist, not an anti-anxiety medication.

---

Seriously though, once you get a better grasp of handling the game it may not be as much of an issue for you. I remember it all being overwhelming, once, long long ago :')

Avi, Tibs, Dam, et al,

Okay, and so begins the next adventure ~ here's the initial set-up:

Investigators, along w/Fixed and Random Possessions

Joe Diamond: $8, 3 Clue Tokens, .45 Automatic, Knife, Shotgun, and Dodge ( Skill )

Harvey Walters: $5, 1 Clue Token, Lamp of Alhazred , Cabala of Saboth , Wither and Enchant Weapon (Spells), and Expert Occultist ( Skill )

Leo Anderson: $5, 2 Clue Tokens, Ruby Standish (Ally), Bullwhip, .38 Revolver, Camilla's Ruby (Unique Item from Ruby Standish - funny that!), and Stealth ( Skill )

Vincent Lee: $9, 1 Clue Token, Tommy Gun, Safety Deposit Key, Dread Curse of Azathoth and Heal (Spells), and Bravery ( Skill )

GOO: Shub-Niggurath First Gate: Woods Monster: Zombie Mythos Card: Southside Strangler Suspected! (w/a Fire Vampire and Witch )

The Professor