My GF and I have been playing AH since last week and out of the four games we've played only one was a loss. The other three were won through sealing six gates while playing two investigators each. Maybe we've just been lucky. We're going to play the next few with only two characters to make things harder but I wanted to get an expansion that has Gate Bursts or enough other craziness to keep us busy that sealing gates is less of a priority. The only expansion I know of that contains Gate Bursts is DH but since I can't get it right now I was thinking of BGotW or Lurker until DH is available. So I was just curious as to whether or not BGotW or Lurker would help us get a more tense experience.

TL;DR: Wait for DH for our first expansion or get BGotW/Lurker now?

Lurker is cool, but it will make things easier unless you use house rules. I think there's a thread for Lurker house rules on the Fan Creations page. Black Goat will give you a more tense experience, but then so will hitting yourself on the head with a hammer. If you get Black Goat, when you open the box you'll notice a lot of cool cult cards. You may wonder when you'll use these cards, and why you'd use them. The answers are never, and you wouldn't.

By the way, Innsmouth Horror and Kingsport Horror also have gate bursts. Innsmouth is better, but it's not designed to be the first expansion that you buy. I'd probably get it anyway.

With Miskatonic Horror arriving, the reprint of DH shouldn't be so far, maybe (hopefully) a couple of months. Anyway, both BGotW and Lurker are good expansions; the problems Avec mentioned are mostly related to the Heralds hosted in these expansions; you can play without Herald, and have gate bursts and interesting new rumors, and new location encounters, and monsters (in the BGotW set) and raise the difficulty a bit (and no, you weren't that lucky, if you get how the base game works, it's rather easy to beat. I think I've lost only one game with just the core set, and it was because of an incredible bad luck and some suicidal tactics the guys I was playing with pretended to follow). Then, if it's not enough, you can use the Heralds too, and in case you need, both were fixed with some houserules you can find in the Custom Herald threat in the Fan Creation section.

I'd personally go with Kingsport + Black Goat, but that's just me, and I love Kingsport, even if this feeling is not universally felt by everyone here, for different reasons.

Anyway, welcome to the Carnival!

Why don't you consider the King in Yellow? The herald with the Blight cards add quite a lot of difficulty. As previously said, Black Goat has cult encounters and corruption cards but you will only draw these in about 10% of the games you play. The Black Goat herald is brutal though. Brutal.

Read posts 695-698. Those game tweaks should tide you over for a while until you get an expansion (and they should be fun in their own right).

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efpag=46&efid=113&efcid=1&efidt=22867

Also, try playing with only two investigators, and for an extra challenge, make sure they aren't Mandy or Joe :')

If you want a major difficulty boost with an expansion, the Black Goat herald will do it for you. Or if you don't feel like buying that expansion yet, just house rule that whenever there is a gate surge it adds a doom token. Voila!

Tox said:

Only if Terror goes up. And even then KiY offers the cheesecake variant, bump those tokens to the doom track and wake the GOO while you're all geared up for final combat.

Tox said:

BGotW for me is lot less about the cult and much more about getting two monsters for each gate and doomer for each monster surge. Corruptions are fun and see action each and every time I've used the Herald, since killing hexagons is pretty much the only way to get them off the board and killing them -> corruption.

Hey, thanks for all the suggestions. I'm focusing on BGotW and Lurker because they're the only two small expansions I can get relatively inexpensively. Getting DCotP is pointless since the revision is coming out sometime and TKiY is stupidly expensive on most sites or I'd have to pay full price PLUS shipping at others and I'm way too cheap for that.

@ Avi - I'll try those house rules out and see what happens but if my GF gets angry at me I'm telling her it's your fault!

arkhamresident said:

;') I do my best to please with displeasure.

Uhhh... I just took another look at those variants (it's been a while). You might want to play 2 investigators each after all ;') otherwise I think your GF is definitely going to be angry at us.

Oh, and if you want an extra special nightmare against Nyarlathop... Read through this thread :'D

(You could combine it with the replacement cultist rule for an extra challenge since you don't have all the masks yet).

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

I should've just bought BGotW and been done with it because now after reading up on KH, BGotW and Lurker I can't decide! I'll just read the rules for each and discuss what changes the expansions would bring with lady and we'll figure it out.

P.S. Avi your AO variants are evil...

Definitely Lurker, with house rules to make him into a real herald.

arkhamresident said:

:') just think of them as preparing you for the boost in game difficulty that comes after expansion acquisition.

I haven't found the expansions to add much in terms of difficulty, to be quite honest. There are some house rules out there that provide more punishment than anything I have found in Lurker/King in Yellow.

As for big box expansions, I'm not sure I'm convinced of their value. Sure, you get an extra two Other Worlds and a whole lot of cards, but take Dunwich for example: the only part of that expansion that a lot of people use are the "Madness" and "Injury" cards. Worth the $50-$70 shelf-price (if you can find it)? Not to me.

Great game, but I'd highly recommend just making some house rules. Here are a few examples:

- If a gate opens on a sealed location, make it a gate burst, which means the seal is removed, the gate opens, a monster spawns, but no token is added to the doom track.

- If an investigator attempts to close a Gate with their "Fight" and they fail, they lose 1 Stamina. If they attempt to close the Gate with their "Lore" and fail, they lose 1 Sanity.

- When an Investigator loses all his stamina, he can choose to take a permanent -1 to Maximum Stamina to keep all his items OR clues (he still must discard half of the other), and instantly have his Stamina restored to its maximum value (after the reduction). If he chooses to take the reduction, he is then placed at the Hospital, or Lost in Time and Space if he was in an Other World. Investigators who make this choice are only delayed if they end up Lost in Time and Space - otherwise they are able to continue their next turn as normal. When an Investigator gets down to 1 Maximum Stamina, he cannot make this choice anymore, as reducing himself to a Maximum Stamina of 0 would result in being Devoured. An Investigator may also make this choice when he is driven insane (reduce Maximum Sanity by 1, keeps all items OR clues, placed at Asylum, or Lost in Time and Space if in an Other World).

- The Special Abilities of Michael McGlen and Harvey Walters are only activated once per turn.

- Mandy Thompson's Special Ability can only be used on investigators in the same neighborhood/other world location as her.

- At the beginning of the game, place three "Doom Tokens" on Kate Winthrop's character sheet. Each time she blocks a gate/monster appearance at her location, a "Doom Token" is removed from her sheet and returned to the pile. When Kate runs out of Doom Tokens, her flux capacitor is rendered inoperational, and as such her special ability is no longer effective.

- Every time the "first player token" goes full circle (say Michael McGlen starts the game with it, every time it comes back to him it's gone full circle), draw two Mythos cards during the "full circle" Mythos phase. For the first card, just do the gate and monster spawn. For the second one, do everything listed on the card. Add one doom token to the track (or none, or two, depending on how you find this for balance). If two gates open and both locations already have gates, you can choose to have two monster surges instead of one (determine if this will occur before the game begins). Two monster surges are especially punishing with the next rule.

- Whenever a "Monster Surge" occurs, increase the "Terror Level" by one, even if the Outskirts doesn't exceed its monster limit. If a Monster Surge occurs and the Outskirts exceed their maximum, the "Terror Level" will increase by two! If the Terror Level hits 10, the Ancient One immediately awakens - any Investigator Lost in Time and Space or in an Other World location must make a speed check (2 successes if Lost in Time and Space, 1 if in an Other World) or is devoured. Terror Level is severely underutilized in the base game and this will make it the threat it should have been - expansions aren't necessary to fix this.

- Investigators can't win by sealing gates.

You'll get just as much longevity out of rules like these as you would from the expansions, but you aren't spending any more money than you already have. With the money you save, you can pick up another board game (Dominion, Betrayal at House on the Hill, Dungeon Twister). Plenty of good ones out there to keep things fresh!

cipher86 said:

That's actually Atlach-Nacha's power. He can be found in Kingsport Horror, and online: http://www.arkhamhorrorwiki.com/Atlach-Nacha'>http://www.arkhamhorrorwiki.com/Atlach-Nacha

cipher86 said:

That's quite similar to the Black Goat Herald, from the expansion of the same name, and at: http://www.arkhamhorrorwiki.com/The_Black_Goat_of_the_Woods_(herald'>http://www.arkhamhorrorwiki.com/The_Black_Goat_of_the_Woods_(herald)

cipher86 said:

I've heard of that one, but I can't convince anyone in my gaming group to try it.

House rules are great. I use tons of them. However, I think it's important to have at least one extra board. Arkham itself is too small and too easily managed. Adding the towns of Dunwich, Kingsport, or Innsmouth fixes a major flaw in the base game.

You can also use of the free content on http://www.arkhamhorrorwiki.com to make the game harder, and to see if there's an expansion that you're particularly interested in. It's pretty easy to download a Herald or an Ancient One and take it on a "test drive." The only exceptions I can think of are Ghatanothoa, Quachil Uttaus, and the Tattered King, since they have their own cards or tokens.

By the way, Innsmouth and Black Goat are generally considered the hardest expansions. If you use them, and they don't increase the challenge of the game, you're probably playing them wrong.

avec said:

The point I was trying to make is that expansions are hardly necessary to increase the difficulty of the game. I don't really find them to add a TON of variety, either - more Ancient One and Investigator cards seems like a good idea, but it comes to down to boosting your character, drawing cards and rolling dice to see if you pass or fail skill checks. I also think it adds more setup/cleanup time, and Arkham Horror is the only game I have that needs an additional table to hold all the pieces, so I suppose I'm a bit turned off by that.

avec said:

I think this one increases game length more than anything, so I can understand resistance. The majority of my victories are from sealing gates - take that victory condition out and suddenly time is being tacked onto an already lengthy game.

We inadvertently found a way to make the game more difficult. An almost constantly insane or unconscious Sister Mary left Kate running around trying to deal with gates and monsters with a steadily climbing terror track that finally filled when the Terrible Experiment failed and soon after Hastur awakened made things quite hairy.

Stupid Sister Mary...

arkhamresident said:

STANDING OVATION!

(but do not complain too much about Mary, otherwise some evil forces will make you play with Monterey. Ask Avi for further details)

Julia said:

Played Monterey and Ashcan Pete the game prior. I sealed one MAYBE two gates and my lady did the rest due to Monterey AND Pete getting the snot beat out of them almost the entire game. Monterey's skill seems to be good for drawing an extra holy water and nothing else.

Julia said:

Watch out Julia, don't give spoilers, or soon you will be playing with Vincent Lee!

Avi_dreader said:

::laughter:: I hope you won't be that evil (spelled avil, pronounced evil ::laughter:

Julia said:

I will burn all the scenarios and stories and rewrite everything so it is all Vincent, all the time! (All other investigators will be treated as copies of Vincent).

Avi_dreader said:

I still prefer Tibs nightmarish vision with 16 Patrice in the core game, but hey, maybe Vincent is better than Monterey. Dunno. Maybe it's just he looks so hopeless...

Julia said:

Avi_dreader said:

::laughter:: it's a good idea for a Herald. Upkeep: on a 1-3, all your characters become exact copies of Vincent Lee and are Cursed.

Julia said: