I've mixed all "King in Yellow" Investigator Cards, Other World Cards, and Location Cards into the base deck. Left Mythos Cards on the side (plan on shuffling these into the top 40 Mythos cards if I want to play a heavier King in Yellow themed game, since mixing them into the base deck would diminish the threat of the "Act" cards).

Mix all the "Lurker" Investigator Cards, Other World Cards, Location Cards, and Mythos Cards into the base deck. Use the Relationship cards.

Play with either Herald or none at all.

Has anyone else done something like this? If so, what are your thoughts on it? I don't want a diluted game (hence keeping the "King in Yellow" Mythos cards out unless I want that specifically) but I do want more variety in cards. Also curious how it might be for balance.

EDIT: I was also thinking about mixing every "King in Yellow" Mythos card into the base+Lurker Mythos deck but leaving out the Act cards, shuffling those into the top 30 cards when I want to play with that threat. Any thoughts on this?

Sounds like a good idea to try. The group I play with usually mixes everything together, though we did notice that in the few games we played with King in Yellow, he basically did nothing the entire time because of Mythos dilution and also the fact we never seem to have problems with the terror level rising. By mixing in the Act cards in the top portion of the deck, it should make him more dangerous.

Until I picked up Innsmouth a week ago, that was the exact same sets I had.

I incorporated the items from both sets (including the magical effects), the other world cards, and the Relationship cards into the main set permanently, along with the Lurker gate markers (which I mixed in with the regular gates to add a bit more variety to all games). THe other world cards are usually nonspecfic enough that they don't add or lose the theme when incorporated. The items are a little more themed, but their a hassle to pull out, so I just roll with it.

But I keep the Location and Mythos cards seperate. When I want to play a theme game, I use all the remaining elements from that one set. I never put them all together, because to me, I just felt it wouldn't feel right to have the King in Yellow Play going without themed mythos and location cards and the King in Herald menacing things.

I've done similar with Innsmouth, keeping the location and mythos sets with the board and heralds, while sticking the monsters, AOs, Investigators and personal stories in the main set. I'll likely keep it up with further sets I get.

cipher86 said:

I crunched some numbers on how to best preserve the ratio of Next Act Begins cards, which were designed to be 6.38% of the Mythos deck. I published the results here:

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=114&efcid=1&efidt=456103

I'll probably update and expand it once Miskatonic Horror comes out.

If you shuffle the 6 Act cards into the top 30 cards, then they'll be 20% of your Mythos deck, not 6.38%. It could be fun, but you'll certainly get a lot of Act cards.

I like to play both those expansions together, they go well. Only I play with both heralds at the same time.

Thanks for the replies.

Played a game with this last night and it seemed to go okay, though even with the expansions and the Heralds the game is feeling kind of dry. Was considering picking up a big box expansion but all my local store has is Kingport... thought about it a bit more and figure I should take a break from Arkham for a bit - I've played four games in the past three weeks and I'm feeling pretty burnt out (long setup and cleanup, needing to set aside so much time to play, having to play for so long because I can't leave it overnight [my cat would have fun with the pieces, not to mention the difficulty of getting the group back together right away], it being pretty easy at this point even with the reliance on dice).

Especially good to know about the 6/94 for the "Act" cards - I'm going to put that on a note and stick it with the rules so I remember next time I play. Thanks