I have played against Rhan tegoth many times and find him to be unbeatable. Does anyone have a good strategy or investigators they would recommend to do battle with the GOO. Thanks

SyrioForel said:

They're one of the toughest. I have two wins against them - one by closing, one in Final Combat. Both involved massive amounts of luck (as closing victories always do, and with some lucky combat rolls - and only the one cultist appearing all game).

Someone who could potentially, in the right circumstances, wake up on turn zero obviously requires plenty of luck to manage. There are ways to help that luck be in your favour, but they're not reliable.

1) Doom track of 11 is short enough as it is, so don't waste time. With typical luck on cultist draws, you're probably looking at closer to only having 9 in practice. Anything that slows down sealing is almost certainly going to be fatal, so you probably need enough Investigators so that if a rumour comes up or a Star Vampire decides to sit in the Merchant District, someone can go and deal with it without slowing down sealing.

2) Every single monster draw can be deadly, so try to minimise them:
- close and seal active gate locations as quickly as possible to minimise monster surges.
- never do anything voluntarily that involves drawing monsters from the cup
- spend monster trophies as quickly as possible to dilute the cultists still in the cup.
- avoid unsealed unstable locations that have lots of "a monster appears" encounters, if you can.

3) There are plenty of useful items about that remove doom tokens, prevent monsters appearing, stop monster surges, let you avoid "a monster appears" encounters, and so on ... but in practice you probably won't get many of them, if any. Still, if you do, use them as much as you can.

4) If it comes to a fight, swap items round in Upkeep so that Rhan's target isn't holding the good weapons. The Heal spell is probably the most useful thing you can have for buying more turns, and unlike other things (Blessings, attack cancelling items) it's common enough that you might actually have a copy. Sir William Brinton can also be extremely useful, especially if discarded at the right time.

Avi_dreader said:

Avi_dreader said:

I am using the Lurker at the Threshold and the Innsmouth Horror Expansions. Either strategy would be great, either sealing gates or defeating him in final battle. I usually use Norman Withers for one of the investigators b/c he is awesome at closing gates, but not sure who else to use, or who would be a great investigator in final battle against Rhan tegoth.

SyrioForel said:

Ouch, tough combo, unless you're using the Lurker herald. I'd say if you're using less than four investigators don't even bother trying to seal, it's almost definitely not going to happen (without luck, the track's just too short). Just gear up for final battle.

How many investigators are you using?

I usually just use 2 . . . should I use more?

SyrioForel said:

Oh, there's no way in hell you'll get a sealing victory against that with two investigators. Well... Maaaaybe if you used Patrice and Mandy or Wendy. But otherwise, no. You'd need to gear up for that game. Horde as many clue tokens as you possibly can, leave the frequently surging gates open, close but don't seal any other gates. And try to shop through the unique item deck (so you can hopefully get some strong weapons and some Ancient One attack cancelling items). If you have enough clues you should be able to win fairly easily, especially if you're blessed.

But in general, if you're only playing two with that kind of set up, go for a combat victory unless you're playing a really slow AO (13-14 doom track). If you're playing solitaire games, I'd say go for three investigators (4 if you're unable to win with a sealing victory still).

As others said before, Rhan is a tough guy. I don't have a great expertise in Rhan games, simply because I don't like it at all. It's too a question of luck. If you draw three or four cultists in a game, then it's game over. Anyway, I played only two Rhan games until now, and I won both. The first one was Rhan + Black Goat of the Woods, and I won by closing gates in eigth Mythos, playing with Marie, Patrice, Silas, Hank e Norman. The second game was Rhan + Dagon + Hydra, victory by sealing gates in 12 Mythos. Same party as before, with Rita in the place of Norman. I'd say you have to pick up Marie because of her ability to remove doomers (if she passes her PS, Rhan has a "virtual" doom track of 13, which is not that bad even if you draw a couple of cultists) and Patrice is a must have as clues generator. But probably playing with two investigators only implies you need more time for a sealing victory, so basically you're doomed. If you don't want to play more investigators, go with Joe and Patrice, gather clues and a shotgun + some attack cancellers and shop for blessing before the final battle starts.

Julia said:

Avi_dreader said:

Are you suggesting not to metagame? ::laughter::

Julia said:

Never. I'm suggesting he doesn't bore himself by making the game easy ;')

Avi_dreader said:

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh ::laughter::

Well he should use the clues-per-seal rule! Then he'll learn some fun lessons about clue-shotgunning.