HI all

Our group of 4 intrepid investigators have played our 10th total game of Arkham and we're still definitely enjoying things. We've decided to get some expansions and due to the difficulty of ordering them in a timely manner here in Australia, we've had to take what we can get so far. This means that we have Black Goat of the Woods expansion with Lurker at the Threshold just arrived in the mail today.

I'd like to share some observations and invite people to respond please.

The Black Goat herald certainly makes the game much harder! We had our first ever loss with the Goat + Hastur - basically we couldn't seal gates early enough to prevent the monster surges cluttering up Arkham and making it very difficult to actually get anything done. Add to that the Doom token on surge effect and the game raced to the final encounter very very quickly. Which brings me to the observation that while Goat certainly does increase the difficulty, it does so at the expense of removing certain aspects of the game.

Played as written, it seems as if it's far more efficient for the investigators to use their time preparing for the final battle than to attempt to close or seal gates. We discussed and decided to temporarily make a house rule that the Goat did not add a Doom token on surge and found that the difficulty was certainly tougher but there still seemed to be hope for a win by sealing. Our second game paired Goat with Ithaqua and we just squeaked through to a victory right before the Corruption deck ran out - we'd also had two investigators devoured.

A quick forum search revealed that our observation that cult infiltration just wasn't a big part of the Goat expansion was generally well known. We did love the Corruption cards though, the slow (and sometimes very quick) descent into evil was fantastic and the frustration of Endless Greed & Jealous Guardian was great.

We've noticed overall that spells in general are very powerful and extremely useful. Combat spells are generally much less useful, especially if there are multiple monsters at a single location. I'm sure I can't be the first to think that Wither is pathetic Has anyone got any ideas on making combat spells more in line with other items? (we thought of making a minimum lore of 2 minus the casting modifier a requirement for using a spell but not actually rolling to cast combat spells)

Cheers

Yes, the herald is interesting. Certainly not one to use every single game, because she makes the game too short to enjoy all its facets.

Well when you have expansion AOs and/or Epic Battle cards, then gearing up for final combat isn't often a good idea. With Hastur it may very well be. But don't forget that you can win by closing gates. Try to shoot for that too.

I've never seen the Corruption deck come close to emptying. But I often don't play with the herald, so that could be why. The corruption cards are awesome but joining the cult is a dud. The Miskatonic expansion adds like 20-something encounters so they're probably mostly good so that there is renewed incentive to join.

Wither certainly isn't pathetic, especially if your alternative is a physical weapon against a physically immune monster, or no weapon at all.

I wouldn't change any spells (except Call Ancient One). They're all pretty thematic and fair, especially considering the physical immunity issue. If you want a better shot at casting, you need to set your Lore high (and therefore your Luck low). It's a risk-management feature.

I do exactly the same for the BGOTW herald and simply ignore the doom token for monster surges.

I have not used the herald in a while though because I've not needed to add difficulty since aquiring the Innsmouth expansion!

Tibs said:

The choice though, isn't between Wither and a physical weapon (or no weapon), but between the opportunity cost of looking for a spell vs a weapon. It's also between an item which activates every combat every time and never exhausts vs an item which might activate for one combat and exhausts so that it cannot be used for a subsequent combat in the same turn. Simply put, we have noticed a huge difference in monster slaying ability between a weapon user and a spell caster.

Spells are fantastic, however, our players often groan in frustration when they draw a combat spell. Find gate on the other hand...

Now, this wouldn't be a problem if physical resistant/immune monsters were weaker than others but they aren't. In fact, several of them are amongst the nastiest monsters in the base set. So a spell caster often wants to avoid combat especially if there are significant numbers of monsters which might move to his/her location because unless a player has a large repertoire of spells, multiple monsters in one turn can spell doom.

Furthermore, the risk factor of spells and uncertain nature of casting can destroy the plans of even the most well prepared investigator. If a spellcaster charges in against a physical immune creature (perhaps to clear the way for another person armed with only a tommy gun) and their Dread Curse fails, they have no fallback position unless they have another spell and, even then, they must accept a round of combat before they can attempt to use those hands for new spell(s). In a significant number of cases, it's "fail your lore roll and move to hospital/asylum" with the accompanying loss of half your items.

From my searching, the topic of combat spells appears to be highly polarised. I guess I come down on the side that spellcasting should be a viable alternative to searching the Curiositie Shoppe.

We have a house rule that lets you use a combat spell for multiple monsters in a single turn once you cast it, similar to a weapon. It makes them more viable, yet not on par with weapons since you still have the casting cost and chance to fail the spell check.

Believe it or not, Wither is one of the better combat spells for the simple reason that it costs no Sanity and only takes up one hand. Sure, it's no Enchanted Knife, but +3 for one hand is about average and there are more beasties with physical resistance / immunity than magical resistance / immunity. It's also a great boon against Lloigor, who have Weapon Immunity. It's the spell check that makes Wither hard to use... but if you a gate diver you may be keeping your Lore pretty high for when you escape the OW.

***Shameless plug*** For another take on Wither, see Alexander Thorne in the Lovecraft Country Horror expansion. (Link in sig)

heh

I played Black Goat of the Woods last night for the first time, with three rookies. First off, the three new guys are all addicted already....go figure. We played with the Black Goat Herald paired with Ithaqua and just like your guys' game, we squeaked by. In fact, all my one investigator was devoured and it came down to a last roll. If he would have not succeeded in the last roll, he would have been devoured. The guy that stayed alive also had 9/16 Corruption Cards on him...hahahaha. It was fairly entertaining. One guy was a cult member, but he did not deal with any cult encounters the whole game. We had THE TERRIBLE EXPERIMENT out, so a lot of attention was focused on that for the bulk of the game.

I remember reading a lot of negativety about Black Goat of the Woods, but after one play of it, I think I like it better than the King in Yellow.

Cheers

Terrible Experiement is fairly easy to handle. Kill most of the monsters, but leave one alive. Every now-and-then go on a experiment cull. This leaves TE out to block all the other Rumours.