I just ordered Miskatonic Horror from my favorite online site. (They got their shipment in today)

I can only assume that brick and mortar places are also seeing it in stock today as well.

(I can't bear the wrath of Cthugha to actually go down to my local retailer and check)

LNH

'bout **** time.

Come on, Thought Hammer. Get it together!

Lord_Nerdhammer said:

Which online site is that?

I'd like to get it as soon as possible, but I don't know which online stores to check. Any help would be appreciated.

www.coolstuffinc.com

I use these guys,great prices, good communication, they take pay pal, and if you're buying $100 of games its free shipping.

but the free shipping takes about 7 days...

I'm sure lots of retailers will have it soon though

Waiting for Boardsandbits to get Miskatonic.

I shot them an e-mail and they said they will get it today.

Lord_Nerdhammer said:

Just got done sorting everything out and placing them in the proper boxes. I picked my copy up at cool stuff this afternoon along with revised pharaoh.

Let's hold off on reviews for a while. This expansion is crazy large. I didn't realize how big it was til' I had it all ready to be boxed in the proper expansions. It will be a long time before enough playtests have been made to really get a grasps for balances and such with this expansion.

I think I am going to try Arkham base game all over again but with the added components and cards from Miskatonic and Revised Dark Pharaoh while using Lurker's gates.

I will post my report after two or three games using just these variants.

I guess I'll find out for myself in a week, but I suppose the box insert is the same as the other big boxes?

Based in Toronto.

Just picked it up from my FLGS this morning

No show in the UK. Give us a couple of spoilers to help alleviate the wait...

Jake yet again said:

No sign of Dark Pharaoh in shops here either yet.

Looking forward to getting them both as soon as they go on sale.

Curator said:

I just want to know:

• The names of the institutions
• The names of the seven new skills and six new relationships (and what they do)
• The names of the rumors
• Whether the Dunwich herald actually activates on a roll of 2 to 6 and not 3 to 6

Tibs said:

These we already know:

• Organized Crime (from one of the preview articles)
• Miskatonic University (from the rulebook)
• Bureau of Investigations (ditto)

Tibs said:

I'm also very keen to find out the details of these.

I'd like to know the names of the five new exhibit cards. Specifically do any of them duplicate the names of items found in the Gilman Memorial Exhibit / Curse of the Golden Scarab. (On a side note, does anyone have a copy of that that isn't in torrent format? A zip or a pdf would be nice.)

Jake yet again said:

I have the Golden Scarab. In case you need it, drop me your e-mail via PM, and I'll send you over the zipped archive

Just played a game using the miskatonic cards, base game, and the gates from lurker. I want to kind of work my way around these expansions and some of the players wanted a fast game since we didn't start til' 12 am, so we took on Yig.

All of the new Mythos cards in this expansion are for base game. So out of the expansion all we used were the new mythos cards. These cards are great. In total you are adding about 2/3 of the base games mythos size to the deck. Best of all is the fact that these cards denied us an easy win. The gate appearances are more evenly distributed so no more hanging on the less frequent gate locations and sealing of the frequent ones. We learned quickly that the sealin' and sittin' strategy was no longer viable. Our next lesson came when we drew a gate burst for one of the frequently drawn locations.

The highlight of the game had to be when we drew the card "Taxes are due" typical gov't...I can just see it now. Tanks rolling in to Arkham only to ensure people paid their taxes. It is a nasty card to boot. All investigators lose half of their money rounded down.

We couldn't get a closing of gates victory much less and sealing victory. Nasty monsters (Star Vampire) blocked the bootlegger from moving outside of the Curiosity Shoppe. We beat Yig in final battle, but I have a feeling we won't next game later today. We will be adding the Epic Battle cards to the game. On eof the new ones stays on the board and doesn't allow things to unexhaust for the rest of the battle.

We had a ton of fun with just adding the new Mythos cards to the base game. I can tell firsthand that FFG and Kevin listened to the gripes even the core game got, with the cheap victory strategies.

BTW prior to this expansion we played arkham almost every night. This game felt fresh even after taking away all expansions except the lurker gates and miskatonic mythos cards.

So there it is. Evidence that Miskatonic is the "Great Patch" that fixes "Base Game Only". This interests me GREATLY, because it could mean that that "viability" will extend to one-small-expansion-ONLY games. I really look forward to testing a theme-saturated King in Yellow Only game, or Dark Pharaoh Only one.

jgt7771 said:

Meh. That was anecdotal evidence ;') Also, he played it with Lurker too. You can still run out the clock by sealing a few high frequency locations I'll bet, although it might be a bit harder if there's a significant increase in low frequency location gates. Still. I'm not convinced it's much harder yet.

It just occurred to me that the Arkham Nights ancient ones are not in Miskatonic. I don't suppose anyone has actually scanned them? BGG just has the poor photograph of them. I would like to have print-outs of them. I suppose making them myself in Strange Eons is one of my only options?

Edit - Nevermind, Tibs already did it.

Avi_dreader said:

@jgt7771 Thanks for the kind words and respect. Tonight I will try to get another game with the same components and just add the epic battle cards variant.

Two games down this time I made sure to study the Mythos cards rather than just having nostalgic fun.

Okay so I was wrong. About 66% of the mythos gates open in the high frequency locations. About 24% are medium frequency locations. And obviously that leaves 10% as low frequency and other cards. There is a new card introduced. Four copies of 'Strange Sightings!' A card that causes an automatic monster surge but no gates open and first player gains a clue token. All monsters move, with square, diamond, crescent, and hex moving one color, and slash, triangle, star, plus, and circle moving the other color. There is a rumor added that opens no gate but adds two doom tokens. It removes all spells from the game if failed. Two headlines are added that add no gate but do add two doom tokens.

I should note 8 gate burst locations were added to the game. All being frequent locations. I felt this addition is what made the seal and sit strategy harder to do. In our second game the strange sightings cards and monster surges closed down the curiosity shoppe. We lost to Yig this time using the epic battle cards. That one card that prevents cards from unexhausting for the rest of the final battle is nasty.

The epic battle variant has added to it:

4 new green backed cards and 4 new red backed cards.
2 Battle events and 2 battle conditions for each back.

Green
One condition grants all players +1 to skill checks (but not combat). And each time an investigator is devoured all investigators lose their choice of 1 sanity or stamina which can't be reduced.
The other condition any time a 6 is rolled add one more success to the total number of suceseses and 1's reduce the total number of successes by 1. (Combat checks only)
One battle event reduces the players' stamina and sanity to 4 if they were higher than 4. If more than 9 doom tokens were on the ancient one reduce the number of doom tokens to 9.
The other event manipulates the green deck. First player rolls a will -2 check. If passed they either add one discarded epic battle card to the deck of green cards or remove an undrawn card from the game.

Red
The battle condition that stops cards from unexhausting. Also adds one to the ancient ones combat modifier, making him EASIER to hit.
The other resets the cumulative successes to ) before each investigator attack 0o. But reduces the total number of successes needed to damage the ancient one by one.
One battle event regenerates the ancient ones health equal to the number of the terror level. Then you remove a doom token for each elder sign on the table.
The other event curses the first player after they get to rearrange the top 3 cards of the Battle deck.

Brine said:

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=5&efcid=1&efidt=414447 has both image.

If you want to use original Cthulhu with a Herald to turn him into Newthulhu, try; http://www.boardgamegeek.com/filepage/65091/lovecraft-country-horror-guardians-and-heralds

Curator said:

Avi, remember that all eight new Epic Battle cards instruct you to draw a new one after. That means that you still have eight rounds of green before the red. These new cards do not decrease your chances of seeing reds (except the ones that make the game harder).

I'm using the same technique I've always been, except now I'm adding two green cards per seal instead of one.

@Tibs