Last night I was playing a game against Eihort. My companion had never seen Eihort and I assured him that probabilities tend to bend in favor of despair. Well I should have put money on that assertion.

The game started oddly, with a gate being blocked by Kate immediately and many double-doom and no-gate Mythos cards to follow. Twice we opted to hold back Act I, adding two more doom tokens, so by the time there were three gates open, the doom track was at 7 and the Deep One track was at 5.

Eihort had physical immunity, we knew, so we made it a point to swing by the Curiositie Shoppe. Eventually we obtained some decent magical weapons, including the Brazier of Souls.

In a brave and desperate attempt to keep monsters out of Innsmouth, Monterey Jack dropped all his gear onto Kate and ran into Kingsport with the Milk of Shub Niggurath. We figured that he could avoid losing his items and avoid a Madness card. That seemed to work well, and with so few brood tokens on us, we figured that we'd stand a chance in final combat. Still, the chance wasn't GREAT, so we pressed on to seal (plus I use two rules that make final combat easier with more seals).

Kate happened upon an Elder Sign, and entered a gate. When she came back, she sealed it, obtaining her second brood token. I rolled the die.

Do I even need to say what the result was?

Kate died, two brood tokens were added to Eihort (bringing him to 11 of 12), and since we didn't have time to exchange items again, she died with the Brazier of Souls, Withering, Holy Water, Powder of Ibn-Ghazi, a Ritual Blade, and the Call Ancient One spell, that we were increasingly and seriously considering using.

So in a single one-in-six roll, our chance to win was shot completely to hell. There were not enough gates open to win by sealing (like we had the clues anyway); any new gates would mean the final doom token, and the only two gates that had nobody in them had modifiers of –3 and –4. Our chance to win by combat was obviously lost. Kate's replacement, Ursula, failed her personal story immediately upon arriving, which curses her. The fact that she started with three Tomes and a key or something didn't help us during combat.

Eventually the last man fell in combat, leaving Eihort with a measily 23-or-so doom tokens. Whoopee!

About the only good thing to mention was that we got Fist of Yog-Sothoth up to a +5 bonus.

Are you sure you prevented those act cards from opening? Because it sounded like total obliteration to me :'D

OUCH. Painful yet amusing report. (Mmmmmm...shaaadenfreuuude...) At the very least, it sounds like we can all agree that Miskatonic has revived the King in Yellow's Act mechanic with a vengeance. The Tattered King has been saving up a LOT of payback, and it's finally Judgment Day.

Most of the time, veterans can slip under Eihort's radar by spreading Brood Tokens amongst them as evenly as possible. This effectively heightens and expands Eihort's "Ghatanothoa Effect" to encompass all players as the game goes on, and every player has a growing weight in their hearts every time they're forced to "poke" the snoozing beast. And every once in a while, even spreading the Brood Tokens around won't save you from a bad "1" on the die. (Just like a bad 1-in-8 Ghata flip. These situations make for my favorite Ancient Ones.)

Tibs said:

And if you ask me, the MOMENT you had even a WHISPER in your brains of metagaming this stupid, anti-thematic, cop-out of a Spell, the game knew it and was utterly INSULTED. And that's why Kate, and thus all hope of winning, had to be destroyed, as violently and instantaneously as possible, like some kind of Final Destination gag. (Burn that Spell, Tibs: it's the right thing to do. )

Avi_dreader said:

We were at Act II when Eihort awoke, and we checked—the next Mythos card was a weather. Blark!

jgt7771 said:

Oh believe me, I announced from the onset that we would need to spread sealing duties as evenly as possible. Which we sincerely tried to do, but I (stupidly) assumed that Kate's second brood token wouldn't kill her.

Honestly, this was the first time I considered using it, and I also took note of how much effort is required to abuse it. One character did start with the Ancient Language skill, but since we collected about four gate trophies and two monsters total, we really wouldn't have been able to hit too hard.

I'm not going back on my claims against the spell from before (since I didn't have all the tools to abuse it to its end), but I can now see how hard it is to utilize. If I removed it from the set, I'd be bugged a bit because one of Black Goat's whopping four spells has been removed.

Tibs said:

Noted. But don't think of it that way. Much like how DP + DH finally gave enough Allies to double the Ally deck, Black Goat and Lurker complement each other. Black Goat has only 4 Spells, but a decent handful of Commons and Uniques. While Lurker has only 4 Commons and 4 Uniques, it has an awesome handful of Spells. So if you take BG + LT together, surely you can lose one craptastic Spell from the lot.

Don't force the game to teach you another lesson.

I'll admit, it was actually kind of fun to get the spell and consider its small tactical value rather than to just immediately roll my eyes so hard I that got a headache. The other player had not seen it before, either, and he greeted it with an emphatic, "why the hell would we use this?"

Guess he learned his lesson, eh?

jgt7771 said:

Tibs said:

Awesome story! I am sure I will appreciated it better as I begin to explore the expansions. I do however, sympathize. My wife and I watched a game where we had been doing fairly well pretty much implode in 3 mythos turn and kill us all.