Well here I am, its 1:30 in the morning, about 30 degrees celsius, and I am having trouble sleeping. So, I thought I'd pass on my first impressions of Curse of the Dark Pharaoh after I played my first game of it yesterday.

Well, for starters, there was a large portion of annoyance factor. Despite that I seperated all the cards and shuffled them in individually, as soon as I shuffled the decks properly, all the CotDP cards seemed to gravitate back together. It was like they were magnetic or something. Most of the Location encounter decks had a section in the middle that was CotDP cards, despite all having been shuffled well before play, and during. The Other World encounters were even worse. Despite indivually placing each card into the base AH deck, after giving them a good shuffle, 95% of the CotDP cards ended up together. I can only hope that this problem works itself out as the new cards get to have that well-loved usedness that the rest of my cards have.

Now, apart from that, on to the actual gameplay of the expansion.

I liked the new Allies, but unfortunately I had an almost Ally-free game. It wasn't until the last rounds of the game that I ever got to draw an Ally, but hopefully my next game will let me have some fun with them.

Clothing Drive and the one with the Asylum breakout and the one about Misk U being haunted were great Mythos cards. Really enjoyed them, as much as Clothing Drive came at a most annoying time, I like what it does. And the ghost one was really annoying, purely because I had some terrible rolls, otherwise a nice card. The asylum breakout was great, saw it twice in the game and both times before the Terror Track hit 6 so the Maniacs were nice and easy to take down.

Benefits & Detriments were kinda cool, only really had one investigator get into them because of luck of the draw, but she made great use of them.

New Other World encounters were nice and destructive. I did not have anyone face off against a GOO, but I did have two investigators devoured by way of bad draws/bad rolls in Other Worlds.

Didn't see many Exhibit items, only one or two, but I certainly made use of them, and would love to see more of what is in the deck.

Back to annoyance again. I had far too many Blessings go away 2 turns after receiving them. **** dice. Not a complaint about CotDP as such, but it happened. Wasn't happy.

Did not see a single Barred card. Had the chance to get one, but the reward wasn't worth it. Maybe next time.

And now for something I learnt along the way. Azathoth really, really, REALLY, does not like being hit with two Elder Signs in the same turn. Had two come up two shopping sprees in a row, and thusly they were passed to my gate-jumpers (both of whom had Find Gate, and one of whom had a Gate box). They both jumped in the same gate, and the very next turn popped out of two of my more troublesome gates. One went insane in the process, but both gates were then sealed. THEN, 2 turns later and one of those investigators was devoured, 2 more turns and so was the other. Along with the terror track rising by 5 in the time it took for Azathoth to re-acquire the two Doom tokens removed by those Elder Signs. But many thanks must be attributed to big Jim Culver for having had the 4 gate trophies and 16 toughness worth of monster trophies before he so rudely got devoured, and while the monster trophies were whittled down by the second occurence of the Asylum riot taking all 3 maniacs and after Antarctic Expedition Returns to Arkham taking 2 elder things, the gate trophies were spent well to bless everyone.

Overall I had fun playing CotDP (for starters it is the first time since I got Dunwich Horror that I played without any DH cards except Injury/Madness cards), and am really looking forward to playing it again, hoping to see more of the allies, barred cards and Exhibit items.

When you get devoured or retire a character in-game, that character's monster and gate trophies transfer over to the replacement character. So Jim having been devoured wasn't so big a deal—you got to keep those trophies.

thorgrim said:

I had EXACTLY the same problem with more than one expansion. It was pretty weird to watch, and VERY ANNOYING. We kept shuffling and the expansion cards eventually found their way together again. Any way around it other than waiting for the cards to rotten over time?

Since I totally suck at shuffling cards, when I am adding expansion cards to the base game, I start by sorting them in, e.g. 3 cards from the base, then 1 from the expansion, etc. Only after that do I start shuffling. That works pretty well for me.

I shuffle each my random decks this way:

Deal the deck into X different piles. Stack the piles on top of each other (randomly will do I guess).

X depends on the size of the deck—it's the square root. It ensures the biggest distribution of cards that were close together.

For example, with all expansions together my Mythos deck has 193 cards. I deal it into 14 piles, then stack the piles. Same with the Gate deck— with 188 cards.

Injury—5 stacks
Madness—5 stacks
Exhibit items—5 stacks
Nodens cards—4 stacks
Hypnos cards—5 stacks

Shuffling this way yields the added bonus that the cards remain in pristine condition, and aren't warped/creased like my last set—which I riffle-shuffled.

jhaelen said:

I do this when I get new expansions. Items and Mythos and Gate cards are interspersed as evenly as possible before I perform my above method.

However, new Arkham Encounter decks and Ancient Ones are placed on the TOP of their stacks. I use the d6 method to select encounter cards and AOs so that cards I haven't encountered in the longest time are more likely to appear. Of course, I place the selected card on the bottom.

And naturally, since the new AOs and Encounters haven't been encountered in the longest time (note: ever ), they get to be on top.

Even though the AOs start out grouped, I have used the d6 method for every single game since getting Kingsport (with the exception of the League scenarios) and they have broken up nicely.

This is the current order of my deck, from longest since I've played to most recent:

1. Yog-Sothoth
2. Eihort
3. Yibb-Tstll
4. Azathoth
5. Shub-Niggurath
6. Ithaqua
7. Yig
8. Y'Golonac
9. Glaaki
10. Atlach-Nacha
11. Tsathoggua
12. Hastur
13. Shudde M'ell
14. Nyarlathotep
15. Cthulhu
16. Abhoth

Notice that almost none of the AOs included in the same expansion are together. And I've faced Eihort 5 times and Yibb-Tstll 6, so they're only next to each other by coincidence.

jhaelen said:

That's exactly what I do, too. But with those "magnetic" cards (to put it some way), after I start the shuffling, the more I shuffle, the more chance those cards begin getting back together.

Yeah, weird. But I have witnesses!