I don’t even think I’m the right guy to do this, since I play with Heralds less than half the time, but somebody’s got to toss out the first grenade.

How does one gauge a Herald? There’s the difficulty factor, the versatility factor, the fun factor, all of which are subjective, often stiflingly so, depending on how one plays the game or how masochistic one is. So I tried to throw up an umbrella to cover all of each Herald. I rarely play with more than one big + one small (+MH) expansions, but I have done so on occasion, so I generally know how each Herald operates. Obviously, your mileage may vary.

Rated Bottom to Top:

Dark Pharaoh – Aw, I know this is just gonna tick so many people off, but here’s the problem: this Herald isn’t FUN. Sanity is precious, and dinging Investigators on their STARTING items is just tacky. It’s one thing when it’s the Great Cthulhu on your Maxes; it’s another when you’re starting the game with your own padded room at the Asylum. Worse, now that the Curse of the Dark Pharaoh Expansion has been brilliantly refurbished with Ancient Whispers, this Herald just makes everyone avoid Exhibits, burying an awesome mechanic. Lastly, this Herald is WAY too specific: it’s got five rules, but play without the DP Expansion and Nyarlathotep, and it’s reduced to one (the lamest one!).

Dunwich Horror – This one is slightly better than the last one: it’s still extremely specific (must play with Dunwich), but it is designed to speed up the Dunwich Horror mechanic, and does a fairly decent job of it. Investigators must keep an eye on Dunwich, or else…but then that’s the thing. If Dunwich ends up “sleepy”, this Herald sleeps with it. Often this Herald is reduced to a single discussion on whether to worry about it or not, and then trying to beat the time bomb before it goes off. (For people who play racing the Doom Track anyway…hardly a big deal at all.)

Ghroth – There is every chance that you won’t even get to “spin the wheel” at all, and even if you do, it’s never a big deal. But Ghroth fires one NASTY bullet at the beginning of the game, starting any Ancient One on Doom 3 after the first draw. No more slow leisurely Doom Track on some of the real heavies, and it’s a real challenge to keep zippers like Yig and Rhan-Tegoth asleep. So Ghroth is barely a Herald: he’s more like one painful House Rule, and that lowers him quite a bit on the fun scale.

Lurker at the Threshold – Almost too controversial to include, the Lurker splits right down the middle of us. If you don’t fear the Reckoning Deck, and exploit the heck out of the Dark Pacts, the Lurker may become—say it with me, Avi—a Guardian (with, say, a bad body odor). MH doesn’t seem to increase his threat too much, mostly because the problem is more in the Pact mechanics than the Reckonings. However, for those of us who disagree, the Lurker is a decent blob of unpredictable fun. (With even some minor Pact house ruling, the naysayers can’t argue with that.) And a permanent penalty on Gate Checks is terrifically effective.

Black Goat – The absolute Beast of the Heralds, the Black Goat punishes. Monsters flow thick, and this is the only way to get some serious yardage out of the Corruption Deck. But you only have thirteen or less turns to enjoy it, since monster surges are no longer a respite from Doom Tokens. For those who love “Speed Arkham”, this Herald is an afterburner; for those who don’t wish to ignore everything not related to Gates, this Herald is a party-pooper. (However, similar to the Lurker, if one edits the “Pagan Rites” rule, everyone can enjoy it.)

Father Dagon and Mother Hydra – I’m taking these two together because they operate very similar to each other. On the surface, both appear to be as specific as the Dunwich Horror, but you really don’t have to be using Innsmouth at all to use the fun parts. With Innsmouth in play, both make the Deep One Rising Track an even quicker threat, but without Innsmouth, either can still run an amusing racket on regular game mechanics—Dagon on the Doom Track, Hydra on the Terror Track—that works even better when they swim together.

Tulzscha – The best use of the Elusive mechanic, Tulzscha takes away easy trophies and uses them to threaten one of the worst things possible: your Elder Signs (and victory). Horrifyingly effective in Dunwich and Innsmouth, and not too bad at filling up your Monster Limit and increasing your Terror Track. A great deal of fun.

The King in Yellow – The first is still the best. Now that there are so many ways for the Terror Track to move, you are guaranteed to have either a deadly Doom Track or a couple of strategy-busting Blights dogging you all game. MH even adds more Blights so other towns can get in on the insanity now. The perfect Herald for anyone: so effective, so fun, and it works with ANY combination of gaming you can come up with.

Yeah, the Dark Pharaoh herald is pretty dumb. It's designed so that you only collect Exhibit Items when the herald isn't in play. WTF?

The Dunwich Horror is basically a stick to make sure you don't completely ignore Dunwich. The open gates limit takes care of that problem anyway, so he's almost redundant.

The Tattered King is pure awesomeness.

Allow me to pitch back my own grenade. This will be based on overall feeling of excitement I get when I draw the herald. I'll add Guardians and Institutions too:

Fun:

The Black Goat of the Woods —the doom track speeds up, and the monsters appear more frequently. It's tough, but while my clue tokens are not at risk (hello? Dagon?), it's a fun race against the clock. Corruptions are injected liberally, which is A+ .

Hypnos— More encounters, and clue tokens appearing in stable locations. This helps you see encounters you don't rarely see—and may never have seen.

The King in Yellow — Still the best! The most thematic, and probably the most suspenseful. Additionally, its ability offers the players a choice for its effect, which many later heralds do not.

Lurker at the Threshold— whether or not you think that it counts more as a guardian (highly debatable once Miskatonic is mixed in), the concept is great and the herald allows you to make some important choices, which was the original REQUIREMENT of a herald. Any herald that lures you to the dark side is okay by me.

Miskatonic University — Three cool new abilities that you can activate with your trophies (although you'll really only be using one)!

Tulzscha — You have to be careful where you lay your seals, and may have to exert a lot of effort to stop a Cultist from ruining your plan! Bumped down significantly if someone has a Sedanette.

Indifferen t:

The Dark Pharaoh— The herald doesn't make Masks or Exhibits more common, and it even discourages you from getting Exhibits (the core item type of the expansion—durr!) Though, gambling your sanity against coordinating your unique item possession is at least interesting. Anything that breaks up Elder Sign shopping is a good thing.

The Dunwich Horror— It's supposed to make the Dunwich Horror awaken quicker, and activate more often. It does that perfectly fine.

Ghroth— The opening two doom tokens compose 90% of this herald's purpose. The Mystic ability doesn't come up nearly often enough for the "choice" mechanic to be interesting.

Mother Hydra— Yawn. Very small pre-game effect, and only bears its teeth during combat with Cthulhu. Weakest of the heralds.

Nodens— Doesn't do much from the get-go, and it requires blessings to see the neater stuff.

Organized Crime— The starting Retainers are very generous, so there's often no incentive to grab the gang membership. The other abilities are all right, I guess.

Invariably ellicits groans:

Bast— As written, you have to make one hell of an investment to use its latent ability, and then have to hope against hope to see its randomly (yet rarely) assigned ultimate ability. Even with my more generous house-ruled version, it still does little to nothing.

Bureau of Investigations— You want me to spend how many clues to maybe remove a one-toughness monster?? I thought there were government agents! Even Wendy can kill a Cultist with her bare hands! Needless to say, I've had to tweak this one a bit (as have others).

Father Dagon— Get it away! Just when you think you think you're well on your way to sealing, and you've responsibly been keeping monsters under control, there will be multiple unpredictable successive surprise-terror-rises that strip you of your clues, ability to seal, and almost inevitably, your dignity as a doom token is added. I like a challenge, but this tips the scales towards infuriating .

@jgt re: Lurker, preempt me , will you?! Yaaaarg!

It's kind of sad how King in Yellow was the best and they all went down hill from there :'r Sometimes I feel like they just threw some of the heralds together without thinking about them. Buuuut, when I'm dissatisfied, I just customize, so I don't care that much.

I think it might be fun to come up with a supplementary herald to The Dark Pharoah specifically to encourage gaining exhibit items. I might add a mini section about it to my Nyarlathotep variant.

Or perhaps if the investigators do not have at least two exhibit items when the doom track is at nine, add two doom tokens to the doom track, plus all monsters adjacent to investigators with exhibit items move like stalkers, and the sky is considered adjacent to unstable locations as well. That might make for an interesting twist.

And if an investigator carries two exhibit items, a random monster appears on him/her during Arkham Encounters or Other World encounters.

If Nyarlathotep is the Ancient One and he awakens when investigators do not have at least two exhibit items, his combat rating is raised to -8 (in addition to the My True Glory Effect).

And whenever an investigator is knocked unconscious, search the cup and place the first mask drawn on the location the investigator was (the Black Cave if in Another World), masks won't count against the monster limit, and if they are placed in the outskirts they go to the Black Cave instead).

jgt and Tibs,

While I've rarely played with Guardians, I've used both Lurker and The King in Yellow as my stand-by Heralds . Over the next 16 games, I'll introduce both Hypnos (gotta love anything which will provide a greater chance for Investigators to visit stable locations and of course . . . Clue Tokens!) and the Miskatonic University Institution . As a member of the Bureau, I'm frankly embarrassed by their 'ability' in the game. Frankly, as I'm not a "power" or "speed" gamer, I'm not inclined to use any of the other Heralds (and it's interesting that few get as high marks as the "King"), but I may, over time, add a few more of the Institutions into the mix.

The Professor

I still don't have Kingsport (MUST... FINISH... COLLECTION...) but I have everything else. However, I find myself often electing to skip the Heralds, most because I lose enough at the game as it is.

But here's my thoughts.

My favorite is the Lurker at the Threshold. While he is exploitable, bad things still happen enough to make him interesting. I enjoy playing with him because I feel he adds variety and an interesting mechanic. Sure, he doesn't do much if you don't take any pacts, but eventually you'll be at a spot where you just HAVE to cast that spell, and you just know that'll come back on you eventually. I wouldn't play him alongside a Guardian/Institution (since he helps you too), but I enjoy playing him by himself.

But close behind is the King in Yellow. While simple, his mechanic is VERY effective and wonderfully thematic, and strikes the perfect balance of fun and difficulty inducing. I still keep my King in Yellow cards seperate for theme games due to how much fun this guy is. I'm always down for running in fear from the King.

I understand why people would like the Black Goat, however, I'm not good enough yet at the game to think it's remotely neccessary to make the game THAT HARD. Ugh. That things just a nightmare. Screw it, if I want to lose, I'll fight Cthulhu.

The one time I've played with the Dunwich Horror, he did nothing because Dunwich was stupid quiet (I've since fixed distribution issues). However, he appears to help make the Horror itself more threatening, which is fine by me. I'd play with him in some of my Dunwich games.

I like the idea behind Father Dagon and Mother Hydra, but between you and me, the Innsmouth mechanic is irritating as it is, and I don't feel a need to make it harder already.

Screw the Dark Pharaoh. I love the Ancient Whispers mechanic, but he exists solely to ruin it. So forget him. I've never bothered to play against him, and I see no reason to change it.

Both the times I've played with Institutions (Organized Crime and Miskatonic), neither of them made a real impression on me. I do like that organized crime gives you something to do with your money, but I've found that unless you have certain characters, money often becomes a valuable commdodity. Unless you've got Jenny or someone who starts with a retainer/gains a retainer with the personal story, there's not much of a reason to use it. Miskatonic didn't leave much of an impression on me, and I like the idea behind the FBI, but the execution is terrible, so I haven't bothered to use it.

Master Fwiffo: You do know that Organized Crime means everyone can start with a Retainer, right?

Walk said:

...

Wow. I did miss that. @@

So, have we discussed a way to make the FBI useful?

I think a 1 to 1 Clue Token to Agent ratio seems more reasonable. It's still expensive, but now you don't have to spend 4 to defeat a 1 toughness monster - spending 4 will instead bag a 3 toughness big bad beasty, which is a lot more reasonable.

Master Fwiffo said:

But then then someone with a bunch of clues could dump them at Joe Sargent's and prevent many monsters from entering the vortex.

Two clues is more thematic, because a single clue doesn't seem like enough information to spur the bureau into action.

My two ideas for solutions have been:

1. Monsters are defeated if there are as many or more agents as their toughness, or
2. 1 clue per agent, but you roll dice equal to the number of agents and remove the monster if you roll at least as many successes as its toughness. If you roll twice the successes, no agents are removed.

In both cases, an elusive monster is considered to have +1 toughness.

I'm actually very happy that the Lurker has fans, even more so that one of them is Tibs. (Didn't expect that. ) I'll admit I've only played with the MH-boosted Reckoning Deck once, and it wasn't much different, so maybe I need more time with it.

Heralds still petrify my gaming Cultists, so I only use them when I play solo. The Lurker gave me a shot with them, but only one Cultist learned to use Power cleverly; the rest were too terrified to make a Pact, and the Reckoning Deck refused to cooperate and force one on them. Still working up to regular Heralding, I guess; for now, the Ancient Ones and Innsmouth are enough.

I didn't do the Guardians because they're too easy: Hypnos is fantastic, Nodens is barely felt, and Bast is ignored.

At the moment, Institutions are similarly easy. Organized Crime is adored because (a) my Cultists LOVE to shop, and (b) Sawbones works beautifully with the other towns' minor healing centers to prevent having to come back to Arkham to recover (especially when you can get out of being arrested at the Gilman Hotel!). Miskatonic University is generally too costly to use ALL of it in one game (except maybe Tsathoggua games, and that ALMOST feels like cheating), but almost everyone tries to become at least a Student. But we did put an Expedition Marker on Sawbone Alley in order to set up an Underground Railroad of sorts, and that went over great. The Bureau is as bad as Bast (as written): no one wants to use it, and the card just sits there gathering dust. Still working on an acceptable tweak.

I have major problems with the Lurker's implementation and exploitability, but that doesn't mean it isn't thematic and fun. Though, I've never used the Lurker outside of my own scenarios and I haven't used the Miskatonic add-on cards yet. Can't wait to see that!

Needless to say, a Rhan-Tegoth / Father Dagon / Bast / Bureau of Investigations game would probably be my least favorite.

Tibs said:

...with Vincent, George, Jim, and Charlie.

There comes a time when you just have to pass the game over to the dog, and tell him to come get you when it's over.

I'm surprised at how much consensus there is, on the whole (and doubly surprised at Hypnos's popularity...my old group insisted on him, and, though it gave us more of a sense of purpose, I've always felt a twinge of shame at opening the clue floodgates). Another thing this discussion has made me realize is that I fall both on the side of "Black Goat's difficulty totally ruins an otherwise great Herald," and also that of "Lurker's absurd easiness doesn't ruin it at all, c'mon, where's your sense of theme," which is a little bit contradictory, at best. Anyways, now I'm wondering what would happen if I played with both of them. Has anyone tried this?

Hmmm... It just occurred to me that pairing the guardian Lurker, with the herald King in Yellow and Hastur (might actually balance out all that **** power, particularly if coupled with the can't spend the turn power is gained rule) starting with the terror track at two would be fun :') Eeee... I know what my next Hastur game's going to look like :'D

jgt7771 said:

subochre said:

Bah . I meant without abusing seals. (As clever as a lot of the modifications are, my current preferred method of dealing with the Lurker is to just adhere to some vaguely specified standards of sportsmanship. In this case the line is somewhat less clear than that of not using bank loan or ashcan exploits, but it works well enough.) But even if one is still going fast enough for the accelerated doom track to not be a concern, the combination of extra monsters, corruption, and MH reckonings seems like it should keep the game pretty interesting (depending on the AO, of course)