As has probably been made clear by now, I tend to enjoy thinking through various situations and combinations of effects in Arkham. In doing so, I have recently stumbled upon a rather overpowered combo, so it is here presented for your examination: simply put, Mask of Vice and Organized Crime. The only reason the phenomenally effective Mask of Vice wasn't blatantly overpowered was that you still had to sit on a shop to get items. WIth Organized Crime, you just need to start your turn in the streets, which means a designated monster hunter can continuously get items for no cost. Think about that for a second: one free item a turn for no cost whatsoever. Revelation of Script means one free clue a turn as well, if you keep your Lore high. But the real fun comes when you throw Pete into the mix, since he can keep stealing and then discarding the same item. To go with the monster hunter theme, you could repeatedly use and then retrieve Dynamite. Recycling Elder Sign Pendant completely shuts down monster surges. Recycling Eltdown Shards is a massive blow to the Doom Track. If Daisy Walker is around, Pete can give Eltdown Shards to her each turn, and you can effectively ignore the Doom Track for the rest of the game. Doing the same with Dhol Chants (or, to a lesser extent, Cabala of Saboth) turns Daisy into an unthinkably strong character. Doing the same with De Vermiis Mysteriis (as an aside: shouldn't that be Vermis?) will get you boatloads of trophies and contribute significantly to a closing win.

Wow, I feel like Marius Hartland.... So, what does everyone think? Blatantly overpowered? Not as bad as I make it out to be? Worth a ban?

Play with single draft investigator picking variant. Or even with full random.

Walk said:

Well, I don't play with Organized Crime ;'D problem solved.

This for me is part of the fun of Arkham - sometimes these combos will really screw you, sometimes they will screw the Ancient One. It doesnt seem particularly dangerous to me - not only must you have OC in play, but the Mask must still be found (and not returned to the box by the encounter) and by the time that happens, you will likely only have a half dozen or so cracks at it. So youll get maybe 6-7 items from the deck and could just as easily end up with something far from useful. Yes, Pete is an additional exploit, as you say, but again if Pete finds the Shards or the Dynamite, way to go you lucked out. It wont happen too often.

The dangerous thing, for me, is that less scrupulous players can easily try to trigger such combos intentionally. For example, they could choose to play wiith Organized Crime, Pete, and Lola (using Lola to fish for Egyptology and then repeatedly recycle it). It's still fairly unlikely, admittedly, but if it does happen....

The bank scam is worse though because it can be pulled off every time (except against St. Toad - gotta love him for that!). Every game has its potential flaws which such players will try to exploit, I just dont play games with them.

dj2.0 said:

::standing ovation:: same here... even if I see AH more as a strategic game rather than an RPG-like experience, I strongly refuse to search for loopholes to break the game. I mean, I play because I love the setting and so on, but I love even more being challenged. Winning a game by exploiting intentionally one of its flaw is not satisfctory at all. To me, at least

an investigator on my side of the non-Euclidean table! a game is a social event not a bandstand for how smart you can be vs. the game designer. That, at least, is my meditation on imbalance. Iä Iä!