Ever since MH came out my group has been using the CotDP material in addition to all of the big box material. The challenge has been about equivalent to where it has been for months, maybe a little greater. A few days ago, though, we decided to try the other big cultural event in Arkham. We took out all of the CotDP material and put in all of the KiY material (except for most of the Other World cards; with two exceptions, I find the KiY Other World cards to be bland and boring).

In the three games since then we've been utterly thrashed; even Yig defeated us! So my question is this: is everyone else finding the new Act Cards and the King in Yellow Herald to be a bit much to handle, or is it just us?

It's hard to comment. I definitely notice that the Acts are far more active, but they were intended to be. I also use all expansions, so my chances of a "Next Act Begins" is around three-quarters of what yours is. Not huge, I know.

Three Acts is what I complained the most about with regards to dilution, so I'm glad they changed it. I guess you just have to get through this adjustment period and treat the new Acts as though you've never seen Acts before. If you try to consider them the way you were probably used to (that is, the old versions), you'll get slaughtered.

The new act mechanic is, IMHO, what it should have been all along. It's pervasive, you shouldn't ignore it, and can surprise you when you least expect it.

What may be of interest is that not all acts stand the same chance of coming into play (due to the uneven distribution of environment card types). Crunching the numbers (as I so love to do):

If you play with just MH and KiY:

• 19% chance of Act I being triggered from Overture.
• 16% chance of Act II being triggered from Act I
• 15% chance of Act III being triggered from Act II.

For most combinations of expansions the %s are similar to this (in descending order). The notable exception is if you use DH (which has a lot of Urban and Weather cards but only one mystic). If you have MH, KiY, DH than all likelihoods match at 16%.

If you really want to make things harder, then use MH, KiY, DH, and IH, as the Act likelihood accelerates:

• 15% chance of Act I being triggered from Overture.
• 16% chance of Act II being triggered from Act I
• 16% chance of Act III being triggered from Act II.

So once the town people start to put on the play, they really want to finish it.

How are the probabilities with KiY alone? Are they the highest because the six The Next Act cards are also the most concentrated? Does this overcome any dips in probabilities from specific environments?

Tibs said:

If you're referring to the old "Touring/Permanent" exhibit styles when using KiY, the next act! chances are 22% (Touring) and 6% (Permanent). So MH definitely plays more like the old Touring mode. Of course, the cost for not having an act come into play is not as great.

Regarding the MH + KiY probabilities being so high (19% for act 1) it's more a factor of how the environment cards are distributed than because of the Next Act cards. Just adding MH to the base mythos deck gives you 109 mythos cards of which 39 are environment cards. Adding in KiY adds another 27 cards, 6 of which are act and 11 are environment ... so the environment cards continue to dominate.

One thing I like about the new Next Act! mechanic is that you don't really need to be playing with the KiY cards ... it's almost like a herald unto itself. Maybe I'll amend Hastur so that he his Slumber ability includes "Use the MH Next Act!" mechanic.

Tibs said:

It actually wasn't the Acts I was talking about; though their threat was ever-present, we didn't have the Third Act come up in any of the four games we played.

I agree that the new Overture and Acts are far superior to the old ones. I cannot, however, thematically reconcile using the Act cards without the King in Yellow Herald, and it is from the latter that most of our problems stemmed.

I don't think it's a question of adjustment. I think the King in Yellow is simply too much for us to handle on top of four boards, just as the Father Dagon Herald or the Lurker gates were too much to handle. Arkham is a delicated balancing act, and this throws the balance too far in favor of the Ancient One for us. I was hoping to discover whether anyone else had come to that same conclusion, or whether other people were handling the new King in Yellow without a problem.

I've only played with the King once, and that was before I got MH. I don't recall his specific impact on the game very well, but I'm faily certain he messed us up good. The Acts...well, it depends on what you mean. Certainly, we've had games where we added a doom token to stop Act I, and then the AO woke up because of the Doom Track and thrashed us. I haven't yet had Act III come out, but I suppose you could say that the prevention of Act I counts as part of the difficulty. Of course, in my last two games, we might have had more problems with the Acts if the AO hadn't woken up so very quickly (said games included Ghroth and Dagon, respectively). So, in summary, the effect the Acts have had is pretty much to add one extra Doom token each game, which is not that bad.

I've actually had almost no difficulties with the Lurker gates. Certainly, the moving gates are annoying and we pretty much avoid them, but everything else just hasn't happened to bother us. The Gate of Doom hasn't opened on anyone, and (as far as I can recall) no one's failed a check on a gate with a penalty for failure. Of course, that probably has a fair amount to do with luck (the abstract real-world concept, not the in-game skill). I am ABSOLUTELY with you on Dagon, though.

Wondering how lovable would be a game with both Dagon and the King in Yellow in play...

Julia said:

Challenge accepted!

Veet said:

Let us know how it goes!

Well the game actually started out pretty well, the team of investigators was on their way to a sealing victory but then a single rise in the terror track ruined it all. With Mary sitting on a gate with only 5 clue tokens and rex coming through another with 6. Dagon forced them to discard a clue then, since we couldn't afford a doom token they drew Oliver Thomas effectively ruining 1/3 of the needed seals and they couldn't recover in time. Tsathoggua was not kind in final combat.

Yep, Tsath tends to be *tough* in final combat. I'm sorry for the bad end of the game, hope it had a great time nonetheless!

I still think Glaaki + KiY herald is one of the sickest games ever imagined.

Rhan-Tegoth + KiY is also a real pain: draw a cultist, raise terror, add yellow sign ...

I still maintain Rhan-Tegoth / Dagon is the worst.

Did you draw a Cultist?

1. Add a doom token
2. Raise the terror level
3. Everyone loses a clue token
4. If not everyone lost a clue, then add another doom token
5. Draw another monster

Is it another Cultist? GO BACK TO 1.

yeah, those are easily in my top 5 horrors. Atlach and Black Goat are in there too.