Hi everyone! I'm going to buy a second-hand copy of this wonderful game but it's last owner told me that figures and monster tokens are glued to the stand. I wanted to know if this may be an inconvenience in the future. I mean, here in Spain the two first expansions haven not been released yet and I don't know if these expansions bring new creature tokens.

Can anybody help me? Does anyone know if the new expansions bring new monster tokens? Does it make sense to create new monster tokens for the monsters of the base game? I need to know to finally decide wether I should buy the game or not.

Thanks in advance.

The first two expansions are Print-on-Demand so they are cards only. No tokens at all.

The third (not yet released) expansion will come with two new monster types, so I don't think there will be new tokens for the older monsters.

I don't know why anyone wold glue his tokens to the base, but normally you can keep them in anyway. The only time when you would take them out is when you want to randomize the monsters.

Neither do I. I've played the game once and I didn't get the feeling that the tokens might fall off easily.

Thank you very much. With that info II think I'm going to buy it.

Thanks again!

I just wonder why are you buying second hand instead of brand new copy?

Or why would anyone sell such a wonderful game...

^-^. I can only give you a good anwser to the first question and my best guess to the second.

In Spain a new copy costs 80 euros, that is 107 dolars, quite a lot. Second hand the game costs me 55 euros, that is 75 dolars. As you can imagine there are more thant 30 bucks of difference.

I always like to buy new games but prices in Spain are quite high comparing them with USA prices. In this cases, if the game has been treated with care, I prefer saving some money and buy more games (like Gears of war xD)

Regarding the second question, here in Spain we still are waiting for the first two expansions. Maybe the owner just got tired of waiting and bored with the 7 missions. Or maybe he just didn't enjoy the game very much.

I'm just glad he's selling it.

Replayability is my main issue with the game. I've played scenarios 1-4 with each of the three Objectives and currently don't see any point in going back., feel like I've seen them, move on. Luckily, I still have both PODs with two more Objectives to play. As for scenario #5, one play was I could take of that one. People generally dislike #4 the most, but #5 for me was just horrible. Compare that total of play (6x3 + 1 = 19) with Gears of War that I got this month. GoW has already clocked 18 plays in about half a month and will see action at at least 12 plays per month for the next two month (after which I will have played six of the seven mission which each of the possible COG pairings). Can't really put my finger on what it is that makes single goal scenario games (GoW, Arkham Horror, etc.) more replayable than games like MoM, but I think despite varying Objectives, the fixed maps and linear experience going from Clue to Clue has something to do with it. And maybe that the Keeper wins more often than not.

Well, it's all about you. You don't go for risk and you have your result.

I heard alot about 4th scenario being a horrible unenjoyable scenario. I tested it once to confirm this.

Then, I slightly reworked it with set of my houserules and you know what? My playing group enjoyed it very much.

If you want good replayability from games like MoM, you'll need to go through rules sometimes, or even most of times.

Last time we played a scenario completely written by myself as a sequel to our previous SotW session, and it was great. Players met characters they played last time as a foes in their transformed form, it was incredible.

So, I guess, it's all about players.

MyNeighbourTrololo said:

If a game doesn't work without house rules, it probably isn't much of a game to begin with. Something must be seriously broken if it requires houserules to fix. As such, I keep houserules to a minimum (ideally none) and never bother with homebrews of any kind (characters, scenarios, etc.). Games should have enough in the box itself to provide replayability without me having to do more work to get more plays. I'm having flashbacks to my RPG days here. Don't have time for RPGs anymore, both as the sessios require too much time and too much work if you're the GM (plus getting enough people is also an issue). Gears of War will get 40+ plays just out of the base set, Middle-Earth Quest is closing in on 70 plays, Marvel Heroes is etching towards 100 plays, all games with just the base set (although I would've wanted to see an expansion for that last two by now).

Dam said:

If you have time to setup standart MoM scenario, then you have enough time to setup customized MoM scenario, because it'll take maximum of +5-10 minutes of your time(I'm not talking about writting your own scenario, I'm talking about making something worth of 4th scenario for example). But, well, as you said yourself - you just dont like the game itself to make it more enjoyable for you and your playing group.

So unless I make houserules for a game, I don't like it ? And for the record, I like scenario #4, it's a nice change of pace, having to hamper the investigator with something other than monsters. I prefer it over scenario 5 with its pop-up Witches that make it fairly simple for the Keeper to cripple the investigators, since you either waste an attack on the Witch that will just mostly likely come back anyways or Evade, risking damage (plus the Horror check when she appears). Do you think I would've bought the POD expansions if I don't like the game? Hell no! Games that I don't like, I spend extra money on. Games must and should work right out of the box, otherwise the whole design process has been only partially done, game makers should not be asking the players to fix/change things to make it more enjoyable. IMO it's up to the creators to make a balanced game, that scales well, etc. I like MoM, but replayability is low for me, once you've played a scenario with each Objective, there is nothing left to discover as far the Clues/goals are concerned. That's a problem with games that setup like MoM.

What houserules do you use in MoM?

The designers did a brilliant job creating a base set of rules which I almost did not touch.

My houserules is more of addition instead of changing the existant. '

Besides of modyfing each scenario during setup to make it feel diffrent from previous run, I use my core set of houserules which includes:

• Limited inventory - players are not allowed to have more than 4 items, having more than 3 items blocks Run Action for player, players may also leave unwanted items on the floor during exploration and drop 1 item of their choice at the investigator trading step(some players seem to grab everything they find, stockpiling items and not using em, limited inventory forces players to choose and even communicate more about what who will get).
• Elimination rule - death is permanent, dead players does not recieve replacement(makes people really care about what are they doing, also makes sacrifices more dramatic).
• Insanity penalties - insane players suffer -2 Intellect, Willpower and Lore penalties(one day I turned two players insane but I was so unlucky with my trauma hand - I drawn almost no mental trauma through all the game, so players reaction to madness was "meh, whatever").
• Interception - if a player is attacked by a monster, other players in his space may once per turn per player redirect this attack at themselves and suffer -2 penalty for this attack. Stunned players can't do so, and also interception is impossible in the dark room(designed to make characters like Harvey without warding totem more likely to survive with a help of teammates, remember the elimination rule).
• Tactical mythos placing - playing mythos cards facedown on the board following their requirements(marking rooms as the ones with "paranormal activity" or something to force players communicate about these rooms and what might be going on there and make decisions they never did without this rule).
• Improved barriers - All barrier tokens removed from the board at the start of the game. Nothing of Interest cards are not discarded upon discovering, they placed faceup in the room they were found instead and can be taken by the player if wanted. Player can spend an action point to use NoI in his room or inventory to create a barrier attached to a door in his space(people very rarely used barriers before this rule, and now it has more pressence and killing the monster is not the only way now).

That's the main rules from my mind which we are using. There is a few others.

Well, I appreciate all the feedback. However, I think I'm with Dam regarding house rules. I know house ruling improves the gaming experiencie because it makes it closer to what you're expecting. The problem, IMHO, is that house rules tend to create problems in the group of players since you're playing exactly the game as it was designed.

This is not criticism. Games should be made to enjoy and if with those home rules the gaming experience is more enjoyable for your group then that's great. Nevertheless, I don't really like them. First, because I'm paying a lot of money not only for the components of the game but for a set of rules tested that makes the game tight. Secondly, as I said before, it does more harm than good (at least in my group).

From my only play, in which we lost, I think that the game is tough as it is. The suggested house rules make increases the difficulty of the game.

However, thank you both for all the anwsers. I really appreciate them. I'm buying the gaming tomorrow.

Seeya!

Oh... I wanted to say "since you'r not playing as it was designed".

Sorry. It's late and I'm tired.

MyNeighbourTrololo said:

I think this one makes the most game impact out of those. Carrying limits don't really matter since there are rarely that many items to lug around, one weapon per investigator plus one more item and a key maybe. But this elimination rule IMO tweaks the game even more in favor of the Keeper. Instead of getting an investigator down to like 1-2 Stamina and waiting for the Objective to be revealed before killing him (no replacement after Obj revealed), I could just kill him right away. Season of the Witch scenario has auto-kill, no-warming Lock for example, that could be a severe blow in the middle of the game. Also, what does the player do for the rest of the game, just sit there and watch? Maybe your style of Keepering isn't about killing off the investigators, but I play to win and this elimination rule would not go well at all.

Dam said:

Oh, you will be surprised about items, very surprised. I remove instantly killing effects from the game or reduce them if they are inevitable. I play to create a thrilling and interesting adventure. Don't think I'm letting them just walk around, but I'm not going to summon all monster available into one room containing investigators just to win.