This is probably a silly question given the number of AH games I've played but thought I'd ask it of the community.

The manual for AH states during game setup that gate tokens are shuffled and stacked with new gates being drawn from the stack.

As best I can recall however, it does NOT say how to treat redeemed gate tokens - whether they are added to the bottom of the pile (a first in, first out approach) or are shuffled before every draw like location decks.

Which lead me to thinking that perhaps they might better be served being randomly drawn from a bag although that might affect gameplay somewhat.

I wonder if there was an official ruling on the drawing and redemption of gate tokens?

Thanks!

Well the tokens are supposed to be in a stack. An image of this can be seen in the rules, and there is at least one expansion component that says to "return the token to the top of the gate pile."

I'd keep them in a pile. It'll reduce wear on your tokens. As for redeeming them, I'd say they go to the bottom like an item deck. This keeps the random draw from being repetitive.

Thanks Tibs. That's how I've been playing it currently.

I was just struck the other day by the idea I described and wondered if it could be improved.

I suppose moving from the First in, First out approach to a random draw from a bag would affect the difficulty probabilites somewhat.

Page 23 of the PDF version of the Arkham Horror rulebook (emphasis added):

There are several locations on the game board where players can spend the monster and gate trophies they have collected. For example, a player can spend monster or gate trophies at the River Docks to gain $5. All monster trophies spent in this manner are returned to the monster cup, while all gate trophies are placed face down on the bottom of the pile of gate markers.

parkrrrr said:

Thanks parkrrr!

It's good to know that I've come by the correct habit from the rulebook and not by my imagination. I'd hate for "feature creep" to enter my games of AH.