Hi all.

I'm posting this mainly because I played my first "test" game yesterday and found it to be much easier to beat than what I thought... As I'm reading from most of your posts that "winning is extremely hard", I was starting to wonder if I did something wrong, or maybe I was just plain lucky...

Brief summary (excuse the mistakes, I haven't got the game in front of me and btw it's the italian version and I don't know all the proper translations):

GOO: Ithaqua; players Amanda Sharpe, Harvey Walters and XXX Lee (the doctor);

It took me about 25 turns to seal six gates. The terror level was at 8, Same with the fate tokens.

After six or seven turns I had already three sealed gates. The seals were once removed by the"Much work for nothing" mythos card (the one with the token stack that reopens all sealed gates), but if they hadn't, I'd probably have won much sooner.

Mythos cards were always opening portals in the same places; this caused very few open portals (I never had more than four at the same time). On the other hand, I had many monster surges, which took my terror level at 8, but with just six monsters hanging around (a couple of them stationary, a couple flying) avoiding them was VERY easy.

Thus, I had very few encounters, and even when I lost them I found out that fainting or going insane isn't much of a worry: you just lose a few items (I didn't retrieve many items in the first place, so it wasn't that much of a loss, and one item still stays there in the end, as you lose "half of them rounded down"), and wake up in the hospital or asylum with resistance/sanity at 1 and the ability to start the next turn just as nothing happened. I sometimes found out that fighting a monster and losing is even a nice, fast and somehow "painless" way to move to the other side of the board...

I found flying monsters in particular to be absolutely useless; I was probably using them the wrong way, but given that they attack only characters in road spaces, it was enough to end my movement outside of the roads to avoid them (a thing that I already did by default, as Ithaqua gives a -1 resistance penalty to everyone sitting in road spaces during the mythos phase).

In the end, winning took me quite some time (about 4h of play), but I never really had the impression I could lose; the fate tokens went up very slowly, my characters kept on fainting and going insane but, as I said, that wasn't much of a worry, and, well, It just plain fixed itself in the end...

Did I miss something?

Thanks...

How did you seal the gates, since with base-AH going unconscious/insane costs you 1/2 of your Clues as well? Also, 3 seals in 6-7 turn sounds like you had Elder Signs (since collecting 5 Clues takes 3-4 turns with the investigators you started with) or just never had to use a Clue on your OW romps.

I'm sure you made a few mistakes...because EVERYONE does their first game...but honestly, no, you may not be missing anything. The Base Game alone has a few fundamental flaws in its gameplay that often allow for victories just like yours. Most of us required Dunwich to "patch" those flaws. And when people say how hard the game is, I'm pretty sure most of them are playing with at least one Expansion.

Don't get discouraged. That was your first game, and I bet, even with that nasty Rumor, you got a little lucky with your card and monster draws. (A Terror Track of 8 is something most of us who play the "hard" games are SERIOUSLY trying to AVOID.) Maybe if, instead of all those flyers and stationary monsters, you had Gugs and Elder Things and Hounds of Tindalos? Or maybe playing against Yog-Sothoth.

Try another game; see if the game changes on you.

I actually didn't get unconscious during the first rounds, when health and sanity were at their top. It happened systematically during the final rounds, though. I DID have one Elder sign in the beginning, together with a "summon portal" card on Harvey Walters and a tome that gave me 4 clue tokens on Amanda Sharpe...

I think the Mythos cards always opening portals in the same places is just down to shuffling.

That happened to us in our first two games even though we thought they had been shuffled them thoroughly. This resolved itself by the third game.

Hmm, guess I was just plain lucky and did a bad job at shuffling, then... I'll try again and see what happens. Thanks.

Btw, another question that comes to my mind and doesn't deserve its own topic: let's suppose a stationary monster spawns from a portal, and after a few turns the portal is sealed with the monster still there. Does it STAY there, or is it removed by the seal? I mean, the seal prevents monster and portals from SPAWNING into the location, but does it remove monsters who were there previously as well?

Abi said:

Sealed gates only prevent new monsters from spawning there. If they are their prior to the gate being sealed, or find a way to move into it (such as the Hound of Tindalos), they can still be there.

Remember that monsters get returned to the cup if the gate with their symbol on it is closed. After all my know-how with this game, that is the one rule I consistently forget when playing.

maphisto_2000 said:

Could be that, of course, but I'd like to point out that the base game has 4 locations where a gate rarely opens anyway, and 3-4 very busy locations. So "clusters" of gates trying to open on two or three same locations for several turns should be pretty common in a thoroughly shuffled deck. So every once in a while, or maybe even half the games, you'll hit one of these clusters in the early turns. Whereas a distribution in which most locations would have gates trying to open on them before repeats, throughout the deck, seems much less probable.

Does anyone know/remember anymore how the Mythos cards are arranged when you first crack them out of the plastic? Are they sorted according to gate locations, alphabetically, perhaps environments are all together, then headlines...?

Anyway, even with Dunwich locations added, I still frequently run into situations where the same 2-3 gate locations are bombed over and over. Since the deck has been shuffled about 200 times by then, it's just basic everyday randomness.

This topic shows up everytime some one plays his first game, let me tell you where you might be wrong:

- You do not place clue tokens on opened gates

- You remove all clue tokens when a gate opens there

- You need 5 clues to seal a gate

- To close/seal a gate you will need to go trough it, and then exit with an explored marker, even if you have an elder sign

- Add a doom track to the AO every time a gate opens (don't add if this provokes a monster surge)

- You can only have one environment and one rumor in play at any time.

- When fighting monsters you need to have an ammoun of succeses equal to its toughness (you can't kill a toughness 3 monster by dealing 1 damage to it in first round of combat, and 2 more in second round)

- You don't go directly in the gate, you first have to fight or evade the monster guarding the gate if there are any.

- When you come back from the gate, you don't have to fight the monster on the first round, but you do have to fight or evade him on the second.

- You do not choose to have the other encounter in OW, you must do the listed encounter for the otherworld you are in, only execute the other when its name is not in the card.

- You cannot trade clues and/or allies

- When you are reduced to zero stamina or sanity, you lose half your items rounded down, money and clues.

- Roll for blessings in each upkeep (exception: don't roll first round, its free )

can't think of anything more now, please add if you guys can think of anything else.

P.S. Also need to mention Arkham base set, yeah...you pretty much have to be playing the game for the first time, or just be randomly closing gates to lose at it, its pretty hard to lose in base game IMO.

StarBurn said:

On the turn you come back, you do not have to deal with any monsters on your location. If an encounter in the Other World sends you back, then the turn will have ended before you need to deal with any monsters, so you don't get a freebie.

Bank Loans, Curses, Blessings, and Retainers are not rolled for on the round they're acquired. You can't have more than one copy of any of those given things (can't have two blessings, for example), but when you get a new copy, you discard the old one and replace it with the new one. So essentially, you don't have to roll the first turn you have the "replacement" copy. Curses, Blessings, Retainers, and Bank Loans can't be traded.

Neither can skills or STL memberships. Really, only items (Common, Unique, Exhibit, Spell; Patrol Wagon or Deputy Revolver) or money can be traded, and nothing else.

Bel-Shamharoth said:

They are sorted by Gate location. So a poor shuffle, or even a half decent one will still find these clumped together. It is a common occurance for new players to find this situation the first couple of games.

I always use the method of sorting a deck into 7 stacks and then pile them together before shuffling. This goes along with the "magic" number of saying that a deck is fully shuffled after 7 full shuffles. Though even that number is disputed a bit.

ColtsFan76 said:

The "magic" number is 7 piles because it is closest to the square root of a standard deck of cards (52).

If you sorted a standard deck into 1 pile of 52 cards, they would all still be in order. If you sorted it into 52 piles of 1 card each and stacked the piles, they would still be in order. 7 is the most "thorough" you can mix it when dealing into equal piles.

Whatever number is closest to the square root is the best number for forming piles. For the base game Arkham I guess it would be, for the base game:

Mythos: 67 cards--8 piles
Gate deck: 49 cards; 7 piles
etc. with item decks, whatever their roots may be.

With all the expansions mixed together, the Gate and Mythos decks each require 14 piles. Yikes!

StarBurn said:

Thorough. I dub yours the authoratative response!