The story behind this. The first game of Arkham Horror I played was at a Convention. The guy's set was unique and he had his own custom rules (several of which I've adopted). But the most interesting one was this.

He felt that some of the Ancient Ones were pushovers - way too easy. Others were far too difficult. So to increase excitement, he created a varient where you would end up facing several Ancient Ones in one game through a method including a second deck that is gone through as you gain clue tokens.

I like the concept behind his idea, but I've streamlined, condesed and made the process (I feel) more interesting. Here is the Base Games Ancient Ones (using the Arkham Nights Cthulhu, but not the Hastur) alongside the Ancient One Sheet to be used with this varient. I made Nylarhotep a bit more threatening as well (and I'm considering adding redundancies for him so he's likely to show up repeatedly). This varient will work best with all Ancient Ones from all Expansions, but I wanted to share the progress thusfar. What do you guys think?

That sounds an interesting mechanism. The only bad point, at least the way i see it, it's because the investigators are quite able to chose which AO they want to face. Just have to pay the replacement cost until they have the one they want.

Hugues said:

That's actually intended as part of the strategy. If you think you've got an Easier Ancient One, just let it sit there. But most the costs are either difficult, painful or random, so it won't be as easy (for the most part) as 'paying the cost'. When you add in the Expansion Ancient ones (who I'm working on), it will become more difficult as many of them have harder costs than the base set.

One thin I considered implementing was increasing the number of Seals required to win the game to 8 instead of 6 to counterbalance this. This would pmake it more difficult to focus it down to an Ancient One you like over one you don't.

-edit- And just noticed Yoggy had a typo, It's supposed to be 3 Gate Trophies.

I agree the costs could be high, just to get the AO you want. But I saw the things so I shared

You could even make a limited stack. Draw 7 AO Cards and keep the undrawn hidden. So you won't know which one are still available in the stack.

By the way, I thought i read it, but what about if you're paying the replacement cost for the last card ?

Game over ? Win for the investigators ?

Hugues said:

However, I really like the idea of limiting the stack. I could make it so the varient states that if you do make it through the stack, you win the game. I put that clause in there initially to keep it from scaling badly when you have expansions (You could theoretically go through all the base game sets, but add in all the expansions and you will never hit that problem).

If I do that though, I'd definitely increase the number of Seals needed to win the game as a trade-off.

What do you guys think of that?

First of all... I love the picture. Second of all, interesting idea. But I kind of wish you went in a different direction with this. You could make it so that you flip to a different ancient one when the doom track hits 5 and when it hits 10. This would make the unpredictability a bit more frightening (and who knows what you'd end up with for the final one).

Master Fwiffo said:

I knew i read it somewhere, but i didn't check the AO sheet, just the text around

I really like the idea in fact. Don't if a win if you go through the stack is a good idea, but it's an interesting new way (cause the cost are quite high).

And maybe you could mix Avi's idea. When you hit 5 or 10, discard current card. So you can't keep an AO you like too long. I really like that stuff in fact. Keep the good ideas for the expansion AOs

Avi_dreader said:

What about 5 and 9? Just to avoid that, as soon as you reach 10 and switch AO, you discover you're fighting against Yig and the Final Battle has begun!

So I took some suggestions into account and made my own spin on things and changed up the sheet. Here's the revised version, as well as more interesting and threatening Foils for Nyarlahotep and Azatoth, and the Dunwich and Kingsport Expansion AO's.

If you've got feedback on Indiviual AO's and their discard conditions, that'd be helpful for me too! I hope to finish the Innsmouth Ancient Ones by Monday, and then I'll start cleaning this up to be a final, printable packet.

I liked the change to the ancient one swap :') now it's even more chaotic. Chaos is good because it breeds fear :'D

Glaaki says if there are no Servants it's discarded. Could be discarded as soon as it is drawn right ? Maybe you should add a Servant when it comes into play. Same thing with Y'Golonac. When drawn, investigators could already have no Tomes.

And for the number of cards double the number of investigator seems not enough for a 1 investigator game. Could be very easy i'm afraid.

Maybe twice the number of investigator plus one... Sounds still too few :/

Hugues said:

And for the number of cards double the number of investigator seems not enough for a 1 investigator game. Could be very easy i'm afraid.

Maybe twice the number of investigator plus one... Sounds still too few :/

On Glaaki and Yiggy, read the entire card. I'm actually one step ahead of you.

With a lone Investigator, managing to do just two of those tasks should be pretty hard (without an insane amount of luck) - especially with all the other stuff the game can do to screw you. Unfortunately, I just can't think of a good way to scale this with only 1 Investigator.

Once you hit 2 or 3, how difficult does it sound?

Sorry man I just read the discarding cost :ashamed:

Well for 2/3 investigators, have no idea. I think it needs to be tested to know if it's okay. For the one investigator game, yeah, you need to be lucky, but it could be doable. Y'Golonac and Shudde M'Ell for example can easily be beaten. In fact the more cards you had the more you're reducing a "only-easy-cards" stack. So I guess it would be okay. But still, to be tested.

Here's the Innsmouth Ancient Ones. If you guys could look all of them over for any typos, broken cards, ect. that'd be helpful! Thank you! I'll begin working on a PDF packet for the final and get it up on BoardgameGeek,

I've put together a near-final packet for final review before I submit it to Board Game Geek. My first file there, yay!

I'm still working on getting the file size down (currently 30 megs hosted by Megaupload, my apologies!), but I'd appreciate some error-checking (I keep spotting little tiny ones) and any final balance checking before I mark this final. I've also included all 3 Arkham Nights Ancient Ones and distinguished Hastur and Cthulhu from their base set counterparts.

Thanks!

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I've gotten the Low Quality PDF available for review, with HQ currently available on request. I've made a couple more minor changes, and given it a (brief, unfinished) Test Drive. We got stuck with Shudde Me'll as the first Ancient One, but after he finally went away, we had a quick run in with Yig and Eihort befire having to call it. Increasing the Seals to 8 may make it too difficult. Does anyone have any input?

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Giving this a bump. The file's been uploaded to Board Game Geek and (hopefully) will be available soon. Here's the final version of the Ancient One sheet, revised and ready to play!