First of all I would just like to say hello to everyone. I am a newbie who discovered Arkham Horror by pure accident. I got the game and all its expansions for myself as an early Christmas present after reading all the good reviews the game got. It was expensive but I am an all or nothing type of guy and I stand by my decision. I have had some much fun with the game and have been playing non stop since almost the first week of December. Never having heard of FFG I must give them a shout out for their outstanding product.

Most of the time (to the sometimes regret from my family) I play by myself using four investigators each time. I have learned the rules pretty quick and played using none, some and all of the expansions. The big box expansions are all good to me. It is the small expansions I have problems with. The Black Goat of the Woods and Lurker on the Threshold are the problems. With Lurker their is no real incentive to make a pact and if no pacts are made the you never really use it. could be I am missing something. Same with The Black Goat. I get the whole cult encounters but the problem for me is having the cult encounters. I have played several times and only twice did an investigator have a chance to become a cult member, again maybe I am missing something. Do like the herals though.

So a couple of weeks ago I started to look at fan made stuff. I started with the official league scenarios and they were fun. Then I download the Strange Eons program and I started looking for every scenario, ancient ones, heralds, and investigators I could find and printed them out on cardstock paper. It got to a point that it was like crack to me. To be honest most of the fan made stuff I did not care for but their were a few that were really good. Something did catch my eye. The spanish league scenarios. They look really cool and I really want them. I went to all the links on boardgamegeek but they will not download right. I was told that the file on boardgamegeek is corrupted because everything else i have downloaded from there worked fine, just not the spanish league.

I went to the official spanish league site and downloaded the stuff from there using Strange Eons but unfortunatley it is all in spanish. Can anyone help me on this. I would love to have the 3 spanish league sessions. Thanks for all the help and I look forward to being part of the community.

I have yet to use the Black Goat expansion, but I have used the Lurker a couple times. I always use the relationship cards, as they are a nice touch. The pacts usually only come into play for me when time is of the essence and clue tokens are scarce. This happens more in two player games versus four player. If you use only two investigators and an Ancient One like Hastur, chances are those power tokens will start to look very attractive when you have seven open gates and a nearly full doom track.

I also like the relationship card and I like the herald and the new gates. But in my opinion you have to be really desperate to make a deal with the Lurker. About 90% of the time it just seems like it burns you.

And I also see it different. Hastur with his 8 tokens to seal a gate is had enough as it is. Any bites in the butt due to the Lurkers makes things nearly impossible. But if Yig is the AO then he is easy enough then the risk of dealing with the Lurker can be overcome.

Avi will be along in a moment with his trademark spiel on How The Lurker Can Be Exploited, so I won't steal his thunder. The Black Goat: yeah, Cult Encounters and Corruptions just never come up. The only way to get a Membership is to happen to stumble upon one of the encounters that gives you one (or get the Black Goat skill from Miskatonic). With Miskatonic, it's arguably better than it used to be, since the greater number of positive encounters means you have more of an incentive to take a Membership when you have the oportunity, but again, the problem is the opportunity. Really, the only way to deal with this is to take a bunch of cards out of the Skill and Location decks to up the chances of getting a Membership or to use custom content. It's one of the great wasted opportunities of Arkham.

Walk said:

But we can all dance naked around a heathen fire, chanting: "The Lurker is a Guardian, a Guardian, a Guardian"

(seriously, I'm still wondering how is possible to make such a big playtesting horror, ehm, error, and not noticing how much the Lurker is exploitable)

I wouldn't say that it's obvious that the Lurker is exploitable. In fact, it's only exploitable if you learn about the proper technique from someone or figure it out on your own through strategic analysis of all the Reckonings and Pacts.

Patrice, on the other hand....

The Spanish League looks awesome- I think some have been translated to English already...

With the Black Goat it's best if one or two Investigators start the game with Cult memberships- and it helps to have a self destructive streak cause accumulating Corruptions is fun! Corruptions are easy to get- just kill a monster with the hex symbol.

The Lurker comes with the most cool new stuff (Gates, Relationships) and the Lurker Herald can tip the balance in your favor, even against Hastur (who I consider the toughest Old One from the base game) You need one or more Pacts to use the Power tokens- that's where the Lurker really comes in handy. But the Lurker's not really an enemy you fight, who makes things harder- it makes things easier, but it's like playing Russian Roulette with the Reckoning cards. I guess that's the 'theme'.

My problem with the Lurker expansion (and it's not really a problem)- the new encounters and Other World encounters are a great addition, but they're not all that thematic. It's not like the Dark Pharaoh 2 where everything revolves around the Exhibit, the Lurker encounters are more generic. I think they designed it to be played with multiple other expansions. The Lurker is a very scary concept- but I think it should be harder to make a Dark Pact. I know he's supposed to be omnipresent, it just seems too easy to simply take 1-3 Pacts out of thin air...

Welcome to the carnival. English translations of the Spanish scenarios can be found on www.boardgamegeek.com

Thanks but i still cant pull it up from boardgamegeek. So what i have been doing is just going to the offical website and pulling up the scenarios using the strange eons file the deleting all the text and writing in the english text after having translate it using the translator on the computer. It is a slow labor. I've started with the 3rd league and am working my way backwords. It took me nealy six hours just to do the first two scenarios, but they look worth it.

Try http://plaidscape.net/downloads/arkham/

Walk said:

Uhm... honestly, I figured this out on my own more or less five minutes after reading the Herald. And it has nothing to do with the Reckonings. Put three seals down, make three investigators jump into OW, get a pact, exhaust to gain power in the turn you have to seal and it's done. You don't need the clues, just Pacts and three investigators going for the last seals. Hence, 15 clues are enough for winning *any* game without taking *any* risk. And you generallya re able to gather 15 clues in a bunch of turns

It's by far more helpful than Patrice. For as strong as she is, Patrice is limited: she can gain only a certain amount of clues (too many, but that's another story). The Lurker offers you *unlimited* clues, for a very little price. Patrice can be devoured; the Lurker not. And I've lost games with Patrice (2, IIRC, a Quachil Uttaus game, and a Cthugha game), but I've never lost a Lurker game (it's my second quickest victory of all times, revised Hastur + Lurker, 6 seals in 7 turns, all expansions but DH in)

Julia said:

Julia ;') that was trademarked, you owe me 25 cents.

And yeah, everything you said :')

Avi_dreader said:

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!!! You haven't released your thunder yet, have you?

Sorry, let me reword it in this way:

"[quoting Julia] (Avi Trademark)"

I'll go via PayPal for the 25 cents.

Ugh. Another two or three oversights and I'll be forced to buy you a coffee...

Julia: What I meant is that it's not immediately obvious without reading the Reckonings that you can dodge many of their effects by not having Power. Not reading the Reckonings beforehand, one could reasonably assume that they targeted people with Pacts and Powers wasn't that important. What I meant to express with Patrice is that, like the Lurker, she is unreasonably beneficial, but unlike the Lurker, it is extremely easy to figure out how to (ab)use her.

That's a nice point indeed, Walk. I forgot to mention one point in my reasoning: I assume, always, that a price must be payed.

Hence, without looking at the Reckoning, I can say that, if a price has to be payed, then it has to be related to the Pact or to the Reckonings. But, if I read carefully the Herald and the Pacts, I can quite confidently assume that I can make a deal with the Lurker, take a Pact, exhaust it, gain clues and spend them for sealing *all in the same turn* (and I will certainly be able to do! You can receive more than one pact / round, and they restore Stamina and Sanity, basically offering you clues for sealing). If I do this by coordinating my last three investigators, I can finish a game dealing with the Herad only during the last turn. So, no knowledge of the Reckoning cards required.

But yeah, I guess Patrice is easier to exploit.

Julia said:

Easier to exploit with zero knowledge of the game (I hate these hypothetic scenarios that presume people should be utterly ignorant)? Two games with Lurker, even assuming you haven't looked at the Reckonings, and a person will realize it's a toothless monster.

Avi_dreader said:

Actually, there is always a visual spoiler: if you look at the picture, no teeth are shown ::rofling::

(ok, bad sense of humour this morning. There is such a dull weather outside)

Just want to say a late thanks to Jake yet Again for that link. It really saved me some time. Finished the second spanish league today and will work on the fist one Monday. Got to say that spanish league kicks ass. I could not download the 6th scenario board something was wrong with the eon file. Tried to download it using the peng image but it looked like crap. If anybody has another link to the spanis league scenarios other than boardgamegeek let me know cause translating those is a pain.

I should have somewhere buried in the PC all the components, both in eons and jpeg. If you want, drop me via PM your e-mail address with the files you need, and I'll send you an e-mail back with the missing components.

As for the League per se... it should be made of the very same Scenarios Edge based even the French league on... and honestly, it's full of flaws and really to easy for being a League. The only Scenario that was barely difficult was the first one (The Tree on the Hill), all others were very badly designed. Don't misunderstand me, I had a good time too playing those Scenarios, but... yeah, I'd have expected much more from something official

Thanks, I will as soon as I figure out how to pm. I am an idiot when it comes to computers.

woodsdarkman said:

Just click on my name to open my personal page. Clck the "add to my friends" button (we need to be friends in order to exchange PM): a small text box will appear. You can write there what you need :-)

woodsdarkman said:

It ain't you. This site's "friends" and "personal message" systems are nonsensical and unintuitive.