It says in the expansion rules that when the Dunwich Horror monster moves there is a chance that the Doom Track will go up by one. What are the conditions that will cause this to occur?

The Dunwich Horror has a crescent symbol on it, so when drawing a Mythos card, if it has a crescent symbol on it for monster movement, you follow the instructions on the back of the Dunwich Horror monster tile, which involves rolling a die to determine if a doom token is placed or not. The Dunwich Horror tile does not move whether a doom token is placed or not.

Now I'll likely go straight to hell for rendering assistance to Joseph Curwen...

Yeah, Cyandroid got this. Generally speaking, the DH is a green bordered monster. All green bordered monsters have a special movement described on the back of the chit. Hence, if the dimensional symbol of the green monster matches the movement pattern on the Mythos card, you look at the back of the chit and see how the monster moves.

note too that the red circle on its picture signifies it is also a spawn monster which does not go to the cup and cannot be claimed as a trophy, and that if you play with the Dunwich Horror herald (available here in support and in MH) then you have a higher chance of adding Doom when the Horror moves, and it moves more frequently. When DH first came out Kevin was here telling us that the Horror was designed to have about a 1 in 3 chance of waking up. This herald appeared later to up those odds.

I guess I was never around for the "one in three chance" announcement, but the results on the Arkham Stats reports suggests that for all games using the Dunwich board, possibly including other expansions, the Horror awakens 13% of the time. Unfortunately, I have no easy way to find out its awakening frequency when using only the Dunwich Horror expansion, but I'd estimate it would be roughly 1 in 3.

As it stands, using the herald increases the chance to awaken by 182%. The actual increase is probably higher when using more expansions, and lower when using fewer.

One possible way to get the DH more often in play while playing only with the Dunwich board is to build 2 mythos decks, one with dunwich cards only. You draw one out of two mythos card from the dunwich deck. This increase the activity in dunwich significantly.

amikezor said:

A bit too predictable. It might be better to take the one stack of Dunwich-only cards (36 total) and randomly trim down your "non-Dunwich" deck to 36 cards, and then mix the two together. Also, add in "The Story Continues" for a total of 73.

I herd Innsmouth is most vicious board.

But these Dunwich horror generating doom tokens on walking and Vortexes seem more vicious to me.

The Dunwich Horror's purpose in the game is to be a deterrent. It's not supposed to show up. It's supposed to keep you from ignoring monsters in Dunwich. It does its job fairly well.

Tibs said:

Indeed, too much predictability (one out of two draw from dunwich deck). Actually, I roll a die at each mythos. 1-3 draw from the regular mythos and 4-6 from the dunwich deck. Less work than trimming down the mythos deck (for me). Since I keep all mythos deck separated, it works for any combo of expansions (I typically use 2 expansions, usually 1 board and 1 small, replacing the base deck by the small expansion one). This however do not work if you play with many (all?) mythos decks together.

As for "the story continues", I really do not get the point of this card. Any idea ?

best regards

Tibs: Trimming the mythos deck is a good approach, but those aren't actually the right proportions. The advantage of trimming the deck is that you can completely solve the dilution problem. If you're only using the Dunwich expansion, these are the proportions to use:

• 24 Dunwich cards
• 72 Arkham cards (not including Old Debts Come Due)
• 5 “other” cards
• The Story Continues and Old Debts Come Due
103 cards total

23.53% are Dunwich cards
71.57% are Arkham cards
4.90% are “other” cards

If just play with the base game and the Dunwich expansion (and no other expansions), the proportions are: 24.51% Dunwich, 75.49% Arkham, and 0% Other. However, most people like playing with "other" mythos cards (strange sightings, double doom token cards, etc.). If you play with DH + Miskatonic, about 5% of the mythos cards are "others." Therefore, the above cards gets almost the exact proportions for Dunwich, plus a healthy number of "other" cards.

As I recall, you think that each expansion board should be just as active as Arkham. In other words, you think that unstable locations in Arkham should see very little activity, and that low frequency locations like Silver Twilight Lodge should be stable locations in all but name. If that's how you like to play, okay. But when you advise other people to play that way, you should be up front about how it will radically change the game.

Amikezor: If you want to roll dice to choose which mythos deck to draw from, these are some good numbers to use:

2 six sided dice added together

When playing with just the Dunwich board:

• 2 or 12: other (6% chance)
• 3-8: Arkham (69% chance)
• 9-11: Dunwich (25% chance)

When playing with just the Innsmouth board:

• 2-7: Arkham (58% chance)
• 8-11: Innsmouth (39% chance)
• 12: other (3% chance)

When playing with both Dunwich and Innsmouth:

• 2-6, 10-11: Arkham (55% chance)
• 7: Dunwich (17% chance)
• 8-9: Innsmouth (25% chance)
• 12: other (3% chance)

That last one is a little complicated, but it's the best fit for the probabilities.

The point of the Story Continues is that you always have a chance of getting a card again. If you draw a Rumor, for example, there's always the chance that it could come up again.

I hope that helps. Happy gaming!

avec said:

Aren't Rumors returned to the box after they are passed / failed?

oh, I sure hope so...even when you get the card to throw everything back into the mix, I don't include the "Passed" or "Failed" Rumor Cards

avec said:

Thank you for your post avec. I can only totally agree with your calculations but my point was to enhance the dunwich deck. So instead of being 1/4, I'd make it 1/2... otherwise dunwich gets too mellow.

As for the story continues, as Julia pointed out, rumors already solved are out, so it is really to reshuffle the events and headlines... though it makes no so much difference when compared to the deck size and the number of mythos drawn (around 20). For me it is a useless card that is just there to spend my time on uninteresting stuff (i.e. shuffling while I am playing :-). Therefore, I just ignore the card.

Okay, true enough. Still, there are reasons why it's good to recycle cards. Say you know there's only 2 Y'ha-nthlei cards in the mythos deck. Once you get them both, then without The Story Continues, Y'ha-nthlei is done for the game. Also, there are some environments that are worse than the average rumor (Funnel Clouds, the original Clothing Drive). The Story Continues means that these cards are always active. Still, I can see why you'd ignore it.

By the way, in the base game you have a 9% chance of drawing the Graveyard. With Dunwich, you have a 7% chance of drawing the Graveyard. With your rule, you have a 4% chance. (That's assuming "other" mythos cards are mixed in the same deck as Arkham mythos cards). That's almost as low as the 3% chance you have of drawing Hibb's Roadhouse in the base game. (And with your rule, you only have a 1% chance of drawing Hibb's.) Arkham gets pretty quiet when the deck is only used half the time.

I should clarify: Those percentages are the chances of drawing that type of card on the first draw of the game. The main point is that the chances fall a little bit when you add Dunwich, but they fall by a lot when you add in "other" cards and draw Dunwich cards 50% of the time.

avec said:

I like when it gets to the sampling without replacement.... As calculations get trickier, excitement gets higher. Just to be crystal clear, I typically only play with 2 mythos decks ; all decks being divided by expansion to get a stronger flavor of the expansion (although mythos from late expansions do not have flavor anymore... such a pity... ).

About graveyard: 6/66 in the base game (I guess it is similar in other small expansions) and 1/36 in dunwich but still 1/11 of Arkham locations. Conditioned on the gate being in arkham, you really don't mess up so much with the chances of opening a gate in the graveyard. Besides, there is a 1/2 * 25/36 ~ 0.35 chance of opening a gate in Dunwich, so from 0.09, you drop to about 0.06 which is ok for me (expected value on 20 turns is definitely larger than 1, even more so because of the lack of replacement).

So whatever small mythos deck or base mythos deck you use on top of your extra board deck, tweaking the weight of the decks (i.e. above 1/2 on each), the probability of opening a gate in an Arkham location, while conditioning on the gate to be in Arkham, is not altered strongly I believe. It is all a matter of how many gates in arkham vs extra board that matters.

warm regards ^^

amikezor said:

Standing ovation...

Julia said:

Let the wonkery begin...

Base game has 66 cards (not counting Story Continues). Six of them are Graveyard cards. Therefore, 6 of 66 or 9.09% of the cards are for the Graveyard.

Add Dunwich. Now the Graveyard is 7 of 102 cards, or 6.86%.

Compare that with your rule, where "regular" mythos cards are drawn half the time. I assume by "regular" you mean both Arkham locations and cards without a location (strange sightings, two doom tokens, etc.). With all the expansions, that's a total of 221 cards. 17 of those cards open a gate in the Graveyard. Therefore, 17/221 or 7.69% are Graveyard cards. But, since you only draw from that deck half the time, the chance of getting a Graveyard card is only 3.85%.

wonkery ? (strange word, hugh :-)

You are right on your calculations, but I never mix all mythos ; I only play with 1 small expansion (or base game) as a "regular" deck and 1 board as an "extra" deck, each of them being drawn at 1/2. Anyway, let's move on, since we both are right in a different way and would agree in the end .

Fair enough. I'm not just engaged in number crunching for the sake of number crunching. A lot of house-rule solutions for dilution in Dunwich end up making Arkham a lot quieter than the house-ruler probably intended, which is what I think is going on here. It's sort of like noticing some dirt that's been swept under the rug and then moving the dirt so it's under the rug in a different spot. If you have a house rule that works for you, cool. It does bug me when these approaches are recommended to others without any warning of what they really entail.

Indeed, it does alter the overall probability of opening a gate at a particular unstable location in Arkham, but not relatively to other locations in Arkham.

The thing we tune in the above propositions is the gates opening rates in arkham vs in dunwich. Increasing one is equivalent to lower the other as you pointed out elegantly.

It is all a matter of taste. If one likes dunwich to be more active (and thus arkham less) : increasing the weight of specific deck or trimming the decks would achieve this goal.

warm regards