final battle against Rhan-Tegoth:

4 Cultist on him, so... 19 doom tokens by remove...

we were 4 investigator and at last we had to inflict more then 10 succes for the stamina drain...

but are we sure of that? ...is he really so powerful?

...only "The Bell Tolls" battle event gaves us a little chance!

but the battle was losing from the beginning...

Pfft, don't draw Cultists !

If you do, you need to channel your inner Shatner, as in "RHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!"

Rhan-Tegoth is the worst AO. I suspect I'm not the only one who feels this way.

Quachil Uttaus is worse.

Quachil Uttaus is worse.

Tried Rhan-Tegoth with The Black Goat as the herald once... we were butchered.

Tibs, do you mean "worst" as in "most difficult" or as in "most idiotic design"?

I've never liked Rhan-Tegoth, ever since it appeared as a preview for Innsmouth. It has a short doom track, and its main in-game effect is that its doom track speeds up a bit. Increasing the terror level is good, but this AO awakens so fast that it is unlikely to make a difference. The idea of cultists adding doom tokens sounds interesting, but in practice there's no way for players to significantly influence it, so it just ends up as a random accelerant. Then, in the final battle, the players are punished disproportionately for something which they had almost no control over.

(And giving "Nightmarish" to Gnoph-Keh: just to confirm, there is only ONE Gnoph-Keh, it's from a different expansion, and it has a -1 Horror check with 1 damage, so this effect just turns it into one of those wierd horror checks like the Wraith's, where it doesn't matter if you succeed. What a waste of time.)

Of course it doesn't matter if one particular AO is just a very difficult race against time, but it seems like a waste of the source material as the original short story (The Horror in the Museum) is pretty cool.

thecorinthian said:

Seconded. Rhan is probably the only AO that could have been interesting with a 14 doomers doom track.

At the moment I'm 2-0 againg Rhan (won both Rhan games played, one against Dagon & Hydra and the other against the Black goat), but I don't feel any urge to play him again

Julia said:

I played once against him, we defeated him in final battle. No heralds involved.

MyNeighbourTrololo said:

Ok, digged in my logfile (and found out I beat him three times! Thx, MNT!)

Rhan + Tulzscha, victory by sealing, 9 Mythos, AH, KH, IH in play (not a big deal having Tulzscha, since the Cultists were destined to feed Rhan)

Rhan + Black goat, victory by closing gates, 8 Mythos, AH, KH, IH, BGotW in play

Rhan + Dagon & Hydra, victory by sealing, 12 Mythos, AH, KH, IH in play

There is a report of my Black Goat + Rhan game here on this very forum; sadly, the Search buttom seems not to work lately, so I cannot link you the chronicle of the game.

And my compliments for beating him in final combat!

We were just lucky with not so many cultists appearing(only 2, if I remember correctly), and we realized soon enough we can't win by sealing/closing, so we started preparing in time.

Too bad I don't have Kingsport with it's Epic Battle deck, it coulda went another way if I had. Most certainly not in our favor, but more fun for sure.

Oh, I forgot to ask. What's your tactic to win so fast in such circumstances?

MyNeighbourTrololo said:

I generally play large teams. 5 investigators. So it's enough gathering clues in order to have each of them sealing once, and only one of those has to do twice the job. Plus, I'm rather good in controlling the board (risk calculation, as Avi would say). And when I need a quick victory, I go with Norman (he's a great character, and his Find Gate is vital in order to achieve a closing victory)

But I think sooner or later I'll try something crazy, like Vincent, Dexter and George against Rhan and Black Goat, all boards in play. Let's see. It's a challenge a lot appealing to me :-)

And yes, Epic Battle Cards are crazy yet brilliant (even if you'll lose a lot more games with them in play) (and I wish you can get KH soon :-))

It's only matter of shipping. I'm waiting for my copies of remaining expansions I don't currently possess 3 months already. And all seems I'll have to wait until the end of this month.

MyNeighbourTrololo said:

Not too a long time still! Fingers crossed!

thecorinthian said:

He's not the most difficult... Atlach-Nacha is roundly above him. But I enjoy playing Atlach more than playing Rhan. The reasons I don't like Rhan were pretty much summarized in your following paragraph.

Julia said:

What the...? Julia the cherry-picker? Say it ain't so!

Dam said:

::laughter:: those games dated back in 2010. At that time, I was still a noob, it was the time before I started playing Avi's League. Now I'm going with random investigators 95% of the times (the only time I cherry-pick them is for League play)

I actually remember one game versus Rhan-Tegoth where by chance I picked up Heal and still had it at the end. In the end everybody died except Daisy who teetered of the brink of oblivion for over a dozen rounds before succombing. Only had two dooms left, oh well.

I actually dislike the random 'you die' nature of Ghatanothoa than Rhan Tegoth. Rhan you at least postulate a worst case and mitigate for. Ghat will just open up and kill you at random because an encounter doesn't give the option not to risk it.

Oh man, mechanically I'm right there with you on Ghatanothoa, but thematically, he's even better than Quachil for the whole "terrifying moment of truth and then you're arbitrarily devoured" thing. I wouldn't want it to be like that all the time, but sometimes I'm in the mood for a game in which something can jump out and kill you at any moment (see also Nyogtha). Whereas I'm rarely in a Rhan mood.

VinceT said:

Aww man, I love Ghatanathoa! probably one of my favourite AOs. It is random devouring, but there are relatively few encounters that give two clue tokens without having any way of preventing it, and often that means intentionally failing a skill check and taking some other penalty. I also like the fact that the chance of devouring escalates as people survive it.

I also love Ghatonothoa, largely for the reasons other people have mentioned. Dying is more fun in AH than anything else I've played (with the possible exception of DungeonQuest, when it always seems to happen in some kind of horribly poetic way).

Ghatanothoa is fun. Especially with Rex Murphy, hehe,

Rhan Tegoth is not THAT hard actually. We defeated him in Epic Battle the last time we played. As luck would have it, though we hadn't drawn any Cultists or Children of the Goat during the game, and only once were tripped by one of his plot cards(draw 10 monsters from the cup, and add a doom token for every cultist drawn. We had drawn two). The hideous crab was banished although not without casualties on our side. Ursulla was devoured. She was our punching bag in a way, having accumulated 6 Stamina through the Vessel of the Mythos corruption card.

zealot12 said:

I boiled down your summary to its key point.

Though I do agree, Ghatanothoa is more fun. Often you can choose whether or not to take two or more clues (on the board, for example), and if you screw up, only the person taking the clues pays the price. Not to mention, the act of flipping the token is very tense. With Rhan, there is no choice, apart from the highly negligible influence of monster surge control; his ability has a far more likely chance of activating and it penalizes everyone (by making final combat more likely and more difficult).