The giant spider AO is difficult to defeat, but we've managed it a couple of times through six seals. Today, for the first time ever, we beat him through completing the Walking the Ley Lines mission. Winning that way is challenging, but I believe it is actually easier than trying to achieve six seals against an AO whose every gate opening is a gate burst. What do the rest of you think?

Depends on how many players you have. You need one player to close 4 gates and then go to 4 locations. You got to plan for at least 12 turns just for that. The rest of the team has to close 1 gate per player and keep the streets clear so the runner can get to all the required locations.

Atlach has a Doom Track of 13, so you're barely OK as far as time goes if you use at least one Elder Sign at any point along the way or your main gate runner has Find Gate or Summon Shantak. The quandary comes in if you're playing an 8 player game, as you'd need to collect a total of 12 Gate Trophies, which is more than will ever exist if you pull a Rumor at basically any point.

But for a 6 player or especially a 4 player game, it's extremely winable. With Daisy around it might even be considered "too easy."

-Frank

If you send the person doing the mission to the four locations in order when there is a gate there, they can return from the OW, close the gate, then sacrifice the gate during upkeep. The four steps on the mission are very unstable locations, so there should be gates there constantly.

The trick is then having enough gate trophies left over to win by closing all gates. Not easily done!

Sealing A-N was a very, very difficult ordeal. I don't think I want to try it again.

Tibs said:

Try it with Kate Winthrop and Arcane Insight some time. It's not even particularly difficult. Other than the gate breaches, Atlach doesn't really screw with you, and the worst environments get discarded anyway. Long Doom Track and minimal interference makes for an ideal situation for Scientist / Insight suppression strategy. Then you can just grind it through.

Remember that a Gate Burst doesn't raise the Doom Track if it breaks an Elder Sign, so if you screw up and lose a seal you haven't actually gotten any closer to losing.

-Frank

get kate the wagon...and your set...

Frank said:

Getting Arcane Insight for Kate is the first step. Second, it's not even official that she gets to stop gate bursts from removing seals. Third, I'd like to know that with a random team it's just as plausible.

Note that the more seals we lay, the higher the chances one will get broken, so going from seal 5 to seal 6 is much more difficult than going from 1 to 2.

Breaking an elder sign and not getting a doom token is a great tactic when you're not playing to win by seals, because it does buy you time. But it is far from fair to say that you've not gotten closer to losing when one of your seals is lost when you're trying to win that way. Now you need to get at least 5 more clues than you did before, and have to make at least one more OW trip.

That said, such a victory is easier with more players. I was playing with 4 and 5 player teams. It took I think 6 attempts to seal him.

It's definitely plausible in a random team game. And not just because I've actually drawn Kate randomly in a game against Atlach. It can be done with or without Dunwich even. Let's assume you have a 6 person team. The game ends if there are six open gates. Which means that all five of the major gates can be open simultaneously and you don't lose. Don't seal or even close those gates while there are still a couple of open slots on that list.

Remember, there's no Doom Token on a Monster Surge, and there's no Doom Token on a Gate Breach. In the basic game there are only 11 unstable locations, and Atlach has 13 marks on the Doom Track. If you leave Independent Square, The Witch House, The Woods, and The Unimplemented Isle alone, you'll get more than half monster surges. If it opens somewhere like the Silver Twilight Lodge, leap on it and seal it! Once it has been drawn once, it has a less than 1 n 4 chance of ever being drawn again in a 15 turn game. It's a long game, and you'll kill a lot of monsters, but you can use those monsters for allies, blessings, and the clues to close gates.

If you use DH, it actually gets easier, because even though there's almost no chance of you seeing Cold Spring Glen get seal bursted, especially if you are also using other sets. You always have to plan for the long haul against Atlach, and it basically requires you to count cards and know gate frequency. Atlach is playing the game on hard mode, no two ways about it.

-Frank