For me, my team's victory the other day in Arkham Horror made me realize how insane this game can truly be.

Long story short, we followed all rules for setup, and I randomly drew Michael for my investigator, something I can say I was pretty excited about. Our AO sadly was not Shub but rather good old Yog. All expansions except Miskatonic were in play, including all boards. In total we had 6 investigators, a pretty solid group and enough people to handle all situations that may arise. My random Unique Item was a bust however, as I was dealt a Crystal of the Elder Things. Not my best.

Game starts, nothing too exciting happening. I as Michael took care of monsters promptly as my ally traded me a Gladius of Carcosa early on, my Tommy Gun dealing with the rest. Most of the gate openings occurred on the main board, and we gathered clues and did what we needed to do. I entered a few gates to close some gates in case he did wake up, grabbing 2 total in the process. And then the fun happened…

Mythos comes up as the Rumor: The Terrible Experiment. I of course as Michael ended up dealing with that quite promptly as my PS gave me some extra Sanity, and I ended up at the end of the experiment collecting a total of 11 monster trophies (this of course including early game ones). And then it happened. I had an encounter coming near the end of the game and drew the spell "Call Ancient One." And then I started to think to myself…

With the way we were standing, there was very little chance we could survive the final fight. 4 seals on the board was nice, but with the end coming close and not many gate trophies (let alone very low average for Will values), I decided to cast the spell.

I spent my 2 gates, and 11 monsters, used my Crystal of the Elder Things to avoid losing 13 Sanity, and used my 3 clues to cast the spell. On the 2nd clue, I rolled a 6. Ding dong, 13 doom tokens gone on Yog and game over. Glorious.

Anyways, to spur more of the conversation, what is one of your guys' most epic wins?

As far as I know, you can't remove all doom tokens from the AO when using dis spell. If you awaken him, he must be with atleast one left.

As written, you did nothing wrong. And though I've whined and howled about Crystal/CAO before, there has been something submitted to the FAQ about it.

In the (indeterminate) meantime, the best protection we all have for this is to either head off this combo indirectly (by disallowing the spell to be in the same game as Crystal and/or Ancient Language/Mystic Gift), or by coming up with some unwritten ancillary rule (CAO can't remove more than 7 doom tokens when cast).

Might as well submit mine though:

I got a guy on my campus REALLY into this game. Like, he ran out and bought it and all the expansions within a month. Anyway.

He graduated and was leaving for Boston, and probably wouldn't see him again. So we played one last game at the end of the semester, against Rhan-Tegoth (no!!!!!!!!) and Ghroth (blurgh!). Predictably, things weren't going so well.

Rhan awoke, but Dexter had passed his personal story and was swinging away with two Shrivellings. The bell tower collapse took care of a lot of the extra doom tokens and with one survivor left (it was either Kate or one of my custom characters), we blasted away my worst AO nemesis. It was a grand spectacle and I wish him well in his life.

I'm surprised that you can pay (even if prevented by the Crystal) more Sanity for casting the spell than your current sanity total.

Oh yeah, I think that's something that I used to argue: you can't cast a spell with a higher sanity cost than the sanity you have, even if you can somehow prevent it all.

The first clause is universally true. The second clause (about preventing it) is something I had to invent to address this specific abuse.

Without wishing to seem derogatory, I find it amusingly characteristic of this forum that a post on a person's best victory immediately becomes a refutation of the validity of the method used to accomplish said victory. I would refer to one of jgt's posts on how people need to stop worrying about potentially broken corner cases, but then, he despises Call Ancient One in general. The masochistic madness of Arkham infects all…. (For the record, I agree with Tibs that such combos should be prevented, and I still find it annoying that no reasonable interpretation of the rules can lead to Charlie Kane + Granny Orne v. Glaaki being anything other than an automatic victory [Epic Battle aside]. I was merely struck by the situation's success at capturing the spirit of the forums.)

Sadly, I can't really remember any truly spectacular or even very interesting victories. Of course, there are a number that would qualify for this thread had I actually won them….

Heh. Here's the thing: though I may grumble about your method (as Walk suggested), I'm actually much more impressed that someone who has obviously never seen how us Where's-the-FAQ Vets have debated endlessly on this particular combo-breaker, came up with that same combo-breaker all by themselves. I would love to have been a fly on the wall (of your brain) as you put the puzzle pieces together: "If I…and then use this…could I…hey, guys! I have an idea!" ("We could cross the streams!")

Just be wary. Yog…holds a grudge. BADLY.

Speaking of grudges, we had Nyarlathotep make a harsh appearance one day. We'd been playing against him a few times in a row after his miniatures came out and had won our first game. During setup the next time we played he appeared in person as The Skinless Man and moved out into the street. Then he proceded to devour the first player as she tried to move past him on her first turn. We won in the end but that was just mean.

jgt7771 said:

Ha, shall keep that tidbit about the grudge in mind..probably get destroyed next time around, what fun!

I suppose how I saw this ending was trying to find any way that this combo could I suppose "break" the game in its essence, yet I guess I feel that even having 13 of any combination of gates/monsters is a little more on the challenging side unless you are truly dealt the right combination of items; Michael's Horror Checks were no easy feet, trust me on that…and the fact that I didn't help anyone by spending those on clues, blessings, or any combination of the sort seems sort of risky.

But I don't know, I feel even getting dealt that combination perfectly is so rare (much like Join the Winning Team and even passing it, which Tibs' Arkham Stat reports last time I checked only showed 7 games of anyone actually passing of like what…6000+ games?) that it should be allowed. It's a once in every blue moon moment I guess for me, so I let it be justified, and in the end I felt epic heh.

Anyways, thanks for commenting about it!

Tomoka: Ah, I find myself drifting towards the side I abjured….I agree with you that getting that combination by accident is unlikely, but the problem is that savvy players can go hunting it out. Daisy Walker starts with Livre D'Ivon, which lets her take a spell of her choice from the deck. One variant of the rules allows you to choose your own starting characters, so that essentially means that, if you want to, you always have a very good shot at getting Call Ancient One (the modifier for Livre D'Ivon's Lore check is -2, but Daisy's max Lore is 5, so really, only very severe bad luck would stop you getting it in the first few turns). Plus, there's an encounter at the Curiositie Shoppe that lets you buy a Unique Item of your choice. If you're playing with just the base game and Kingsport, you have a 9(.0909090909…)% chance of getting that encounter; with Darrell, that chance doubles. If you have a number of people converge on the Curiositie Shoppe to get the Crystal while others kill some monsters (and Daisy reads Livre D'Ivon). It's not a terribly difficult victory.

Isn't Livre d'Ivon a "discard" after use? So if you fail, you don't get anything? Unless there's an errata I'm unaware of on the card…

In your note, I still feel it is a hard encounter because 1 sole person needs to get a combination of at least 10-14 gates/monsters since one person is casting the spell and you can't share those to pay the cost. With people camping for the Crystal, and even with Daisy you still need to wait plenty of turns to grab those monsters/gates, and since in your description people are "camping" for the item, you are wasting valuable time around the board and failing to manage it as well as you hope. By that time, I feel the AO would already be very close to waking. But still..that's just how I feel. Also, even with monster surges that one person needs to manage all his stats and be dealt the right combination of cards to battle things, manage Sanity, and/or whatever else. 10-13 monsters is a lot to collect..

Whatever the variant you play with, I felt pretty good about it haha.

Yes, there's been an erratum to Livre D'Ivon saying that it's only discarded if you pass the check. And, yes, it will take a decent amount of time to pull off, but here's the thing: this combo won't just get you a very powerful bonus, it will win the game for you . That means that you don't need to gather Clues, you don't need to seal gates, you don't need to do anything except make the strategy work. You're not wasting time, since you are working directly towards your goal of waking up the AO with 0 Doom tokens, and you only have a time limit in the sense that you always do.

I gues my question is: how hard is it to pull it off?

If it is rather easy and almost always works (wich I suspect might be the case), I would say that one should perhaps houserule to prevent it.

If it takes a long time (getting the trophies and the two items) and there is a fair chance the AO awakens, I have no problem with it. I mean then it's just another way to win the game.

Note that I was talking about hunting for the items.
If one gets them as starting equipment or as a random draw later I have no problem with it since the chances of getting them are really small. I would just consider myself lucky, win the game and maybe start another. Otherwise where are we to draw the line for what is ok? If you are given four elder signs as starting equipment you will probably have a rather easy victory but I don't think the elder signs are game breaking because of that.

Btw, Tomoka: Great victory! I really like that sort of game, where you use somewhat unusual methods and a bit of brain activity to turn a bad situation into victory.

Walk said:

Since Walk already put a lampshade on it, I will now clarify my devilishly intricate method for avoiding this deadly combo-breaker. Ready?

REMOVE "CALL ANCIENT ONE" FROM PLAY. Remove it from the box, from the game, from your HOUSE.

Look, WHY would Investigators that are doing their damnedest to seal away the Ancient One want to CALL IT FORTH? Because they think they can "take it"? With sticks and rocks and guns and blades? "Well, shoot, this ain't workin'. Maybe we should try bangin' on it with a wrench." I suppose there isn't anything more American than that…

Okay, forget thematic. There is only one reason to play Call Ancient One: you are closer to losing the game of seals, and you think you have a better shot at the Ancient One directly if you hobble it first. Or worse, you just give up on the seal game, and start shopping for clubs and Blessings, gearing up to win by attrition. I'm in the camp that believes that once the Ancient One awakens, the best you can achieve is a draw. (My cult disagrees, but then my Cult also doesn't believe in shortening the game for ANY reason.) So ending the game prematurely by zipping to the Final Battle is just giving the win up for a tie. That's not Arkham Horror, that's…pro sports.

You probably deserve to lose anyway, whether you played badly or the game seriously had it in for you, so just take the loss like the tragic Lovecraft heroes you are, and start a new game. "Losing" just doesn't carry the same weight in Arkham as it does in most other games: in the [paraphrased] words of Mageith's young daughter, "Daddy, I don't think we're supposed to win." So it's less of a big deal to lose than it is to shoot for a cheapish win.

No offense, Tomoka, of course. Like I said, you found it by yourself, and I'm impressed and amused. You have the chops to survive Arkham Horror! But you only get one pass, true believer. No one around here would ever let one of us grognards get away with that, knowing what we know. So take the win with our collective blessing, and then do the right thing: never do it again. Really, you're better than that. We all are.

I appreciate that Lovecraftian stories are supposed to feel extremely hopeless for the humans, but the idea that Ancient Ones are nearly impossible to take down by physical means has always irked me slightly.

SPOILERS FOR "THE CALL OF CTHULHU" FOLLOW

I mean, Cthulhu, the premier Great Old One and most famous of Lovecraft's creations, was taken down by getting hit with a ship . And it wasn't just like it knocked him out of commission for a bit, it stopped him from claiming control over the world. So, you know, an Arkham defeat, in other words. If one guy with a boat can bring him down, a number of people with guns aren't that much of a stretch. The Ancient Ones might be all-powerful, but there are few instances in the stories where their plans can't be thwarted with extreme firepower.

Walk said:

1) I find it funny that it might be considered necessary to SPOILER the plot for an almost 85 year old short story! And on a forum full of people who presumably play this game because they've read and enjoy Lovecraft's mythos.

2) My impression of the boat blowing Cthulhu up like a sac of putrid jello was that it was indeed a temporary set-back for him, but that he wasn't able to recover in time while "the stars were still right" and thus was relegated back to the again sinking R'lyeh before he could assert his dominance.

For reference:

"There was a bursting as of an exploding bladder, a slushy nastiness as of a cloven sunfish, a stench as of a thousand opened graves, and a sound that the chronicler could not put on paper. For an instant the ship was befouled by an acrid and blinding green cloud, and then there was only a venomous seething astern; where - God in heaven! - the scattered plasticity of that nameless sky-spawn was nebulously recombining in its hateful original form , whilst its distance widened every second as the Alert gained impetus from its mounting steam."

But I do agree wholly with your point that the Ancient Ones and their ilk certainly do seem to be perfectly valid targets of physical assault. Certainly not always in a "kill 'em dead forever" kind of way. But definitely in a way that weakens them enough in our worldly realm to consider them defeated, if only for a time.

Walk said:

::desperately trying to find in her common item deck a ship::

Walk said:

Hang on, are you trying to suggest that getting hit by a M___-F______ SHIP is a slight thing- something which you might shrug off with a "tut-tut old chap, that's a bit rough, what?"

We're talking about a steam yacht, something similar to the Aurora ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SY_Aurora )- that's 380 tons of steel. Just SLIGHTLY different to 30 grams of steel from a shotgun.

My thoughts.

1. I've thematically justified final combats by saying that they were transitional phases: the Ancient One is transitioning from "slumbering" to "awake." This explains why the "slumber" ability still works, why the battles tend to get harder during subsequent rounds (decreasing defense check modifier), and why the investigators are able to stop the Ancient One at all. If the battle reaches "End of Everything" or the investigators are killed, then there is nothing left stopping the Ancient One from reaching its fully-awoken, and practically invincible, state.

2. Recall that after Cthulhu was rammed with the ship, he started to re-coalesce. Defeated, but not killed. It was a temporary, and ultimately futile, victory.

Julia said:

If you're really lucky, you might be able to find one at the general store, but something like that would set you back at least $12

subochre said:

::laughter::

RJM: Yes, there are indeed quite a few people on here who have already read "The Call of Cthulhu", but just to be safe, I put in the spoiler warning. Better to be cautious.

Spoilers again, naturally. Of course, if anyone's read this far, they'll probably already know what's being spoiled.

Two-Hands: What I meant to indicate is that, while a ship may indeed be very powerful, it's not that out of the question, realistically speaking, that one might a hold of one (even though it's impossible in-game). I intended it as a refutation of jgt's point that it's absurd that the investigators might consider themselves able to bring down an Ancient One. Also, while a ship is indeed very heavy and liable to do a great deal of damage, getting hit with one is not exactly a dignified way for an unimaginably powerful ancient being to get his plans foiled. I've always found this a (rather amusing) break with the aura of dread and hopelessnes in the original story.

Tibs: Well, I don't know about "futile victory". As I said, that Cthulhu is rammed by the ship is apparently the reason that he doesn't "rise up to claim his own" despite all of the indications to that effect throughout the story. If it saves humanity from the return of the Great Old Ones, I'd say that's a fairly substantial victory. It's only futile in the sense that the Great Old Ones will win at some point anyway, but from the perspective of Johansen (or any victorious investigator), this probably wouldn't matter. The stars being right would seem to be a rather unusual occurrence, so there's a pretty good chance that such a victory would postpone the possibility of the Great Old Ones returning at least until after the death of those people involved.

Oh indeed. That is what I meant. Cthulhu isn't stopped permanently… but he's kept at bay for what could be considered a "significant" period of time.

Walk said:

Nngh, that's not what I meant at all…even though I can see that's exactly what I said. >FACEPALM< >WALLSLAM<

Of course the Investigators can take down the Ancient One, although I have always seen it more as one last-ditch delaying tactic to allow the Stars to Stop Being Right, and all that hard work the Ancient One had done goes away until the NEXT Great Conjunction. Using a steam yacht as a big sledgehammer is one way, apparently, but my favorite example has always been Ghostbusters, the best example of a contemporary AH game yet: Monsters in the streets, site exploration, Other Worlds, Final Battle with an Ancient One. And all they really did (with a wild amount of Special Effects) was "close the door" on Gozer.

But all those stories of victory by the skin of one's teeth are just a bit cheapened by the existence of "Call Ancient One". That's not a Final Battle. Thematically, I can't even justify it in my head. "It's horrifying beyond all imagining! We're doo…oh wait. Silly me. I didn't close the latch." >click< "Never mind." Yes, it's a win, and I'm sure creative writers can write something to make that particularly feeble mechanic sound far more grandiose, but at the end of the day, the Investigators acted against (what I consider) an established heroic standard to ****** victory away from what was probably going to be a landslide for the Ancient One.

It's a potential win that shouldn't exist, not for the story, not for the mechanics, not for the brilliant cooperative paradigm. And it simply needs to be stopped. Officially, indisputably, FINALLY.