Sometimes I could swear the game is actually alive and out to get me and I know that many of you have had the same thoughts. It's even more devious then the most cunning human player I have ever encountered.

A few days ago I played a game with my girl friend against Yig using the CotDP and KiY expansions.

Pretty soon we got the 1st act into play and we decided to let it stay since Yig has such a short doom track and we thought that we would probably have won or lost before it would pose any threat anyway.
On the very next turn we got the 2nd act and with no sealed locations there were pretty much nothing we could do about it except curse our previous decision. So for the rest of the game every mythos phase was a moment of terror.

From there on things went really well, we got lots of clue tokens from encounters and managed to seal 4 locations without the doom track going higher than 5.
But now the game decided to stop playing nice.
Both me and my GF entered an OW, me with cluetokens and her with an elder sign. I managed to get through and seal the gate (5 done) but she managed to get a dual color AO encounter in the second area and had to face Ithaqua. She lost all her items to his start-of-battle ability and were devoured, losing her elder sign.
This is the reason you should always have a backup plan.

So my GF's other investigator (we were playing 2 each) got 5 clues and headed for a gate but were defeated by a Byakhee (that should have been an easy victory) and lost half the clues. Still having the most clues though she collected a few more and went for it again. This time she failed an evade and had to stay in the streets where her harried-card (from a previous encounter) forced her to move a Cthonian to her location and she was defeated again.
I might ad that her luck with the dice were ridiculously bad for the whole game.

By this time I had also got 5 clues and went to an OW. I managed to get through but the turn before I could seal it we had a gate burst. So down to 4 seals and with the one I sealed back to 5 and still one to go.

So for the 5th time we sent an investigator through to seal the last gate and He came through without dying. But once again, on the turn before our certain victory, the game screwed us with the mythos cards. This time we got the 3rd act.

I think I'll have to secure my game boxes with some chains and iron bars. Otherwise the game might get out and try to kill me when I'm asleep.

Very good, you have attained the rank of Magister Adeptus with only one mistake - the game is Alive but not evil, it cares nothing of good or evil, they are irrelevant, like humanity.

It just wants to eat you, body and soul, and to revel in the rivers of your blood.

As such, we cannot really claim to be much different, can we?

EXCELLENT STORY!!! Oh, I do so enjoy when the "Littlest Ancient One" gets his meal.

It's not completely your fault, Tbla; the game has never forgiven us for the Mock-o-rama we danced around Yig in the early days. (I'm pretty sure Yig was there when some boisterous player discovered the Joe-Mandy Shotgun-Clue One-Shot-Kill.) The game may not be deliberately evil, but it DOES remember when it's been slighted, and it doesn't care for that at all.

And, like John Carpenter's The Thing, every individual game is both its own game as well as a part of EVERY OTHER GAME OUT THERE. They are ALL "the game". And the game knows EVERY SINGLE ONE of us, and EVERY SINGLE THING we have all ever tried to do to it.

Whenever you think " I'll let this ***bad effect*** come into play, just this one time, even if I can prevent it! "….

YOU.

WILL.

REGRET IT.

=P

As soon as I read your third paragraph, I knew where this was going. The Acts are terrifying . They might do absolute nothing, or they might kill you in a frightening casual fashion. And one of the worst things about them is the psychological factor. When you decide whether to block an Act, you weigh your current situation and the chances of your decision backfiring one way or another and then hope for the best outcome. But with the Acts, the outcome is already determined. The Mythos cards are already laid down, you're going to draw them in a particular order, and the only question is whether your failure to block the Act(s) will seal your doom. If you had x-ray vision (or were willing to cheat), then you could (probably) make the right decision. When you look back at your decisions over a game, you tend to disregard die rolls and judge decisions based on how wise they were considering the odds. But when you look back at your decision to block the Act(s) or not, you can say confidently that one decision was a bad idea regardless of how wise it was considering the odds. If you were playing a game with all expansions except Miskatonic and you decided not to block the first Act, you objectively say that that was a bad decision if two more "The Next Act Begins!" Mythos triggered over the next two turns (and you hadn't sealed two gates yet), even though, from the standpoint of not knowing the cards, it was a good decision . Yes, I'm aware that, in a sense, there's no difference between rolling a die and drawing a card, but psychologically, it can be devastating.

****… I read the title and said: yes! the faq is here!!

forever waiting for you ♥

How many times have I beat a Rumour only to have the very next Mythos card be another Rumour? Not sure but it seems like a solid, sadistic 50% of the time.

Same thing with Gate Bursts- they only happen immediately after I've Sealed the location. And of course all Ancient Ones awaken one turn before the 6th Seal….

…..but that's just more reasons why Arkham Horror is so much like real life……