We weren't too successful today.

For our first attempt we decided - on a whim - to draw random investigators - that didn't turn out so well. The doctor is even worse in this scenario than he is otherwise, Sister Mary still sucks, and what can expect of a college student? Doomed to failure from the start with our hardest-hitting weapon being a Derringer. We gave up with 3 gates closed and 10 on the doom track.

For our second attempt we tried a hand-picked team. The Professor with the new ally proved to be a wonderful killing machine, earning about twelve trophies in the course of the game. Gloria got a nice stack of closed gates, as did Dexter (who's slightly better than normal in this scenario, in my opinion - he has or gets the spells the professor needs), and the lady in the blue dress provided the money for extended shopping of weapons, motorbikes and private mental health care.

In the end, we stood at 5 gates closed and had two investigators with explored markers waiting for one of the other two to arrive back in Arkham, ready to close the final three gates in one go. Sadly, the two investigators still in another world got delayed or were LiTaS again and again - until another gate opened in the Lodge and placed the final doom token.

We'll try again on Saturday.

So, Saturday has come and gone.

First game: Same round of investigators as before. Excellent start item-wise, everything from 2x Wither to Tommy, Elder Sign and the Genie lamp (+5 Magic Combat). Sadly, I had the high-frequency locations mixed up in my head and so we made the mistake of closing the Witch House (I thought the Black Cave was high, for some reason). That cost us the game as we were only up to five gates closed when the GOO awoke.

Second game: Checked the high-frequency locations again and found our mistake. We took alone Ashcan instead of Dexter this time - good decision! There are more than enough spells floating around anyway, and Ashcan's Fight 2/Will 5 proved to be very useful. Less luck with items, but generally a smooth game ensued. For some reason, we got Good Work Undone yet again, now that's a nice rumour for this scenario (we've had it every time so far). Finally: 5 gates closed, two investigators waiting anxiously at their explored gates for a third one to arrive, but both dimension travelling investigators get lost in space and time. 7th gate opens, game over.

Third game: Same setup, same start. Terrible items this time, everything from knives to warding statues, but also the Necronomicon! What a read for the Professor with his ally (about 10 spells over the course of the game). The initial shopping went well, shotsguns, tommies and .45 were bought and distributed while the professor got his spells ready. The mythos was decent, we only got 2 monster surges though and lots "2 monsters appear..." which caused us a terror level of two. The professor can't be everywhere and for everyone else even a simple ghost is a death sentence (especially when it spawns on you in the street). It ended (almost) like the last four games: five gates closed, two investigators waiting for at least one more to arrive and close the bag. And finally, in our fifth game, the game relented and allowed Ashcan to close the eighth gate. Just in time - the terror track had been at 11 and the next mythos would have re-opened the gate in the Historical Society...

Final Score: 26 points. Looking forward to Chapter 2!

Sorry for all those typos etc. in the last post, you shouldn't write forum posts after a long day with six hours of AH. It's obvious from the context, but I'm of course talking of the doom track in the last sentence.