Hey all, I just recently picked up Arkham Horror and am wicked excited to play. I've been reading the boards for a bit now and am currently going through the rule book. Excuse the random post, but I just wanted to say hey and I'm sure I'll be back with questions, once I delve into a solo game tonight to teach myself the rules before playing with friends. Thanks!

Welcome to the board. And, according to your post, you apparently know exactly what to do and what to expect.

Soloing for the rules is a great idea. So is coming back to ask questions. I know on my first game, I added a doom token every round, even when there was a monster surge. Boy was this a bad idea.

Looking forward to seeing you around!

Tibs said:

Not claiming you thought of the idea for the Black Goat Herald yet ?

So I just finished my first game... I was Gloria Goldberg and fought against Yig... I will admit for the first part of the game I was kinda eh... but then once I had a portal try to open where I just sealed one I got all excited and realized I was enjoying myself. ( I had a ton of monster surges though, I dont think I shuffled too well!)

So I have a couple questions

1) I didnt end up using alot of the special card decks and think I may have missed something. Like the Allies, blessings, retainers, loans. Is it just cause I didn't have any encounters that told me to use them or did I forget something?

2) In the Final Battle it says that "When the players accumulate a total number of successes equal to the number of players... remove on doom token from the AO's doom track and reset their cumulative successes to zero." So in this case I was playing solo, so say if I rolled 4 dice and passed three of them, does that mean I remove three from the doom track or is that just one and resets for my next turn?

Overall I enjoyed the game very much... kinda excited to go back through the instruction book to see what I messed up on, cause I'm sure there's something and play again! Thanks in advance for the answers and help!

stageguy99 said:

1 Don't forget that there are several locations with option encounters you can do instead of drawing cards. For example, instead of having an encounter at Ma's Boarding House, you can follow the special text to gain an Ally.

2 You'll probably want to look at the FAQ which answers this and other common questions:

Q: In combat with an Ancient One, how do cumulative
successes in the “Investigators Attack” step work?
A: To defeat the Ancient One, the players must do a total
number of successes equal to the number of players multiplied
by the number of doom tokens on the Ancient One.
So, if 4 players are facing Yig (doom track of 10), they
need 40 successes to win. For every 4 successes they do,
they remove 1 doom token to track their progress. If the
investigators get 9 successes in the first round of combat,
they would remove 2 doom tokens, and 1

Cheers,
Chris

Ahhh totally didn't even pay attention to the optional encounters right on the spaces... I will remember them for next game.

I've read the FAQ now too! Thanks for the help!

-C

OK all, another game under my belt... this time with some friends. (We won!) Anyway I have a question that I feel like I should know the answer to and is in the book, but for the life of me I just can't find it.

If there is a monster and a gate on a location what does the character deal with first. Do they fight the monster and then get pulled through the gate on that turn or next turn or just get pulled through the gate. I saw in the book where it said if a monster is on the gate when you return you dont deal with it until the next turn but couldnt find out what to do when it's there.

Second- When I get sent to jail what happens? I couldn't find anything for that either.

Again, muchas gracias to everyone for the answers! I must say this is really an awesome board and soo very differnt form video game boards I have gone on!

stageguy99 said:

If you're moving onto a location with a gate and a monster, you have to deal with the monster(s) there first. If you're still on the location (i.e. not unconscious or insane) during the Arkham Encounters phase, you'll enter the gate.

If you get an Arkham Encounter that says "A gate and monster appear!" then you get drawn in first, before the monster emerges. Of course, if there's an elder sign token on the location, nothing happens.

You don't deal with any monsters on a gate on the turn you come back from the Other World. If you come back during the Other World phase, as the result of an encounter, you don't get the freebies, because the turn will have ended before you would deal with them.

stageguy99 said:

I believe you lose half your money (round down), and lose your next turn; your entire movement is to stand upright in the Police Station proper. That means you don't get a random encounter or Deputization.