Had a close game, but great time with Chapter 1 tonight.

Our team: Harvey Walters, Gloria Goldberg, Joe Diamond. We saw the Harvey Walters + Calvin build just like everyone else did (don't forget though, neither ability works on Sanity lost from casting spells!). We picked Gloria since we figured that, with gate-closing as the victory criteria, we had to do everything in our power to get through an Other World once she got there. I was skeptical of the Joe Diamond choice at first, but my friends asserted that he could be played as a late-game hero well even though the lack of starting Clue Tokens would keep him down early game. It worked well for us, but your milage may vary -- Harvey and Joe both drew tomes to start the game, and the result was Joe packing 7 Clue Tokens a couple turns into the game.

So our general strategy was for Harvey and Gloria to bum rush gates, while Joe kept the Arkham scene from getting out of hand. We got off to a good start, with Gloria demolishing a Dark Young with Dread Curse of Azathoth and she and Harvey closing two gates. Meanwhile, Joe put his clue tokens to use by dispatching a Terrible Experiment rumor on the turn it came into play, clearing Horror checks nonstop with the tokens. Gloria closed a third gate, deferring combat against a Warlock until the next turn; Harvey did the same with a Hound of Tindalos for gate four.

Things started looking grim when the Warlock drove Gloria insane, the Hound stomped Harvey, and Joe got arrested for being out past curfew! To make things worse, the Hound's movement ability procced the next turn, killing Harvey a *second* time. We had a couple of clutch monster surges in this period that kept us from falling too far behind, and were able to close three gates a few turns later for the win. Only had one turn in which we needed a surge to keep the AOO from awakening, and we got it.

All in all, we got lucky in a lot of ways, but played a very disciplined/focused game. Looking forward to the next one!

Playing with odd numbers is brave because you have to use the 4 player limits. Guess is doesn't work for this scenario though.

Congrats on the win! We used Harvey as our monster stomper- you just have to get a great weapon in his hands. It worked very well. We sent McGlenn gatehopping - with a 6 combat, he can close 'em pretty readily. And, yes, we used Gloria too, to get through OW quickly.

We played a 2 person version with just Gloria and Harvey, and that went really well, too. (After we stopped and shopped for common items our first turn).

Taking McGlenn along when every monster is such a (literal) nightmare sounds like a punishing way to play the game. Well done!

He did go insane a couple of times, but got lucky with his OW encounters and encountered very few monsters in the good games. We just ran him from gate to gate (sometimes with Harvey as a bodyguard to clear the way.)

In our best 4 person game, the darn character was flat on his back most of the time because we did not send him gate-hopping. We handed off his Tommy Gun to Harvey and sent him looking for cash & stuff (Newspaper, Train Station, etc). Arrested for trying to break into a crate, injured, then driven insane a couple of times as he tried to get around. He did end up getting through and closing our last gate for a nice win, though. (So he wasn't COMPLETELY useless.)

we used gloria ad harvey too. isn't funny how the old manis turning into a combat wombat in this scenario!

Just a note: All the monsters cause 2 Sanity loss. But they also only cause 2 Sanity loss. If you put Calvin on a different character from Harvey, then you can be certain of losing exactly 1 Sanity from each fight - which for characters with a 7/3 or even 6/4 split is pretty much OK. You don't have to put Calvin on Harvey, and indeed the team becomes a lot more flexible if you don't.

-Frank

It's a trade-off between staying power and flexibility, certainly. There is a huge difference between losing 1 San per fight or none though - especially when there's a large stack of monsters somwehere. When you add the tomes that cost you 2 San per use, giving the Ally to Harvey seems to me like the clearly better choice.