I'm just curious about how you other people decide which Ancient One and which investigators to play. Do you draw them all at random, or do you just pick the ones you want to play? If you do the latter, do you pick the Ancient One before or after you pick the investigators?

My friends and I are fairly new to this game, and so far we've been picking the Ancient One first. We've been starting with the ones which don't seem like the worst ones to defeat, but we're not supposed to play the same Ancient One twice until we've played one game against each of the Ancient Ones. So at the start of each session, we pick an Ancient One together. After that, each player is handed three randomly drawn investigators, and must choose one of them. All players must have decided on an investigator before the choices are revealed. I think this is a nice way to get to know the Ancient Ones and the investigators, while at the same time it gives a nice combination of random drawing and choice.

How do you usually play?

I'm also quite new to AH. But in less than a week I have tried out around 8 games already.

I have been playing both sologames and games with more players.

If we are more than one player we deal 2 investigators each and pick one. Great Old One: Draw one at random.

In my solo-sessions I have tried out 2 investigators at random against one GOO at random. Only thing is, used investigators and GOO:s are put aside and are not drawn again in later games. Thats because I want to try everyone out.

Depends on the mood of the group. Typically random AO and random 2 select 1 Investigator.

But sometimes we are in the mood for a specific AO. We also frequently allow someone to select an investigator or go completely random investigators.

Of my nearly 100 games, I've always played 4 Investigators, chosen randomly. I pick two Investigators for each of the 4 slots and then select one. After setting-up the board, outfitting the Investigators, and dealing out Relationship cards and assigning the Personal Story cards, I select the GOO. Yesterday and today, since the government offices are closed, I played a nail-biter with Amanda, Wendy, Mary, and Rita taking on Eihort. Once cable is restored, probably 3 days, you'll see the write-up.

I know for my games I typically use a similar method to The Professor's which I call Single Draft (a term borrowed from DotA games originating in Warcraft III). Instead of randomly choosing 2 investigators and choosing 1, I will randomly choose 3 investigators and pick one. This is more acceptable to my gaming group who enjoys having more choices (instead of A vs. B). The ancient one is typically then randomly selected.

I like to do it similarly to the way Tibs showed me, where you keep the AOs and investigators in the order in which they've been last seen. I roll a die, and with the AO I haven't seen the longest on top of the stack, I count the number shown on the die into the stack and choose that one. Then I roll a number of dice equal to the number of investigators I'm playing, and choose investigators similarly to how I chose ancient ones. I roll 3 dice for guardian, institution, and herald. For the herald, I pick exactly the same way as the AO (if Dagon or Hydra is picked, I roll another die. If it matches the first, I use both). For the guardian and institution, the one I haven't seen the longest is picked on a 1-3, the second longest is 4 or 5, and the most recent one is a 6.

When I solo, I usually select one Investigator directly—that would be “me” or my spokesperson—and it varies by my mood. Then I randomly “draw 5, pick 3” for the rest of my “party”. Since I have all the Investigator Miniatures, I throw all the Player Tokens into the Monster Cup and draw randomly that way. (I HATE shuffling Investigator sheets.) Ancient One is always random and always after Investigators.

When I’m with my Cult, we’re SUPPOSED to “draw 2, pick 1”, but after we’ve all drawn, there tends to be some…bartering. “I don’t like these two, who did you get?” It’s just that Zebra likes money for shopping, Pizza likes a lot of Sanity, and Wings wants a brute, so they’ll take the best of the 8 for that characteristic. (Hey, fun is fun, so who am I to get in the way?) I just make sure no one gets any Investigator played by anyone in our last game: I leave those tokens out of the Cup during selection.

I keep track of which Ancient Ones have challenged the Cult already, so we face each of them before seeing any recurrences. (Neither Azathoth nor Atlach-Nacha is in that pool; the former is too easy, the latter too hard.)

We randomly determine both investigators and ancient one. We used to have players pick who they wanted to play but we found that we could make the game too easy by our choices.

I should mention that in my initial play throughs of each expansion, I have randomed out the AOs and then removed the ones we've already faced. For Innsmouth, our number of AO's continued to dwindle until randomized between 2 and then finally took the only remaining one we hadn't played.

On my first games with my friends we were selecting at random the Investigators and choose the AO. We prefered an AO that was "easy" to play against him. After we got familiar with the game rules., everything is done at random. First the Investigators and then the AO.

We usually play three players with two investigators each, for six investigators total. But there's very little choice involved: we draw exactly six random investigators from the monster bag, then give two to each player (with some leeway when a particular player's favorite investigators come up; for example, if Lily Chen comes up she'll likely be played by Dave.) While one of us is choosing and setting up the investigators, the other one is choosing a completely random AO, Herald, Guardian, and Institution by rolling dice. For the AO, for example, he deals the AO sheets into six stacks and rolls a d6 to choose a stack, then rolls another d6 to choose which of those four we'll use, rerolling it on a 5 or 6. Admittedly, though, we have been known to veto certain AOs if it's already late at night and we weren't particularly wanting a tough fight.

We're still new enough that there are a lot of investigators we haven't played yet. We seem to have a problem with randomizing (I think I've actually drawn two of the same investigators in a row "randomly") so for the last two games we've just taken investigators that seem interesting to play. I have this nagging and rather disgusted feeling that one of our party chooses his investigators by the attractiveness of their character portraits. Cleavage, apparently, is a bonus.

I think we'll probably go back to the "draw three, pick one" style once we've had our run through the gamut.

We're just barely industrious enough to cull the Ancient Ones we've fought already and randomize their drawing. If we had more than just the Dunwich expansion we might not even do this. We usually do this first, then decide which investigators will make the scene.

Nun of your business said:

::laughter:: at least Mandy is good (both for her cleavage and for her being a great investigator)

Oddly enough, Mandy earned a nickname in relation to your portrait by one of our players here. Fortunately, he's able to see past the superficial and chose an investigator that will benefit the group. Often times that's "Titties" but sometimes it's not.

Nun of your business said:

I don't see any problem with that. =P The first time I played "Junta," I was the only one who hadn't played the game before. My friends suggested I'd learn the game just by playing it, instead of having all the rules explained before the game started. So the first round of the game, I had no idea of which cabinet position (character) I should ask for when the different roles were dealt to the different players. Instead, I just asked if I could play the guy with the biggest moustache. ^_____^

Julia said:

I have to admit that Mandy is actually one of my favorites I've played so far (when I actually remember to use her special ability). I just always feel like I need to check my own shirt for open buttons whenever I play her. Just a little of my silly midwestern American prudishness shining through, there.

eiterorm said:

I can respect that choice. I was actually SUPER excited when I found out that Ashcan started out with a dog. I only found out through further reading that Duke was so useful in the sanity department. Initially I was just all "PUPPY!", and there was no further need for discussion.

Oh I use a lot of different methods for choosing, all depending on the mood I'm in. Sometimes I just pick one that I haven't played in a long time or just feel like playing. Sometimes I draw at random. Sometimes I draw random but decide to play only Dunwich characters/AOs etc. Sometimes I draw 2 and choose one. And the list goes on.

When I draw totally at random I use a handy little list I created for randomizing. It consists of all the investigators, AOs, Heralds, Guardians and institutions with corresponding dice results. I use a d100 for the investigators, a d100 for the AOs, d10 for the heralds and a d6 for guardians and institutions.

Tbla said:

LOL! That is so awesomely nerdy! I want to go to there!

I think I'm going to draw up a list when I get home (although I have no guardians or institutions to add, yet),