A couple weeks ago, we were playing a game where we ran out of clue tokens. I think this is the second time it's happened, and we basically just shrugged it off and went on, but now I'm wondering what the official ruling is, if there is an official ruling: are you limited to the number of clue tokens in the box, or are clues considered infinite?

The specific circumstances that allowed this to happen were that we had had the "No One Can Help You Now" environment, which doesn't allow gates to be sealed, for several turns so we were all hoarding clue tokens while we waited for another environment to come up. Meanwhile, nothing had been happening in Dunwich or Innsmouth so most of the unstable locations there still had their original clue tokens. Then, Akachi achieved her personal story, which told us to put clue tokens on all of the unstable locations without gates (which was most of them; we were closing gates, even if we couldn't seal them.) By that point, we only had a handful of clue tokens in the supply, so we distributed them to the unstable locations we were most likely to visit in the next few turns, but it did leave us wondering what we should have done.

parkrrrr said:

Tokens, unless specifically stated, are not supply limited. This was said many times on this very board, but honestly I don't remember if this is official, or it was said it would be official after the FAQ are released

Buy the Core game of the Call of Cthulhu LCG and use their brown tokens: Magnifying Glass on one side (Story Successes), Skull on the other (Wounds).

jgt7771 said:

Plus, you could also enjoy the experience of having a marvellous new game to play (man, how much I love the CoC LCG..)

jgt7771 said:

Can't do that. I'm a pathological completist, to the extent that I paid way, WAY too much money for StarCraft: Typhon, If I ever got started with an LCG, I'd disappear down a black hole.

Besides, pennies are cheaper.

parkrrrr said:

You're a completist? Wait until you get Lurker, then you'll never run out of tokens again (or any other expansion except Dunwich, for that matter).

I have Lurker. I have them all, though my CotDP isn't ®. But you make a good point: who needs pennies when I have power tokens? Unless the Lurker actually is the herald, I suppose, but then I can use Yellow Sign tokens or Brood tokens.

Using yellow sign/ power tokens or anything else not in use, seems like the most practical idea.

However if you have to have them all matching there are several options:

1) You can sometimes buy them on ebay from people who open game boxes and sell the individual boards and components as replacement parts.

Just checked - none at present, but they do come up now and again (although only seen them for sale twice in two years) - I bought an extra set of clues this way.

2) You can also use the FFG green gaming tokens to replace all the clues and buy as many sets as you need. A bit expensive, but the tokens are useful for many other games where you may need to keep count of somthing.

Definitely tokens. The universal gaming item….

I'm considering buying an additional copy of the game so that I could "scavenge" parts from it to keep my board and other items looking fresh. I've never had an issue with running out of clue tokens, we put them back into the system so quick that there always is a supply. I don't frequently (and by frequently I mean never) play games with 6-8 investigators. Perhaps it's more of a problem in larger games.

Running out of clue tokens is not that likely to happen anyway; some of the most common situations where you may risk is with Patrice in play (once I draw the Unnamable encounter where you look at yourself in a mirror and see you wearing ancient egyptian paraments and so on and you double your clues. I had something like 20 clues at that time) or where you draw professor Rice

It may be unlikely, but it happened to us again this past weekend. And we don't even use clue tokens to mark Rumor cards like you're supposed to; I have some generic counters for that. We used Brood tokens for the overage, and got them out of play again as quickly as we could.

Part of the problem this time was that we were playing with Hypnos, who was putting out one or two clue tokens each upkeep phase. We also had a couple investigators who were hoarding clue tokens but were too busy fighting monsters to do anything about gates - we'd gotten whichever Mythos card it is that dumps monsters all over Innsmouth, and three of those were fast monsters. And, of course, Innsmouth was under Martial Law. Fortunately, we were playing with Wendy Adams, who passes all evade checks in street areas, so we sent her to just stand on the bus station until someone with some weapons could get there. But that meant that all the clue tokens she was hanging on to were tied up for several turns. (This turned out better than we could have hoped, though: three of the monsters were square monsters, and someone closed a square gate. Finally, one of the other investigators finished off the two remaining proto-shoggoths who were sniffing around the bus station looking for Wendy and wishing they'd finished the shoggoth training.)

We use Eihort tokens when we run out or KiY tokens for every ten clue tokens etc

That's when you pray. Or have your investigator drink the whickey if they have it.