So, today we tried scenario 1 for the fourth time, and the second time in two days. I already went over our first loss in Worst Game Ever!, and the second game was a little better, and yesterday we actually closed 7 gates before Shub woke and beat us to death. So we though by playing tonight we'd do better.

And we did. It was late in the game when the Terror track jumped to 10, we used an Elder Sign to remove a Doom Token from the Doom Track, Harvey (aka me) got to use the Flute of the Outer Gods to destroy the 10 monsters on the Science Building (2 monsters, then a monster surge as the only gate on the board), followed by Jenny (my wife) closing the gate for our 11th gate, with none on the board and the Doom Track at 10. Things were looking okay -- not great, but okay. Our plan for the next turn was to send everybody without clues to the Science Building in the hopes of closing whatever gate opened, and everyone with clues to the Church to try and attend mass and remove a Doom Token or two, and one lone investigator to go through whichever gate opened.

Unfortunately, Dexter drew the encounter at the Witch House where a gate appears. Doom jumps to 11. His Outer World encounter sends him insane, and he gets Lost in Time and Space.

And the next mythos card, a gate opens at the Unvisted Isle.

11 gates (9 trophies), 1 Elder Sign used, all monster trophies used up fighting Shub and no surviviors. 0 points. Four attempts, 12+ hours, I think we're happy with this score.

Frakking scenario!!!!

Heh... You're a four player team?

Must be an 8 player team as they closed 11 gates and still fought the AO...Only thing that would make sense....In a 4 player game after they hit 8 gates the game is over and your counting up your score, right???...We got really lucky in our Scenerio 1 game as we hit The Terrible Experiment Card in Turn 2 and drew a 2nd Find Gate Spell in an encounter half-way though the game, the only way to fly from Other World to Arkham....Looking forward to Scenario 2!!!....Have to admit it looks easier than 1 though...

JerusalemJones said:

I keep telling people Dexter has bad juju. No good will come from having Dexter in the game .

Yes JeruselemJones and I are part of an 8 player team (which sometimes baloons to as many as 10 people around the table). This scenario is ridiculously hard for teams of 5 or more investigators becasue very few investigators can encounter more than 1 monster without going insane. It would be a lot easier if Harvey's and Calvins abilities prevented the sanity reduction from paying the cost to cast a spell. As written even a cultist is a pain to deal with considering that you either automaticall fail your horror check and lose two sanity, or you have an extremely limited number of dice and need 2 successes to kill it. Unless you have a better than average weapon you will probably be limited to 6 dice (including the +1 to your combat check) , this does give pretty good odds of success, but that is probably the weakest monster in the game.

Doesn't Scenario 1 end when you have closed 6 gates or something like that?

dkw said:

8 players was tough, but combat wasn't really much of a problem. If you take the easy way out, Harvey becomes one of your fighters. Give him the tommy gun and he starts out at +9. That is good enough to take out most of the easy monsters. With a little shopping, you can pump him up to +10 or +11 (one handed guns, wither, etc.) You can also give him dynamite to help with one bigger monster initially.

On top of that, with 8 investigators, you have a good chance of getting someone with fight +1. That plus some clues is a good way to take down some of the harder monsters.

Avi's suggestion on getting two crosses is great also. And, if you get someone with +1 will, a clue is enough to pass a lot of the horror checks. Any of the characters with decent fight, a weapon, and will +1 should do some real damage. Several of the investigators have max will of 5, so you can start upping the fight as you get crosses, skills, etc.

Maybe this isn't the best strategy, but we often end up with someone playing the roll of hero. A lot of times, when there are two monsters, only one of them is tough. Send McGlenn in at full fight with the tommy gun. He loses 2 sanity and kills the big monster, and then goes insane facing the second one. Losing him for a turn to the asylum isn't that big a price to pay to clear out something tough on the board.

Maybe Iwe were just lucky, but we were able to get enough items to have two fighters that could take out most monsters and surivie a couple of horror checks, and one shot items and suicide runs took out the rest. Whiskey was also very useful, and Ashcan Pete does have a knack for finding a bottle with a few drops left in it. We also burned through one shot items quickly.

With 8 investigators, getting good items did not seem to be a problem. Do you meet up at the general store on the first turn? If everyone pools together and then divides up the money, you will get a several investigators that can make a purchase. If even 4 investifators do it, you get to see 12 cards (more if Pete looks at the bottom of the deck.) The odds ae pretty good of getting a good weapon or two. We had more trouble with the good stuff we were having to discard (do you keep a motorcycle, a shot gun, or a tommy gun)?

We had more trouble with closing a few of the gates. With the race against the doom track, "lose a turn," "lost in time and space," and failed gate rolls hurt more than the monsters did. That being said, Find Gate and Gloria helped get around most of those problems.

What I like about Sc1 is that with the scaling difficulty, 8 players actually have to pull the tricks only 8 players can. You're absolutely required to find a way to lower the doom track by at least one, but you will probably have to do more with a less than ideal run. It's good that it actually gives all eight investigators something to do.

I played Harvey, and we gave Calvin to McGlenn. I had the Dread Curse, and later got a Tommy Gun. Ashcan Pete managed to get both the motorcycle and the Tommy Gun. None of the fighter types got +1 Will or +1 Fight. Amanda started with +1 Sneak and reroll a Horror Check, and later bought reroll an Evade check. Some of our biggest problems were that when 2 monsters popped out of a gate, one just about always moved -- so when the gate opened first turn in the woods, Dexter was face to face with a monster (think it was a Shoggoth).

We did horrible on gathering up clues, drew a rumor when there was alread one in play, several times had players LiT&S, and Jenny was freaked out at least twice times by Drainpipe Gargoyles and was assaulted by Father MIchael (also at least twice) for being in league with Satan. What good is it to have the clues if you can't attend mass?

No, we were doing everything we could to keep closing the gates (though it took passing the elder sign to Gloria to close her gate to Rl'yeh, since she failed it at least three times!) and bought some good items at the church. We didn't play Sister Mary (which I wanted to see in play, just because she starts with the cross) and Vincent Lee, but fate just wasn't going our way. We never got a second Elder Sign, never managed to pull a Find Gate spell, and only once got the experiement to close gates. You can only play a scenario so many times before you cut your losses, and I think we hit it. We might try it again later, but if we keep this up we'll never get to play the next scenarios.

JerusalemJones said:

Errr, you can only have one rumor in play. If a second one comes out, it's just bounced to the bottom of the deck. ::Sigh:: I just replayed scenario one... and decided to forfeit... 7 clue tokens to pass a horror check with Joe Diamond! Gah! And that wasn't the only incident of cursed dice that game. I'm mostly forfeiting because it looks like the terror track's going to hit three though.

We just beat this "scenario one" today score 26 with 6 investigators.

Team: Mary, Pete, Joe, Walters, Dexter, Sharpe

Dexter closed 5 gate because he got find gate as starting gear and got CFC

Mary was the monster killer!

Walter had Calvin but got cursed asap so was running around the first half of the game trying to get blessed.

Closed the last Gate while Mr. Shubb was One doom token away from waking up!

-1 doom due to elder sign + 1 doom token due to Stars are right...

seemed easy enough scenario just go into gates and get out asap!

Plus not one monster was left on the board lol and ended with three Clue Tokens.

PS: blessed @5 investigators that game, Walter Three!!! times lol and bought two alleys but slim pickins thanks to Southside Strangler!

Avi_dreader said:

We know you can't have 2 rumors in play at once, but it still a mythos card that opens a gate and doesn't put a clue on the board. It also exemplifies the kinds of bad luck we were having. What makes it even more annoying is that we were so close to a successful finish. And if it wasn't for the special rule we would have one about 1-2 turns earlier when we had all gates closed and 9 gate trophies.

I just finished chapter 1 with four investigators ("Ashcan Pete", Vincent Lee, Harvey Walters, and Gloria Goldberg).

In turn 18 I won by closing 8 gates with a final score of 19 (terror level reached 5 and I traded 5 gate trophies and about 9 monster trophies for blessings and turning Gloria into a Deputy) but it was really tough. What made things exceptionally difficult was drawing The Terrible Experiment in turn 2. The rumour remained unresolved for the entire game. Three of the initial five monsters had toughness 4, so I was just able to narrowly avoid failing the rumour in a lot of turns.

Even after blessing all investigators I never managed to kill more than two monsters in a single turn with one investigator.

I also drew four other rumours that failed to take place because the Experiment was still running...

I don't think I want to repeat that scenario, at least not with four investigators. I also think Shub-Niggurath is the most difficult Ancient One in the base game. So I hope I'll have an easier time with the next scenario. At least I'll start with four clue tokens - I missed those a lot in this scenario!

Despite the difficulty this was a very interesting scenario since it required a different strategy than I'm usually using.

Well, at least some of our team members want to give this one another go. I guess I can't blame them; it is so frustrating to realize just how close we came to winning, and we want to win. I'll replay it; hopefully this time we'll get things right and someone will have a successful encounter at the church. If Father Michael didn't think we were all in league with Satan, we'd be fine.