Full Doom Track had a session tonight and since this game won't make it into the broadcast I'm inclined to share it here since I felt it was broadcast worthy in a few ways. We've been playing through Innsmouth Horror recently and I'd have to say that there are just some games where Innsmouth carries surprising brutality.

Investigators:

Akachi Onyele, Agnes Baker, Ursula Downs, Minh Thi Phan

Ancient One:

Bokrug

Game Length: 8 Turns

Opening Mythos Card is a gate opening at Devil's Reef and spawning some monsters in Innsmouth. No problems for us, lets grab some clue tokens and be on our merry way. The first mythos phase sees a monster surge at Devil's Reef spawning four monsters there. Three of them are flyers and take off to the sky, one hops in the vortex and the DOR track begins to fill.

On Turn 2 we decide its time to act. Our investigators are sadly weaponless, but a couple have spells. Ursula heads to Innsmouth and we figure everything will work itself out. This has been a weird start to the game though.

Turn 2 Mythos gives us….yea….. ANOTHER monster surge at Devil's Reef. Are you kidding me? Also more monsters spawning in Innsmouth. Three Devil's Reef cards in a row? Come on Bokrug!! Play fair!!

For turn 3 Ursula spends her time trapped at Esoteric Order of Dagon as monsters are pouring out of the gate at Devil's Reef and everywhere else on the Innsmouth board. Not a monster or a gate in Arkham.

I'm not even going to finish the rest of the story in detail because the only other things that happened was that Akachi was able to exit into Devil's Reef to close it only to be attacked by 5 different monsters (4 from the sky) to be sent to the Arkham Asylum and Minh decided to NOT seal a gate she had explored at the Witch House. At the time the DOR was at 5 and putting a seal on the board didn't feel "right". Turns out, it was a good hunch because the immediate mythos phase after Minh closed the gate at the Witch House, another one spawned and that would have been the end of the game.

We suffered one more turn where in which Ursula was on the verge of getting a pounding from two Elder Things, in the street, Agnes had been sent to the hospital after an altercation with a local witch and Minh Thi Phan was delayed in the new gate that was opened on her the previous turn.

In the turn 8 Mythos Phase, Bokrug in all his mercy, put our poor band of weaponless investigators out of their misery but opening another gate at…. guess where? ….. uhuh! Devil's Reef! Akachi is long gone at the asylum at this point and the gate promptly releases a Shoggoth who happily skips into the nearby vortex for the 6th DOR token. Bokrug spawns and our investigators are absolutely annihilated by a -8 Magic/Physical Immune Bokrug. I think the highest attack we were able to conjure up was 6. Oh yea, and I forgot to mention, he had 18 doom tokens.

Talk about a full doom track……

This boarders on the most brutal game I've played with Arkham and of course, Innsmouth is involved somehow. Bokrug is now in my cross hairs for a redo and this time I want to beat him down in a final battle. We'll see how that goes.

In other news, work on the 2nd episode of the Full Doom Track podcast is coming along great and we will have another Doom Token for you all sometime early December! Hope you enjoyed the read hit us up on Facebook or Twitter with comments!

So in other words, you didn't manage to remove a single Being of Ib. It does not surprise me that you were defeated. =P

It seems you had a little more trouble than me the last time I played against Bokrug. My friend and I played 4 single-drafted investigators with Innsmouth Horror as the only expansion. We were lucky to draw Amanda, Hank, Mandy and Patrice as investigators, so that was our team. The very first mythos card we resolved opened a gate at Devil Reef and sent a monster directly into the vortex, so our game started off just like yours. However, a few other gates opened before we got any monster surges, so there was no monster party at Devil Reef, and thus no imminent threat of the Deep Ones Rising track filling up. Amanda quickly traveled to Devil Reef and sealed off the gate there, without ever thinking about how she was to get back to the mainland. After a couple of encounters at Y'ha-nthlei, she was lucky enough to draw a card which sent her back to the mainland. Meanwhile, a few other gates had opened in Innsmouth, and a couple of monster surges released strange creatures (even stranger than the village inhabitants) into the village. The simple-minded Hank stormed headfirst into the groups of monsters and completely obliterated the threat of any monster entering a vortex. From there, the investigators sealed off one gate after another, and won the game by sealing gates with the doom track at 7. Before the doom track had reached 6, the investigators had also managed to remove two beings of Ib from the game. It seems you were not as lucky during your game. =P

FDT,

You had me at "8 Turns" ~ most of the games I've played have ended, for good or ill, around the 14th-19th turn. If your game is spiralling out of control and you're still at sub 10 turns, it's time to really grab the whiskey. I tip my hat to you as you have ventured into the vile city of Innsmouth . Given what I've read out here over the past year or two, I can see a whole show dedicated to variants on playing with IH, as the nearly auto-fail Devil's Reef issue occurs with great frequency. I know I've changed Kingsport to suit my taste, I can only imagine what I'll do with that shadowed town.

All the best!

the Professor

The Professor said:

I don't see how it is that bad. Obviously, Full Doom Track had his share of bad luck in the game he mentioned, but two consecutive monster surges at Devil Reef at the very beginning of the game really doesn't happen very often. Of course, if you're playing with Father Dagon and/or Mother Hydra as heralds, it takes a lot less to awaken the Ancient One, but if you choose to play with Father Dagon and/or Mother Hydra, you should know what you're getting yourself into. =P And, of course, if you see a gate opening at Devil's Reef, you should endeavor to seal it as soon as possible. Then Devil Reef won't be a problem until you get a gate burst there.

eiterorm,

You're absolutely right ~ I need to live through the IH experience before I submit to making changes. I've managed to calibrate KH and DH, along with the smaller expansions to ensure a good game without auto-devours (see several Lurker cards). In the end, it's about having fun, not whether or not you win or lose…at least that's been my mantra. This week, I'll travel to Philadelphia, so while AH is too much for the family, they can definitely get their collective heads around Elder Sign . I'm still slowly writing my short story based on one of my last AH games which had four female Investigators ~ good times!

I should have started by saying that win entirely too many games of Arkham Horror. When that happens I always can rely on Innsmouth to take my ego down a couple of notches and remind me that I'm just a pathetic and feeble mortal who shouldn't be meddling in the affairs of the eldritch.

Needless to say, I've never seen Bokrug, or any other AO for that matter, so highly motivated to utterly destroy our chances of winning. My girlfriend was not very happy with the outcome. But I've found that having games like these makes the close wins that much better. It's also good to be reminded once in a while that no matter how much you plan, you'll always be at the mercy of the fickle Mythos Deck.

I'm amazed that no one has protested this vile slander yet! BOKRUG, pure evil?!?! Exactly the opposite is true! Great Bokrug is the kindest and most compassionate of all the Ancient Ones! No less than four times has he shown us mercy during the final battle! If you fail to include Kingsport and the Epic Battle cards in your game, then it is YOUR fault that Bokrug has not been able to demonstrate his fundamentally kind and peaceful nature .

Yeah, Bokrug has at least one benevolent trick up his sleeve.

Rhan-Tegoth is the truly evil one.

I'll admit that when taken in conjunction with his EBCs, Bokrug is definitely one of the more benevolent AOs. However, as I mentioned, his ordering of the mythos deck and our investigator items draws combined to a near perfect storm of defeat. Either way, I decided to tear the IH mythos deck apart and look at some odds, among other things. I may post my findings in a blog post on the FDT website or just save them as a topic of discussion for the IH episode that I have planned somewhere down the line.

Also, we're definitely not done with IH here and because of his obnoxiously bad behavior last game, Bokrug has painted a target on his back for our next encounter. I'll keep you posted as to when and where that is (along with, obviously, the result). Cheers and thanks for reading!