Tonight I played the table top version for the second time (the first time I played solo and beat it after having played the ipad version several times first) with 3 friends who have never played a boardgame since they were a kid when they played monopoly or something. We got all 13 Elder Signs against Nyarlathotep and only procured 1 doom token. One player went insane losing 4 sanity against the Medusa Exhibit and drew another character to continue, but other than that it seemed way too easy. Anyone else have this problem where practically NO doom tokens appear?

P.S.

The players did love the game and can't wait to play again, although one of them was disappointed that it was so short (1.5 hours maybe?). They both picked up the Omens app for their smartphones.

The table top game is definitely a lot easier than the app, but I did lose against Cthulhu over the weekend due to some really bad dice rolling.

It is possible, I've lost three times in 29 plays. Also, why did you collect 13 Elder Signs vs Nyarlathotep when you win by collecting 11 ? Did you remember to add a doom token for the devoured investigator? Not that it would've made much difference.

I've lost about 1 in 5 games. Mostly from bad dice result and not from other decisions.

I haven't encountered this yet we usually fill at least half of the doom token track with mythos cards. Out of the 20 or so games we have played since buying the game we've only won just over half of our games. Partly because of poor die rolls, partly because of bad card draws but also partly because we aren't very good investigators!

You better believe it's possible to lose….Especially when you get at least 4 "At Midnight" cards every game like we do….

Some of the Ancient Ones are much tougher than others- I think Shub-N's the worst, followed by Ithaqua (yes, he's one of the tough ones in his Elder Sign incarnation)

I devised a very, very, very exceedingly simple variant to add to the difficulty of Elder Sign, even with the easiest Ancient Ones.

Here it is: one Green Die is locked all game, returned to the box: even Sister Mary can't use it. It only becomes unlocked during the Final Battle. That's it.

Believe me with this one simple change the entire game becomes a harrowing death-struggle for your heroes (but it makes Shub-N literally impossible to play against, so I never use it with that Ancient One)

If that's not enough of a challenge, once you've all picked starting Investigators return all but 3 extras to the box. If a replacement ever needs to be drawn but there's none of these 3 left, you lose! (wish I could print up a real nice Scenario card for these variants on Strange Eons)

Yeah, we lose plenty of times, generaly because we're bad rollers (and the dice don't like us) More often then not you'll draw doom tokens from the Mythos deck and devoured investigators so depending how the cards are shuffled and how the dice fall, the Ancient One can come out quickly.

i swear the ipad/android version cheats. 21 dice rolls (6,5,4,3,2,1) and not single skull icon? What are the chances? and I've seen it happen more than once, reuglrily actualy. Il complete one task straight off leaving me 3-4 dice and not get a single icon. But still i go back for more

i swear the ipad/android version cheats. 21 dice rolls (6,5,4,3,2,1) and not single skull icon? What are the chances? and I've seen it happen more than once, reuglrily actualy. Il complete one task straight off leaving me 3-4 dice and not get a single icon. But still i go back for more

Neffer said:

Should be (5/6)^21 = 2.1737 % Really, really, really low. Sorry for the bad luck! Not so sure it's so easy to create a good randomizer, though. I'm not an expert, though, but I've heard some complaints at this regard.

I've had similar runs in the table top game:

"10 dice to get 3 investigation result? Check. 18 dice looking for a single Terror result and still failing? Check. 20 dice looking for a single Peril result and failing? Check."

However, even worse than that luck was that inspite of that atricious rolling, I still won the game in the final combat !

Having played about 10 games so far I'd say it is very possible to lose!! There are the odd games where the group wins easily (guess the Elder ones are on our side on those days!! ) Most of the time it is quite close, with us either just winning or getting horribly minced by the Elder god. Although strangely whenever it gets to the final battle my wife seems to win on her own after the rest of the group have been devoured!!

In one game due to bad shuffling of the Mythos cards we got 11 doom tokens in a row at midnight, so mathematically the game can be lost!!

psykotik101 said:

Trouble comes when you're playing (like I do) with just a single investigator. I'd say normally I win by Mythos 5 (that's 20 Adventures possible), so even if there were 11 doom token Mythos on top of the deck, only half of them would see action.

Maybe I misread something, but I thought you got a doom token every midnight no matter what the Mythos cards say? I just won a three player game with that, but it required extreme luck (got a 2 Elder sign Other World card on the last turn before we would lose [i play that if the god appears you lose, like the iPad version] and I made the roll on my very last die after burning through 3 clue tokens). If that isn't the rule, it certainly makes the game more challenging! I would look it up myself, but my rulebook is at work where we played last night…

At Midnight, you draw and resolve a Mythos Card. If the card instructs you to add a doom token to the doom track, then ok. If the card doesn't say anything about adding doomers, or allow you an "escape condition" (like: add a doom token unless at least one investigator has a spell) that you're able to fulfill, then no doomers are added to the Doom Track

Anyway, once you are familiar with the system, your games will last more or less "4 or 5 Midnights", and you often win with an incredibly low doom track (my best was in a Shub game, I won with her with only one doom token on the doom track)

I usually win with 5 or 6 doom, in 18-24 turns. Played against Shub the other night and it took me 35 turns- just wasn't getting adventures that provided elder signs. Even so, I won with only 7 doom. By sheer coincidence (I chose randomly), my solo character was Kate Winthrop, who prevented about 8 or 10 monsters from coming out and many terror results. Would have been a very different game with any other investigator.

One of the biggest flaws playing the game solo is the ridiculous number of trophies you acquire. I hope the expansion introduces mythos cards (or some other mechanic) that cause you to lose all of them occasionally. In another game using Darrell Simmons I won with 40 trophies in hand when I scored the final elder sign (without buying any). I'm glad they got rid of the ability to buy elder signs in the redesign.

The Black Goat of the Woods is the most feared in my group.

I can't find anything in the rules about it, but that's certainly how we played it last night and it certainly rachets up the difficulty a notch.

If you're finding the game too easy, then it's a good way to tighten the screws, especially if you then apply the results of the midnight card.

You could try drawing and placing two mythos cards next to each other every midnight. This not only doubles the rate at which mythos cards cause doom tokens, but it makes it so their is a possibility of 2 lingering effects occurring at once. There can be some pretty nasty combinations.

Having played about a dozen times now, we've lost a couple of the games, with a few wins being veryyyyyy close to raising “he-who-shall-not-be-named”.

As with all random games … the dice ( and card ) gods will decide! The odds are certainly in our favour, but we've found some games have been won because we forgot the Mythos card effects (i.e. monsters at midnight, no spells, etc), the adventure card terror effects, locked dice, etc … so keeping track of what's going on across the table can sometimes allow you to win.

I doubt if many people would buy the game if it was too hard, so it always a balancing act for game designers to find that … equilibrium … to keep it challenging for us plebs.

I personally luv this game because of the whole package … storyline, cool images, cards, textures, counters, etc … luv it! AND with the expansion … well, let's see if it adds more fear to the unbelievers! … Walts

Fake Ghost Pirate said:

Thanks for the tip. A great variant is always appreciated

I've actually never lost this game in about 20 tries. I find its a bad sign when you win the first time you play.

Agreed, the game is rather easy to beat (I lost once in 43 attempts). Have you considered adding the Master Mythos to the mix? They are somehow more threatening.

Otherwise you can use Tibs' variant: the Skill Dice .

Unseen Forces expansion (where Master Mythos come in), all in all makes the game even easier. Mostly because of the drop in already low doom token amounts. My plays with just base had around 5.8 doom tokens, with expansion, average is around 2.8, that's just too low (including 5 wins with doom track on 0).