Cthugha and Innsmouth Encounters

By Full Doom Track, in Arkham Horror Second Edition

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Hey Guys,

I'm in the middle of playing a game with the base set + IH and came across a very interesting contradiction. Trish and Patrice have headed to Innsmouth to take care of the gate out on Devil's Reef that has sent the DORT up to 5 (it's turn 3). Trish just made it to Falcon point and had this encounter:

"Weather's Changin'," says an old salt. Draw mythos cards until you find an Environment (Weather) card. Place that card directly into play, ignoring the gate and monster movement information on that card. Discard the other mythos cards you've drawn.

At this point, Cthugha is forcing his own Sweltering Heat on us so I think that this cleverly becomes a no-encounter for Trish. Let me know what you think or how you'd play it.

To hear how the rest of the game goes, follow me on Twitter @FullDoomTrack!

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I'd not go for a "no encounter". Even if it is not possible to put into play the card, the Mythos you draw until you find the proper Environment card are discarded from the game (thus the sequence of gate opening in the next turns will be different). Plus, if you draw "The story continues…" some cards can enter again your deck.

But yeah, technically the encounter does not change anything else

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I'd say that the Ancient One takes precedence, so I only see two options here:

1. Ignore the encounter; do nothing.

2. Ignore the encounter; draw another one.

And here, I guess, it's mostly a matter of how you choose to play. Personally I'd go for the second option, and just draw another encounter. Deciding to do nothing seems a little pusillanimous. If I remember correctly, Tibs, too, argued against no-encounters in some other thread. And I can't remember any Arkham encounter (at least not right now) where absolutely nothing happens, so I believe that the intention is that there's always something happening in the Arkham encounter phase.

Julia said:

I'd not go for a "no encounter". Even if it is not possible to put into play the card, the Mythos you draw until you find the proper Environment card are discarded from the game (thus the sequence of gate opening in the next turns will be different). Plus, if you draw "The story continues…" some cards can enter again your deck.

But yeah, technically the encounter does not change anything else

On Cthugha's sheet it says about the Sweltering Heat ability: "(…) all Weather cards are ignored when drawn -- a new card being drawn instead." So if you are to do what it says on the Arkham encounter, you draw Mythos cards until you find one with a Weather environment. But once you have drawn a Mythos card with a Weather environment, according to Cthugha's Sweltering Heat ability, that card should immediately be ignored and you should draw a new Mythos card until you find one that doesn't have a Weather environment. But then you don't have a Weather card, which is what the Arkham encounter instructed you to find, and you're back where you started. So if you start drawing cards, you'll be stuck in an infinite loop. Hence I'd say it's better to simply ignore the encounter and draw another one.

And about drawing and ignoring Mythos cards for the sake of it. This only has a purpose if you, as a consequence of this, either

1. draw "The story continues…", such that the deck is reshuffled.

or

2. end up having cycled through the entire Mythos deck.

In all other situations, drawing and ignoring Mythos cards will have absolutely no effect on the game. So unless one of the two situations above occur, the probability of drawing a gate burst, for instance, will be exactly the same whether or not you draw and ignore those cards.

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eiterorm said:



If I remember correctly, Tibs, too, argued against no-encounters in some other thread. And I can't remember any Arkham encounter (at least not right now) where absolutely nothing happens, so I believe that the intention is that there's always something happening in the Arkham encounter phase.





That's an interesting thing I never noticed. Curious, uh? Plenty of OW encounters saying basically "no encounter", but no Arkham encounters saying the same. Hence, Arkham is much a more terrible place than any OW! ::laughter::



eiterorm said:



On Cthugha's sheet it says about the Sweltering Heat ability: "(…) all Weather cards are ignored when drawn -- a new card being drawn instead." So if you are to do what it says on the Arkham encounter, you draw Mythos cards until you find one with a Weather environment. But once you have drawn a Mythos card with a Weather environment, according to Cthugha's Sweltering Heat ability, that card should immediately be ignored and you should draw a new Mythos card until you find one that doesn't have a Weather environment. But then you don't have a Weather card, which is what the Arkham encounter instructed you to find, and you're back where you started. So if you start drawing cards, you'll be stuck in an infinite loop. Hence I'd say it's better to simply ignore the encounter and draw another one.





I see the loop point you're referring too, but still, I'm not 100% with you. Basically, I believe that since you're resolving an encounter, is the encounter that "takes precedence", while if you were resolving a Mythos card, it'd be the AO ability to "command". So, the encounters instructs you to draw Mythos card until you find a Wehather environment. You do it. But then, since you cannot put that card into play, you discard it without triggering the second part of Cthugha's ability (that was written referring to a "what shall I do when I draw a Weather card during the Mythos Phase") and break the loop.



Still, no rules behind my answer, it's just the way I'll solve the conundrum


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Julia said:

That's an interesting thing I never noticed. Curious, uh? Plenty of OW encounters saying basically "no encounter", but no Arkham encounters saying the same. Hence, Arkham is much a more terrible place than any OW! ::laughter::

And you have KH, guess you're just not spending time there much burla :

http://www.arkhamhorrorwiki.com/The_Rope_and_Anchor

Six copies of (with MH in the mix):

"Tonight, the old Yankee fishermen who frequent the tavern are trading long, rambling tales of the sea. You listen for awhile, but although the tales are entertaining, they are uninformative. Nothing happens."

Neil's Curiosity Shop:

"Neil rambles on as he gives you the guided tour. It's entertaining, but ultimately useless. Nothing happens." (5 copies)

And just so it's not all anti-KH, from DH:

"You knock on the door of the shack, but it appears that Harney is out. No encounter . " (ugh, 8 copies with everything in the mix)

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::laughter:: good catch, Dam! It's impressive your knowledge of Kingsport… and… curious, Freud would say ::devil::

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(myself, eiterorm --- see above)




And about drawing and ignoring Mythos cards for the sake of it. This only has a purpose if you, as a consequence of this, either




1. draw "The story continues…", such that the deck is reshuffled.




or




2. end up having cycled through the entire Mythos deck.




In all other situations, drawing and ignoring Mythos cards will have absolutely no effect on the game. So unless one of the two situations above occur, the probability of drawing a gate burst, for instance, will be exactly the same whether or not you draw and ignore those cards.








This is obviously a mistake, and I just want to correct this. As long as "The story continues…" is a part of the deck, situation 2 will never happen. "The story continues…" is always inside the deck, so you will always find "The story continues…" before you cycle through all the Mythos cards.






(Julia --- see above)




I see the loop point you're referring too, but still, I'm not 100% with you. Basically, I believe that since you're resolving an encounter, is the encounter that "takes precedence", while if you were resolving a Mythos card, it'd be the AO ability to "command". So, the encounters instructs you to draw Mythos card until you find a Wehather environment. You do it. But then, since you cannot put that card into play, you discard it without triggering the second part of Cthugha's ability (that was written referring to a "what shall I do when I draw a Weather card during the Mythos Phase") and break the loop.




Still, no rules behind my answer, it's just the way I'll solve the conundrum








Well, let's just look at the numbers. In the base game, there's 67 Mythos cards. In the Innsmouth expansion there's 36, adding up to a total of 103. Of these 103 there are 10 Weather cards. So if you were to draw and ignore Mythos cards until you get a Weather card, you'd be expected to draw 10 cards. Let's assume that you've already played 10 Mythos cards, none of which were "The story continues…", such that there are 93 cards remaining in the Mythos deck. If you draw 10 cards out of these 93, you will have an 11% chance of drawing "The story continues…". Of course, drawing and ignoring 10 cards will increase the probability of drawing "The story continues…" later in the game, but just how many Mythos cards will be played during the game? If you draw 52 Mythos over the course of the game, you have a 50% chance of "The story continues…" ever showing up during the entire game. But when do you ever play that many Mythos cards during a game? The probability that drawing and ignoring Mythos cards will have any effect on the game, is too low for me to bother. I'll just draw a new encounter instead. ;-]




EDIT: What's wrong with the forum? Why can't I quote people?

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eiterorm said:

Well, let's just look at the numbers. In the base game, there's 67 Mythos cards. In the Innsmouth expansion there's 36, adding up to a total of 103. Of these 103 there are 10 Weather cards. So if you were to draw and ignore Mythos cards until you get a Weather card, you'd be expected to draw 10 cards. Let's assume that you've already played 10 Mythos cards, none of which were "The story continues…", such that there are 93 cards remaining in the Mythos deck. If you draw 10 cards out of these 93, you will have an 11% chance of drawing "The story continues…". Of course, drawing and ignoring 10 cards will increase the probability of drawing "The story continues…" later in the game, but just how many Mythos cards will be played during the game? If you draw 52 Mythos over the course of the game, you have a 50% chance of "The story continues…" ever showing up during the entire game. But when do you ever play that many Mythos cards during a game? The probability that drawing and ignoring Mythos cards will have any effect on the game, is too low for me to bother. I'll just draw a new encounter instead. ;-]
EDIT: What's wrong with the forum? Why can't I quote people?

There are many things wrong with the forum, and multiple quoting is indeed messy ::laugther::

Anyway, the odds of drawing a "Story continues" card under your hypothesis is 9.68%, not 11% :-P

if my math is correct, it should be: [1-(92/93)*(91/92)*…*(84/85)]*100

but you're right, the odds are quite low. My point was something like: "oh, my god, the next Mythos is Evidence destroyed? WHAT A PITY, I had to discard this card because of the encounter at FP". Clearly, it could also happen the other way round: "after discarding ten cards, the next one is Evidence destroyed" - or something nastier - and you lose a game that you could possibly have won if you weren't meant to draw all those cards. Still, not so sure I was able to explain myself properly. Ugh.

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Julia said:

There are many things wrong with the forum, and multiple quoting is indeed messy ::laugther::

Anyway, the odds of drawing a "Story continues" card under your hypothesis is 9.68%, not 11% :-P

if my math is correct, it should be: [1-(92/93)*(91/92)*…*(84/85)]*100

but you're right, the odds are quite low. My point was something like: "oh, my god, the next Mythos is Evidence destroyed? WHAT A PITY, I had to discard this card because of the encounter at FP". Clearly, it could also happen the other way round: "after discarding ten cards, the next one is Evidence destroyed" - or something nastier - and you lose a game that you could possibly have won if you weren't meant to draw all those cards. Still, not so sure I was able to explain myself properly. Ugh.

If you stop at 84/85, you're only drawing 9 cards, not 10. =) If you multiply the second term by 83/84, you should get the same result as me.

1 - (92/93) * (91/92) * … * (83/84) = 1 - 83/93 = 10/93 = 0.1075 ≈ 11%.

Yep, but the probability for drawing "Evidence destroyed!" is the exact same whether or not you choose to draw and ignore the Mythos cards during the encounter. So whether you do or whether you don't, it won't affect the game. Unless you draw "The story continues…", (which, as we've established, is not very probable) it essentially it becomes a bothersome no-encounter.

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eiterorm said:

If you stop at 84/85, you're only drawing 9 cards, not 10. =) If you multiply the second term by 83/84, you should get the same result as me.

1 - (92/93) * (91/92) * … * (83/84) = 1 - 83/93 = 10/93 = 0.1075 ≈ 11%.

::facepalm:: I did a count of ten! I swear it, your grace!

(well, at least my math was good. The fact that I'm not able to count it's another thing ::whistling casually::

eiterorm said:

Yep, but the probability for drawing "Evidence destroyed!" is the exact same whether or not you choose to draw and ignore the Mythos cards during the encounter. So whether you do or whether you don't, it won't affect the game. Unless you draw "The story continues…", (which, as we've established, is not very probable) it essentially it becomes a bothersome no-encounter.

Yeah, it's just the way you prefer being doomed, after all…

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Julia said:

::facepalm:: I did a count of ten! I swear it, your grace!

(well, at least my math was good. The fact that I'm not able to count it's another thing ::whistling casually::

Your math was indeed good.

And please excuse me, but I just had to

Julia said:

Yeah, it's just the way you prefer being doomed, after all…

Yeah, life ain't easy in Arkham. And

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eiterorm said:

Yeah, life ain't easy in Arkham. And

. ^__^

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH…. ok for the first one, but the second one… omg… probably the second most horrible thing in the world after the Crazy Frog (that obnoxious green thing on the Axel Fooley theme that tormented us for a whole summer….)

(sigh. Once we had an Off-Topic section for these things)