Well, we tried the Innsmouth expansion tongiht, and failed. Oh so coloosally failed. We were up against Glaaki for the first time, and between him, Arkham's normal problems, and the Deep Ones Rising we were overrun in short order. It was a massacre. We didn't even manage a single seal.

On particular note was Harvey who seemed to get cheated on cards time and again. Normally the guy is our star player, but thanks to various events, Glaaki's servants, and having to fight a few Rat-Things the old man ended up with no weapons, no items, no spells, nada. I was waiting for a mythos card to read "Bury Harvey's player in the woods; you are not allowed to reveal the location of the body until you succeed at AH".

Now, I play with all expansions ~ which means if you don't have a few Variants , you're almost assured destruction. Here are two Variants, I've employed for the items you mentioned:

1.) In Innsmouth , if one or more monsters enter a Vortex, add a Deep Ones Token to the Deep Ones Track (vice one for each monster)

2.) When fighting a Rat-Thing , play per normal, however, if you defeat the monster, you find the item which had ben lost. Rationale : The Rat-Thing is like a little picpocket which takes an item before you engage it in combat. After combat, you have the time to retrieve your item.

Hello,

Yep, Innsmouth is not an easy expansion. We also lost a few before we started to win/get the upper hand.

Keep trying.

If you get a chance, do a search for the podcast by FullDoomTrack in which he discusses the element and vagaries of Innsmouth…good times!

We may return to base to lick our wounds and tighten our strategy first. Hopefully we'll get it. The new Ancients in the expansions are quite quite nasty, so maybe some experience with them would be helpful before splitting our attention. I'm keen to play against Shudde M'ell and Quachil Uttaus, but I may be the only one.

Also, anyone know how to pronounce Y'ha-nthlei ?

Glaaki could very well be the most annoying ancient one in the game imo. Not *that* hard, but losing your hard-earned items and whatnot is oh well… Innsmouth on the other hand is fun to play! Very challenging, even when you learn the ropes. Like filling the FBI raid 5/6 - leaving a green one last - before things spiral out of control (I did lose a fair amount of IH games because I arrogantly ignored the track alltogether.), or just generally preparing well for *that* Devil's reef gate at the worst possible time. Not to mention fast monster(s) coming from Dagon's straight into the vortex. Having the sailor in your team makes the expansion board significantly more manageable, that is if you're careful not to have any unnecessary encounters in Innsmouth.

Oh, and if IH gets too easy… try Dagon&Hydra. ;-)

Wolfgar said:

Yeah, it's definitely better if you try to improve the strategy before starting bending rules. Plus, the Professor really loves the roleplaying flavour of the game; some others enjoy more the strategic part. Try to understand what you want your Arkham experience to be like, and then consider if you need some houserules. Innsmouth is a nasty board, and it's very difficult to keep everything under control there, but it's absolutely beautiful in its brutality. My suggestions is: go for a Innsmouth only game, and play Azathoth a few times (long doom track and no impact on the game) so that you can dedicate yourself to the study of the board, of the encounters and of the Mytos cards (some of these are really nasty).

Generally speaking, Glaaki is the nemesis of many of our fellow forumites; it's a difficult AO even if you don't play with Innsmouth!

As for Y'ha-nthlei, I pronounce it "the Unspellable", which is a fair match with "the Unnamable"

We called the Unnameable "Bob" It was half as frightening then.

Julia said:

We've been going with "The Unpronouncable" so far.

Depends on then number of beers we had. Usually ends up 'yeehaa' though.

So we tried again tonight. We also had a new player, so since he was my good friend and a newb, we immediately set him against this hard as crab carapace expansion, because **** him.

Investigators were Harvey, Silas, Mandy, and Wilson. New guy played Wilson, since he was the MVP of our last session. Testing new guys infamous beginner's luck, he drew Shudde M'ell. Dear oh dear. Between the deep ones rising, the ancient ones destruction, and just helping the new guy i wasn't sure how we were going to win.

Ultimately, we wound up losing again, but I know where we went wrong. Early gaqme we agreed to focus on closing gates to prevent monster surges, with the thought that with some shopping and a little leeway with rubble tokens, we could take of Shude M'ell in a battle against the ancient one. Unfortunately we got cocky early game and shifted towards a win via sealing or closing, and continually fell one step behind in getting all the gates closed. We chased the board for three hours trying to get enough gates closed simultaneously to seal, and never quite made it. When Shudde M'ell finally awoke, we fought him to a near standstill, two successes short of removing his last doom token before he cracked the planet.

I've learned this about Innsmouth.

1. Silas is really really useful for Innsmouth, despite his tainted blood. Getting up and on top of Devil's Reef made it much easier to manage early in the game, and helped with cheap travel to Innsmouth.

2. The Deep Ones Rising track really has two modes. It's either completely quiet, or full to the brim with an army (navy?) or fishmen coming out of every corner. Do not make the mistake of thinking you can just leave the rising track be when there is nothing on it yet, because by the time there is it's almost too late to stop it.

Sorry to hear you lost! But still, it seems like you're getting to know a little better the board and its traps (yeah, the DOR… actually, you have to figure out the DOR like a short Atlach game: if you start sealing the high freq too soon, it's very easy the track bumps up very quickly; on the other hand, with Shudde in play, if you leave the high freq open, it's likely that you loose by an Earthquake :laughter: man, sometimes it's *difficult*)

I just finished a game, for which I'll provide a detailed report this weekend, and in the end I had three Investigators up at Innsmouth, The Deep Ones Track which is usually quite anemic was quite active this game…you just never know. (Oh, but the Board does!)

Innsmouth took me this time as well… against Ithaqua! It's a shame, I know. The game went well enough, had 4 seals down, 5 clue on FBI raid track. In fact it went too well, because the seals stopped 2 openings and Kate stopped another 2. Then a mythos put monsters in every aquatic location (way to introduce the new MH cards…), including an elusive one at Y'ha. Then suddenly a mythos attempted to open a gate at a sealed location and moved the elusive monster into the vortex. It happened too **** fast and the next thing I know, the cold winds of the eskimo god took 90% of my usable items. I was left with low combat characters, a wither and a voice of ra. He also killed 3/5 investigators within 2 rounds. I still managed hold out until 'the end of everything' though!

Innsmouth. Love it and hate it like no other town!

Nice job! I have to tell you, like no other game, even when you lose it's a great, great ride.

Cheers! It sure is fun to see your carefully devised plans fall to ruin in unexpected ways… especially when you manage to win just barely against all odds (It wasn't sarcasm, really! :-D). Keeps one on the edge at all times. Little update: Ithaqua got what was coming for him! Think I'm beginning to like McGlen, used to think he was an aweful investigator.

Manishtusu said:

Aye, he is not top-notch, but not too bad. He's kinda fixed with his Personal Story, plus, if you manage not to mess up with his Sanity, he's a very good street sweeper

Yes, Julia is spot-on with her comment ~ he's always been great in my opinion, but with his Personal Story passed ~ he's incredible!

Another chapter of the story: Ithaqua came back for more! No, not as the prime ancient one, but in an other world encounter. Suffice to say, it was a close one, Zoey had 1 stamina/sanity and 3 pacts in the end. The latter resulted in first going insane, then dying to a reckoning. I may have cheated a little bit though. The dual-color gate card is quite vague about what happens. I know it's not considered Final Combat, so you can tap dark pacts and epic battle isn't used either, but can make new pacts? Lurker sheet says that you can accept them 'at the start of any turn. Now, the fight against the great old one gives you plenty of turns, which are turns within a single 'big' turn. So I wasn't entirely sure I could do it, but decided that the Lurker would take what's his later anyway. And he did…

Honestly I've always found McGlen incredibly useful. I consider him my standard; I mostly play others just to show off how useful they can be. For example, my group had written off Bob until I started using him to murder mostly everything that popped up on the board.

I've just started a new game (yes, I know…I still need to write-up the Session Report from the last game) with Michael and three dames, Jaqueline , Agnes , and Amanda . I can hear him now…"don't worry ladies, Mike's here!" Rat-a-tat-tat…rat-a-tat-tat!