The girlfriend and I have taken Arkham Horror on holiday and managed to defeat Azathoth on just our second attempt.

Two things perplexed us though (and may have led to our victory if I interpretted the rules wrongly!).

1. Joe Diamond. My reading of his special ability is that if he fails a standard role and then decides to spend a clue token, he gets TWO extra rolls. But this seems to contradict the example of spending clue tokens on skill checks given on page 13 of my rulebook. This example imagines Joe failing a Lore (-1) [3] check, because on his standard skil check he rolls only two successes. He then spends a clue token, and throws a 3 - another failure. He therefore spends a further clue token and gets a 6 - finally reaching the total of three successful rolls he needs. But why does he need to spend the second clue token? By spending the first token, my reading of his special ability is that this would give him two further rolls, not just one.

2. "Undead". What does the term "Undead" mean on the back of various monsters? It isn't listed in the "Monster Special Abilities" section on page 24 of my rulebook (whereas Ambush/Nightmarish/Endless etc all are mentioned). I'm assuming that certain cards (that I'm yet to come across) impact upon "Undead" monsters in some ways - but otherwise there is no automatic impact on combat?

Any help appreciated. Thanks.

Hi! And welcome to the Carnival

As for your questions:

1. Clue token spent on skill checks allow you to roll an extra die. In case is Joe the guy who's spending the clue, every time you spend a clue token you roll two dice (at the same time) instead of one

2. Some Environment cards, and other game effects, influence monsters having the "Undead" keyword on the chit. If none of these cards / effects are in play, then "Undead" does not have any special meaning during normal combat

Hope this helps!

Thanks Julia, seems that the example given on page 13 of the core game rulebook is wrong then!

:laughter: I never noticed that (probably because I read the rules before playing with Joe?). I guess they wrote the example without considering Joe's special ability (facepalm). I mean, the example is good with all but Joe (double facepalm)

Lol. Bit of an oversight, I guess. You're right it is a clear example to explain the spending of clues - they just needed to use any one of the other 15 investigators to make it!

I'm not looking at the rules but I already can picture what's going on. Somewhere else in the rules, if I remember correctly, there's an example of an Ancient One attack in final combat. The example uses Hastur, citing that the investigators will make an ever-increasingly difficult Will check to avoid losing sanity. But Hastur's attack checks Luck !