My girlfriend and I just concluded our first came against Atlach-Nacha and got stomped on pretty throughly, and decided to pack it in, as it seemed pretty obvious that we were looking at a long, drawn-out slide into oblivion. Can anyone suggest a general plan of action for defeating this GOO? During the course of the game, we attempted to use Luke Robinson's Gate Box to "stage" him in OW and pop out on top of a new gate, and to use Arcane Insight to jigger the Mythos cards to cause monster surges and prevent gates opening, but everything seemed to rely on luck so much that defeat against this disagreeable creature seems near-inevitable. Other then kitting up for the final battle, can anyone suggest a strategy?

Tibs did plenty of "research" into sealing A-N on the old forums. He's the man to poke and prod on this issue . Most likely he'll be along at some point. Or you can take hints from Avi, but that's at your own peril .

OK here's what you do:

1. Start your furnace
2. Throw in Atlach-Nacha sheet

Voilà. Atlach-Nacha will not be bothering Arkham anymore.

OK time for a serious answer. I tried to seal the beast MANY MANY times, and eventually did it one. But that was for novelty—I don't recommend it.

To win against Atlach-Nacha, you'll want to go after closing gates IMMEDIATELY. Just, the first one that opens, V-line there.

Gates that appear in less unstable locations (Hibb's, Science Building, Historical Society, etc) should be closed and left alone. With more active gates, try to get players into them so that they can be closed at around the same time. If you just sit on active gates, they'll just cause monster surges instead of more gates and more doom tokens. Just KEEP IT UP and don't stop for anything. I generally do not send anyone to Kingsport unless the **** is about to hit the inter-dimensional fan.

The first two or three plays against A-N I managed to win because I got pretty lucky. Characters would start with De Vermis Mysteriis or whatever tome closes a gate. The last thing you want to do is have to do battle. But if you want to prepare, get allies. Lots of allies. Good luck with that.

When you close a gate, if you have the 5 clue tokens available, I highly recommend laying a seal. Here is why:

• If the seal is burst later, a doom token will not be added to the track
• If you get lucky and keep things under control, you MIGHT ACTUALLY WIN by 6 seals
• If Atlach awakens, he has a real nasty trick that is made less nasty by having more seals down. I kid you not .

Last time I attempted A-N, I had Ghroth backing him up, so it was just silly. I managed to get down three seals, and none were blown. However, needless to say, I lost hard.

Any ancillary strategies you get, like the Arcane Insight or Astral Travel or Find Gate spells will be extremely helpful. If you happen upon the For the Greater Good or Walking the Ley Lines missions, by all means, try to complete them!

Hey, don't preempt me. Is it worth it, saving the universe, at the price of your soul? You betcha! ::Wink::

KILL HIM! KIIIIIIIIIILL HIM! Not Dam this time, Atlach. (Her?) Anyhoo.

Yes. You want to go for the kill victory. Sealing victory is not something you're going to be able to pull off. If you are insane like my nemesis though, I shall give you a few pieces of advice. Aim for the head. Yours. :') Oh, I never said the advice would be helpful. What? You want helpful advice? Oh fine. ::Mumble grumble:: Sealing victory isn't going to happen unless you have six or more players. You can go for a simultaneous sealing victory on the same turn. Just kidding ;') gate limit will nail you. ::Cough cough:: Forget about a sealing victory. A closing victory *might* have a chance, if you play it right. It depends on keeping the infrequent gates shut, and doing a simultaneous closing of all the high frequency gates. Having the find gate— captain of the white ship combo will MASSIVELY help in case of a screw up (or just closing the smaller gates regardless, as it can close one gate per turn). If your team is less than 5 players, I'd say you're crazy for trying this though. If you're playing 4 or less, I think it's pretty much essential to go for a combat strategy. Try to buy up all the allies. Fight down the monsters. Stock up on weapons and clues. Make sure you get the items that cancel ancient one attacks (save them for sinister plots). Blast that ugly spider face. If you're going for a combat victory don't seal gates. Don't close the high frequency gates (because they'll just reopen), just use them as trading materials for allies Don't worry, you'll still have fun :'D and who knows, you might even win.

::Laughter:: and what Tibs said about the missions. Yes. But I would add Sealing the Beast's Power— if you're going to fight him, that one will *definitely* help.

I think it's *crucial* to get a cancel ancient one attack card if you're going to fight him with a 3 or 4 player team (one or two player you can probably take him out prior to a sinister plot being drawn if you stock up weapons well)— so definitely do some unique item deck shopping (and of course, one would think this is common sense— get your guys blessed before final combat). Mmm... And see if you can't get an ally or item that can punch through mag or phys resistence. If you plan things right against him, you should be able to get off maybe 8-11 rounds of combat.

Well, I don't have Kingsport, but I've contemplated the question a lot. In theory, closing common gates and putting seals on the less common gates (Twilight Lodge, Hibs, Science, etc) could potentially net you a seal victory. Unfortunately, this requires a bit of luck to get those uncommon gates to open in the first place.

Perhaps attempting to have one or more characters become Changed at the right time would also help you seal.

Thought about teams vs A-N. Mark is compelling to get Changed. Leo and Pete both start with an ally. Mandy and Joe are always useful in final combat. The Bounty Hunter (name?) would be able to buy allies for cheaper, also good if you plan on the final fight. Daisy could search for Arcane Insight and help you out to seal...

good luck, may the dice be merciful on you.

awp832 said:

You can only get *one* character changed... And it takes a long time. One great seal is not enough.

I have a couple of strategies to suggest against Atlach-Nacha. The first is to use the Dunwich Unique Item Mission Card "Walking the Ley Lines". My group has beaten him once before by completing this Mission while possessing a number of gate trophies equal to the number of players.

The primary difficulty with this strategy lies in getting ahold of the mission soon enough to do any good. One possibility: Send everyone to the Curiousity Shop to have an encounter there first turn. With a little luck you'll get the Mission, though you'll also wind up with one of your players Cursed.

The second strategy is to seal selectively, depending on the frequency of gates opening in that location. Seal only infrequent or rare gates the first four times; don't try to seal any high-frequency gates until you're doing your last one, or last two or three simultaneously.

The big problem with this course is that you are wholly dependent on which gates open up, and can VERY easily wind up losing due to too many gates being open. You might have to close some of the high frequency gates without sealing, which is certain to speed the doom track along.

Neither of these stratagies is by any means foolproof, but my group has won against Atlach-Nacha using both of them.

One more thing: the Dunwich Unique Item Fire of Ashurnabipaal (sp?) is even more useful in games against Atlach-Nacha than it is normally.

Hey, Avi! My group only has four Investigators, and we've gotten a six seal win against Atlach-Nacha FOUR times. Don't be so pessimistic!

Solan said:

Heh, I know it can be done your way :') a few small gate seals and simultaneous medium gate seals, yeah yeah, but I want them to FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT!

Avi_dreader said:

You sir are high.

DO NOT FIGHT OR ELSE YOU'LL BE IN TEARS.

If you play with both expansions, then you'll win if you have all gates closed and gate trophies equal to one less than the number of players, so there's that. The game will probably be over before the Dunwich Horror can really do any damage, so screw him.

Tibs said:

Whaaa? We were talking about Atlach Nacha not the Dunwich Horror ;') Who's high now?

But seriously, I think you have better odds of beating Nacha by gearing up for combat than by going for gate closing strategy if you have four or less players.

Raid RTM or a Giant Boot works!

Sealing Atlach is difficult, but nothing like impossible. Your big threat is the Doom Track of course, so you'll want to manage that.

When a portal opens at a common location like the Black Cave or the Woods, you should just leave it there. Remember that you don't fall behind when monster surges happen, they're a turn with no doom track. You want monster surges. You want to put seals at uncommon locations, because those stay up the longest. Cold Spring Glen, the Historical Society, etc. Those places have a roughly 2% chance of coming up again (or less, in the case of Dunwich uncommon locations). So Atlach's power is unlikely to even matter on them. Remember that when Atlach does break a seal you don't really fall behind because there's no Doom Track on that either. It's disappointing, but a seal burst is a tie , not a loss.

It's a long game, because you end up having a lot of water treading with monsters running amok and no Doom Track increases. But it's not really that hard.

-Frank

I haven't tried out KH so can't really comment, but why are you talking about sealing the locations where gates open all the time? If a gate opening is an automatic burst with AN, wouldn't it make more sense to put seals on the most stable locations as they are less likely to crop up twice?

oldthrashbarg said:

No, the strategy is to ignore frequent gates and seal less frequent ones. The seals are less likely to be lost on less frequent gates, and more frequent gates will produce monster surges, which don't create new gates or advance the doom track. The caveat, of course, is that less frequent gates are less likely to come up in the first place.

Eventually, you rally everyone together to sit on the gates until they can all be closed at the same time.

Tough stuff, Atlach-Nacha.

Hence, a still undefeated Atlach-Nacha/Black Goat of the Woods Herald.

Because it just seems unnecessary.

flamethrower49 said:

Yes, I see that you finally picked up Black Goat. That herald's quite a pain, isn't it?

You might say that. Really speeds up the game.

Black Goat Herald: "I don't have time for this. Can we hurry this up? I have places to be, people to eat. With hexagon monsters. And corruption."

Summary of the Black Goat herald:

• Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah

• Blah blah blah

• Every time there is a monster surge, add a doom token to the doom track

• Blah blah blah blah blah blah

Atlach-Nacha is a easy AO until you use Epic Battle cards then she becomes...well not easy lol

but mostly in our group we try to Seal the Gate vs. Closing them and in one game actually got lucky and won due to seal victories...

if you Epic Battle try to defeat the Giant Spider any other ways besides the final battle and if your not epic battling Buy allot of Pawns to feed to her!