I am trying to learn the rules to play AH. But I am confused about the doom tokens. The Rules state that a doom token is played in the Mythos phase when there is no gate or Elder Sign at the location mentioned. But tutorials in Youtube show that a doom token is played whenever the Mythos phase starts. Which is the correct way? The second way indicates that the Ancient One awakens in roughly 14 turns every game. So to not fight the AO, you have to finish the game in less turns? I guess that means there is only approx. 14 turns to any game.

Any help appreciated

Not so sure which tutorials have you seen, but in any case the rulebook is correct: you start resolving the Mythos card by looking at the image in the lower left corner, depicting the place where the gate is to appear. If you have an Elder Sign sealing that location or if there is already an open gate there, you do not add doom tokens to the doom track. You add a doom token *only* if the gate appears and you do not have ES or another gate there.

Hope this helps!

Julia is quite right so there will certainly be variable game lengths. No doom tokens added for monster surges or Elder Signed locations and indeed if you succeed if sealing an open gate with an Elder Sign card you get to take a doom token off the doom track. There are even encounters or Personnal stories that also remove doom markers from the tracks and even seal gates for you if you fulfill them.

All in all game length is definitely not finite though it's usually best to try and finish as quickly as you can. Longer games are usually harder to win but of course not impossible.

Julia is quite right

Thanks for the "quite" :laughter:

Anyway, I didn't mentioned PS or encounters simply because a) the question was about the Mythos Phase and b) the guy's playing vanilla Arkham, so no PS and almost nothing to worry about any other effects (I think in the base game you have only one encounter at the South Church allowing you to remove doomers)

Good that you mentioned ES removing doomers!

Anyway, to the OP: remember when an encounter says "a gate appears" or "a gate and a monster appear" , you have to add a doom token to the doom track

Thanks for info, guys. I guess I was doing it correctly, but I was not aware of your last comment, Julia. I need to start doing that.

Always glad to help Feel free to post any time you have doubts, Arkham could be quite tricky