And now at last it seems I was successful in getting the remaining pieces of the collection plus a few frills. I'll be selling the pieces I already had to a friend. The seller told me everything but Base and Dunwich were unused. Price a touch higher than I hoped but the frills and resale barely made it worthwhile. Now when I learn the rest of the game I can comment a bit more and play Avi's campaign. This was the item

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=261302558896

Well done Jackman! And... good luck with sleeving everything...

Well done Jackman! And... good luck with sleeving everything...

Yeah actually I was gonna ask about that. How do you people shuffle after sleeving-or do you? Not sure if I want to do that.

jackman51,

It's quite the process...I won't belabor the point here, but suffice it to say, it takes about 7 minutes and the entire pile of 288 "sleeved" cards is well-shuffled.

Cheers,

Joe

Oh yeah I remember that thread now---seems like it works fine with Mythos and Outer World decks but how do you do the Location decks which should be shuffled every card draw?

I never do that. It's just silly (to me, at least). I simply shuffle the decks once at the beginning of the game and then I draw from the top and discard to the bottom of the pile. Otherwise it's simply too long, and I want to spend my time playing the game, not shuffling the decks.

But yes, my suggestion is: sleeve everything. After ca. 300 games, all my cards are still perfect (and yes, I do use FFG sleeves. They are a little more expensive, but they are thick enough to protect cards from the 99.9% of the environmental catastrophes that could hit you at home), which is totally awesome problems are cardboard components, some of them are just falling apart (main board). Sooner or later, I'd consider getting another base game...

Jackman51,

To echo Julia's comment, I shuffle the 19 Encounter Decks at the very beginning of the game and simply draw a card, resolving the encounter, and returning the card to the back of the Neighborhood Display .

Cheers,

Joe

Joe, I sense something arkhamesque on my kitchen's table... and I'm reading your signature on the invoice

Julia,

That's outstanding news!!! I'm so glad you're there to receive it ~ and of course I can't wait to see the pictures of Happy Julia and her new pieces!

Ciao,

Joe

I never do that. It's just silly (to me, at least). I simply shuffle the decks once at the beginning of the game and then I draw from the top and discard to the bottom of the pile. Otherwise it's simply too long, and I want to spend my time playing the game, not shuffling the decks.

To echo Julia's comment, I shuffle the 19 Encounter Decks at the very beginning of the game and simply draw a card, resolving the encounter, and returning the card to the back of the Neighborhood Display .

Okay I do not wish to offend long time vets of the game but I cannot condone this. It seems to me you would have knowledge of the possibilities of the next Encounter if you knew a particular card was already at the bottom of the deck--in cases where you used the Dragon Eye or Darrell's special ability it could be two or even three cards sent to the bottom of the deck. While there is a certain amount of realism in not duplicating encounters I don't like the idea of possibly knowing an exceptionally dangerous draw has already been played and thus will not reappear, I can see some of the counter arguments but I prefer to play this RAW.

That said (and again please do not be upset) is it really still practical to conduct a hand shuffle with the FFG sleeves? I mean without letting them hit the table? And I can't wait to find out what sleeving what, some 2400 plus cards, is gonna cost not to mention replacing or modifying the crap monster/investigator stands FFG gave us.

No offense taken at all Let me ask you a question before answering the remaining points of your post: have you ever noticed that encounters tend to repeat over and over again? When you have a deck of 38 encounters / neighborhood, it's not like you have 38 DIFFERENT encounters in the same place. So, even if a certain encounter is now on the bottom of the deck, it's not 100% sure it won't pop up again on the very next card.

Additionally, it is true that you could end up with a particularly bad encounter at the bottom of the deck, but this could also happen with a particularly good encounter (like the doom token removal encounter at the South Church, for example)

Finally, how many times do you think I pick up a card in the same location during the same game? I tend to win all my games in 11-13 Mythos (including set-up cards), so it means more or less 12 "action" turns, with people killing monsters, using location special abilities, travelling to OWs and sealing gates. Apart some rare cases, it's almost impossible drawing more than 2 cards related to the same location in the whole game.

Very last point: it's also a question of honesty. I never ever thought throughout my gaming life "hey, the bad encounter is gone, let's try again". It's like cheating. I have a general strategy in mind, and I move my pieces on the chessboard according to the general strategy and to the tactics demanded by that particular situation.

You can clearly play the way you wish! If you prefer shuffling and reshuffling, do that! But please, after six months from now, return to this thread and tell us if you still shuffle everything! I'll admire your perseverance in case!

As for your last question: not too difficult shuffling with FFG sleeves. The only big decks are the Mythos and the OW decks, but the rest is OK.

jackman51,

No offense, at all, my friend ~ as I've said many times before, "It's about the journey, not the destination." Thus, I would fully-expect people to play the game in a manner which they find the most agreeable. I'm an "all-expansions-in" kind of player, who enjoys the RPGesque of the game. I play almost exclusively with four Investigators (unless I'm visiting my brother in Philadelphia and we have a number of people playing) and developed a unique Variant that works for me.

As to Julia's point, the "random" drawing of a card is almost wholly irrelevant as you will no doubt select only one or two cards from a specific deck during the entire game. I shuffle everything (unless it wasn't used during the last game, such as Injuries or Madness ). I'm curious to hear your take on it after 100 games loke me, or closer to 400 like Julia.

Cheers,

Joe

I'm still closer to 300 than 400... but agreed, I've shuffled enough...

or closer to 400 like Julia.

...but almost 4,000 posts!!!

I've been playing with a few of the game's investigators, rather than my own created ones, and I think my dream team would be:

Roland, Ashcan Pete, Luke Robinson and Jaqueline Fine.

The selection is part thematic and part strategy--I love each of these characters for their theme. They are so very Lovecraft that it almost hurts. In terms of abilities, they are not over-powered so you still have a challenge but they also are solid characters in what they can do. Pete's biggest weakness is his Speed, but he can remedy that easily enough with his ability when drawing Items. Roland is just--my favorite. Plain and simple, my favorite, and Luke is my second. His ability means he only needs three Clue tokens before entering a Gate (theoretically) and he's just plain NEAT,

Jaqueline is a great character for what she can do--controlling the Mythos deck in any capacity is incredible enough when someone else gets to do it, but having a person who can do it consistently is even better.

Finally was able to play a game with my new to AH friend who is an excellent board gamer generally and now is even assisting in game design with a small company called Victory Point Games . It was as I said in previous posts in this thread just a Base plus Innsmouth affair with one Herald. Ascribing to my fear that a first time defeat defeat would discourage further play I did give him a very powerful group of four investigators- Mandy, Patrice, Thomas, and Silas -and pretty much let him do nearly every move with just a few suggestions in strategic options. He faced Azathoth.

Guess I should have used both Heralds since he won by closing in only 6 turns. Still the DOR track reached three and would have went to 5 had he not intercepted two beasties at the Bus Station so there was at least a slight amount of tension. The overwhelming number of clues these characters can generate easily carried him through any negative situations that developed and fulfilling Silas' personal story quickly allowed him to close the final gate by heroic sacrifice. Interestingly for some odd reason I had been thinking that Silas' sacrifice seal was only useful for Elder Sign victory but he made me realize as a sort of epiphany that you can use it to gain the win by closing just as easily.

No need to go light on him the next time--as I suspected he picked this game up as well as he has so many others--we're talking about a guy who has placed first in board game tournaments at such places as the Origins Game Fair. I sent him the list of suggested investigators that Julia gave in an earlier post and when he gets around to it we'll see how well he does with them against both Heralds. At any rate he played well.

Uh, it seems like the guy is good Definitely go for a heavier game next time

(and Hi Jackman! welcome back)

Thanks Julia--my interest in actually playing has waned a bit in part because I'm working with a store owner friend of mine on a AH specific (with graphics) carry bag. Ultimately I plan on just storing my set in it-hopefully boards and all-and eventually I'll post some pictures and see if any here or at the BGG forums have any interest. Maybe even Kickstarter. I have been reorganizing my set from Ebay and have been measuring the cards and figuring out storage containers for all the pieces. Even the plastic or glass storage jars we hope to put some graphics on to make it easy to pick out any combination of sets easily from the bag and thus shorten set-up and take down time. We may also convert the boards into a foam mat format.

Yeah Wes is good--I got him to sign up on these boards under the Moniker gamebreaker- but he is quire busy helping other game designers make games that can't be so easily "broken" hence his moniker. He also shows up on BGG. Should he show up here give him a shout out if you can.

I most certainly will

Nice you're working on an Arkham-related project too (many people here offered interesting solutions to the storage problem). Really interested in seeing pictures of your work-in-progress too! Good luck with that!

We do have the advantage of access to a major manufacturer of these types of foam mats and bags and are able to use his equipment to make some nice stuff with graphics and all. Most of the storage containers inside the bag won't be made by us and can be easily found at stores--it's just a question of picking attractive ones and figuring out how to organize and emblazon them. The bag itself may need to be redesigned specific to this game but my friend would rather not do this (I want him to though). We'll also probably create a folder/binder for the AO, Herald, and Investigator cards that of course will fit in the bag as well.

There may be copyright issues we will have to work out on some artwork so we'll just have to see how that all plays out.