Hi! A couple of months ago, i got my hands on this incredible game ( allready ordered Dunwich, Innsmouth and Lurker! ) . I have played it a couple of times, i'll try to recall all of them here (i'll do this because there's a question about this i want to ask) :

- My first game was against Yig, i read that Azathoth was the beginner's choice, but the fact that he pretty muchadded NOTHING to thegame was kind of "meh" to me, so we ( a group of 6 people ) went against Yig ;D . We had to go back to the rulebook a couple of times for being the very first time we played, but it was a beautiful game! Yig woke up, and we were not experienced enough to prevent his curse, so anyone was blessed xD, but we managed to kill him, thanks to a clued up Joe Dimond with a shotgun ! We didn't even know at that moment that this combination was so lethal xD, so iguess we were lucky!

- Second game, against Ithaqua, took place immediatly after the Yig one, we were all very hyped and decided to play another game, but it had to be cancelled when we realized it was 5 am in the morning 0.0 .

- Third game, it was against ithaqua again, a group of 4, we sealed him without any problem

-Fourth, against Yig again ( i played with other people ) but this time i knew we had to get blessed. Yig woke up, but this time it was a walk in the park xD.

- Fifth was another cancelled game, against Nyarlathothep ):

- Sixth, Nyarly again, a new group of 4, we managed to seal him away ;D .

- Seventh and my last one until now, the terrible Yogh-Sothoth 0.0 . Actually i thought it was going to be harder, we managed to seal him with the doom track at 7 i think.

So now, some questions and reflexions: Until now, i have never lost a game, which kind of confueses me, because i keep reading how hard this game is, so i tried to figure out why... and i think i know why ! ---> Mandy Thompson... She was a constant in our games, at the moment i read her special ability, i knew she was OP. I realised this against Yog, thinking " Why wasnt it THAT hard? " i realised it was her all this time xD, closing the gates would have been a pain in the ass without her! I think i will try to avoid our group for using her next time, and it will be against Shub-Niggurath ! So i hope ( yes, I HOPE ) we get our asses served to us. I just want to know if it was her all this time 0.0 .

So, what do you think about it ? Could it be Mandy Thompson? Is she really THAT OP ? Im prettyconvinced it was here all this time !

And here, another question: I think we have been using the Elder Signs wrong.. i mean, the card itself is pretty confusing... It says " any phase... " so, like, i cant use it in the movement phase, and then have an encounter in the same location? And is it an aoutomatic close+seal ? AND i have read that, to use it propperly, you first have to EXPLORE the other world, come back, and then use it in the encounter phase to instant close+seal ... so how does it exactly works?

And my final question: How well does the difficulty scalates? I mean, my last game against Yog was a 7 people game.. and i think that it was another factor that made the game easier... we had all areas covered ( we had 2 investigators cleaning the monsters, 2-3 managing the gates, and we had 1-2 guys at times like doing pretty much nothing relevant /: ) . Is it like a known issue? I mean, you dont need 5 ppl to kill monsters, and you deffinitely dont want EVERYBODY to take clues to seal ( just let the ppl with more clues get them ) so, what happens to the other people? what do they do?

Well, that's all ! I have been really enjoying the game so far, but i want it to get harder! I hope the expansions fix this!

Hi Bullsito,

welcome back to the forum You were the guy asking about printing custom stuff, right? Hope you find a solution both practical and satisfactory for your needs

So, the game. Indeed, in general core Arkham is not so difficult once you've the basics clear. Additionally, Mandy is a rockstar, hence games with her in the mix tend to be easier Great starting clues (you can have her diving into an OW during turn 2) and an ability that indeed is awesome. Especially when Yog is in the mix

But indeed, I encourage you to play some more games without Mandy and without Joe; the game will be a little more difficult, I'm pretty sure. Anyhow, I'm not saying Mandy is that overpowered. It's a very strong investigator, but believe me, as soon as you'll start adding expansions to the game, you'll have much more troubles even with Wendy in the mix (eventhough I don't remember I've ever lost a game with Mandy in. Uhm. Should check)

As for your Elder Sign question:

Elder Signs (12/12/06)
Those items are used when you are closing or sealing a gate, and you can only do that during the Arkham Encounter phase. The phase label on the items is just imprecise, that's all.

(taken from the Official Answer by Kevin WIlson pinned thread, reply n.2, first answer)

And yes, it's an auto-close & seal, you don't have to roll dice. Simply, spend 1 Sta and 1 San e return the card to the box and it's done. But sure, you need to have an explorer marker to be eligible for a seal in this way

As for your difficulty question: the more investigators you play, the easier scoring a victory by sealing / closing is, and the more difficult is Final Battle. If you want a challenge with the core game, play 3 investigators

There is an interesting reference on the Arkham Statistics Report run by Tibs here

Thanks for the quick response Julia, and those charts are quite interesting.

I knew we were using the elder signs wrong all this time -.- , well actually im happy about it, games are going to be harder :3 .

Im deffinitely going to put Mandy in rest for some time, just to see how things go. Dont get me wrong, i LOVE her (despite i have never used her) , i like pretty much all the base game characters so far.. except for Vincent Lee, who seems a little weak and slow, and has very bad karma ._. , everytime someone uses him, is a disaster for that person ( a friend got stuck THREE EXTRA TURNS in another world with vincent xD ) .

Can i ask you what you think about the AO's in Dunwich and Innsmouth ? I have been obssessed with them lately, they seem to be SO MUCH FUN, and their mechanics look a little more elaborated than the base game AO's .

PS: About the printing of the promo cards, i'll have them next week ;D !

PS2: Sorry for the bad english, not my mother language !

EDIT: Oh, i remembered one more question! Let's say, im in the 1rst or 2nd half of another world, and an event there tells me to go back to Arkham... is it considered that gate to have been explored? Or the gate expells you and yu have to enter AGAIN? Same thing with the find portal card.. if i use it, is it considered that i have explored the gate from which im coming from?

I guess almost everybody here believes Vincent not to be, ehm, a welcome guest in the party :whistle: indee, he is horrible. Bad stats, slow speed, and an ability that rarely is vital (you tend to lose much more Sanity than Stamina in a game). Plus, he's followed by a cloud of hopelessness, agreed.

DH and IH AOs... first of all, they are more difficult than base game AOs. They have rather a big influence on the game, and they are much more difficult to deal with in Final Battle. As for the design... Dunwich AOs are by far (IMO) the best designed AOs of the whole Arkham Universe. They are brilliant, and force you to play in different ways. Tsath forces you to reconsider exploiting the Science Building or Ma's, Glaaki is an unstoppable machine of terror and desperation, Shudde M'ell introduces the perils of earthquakes and it's not a dude you want to invite for dinner (additionally, makes monster surges finally scary) and Abhoth is quick to awake and his offspring lethal.

On the other hand, IH AOs are interesting. Some of them are pretty cool in design, and some of them could have been designed better (Rhan is simply stupid. Full stop. It's totally luck based and Final Battle against him is just a carnage; Ghat is fun, but he has a very long doom track, so it's easier to seal; and after a while you play Nyoghta you keep on thinking "God, the bloody tentacle no.. not again..."). But Bokrug, Cthugha, Chaugnar are good.

Finally, I like the KH AOs less than any other expansion's AO ever... Y'golonac again it's luck based, Atlach is a great guy, but Atlach games tend to be very very very long; Eihort has a clever design, but there is no "no retirement" clause, hence you can easily avoid the brood tokens problem (so the AO is badly designed) and Yibb, although interesting, is not so difficult, unless you pair her up with Dagon or some other game effect / component forcing you to discard clues.

i loved all the dunwich AO's, for what i have read, they all seem really cool. And yes, some of IH seemed really cool, but others not so much.. I actually think that Rhan seems like fun xD, but i guess i have to fight against him. And what about Quachil-Uttaus? He seems wuite fun too

I made an edit in my previous post ! Maybe you missed it x3, if you could resolve that final question i would be glad !

Love Quachil! I just made a Herald to boost the poor guy a little

As for your last question, remember the golden rule: whenever a "something" (encounter, item, spell, whatever) instructs you to return to Arkham , you get the explorer marker.

Oh, that's really cool 0.0 .

Well, you have been a charm Julia, thanks for everything ;D

All doubts dissipated ;D ! Thanks a lot!

Just to be curious, what other boardgames do you like?

Finally, sorry for al the typos in my post xD, seems like i have some butter in my fingers 0.0

You're welcome

Other games I like? Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too many to be properly listed here If I had to mention ten games, I'd go with:

1) Chess

2) Arkham Horror

3) Dominion

4) Doom

5) Descent 1st Edition

6) The Castles of Burgundy

7) 1830 (and many other from the 18XX family)

8) X-wing

9) Wiz-war

10) Hannibal: Rome vs Carthage

Huh?

Dominion totally bores me. Though it must be said that I only played the base game without expansions. At first it was a nice game for in between, but after a friend of mine elaborated a tactic, where he only bought more money and every time he had 8 coins he bought this 6-point card (don't know the english name of it now) and he succeeded many times with it against us, the game sucked.

Probably way better with expansions, but I never tried.

i was actually thinking of getting Dominion or Descent 2nd ed. for Christmas... so i guess im going to get Descent xD.

Schwaig, the strategy your friends used is called in jergon "Big Money". It's a very basic strategy, destined to be smashed by anyone who's a little more advanced in play (sorry, no offense intended). Many players tend to underestimate Dominion because they follow this route. If you're interested, you can have an interesting read here . The article is great, and explains the problems with big money far better than anything I could write here).

This said, all different expansions add tons of new mechanics, and the game is really a brain burner, especially when you play randomized games

Bullsito, Descend 2nd ed is *not* such a brilliant game as Descent 1st edition was. Not saying is not owrth buying, just saying that if you want a real challenge, and are accustomed to advanced strategy games, then you could be bored to death by certain loops the game has.

Julia,

You had me at Chess...

Ciao,

Joe

Joe,

why not? Anyhoo, I really hope to have you at Arkham, sooner or later (we should play twice, in one you'll lead and we'll use all your houserules and variants, and in another one you'll follow, and we'll play Janus + a couple of my Heralds and clearly, we will lose horribly both games :laughter: )

J

Julia,

But we'll have your delicious cupcakes ! oh yes, and fine Italian wine!

Ciao,

Joe

Schwaig, the strategy your friends used is called in jergon "Big Money". It's a very basic strategy, destined to be smashed by anyone who's a little more advanced in play (sorry, no offense intended). Many players tend to underestimate Dominion because they follow this route. If you're interested, you can have an interesting read here . The article is great, and explains the problems with big money far better than anything I could write here).

[...]

That's interesting. I already thought that this would not work every time. But I also thought my strategy wasn't that bad. Probably bought to many actions and started to late with point cards. Maybe I will give Dominion another try

But for me, it will never beat games like Arkham, Junta or Diplomacy. I think, it just has not enough interaction (at least if you have no or only few offensive cards in play. And most people I played with did not like to have them).

Agreed on this point, they are really different games. Dominion is much more fast paced, and doesn't have the interactions you have with the other players you have in other games. Still, I've found easier to have friends playing Dominion than other games (and I had a marvellous experience this summer with one of my closest friend. We talked about Arkham for a while, and she asked to try. 1 hour to set up everything & explaining the basics, then 1 turn played only to hear "I don't like it" / "Why?" / "It's a horror game. I don't like horror". Now, if we were playing Dominion at least the setup would have been shrinked to 5 minutes...)

Anyway, glad you could consider giving it another try. You can play on-line for free (only with the core set) here . It's a good way to meet people playing with different styles

i loved all the dunwich AO's, for what i have read, they all seem really cool. And yes, some of IH seemed really cool, but others not so much.. I actually think that Rhan seems like fun xD, but i guess i have to fight against him. And what about Quachil-Uttaus? He seems wuite fun too

I made an edit in my previous post ! Maybe you missed it x3, if you could resolve that final question i would be glad !

I like all AOs, but some I use less because they don't make for a great game...I've used Azathoth only 3-4 times, Rhan-Tegoth the same (my first game against him lasted around 3 or 4 turns, due to bad luck drawing cultists, cultists and more cultists from the cup).

Remember that 3 AOs from the base game have been revamped and released during the Arkham Nights conventions. They are Yig (now much, MUCH more powerful), Hastur (hard but fair) and Cthulhu (not that hard...). Also, Daoloth has also been released (madness-inducing Daoloth...). Also, as you get more and more expansions, some AOs' abilities can create "synergies" with other components in play. One example, if you add the King in Yellow herald to Glaaki or Hastur (or New Hastur), you will get a terror track that is really going to change the game if it starts rising...

So, the more components you have, the more you can tailor the game to be more/less difficult. Also, the investigator's pool growing to 48 and selecting them randomly also boosts difficulty

Agreed on this point, they are really different games. Dominion is much more fast paced, and doesn't have the interactions you have with the other players you have in other games. Still, I've found easier to have friends playing Dominion than other games (and I had a marvellous experience this summer with one of my closest friend. We talked about Arkham for a while, and she asked to try. 1 hour to set up everything & explaining the basics, then 1 turn played only to hear "I don't like it" / "Why?" / "It's a horror game. I don't like horror". Now, if we were playing Dominion at least the setup would have been shrinked to 5 minutes...)

Anyway, glad you could consider giving it another try. You can play on-line for free (only with the core set) here . It's a good way to meet people playing with different styles

That's funny. Regarding Arkham, most people that I invited to play with seemed very sceptic at first but really liked the game afterwards. Only thing is that it takes too much time for many of them.

And thanks for the link, I played a few games against the bots. Much more interesting than I remembered, escpecially with random setup. Dominion gets a better place in the games-cupboard again

Edit: By the way, do you know / like 'Carolus Magnus'? It's such a simple game and still such a good if played with 3 players..

Aye, adding people to the mix boosts the time required to play a game because of the downtime and the talking about strategy and so on. No probs with those unconfortable with Arkham, it was just odd that after talking about Lovecraft and supernatural horrors and the game in general and hearing her saying she wanted to try, then she was surprised the game had a horror theme. I guess if it was about ponies, I'd have told her immediately... Avi suggested me that I should have revealed a sacrificial knife, saying "yes, darling. It's a horror game. But actually, it's not a game..." (love you Avi!)

Happy the link provided helped, and that you've enjoyed the game some more

As for Carolus Magnus, yes, I've heard of the game, but no, I've never played it. Too many good games around, and time... oh well...

Didn't want to start a new newby questions thread, so I ended up here. One small question: how exactly do you resolve a monster surge, specifically - monster placement.

That is how I do it:

a) look at the number of open gates on the board and compare to # of players to calculate the "size" of surge

b) check if the monster limit allows me to place all monsters

b-1) if it is possible to place all the monster, go to c)

b-2) if it is not possible to place all monsters - decide where monsters will spawn

c) draw monsters 1 by 1, without looking at them and put them on the gate, starting with the surge gate. Mosters that cannot be placed on the gates go to the outskirts - I pull them from the cup 1 by 1 after I am done placing the monsters in Arkham.

But after re-reading the rules I think that I am overcomplicating this... The rules say that I have to "draw monsters from the cup at random and place them on each location with an open gate". So I see at least 3 ways to do this:

1) the way I do it - first decide where to place monster and order of placement and them pull them 1 by 1;

2) first decide gates that will get a monster, then pull a monster, look at it and choose its destination gate (example - I have to place 3 monster and have 4 gates opened, first I choose IS, UI and BC for monster placement, then I pull 1 moster, look at it and decide where exactly I am going to put him);

3) draw X monsters (X=surge size) look at them all and divide them between the gates as previously decided. This, I think, is the most player-friendly variant, because you see the "difficulty" of the surge and can choose to leave most troublesome monsters for the outskirts if the monster limit will be exceeded.

Is there anything I've missed in the rules and FAQ that shows how this is to be resolved correctly? And, most importantly, how do you resilve monster surge?

Thanks, Mike

Oh, and I can think of 1 more variant:

4) As always, first choose the gate to spawn monsters. Pull X mosnsters where X is the number of monsters "placeable" in Arkham due to monster limit. Spread monsters among the gates the way I like. After that pull Y monsters and put them to outskirts.

This way I can't choose to distribute toughest to the outskirts...

a) you calculate the number of monsters released by the surge (investigators number or gates number, whichever is the greater)

b) you start spawning monsters on the gates, starting from the surging gate (no other gate can have more monsters spawned during the surge than the surging gate) without looking at the chit (the step from chit to cheat is very small) and placing one monster at the time over the different gates

c) if after placing a monster on every gate in play you still have monsters to place, you repeat b) until you're done with all the monsters

d) if at any point during b) or c) the number of monsters in Arkham equals the monster limit, the remaining monsters are placed in the Outskirts

Hope this helps!

Thanks for the lightning-fast reply, Julia!

I have to ask for further clarification thou. Lets simulate this situation:

I have a game with 4 investigators, core game no expansions. There are 4 gates opened in Arkham: Woods, Black Cave, Graveyard and The Unnabmle. There are 4 monsters currently in play. I pull a Mythos with a gate openeing in the Woods. Monster surge (MS) happens.

1) I have to place 4 monsters, but due to ML (monster limit) I can only place 3. One of them should be placed on the Woods.

2) I decide, that I will put 1 monster on Woods, 1 on Graveyard and 1 on Black Cave.

3) You say, that I will have to place 1st monster on Woods. But, tbh, I disagree. The rules say, that I can't place more monsters on other gates compared to initial MS gate. But nothing about placing my first chip there. So I can (before drawing) choose to put 1st monster on Graveyard, 2nd on Woods anв 3rd on Black Cave. The Unnamable will get 0 due to ML.

4) Now I draw 1st chip and, as previously decided, I put it on Graveyard. After that Woods and Black Cave.

But yet again, rules only say:

So, literally, I only decide which gates will get a monster, not the order of monster placement. If so, I can pull a chip, look at it and send it either to Woods, Graveyard or Black Cave as I see fit.

This is another option and I can't see if it contradicts the rules in any way... but maybe I am wrong.

5) There is still 1 more monster that is pulled after step 3. He goes to the outskirts due to ML. Again, if I pull all monster chips (4) and then decide - I can choose which monster lives in suburbs.

I think I am about to get a reputation of an unpleasant guy who tends to disagree with seniors, but I am trying to get to the bottom of this and so I have to argue a bit first

Personaly, I agree that choosing which monster goes where after pulling the chips looks a bit like cheating... as it considerably lowers the difficulty of a monster surge. But still, the rules allow a player to resolve MS this way, unless I missed something in there.

ceridan13,

The way Julia described the process is the cleanest, easiest way to resolve it. As always, start with the 'surging' gate...now remember that while no other gate may obtain more chits than other 'from the surge' that doesn't mean that no gate could have more monster chits than the currently surging gate 'after resolving the surging gate.'

Cheers,

Joe