Lately putting basic Arkham, Kingsport and Dunwich together has led to the problem of the doom track advancing too fast. To cite just one example our last game against Shub-Niggurath saw TEN different gates opening in a row, with no monster surges. Even with sealing two gates and the Fire of Ashurnabipaal we still saw Shub awakening due to too many open gates. I was wondering if other players have been having the same problem?

How many investigators?

It's rare to have 10 different gates opening without a surge and considering you've possibly sealed two gates. There are sixteen possible location for gate appearance and quite a few of them are rare. And unless you're playing with a very small group (1 or 2), two gates in nine turns is too slow. Consider closing some gates instead of trying to seal each one.

Yes, in that many turns you should have done more than just seal two gates. But there's also a lot of bad luck involved if you had ten different gate locations come up with no repeats. That's weird.

"Doing more" alone is not enough, though. With the right kind of bad luck, simply closing gates doesn't help at all - maybe the next mythos card opens it up again anyway. Closing low-frequency gates instead of sealing them might be a better way to go about it.

Anyhow, we usually put games like the one the OP described down to bad mythos luck and move on. We've recently had the same issue with just the base game again, 10 different gate locations in the first 10 mythos cards. Unless you know that in advance or run a strategy very different from ours this is almost a surefire way to a GOO fight in under a dozen turns.

We play 4 investigators. There have been a few of those games where everything seems to go wrong right from the start.

Two or three gates open a turn because of encounters in addition to mythos, three turns in a row, and we just never catch up.

Sometimes you seal the AO, sometimes the AO eats you (and the rest of the planet.)

Nghtflame7 said:

It's situations like this that you need to stop having encounters in the Woods, or the Unvisited Isle, or the like. In limited quantities or with a protected investigator (Dragon's Eye, Kate, Darrell, Wilson), it's fine, but if multiple gates open a turn, every turn, you should examine your play style. Sometimes it happens, but you shouldn't invite it.

But yeah, sometimes the game just gets you. Two double-doom rumours vs. Yig, or four Act cards in 10 cards, or what have you. Sometimes there's nothing you can do. We opened too many gates against Tsathoggua last night. You have to pay attention to that sort of thing.

Four players, Sothis. Well, technically three under the Dunwich+Kingsport rule.

Speaking of the bad luck involved, keep in mind that while all of this was happening we were also trying to cope with a Terrible Experiment which had a Dark Young, Cthonian and the Star Vampire on it, among others. We weren't trying to pass the Rumor, just to keep from failing it!

We might have had one person about to come out and seal a third gate; I can't remember for sure.

Yes, sometimes you should close gates to keep from having too many open. But closing rare gates without sealing is a double-edged choice. On the one hand, they're unlikely to open again (though I have closed the Science Building gate once, only to have it open again next turn. I've also had the Science Building come up again after I've sealed it in other games); on the other hand, there are NO gate bursts for rare locations, so if you seal one of those you can count on it staying sealed. Assuming you're not playing against Atlach-Nacha, of course.

ONE extra gate opening as a result of a location encounter in a turn can spell disaster; two or more opening as a result of location encounters in a single turn is a catastrophe!

We hand this problem with the base game the other night... Gate, Gate, etc we sealed 3 and closed 2 that don't open very much but still hand 11 Gates total open on us and 2 surges!