I've got Dunwhich and King, plan on getting Curse, and am unsure if Kingsport or Blackgoat will be worth buying. Looking forward to Innsmouth though.

Gatha said:

Hmm.

Black Goat is definitely my least favorite so far, but it's still not bad.

Kingsport is DEFINITELY worth getting:

• New investigators
• New AOs
• New board with its horrors
• EPIC BATTLE CARDS!!!!
• New Heralds
• New Guardians
• New items of all types
• New new new new new new

Black goat just has confusing or broken items, a "cult" with no real incentive or reward to investigate, and a frustrating herald (both for its difficulty and its setup). Still, I'm not sorry I bought it. The Corruptions deck is kind of cool.

If price is your determining factor, grab Black Goat. If it's quality, size, or expanse—grab Kingsport.

Tibs said:

No KH, but of those that I have KiY is my least favourite. For anyone who dislikes long games of AH, BGotW Herald is the answer . He brings about the end that much faster. Might not be the end you were looking for (close/seal win), but end nevertheless.

Shameless, self-promotional plug (my review of BGotW):

www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/381025

I own all of them, purchased in order. Games tend to be "one big box, one small box", but I toolbox every expansion in some way. If not playing with the whole expansion, the following "seep" into every game:

DP: Allies, Arkham Encounters that grant those Allies by name, the Book of Anubis (now permanently attached to Sarah Danforth as her "random" Exhibit Item), 2 Markings of Isis, 2 Feeding the Mind, 1 Astral Travel, 1 Premonition, the three dual-color Gate Encounters. (These have all been "adopted" by my Base Game; the rest of DP has been sealed and retired.

DH: Investigator Cards, Madness/Injury Decks, Monsters Chits. If there are 5 or more Investigators, we'll House-Rule that Rail Passes can be purchased at the Train Station for $3.

KY: Investigator Cards, Spell Effects.

KH: Investigator Cards, Epic Battle deck, Monster Chits.

BG: Investigator Cards, Cult Deck, Corruption Deck, Monster Chits. Dark Druid, Goat Spawn, and Goat Children go in the primary Monster Cup; I only use the three BG Dark Young in the "Hexagon Cup" if specifically playing with the Black Goat. Currently, if the Black Goat is not in play, we have adopted (House-Ruled) the "defeat-Hexagon-draw-Corruption" line, just to get more action from the Corruption Deck.

All Investigators, Ancient Ones, Heralds, and Guardians (and any cards or chits directly related to them) are essentially independent of their home expansions, and available for all games. (Duh.) I've also pecked and removed a few controversial (or busted) cards forever (until fixed), just to end the annoying bickering.

Currently, I like the KH/KY combo the best, even though I pretty much just write-off the Act Cards involvement. Kingsport is always active with Rift Tokens, and my cultists enjoy the Encounters. DH Gates dilute too much in combos, and no one's really hip to going there anymore. (I assume Kingsport will wear off the same way once Innsmouth hits.) BG has nifty cards, but the mechanics don't fire as often as I'd like, whereas KY seems to hit the Terror Track a lot more and with a lot more theme.

Too Much Information? Bored At Work!

No offense, but don't ever invite me to play with you when I buy an expansion, I must put all of its components into their respective decks. even if I was reach and could afford the "luxury" of not playing with a part of something you paid for, I would still paly with all the components and card. Every expansion has its cool encounters, gates and mythos. I must play with them all. My only concern at the moments is the watering down of gates opening at dunwhich locations and the new other worlds. But it beats the alternative.

I have all of the expansions that have been published but have only played with AH and AH+DH so far because we've been trying to get a group of 6-8 players who are used to the fundamental game mechanics. I bought AH and DH first. After playing once, I realised how much I enjoyed the game and then bought KIY and CotDP, followed by BGotW. However, due to a bit of player turnover, I wanted to keep going with the basic game + DH for a while. I bought KH last week and we're going for broke with all of the expansions this weekend.

I was planning to integrate CotDP, KIY and BGotW into the decks and not use a herald or a guardian for the first game, with both DH and KH boards on in all their glory. Unless things go horribly wrong, I will most likely leave all the decks mixed in together to make it more interesting. We've been winning a bit too much recently - usually with 1 doom token to go, but winning none the less.

I enjoy the DH supplement because it adds the mechanism that destroys seals, as well as the extra board. We use a fairly strong '2-person combat team' model for dealing with the game and each region is covered by a biff merchant and a spell caster. Putting extra boards on forces us to be much clearer on what each group is doing, as well as having to think strategically about gate closure and monster clearance.

I just completed a game with all expansions, and Dunwich went completely ape. I'm not complaining about Dunwich dilution anymore

kroen said:

No offense, but don't ever invite me to play with you when I buy an expansion, I must put all of its components into their respective decks. even if I was reach and could afford the "luxury" of not playing with a part of something you paid for, I would still paly with all the components and card. Every expansion has its cool encounters, gates and mythos. I must play with them all. My only concern at the moments is the watering down of gates opening at dunwhich locations and the new other worlds. But it beats the alternative.

Oh, pshaw. None taken, of course. I've long since reconciled myself to being in the minority viewpoint of the Most Vocal Posters. I just like to make sure that that minority viewpoint is out there, so that the Lurking Majority knows that it's okay to play AH without "everything and the kitchen sink".

My cult is made up of roleplayers and Lovecraft aficionados (if they weren't HPLites then, they are now), not board gamers. I bought AH because it said, "1-8 players", and it wouldn't matter if anyone else liked, as long as I did. As it turns out, they did, but I think a big reason for that is because it was a Call of Cthulhu adventure in a few hours, instead of a few weekends. Now that we're "contributing members to society" and crap, we generally lack the time for more than "tonight". And we roleplay the hell out of a board game, violating the Horror Laws and turning it into one big party. (And losing. Quite a bit.)

I've played the game as many do, with everything possible, solo and with some brave cultists eager to see "the other side". The results being, we are just not fond of the "spray". A KY card, a DH card, a DP card...one of my friends said, "I'd rather feel like I'm fighting Luthor instead of the whole Legion of Doom." It assists the storytellers we all are to have that focus to tie the whole night together.

Note that the only things we really leave out are any big cards (Mythos, Encounters) that "theme" to an expansion we aren't using. Our little card decks are just as big as yours.

All... but Insmouth ! Waiting for next month...

jgt7771 said:

Hear, hear! There are plenty of good reasons for cutting each expansion. Controversy time!

Curse of the Dark Pharaoh: a mess; it's worth cutting just to get rid of that stupid Mythos card with all the mummies.

Dunwich Horror: If you dilute the Mythos deck with other expansions, Dunwich town itself doesn't do much.

King in Yellow: Without a trimmed Mythos deck, the Next Act stuff doesn't do much. Dunwich Mythos cards also nerf the King in Yellow herald (fewer surges).

Kingsport Horror: Plenty of good small cards, but the board itself is a waste of time. Bugger-all happens.

Black Goat of the Woods: Cult of the 1000 stuff does absolutely nothing. Corruption cards are rare, and there's no point to the cult encounters anyway.

I'm still tweaking (you heard me) to try to find the perfect mix of expansion cards in the base game. But it won't involve either of the actual other town boards, I promise you! I fully expect that Innsmouth will be equally bloated and pointless...

thecorinthian said:

Nah ah. The "find two Ghosts" and "locate all three Maniacs" cards are far more annoying. But still thematically awesome--that is one thing Dark Pharaoh does better than the other expansions.

And Dunwich doesn't nerf the King herald; each monster that wanders into a vortex causes a terror level increase. Why bother with the surge when you can just cut to the terror up?

Not to mention, Dunwich still surprises me. Like I mentioned earlier, about half the gates in our last all-expansion game were Dunwich. The horror awoke and all of Dunwich punched us in the guts. Too bad the Next Act cards are either (usually) inactive or non-existent, or (occasionally) dangerously close together. Doesn't give you much of a strategic decision if you expect them to be few and far between, and every so often then are clustered together.

thecorinthian said:

Corruption rare IF you don't use the Herald or when using Herald don't kill any hexagon monsters. Otherwise...

I have all of the expansions and have been trying out a variety of combinations. Played the last couple with all the Kingsport stuff and the CotDP stuff mixed in, as well as all the monsters from everything (don't have the patience to seperate my monsters). The games have been pretty good. Almost always had to have someone up in Kingsport doing some Scooby Doo work, and enjoyed getting to dig up exhibit items and fight silly mummies in the streets. Don't know how good the balance is, but each game has been pretty close( but then, I mainly play to kill the occaisional monster, and read cards in a spooky voice).

As far as the others expansions, I almost always try to combine one or two with the base game, rather than combine them all.

With BGotW, i have played a couple of games where half of the players had to start the game as cult members. Even without the herald, we usually got pretty far through the corruption deck.

cheers!

jgt7771 said:

kroen said:

No offense, but don't ever invite me to play with you when I buy an expansion, I must put all of its components into their respective decks. even if I was reach and could afford the "luxury" of not playing with a part of something you paid for, I would still paly with all the components and card. Every expansion has its cool encounters, gates and mythos. I must play with them all. My only concern at the moments is the watering down of gates opening at dunwhich locations and the new other worlds. But it beats the alternative.

Oh, pshaw. None taken, of course. I've long since reconciled myself to being in the minority viewpoint of the Most Vocal Posters. I just like to make sure that that minority viewpoint is out there, so that the Lurking Majority knows that it's okay to play AH without "everything and the kitchen sink".

My cult is made up of roleplayers and Lovecraft aficionados (if they weren't HPLites then, they are now), not board gamers. I bought AH because it said, "1-8 players", and it wouldn't matter if anyone else liked, as long as I did. As it turns out, they did, but I think a big reason for that is because it was a Call of Cthulhu adventure in a few hours, instead of a few weekends. Now that we're "contributing members to society" and crap, we generally lack the time for more than "tonight". And we roleplay the hell out of a board game, violating the Horror Laws and turning it into one big party. (And losing. Quite a bit.)

I've played the game as many do, with everything possible, solo and with some brave cultists eager to see "the other side". The results being, we are just not fond of the "spray". A KY card, a DH card, a DP card...one of my friends said, "I'd rather feel like I'm fighting Luthor instead of the whole Legion of Doom." It assists the storytellers we all are to have that focus to tie the whole night together.

Note that the only things we really leave out are any big cards (Mythos, Encounters) that "theme" to an expansion we aren't using. Our little card decks are just as big as yours.

I don't have any problem with that. I think that theme games are great. I just think it's a pain in the ass to constantly have to weed through the decks so that they will be more thematic. I've done it a few times though.