Howdy all!

I was just wondering which investigators are your favorite?

I use Lola all the time because of her balanced stats and awesome passive ability. My partner usually plays Akashi because of the amazing "teleport" ability and starting spell.

I love Trish but she dies every time I play her. Silas is another favorite because of his local action ability.

Anybody you thought was useless? We almost never play Jim anymore, and Diana always seems to flunk her encounters with the lowest Willpower in the game (in spite of being decent otherwise).

Man, Lola is amazing. She's my go-to. Mark is very stable and makes for a great fighter. Silas has the best "base stats" of the game (he has 3 in everything but lore), and I imagine he's invaluable when facing Cthulhu.

I personally don't like Diana, and Charlie Kane is too boring.

Trish and Jacqie are a bit on the OP side (so I tend to avoid them).

I like Jim but he doesn't get much play from me. Also, Lily seems VERY weak compared to her Arkham Horror counter-part. And for this reason I find it hard to pick her, even though overall she's not a bad character.

In my opinion all of them us very balanced. Just need to know how to use them properly. My favorite is Lily and Trish.

Well, i consider Charlie very useful, at least, although he is also very fragile. Jacqueline is the same way.

I think all the investigators are fairly balanced with one another, but there are two that I find myself choosing most often.

The one I choose because I just love her character is Akachi. I love the idea of a shaman facing other worlds like they are nothing, teleporting around, and dealing with gates; she is also the most aesthetically pleasing to me. However, I do find her fairly weak whenever I play her seeng that she usually dies. I think it might just be a string of bad luck, but I have had a few instances where she just shut down most of the gates on the map and really contributed to winning the game.

The one I tend to pick the most is Charlie. His passive to buy assets and give them to anyone and his ability to give anyone else an action are just damned great. I love playing support characters and he certainly fills that role nicely. Only thing is he is fairly boring to play as sometimes seeing that he mainly does just those two things.

Guess who's my favorite, lol.

I don't like Akachi. For starters, her Action doesn't seem that useful. It might be nice if there was absolutely some city I couldn't afford to let spawn a Gate, but that's just not a common enough situation for me for it to be worth it. I recently played with her in a game against Azathoth, trying to use her power to regulate gate openings, and it didn't really wind up helping at all. Her passive is nice from getting to Gate to Gate, but she has no real way to deal with monsters - her Strength is too low to deal with most things, she has no weapons, her Influence is too low for her to acquire weapons with any reliability, and if Mists of R'lyeh fails she has no back up. Likewise her Observation is too low to acquire Clues well, and she's too far away from San Francisco to start to boost it. She's poor for Expeditions, and she's poor for most city encounters.She's good for Closing Gates, but she has to get to them, which becomes the regular challenge.

Charlie is great for supplying people, but he sucks at just about everything else. He's really, really useful at what he does, but he can't do jack on his own. I almost never need his action, but his special is so good that he's usually worth keeping around. The only downside is that he is going to die at some point during the game, because he cannot defend himself, at all. He can't cast spells for beans, he can't fight monsters, he can't close Gates, and he really really shouldn't be Lead investigator, but the stuff he can provide is invaluable. He's really nice to park on London or Tokyo too.

Diana makes for a crackerjack spell-caster until she goes bonkers, but bonkers she goes. Her Sanity is fragile and her Will sucks. She can't deal with monsters in combat encounters and can't close Gates, but if you park her on Arkham or Buenos Aires she can gain a lot of spells. I almost never draw Cultist monsters so her special Action is useless to me. How good she is depends on what spells she gets later - Wither is a crappy spell for what you get out of it versus what it costs. Oddly, Diana is actually really good for expeditions - most expeditions rely on her favored traits.

Jacqueline is good for juicing Clues out of her if you use her properly - in early games I kept forgetting to use her passive. DO NOT FORGET JACQUELINE'S PASSIVE. She's also very useful for being able to get clues across the board quickly to people who need them. It's nice if she can sit on Arkham and acquire spells. I have heard of people having good success using Jacqueline in combination with Clairvoyance; in practice this has never worked well for me. Jacqueline is also fragile and likely to die from random Mythos effect.

Jim is pretty useful. He recovers Sanity more quickly than most, and his extra die during combat is really useful. He lacks a real strength, but he also lacks any real weaknesses, so his stats can all be shored up. Shriveling is also a better spell in my opinion. I wouldn't use him for expeditions, and I would take him Clue hunting without some practice in San Francisco first, but give the man a weapon and he'll be an impressive monster whacker, and he's not terrible at closing Gates.

Leo is good. There are fewer Wilderness spaces on the board, but all Expedition encounters with the exception of Antarctica are Wilderness spaces, so that makes him strong for those encounters. Too bad his Lore is so low, he's less likely to pass the secondary roll. Still, like Jim he's not particularly bad at things, and he's also good for Clue tokens - extra good if they are on Wilderness spaces. How good his Action ability is depends on what is in the reserve/discard. If it's good, great. If not, oh well. You'll get games where all the allies are buried at the bottom of the deck and Jim's power will be useless. Likewise Allies tend to not give super high bonuses, and there are several cards where having a large number of Ally cards will bite you; these strike Leo extra hard.

I don't like Lily much. She has to spend a lot of time on the board to be useful building herself up, having encounters across multiple cities. Her starting items are poor. Her special action mostly seems like treading water - she can heal faster but it makes her slower. If there were a way to reliably predict upcoming damage it might be useful, but there isn't so there's not. She's poor for closing Gates, she's poor for Expeditions, and she's poor for Clues; other Investigators have an easier time with monster. First thing with her should be to drive her down to Sydney and pick up a weapon or boost her Strength at least.

Lola can be almost abusive with work. Normal characters have to move about the board significantly to improve. Lola doesn't; you can just stick her in Shanghai with most of her improvements on Observation and Influence and she will just keep getting better and better as you reassign stat buffs, and she has an easy time acquiring weapons. Also I find the derringer to just be really nice for those big dice pool rolls that just can't squeeze out anything higher than 4.

Mark mostly is good for killing monsters, and that's it. His Observation means he's not getting a lot of Clue tokens, so he is going to need those delivered if he's doing something like Hunting the Thousand. I don't get a whole lot out of his Action, but it will help wear down some of the tougher monsters. Honestly I rarely if ever get use out of his passive ability; most Delayed conditions I see are optional, and Detained is a relatively rare condition. He doesn't close Gates too well either due to his weakness for book learning, and spells and spell casting items are just useless for him. I wouldn't take him on Expedition either; when he fails them he will fail hard.

Norman is really really good if you need Clue tokens, and yet really really frustrating if you need multiple Clue tokens, as he doesn't generate them, just substitutes for them, so you are constantly trying to get the extra clues he needs. He's not bad for clue hunting, but it's really frustrating if you don't get it. he starts with one of the more powerful spells in the game but it can be difficult for him to get a chance to use it. Likewise, he has a very useful Action that is remarkably difficult to get off. His poor Influence makes him terrible at City encounters (last game I played he got his legs broken because of it), terrible with acquiring items, terrible with Debt and terrible with being Detained. He stats with Feed the Mind; I recommend using it early on to improve Norman's Influence, but you might not get the chance.That's Norman in a nutshell, very useful if you can position him, annoying dead weight otherwise.

Silas is strong in basically everything, and is a monster on the high seas. Need sea clues? Silas. Need to fight sea monsters? Silas. And he gets around fast thanks to his special. The only thing that will give you trouble is when the board clogs up around the middle of Asia so there are no waterways. I would really recommend him when dealing with Cthulhu. Also the fishing net is a reasonably solid piece of equipment, though Silas benefits from a real weapon. That said, most of the game doesn't play to his strengths. He can't really cast spells. He's okay for city encounters. He's good for most Clue encounters. He's not good for Closing Gates, which tends to call upon Lore and is never in a Sea Space, and I wouldn't recommend him for expeditions except for Antarctica - always take Silas to Antarctica if you can. Also since most monsters spawn out in cities or the wilderness, you may want some other effect to move them to the ocean for Silas to whack them. Silas remains a very strong character.

Trish is weak. Her ability to generate clues is nice, but you need to be able to trade them readily. Combined with Jacqueline you have a Clue mill, but by herself not so much. Her low Will is bad against monsters, so I really recommend a trip to Rome at your earliest convenience. She can't cast spells, she can't close Gates, and she's bad for expeditions, but she is okay for city encounters. She is good for most Clue encounters. Her action is useful if you can trade easily, like I said. I find her passive isn't really all that useful, but that's because Clue token rerolls are almost always a waste. She's cool, but not a winner.

I don't like Akachi. For starters, her Action doesn't seem that useful. It might be nice if there was absolutely some city I couldn't afford to let spawn a Gate, but that's just not a common enough situation for me for it to be worth it. I recently played with her in a game against Azathoth, trying to use her power to regulate gate openings, and it didn't really wind up helping at all. Her passive is nice from getting to Gate to Gate, but she has no real way to deal with monsters - her Strength is too low to deal with most things, she has no weapons, her Influence is too low for her to acquire weapons with any reliability, and if Mists of R'lyeh fails she has no back up. Likewise her Observation is too low to acquire Clues well, and she's too far away from San Francisco to start to boost it. She's poor for Expeditions, and she's poor for most city encounters.She's good for Closing Gates, but she has to get to them, which becomes the regular challenge.

Her ability is best(and probably only) "out of the box" constant doom mitigation in the game. You don't need to spam it, but in certain circumstances it helps A LOT. Recently we won a game because of this ability, I was playing as Akachi and our doom was dire, so I was consulting the Omen track and placing would-be-doom-increasing-soon gates to the bottom, preventing doom from advancing and giving us much needed breather to win. As for what's shes good at - try visiting Arkham and/or Buenos Aires for a few times before you strike out to the gates and stuff.

Silas has a neat trick too. Get in a fight with an epic monster. Next turn use your personal action to sail away and use the bonus to rest up, then use your move action to go back to the monster in question for round two. Works great on giant spiders in Greenland.

Arkhamites,

While I haven't played EH yet, I've spoken to a number of players and play-testers, read through many of the nearly 50 pages over at BGG , and the handful of posts here. I'm curious, as a long-time player of AH if the game relies too heavily on Investigators serving in one primary role. One of the things that AH players will discuss is having certain Investigators serve as Monster killers ( Mike and Mark ), Spell casters ( Carolyn and Daisy ), etc.

While these are possible roles for the particular Investigators in EH , ALL AH Investigators generally have the ability to seal gates (as it relies on either Lore or Fight ) which is the primary focus and one of the key ways to win the game. Please tell me if I'm off-base in positing that it seems as though EH , by its design, has dictated what the Investigators will do..based on what it can do.

Cheers,

Joe

It's like in AH, everybody can do anything, some just better at something than others.

I would say not all Investigators are all that useful, but it depends on the Ancient One you are fighting and the exact mysteries involved. For instance, in a Yog-Sothoth game Mark Harrigan tends to be useless. In a Shub-Niggurath game, he's vital.

In theory it's possible to take a crappy investigator, and spend multiple terms beefing them up in their weak areas, but they will still always be mediocre at best and the tight time limit of the game means you just are not going to have the extra turns to spare most games.

I would say not all Investigators are all that useful, but it depends on the Ancient One you are fighting and the exact mysteries involved. For instance, in a Yog-Sothoth game Mark Harrigan tends to be useless. In a Shub-Niggurath game, he's vital.

In theory it's possible to take a crappy investigator, and spend multiple terms beefing them up in their weak areas, but they will still always be mediocre at best and the tight time limit of the game means you just are not going to have the extra turns to spare most games.

Yes you right. Sounds like you play a lot this game….?

Our group's experience has been that having traits/actions that severely shortcut time are ridiculous in this game. Also good is being able to generate a lot of value from things that happen regularly. Everything else is kinda whatever, but I don't any character is unusable. Ultimately, how you play the character matters the most.

Here's the strength I feel the characters are at:

S: Akachi Onyele, Lily Chen, Silas Marsh
A: Leo Anderson, Jacqueline Fine, Lola Hayes
B+: Mark Harrigan
B: Charlie Kane, Jim Culver, Diana Stanley

C+: Trish Scarborough

C: Norman Withers

-Akachi just saves a ridiculous amount of time on travel since she just "warps" around the board constantly. Traveling across the globe in one turn is stupid easy with her, and not even monsters get in her way since she's equipped with Mists.

-After only a couple turns, Lily Chen is good at everything, and her starting items are amazing too.
-Silas is effectively a character with 3 actions instead of 2, in a game where you really have to fight hard to make every action count. His stats are also reasonable.

-Leo is amazing at tackling Expeditions (which makes sense), and after dealing with 1 or 2 of them, I think he's contributed a lot. Being able to "shop" for allies while anywhere on the board is also pretty good. Unfortunately, Leo is a little luck based. If the starting expedition is in Antarctica, or allies just never show up on the reserve, he gets way worse.

-With the amount of conditions you go through in the game of EH, Jacqueline will be gaining a ton of clues for nothing. She can also supply characters with clues that desperately need them. Her overall effectiveness, however, is a bit dependent on number of players.

-Lola Hayes isn't top notch, but she so much flexibility that you can pretty much play her in any way you want. If you can afford to leave her in one location for a while, she can get pretty big.

-Mark Harrigan is just all around solid, but obviously he excels at monsters. If monsters aren't a problem, there's not as much for him to do.

-Charlie, like Jacqueline, is dependent on number of players. Unfortunately, it's much more important for Charlie, as he is stretched way too thin in a small group. In a large group, he's nuts since he just sits in one place all game and shops.

-Jim doesn't do much, but at least he starts with a good spell. He can be great against epic monsters, but only if lots of people are there.

-Diana is basically Mark with less consistency. Mark is good at killing monsters. Diana is good at killing monsters with Cultists. Diana is really only good at dealing with monsters if cultists show up. Outside of monsters, Diana's only good at casting spells and unfortunately most spells aren't super great in this game (not to mention you have to spend time getting them).

-Trish is a bit of a wild card. Sometimes she's amazing, other times she doesn't really offer anything. Extremely dependent on the situation, players and setup, maybe overly so.

-Norman sucks. If he's in a game where lots of clues are needed in small quantities, then he'll really shine. Otherwise, he's pretty terrible since he's not especially great at anything else. The only other thing he can do is destroy all but the most relevant monsters at 2 clues a piece.

All that being said, my favorites to play are Akachi, Lola, Leo and Trish.

Thanks for the responses. I remain a huge AH fan, but was simply trying to gauge some of the game mechanics in EH and determine if the game has set forth some roles for each of the Investigators .

Cheers,

Joe

Joe,

Regarding your original post which noted that in AH all investigators can serve to seal gates (due to sufficient Fight or Lore) and hence can support the primary way to win a game of AH: in EH what matter is solving the mysteries. Gates are secondary - if you ignore them you will make things harder and likely lose, but closing gates (there is no notion of sealing) will not suffice to win the game.

So the better question is: are all investigators able to help solve mysteries? In my experience (9 games, using either 2 or 4 investigators) I'd say overall the answer is yes. What is required to solve a mystery varies with the AO (and the mystery) and there is no one investigator who can do it all. For example, one mystery might require killing a monster and another discarding spells after closing a gate. So some investigators will do better than others, depending on the game. So far I've not come to regard any investigator as useless (though I have found some to be more useful). This is in contrast to AH (for which I've played over 200+ games) where there are certain investigators that I dread playing with.

I've only played a single game, and used Akachi, Leo and Diana, and of the three, Akachi was my favourite. I think I picked her to begin with because I wanted a contrast with AH, where you feel like everyone knows everyone and it's an urban game, and in EH I thought I'd really play up the globe-trotting. But I found her ability to jump all over the board to be tremendously useful, and her ability to hide from monsters wasn't bad either. (Of course it helps that I didn't flip over the card and see there was a sanity cost, but, ahem...)

Leo spent a while trying and failing to learn something useful in San Fran, travelled a bit and then got killed. So I didn't get a lot out of him, but it's probably not fair to judge him on a single game.

Diana seemed pretty interesting, but I didn't play her long before I lost the game.

Overall, I like the characters, and although I've only glanced at the others, they all look like they've been designed to be interesting and good at something that interests you. Unlike AH, where you're supposed (I think) to assign characters at random, EH tells you to pick. With that in mind, there's no reason to feel like you've been shafted by whichever character you end up with.

I like that it feels like all of the characters have abilities that are powerful or dramatic in some way. There's not necessarily a guarantee that that thing will be useful in any given game, but you do at least know that you can do something cool. Some of the AH characters feel a bit bland by comparison.

ricedwlit,

My apologies...I wasn't clear...I was simply drawing a corrolary between the two games. Based on the rundown from the earlier post, it appeared as though some Investigators are good and others, not so good at solving Mysteries , the main way to win in EH . I greatly appreciate your post as it balances the other one to some degree. At first blush and then reinforced by more and more conversations was the idea that Investigator 'x' is best served doing 'y' during the game. Apparently, it's not that cut-and-dry of a situation.

Thanks again!

Cheers,

Joe

Even though the mysteries are different, a lot of them are just different versions of the same type of mystery.

For example, 3/4 AO have one where you have to kill a specific Epic Monster and they all have some variation of "reseach", where you have to do a research encounter and put the clue token on the mystery card.

Also even with the more unique mysteries there is almost always a requirement to spend clue tokens as part of resolving the task of the mystery.

So even if, you are fighting Shub or Cthulhu (who are more combat heavy than the two other AOs), you are still gonna need someone with good obervation or other clue generating ability to win.

Thanks, Barl!

I was surprised to see that after 1,000+ votes, EH ranks as the 12th most thematic game!

Cheers,

Joe

Yeah votes for Akachi (obviously) and Lily here. Akachi because especially in games with few players, her moves are invaluable. Lily because as mentioned, if you spend a couple of turns trying to raise your abilities, she becomes great at almost anything.

In the few games I have played, Trish and Jim are were the MVP's. When it came to needing clue tokens, Trish would just take 1 for an action (when she had none), and second action trade any she had away. Jim was my spell horse in Buenos Ares and turned into the one that kept solving mysteries.

I'm gonna copy Shining Aquas' formatting although interestingly we disagree pretty drastically in some cases. Which probably speaks well for the game.

S: Akachi Onyele, Silas Marsh, Charlie Kane
A: Norman Withers, Diana Stanley
B+: Jacqueline Fine, Trish
B: Leo Anderson, Lola

C+: Mark Harrigan, Lily

C: Jim Culver

-Akachi is great for gate closing. Mists if Releh is great early game but don't overlook giving her some good weapons because she is also teleporting to where the monsters are so can quickly clean those up along with the gates.

-Silas' ability to move around so rapidly on water is great. And an additional die for everything? Good stuff.

-Charlie is awesome. He never does much himself because he is too bust making everyone else AMAZING. Churn through that item deck. No need to travel to other people to give them the good stuff. Have an action to spare? Give it to someone who needs it!

-Norman I initially thought was sort of lame. And admittedly I've only used his discard a monster ability once or twice. Spending a sanity as a clue token can be invaluable though... But I've left the best for last. Feed the mind. Oh set my heart a flutter. I'll just buff my lore and then BUFF EVERYONE.

-Excepting will Diana has good monster killing, spell casting and gate hopping stats. And she doesn't need much will for monsters thanks to her ability. So bump up her will a bit and go tromping around the board. And spell casting. Don't ignore the spell casting. She starts as the best spellcaster in the game and is one spot away from Arkham and Buenos Aires.

-Jacqueline Fine she gets tons of clues and can hand them around. Is nice.

- Trish generates lots of clues. But like Aquas I find her to be a wild card. In situations where two clues are needed she isn't so great. One clue though and she is fantastic.

- Leo I've had mixed luck with. Sometimes he takes off and becomes great. Sometimes he just can't make it around the board fast enough.

- Lola's flexibility is nice and always getting an additional die is handy.

- Mark Harrigan is good when you need monsters killed... Just hope you never want to do something else...

- Lily I had a great time with my first few games. But she's been on a streak where she never ends up getting any improvements (unless she hooks up with a spellcaster for feed the mind). Just really unlucky I guess.

- Jim... Maybe I just haven't had a chance to see Jim shine. Maybe I just don't have investogators stacked up often enough to take advantage of the sanity gain? I dunno.

Jacqueline is actually the main sealer of the game: 52% of closing a gate with a sequence of Check 1 and Check 2 passed, 19% of closing a gate when triggering the failed condition of the OW encounter (the so called Check 3)

Akachi and Norman come second (48% / 19%), followed by Jim (46% / 18%).

Just for further reference since I don't see him here much:

1. Lola

2. Norman

3. Mark