You're probably aware of the phenomenon that is watering down: Not enough gates open at Dunwich and the chances of you pulling an appropirate encounter for Another Time/Lost Carcosa/Underworld/Unknown Kadath is slim to none. I have the perfect solution for this: A small box expansions that expands the big box expansion. For example, an expansion for Dunwich Horror can include: Mythos cards that open gates at Dunwich; Gate cards for the new other worlds; more encounters for dunwich locations, and maybe even some investigator cards if you feel like it, but it would be prefectly fine without them.

The number of cards that would substantionally increase the rate of these rare events is something along the line of:

Dunwich Horror Expansion (Small Box, Requires Arkham Horror):

20 Mythos cards, all opening gates at Dunwich locations

40 Gate cards, 10 per color, all associated with Another Time/Lost Carcosa

45 Location cards, 5 per Dunwich location

Kingsport Horror Expansion (Small Box, Requires Kingsport Horror):

5xUnusual Phenomenon Sighted in Arkham!

40 Gate cards, 10 per color, all associated with Underworld/Unknown Kadath

60 Location cards, 5 per Kingsport location

Price: 14.95$ each

Also, there can be a booster-sized expansion for KiY and CotDP, containing:

KiY: 10xThe Next Act Begins!

CotDP: 10 Exhibit Item cards

These should not boosters in the sense of many of them, 1 or 2 for each of these expansions would suffice.

Price: 4.95$ each

Thoughts?

Hurm. How should I put this?

I guess every one of us already thought 'bout if it's possible to expand the already existing expansions.

The problem isn't to come up with this idea, it's mostly the rest:

First problem is that you'd be selling expansions that would only be bought by people who already got a special expansion, instead of reaching everyone who owns the base game. Doesn't seem likely that the sellings would be worth it.

Next, if you make everything bigger, then the relations won't change that much, plus you get more chaos into the game. To make an example of your suggested expansions, if you add 10 more "next act" cards in your game, a little unlucky shuffling could easily line up 5+ of them in a few rounds, or even worse.

By the way, what's the pharaoh booster pack supposed to do? In all-expansion-games, the problem you might encounter isn't that there are too less exhibit items, it's the point that there are too little ways to get a hold of them, since the dark pharaoh encounter cards are only a small part of the big encounter pile...

Still, some new encounter cards for dunwich and kingsport would be nice, of course, and maybe some gate encounters for the new worlds like carcosa or the underworld. But I still doubt that will happen, if FFG doesn't come up with a great idea to sell something alike.

With all the expansions including innsmouth, the chace of a gate opening in dunwich is around 10% and the chance of you drawing a proper encounter for an other world like another time is 17% and the chance of drawing a next act card is around 5%. FFG must know that this is a problem. Okay, so maybe small box expansion won't make them much money, but they should at least make a booster that adds around 20-30 gates from dunwcih, and a sperate booster that adds ~40 gate cards. They won't lose much money on small, non-carton covered boosters, and there's a good chance they will sell well.

The best solution I've heard is to discard a certain number of Mythos cards--face down--before shuffling the Dunwich location cards and the Next Act Begins cards into the mythos deck. It should be pretty easy to preserve the proper ratios, more or less, as long as you keep track of what the ratios ought to be.

avec said:

I have no heart to not play with all the cards I own. I simply can't bring myself to do this.

kroen said:

You never play with all the cards that you own. The base set alone has 67 Mythos cards. When was the last time a single game has had 67 Mythos phases?

by "play" I meant "include in the game"... when I play with everythnig, anything can happen. If I thin the deck then some cards will never happen. I want to keep things open.

kroen said:

But see, if you discard the cards face down , you don't know which have been removed from the game. That's the beauty of it - it's just as if those cards had been shuffled to the bottom of the deck. The only thing you know is that the Dunwich and Next Act cards will appear as frequently as they were intended to be. The biggest downside is the extra effort involved in storing the Dunwich/NAB cards separately, shuffling the Mythos deck, removing the excess cards, and then shuffling the Dunwich/NAB cards back in.

Well I currenly don't have KiY, so that part isn't an issue yet.

Also, removing cards face down at random isn't such a good idea- imagine that you'll remove all the mythos cards for a low frequency location or two. Okay, so you don't know it, but still, no gates will ever open in these locations, and that's a serious blow, because low frequency locations are 99% safe when sealed. Many problems can rise from your methods.

Btw a question: Are there location/gate encounters in KiY that add next act cards?

kroen said:

I don't agree that the situation you describe demonstrates a problem with the method. I can just as easily imagine a situation where all the low-frequency mythos cards are shuffled to the bottom of the deck. It would pose the exact same problem for the exact same reason.

Perhaps it would help you visualize the approach if, instead of discarding the cards, you just put them at the bottom of the mythos deck. Either way, you'll never get to them ("The Story Continues" notwithstanding).

I don't know of any KiY encounter cards that add next act cards.

What about the story continues? should I remove it as well and imagine that it's also at the bottom of the deck? or perhaps when I draw it and shuffle the mythos deck I should imagine that, again , the low frequency gates went to the bottom? I'm sorry, but I just don't like it. Nothing personal. A better method would be to seperate the mythos opening at dunwich and shuffle them with the next act cards to form a second mythos deck, and before every mythos phase you roll a die. On a 4-6, you draw from the regular mythos deck, and on a 1 or 2 you draw from the special one. I might do this eventually, but at the moment I'm lacking KH and KiY so it's not that of an issue. When I'll have them all I will seriously consider it. Regarding the watering down of other worlds, there's always method of, that if you draw "other", you discard it and draw again, but only once per other world encounter. This methods raises the new other world's frequency from 17% to around 50%. However I would still like my idreas presented at the start of the thread to be issued, as it's always more fun to play the game "legally" and not come up with house rules.

kroen said:

You certainly have a right to your opinion, but in terms of probability the method I've described is virtually flawless. The problem regarding The Story Continues is not an issue, since you're not really putting the excess cards at the bottom of the deck. Therefore, when you reshuffle, you're not shuffling them in. When you reshuffle the deck, the only difference you'd find when using the method I've described would be that the cards you've already had would have a greater chance of being drawn again. But even that probability--the probability of re-drawing a card--is closer to the probabilities that you have when using only one expansion, as FFG intends.

The biggest problem is that a DH deck has 103 mythos cards, while a KiY deck has 94 mythos cards. So, if you go with the 103 size, the chance of drawing a NAB card on a given turn decreases from 6.4% (as intended by FFG) to 5.8%. If you go with the 94 size, the chance of drawing a Dunwich location card increases from 24.3% (as intended by FFG) to 26.6%.

I think this whole problem comes from wanting to use all expansions at once. What did you think would happen if you do this?

As many people have pointed out, that is not a good way to a) have balance or b) ensure the different elements all play a real part in the game.

If you use either DH or KH (but not both), you will never have a watering down problem. Then when you want a small expansion, you play the variation where those mythos cards are on top rather than mixed in.

Of course, cards like items and allies and so forth can just be mixed in forever as this doesn't affect the watering down issue. For most of these decks it adds to the variety with no downside.

If you insist on mixing everything together, AND you refuse to manage the balance with a method such as avec suggests, then you're doing it to yourself. If the resulting game bothers you, just stop doing this! Play in a manner that doesn't water things down. The variations are literally written already. Otherwise, admit that you are doing it to yourself and that you prefer it this way (so why complain).

I don't want a variation, I want an official un-watering down. You can't really blaim me for wanting to play with all cards. But as I said, currently it's not that of an issue, and when I get KiY and KH I would consider following my own variation, that for some reason no one replied to (it's in the quote on the post above you).

Well, to your idea...

First, it's not really thought through. For example, what's supposed to happen if you roll a 3? No mythos phase at all?

Then, it doesn't stack with some game elements like arcane insight. would you look on the top 3 of both piles? Or have to choose one pile? Either way, it would kick one of the most important strategy elements.

Sorting out some of the "unwanted" mythos cards at random before the game begins seems the better idea to me.

Oops, I meant regular mythos on a 3-6. Anyway, for Arcane Insight, you could pick a pile I guess, or you could house rule that you rearange 2 cards per pile.

kroen said:

But that *is* an official un-watering down. The "traveling exhibit" rules and so forth are written precisely so that there is no watering down. And as for this "You can't really blaim me for wanting to play with all cards," yes that is exactly my point. You know what will happen if you use everything, so if you do it anyway that's your choice. FFG has given you multiple play options so that watering down isn't a problem.

Besides, with the amount of games you play (it sounds like quite a few), you could use only one or two expansions per game and not miss the others. You'd be playing them again soon enough, AND you'd enjoy the game more. Try it out!

kroen said:

Actually I think what is unofficial is using all expansions at once. Just because it can be done, doesn't mean it should be done or is intended to be done. It really should be obvious since using all expansions at once just doesn't work right.

Each of these expansions are based on major story from the Mythos. In order to fully experience that story, then one should only use that expansion and the toughest version of that expansion, as suggested above and/or the herald for that expansion.

The exception is Kingsport . FFG finally recognized what folks were doing and built an expansion that can be combined with other expansions. It didn't fix the problems with King in Yellow and Dunwich but it didn't add another incompatible expansion either.

In short there is no way to make Dunwich and the King in Yellow work with other expansions without either watering them down or watering down the other expansions. If you increase the chances of a Dunwich opening, then you decrease the chances of other things happening. If you play with all the expansions, you'll be, in essence, always playing Kingsport.

And you'll never get to play with all your cards. There's just too much in Arkham Horror. Some things have never happened in my over 250 games.

My solution/variation is to let the gods of randomness determine what expansion I'm playing with. I don't know which expansion or even expansions will be part of the game until I'm into the game. This is a little more work and a little more preparation and a little more sorting, but if you want to experience the sudden ending of the third Act, you'll need to make it happen yourself.

mageith said:

Bingo. And as much as I've been clawing my face off with anticipation for Deep Ones ever since the base game left them out, I'm hoping that FFG stalling this long for Innsmouth has taught them everything they need to know about what works and what doesn't, with one expansion or a dozen, so that Innsmouth truly slams one so out of the park, they'll think the ball is Ghroth.

My group recently played a game with just DH and tried something new. We didn't shuffle the Mythos decks together, instead we kept them separate and alternated drawing from each pile. Dunwich was definately more active, usually just 1 investigator can visit Dunwich on occasion to handle the odd gate or two that opens there. This time we had 3 gates in Dunwich and (if they'd been sealed) 2 gate bursts and actually managed to get a token on the Horror's track (who never really seems to be a threat). I think if we play with more than 2 expansions we'd shuffle the expansions together into the top half of the base deck.

Too many cards ...

Disclaimer:
I do NOT support or suggest suicide as an option.

Admittedly, my group does not yet have Kingsport or Curse of the Dark Pharoah. But I've never really noticed dilution yet. Sure, some games may go by without Dunwich gates, but most have two or more gates opening up, and it usually poses some semblance of a threat. In other words, we have to respond. And the games where Dunwich goes crazy more than make up for the ones where it doesn't do anything.

And even now, our act deck is very active. Hardly a game goes by where we don't see the first act. Since I've started recording, we've lost to the third act seven times, which is more than the rest of you have recorded combined. This may be a reluctance on our part to add the doom, or overconfidence in statistical advantage, but honestly, I'm looking forward to diluting that deck even more.

Finally, if you play with all of the parts, so many things will never, ever happen. Beloved of Bast comes to mind, as it's so pricey. Corruptions don't happen, unless the Black Goat Herald is in play, in which case, it's almost too much. Conditions don't happen. The various memberships are so hard to come by (STL is still pretty good). Exhibit Items, or any little piece from Dark Pharoah. Even the ally encounters, if you play the official way of only having 11 allies in the game, don't really happen. Arkham Horror is a game that prides itself on corner cases. And maybe that's just one more thing I like about it.

Yeah quite frankly, I love the way the game plays when you only use one or two things at a time. It's like having ten different versions of my favorite game available (not to mention it just begs to be customized, so the sky's the limit).

Having one game be Dunwich plus KiY, the next game be only CotDP, the next game a custom Herald, etc makes AH endlessly entertaining. There's just not enough time to get bored with a game that has so much variety and potential built in. I would be very sad if I had to just mix everything into a pile of mediocrity and play that way. That sounds like a real shame.

The real reason I play with everything together? Separating it is just TOO MUCH WORK. Maybe I'm just lazy.

Thats why my group doesn't seperate.

We simply skip all cards that are part of the "wrong" expansions.