Arkham Horror

[ShadyDave]

Intruging - can one combine boards in the same manner as Talisman in order to end up with a time-sink of gargantuan proportions? 8 does seem at first glance excessive but narrowing it down to the core game with a couple of suitable expansions seems a little kinder to the wallet

[bhu]

You can combine the boards, but the more boards you use, the more dilute the effects of each expansion.  A lot of their flavor and /or mechanics depend on the extra Mythos cards that come with each set, and the more expansions you use the less likely you are to draw any of those cards.  Also, each expansion has a mechanic you have to keep track of.  Which means you need lots of players, because one each will eventually have to deal solely with problems in the alternate cities.  Insmouth for example has a Deep Ones Rising Track.  Anytime a gate fails to open, you put a marker on it.   When its full, the Ancient One awakens.  It's countered by another track you can place clues on to empty the Deep Ones Rising Track, but you have to be in Innsmouth to do it, and once the AO's Doom Track is half full, you can get arrested for being in Innsmouth.

[ShadyDave]

That makes it a lot clearer and possibly also more enticing!

Cheers

[RobbyPants]

Got it for Christmas! Now I have to find time to read the rules, then get some victims players.

[Shining Phoenix]

Got it for Christmas! Now I have to find time to read the rules, then get some victims players.

Oh, you too?

I managed to get my mom and my little brother to play along. We beat Azathoth on three doom tokens by sealing all five gates that opened. In retrospect, the decks probably weren't all that well shuffled -- there were, like, five monster surges. The two Elder Signs and the Find Gate spell we started with helped a bunch too.

[radionausea]

We're having friends over for Christmas dinner today and they're bringing it along.  Bloated, tipsy CoC - we're going to be eaten and beaten every game.

[Shining Phoenix]

We're having friends over for Christmas dinner today and they're bringing it along.  Bloated, tipsy CoC - we're going to be eaten and beaten every game.

If they have Innsmouth but not Kingsport, or just don't use Epic Battle cards, run Roland Banks as your investigator against Nyarlathotep; get +5 worth of physical weapons and just hide out until he arrives -- you recover clue tokens as fast as he takes them.

[dither]

Back in December, I revised the Arkham location encounters to run off a d6 roll so I wouldn't have to cart around a ton of cards. After that, I realized how horrifically unbalanced/broken/misleading some of the stuff in the encounters was, and I've been tweaking the game since then in order to fine-tune it and make it more playable.

Eventually, I'd like to turn on the expansion boards, but for the time being, I'm focusing on fixing the basic game.

P.S. Don't ever go into the Black Cave. IT'S A TRAP!

[bhu]

There's a chart on board game geek showing the possible results for each location and whether theyre good/bad.  Some of the locations are SUPPOSED to be fucked up.  Taken as a whole they run about 50/50 but some locations lean hard one way or the other.

[dither]

There's a chart on board game geek showing the possible results for each location and whether theyre good/bad.  Some of the locations are SUPPOSED to be fucked up.  Taken as a whole they run about 50/50 but some locations lean hard one way or the other.

Eh, there's a problem with some of the locations being intentionally misleading. Like the Black Cave not having one of the items listed among its location icons in even a single encounter. Why on earth would the developers lie to the players about the sorts of things they can expect out of a location?

My experience with the game has been that after the first few games, a given group of players wants to get better at beating the Ancient Ones, and the swinginess of the encounters makes that impossible. The game relies so heavily on chance and unfamiliarity that it stands up very poorly to regular play.

It's okay if you like the random chance encounters, 'cause the game was made for you to enjoy in that regard. The guys in my group like to feel like their skill and strategy means something, and Arkham Horror regularly defeats that. I've developed house rules to make the game more appealing to my group's preferences.

[Halinn]

It's okay if you like the random chance encounters, 'cause the game was made for you to enjoy in that regard. The guys in my group like to feel like their skill and strategy means something, and Arkham Horror regularly defeats that. I've developed house rules to make the game more appealing to my group's preferences.

It's based on a franchise where there is no winning move. You either go insane or die. Those are your options.

[bhu]

Eh, there's a problem with some of the locations being intentionally misleading. Like the Black Cave not having one of the items listed among its location icons in even a single encounter. Why on earth would the developers lie to the players about the sorts of things they can expect out of a location?

The Black Cave lists the possibility of a Common Item or Spell.  It has those but there arent a lot of them http://www.arkhamhorrorwiki.com/Black_Cave

My experience with the game has been that after the first few games, a given group of players wants to get better at beating the Ancient Ones, and the swinginess of the encounters makes that impossible. The game relies so heavily on chance and unfamiliarity that it stands up very poorly to regular play.

It's okay if you like the random chance encounters, 'cause the game was made for you to enjoy in that regard. The guys in my group like to feel like their skill and strategy means something, and Arkham Horror regularly defeats that. I've developed house rules to make the game more appealing to my group's preferences.

There is possible strategy to it, you just need to have played it often enough to realize what encounters exist at each location, their likelihood,  and how to best use Investigator abilities in combos.  For example: your group needs money.   Send someone playing  Darrell Simmons to the Newspaper.  The Newspaper has the most encounters giving money, and Darrell can draw multiple encounter cards and choose which one he wishes to take.  Need an Elder Sign?  Get appropriate cash to the guy playing Ashcan Pete or Monterey Jack and send them to the Curiositie Shoppe.  Remember the encounters are there to benefit the Old One as much as you.  Avoid them.  Each turn a Gate opens, and an available Investigator needs to be going through it if able.  Investigators not pursuing gate closure should be accumulating elder signs, clues, or the money to get them, and you do that by sending the right investigator to the right location, and taking advantage of that locations special as opposed to the regular encounter cards.

[dither]

If you examine the encounters from the Black Cave carefully (using the link you provided), you'll notice that not a single encounter in the basic game provides Spells. Later expansions correct this, but the fact remains that the location icons are misleading. I don't remember if there were any other locations as bad as that, but I know the Black Cave was the worst of them.

[bhu]

There is however one that gives you a Tome from the Unique item deck, most of which get you access to a spell with the proper check.  Its designed to be a longshot, as are most of the unstable locations.  If your in an unstable location you're actually trying to win the game in theory, and the game has a mechanic for making obstacles.  If you're in a stable location, you aren't trying to win the game, and you get a better possibility of a reward because you'll need one to make up for the time you're wasting.

[dither]

Please don't use the rebalanced encounters I wrote.

Obviously you enjoy the game the way it is.

[bhu]

You haven't posted them.  That would make it kind of difficult for any of us to use them.  I'm perfectly willing to give them a  shot, but honestly depending on the combination of Investigators/Old One you have, it's not as difficult as it seems.  It'll get to the point you have to add additional difficulties like the expansion sets to make it challenging.

[Shadowhunter]

Well, for what it's worth, I've played Arkham Horror about 10 times with my friends. I have an average win percentage of 80% or so.
In our games, our strategies and plans have worked out. So at least in my experience AH allows for strategical planning.