mi-go hunter said:

I would have told him to just seal the dang gate and then we'd let him play out combat with the Gug to get his revenge or die trying. ^_^

Last game I played, we were one seal from winning with one of us ready to make the seal on his next move (he had an Elder Sign, so there was basically no doubt whatsoever).  But another guy came first, and wanted to go out on a glorious battle on a space that had like 3 or 4 big monsters on it.  It was 4 AM, so we compromised and let him take on another space that had one formless spawn instead. :-P 

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Pulsar said:

Wow, you should be their ultimate go-to whenever they reprint. (After reading ColtsFan76's top-posted thread, it seems the rules could be rewritten several times and still be labyrinthine.) I get you, I just love my four-to-five-player, cooperative or not. You just proved to me that this game is complex enough stand side by side with computer games, if it's so rich on its own. I wonder if that's why I kept thinking of the first Myst game from fifteen years ago when I was perusing it. That's the only game that ever spellbound me into solo play, and that required a screen and (at the time) state-of-the-art graphics.

I love this game. If you just think of it as a cooperative boardgame you're missing one of its major draws, that it can be played alone with a completely different feel from coop, but still it will be very engaging (as I said earlier, I prefer playing it alone, I play with others for social reasons, but, I much prefer it as a single player game controlling several investigators).
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I don't really "prefer" one or the other, but I really like having the flexibility of being able to play this game by myself, without having to play "both sides" as it were (like if you were playing a card game against yourself or something). As I usually say, but will reiterate, when I play by myself, I play to win. And that's fun (except if I lose, of coyrse!), but if I play with others, I just have fun as my character.

EcnoTheNeato said:

Very true, it's the same for me. As a side note, I lose games more often when not playing solitaire. Furthermore, the more people we are around the table, the higher is the chance of losing the game

i play it myself with three investigators a lot, mostly to test-implement house rules or expansion-combos. the win statistics is highest when either we're three players with one investigator each, me with three investigators or two players with two investigators each. adding players and/or investigators quickly reduces win chance. in my group. but it's a special group.

Taurmindo said:

I usually do 4 investigators, because it's on the "verge" of two things: 1 monster per gate instead of 2, and 7 open gates instead of 6. Having 3 investigators has the same rules, but with 1 less person, so that's why I play with 4, and why I'm sure so many call it the "sweet spot." Though I also houserule that when I play with 4 (because sometimes, depending on how many investigators are devoured before the AO wakes up, and how late in the game), 2 monsters come out of the first gate (and first gate opening only), to help get things moving!

Tibs said:

I would really love to know what your house rule specifically is here... seems like a good idea.

Okay.

First off, I use Kevin's suggested rule: during a round of final combat, no investigator can spend more clue tokens than there are seals on the board. This affects base game AOs more significantly than expansion AOs, and the base game ones are the ones who need the most boosting.

My other rule is related to Epic Battle, so if you don't have that yet then get Kingsport!

Remove the red "End of Everything" and green "Sinister Plot" cards. Shuffle the remaining red cards into a deck. Put "End of Everything" on bottom and the green "Sinister Plot" on top. Then shuffle the remaining green cards and place one on top of the stack for every seal on the board.

At the start of a round of final combat, instead of taking the top card, roll a die. Take that numbered card off the top. If you roll higher than there are cards remaining in the deck, you get "End of Everything."

Here a few new House rules I came up with. Since they encompass multiple pages, I'm posting a link to the .docx file:

www.freefilehosting.net/specialrules

Here's what's included:

1) Multiple Investigators and Skill Checks at Locations
2) Multiple Investigators and Monsters at Locations
3) Multiple Monsters and Horror Checks
4) Multiple Monsters and Evade Checks
5) Impaling Weapons

In addition, I came up with new Ancient One and monster special abilities, to better reflect their abilities from the Call of Cthulhu RPG and make them less two-dimensional:

www.freefilehosting.net/ancientonespecialabilities

www.freefilehosting.net/monsterspecialabilities

Some of the monster special abilities make reference to the Impaling Weapons rules.

Thematic Monsters: At the start of the game, instead of combining all monsters into one monster cup, separate the monsters by dimensional symbol and place them near their associated Other Worlds (square monsters next to Another Dimension, hex monsters next to The Abyss, etc.; consult the gate markers in the base game to determine which monsters are associated with which Other World). Moon monsters aren't associated with any Other World, and so are simply placed anywhere near the other monsters. When instructed to draw a monster, place the appropriate monsters in the cup and draw randomly.
   When a new gate opens, the monsters that appear are drawn at random from those that match the dimensional symbol on the new gate.
   When a monster surge occurs, for each open gate, draw a Gate card. If the color of the card matches the color of any of the encounter symbols for that Other World, draw a random monster with a matching dimensional symbol. If the color does not match any of the encounter symbols, draw a random moon monster.
   For monsters that appear as the result of an Arkham Encounter or Mythos card ability, draw one Gate card for each monster that appears (one at a time). If there are any open gates leading to the Other World on the card, draw a random monster with a matching dimensional symbol. If there are open gates leading to more than one of the Other Worlds on the card, combine the appropriate monsters in the cup and draw one randomly. If there are no open gates leading to any of the Other Worlds on the card, draw a random moon monster.
   For monsters that appear as the result of an Other World encounter, draw a random monster with a matching dimensional symbol to the Other World, or a moon monster if there are no matching monsters.

Modified Impaling Weapons Rule: Instead of sixes counting as two successes for implaing weapons, they are counted as successes and re-rolled. If a five is rolled on the re-roll, it is added to the total successes; if a six is rolled, it is added to the successes and rolled again. This continues until no more sixes are rolled.

The Thematic Monster rule was devised to make more sense of which monsters appear when a gate opens or as the result of an encounter; random monsters, more often than not, just don't make sense thematically accoring to which Other Worlds are open.

I modified my Impaling Weapons rule (posted earlier as part of a .docx file) to allow impaling weapons to do even more potential damage and to be more realistic.
 

1. The Terror Track: Whenever the Terror Track increases, each investigator loses a sanity or stamina. Or whenever the Terror Track increases, each investigator loses sanity/stamina, split however they choose, equal to the terror level. For example, the terror level increases to 3, each investigator loses 3 sanity/stamina split however they choose. I just feel that the raise in the terror level isn't that big of a deal, it should be made that big of a deal.

2. Corruption Cards: Even when the Black Goat of the Woods Herald is not in play, anytime an investigator defeats a Dark Young, they draw a corruption card. This at least helps corruption cards come into play even without the herald in play.

3. Rift Movement: Whenever a rift moves on its matching color, add a Doom Token and spawn a monster. Whenever a rift moves on its off color, raise the terror level and spawn a monster. Not much of a change, but makes rifts even more dangerous, Kingsport more important to tend to, and when combined with adjusted Terror Track rule even more necessary.

4. Unstable Kingsport: This is one I've played a few times and I like it, but it does seem to throw off the number of gates open so ideas to modify it would be appreciated. When ever a monster surge occurs you roll a die. On a success the monster surge occurs. On a failure you flip over a random rift progress marker token and open a gate at that location and spawn a monster as if a normal gate were opening. Now this is where I'm not sure on some things. I know that in the "Lurker" expansion it says you cannot seal gates on unstable locations, would this be a place you make an exception? Should the open gates in Kingsport count toward the gate limit? Any other observations of potential problems?

Anyways, those are the few changes we make in our group, for anyone who cares.

Terror is definitely not a big enough deal but in a normal game it's pretty much dead anyway. We don't have a monster limit anymore. Monsters in the streets of Arkham increase the terror level. If there are more monsters in the street than the number of the terror level, the terror level increases by 1. In addition, we close a stable location in Arkham town other than the police station. Our terror level routinely hits 6 and 8 or 9 is not unheard of. Still 10 is rare. One upside. Investigators can ignore (not evade) single monsters in the streets. If you like terror and killing monsters you ought to try it.

We play a similar mechanic. Treat Kingsport normally, but when rifts collide they are both removed but cause a gate opening and that area is considered unstable. The gate counts toward the gate limit and it can be sealed. However when it gets that far, we've always lost. A slightly harder version is to open a gate on the location indicated on the last rift token. But since some of the rift tokens are duplications you could end up with monster surges. If a rift collides with an open gate, I'd probably have a surge too.