Why not use Child of the Goat tokens to represent the stationary cultists, would be easier to keep track of.

Veet said:

Because they can be removed from the board by closing Hexagon gates :') and that'd require another rule to close off that loophole.  It's not really hard to keep track of.  You'll have three spots with giant cultists.  You should remember where they are since you'll have to devise early game tactics around taking one or two of them down (or else you won't have access to a weapons/item shop and will be overrun— I'd think).

Nah, the child of the goat does most of the work for you.

Start of Game: Any Cultist monster trophies are discarded. Place a Child of the Goat on Downtown Streets, Merchant District Streets, and Rivertown Streets. These are treated as stationary spawn monsters with a base stamina damage of 1.

Veet said:

Ah, but I don't want them to be spawn monsters :') technically you can remove them from the board by gate closings.

Is there actually a way to do that with crescents?

Veet said:

Child of the Goats aren't crescents.  Neither is Dark Druid.

This evening I tried to beat scenario 2. A party of 5, including Sister Mary (sigh) and Jacqueline, plus Norman, Wendy and Carolyn Fern. Not a great game. Honestly, we lost by forfait after Mythos 11, when Glaaki was still at 8 doomers, simply because there was no chance to do anything but slowly dying in the utmost silence. The worst luck ever, the first Mythos was an enviroment adding a doomer for every monster surge we had, and then we had three monster surges in a row (all from the Esoteric order of Dagon, spawning a Cthonian, a Phantom, a Dhole and some other nasty monsters). Jacqueline couldn't help with her power, simply because the Clue servant at the start of the game had drained all her resources and then the situation was so mess up that getting clues was pretty tough.

We were able to clean the streets from the three Servants and Cultists spawned at the beginning of the game by round one (a blessed Sister Mary destroyed the pair in the Southside Streets, Norman used the Mi-Go brain case to swap position with the Servants in the streets in front of Darke's Carnival and kill the Cultist thanks to the Powder of Ibn Gazi and Carolyn with the Lamp of Alhazred exterminated the pair in the Miskatonic University street), but then we ran out of almost every resource we had (read: Sanity and Stamina and weapons, most of the starting equipment was one use only).

And then came the Terrible Experiment (with TWO Hounds of Tindalos, a Skeleton, a Crawling one and a dam(n) Warlock and none had a Physical weapon to harm it) and none was able to gather clues quick enough. Even under these circumstances, we had a thin chance to win, with two seals on the board and enough trophies collecting to go hunting for a closing victory: two gates open, and Wendy and Norm into the respective OW, both with Find Gate (and the bloody Mary finally DEVOURED, thanks to a Shan) but Norm drew a card instructing him to roll 4 dice, gaining a Clue token for every success, but losing a Sanity for every failure. Obviously I rolled 1 success and had 3 sanity left, so Norm went LiTaS and then new gates started popping out from everywhere, we had 5 characters with almost no equipment, no clues, 6 gates open, Innsmouth invaded by monsters and nobody able to do anything to stop this season of slaughter. Considering it was quite late in the evening, we decided to stop.

A couple of (very personal) considerations about the whole experience (nothing personal with you, Avi, of course ::smiling::): Scenario 1 was tough, but doable. Even if the pressure was high, it was possible to think about strategies to face the uprising horror and following them, even if it was a hard task, it was possible. This time the game was no fun at all. The three Servants in play at the beginning of the game damaged really badly the characters, not only for the Skill loss, but especially for the Clues loss. With no starting clue (more or less), 5 rounds were required to gather the needed Clues for a seal (we had bad luck with starting equipment, probably, but nevertheless, I do prefer a game where the result of the game is not dependant on how lucky I am with the first draw of items) + some time to recover from the tough battles at the beginning of the game (and you know that dam(n) things had to be beaten, it's too risky going for a walk with three servants + bodybuilder cultists free to walk among the living), so basically the game had a time-delay factor which was very difficult to deal with. The main point is basically this one: the game is very challenging and difficult, and this is always welcome. But a great part of a good strategy for beating the system is the correct choice of the *special team* (NFL gergon, sorry) to use against the enemy. Even without disturbing some broken or overpowered characters like Patrice, Hank or Daisy, a character like Silas, able to move between boards for clues-gathering purposes, or Marie or Rex or Rita could have been of great help, allowing some more choices in order to find the proper strategy. When you have very few chances to do anything, and the game is difficult, it's very likely to happen something blocking the only way you have to do something. And this is a little frustrating, especially when it happens for 11 rounds in a row.

Okay, a few tips for beating scenario 2.

First of all, you can't blame me for the bad luck with that environment draw :')

Second, you can use Wendy to delay the Servant of Glaaki in Dunwich so it won't move into the vortex (although this might waste a turn or two of hers).

Third, and this is most important, take into consideration what items will be discarded at the start of game and don't pick investigators who are heavy with those items, get investigators who are cash heavy instead if nothing better is available.  Otherwise you are right, you're not going to be able to manage the resource depletion.  The trick to that level is managing starting resources properly.

The first scenario was designed to be very easy just to get players in the swing of the scenarios.  The rest are rather difficult (although I'll admit out of the first five 2 might be the hardest).  I think the best (selectable) investigators for scenario two are Zoey, Wendy, William, Dexter, and Carolyn.  Out of those I'd probably go for Carolyn, William, and Wendy (with a five investigator team).  William's an important asset for this scenario since the clue token discard Servant can't affect his monster trophy collection (it's also another way to make up for clue shortage, and basically allows you to have an investigator who starts with 3 clues, just try not to get him knocked out before you can get someone else to bless him).

Mmm...  Also, remember that if you only play a four investigator team you can money launder with your bankloans.  And even if you have 5 or more investigators you can still shop with a bank loan and trade junky items for the items you get (holy water is worth 4, enchanted jewlery is worth 3 and you can use it twice before trading it for the default).

Anyway, if you have Wendy and William on your team, you should be able to have resources to seal 2 gates within the first two turns.  I think they are the keys to winning this scenario along with the previously mentioned tactics.  If you're going to play more than four, Carolyn is probably the best bet (for her money and spellcasting, and starting items).

----

Anyways, good luck with the next try :'D you can do it!

Avi_dreader said:

Yep, don't worry, I'm not blaming you for that ::laughing:: anyway, even with that enviroment we could have beaten the game, if at least something else went right..

Avi_dreader said:

Yes, I know. but I told you, monsters spawned before Mythos zero were almost completely destroyed during round one, so this was not a problem!

Avi_dreader said:

Yep, I know, but basically every character has a skill, so the Skill Servant will deserve a bitter fate with its (his?) arrival. As a second thing.. Zoey + Wendy + William + Dexter + Carolyn means palying with seven investigators (simply because Sister Mary - may God bless her cross and send her somewhere else in the farthest corner of the Galaxy - of R'lyeh ::laughing:: - and Jacqueline are to be used on this scenario). And here comes the problem, I do not have phisical room enough for playing seven characters (should curve the walls of my kitchen following non-euclidyan gemoetries, but I still have to learn how), not to mention the fact that my party consists of myself + another person, so 4 investigator each is a little mind damaging after a day spent at work...

I thought William was to be used but... I don't know... it's a little frustrating too having a unique party to because otherwise the game will kick your bum for the next n-hours (where n = limit [e^(1/patience left)] when the residual brains tend to zero). so we knew the game should have been tough, but at least we chose a party we were confortably with. And so Wendy (ES + Sneak ability), Norman (Find Gate + the Mi-Go brain case from the previous scenario), Carolyn (decent monster whacker, regenerating sanity) + the two fixed one seemed not to be a disgusting party

Avi_dreader said:

I never ever exploited the bank loans system, and I will never do it. It's too similar to real life (that's the reason why I hate Monopoli), sorry ::laughing::

Avi_dreader said:

You see, for a 5 players game you almost selected the ones I had chosen, with the only difference of William (more clues) vs Norman (find gate + mi-go brain case). My point is that, if this is something that can change a victory in a defeat, well... it's not my cup of tea, sorry. I really appreciate a tough scenario, but if this means you can win just in case you draw some lucky cards or you're lucky at dice throwing... well, it's like the strategy behind a strategy game is compeltely gone.

I mean: I choose Norman instead of William. This implies that with a character I should do certaing things, with the other I'll adopt a different strategy. But nontheless, if I'm good at it, I should have at least a chance for beating the game. And this seems not to be the case. Arkham is great because even if the game is really slaughtering your resources, you can try tons of different things to overcome all the difficulties, and this because luck is not a dominant factor in the game. But in this case, with these characters, the border between victory and defeat is too narrow to be non-dominated by luck. And this turned our enthusiasm down. Mary is the worst character ever created in the entire game. Crappy equipment, crappy everything. In Tibs statistics, she is (or at least has been for a long time) the last near the bottom, so it's a con and not a pro having her in the party. I don't remember all the stats of characters now, but they have almost all (but Jacqueline and Wendy) some major flaws. Basically, from the "ideal" 5-characters party, William, Norm, Carolyn suffers from low speed (3), which is terrible to cover 2 expansion boards + Arkham, not to mention that playing with just these investigator makes almost impossible going to Devil reef or Yan'thley for gathering clues. And so on.

Avi_dreader said:

Yep, I'll give this scenario a second try. In case nothing changes, I'll probably change something (expanded investigator pool + Kingsport board in play - do not worry, I won't exploit anything of Kingsport to alter the balance of the game + a different house to play in, otherwise you'll have Julia in the Asylum instead of her characters ::laughing::)

 Well...  If you're not willing to exploit bank loans, you should probably just play the game with regular bank loan rules then.

If you're finding a scenario too hard, just swap one of the transfered items to a different character (if you want) when you restart it.

I wasn't suggesting you control 7 investigators :') 4-6 at most.  (I think 4-5 is the best combination for many of these scenarios, though there are a few you might want to go higher, especially in the later investigator pools).  Six should be adequate for anything though.

I suspect that one problem you might be having (I completely forgot about this earlier) with scenario two, is you didn't horde powerful enough items from scenario one (it was kindof designed to allow you to do that).  I don't remember exactly what I carried over, but I think it was a second find gate on norman (which I lost), an illuminated manuscript, alchemy, and either alien weapon or the +2 to horror checks item.  If you carry over things like regular weapons, you're actually wasting the carry over ability (in my opinion) since it's not that hard to find weapons while shopping, while a really unique ability item is one in a deck (or two).  If you feel that your items are too underpowered, search the decks for any one item of your choice and give it to whomever you want in the investigator pool.  But don't change the investigator pool :') unless you *really* want to.  I designed these like puzzles, and the investigator pools are appropriate to the puzzles (to be slightly more accurate, I first designed the scenarios, and then I thought which combinations of investigators would be needed to win in them fairly consistently).

Technically the rules allow for backtracking (to try and get an item for the next scenario), but it wouldn't really matter if you shortcutted the process a little bit and just started with that item ;'D

In the second set of scenarios, there's much more lee-way in investigator selection (i.e. Mary won't be required in every scenario), and the investigator pool is much stronger.  Of course...  There is at least one scenario in the set that makes me anxious just thinking about playing it :'D (the last one is a real nightmare).

Out of the first five scenarios, the only ones I felt really stressed against were the second and the fifth, the others I was able to beat more casually (I actually had a lot of fun playing the Werewolf scenario and the Witch House scenario).  So, just beat scenario two and Happy Days are Here Again.

Avi_dreader said:

Hi Avi, thank you for the detailed post :-) Yep, I thought 6 investigator could have been better than the 5 I'm actually playing with. Simply because of a time issue, having both Dunwich and Innsmouth in play requires to be very quick at gate closing (20 unstable locations might imply you lose the game in 12 rounds), so probably having another character in play could be of great help. This was the reason why I said I'd like to introduce the Kingsport board, otherwise playing 6 character implies you have double monsters on each new gate, a factor very difficult to control in games you want to keep the terror level low.

Avi_dreader said:

Ok, I won't alter the investigator pool :-) and yes, you're right, my "carried over" equipment completely sucks. That's because of two different reasons:
- when we finished scenario 1, I completely messed up your rules (do not ask me why, I don't know, they're quite simple to understand but, you know, sometimes the easiest the thing, the greater the errors), giving people some stuff they were not supposed to carry over again
- when you kindly explained it to me - again - I thought "yep, now everything's clear", but I did not write down the equipment I had, just thinking that my memory should have been good enough to remember everything since I wanted to play the next Scenario the week after the first. Then, for some mysterious reasons, two months passed and now I do not remember anything except that Norm had the Mi-go brain case.
So we drew completely new items for everyone but Norman, and we had a very, very bad time at it. Terrible. So, first of all, I'll skim our previous posts in order to see whether I can recontruct something or not. In case it's not. I won't search the decks for specific items but maybe, in case again the starting equipment sucks, I'm gonna give the characters a second draw possibility, if you think this is fair enough. Anyway, the idea was not carrying over "normal weapons" but unique / common item very strong. Not remembering what the hell we had, makes things a little more complicated ::laughing::

Avi_dreader said:

You made my day! Great news under the Arkham sky ::blowing trumpets and dancing at the court of the blind gods::
But a question Avi... do you *really* like Mary? Or it is just something enforcing the Scenario you designed?

Avi_dreader said:

Yeah, I read almost everything you had written about the League, and Werewolves and Witch House seems to be lovely (what a distorted vision of reality I have...). Still have to read the Lich King one (I really liked the first draft of that Herald... even if I'm a little scared the Lich won't be the only problem of that scenario.
I hope to be able to try the scenario again this week. In the worst of the cases, in a couple of weeks. I'm going to report it again

 ::Laughter:: okay, you didn't mention the equipment problem.  And that explains quite a bit.  

I know what you mean about the terror difficulties...  Personally, I just tried to blitz that level (get it over with as fast as possible) since it is so dangerous (one major error leading to a devouring can be game over or nearly game over).  I think it's really important to give Jacqueline a few extra clues also to prevent low frequency gates from opening (keeping the doom track low, giving you extra time, and potentially to bounce double doom mythos cards and gate bursts).  I think I just got her a clue generating item and did almost nothing with her that game but try to keep the board under control and shop.  I still remember it being very tense (I didn't even bother trying to optimize who got what item, I just wanted to win as fast as possible because I found the board so threatening).

I don't remember exactly how I designed the Lich King scenario.  Oh wait, now I do.  It's paired with The Darkness and is extremely brutal.  Monsters are almost impossible to defeat in combat except with Zoey.  I felt scenario two was harder though.  I'm not sure if that's because I had better equipment for scenario five or what, but that's my feeling.  Hmmm...  I think it was also because the doom track was so long (so even though the monsters were very difficult, you had plenty of time to come up with powerful equipment to defeat or bypass them— and of course, Wendy can walk right through them).

Mmm...  And you start with Visions and the Necronomicon I think :')

As for Mary, well...  Mary is sort of a focal point for the story to revolve around, which is why she was a required investigator in the first five missions.  Then I realized that she doesn't actually *need* to play in every mission (maybe just occasionally), and that she can still have the story revolving around her :') although I also figured out how to decentralize the story a bit too.

Heh...  I'm going to write up scenario 7 soon (probably within the next week) and you're going to see what I *really* had in mind for amping up something like scenario 1 (endless hordes), before deciding it should be somewhat easy so people could get good equipment in it.  I suspect it's going to be another scenario that I'll try to rush through as quickly as possible (since it adds in another time limiting mechanism).  The longer you wait, the more likely the town is to become overrun.

Avi_dreader said:

Yep. Hopefully we've fixed this problem now ::laughing::

Avi_dreader said:

It's scaring basically because of the three Servants starting the game on the board. It's just like you have to face immediately a situation usually found later in the game, and try to win a game that could be lost very quickly. Fortunately, Cultists do not deal any Sanity damage, so at least you can focus on the Servants without being afraid of being forced to the Asylum during round one. The couple in Dunwich is particularly nasty.
Anyway, we'll try again ::smiling::

Avi_dreader said:

I just gave the scenario a quick read ::shock:: Adding +7 to undead toughness? Where may I buy 5 tons of explosives and make the whole city collapsing to the ground? Seems like staying in a butcher's backyard...
Zoey's toughness reduction is cool, but she still has 3 Sanity, I don't see how you can rely upon her for combats. You should go shopping for Duke, and prey...

(btw, have you noticed that all your custom AOs names start with 'D'? Death, Dracula, Darkness, D-Idontrememberwhatbutitsadragon)

Avi_dreader said:

I'd love to see you beating your creations ::smiling:: not kidding or missing respect, it's an desire of my heart. I'm gonna think about Scenario 5 longer, since I still don't see any chance for beating it apart from being hyperquick rushing into gates and being very lucky while drwing cards

Heh...  You're forgetting one other thing...  Zoey starts with a cross, and Mary starts with a cross, and if that's not enough, William almost definitely has enough trophies to trade for a blessing. Will 6 really isn't so bad :')

Regarding the Ds. No, I'd never noticed that. My only semi-plausible sounding explanation is that in English, all evil must start with a D to alliterate with the Devil.

The rest of this post is kindof a spoiler for how to play Zoey in that scenario, so, only read it if you want to win on your first try for sure :')

 I think I also had her rush to get a combat boosting ally (making her even more effective and reliable).  Also, Zoey's monster trophies are worth a lot (they still have their toughness outside of combat) so trading for an ally isn't that difficult for her.  She can handle it.  Personally, I beat the scenario with almost no use of Visions, but it'd be even easier had I tried to use it.  I think it's only very difficult if you try to play it like a normal game of Arkham (in which case you will be brutally massacred).

Avi_dreader said:

It's not that bad, but Will 6 implies Fight 1, not the best thing to start a battle with monsters. Anyway, it can be fix. First of all, kill a couple of dudes to have her PS passed. Then go shopping for Duke. 5 Sanity, 7 stamina isn't that bad. Try to reach Scenario 5 with a Healing stone between someone's possessions and it's done. And then go shopping for - cannot remember his name - an Ally from CotDP, boosting your Combat (+2, if I remember correctly)

Avi_dreader said:

Avi_dreader said:

Don't worry, it's not a spoiler. I perfectly understood this, as soon as I read that the monsters she has to fight have their toughness decreased by three only for combat purposes. A very clear message ::smiling::

Avi_dreader said:

I had this strange feeling too. No way, I know you cannot really control the board, just trying to avoid things going bad too quickly. Anyway, it'd be interesting to try. Even if I still feel some of this games are just too hard, I really enjoy the way you're forced to think about different strategies. You understand better the game, and that's important. At least for me ::laughing::
Anyway, no chance this week to play again Scenario 2 (for tonight a A game of thrones evening is scheduled), so next w-end we're going to face Glaaki again (and hopefully we'll be a little more lucky. It's amazing that two weeks ago we played a game against Hastur + King in Yellow and Patrice - I mean, Patrice - had TWO press passes and in the last game, with very few clues and no Patrice, we drew carrots and cabbage. Oh, well...)