Winning by closing gates

If you close all the gates, do you win immediately?
We have only managed to do this once. One of the players was playing Kate Winthrop and she happened to be standing exactly in the right place every time a gate opened. Then the player got that card that says she could roll to close each gate that was open, of which there was only one, and she rolled a success. It was only 5 rounds into the game! Shortest game ever. But we win on that roll, right?

The caveat to that path to victory is that your team must have collectively a number of (unspent) gate trophies equal to the number of investigators. But then yes, you do win instantly.

Oh crap! Then we didn't win! We couldn't get any gates to open because Kate was always standing where they wanted to be. I had Leo, a shot gun, the golden sword of y'tala and a molatov cocktail and I was standing in the middle of the street for 5 rounds going "C'mon monsters! I'm loaded for bear!... Hello?"

But we didn't actually win.

awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

I'm still amazed whenever we actually win, the whole point of cthulhu is to go mad or die or both! The fun is in the trying.

BellaDonna wrote:Oh crap! Then we didn't win! We couldn't get any gates to open because Kate was always standing where they wanted to be. I had Leo, a shot gun, the golden sword of y'tala and a molatov cocktail and I was standing in the middle of the street for 5 rounds going "C'mon monsters! I'm loaded for bear!... Hello?"

But we didn't actually win.

awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

Don't feel too bad. I made the same mistake when I first bought the game. Its a shame you weren't able to ventilate any monsters.

I am glad I wasn't on this board months ago when we were playing it all wrong! I scoff at those wo believe they can master The Most Complicated Board Game Ever (TM) on the first attempt!

It used to be easier to win by closing gates before the "gate bursts" came into it.

There are a few other new rules variants that make things more difficult, also. One of the newer GOOs limits the player to no more than 5 clue tokens in possession. I believe another GOO requires an increase in the number of clues needed to seal a gate.

Ah, for the good old days!

Dublin Ireland wrote:It used to be easier to win by closing gates before the "gate bursts" came into it.

Don't you mean that 'sealing' gates was easier? I don't believe gate bursts effect the "close all gates" win condition. It should only make the "seal six gates" condition more difficult.

Kaz Necro wrote:Don't you mean that 'sealing' gates was easier? I don't believe gate bursts effect the "close all gates" win condition. It should only make the "seal six gates" condition more difficult.

Pre-gate bursts, if you sealed 3-4 locations (esp. if they were the high-probability ones), a good many of the Mythos cards would do nothing regarding gates opening. Thus you had more time to attack the open gates, since the chances of 2 gates opening during your OW jaunt were greatly reduced. With bursts, you can't count on your seals to keep the # of gates under control, unless you keep a mental/other count of how many bursts have been drawn per a gate.

For the record, I've only managed 1 close-win out of my 21 seal/close wins.

tamsyn wrote:I am glad I wasn't on this board months ago when we were playing it all wrong! I scoff at those wo believe they can master The Most Complicated Board Game Ever (TM) on the first attempt!

I dunno, I think Arkham Horror has a lot of rules, and could thus be called complex, but it is a very easy game to get used to - think FFG did a great job there. Games where I don't forget most of what is going on get thumbs up from me (I have particularly bad memory, and have had no problems with Arkham Horror, besides looking up things with the extremely unintuitive manual. Yay for indices!).

Unlike Skat, a game played with poker cards:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skat_%28card_game%29 I'm too dumb to play it (too many things to remember = autofail fer me), despite having been "taught" to play it several times. I always fail at games like that though - I only once won a game of Hearts by accident by loosing all tricks (wikipedia tells me this is called "shooting the moon").

i nearly made the same mistake last night. I was lucky enough to start with the tome De Vermiis Mysteriis which once read allows you to close one gate. so i cackled insanely and used the book in my first turn, closed the gate and started to write up my recording sheet. However a small niggling doubt formed: hey! it thought, that was too damned easy! ...especially for this evil, twisted game, it added.

so i looked up the victory conditions.... then the real horror hit me, i hadn't won at all. aaagggghhhhh nnnnnnooooooo i screamed in slow motion.

luckily i'd had the forsight to play my entire first turn properly as if i wasn't about to win, and so i was able to carry on and utterly crush the evil tsathoggua! Who am i kidding, i carried on and got freight-trained all over arkham. boy ive played it four times now and i keep getting smacked by him.

i had victory in my grasp though... Harvey walter had Walk the ley lines and i managed to get him through four other worlds and the four needed gate trophies, i had three other gate trophies collectively between the other two players. so i was set to win by closing the gates. all harvey had to do was visit; the woods, the witch house, independence square and the unvisited isle. independence square and the unvisited isle were sealed too. as i said victory was within my grasp but evil conspired against me once again and it reared its ugly head in those damn woods. Harvey went there and encountered the sheldon gang and was kicked out into the streets so i couldn't spend my gate trophy, so he went back in on the next turn and tried again. This time he had an encounter that made me spend a gate trophy or be kicked out to the streets, so seeing that the doom track was getting close to 13 i decided to spend the trophy and walk the ley line and worry about what miracle was going to get me another gate to finish the mission later. i moved over to the witch house and had an encounter there and a gate and monster appeared aggghhh! in i went another 3 turns before i could come back and attempt to walk the ley line. Ironic... here was the gate that would enable me to complete the the ley lines mission but required more time to close it, but time was something harvey had run out of, the great old one awakened and.......well, they were picking up pieces of harvey up from all over the multiverse.

Walking the ley lines is an awesome card but i think you have to devote your entire strategy to it. has any one won this way?

i have had the mission For The Greater Good too but it looks dam hard to pull off, any one done that too?

also is the phase on the vermiis mysteriis card correct? it says to use it in the arkham encounters phase but it uses up movement points should it not be the movement phase?

thanks
Ninjadude

Kaz Necro writes, Don't you mean that 'sealing' gates was easier? I don't believe gate bursts effect the "close all gates" win condition. It should only make the "seal six gates" condition more difficult.

You are right-- I was thinking about sealing the six gates to win, not closing all gates.

Victimizer wrote:
I dunno, I think Arkham Horror has a lot of rules, and could thus be called complex, but it is a very easy game to get used to - think FFG did a great job there. Games where I don't forget most of what is going on get thumbs up from me (I have particularly bad memory, and have had no problems with Arkham Horror, besides looking up things with the extremely unintuitive manual. Yay for indices!).

I used to have a handle on it before all the expansions came out. We're too chicken to try them all at once yet.

Gate closing wins hapen so rarely for us, that the first time it happened, we nearly didn't realise. It was a case of "Hang on, no gates left, that's a new one..." checks rules, counts gate trophies. "erm guys, we won."

ninjadude wrote:
Walking the ley lines is an awesome card but i think you have to devote your entire strategy to it. has any one won this way?

i have had the mission For The Greater Good too but it looks dam hard to pull off, any one done that too?

thanks
Ninjadude

Nope. None of us have managed to pull off either of those missions.
We had a player get the "Join the winning team" card last night. He was unfamiliar to the card so we explained it and as he read it, he began to giggle. We spent a few rounds trying to mentally send him bad luck as he almost managed to get an ally and make his way to the first area but he eventually abandoned the mission . He wouldn't do it but he enjoyed scaring the rest of us for a while. I kinda wished he did it though because it would have been a funny ending.

I have to agree with Tamsyn's "Most Complicated Board Game Ever (tm)" description. It isn't an impossible game to learn, just takes a while.

ninjadude wrote:luckily i'd had the forsight to play my entire first turn properly as if i wasn't about to win, and so i was able to carry on and utterly crush the evil tsathoggua! Who am i kidding, i carried on and got freight-trained all over arkham. boy ive played it four times now and i keep getting smacked by him.

For me, having completed my 3rd rotation (36 games, 12 GOOs), Tsathoggua aka Gene Simmons

shares the EASIEST GOO title with Cthulhu and Azathoth. One of those 3 games was with a Herald and still I'm 3-0-0 against the whole lot.

all harvey had to do was visit; the woods, the witch house, independence square and the unvisited isle. independence square and the unvisited isle were sealed too. as i said victory was within my grasp but evil conspired against me once again and it reared its ugly head in those damn woods. Harvey went there and encountered the sheldon gang and was kicked out into the streets so i couldn't spend my gate trophy, so he went back in on the next turn and tried again. This time he had an encounter that made me spend a gate trophy or be kicked out to the streets, so seeing that the doom track was getting close to 13

While I've found Darrell to suck during the OW jaunts he goes on, he is the King of Tasks/Missions you do in Arkham.

also is the phase on the vermiis mysteriis card correct? it says to use it in the arkham encounters phase but it uses up movement points should it not be the movement phase?

Yeah, I think Vermiis is meant as Movement. Speaking of that Tome, do you keep the closed gate as a trophy or not? I'm kinda iffy on that. In a 1-player game it would result in a 1-turn win

if you get the trophy, which would kinda suck IMO.

Dam wrote:

ninjadude wrote:also is the phase on the vermiis mysteriis card correct? it says to use it in the arkham encounters phase but it uses up movement points should it not be the movement phase?

Yeah, I think Vermiis is meant as Movement. Speaking of that Tome, do you keep the closed gate as a trophy or not? I'm kinda iffy on that. In a 1-player game it would result in a 1-turn win if you get the trophy, which would kinda suck IMO.

Yes, it should have been "movement." The rules state that when a gate is closed, you get to keep the trophy. It doesn't specific how you closed it. In the instances where you are not allowed to keep it, the card is usually pretty clear.

So in the event that you have this card to start the game with, you could win in one move with only 1 investigator. Chalk up an easy win and play again.

To quote myself in a posting earlier in this thread, I stated, "There are a few other new rules variants that make things more difficult, also. One of the newer GOOs limits the player to no more than 5 clue tokens in possession. I believe another GOO requires an increase in the number of clues needed to seal a gate."

Ah, for the good old days!"

We drew a mythos environment card about half an hour ago that requires plus 2 to either close or seal close a gate.

My only point in posting this is to suggest that as more expansions come out, and some similar cards to this are in play, it become even more difficult to close or seal gates.

To repeat my earlier refrain, "Ah, for the good old days!"

I forget which one it is, but one of them requires 8 clue tokens to close gates. We always get our butts kicked by that guy.

Dam wrote:

Kaz Necro wrote:Don't you mean that 'sealing' gates was easier? I don't believe gate bursts effect the "close all gates" win condition. It should only make the "seal six gates" condition more difficult.

Pre-gate bursts, if you sealed 3-4 locations (esp. if they were the high-probability ones), a good many of the Mythos cards would do nothing regarding gates opening. Thus you had more time to attack the open gates, since the chances of 2 gates opening during your OW jaunt were greatly reduced. With bursts, you can't count on your seals to keep the # of gates under control, unless you keep a mental/other count of how many bursts have been drawn per a gate.

For the record, I've only managed 1 close-win out of my 21 seal/close wins.

Ahhh... good point. I hadn't considered keeping 'hot spots' under control.

BellaDonna wrote:I forget which one it is, but one of them requires 8 clue tokens to close gates. We always get our butts kicked by that guy.

Hastur. I've not found him to be more difficult than others, mainly since he has a 13 doom track. Plus, mostly seems with him, that Flying Cultists make things easier, less need to Evade them, when they're lolly-gagging in the Sky.

Our group has house rules that make the game so much harder that it almost seems hopeless now. Here are a few to destroy your day.

1. Any investigator reduced to 0 sanity or stamina is killed or driven mad (Devoured). Raise the terror level by one and start a new investigator.

2. Gates are placed on the board face down, and are not flipped over unless they need to be. EX. someone enters them, a mythos card effects a gate.

3. The closing gate victory does not exist! You must seal 6 gates or defeat the GOO to win.

4. Monsters cannot be flipped unless necessary, like in combat.

5. Location encounter cards are only read up to the skill check (by another player of course). No more knowing what your failed check will bring, until it's to late.

6. Any investigator killed adds to the number of players for the purposes of the final GOO fight!

7. Monsters released on the board stay unless they entered through a gate and the numbers of monsters is to high.

Someone wanted a harder ARKHAM there it is.

CURRENT STATUS: Boards (Arkham+Dunwitch+Kingsport)

Current number of games: 42 Wins 6 Loses 36

GOOS cleared: Eihort, Hastur, Ithaqua, Nyarlathotep, Y'Golonac and Yig of course!

Glau (Nightshade2099)

Nightshade2099 wrote:3. The closing gate victory does not exist! You must seal 6 gates or defeat the GOO to win.

Why did you go this route? I've found Gate-seal win to be very easy, that is, compared to gate-close win. And GOO-fight win counts as a draw for us.

4. Monsters cannot be flipped unless necessary, like in combat.

Don't know about your group, but at least for me personally, this wouldn't make any difference at all.

7. Monsters released on the board stay unless they entered through a gate and the numbers of monsters is to high.

Um, what

?

EDIT: Point #1 seems really insane

!

@Nightshade2099
Cool, though I personally don't like rule 4 (since knowing monster stats is a memory thing) and 5 can get problematic with some encounters/investigators.

I don't understand your rule 7, or more accurately, isn't what you said under rule 7 how one regularly plays it?

Do you use the Dark Pharaoh and King in Yellow expansion? How many investigators do you guys normally use? Also, is your group involved in other cthulhoid activities? How many of the ancient ones you've cleared were defeated in combat?

*is interested*

Nightshade2099 wrote:1. Any investigator reduced to 0 sanity or stamina is killed or driven mad (Devoured). Raise the terror level by one and start a new investigator.

I like the terror track part - it rarely rises in our games (in some games, it only rose when "Family found Butchered" was drawn). The "devoured" part sounds funny, but I'm not sure if it really increases the difficulty, as weak investigators are exchanged for fresh ones with full equipment and clues.

Nightshade2099 wrote:2. Gates are placed on the board face down, and are not flipped over unless they need to be. EX. someone enters them, a mythos card effects a gate.

Though it makes the game harder, it adds randomness and removes strategic options (close Abyss to remove that Dark Young garding the gate in the Woods), so I don't like it.

Nightshade2099 wrote:3. The closing gate victory does not exist! You must seal 6 gates or defeat the GOO to win.

Did you mean "no victory for sealing 6 gates" instead, perhaps?

Nightshade2099 wrote:4. Monsters cannot be flipped unless necessary, like in combat.

Well, this makes the game harder, but only for those who don't play the game often and/or have a bad memory...nope, that's nothing for me.

Nightshade2099 wrote:5. Location encounter cards are only read up to the skill check (by another player of course). No more knowing what your failed check will bring, until it's to late.

Personally I don't use it, but I guess it's interesting, but also a memory-thing. If you want to make it more interesting, try to rephrase the encounters, so the others wouldn't recognize them.

Nightshade2099 wrote:6. Any investigator killed adds to the number of players for the purposes of the final GOO fight!

That one is interesting - maybe I'll try it, though I'm very content with the Epic Battle cards at the moment.

Nightshade2099 wrote:7. Monsters released on the board stay unless they entered through a gate and the numbers of monsters is to high.

I like that idea - does this include monsters who appear through location (or even OW?) encounters, or only those placed by Mythos cards (-> special text)?