The most useless/unplayable investigator

If you think that having a find gate makes Daisy the game's best spellcaster, you're really under-utilizing her. When she is a gold mine who can reroll her skill checks, has several shrivelings, and multiple voices of Ra, then she's the game's best spellcaster ::laughter:: and of course, once you cycle through the unique item shop, you get to search the spell deck for another card of your choice ;') of course, at that point I'd probably go for an arcane insight.

Oh, and I don't *hope* for elder signs, I *get* elder signs ;')

And lets see how many turns you're wasting:

3 minimum (probably about double this, but lets work with it) from not having Find Gate
2 for buying two Shrivelings
1 for whatever spell is letting you re-roll spell checks
2 for "multiple" Voices of Ra (why anyone would hope for that spell is beyond me...)
10 for cycling through the unique items deck
1 for movement points to use Book of Ebon

= 19 character turns not fighting the mythos. Good job.

First of all, your calculations are wrong, very very wrong. Second of all, even if they weren't (they are), I would never advise players to just stick one character in a location and shop, shopping should be done as a group early game, and sometimes midgame, or by individuals inbetween game management tasks.

Second, you're forgetting that to get all the elder signs, you still need to buy items every time you draw from the deck.

All the Elder Signs from the deck? Players would be lucky to obtain even half. Multiple Shrivelings and Voices of Ra? Why would you even want them? It's complete overkill. These must be 8 player games or something because there's no conceivable way four players could do it, unless you were playing a pushover GOO like Tsathoggua with no Herald. 10 turns to cycle through the entire Unique item deck is pretty generous, it'd take probably 15 if not more. Alchemical Process only generates $3 a turn, the average cost of the items you'd buy would probably be about $5. By that point the GOO's doom track would be nearly full, rifts in Kingsport would be springing up, and you'd be in danger of losing to the open gates condition.

You're right; the calculations are slanted heavily in your favor. It really takes about 25 character turns to get through the unique items; we figure that about 5 of those happened anyways, so there's 20 character turns right there alone. Your entire team might as well have done nothing until doom token 5 hit the board.

Plus, I didn't count the turns you lose by getting hurt in otherworlds. That's another 2 or 3, minimum (but really, that looks small compared to a massive 20 spent cycling the uniques).

@Avian- Daisy casts Voice of Ra and Shriveling for free (-1 sanity loss on all spells).

My point was not that it takes more time. It was that it costs more money. You made it sound as if you can get elder signs and kings in yellows for $30, when in reality, even if you're only going to search through item decks 10-20 times (which is what I do in an average game), it's going to cost much more money than $30. Lets say it's ten cyclings at an avg of 4$ per cycle in a three investigator game. That's $40 (in reality it will be considerably more expensive). Lets say you have three characters and they have six dollars on avg and you somehow luckily draw a retainer on your first turn. That'll take you eleven *game* turns to generate that kind of money with retainer (assuming you don't roll a one, statistically unlikely).

::shrug:: I wouldn't count the turns I lose by getting hurt in otherworlds, because my characters rarely get hurt in otherworlds, they usually pass the checks or get bonus items. I make strong characters, one at a time, and only send weaker characters into otherworlds if there is great need (or if the otherworld is a very easy one).

Yeah, but money doesn't matter; running out of money doesn't cause a GOO to wake up. Not having items doesn't cause a GOO to wake up.

Again, I'm not arguing in favor of using a retainer that way. I'm arguing against shopping like that at all; but, if you must, retainer does 2/3 of what Alchemical Process does, and doesn't stop you from getting out of gates. It's not like Alchemical Process alone will give you the cash to cycle the entire freakin' deck either.

Time makes a GOO wake up. Time makes you lose from having too many gates open in Arkham.

PS: Black Lotus, Channel, Fireball doesn't work. You need a Mountain, too. And Force of Will basically kills you.

It's been a *long* time since I've let a GOO wake up. With the exception of Yibb Tsill (sp) who I let wake up with the intention of putting back to sleep.

I typically spend the first two/two and a half turns shopping. Sometimes I send off one character if I think it's ready, or almost ready to seal a gate. If you do timing right and coordinate your team properly, you shouldn't have any problems with shopping. Having an alchemy at the beginning lets you keep in one of your characters to shop for 2-4 extra turns (cycling through another 6-12 items and getting 2-4 of them). Then of course, you send the shopper into a gate (if it's ready and has no one to distribute items to). Several turns later, you should have at least three gates sealed (and perhaps another 12-18 cash from alchemy alone), then it's time to take a little breather and send one or two characters shopping for a couple turns (after which you will have another 6$. Repeat cycle. Win game.

P.S. It's classier if you do it with a Mox Ruby ;') or at least a Taiga, but anyways, Channel is banned, so YOU FORFEIT! Muhuhahahahaa!

You're playing with a banned Channel so I forfeit?

Why would I ever want to keep a character in the shop for 2 or 4 more turns? Can't they do something more useful if that's done quicker?. How are you getting 2 items out of 2 turns of alchemical process, when you figure $4 per shopping? Why bother sending the characters shopping a second time when you're already geared up well enough to seal gates?

Why is this post written entirely in questions?

Clearly the you wasn't referring to me, because sadly, I do not own a black lotus ;'D

::laughter:: just think of it this way. By turn five you're going to have made 9 bucks. Do you honestly think you can find a retainer, keep it, and make 10 bucks off it by turn five? And of course, the cash gain just keeps on coming the *entire* game. By the 10th turn you've made nearly $30. You can't make that kind of profit with a retainer. They're hard to keep, and they're slower to make money.

How many player games do you play? 1? 2? Those are really the only circumstances under which I could understand your frantic fleeing from the shop. Two other players are enough to take care of monsters and gates if you are efficient (especially if they are being supplied with powerful items). Anything else is just frills.

Cynical, I lose more sanity points typing to you than I do playing Arkham Horror, but were I not the kind of person who thought sanity loss fun, I probably wouldn't play Arkham Horror Either. You are posting pure questions to make me lose more sanity points!

If you're sending one guy into gates at a time, how do you not lose by hitting the gate limit? If you wait until turn 5 to send someone in, the earliest you can seal would be turn 7, by which point you could have already lost, especially if someone gets a "gate and monster" encounter while going for a clue token.

I never argued a retainer would make you more money. I argued that it was a better alternative than losing find gate, because time is more important than money. Unless, of course, you have a GOO that steals money and wakes up when you run out, but no stock ones or ones we've made do that.

EDIT- We also play with the variant where two monsters come out per gate, even with 4 investigators, which means you need people who aren't sealing to be dealing with monsters. If you don't, that may change things.

Sorry Avian, I didn't see your post above. In a normal game (a game that I'm playing 3-4 investigators, and not for score with all the expansions) I typically cycle through about half of the unique or common deck. I also don't play with Daisy or Mandy in normal games because I feel that they're broken characters ;'D

Oh as for the underutilized best spellcaster post. It was semi-facetious. I would never aim to get all those items in a normal game (because I prefer games to be closer to 3 hours, not seven, and if I were only playing four characters it would be very difficult and unlikely). I normally play to win in a challenging environment with randomized investigator drawing. In the league games I'm playing to win with the highest scores possible ;')

I play with the original one monster per gate version. Perhaps I'll experiment with the two monster per gate version soon ::shrug:: one reason I never did was because as much as I love getting monster trophies :'D if I did that I'd be able to just wait for the monsters to hit the monster limit then I'd be able to send in an investigator to an unguarded gate. So what if a couple monsters end up in the outskirts. Hmm... That might be a little tricky with four players actually. Monster limit seven, so that'd mean I'd need to wait for turn five to get a clean gate ::shrug:: still, it wouldn't be that bad, I'd still have a one monster gate on turn four, probably. This of course assumes there would be no monster surges (in which case finding unguarded gates would be a cinch.

I don't send in one guy into a gate at a time. Typically I send one as fast as I can (usually by turn three or four). Then I send in another around turn five or six. I also target the high frequency gates. And then usually around the time the second one is about ready to come out, I send in a third one. Then I take a little break with the strongest gates sealed, clear off monsters, get an ally or two, do some more shopping, and get ready to finish off the game. Of course, my strategy adjusts based on unusual circumstances, but the gate limit for four players is seven. It's really not that hard to keep seven gates from opening. If a low frequency gate opens, and there aren't any monster surges (and it looks like I might have a gate problem in a few turns), sometimes I'll send in an investigator who is unable to seal just to close the gate ::shrug::

Here's my attitude toward time vs. money. Money *IS* time. You get good weapons, you're less likely to lose sanity and stamina hence less likely to need to waste time healing, hence less likely to be driven insane or knocked unconscious in town or in other worlds, hence less likely to lose items, hence hence hence, I'm getting tired of typing, I want to kill some monsters ;') And of course, there's elder signs. Lets say you only are able to draw and use two in a game. That's *two* less doom tokens on the doom track, that's a hell of alot of player turns you've just earned, plus of course, you don't have to struggle to seal a difficult gate, plus you can send out a weaker character, who would normally have trouble sealing gates or safely collecting clues, with an elder sign, while a stronger character gets clues and closes another gate ::shrug:: Not losing battles is time, *alot* of time. Not dying in other worlds is also alot of time. And of course, removing doom tokens is alot of time. So is getting extra clue tokens from king in yellow. Otherwise you'll do what? Wait around for clue tokens? Trade monster trophies at the science building? No thanks. I think you're better off trading for allies and turning characters into tanks, one at a time, while using extraneous characters as pawns.

It takes you three hours to finish a game? Good god.

For reference, it takes us about 2.

I still don't understand why you'd bother doing a second round of "shop and relax", provided that you're not buying a bunch of discardable crap like Holy Water or Petrifying Solution. What's the point, when you could be getting into (and out of) more gates?

Also, why not have 2 people grab clue tokens at the start and send them both in on turn 3, instead of waiting for the second guy? Then you can get a third in on about turn 6.

because if you have two players grabbing clue tokens at the beginning it creates clue token scarcity (plus you can't trade items and pool money if you don't meet all or most of your characters in a shop on the first turn).

::laughter:: two hour games :') what a novel idea. My games are on average three hours (which isn't to say my average game is three hours, some drag to four or even five hours). Wait, did I say this right? Bleh. I'm not going to try retyping it.

I'm curious, what's your win/loss like? How many players, and do you play custom rules or custom decks, random selections, what?

I don't know our exact win/loss ratio, but heres what our recent games have looked like:

Every game before the first Y'Golonac game, KiY was the herald:
Glaaki: win
Yig: win
Kerghan v 1.0: win (custom GOO, turned out to be way too easy)
Azathoth: win (We've erratta'd Azathoth so that every doom token brings out a blighted ally)
Uldar: won GOO fight (custom GOO, I don't recall exactly what he does)
Shubby: win by close (this was probably the easiest game ever; it took about 1 hr 20 min)
Y'Golonac w/ Tulzscha and Nodens: Loss
Yibb Tsill w/Ghroth and Hypnos: win
Atlach Nacha w/KiY and Nodens: win
Eihort w/Ghroth and Hypnos: win
Y'Golonac w/Tulzscha and someone: loss (this one managed to end in 5 turns)
Cyaega (can't recall herald and guardian): win (custom GOO; when you take a doom token, you roll to see what kind of a token it is, and each of the different types does something each mythos such as sanity loss, stamina loss, investigators as a group discarding items, etc.)
Lady of Pain w/KiY and Nodens: loss (custom GOO, causes gates to move as monsters; I posted her in the custom GOO thread. Would have been a win had I not failed to seal R'lyeh with 2 dice, then failed to kill a Nightgaunt when I had 9 dice on it, causing me to get sucked into Kadath rather than seal [both Kadath and R'lyeh had moved out to the same spot]).
Abhoth w/Ghroth and Nodens: loss

4 players. As for custom rules, we play with 2 monsters per gate and with mythos cards featuring the "rarer" locations counting as acts as well as the act cards. As for investigator selection, everyone gets dealt 3 random investigators and chooses from those.

As for our decks, we've removed CotDP except for the "fight an ancient one" cards (those are too funny to get rid of), and we've removed Sedanette, Alien Statue, Wrack, that worthless "The GOO wakes up!" tome, and Throne of Carcosa from the item decks.

Hm... That's a very different style of gaming. I randomly select 3 or 4 characters. No multiple character draws. Then I randomly select a boss. If it's too easy, i.e. azathoth, I reselect, unless I'm in an odd mood, or unless I feel like adding a complementary herald. Your version of azathoth sounds pretty obnoxious :') you should play it with Groth as the herald ;'D

I used to have somewhat of a challenge playing vs. hastur&the king in yellow, but either the decks are more diluted now (yes) or I'm better (yes), I don't really get much of a kick out of it anymore (even though I do occasionally have interesting games with that play style). Heh... Being able to draw 12 investigators and chose four out of them is a huge advantage :') I pick four out of four ;') (but I see that you put other handicaps on yourselves).

Hrm... If I were to add in the custom rule 2 monsters per gate, I think I would also allow a violation of monster limit, in the case that if there was already the max level of monsters, a minimum of one monster could spawn when a gate opens. I might actually enjoy that variant ::shrug::

Piece of advice vs. Y'Golonac (since you seem to have trouble vs. him): (disclaimer: I've not yet played him). The unique item deck has about 20 tomes out of about 100 cards. The common item deck has about 10 out of 100. You could draw three times from the common deck and still would only be statistically likely to gain one doom token. I would only draw twice though ;') unless I was really desperate. For the rest of your combat operations, shop for spells, despite the sanity costs. It's better doing that than pumping the doom track :')

So you guys never fight the ancient elders? That's too bad. A good final battle can be alot of fun :') especially if you just lose, barely :') and the epic battle cards are really fun too. Hmmm... I would like to see KiY with Y'Golonac... That'd be a pretty tough challenge I think.

We don't select the boss draw; rather, we arbitrarily choose 6 that we haven't played too recently (except in the case of our second Y'golonac game, where we chose him simply because he's the only official GOO we've never beaten), and then just roll a die to choose. The one exception- we NEVER choose Hastur. We've beaten him before, with KiY, but it takes too damn long.

The extra monsters on gates rule is probably most fun playing with KiY as the herald and without raising the monster limit. Get ready for the terror level to go up rather quickly... which means lots of blighted allies.

We've had really bad luck against Y'Golonac more than anything else. The first time we played him, we were going great... until Terrible Experiment, and then the terror level going up several times, and then a fighter with no clue tokens failing a roll with 9 dice against a Nightgaunt (that last one seems to be a theme of mine in recent games). The second time... well, when it ends in 5 turns, there's not much to be done. And I mean literally 5 turns- the mythos cards all pointed to different locations, two people got "a gate and a monster appear" encounters when trying to grab clue tokens, the third investigator got devoured by Shub Niggurath in Yuggoth, and the fourth got lost in time and space because he got an encounter that said "discard a spell or be lost in time and space", and wasn't a caster. Our current strategy against him has been pretty much what you described- shop twice, and then avoid touching the item decks.

I should say we rarely fight the GOO. I remember one game with Glaaki a long time ago where we lost from the gate limit, looked at the terror track, saw that it was at 2, saw that we all had tons of items, and decided "yeah, why the hell not" and killed him. There was that game against a custom GOO that I mentioned in my post where we decided to fight him, and one of who had a shotgun and a lot of clue tokens rolled 12 dice for 10 6s (funniest arkham moment ever). Our first game against Y'Golonac, we fought him just to see the epic battle cards. But, those are exceptions; of the 15 games in that post, we only fought twice.

*cough*

avi-dreader's eat through the shop strategy seems viable if you play with 4 or more investigators (it works with 3 too, I think, though you'd have to plan the tag-teaming well). However, I'm wondering what sort of expansions he's using - i.e. how large his Unique Item stack is.

Personally, we always play it (per the example in the rulebook) that both players are given two random investigators, each chooses one, then we randomly choose an Ancient One from the pile of undefeated ones (currently everyone is "undefeated", as we restarted after getting Kingsport - the only Ancient One left in it before Kingsport came out was Tsathoggua), with the exception of those that have already been played against last time/on the same day (simply to avoid repetition). Then a random Herald is chosen (and with Kingsport, a random guardian). All cards from all expansions are used, as well as all boards *edit* and all downloadable Heralds as well*edit*.

Our win/loss ratio is understandably low (1 in 3.5 or so), and with only two investigators, we can't buy smart at s-mart. But since I can definately vouch for 2 Investigators being nearly able to handle everything in Arkham (i.e. with slight inefficience), 3 ought to do just fine, and I can see why statistically 4-player games are the easiest ones (which has also been my experience).

But since this thread is about character rankings...*looks at them*

Well, personally, I'm going to make groups, and then rank those groups in how important I find them to be in 2 Player games. The investigators in these groups are then ranked *only* amongst themselves.

Group 1: Clue Collectors
Given the massive speed at which the Ancient One will be rolling towards you, getting clues fast to seal gates is the most important thing you can do. Clue collector characters usually generate clues somehow, thus leaving more on the board for other characters to collect, which increases the duo's game completion speed dramatically.

Group 2: Encounter Enhancers
Since you are jumping from one location to the next, it is important to not be slwoed down by negative encounters. Also, given the minimal resources and time that can go into shopping, it is also the primary source of equipment and allies.

Group 3: Self-Sufficience
There mostly isn't alot of time to hang around together, most times, not even to trade equipment. Thus, being reliably able to handle oneself through the entire game becomes very important.

Group 4: Manipulation Masters
These characters usually have some sort of Gimmick which sets them apart from traditional roles and allows them to ignore something pivotal in the Ancient Ones arsenal (for example Wendy's auto-evasion). Controlling the flow of the game is very critical, especially when you will not be able to deal with everything.

Group 5: Tag-Teamers
Characters which allow others to have re-rolls, damage prevention, etc.. The more players you have, the more important this group is, but with two players it usually doesn't matter as much.

Group 6: Smart Shoppers
As mentioned, shopping time is a commodity, but getting the right stuff immediatly can be very useful. This includes characters which can draw more cards from an investigator card deck, like Bob Jenkins.

Group 7: Alternative Aquirement
Like group six, these guys allow you to gian investigator cards in some other fashion, be it by gaining lots of money (Jenny), peeking at the bottom of the deck (Pete) or something else. These methods are oftentimes not as good on their own and require investigator cooperation, thus it conflicts with the game plan (i.e. wasting time).

Group 8: Burly Bruisers
These guys can fight. While being able to get rid of dangerous mosnters is very, very good, you don't have time to go around clean-sweeping the town. Killing monsters gets more important in alrger investigator groups.

So here are the investigators in each group, with a small amount of text. I can explain my choices in a more detailed fashion, if wanted. Remember: Just because an investigator is in a lower ranked group, doesn't mean I consider them to be ranked below or above others from other groups.

Clue Collectors:
Rex Murphy, Luke Robinson, Diana Stanley.
Murphy's phenomenal abillity to practically cut his time collecting clues in half (and thus leaving the other half for the other investigators) is superb. Though Diana is very self-sufficient (the doom track usually rises all the time, as does the Terror track), her abillity to get clues is not all that reliable and cannot be counted on to work, something which Luke can do easily. Luke can also spell cast fairly efficiently, when needed.

Encounter Enhancers:
Darrell Simmons, Gloria Goldberg, Jim Culver.
You mostly run around arkham, so Darrell's abillity comes into play more often than Gloria's. Jim provides you with occasionally easier encounters in other worlds, which isn't too shabby; also, getting rid of the annoying Mummy or Wraith monsters, as well as not needing equipment to get by Ghosts has its uses, but it's very circumstantial.

Self-Sufficient:
Joe Diamond, Lily Chen, Carolyn Fern, Wilson Richards, Vincent Lee.
Obviously, being able to use single clues to enhance any sort of performance to such a degree is pretty great, and the only reason he is set above Lily - she need never make recovery stops, and more importantly, is much less unlikely to be knocked out of an other world. Wilson's Equipment and adaptabillity is also very good, especially now that he can use his Focus of 4 as much as he wants for Kingsport cards, etc. His overall avergaes put him below the others though.
Carolyn and Vincent are in this group, because they won't be healing the other investigator - Carolyn scores fairly high, as sanity is something that is lost very often, plus she can make good use of spells - unfortunately, she doesn't start with any.

Manipulation Masters:
Daisy Walker, Wendy Adams, Marie Lambeau, Jaqueline Fine, Kate Winthrop, Sister Mary.
This is a group which varies alot based on one's opinion.
Daisy's abillity to choose a spell and use it without losing sanity is perfect for nabbing Arcane Insight, Find Gate or Alchemical Process, etc. - all of which allow you to direct the overall game plan towards your ends; we usually go with Arcane insight, as with even 1 or two dice you are able to crack the Mythos deck very effectively.
Wendy's auto-evading powers and elder sign (which we hold on to and use on the final gate or under other horrible happenings) allows her to go everywhere and get hard-to-get clues, etc.. Being able to stab sneaky creatures in the back also has its uses, especially when battling Tulzscha Cultists.
Marie Lambeau removes a doom token = more time. Her starting gear is nice, and the third hand can be practical. Close to her position is Jaqueline, whose abillity to prevent horrible mythos cards may be great, but comes at the expense of two clues - a dangerous decison to make.
Kate can be very nice in combination with Daisy or other setups, but her abillity cannot be used by the player effectively, so its not that great. Mary scores last, due to her awful "abillity". Lost in time and space can be useful in a lot of occasions, so she is sometimes hampered by her advantage to instead go to Arkham, so it's not always an advantage.

Tag-Teamers:
Mandy Thompson, Leo Anderson.
Nothing to add, except that out of all characters, Leo is my favourite due to his character background.

Smart Shoppers:
Bob Jenkins, Monterey Jack, Dexter Drake, Amanda Sharpe, Rita Young.
With good starting gear and a great statline (if lacking in lore and fight), Bob has good chances at becoming self-sufficient through his common item purchases. Monterey closely follows this, though his low sanity might be problematic - however, finding unique items is a very common occurence, and it can be very useful to have more choices. Dexter Drake has higher chances at gaining a game-manipulating spell, and has good lore.
Amanda, though I kinda like the character, and although Kingsport skills are pretty nice, ranks fairly low - there simply isn't alot of times where you get skills, and buying them wastes valuable tokens which could be used on the Captain of the White Ship or, more importantly, clue tokens. Rita's abillity is basically negative shopping, and though she has good stats, focus and items, those things alone don't make you great.

Alternative Aquirement:
"Ashcan Pete", Charlie Kane, Jenny Barnes, Tony Morgan, Lola Hayes.
Choosing between the most and least influential Arkham townies is pretty difficult. Ultimatley though, Pete can identify game-winning items, reuse such items as elder signs and has phenomenal stats. Charlie Kane is also very good, and usually racks up two allies without even trying.
Jenny's money generation is nice, and does provide one with a second or even third shopping opportunity later in the game. Tony can more easily buy good things like clues, but to do so he has to waste time fighting monsters, making his ability not so impressive (since he will be mostly collecting clues and jumping through gates). Hayes' abillity to get a different skill every now and then is nice, but does nothing overall worthwhile.
It should be noted that everyone in this group has a 3/3 Will/Fight, with Pete having one more in one of the two, making these characters fairly reliant against monsters.

Burly Bruisers:
Mark Harrigan, Harvey Walters, Michael McGlen.
Difficult to make chocies between the three of these. Ultimately though, Mark Harrigan wins out. Though McGlen might be able to fight more monsters with his Tommy Gun, Harrigan can simply choose his battles (as could MacGlen) to avoid this being negative. If you kill your target, stamina loss prevention isn't as important, and with 7 stamina you can take a few hits from encounters as well, so McGlen's abillity means even less. Even better though, Harrigan starts with 3 Clues, and is thus quickly able to get the first seal done. I personally don't see much of a difference between Will 3 and 4 on their averaged skills, though it is of course very useful against encounters. McGlen's speed of 5 vs HArrigan's of 4 probably won't play a large role either - they are both focus 1 characters, and are unlikely to have the opportunity to change this up alot. Not being delayed is also a fairly favourable abillity.
Harvey Walters sneaks between these two primarily because his abillity actually helps him fight, he has great starting gear and sanity loss prevention is overall very useful, though less so for a sanity 7 character. I'd almost rank him higher than Harrigan, but his stats make him teeeny bit less useful.

So yeah. If wanted, I could make a list of all of them as one group, like everyone else has been doing. This is difficult to do imo, as some characters can be very good when working in tandem with others (Kate Winthrop or "Ashcan" Pete, for example), but are otherwise not as good as certain others. Some are more useful with lots of investigators, while others become more important with few investigators. So like the importance of my groupings, the fact that I mostly only play with 2 random investigators will offer a very different view to those that actively choose investigators, or have a greater chance at having a team-mate. Not knowing either the Ancient One or the Herald beforehand also screws with this - with the Dark Paharao herald, for example, Monterey Jack is less useful. With Cthulhu, 7/3 characters are less useful. With the Tulzscha Herald, Wendy becomes even better - things like that.

Really, a best investigator would ideally mean someone whom is useful in any combination of Investigators, Heralds, Guardians and Ancient Ones. However, not only are there so many possible combinations, there are also things to consider like utillity spikes - maybe an investigator is only slightly encumbered through certain combinations, but shines so extremely well in 2 or 3 others that he can overshadow these shortcomings.

That's something I like about Arkham Horror though - there are few investigators which I consider to be abyssmal - and even those have their uses.

Eep. You play 2 investigators with all expansions? That's pretty crazy ;'D I like it! So, your rare wins, how do you get them? Fighting the ancient one? Or sealings? (Back when I used to play two vs. ancient on occasion, prior to Kingsport, I pretty much always tried to stock up for direct combat, although sometimes I would seal a couple gates just to provide some extra time).

Edit: Well, okay, I just read through your list. I basically (if not entirely, given the type of game you play) agree with you. I think you did your rankings very well. One thing though, you said Ashcan Pete "can identify game-winning items, reuse such items as elder signs." No he can't. Elder signs are returned to the box (not the deck). Bummer, yeah? ;') If he could seriously reuse elder signs, I'd want to rank him in the top three. He can reuse Eltdown Shards though :') so maybe he belongs in the top 5. Also, I agree with you on the use of Daisy. In a two player game Arcane Insight is the best spell to draw with her, although I would add that circumstances change when you have more characters (and hence greater flexibility).

It's been ages since I've used the last elder sign (and certainly didn't have Pete around then). Too bad he can't be used for that, but like you said, he can still re-read tomes. Getting Pete and the shards would be game-winning indeed (with a source of income).

Our victories are usually sought through seals, but this depends on characters/starting equipment/Ancient One and to a lesser degree the Herald. Nyarlathotep, for example, we stock up clues and blow him away in 1-2 turns of shooting. With Yig we try to get as far as possible, stock up on Blessings and try to blow him away. If we draw characters which can fight well enough and have the right equipment (or could potentially get it during the game), we try to stock up on gate/monster trophies to kill Yog/Shubby. Similarly, we also beat up Abhoth.

Everybody else, we try to crack with seals, but if we see an opportunity to do so (comes up rarely) we try going for the Ancient one combat. With Azathoth, this is no problem. With others it's just pretty tough. We've beaten up Cthulhu in final combat with this sort of approach, but nobody else really. We've sealed everybody else including Hastur (fluke game). Tsathoggua devours us all the time - not having the science building hurts, and his attacks are attrociously inhumane. Not having any clues isn't much help either.

The Kingsport Ancient Ones we've faced with only playing the expansion by itself(to get a feel for it), so I cannot comment on their difficulty with all expansions. We played fairly lax in those games to see what the expansion has to offer, beat Yibb by seals and got devoured during the Ancient One battle with the other three (nearly won with that one mission where you need to traverse a few outer worlds and sacrifice clues vs Atlach-Nacha. I had Luke Wilson sailing around with the White ship, lucky combination). I don't think our strategies and tactics need alot of adjusting for these guys (with Eihort we retire investigators as needed, whoop-dee-doo). I don't know how we'll manage Atlach-Nacha though.

In my experience, the King in yellow and Dunwich Horror Heralds are usually what get us into trouble, not so much the Ancient One's abillities. Now with the awesome Epic battle cards, we'll be even less successful in the final combat, so this should also be fun. It sure saved Cthulhu from being beat down *rubs wounds*. He's the only one we've battled so far with all expansions, due to the current league.

Not sure I answered your questions, actually. As you can see, our approach isn't all that different to what you describe with your earlier 2 investigator games, only that we try to get seals instead. Especially with the new Epic battle cards, stocking up for the ancient one isn't all that great anymore. I agree with your comments on Daisy - Arcane Insight becomes less necessary with more investigators.

I am interested in how you put together your deck - you mentioned not having a custom one, so what do you use?

Nice list. I never play 2 player but I can understand why the people are ranked so. Just one question.

Victimizer wrote:
Amanda, though I kinda like the character, and although Kingsport skills are pretty nice, ranks fairly low - there simply isn't alot of times where you get skills, and buying them wastes valuable tokens which could be used on the Captain of the White Ship or, more importantly, clue tokens.

I'm a little confused what you mean here. Why would buying skills hamper your ability of becoming Captain or getting clue tokens?

When we play 2-player games, we always pick two investigators each, so that there is 4 of them in game.

It's funny, though it might be a little confusionary the first times (since we don't play our 2 characters in a row- it's boring for the other person, so we cross-play'em).

After further thinking, I think that the most "unplayable" investigator is Rita Young:
She's not that bad, though her special ability can only be used if you play with DH, or the madness/injury deck at least.
So if you don't you can't actually play her.

ALso, I don't think her ability is that great: it is useful indeed, but what's good in having 4-5 Injuries/madnesses altogether? You'd be so flawed that you wouldn't be able to scratch your own back without help.

The only reason we don't use 4 investigators is that it is a bit more fun to us to play a single character - i.e. we wouldn't play 2 people per player in a rpg either. Strategically it's probably best to do so though, especially in the leaugue.
As for Rita being the worst, there are a few investigators which can only be played when their expansion is ought, like Daisy Walker or Jim Culver (starting equipment only available in the expansion). Unless you meant during the League, in which case you're absolutely right.

@allstar
It doesn't, I was mistaken on the purchasing thing. While I'd still use the 8 dollars for buying equipment instead, buying skills has no effect on gaining clues. (See, I assumed you got skills with a gate trophy. I only remembered that I don't want to buy skills for some reason, and didn't recall exactly why.)

I really don't see why people are ranking Luke so low. IMO he's very nearly as good as Mandy in any game where you can handle multiple surges, and if you're not playing with DH he may even be better.

The trick is to use Luke not to seal gates at first, but to close gates - preferably at uncommon locations, to keep the doom track short - while the other investigators keep the streets swept. Because of the distribution of the common locations, no uncommon location is ever more than one turn's movement away from a common location for Luke. Depending where the gates show up, you can get him the White Ship as early as turn 6.

Once he has the Ship, Luke never sets foot in Arkham again except to seal a gate, occasionally spend gate trophies at Ma's or the Science Building, or recover stats. He spends the rest of his time bouncing back and forth between sections 1 and 2 of CotGR (or whichever Other World you feel is most benign) until he has enough Clues to seal. If he needs gear, he waits for an investigator carrying it to move through a gate then hops there on the White Ship to meet them.

Also, Luke is SFAIAA the only investigator who can win a solo game on turn 1.