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Blob is also a campaign-ender, as I recall. The blob eats everything.
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Apr 19, 2024 17:54
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Yeah first time we played blob we hit that ending and it really soured us on it. We just decided to ignore it Had a lot of fun with it when we came back more prepared though. Id say its the most fun one for mid level decks, hotel can be a bit too easy
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Apr 19, 2024 18:37
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I've been really surprised by how little I'm enjoying the Scarlet Keys on my first time through. I've made my piece with the guessing game that a blind play-through entails, but whether scenarios have been weirdly hard or laughably easy they all feel so untested that I don't think I ever want to come back to them.
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Apr 19, 2024 19:39
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If you don’t like the core mechanic, you’re in trouble because it’s used almost every time. first sight scenarios, I absolutely loved fortune and folly but we did it right the first time and I don’t feel the need to get back at it. I’d like to revisit war of the Elder gods or machinations throughout time, with extremely mobile decks… They have big maps and you have to keep moving.
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Apr 19, 2024 21:00
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Tevery Best posted:Anybody got any opinions on the side scenarios? I remember some not being good outside a con setting, is that accurate? Does it apply to the later ones as well? I'll repeat some stuff that has already been said, but this is my take on them: 1. Rougarou: Really shows its age and if you started with this one you're basically seeing some of the least compelling content AH has to offer. 2. Carnevale: Pretty decent but I think there are a fair few cards available these days which completely invalidate its movement gimmick. 3. Labyrinths of Lunacy: As mentioned, this was the first Epic Multiplayer scenario, which is basically a mode where multiple 4-person groups play separately but game elements influence each group and you have to work as a large team to get through it all. This is the only AH pack I don't own and probably never will (alongside Barkham, I guess). I thought they did come up with a way to play it solo, but it has no player card rewards and it always sounded like it suck to play anyway. 4. Guardians of the Abyss: This pack consists of two scenarios, The Eternal Slumber and The Night's Usurper. You play them separately but if you do TES first a couple of progression elements carry over into TNU, and if you do TNU first you can't then go back and do TES. TES is an absolute all-timer, I really love it. It has a huge amount of XP on offer (11 in total) but you won't ever get it all, and it's very difficult. It's design, though, feels very modern; it has three distinct acts which each feel like a mini-scenario themselves. I wouldn't try to tackle it without a large card pool to draw from but it's one of the best scenarios in the entire game. As for TNU, I've only tried it a few times and got smashed every time, even with some high-XP decks. I believe it's considered to be the hardest scenario ever made, and I intend to spend some time on it one day to see if I can crack it. 5. Excelsior Hotel: Cool scenario, and I think this one is the first product the new lead designer ever worked on. I haven't gone back to it much, mainly because I really hate how the lead investigator gets stuck with a weakness in their deck even if you get the best ending. 6. The Blob That Ate Everything: This is another Epic Multiplayer one, but it works pretty well as a regular scenario. I haven't gone back to it much but I remember liking it the few times I played it. 7. War of the Outer Gods: Another EM scenario and this one is the worse for it. From memory it has a bunch of very difficult enemies to fight and it didn't really grab me enough for me to want to go back. 8. Machinations Through Time: EM again, and yeah it doesn't quite come together. It has some cool elements and I think it probably would've been a banger if it wasn't shoehorned into the EM format. 9. Fortune and Folly: Speaking of bangers, this is another all-timer. Fantastic theme and design, really some of the most polished and most compelling content AH has to offer (basically the opposite of Rougarou). It can run very long, but I don't personally find that to be a downside. 10. The Blob That Ate Everything ELSE: I think this was just some print-and-play additions for the original Blob scenario. It came out last year during the very long dry run between TSK and FHV and I just assumed that whatever production issues caused that drought also resulted in them not being able to create a proper standalone for that year. Last year I posted a TSK campaign report here and I included Rougarou (half-way through this post) and Fortune and Folly (here) if you're curious and don't mind full spoilers.
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Apr 20, 2024 10:25
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The thing I am most likely to botch in this game is treacheries/enemies that threaten adjacent spaces. I get why the designers want to have the option, but drat, there is so much text already at the location I am on, I do not have the mental capacity to be factoring in what is going on at adjacent locations too! Obviously, hunter enemies routinely “threaten adjacent locations” and it would be silly to grouse about that, but I feel that’s a good bit removed from something like Black Amanita or Cochleal Stag.
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Apr 22, 2024 16:55
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Does any goon happen to have the .pdf version of the Alice in Wonderland fan campaign someone made for people to print their own copies? The links that someone shared from 2022 no longer work, and the creator's files are just .jpgs of each card. I know, I know, I can just pay money and have it professionally printed, but I have a bunch of card stock on hand, and plenty of spare time at work when it's slow.
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Apr 22, 2024 18:47
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So for our next campaign, our playgroup decided to build decks, then roll to see which campaign we're playing afterwards. We built Leo Anderson, Carolyn Fern, and Norman Withers. And then we rolled up (Return to) The Forgotten Age. That's right, we're doing TFA with an average agility of 1.33. We're so hosed. We resigned out of the first scenario with 3xp, Ichtaca's trust, one Poisoned, and 5 Yig's Fury. I (Norman Withers) immediately bought 2 copies of Blur; that's gonna have to pull a lot of weight.
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Apr 25, 2024 06:46
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DontMockMySmock posted:So for our next campaign, our playgroup decided to build decks, then roll to see which campaign we're playing afterwards. We built Leo Anderson, Carolyn Fern, and Norman Withers. And then we rolled up (Return to) The Forgotten Age. That's right, we're doing TFA with an average agility of 1.33. We're so hosed.
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Apr 25, 2024 07:15
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There’s also warning shot to move snakes around.
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Apr 25, 2024 07:28
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Golden Bee posted:There’s also warning shot to move snakes around. No firearms in the party, sadly.
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Apr 25, 2024 09:15
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Have Leo take adaptable because he has rogue access.
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Apr 25, 2024 15:31
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Is there a generally-accepted rule for when to incorporate investigator cards into the available pool for deck building? Core box plus that campaign? Core box plus every set up to that campaign? Add 'em if you got 'em?
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Apr 26, 2024 22:09
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Just use everything you’ve got. The game can take it, and the stuff that really breaks it will break the later campaigns same as the earlier ones.
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Apr 26, 2024 22:17
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Yeah I've never done anything other than everything I have at the time (which is literally everything now) myself. I think if I ever get bored and have played the game a real shitload I might start doing revised core + starter decks + a cycle (maybe two) as a limit for decks but pretty far from that at this point.
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Apr 26, 2024 23:30
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PlayingBoardGames did a challenge where they went back and replayed old campaigns using only the cards available at the time. They said it sucked. My friends and I played Excelsior this week. Against my better judgement I didn't tell my one friend not to bring NatCho. He got frustrated trying not to kill innocent enemies with that madness treachery on them. Our Harvey player was so obsessed with drawing cards and didn't understand he was supposed to be collecting clues, but to be fair the deck has almost no clue compression aside from two Deductions. And I thought I'd pick up slack as Parallel Agnes, but holy poo poo I couldn't believe how bad I was at drawing my clue-getting events. Despite drawing extra cards and using Arcane Initiate. Needless to say we doomed out. But they had a lot of fun, loved the environment of the hotel, and are more determined to go back and beat this thing, so it's a win after all.
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Apr 27, 2024 04:50
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LifeLynx posted:PlayingBoardGames did a challenge where they went back and replayed old campaigns using only the cards available at the time. They said it sucked. I played everything this way the first time through and enjoyed it all. I suppose being familiar with all the cards you can't have could be a bummer. I feel like we got a lot more play out of cards that wouldn't be used with the full collection available.
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Apr 27, 2024 06:51
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Wallet posted:I played everything this way the first time through and enjoyed it all. I suppose being familiar with all the cards you can't have could be a bummer. Yeah, the game has always been fun and playable. Getting used to some newer cards and then not playing with them might be frustrating, but not the fault of the game per se.
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Apr 27, 2024 08:57
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I think if you wanted a restricted challenge like that you'd do something like draft your deck rather than restrict sets personally
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Apr 27, 2024 09:30
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kaffo posted:I think if you wanted a restricted challenge like that you'd do something like draft your deck rather than restrict sets personally It's also just a practical thing. Buying the entire game at once would be a big chunk of change.
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Apr 27, 2024 10:16
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Undimensioned and unseen was so much harder than the scenario before it
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Apr 28, 2024 04:16
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It’s also completely defeated by mind blank. I think it’s one of the worst scenarios in Dunwich and skip it on replays.
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Apr 28, 2024 05:07
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DontMockMySmock posted:So for our next campaign, our playgroup decided to build decks, then roll to see which campaign we're playing afterwards. We built Leo Anderson, Carolyn Fern, and Norman Withers. And then we rolled up (Return to) The Forgotten Age. That's right, we're doing TFA with an average agility of 1.33. We're so hosed. Update: we tpk'd in the second scenario, which if you recall, with 5 yig's fury means we all were killed and had to make new decks. So yeah we abandoned that campaign 
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Apr 28, 2024 06:07
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Golden Bee posted:It’s also completely defeated by mind blank. I think it’s one of the worst scenarios in Dunwich and skip it on replays. my main issue was that the mechanics just seem clumsily written i'll definitely be doing the return to stuff with the next one. i'm pretty sure the base version would completely stonewall us
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Apr 28, 2024 08:34
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Survival knife and grievous wound do work in Hemlock Vale. The number of enemies that either self-heal, disengage and run away, or reduce all damage to 1 make the ability to do multiple instances of small damage often preferable to big burst damage.
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Apr 29, 2024 14:20
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Anonymous Robot posted:Survival knife and grievous wound do work in Hemlock Vale. The number of enemies that either self-heal, disengage and run away, or reduce all damage to 1 make the ability to do multiple instances of small damage often preferable to big burst damage. As always, a lot of the best tools come in the investigator box.
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Apr 29, 2024 15:11
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After multiple abortive attempts at campaigns over the years, I finally wrangled some friends and we finished Dunwich! We also got what I consider the best possible ending: we all died via horrible tentacle monsters, but still saved reality from being eaten. Lost In Time and Space is an incredible scenario, we were biting our fingernails the whole time and had to use every trick in the book to survive. The map spawning from the encounter deck is such a great gimmick, and figuring out the puzzle of locations is great fun. A particular highlight was our Stella player pointing out that we could lure a big pack of monsters pursuing us onto a Prismatic Cascade, clear the clues in the enemy phase with my Daisy's Necronomicon, and then dump them back at the beginning. Of course, we proceeded to immediately advance to the final act and get unceremoniously dumped on top of the enemies we had just escaped, and were promptly eaten. This left only our poor Roland with one sanity remaining alone in his attempt to escape: his final act was trying to pass a Willpower test to avoid taking horror. He drew the tentacle. Fantastic stuff. The campaign had a couple of scenarios that we weren't wild about (Undimensioned and Unseen is a real stinker, and Essex County Express is either a blast or brutally unfair), but that finale is a doozy. I'm extremely excited for Carcosa: I've played it solo a couple of times, but I've never gotten very far with a group.
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Apr 29, 2024 17:59
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DontMockMySmock posted:Update: we tpk'd in the second scenario, which if you recall, with 5 yig's fury means we all were killed and had to make new decks. So yeah we abandoned that campaign Lol. thats classic Forgotten Age. FishFood posted:After multiple abortive attempts at campaigns over the years, I finally wrangled some friends and we finished Dunwich! We also got what I consider the best possible ending: we all died via horrible tentacle monsters, but still saved reality from being eaten. Glad to hear this, I think you'll like Carcosa. It's a big step up from Dunwich imo and it truly shines when you're playing with a group of people.
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Apr 29, 2024 18:20
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carcosa is slightly cheaper on amazon right now, so i grabbed it. looking forward to finishing dunwich and moving onto it dunwich is really hit or miss and you can tell that they're still figuring things out. still fun though i've mostly been having a great time
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Apr 29, 2024 18:27
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Going through TFA again with Kymani and Minh. it’s like a more balanced version of the last run I did which was centered around mindblank. Disguise kit is absolutely great when you don’t wanna deal with an enemy for a while; I don’t know if we’re gonna defeat a victory point enemy this campaign though.
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May 4, 2024 08:14
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My group are about to finish Circle Undone (I have some opinions which I'd like to share but I'll wait until we finish it up) We're going to start Dream Eaters basically right after. Does thread have any non-spoiler advice? (Like Forgotten Age is a well known campaign for needing plenty of health)
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May 5, 2024 22:18
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Dream Eaters feels pretty evenly balanced in terms of what stats it tests or things it wants from you, nothing skewing it one way or the other in terms of health or sanity like TFA/Carcosa and no heavy reliance on testing willpower like Circle Undone or Dunwich so it might be one to bust out the characters with weaker defensive stats if you don't usually like playing them or just haven't so far. There's something I don't consider a spoiler cause it's on the back of the box/before any scenarios in the rulebook but one could consider it a spoiler in the strictest sense so I will put it in a spoiler box, it's pretty vital to know for deckbuilding at all imo, especially if you only have one collection to pull cards from. The structure of the campaign is the first time they really messed with that, it's two 4 scenarios mini campagins that can be played separately or together, if you play them together you pick two investigators each, one for campaign A and one for Campaign B. Decisions you make in one scenario will affect the next scenario for the campaign you're playing but also the next one in the other campaign (so, you finish scenario 1 of campaign A, stuff you decide will affect scenario 2 of Campaign A and B). You're supposed to play them roughly swapping between them equally if you play that way essentially. Campaign B felt more fight heavy to me, with bigger enemies in general but that could just be variance.
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May 5, 2024 22:46
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thebardyspoon posted:Dream Eaters feels pretty evenly balanced in terms of what stats it tests or things it wants from you, nothing skewing it one way or the other in terms of health or sanity like TFA/Carcosa and no heavy reliance on testing willpower like Circle Undone or Dunwich so it might be one to bust out the characters with weaker defensive stats if you don't usually like playing them or just haven't so far.
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May 6, 2024 08:00
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After running through the first scenario of NotZ and then Excelsior Hotel, my friends wanted to do every campaign in order, starting with NotZ. One friend decided on Ashcan, because he had a dog, and the other wanted to play Mark Harrigan. The Mark player found one of the most popular decklists on ArkhamDb, which at this point is seven years old. Only 2x Machete as weapons, and the rest is soak and allies. I tried to convince him to put in at least two more weapons that had been printed since, but he wanted to play it as-is. The Ashcan player I built a deck for, and I myself played Norman Withers with his books and Deduction loops. I knew I'd be picking up clues super efficiently, but I reasoned that I'd be picking up the slack for two inexperienced players. It turned out I really over-compensated. Between me hoovering up clues, Mark killing everything (there's no really challenging enemies in The Gathering or Midnight Masks if you have Lita in the first scenario), and Duke contributing to everything with Ice Picks, we got all six cultists in the victory display with only three doom on the final agenda. I feel like I did them a disservice and set some unrealistic expectations for future campaigns. We stopped before The Devourer Below, but we don't have Lita (I let them decide on the resolution for the first scenario) or a way to deal with Umôrdhoth, as Mark's not getting the damage bonus from Machete against a massive enemy, so I think we're screwed. Which is good, I think?
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May 10, 2024 01:11
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One of the few times I beat gathering with all six cultists was with Rita and Ashcan. Movement is godly in that scenario
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May 10, 2024 01:46
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Golden Bee posted:One of the few times I beat gathering with all six cultists was with Rita and Ashcan. Movement is godly in that scenario A deck loop let me play Shortcut three times, Mark played it twice, and Ashcan has that move and investigate action with Duke, so maybe you're onto something.
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May 10, 2024 03:44
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LifeLynx posted:A deck loop let me play Shortcut three times, Mark played it twice, and Ashcan has that move and investigate action with Duke, so maybe you're onto something. With that much movement, assuming you don’t get really terrible locations, you should be able to easily beat the scenario before the big boss shows up. Especially with no cultists to fight.
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May 10, 2024 04:20
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Mrs Randalor and I finally sat down this weekend to actually play Arkham Horror (we had started playing it several times but she kinda bounced off of it in a "That was fun, we need to play it again some time" but we wouldn't for awhile, at which point we both forgot the rules and....). This time around, it seemed to go much better, and she had been more into the Lovecraft mythos since the previous times so she was able to get more into it. We did the first two scenarios of Night of the Zealot using just the original core set cards (we have everything but Hemlock Vale and the last stand alone scenario, but for learning this seemed the better way to go). We handily beat the first scenario with Roland and Agnes, Agnes shrivelling the Ghoul Priest to a wizened husk while Roland... I dunno, held it in place and killed the other ghoul that popped up? I had more health so I kept it engaged with me while she did the work. We burned down the house for the insurance money after what the ghouls did to it. The second scenario... oof. We got exactly two cultists "interrogated", but whatever could go wrong did go wrong after about turn 2. Multiple red tokens were pulled, I got both Roland's weakness and Amnesia back to back that crippled my ability to do anything productive for a few turns, Mrs Randalor just couldn't find any spells even with the Draw 3 cards location, the ally that let's you check the top 3 AND the university (finally finding some right at the end)... yeah, it was rough. I'm pretty certain it's impossible to actually complete the scenario with 6 cultists found with two investigators without MASSIVE luck, if at all. Either way, she's looking forward to finishing the campaign and having access to more/better cards. We do have two copies of the core set, but the actual "starting decks" are just... pretty bad. I'm looking forward to being able to take two copies of a card in my starting deck. Is there any deck building tips for investigators, or is it pretty straightforward what each investigator wants (ie: Daisy wants tomes, Agnes wants spells)?
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May 13, 2024 13:37
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Randalor posted:Either way, she's looking forward to finishing the campaign and having access to more/better cards. We do have two copies of the core set, but the actual "starting decks" are just... pretty bad. I'm looking forward to being able to take two copies of a card in my starting deck. Is there any deck building tips for investigators, or is it pretty straightforward what each investigator wants (ie: Daisy wants tomes, Agnes wants spells)? First off, consistency is king. (Even in a flexible character, “consistency” still means “can I do SOMETHING at all times?”) If you’re fighting, have multiple weapons and a way to search for them. Two copies of any given card are almost always the right choice (you’ll learn when this isn’t true later.) In line with consistency, you generally only have thirty cards in your deck. Think about the one thing you want your character to do and drive hard for it. Generally, skills are the least important cards in a build, but they are useful as a “lubricant” that is always useful and makes doing everything else easier. I would shoot for a mix of around ten assets/thirteen events/seven skills starting out. Not a hard rule, but gives you a sense of the balance. When I was starting out, I had the idea that you wanted an even mix and that hampered me for a while. Make sure you have a sense of the cost of your deck. How many 3/4/5 resource cards do you have? Where are you getting those resources? When you’re done drafting cards, draw some opening hands. Mulligan anything you wouldn’t use turn 1, with the exception of (say) your signature card or whatever. Once you’ve mulliganed, where are you at? Can you start doing things turn 1, or do you at least have a clear path to doing things turn 2? Draw a few hands and see where you land, then address any issues.
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May 13, 2024 14:06
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I crave metal pieces for resources and clues. Does anyone have any recommendations?
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May 16, 2024 00:27
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