Let's Play Arkham Horror Already!

I too picked this up thanks to poetfox, and played through the base game against Shub-Niggoroth. Managed to win by sealing six gates, too, although I admit I cheated a couple of roles so I wouldn't lose my investigators. Sister Mary ended up being a bit of a powerhouse, and I got lucky in that one of the mythos cards cleared out the really nasty enemies, and I had three flying enemies up in the Sky that couldn't move thanks to lucky Mythos cards.

I've played two games against Yig since pfox started this up. I have lost both times. The first game was my fiancee and I, and that was us trying to relearn the rules. The second game was us plus my friend and his girlfriend and us teaching them the game.

Protip: Mark Harrigan, the soldier, is LAME. I spent the whole game losing encounters and I beat up one maniac. His flamethrower is awesome though.

Since everyone is reporting... heh...

I played a game last night with my friends. We fought Glaaki, and it went... badly. When Mandy Thompson went into a gate to R'yleh turn 3... and then get attacked by Cthuhlu and devoured turn 4... well, the game isn't going to go well. That combined with the fact that when Glaaki was summoned, two characters had no dice to attack it with didn't help either.

Things of note, however: I failed every sneak check at least 2 times, and always with doubles. Snake Eyes, Two 2s, Two 3s... I would have been put into Monopoly jail like 3 times. However, once my brother, taking pity on me, gave me a Silver Key, I never had to sneak again.
We also drew every single task, and finished all but one of them, which was weird.
Bob Jenkins was once again the warrior prince, but didn't kill nearly as many as last game. (That's sort of an inside joke, I suppose, but whenever Bob Jenkins is in a game, he is going to murder some peeps.)

I also spent 120 bucks last week getting all the expansions. I hope the rumored Innsmouth expansion is next.

Girlfriend surprised me with a copy of this today! Hurrah! I wonder how many copies of Arkham Horror this thread managed to sell.

I'm gonna do a dry run through a game tonight and read the rulebook so when I start introducing it to people I will know what I'm talking about.

Thanks again for the awesome thread poetfox, and for introducing me to this game.

Yeah, seriously... Fantasy Flight should be giving me a kickback or something. Heh.

But as long as you all are kicking Ancient One ass and having fun, Secondary Let's Play Mission Objectives have been accomplished. (Primary was to make and complete a Let's Play thread that people enjoyed. I'm fairly confident I did that at this point.)

We knocked Nyarlathotep right the fuck out about a week ago over here. It got pretty hectic right before he got summoned, but I managed to grab four clue tokens the turn before he woke up. In the end, Michael McGlen (me) and Joe Diamond each had eight clue tokens or so, so it was pretty clear sailing at that point. He didn't even get to devour anyone.

Also, Kingsport is out now, right? What are the new investigators and ancient ones like?

Good luck with your first playthrough! You already have a better idea how it goes than most people starting out. ^_^

I love seeing how new people play... There are so many ways!

*playing again tomorrow* Glee~!

Thought Hammer listed it as being in stock, and I should be getting my copy on Tuesday or Wednesday.

I'll be able to say better when we play with the full expansion but the new investigators are interesting. A chick who pays one less sanity for spells and I think tomes don't cost sanity. A politician who can lower the terror track. The little girl I mentioned who can evade like mad, flying around the board almost as fast as the deputy. It's neat but still pretty well-balanced. Boobs McChesty (Mandy) is still the best investigator I think. ^_^

We had a game Friday where the 2nd Mythos card drawn let everyone roll Luck (-1) to gain a Blessing. When 3 of the 4 investigators are Blessed, the game is too damn easy. Only one of them lost his Blessing before the game ended, and that player drew 3 Elder Signs during the game (he didn't even bother taking the 3rd one). Shub-Niggurath's doom track was only at 5 when we won, how boring.

Here's hoping for a more entertaining slaughter tomorrow (with Kingsport).

So I found this Arkham Horror custom content program earlier.

Messing around with it is fun.

Awesome. Now to do some Talking Time regulars, someone?

Well, man. That's fun, that little program. I've mostly been making horrible inside joke investigators for my friends, but, well, I made this...

You realize this means you have to make Etrian Odyssey investigators now. And do the next Let's Play game with five of them against the F.O.E.

Huzzah! My trial run game was a little shaky (lots and lots of rules to keep in my head at once), but in the end the investigators managed to send Yig back where he belongs!

By the time there were eight tokens on the doom track I realized I was never going to seal any gates, so I had everyone mad dash for the church to get everyone blessed.

I was prepared for the final battle. Everyone had Holy Water, nobody was cursed, and two (the magician and the nun) managed to cast Dread Curse of Azathoth. A third had a Shotgun (all 6s count as two successes) and Marksman (exhaust to re-roll a Combat check), so racking up lots of successes was easy.

In fact, I think I got off TOO easy. The rules are a little vague here; does the Refresh phase allow me to use abilities that work during Upkeep (like the psychiatrist's ability to give someone 1 Sanity)? And spells that last "until the end of combat", do they really stay in play until the end of combat? Once I got the Azathoth spell cast, that's 18 dice per round right there. It took three tries for the nun to cast it, and she wouldn't have had enough Sanity to pay the cost if the psychiatrist weren't buffing her each round.

This game takes up my ENTIRE living room. It eats up my entire coffee table plus two TV trays. I went and bought a cheap card table at Wal-Mart for when I get some more people in to play.

THIS SOUNDS LIKE A FANTASTIC IDEA.

I could send you a webcam I'm not using if you'd like to set it up point it toward the board and let us watch you nerd it up.

Or I guess we could even use it for online games.

I'd buy that for a dollar!

If Dread Curse is what I think it is, as in the two-handed attack spell, then that lasts until the end of combat... which ends when a new round of ultimate epic conflict begins. See how I casted Shriveling every turn up in the Let's Play? Yeah. The various upkeep abilities do definitely work during the Refresh phase, though most healing items have been errata'd to say "Remove from the game if the Ancient One Awakens."
This is why I was quite happy to get every single available surface in my bedroom back. It is a serious chunk of board game. Heh.

I think Yig curses everyone at the start of his fight though, so I don't know if the blessings keep.

RE: oodles of rules. This is a nice little cheat sheet that I found on Board Game Geek.

All the more reason to get blessed, as instead they just kind of cancel each other out, leaving you in the normal state without blessing or curse. I'm pretty sure, anyway.

The cheat sheet has one very important oversight, Victory condition 1 should say:
"Close the Gates (when all gates on the board are closed, the players must have a number of gate trophies equal to or greater than the amount of players) [spent trophies don’t count]."

I see that's how you did it, but I couldn't find anything in the rulebook to support the final battle not counting as a single combat. In fact, the rules actually refer "rounds" which, with all my roleplaying experience, implies multiple sections of a single combat.

The Big Bad cards even specifically give them an attack that only works at the "Start of Battle". If each round begins a new battle, they'd get to use that super attack every single round.

(I'm confident I would have killed him anyway, even without those spells. All that Holy Water, psych lady's Shotgun + Marksman, and her Upkeep ability was basically one free Sanity every round.)

I didn't have any cards in play that said to be discarded, but I haven't gone through and read all the cards either.

Exactly. Start of combat all those blessings went away, but that's better than going in with everyone cursed!

So since Dread Curse of Azathoth says "Cast and exhaust" must be re-cast every round of combat. The sanity cost of 2 per casting will eventually wear you down, even with Carolyn Fern's ability.

Yig and Nyarlathotep are the easiest Ancient Ones to fight, the ones from the Dunwich and Kingsport expansions are much tougher. I'm dreading why my group decided to try to fight Atlach-Nacha:

Doom Track: 13
Gates effectively cannot be sealed; Gate openings burst through any seal.
Combat: -5, Physical Resistance & Magical Resistance
Attack: 1 Ally or Investigator is devoured each round

If I can get my camera working, I can post pictures of the new Ancient Ones and Investigators if people are interested.

This just confuses me more, because the card itself very clearly says "...until the end of this combat." The way I read this is, once I cast the spell, it works until the end of combat as long as I devote both hands to it (which I did).

It makes more sense after having discussed it, and I'll know for next time. But it's really strange they'd tuck that rule away in a parenthetical blurb in a section that isn't even talking about fighting the Ancient One. Nowhere in the entire section of the Final Battle (on pg. 22) does it say that each round counts as a full combat, nor that spells that exhaust and refresh need to be re-cast. All the language in that section (and elsewhere in the rulebook) describes the Ancient One fight as one single combat that is divided into rounds.

Hrm... how many other niggling details did I miss?

Got the game, and did a single player run tonight. Took me five hours, as I had to keep checking the rules constantly the first five turns. Drew investigators and the Ancient at random, and ended up with Monterey Jack, Jenny Barnee, and Michael McGlen. No really interesting items, except for Jenny, who got an Obsidian Statue (block all stamina/sanity damage once) and the Expert Occultist skill pluss the Wither spell.

Managed to seal four gates, but new ones opened over already open ones four out of the five last Turns, creating gate bursts and filling the Terror Track. Ithaqua was summoned, but as I only had to get three successes to remove one Doom Token, and my investigators having 15 attack dice between them, I managed to beat him relatively easily; only Monterey was devoured since he had so little stamina when the battle begun.

Though I didn't realize until after that when it says "Fight check", it probably means unmodified without items, right? I still would have beaten him, though probably with less stamina left. Jenny still had the Obsidian Statue, so that's was one round without getting hurt, and Mike reduces all stamina damage by 1.

I also got the King in Yellow expansion, but I haven't opened that box yet.

Right. Otherwise it's a Combat check.

We did a six-player game last night against Azathoth and had a blast. Hit a few snags with the rules here and there but otherwise it went pretty smoothly. We all picked our investigators (I went with "Ashcan" Pete) and let the new guy in the group (who has a hardon for Cthulhu mythos, which is why he was invited) pick our Big Bad.

We thought we were doing pretty good, three gates sealed with the doom track at 7 or 8, when I suddenly remembered the rule about too many open gates. We studied the board and saw that it would be impossible to win unless we got really lucky with the mythos cards. We did; next two gates caused monster bursts, the third tried to open in an already sealed location. Managed to keep the gates and monsters at reasonable levels after that and won the game.

Question: The rules aren't really clear on this, but how do you Close a gate as opposed to Seal it?

If you don't spend the five clue tokens, you've only closed it. The clue tokens or Elder Sign are used for sealing.

Fantasy Flight has posted up rules for league play.