arkham horror strategies?

[fireinthedust]

Just finished the first game. In short: Azathoth ate us. Basically, we couldn't get three spells fast enough because of this Ritual mythos card, and random gates, and weather conditions; two gates every round was annoying to start the game off with!!!
Otherwise, I think our group played well. Would have won, but at the last second were slowed down off-world by one card, stopping the closest investigator (photographer) from closing and sealing his gate. Brutal.



I played the Professor, who I think is up there as well. Soak 1 Sanity? I got the Heal spell, which is great for upkeep. I got the Sword of Glory +6, and even with a 0 in Fight I was the party striker (to use a D&D analogy) and eventually the Arkham Deputy.
As the party caster, I think he's a must-have.

Researcher is a must-have, for sure.

Scientist: is great, but I can see her as boring to play. For sure good if she's a "goalie" for the hot-spot gates, but would need fun encounters to stave off boredom. I'll check her out again, and think something up.

Violinist: sweet! I can see myself getting an expansion or three. Which one would be good to know! Low stats sucks, but get her paired up with the Detective, and the game might even get easy.

Photographer: picks his own encounter cards? Handy.

Detective: gets double the dice from Clues? sweet.

Dilletante: started the game late, but worth the money. I think a mode of transport is a must have, to ferry supplies to the rest of us.


The meat-shields, so called, of Archaeologist and Gangster... sanity is too low to fight monsters, so why bother?


Question: if Azathoth eats the world, does that include the other realms? Like, if I and another character are in the City of the Great Race, and someone else is in the Abyss, do we also get eaten? Sure, the game is over, but I was doing great but for some whims of the dice (I thought, at any rate).

 

[John Crichton]

Just finished the first game. In short: Azathoth ate us. Basically, we couldn't get three spells fast enough because of this Ritual mythos card, and random gates, and weather conditions; two gates every round was annoying to start the game off with!!!
Otherwise, I think our group played well. Would have won, but at the last second were slowed down off-world by one card, stopping the closest investigator (photographer) from closing and sealing his gate. Brutal.

I'm assuming by ritual you mean rumor mythos card name The Great Ritual. It sounds like that was the first one you pulled at the very start of the game. If so, the rules actually prevent the players in a deeper hole right off the bat from happening. If the very first Mythos card is a rumor then you discard it and only open the gate and place the clues indicated on the card. Also, it takes 5 full turns until the fail effect kicks in so you should have had that long to get the spells needed to get rid of it.

Also, with the environment cards, you were making sure to just have one of each category (urban, mystical & weather) in effect at at time right? The new one replaces the old one the moment it is drawn. So the maximum amount of rumors and environments one can have out at any one time are 4. 1 rumor (any new ones are discarded if there is one already in play) plus one of the 3 environment conditions.

I played the Professor, who I think is up there as well. Soak 1 Sanity? I got the Heal spell, which is great for upkeep. I got the Sword of Glory +6, and even with a 0 in Fight I was the party striker (to use a D&D analogy) and eventually the Arkham Deputy.
As the party caster, I think he's a must-have.

Researcher is a must-have, for sure.

Scientist: is great, but I can see her as boring to play. For sure good if she's a "goalie" for the hot-spot gates, but would need fun encounters to stave off boredom. I'll check her out again, and think something up.

Violinist: sweet! I can see myself getting an expansion or three. Which one would be good to know! Low stats sucks, but get her paired up with the Detective, and the game might even get easy.

Photographer: picks his own encounter cards? Handy.

Detective: gets double the dice from Clues? sweet.

Dilletante: started the game late, but worth the money. I think a mode of transport is a must have, to ferry supplies to the rest of us.


The meat-shields, so called, of Archaeologist and Gangster... sanity is too low to fight monsters, so why bother?

The Private Eye/Detective Joe Diamond is okay at best. He has to burn skill tokens to get a use out of that ability and you'd much rather be using them to seal gates. So pairing him up with Patrice is actually not a very good combo in the end. Her clue should almost exclusively be used for sealing gates otherwise much of her biggest asset is wasted.

The Professor is good for casting spells but his ability does not stop sanity cost for casting spells. So Heal still costs one sanity. His ability stops sanity loss but not sanity costs (which is tricky, I screwed it up my first play, too!), which all spells with a 1 or greater sanity cost are. He's not my favorite character to play but I'd much rather draw him than either Vincent Lee (The Doctor) or Carolyn Fern (The Psychologist). Their abilities sound really good at first but really aren't that helpful.

But while we're on characters, Patrice Hathaway is nearly a broken character as I mentioned above. I forgot about Akachi Onyele who closes gates at a +1 bonus and costs her one less clue token to seal them.

The investigators in the expansion are a great addition to game. Many of them, like Zoe Samaras are just awesome for flavor and feel.

Question: if Azathoth eats the world, does that include the other realms? Like, if I and another character are in the City of the Great Race, and someone else is in the Abyss, do we also get eaten? Sure, the game is over, but I was doing great but for some whims of the dice (I thought, at any rate).

If the Azathoth awakens techinically the investigators enter the final battle which means all rumors/environments are discarded and the investigators all team in one place in Arkham so there shouldn't be any characters left in the Other World locations. But yeah, it doesn't really matter.

 

[fireinthedust]

I'm assuming by ritual you mean rumor mythos card name The Great Ritual. It sounds like that was the first one you pulled at the very start of the game. If so, the rules actually prevent the players in a deeper hole right off the bat from happening. If the very first Mythos card is a rumor then you discard it and only open the gate and place the clues indicated on the card. Also, it takes 5 full turns until the fail effect kicks in so you should have had that long to get the spells needed to get rid of it.

Nah, I got sucked into a gate in the Woods when it showed up, and no one else had spells.

Environment: constantly pulling weather cards.

The Professor is good for casting spells but his ability does not stop sanity cost for casting spells. So Heal still costs one sanity. His ability stops sanity loss but not sanity costs (which is tricky, I screwed it up my first play, too!), which all spells with a 1 or greater sanity cost are. He's not my favorite character to play but I'd much rather draw him than either Vincent Lee (The Doctor) or Carolyn Fern (The Psychologist). Their abilities sound really good at first but really aren't that helpful.

Really? I get what you're saying, but I think I'd like a rules quote specifically about the professor... only because it's currently so sweet being able to heal when I want. Basically being the prof and the doctor isn't too bad.

The Psychologist could be great if she was a spellcaster. Some way to cover the loss of sanity.

If the Azathoth awakens techinically the investigators enter the final battle which means all rumors/environments are discarded and the investigators all team in one place in Arkham so there shouldn't be any characters left in the Other World locations. But yeah, it doesn't really matter.

huh. oh well.

Still, if we should've ignored the first rumor card, we would've been able to get most of the gates closed faster. Good to know, then.

 

[Victim]

Joe Diamond is pretty good if you're going to fight the Elder God instead of sealing gates. Once upon a time, we had Joe dump around 10 clue tokens with his special ability AND the fight skill (so 3 dice per clue), while armed with a shotgun and supported by Mandy. He didn't quite one shot the elder god.

It's often faster to try something like that on Hastor than to win by sealing.

 

[John Crichton]

Joe Diamond is pretty good if you're going to fight the Elder God instead of sealing gates. Once upon a time, we had Joe dump around 10 clue tokens with his special ability AND the fight skill (so 3 dice per clue), while armed with a shotgun and supported by Mandy. He didn't quite one shot the elder god.

It's often faster to try something like that on Hastor than to win by sealing.

Well sure, in certain situations all the investigators abilities can be abused.

 

[Victim]

Well sure, in certain situations all the investigators abilities can be abused.

Well, sure. But even in non-ideal situations, some Elder Gods are often best fought by beating them up instead of sealing.

Plus, often times it doesn't really matter what you'd like to do, you MUST do certain things. For example, some skill checks are so bad that failure will knock you out, taking away half your clues. A few bonus dice to prevent catastrophic failure can save more clue tokens.

Also, Joe Diamond's high focus benefits greatly from knowing the encounter decks. The Woods, for instance, has a lot of stealth checks. If you know what you're likely to go into, you can tailor your skills a bit to fit.

 

[John Crichton]

Well, sure. But even in non-ideal situations, some Elder Gods are often best fought by beating them up instead of sealing.

Oh, I agree. Hastur is especially tricky to seal gates against as you said.

Plus, often times it doesn't really matter what you'd like to do, you MUST do certain things. For example, some skill checks are so bad that failure will knock you out, taking away half your clues. A few bonus dice to prevent catastrophic failure can save more clue tokens.

I certainly agree there. The skill often helps with that.

Also, Joe Diamond's high focus benefits greatly from knowing the encounter decks. The Woods, for instance, has a lot of stealth checks. If you know what you're likely to go into, you can tailor your skills a bit to fit.

Well, sure but that can be said for all the locations. That's what the symbols on the board represent for each location. That and multiple playthroughs as you said are good for knowing what may happen in certain locations. I actually like the expansions for this because the surprise of not knowing what is coming can be very fun.

Joe Diamond is certainly not a bad character. I consider him middle tier.

 

[Blackbrrd]

Gloria Goldberg - Arkham Horror Wiki is a great gate hopper since she can selected between two otherworld encounters. Other characters sometimes just die because of bad encounters. Gloria very seldom does this. She can actually nearly gear herself doing gate jumps.

 

[John Crichton]

Gloria Goldberg - Arkham Horror Wiki is a great gate hopper since she can selected between two otherworld encounters. Other characters sometimes just die because of bad encounters. Gloria very seldom does this.

Yeah, she's good in the gates (nice luck/lore balance plus the noted ability) but far from one of the best characters overall. She can have a problem getting herself to gates because of her low speed/sneak.

She can actually nearly gear herself doing gate jumps.

Huh?

 

[Blackbrrd]

Gloria Goldberg can partially gear herself while gate jumping due to the ability to select beneficial other world encounters.

Typically: "Roll a luck -1 check to get a unique item" or similar cards.

It is true about her having a hard time getting into gates to start with, but she should either get: a offensive/sneak spell, a weapon or speed/sneak items, and she is good to go.