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Eldritch Horror MEGATHREAD

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14 Jan 2017 21:00 #242444 by jeb
Replied by jeb on topic Eldritch Horror MEGATHREAD
Played twice this AM, and ate shit both times. I was solo with three and then with the kids at three again. I'd asked above and got waved off, but it's WORSE with odd numbers of players, folks. The "round up" rule kicks your ass here when you need to sacrifice clues equal to "half the number of investigators" and what not.

C'thulhu was the Big Bad, and in the first round C'Thylla appeared and I think someone died on a 90% roll, and I just started over. In the second game, the Spinner of Webs appeared and started ticking, and the Bombay Plague appeared and started killing us. We defeated the first Mystery (which ate clues and spells) but had no clues left before the Spinner cost us the game. (Our bruiser went after her, but failed the Horror check, which means he didn't even GET to the Combat Check, and he was killed by the Bombay Plague when it rang twice in consecutive turns).
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14 Jan 2017 21:28 #242445 by Gary Sax
Replied by Gary Sax on topic Eldritch Horror MEGATHREAD
I think I read Cthulu was the hardest one in the base game, FWIW.

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15 Jan 2017 15:38 #242461 by southernman

Gary Sax wrote: Do you use any house rules? Ours are choose characters and the biggest one is no movement order. So we just move characters in any order. It definitely makes the game easier but I like it because it allows more clever combinations and teamwork. We just roll first player randomly whenever it's needed. Makes the game go faster too.


No house rules apart from the semi-random character start (although if my investigator gets defeated I usually choose my next investigator(s), I like to still have a chance of winning the game). As for first player we often use it to dump it on each other although, if I'm partly nerfed, I'll quite often keep it so the other two less nerfed players don't get hit by any Mythos effects. I will admit that we are quite good at Arkham games and for Elditch we prioritize what is going to lose the game for us soonest then what we need to do to win it, i.e. Ongoing Rumours that result in insta-loss get done before Mystery cards that win the game before the Mythos cards run out which get higher priority over closing gates to stop Doom going down, otherwise we just argue and play.
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04 Feb 2017 21:56 - 04 Feb 2017 22:11 #243508 by Gary Sax
Replied by Gary Sax on topic Eldritch Horror MEGATHREAD
Played today, had a great time. So much good about this game---I moved it up to a 9 on BGG. I think buying the small boxes is the perfect way to play this game. I'm skeptical of the big boxes. I DEFINITELY don't want a bigger board. It can be challenging to traverse already.

We had no mysteries today that required clues, which was an interesting twist. We beat the Dunwich Horror up by using Tokyo (taking a dark pact to do 3 damage) and then coming in and overwhelming him. My wife likes the scamp or whatever the best, who can avoid monsters with an observation check (she starts with "elusive."). We rolled pretty well in this game and caught some decent breaks with rumors and where they were located. We dispatched the rumors quickly. EH actually has a version of a support character, who can park somewhere and cast either protective spells (Flesh Ward, Instill Bravery, etc) or alternatively can just grind out items to give to people (politician) or location encounters. This is fun.

One thing about EH that bears some notice is that it requires a few plays and some strategy to play better. In particular, my "starter" comments to anyone coming into the game:

A) Prepare: while it isn't 100% necessary, I nevertheless think it's important to buy stuff, take debt, distribute items early. In my first few plays I'd go with at least one character in the party that has 4 influence. It's harder to randomly stumble into great shit by just playing the game than in AH.
B) EH is more predictable than AH. THE most important piece of information for play is buried in the rules reference under skill checks: the types of checks that generally go with each card type. EH is much better about making the skills required by each type of check more consistently predictable. Yes, you'll get a few wrenches thrown in here and there, but you have a very good chance of pulling a test with the type of skill that that card usually has. Also, the on-board markers for the big cities are also much more consistent than AH---if you go to Japan there are a large percentage of encounters that hurt and destroy monsters, for example. Our play got 5x better once we looked up which skill goes to which check and distributed tasks accordingly.
C) EH does expect that your investigators have a solid chance of dying. You should plan accordingly.
D) Character powers are almost always really strong, so you should really be hammering their special powers as often as possible.
E) Closing random gates as a matter of course when you happen to travel past is much more key than it immediately seems

Some stuff that remains annoying, but is not a deal breaker:

--Some of the mythos shit is just stupid. A fair number of them will just like randomly lose you like 4+ health or sanity, which is really lame. Others have incredibly crippling consequences, on a level that is just arbitrary and unfun---we drew one today that made every skill for every character worse unless you sacrifices a sanity and a stamina for EACH skill.
--I think you need to play with more characters. Because the game is so tense with regard to die rolling (you'll rarely be rolling more than 3-4 die, so failure is omnipresent), you can get into situations where your character is stuck somewhere trying to do something that really must be done but keeps failing. Or getting delayed. Etc. I think having more than one character means this isn't that big a deal---if one of your characters is stuck trying to pull spells or encounter a particular clue you still have the other to do more dynamic things with.
--Whomever kept the delayed mechanic in the game :rolleyes:
Last edit: 04 Feb 2017 22:11 by Gary Sax.
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19 Feb 2017 17:18 - 19 Feb 2017 17:26 #244186 by Gary Sax
Replied by Gary Sax on topic Eldritch Horror MEGATHREAD
Played about half a game today, we're coming back to it tonight or tomorrow.

Something worth noting is that they went above and beyond in fixing styles of play and characters that were Not Fun in Arkham to be awesome in Eldritch. Specifically, spells and spellcasting are a blast, and support characters that were completely groan worthy useless are now great. Example of this is the Psychic, who rarely moves around the board but when combined with some spells can get involved all over the place like a Guru sitting in Arkham helping everyone out. More than just making them powerful, they also made them fun to play as.

Since you end up making so many critical non- combat checks, it really pays to run largely non-combat characters and have one or two who can fight. I think the game is even winnable without any combat characters.

Also, gotta get those artifacts, they are so gamechangingly good. It isn't obvious until you play a few times, but going to expedition spaces to get artifacts is actually an excellent idea early in the the game, you'll get all kind of shit that is a total blast and incredibly powerful. My wife's character grabbed this tome that tests lore and can neutralize non-epic monsters in a single shot with the low probability risk of advancing the doom token on recurring events. She killed a Dark Young (5 health, brutally strong) that was causing us problems immediately. My expedition leader grabbed a +5 knife (better than a tommy gun) that teleports you to other monsters after you stab a monster.
Last edit: 19 Feb 2017 17:26 by Gary Sax.
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19 Feb 2017 20:58 #244189 by Shellhead

Gary Sax wrote: Something worth noting is that they went above and beyond in fixing styles of play and characters that were Not Fun in Arkham to be awesome in Eldritch. Specifically, spells and spellcasting are a blast, and support characters that were completely groan worthy useless are now great. Example of this is the Psychic, who rarely moves around the board but when combined with some spells can get involved all over the place like a Guru sitting in Arkham helping everyone out. More than just making them powerful, they also made them fun to play as.


Perhaps it was a mistake for Arkham Horror to make spellcasting less fun to play, but it was a decision rooted in the Call of Cthulhu rpg where using magic generally costs sanity points. IIRC, the original version of Arkham Horror also charged sanity for spellcasting.

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19 Feb 2017 21:21 #244190 by Gary Sax
Replied by Gary Sax on topic Eldritch Horror MEGATHREAD
EH spells generally cost a bit of sanity, but the worst effects are left for when you fail to cast a spell or cast it with only 1 success.
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19 Feb 2017 22:37 #244192 by jeb
Replied by jeb on topic Eldritch Horror MEGATHREAD
The biggest change between EH and AH for me is wounding monsters. In AH, you just need to roll 3 hits on tough ones or that's it, try again. The chip damage in EH is a lifesaver.
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19 Feb 2017 23:09 #244194 by Gary Sax
Replied by Gary Sax on topic Eldritch Horror MEGATHREAD
Yeah, it also makes combat one round which speeds things up a bit where one player is no longer rolling round after round while everyone else watches. Which has some nice cheering moments, but sometimes grinds.

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24 Feb 2017 11:57 #244493 by Gary Sax
Replied by Gary Sax on topic Eldritch Horror MEGATHREAD
Alright, I just read Michael's Dreamlands review. My current feeling is that I will buy all the small box expansions but none of the big box options. I know some of you have the big boxes; does anyone think any of the big boxes provides anything vital or extra fun to the game? I'd probably never use the sideboard content but I'd it least put something on the mulling it over list if it's a really solid addition to the regular game.

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24 Feb 2017 12:18 - 24 Feb 2017 12:19 #244497 by Egg Shen
Replied by Egg Shen on topic Eldritch Horror MEGATHREAD
The only thing I can think of are the "focus" tokens and rules that I believe were first introduced in the Mountains of Madness expansion. However, I believe those have been added into one of the small box expansions as well...making it sort of a moot point.
Last edit: 24 Feb 2017 12:19 by Egg Shen.

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24 Feb 2017 12:21 #244498 by Gary Sax
Replied by Gary Sax on topic Eldritch Horror MEGATHREAD
Yeah, I think the second small box has those too. Those are critical.

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24 Apr 2017 20:17 #247093 by ufe20
Replied by ufe20 on topic Eldritch Horror MEGATHREAD
So finally got this and played twice this weekend. Mad at myself for not getting it earlier. There's some little things I miss from AH but overall it's just a cleaner,smoother game.

Only disappointment is that it seems to come with pretty small encounter decks. Probably looking to grab 2 small expansions soon. Already proxying focus tokens as per this thread. Any advice on which two to get? Looks like the first one is sold out right now at CSI. Is that one okay to skip for now?

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25 Apr 2017 07:44 #247120 by Gary Sax
Replied by Gary Sax on topic Eldritch Horror MEGATHREAD
Strong recommendation to track down Foresaken Lore expansion (1st one that is out of stock). It's probably the only expansion that's really must have because it solves the issue you had of thin decks.

I'm not super enthused about the big boxes. I would just buy small boxes. I have them all. They're all pretty good, though adding negative permanent skill penalties is a bit of an annoying kick in the balls.

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25 Apr 2017 14:50 #247169 by ufe20
Replied by ufe20 on topic Eldritch Horror MEGATHREAD
Yeah, Forsaken Lore seemed like the best "more stuff" expansion to start with, but it's going for like $40 right now, so I guess I'm waiting on that one.

Of the three others, which is your favorite?

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