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Eldritch Horror MEGATHREAD
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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- southernman
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- D10
- TOTALLY WiReD
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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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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.
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
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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.
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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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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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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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Of the three others, which is your favorite?
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