[Board Game] Arkham Horror

[HuManBing]

Yeah, the spellcasting is difficult because most of the decent spells cost Sanity to cast. The only time when they're actually worthwhile is when you have somebody who can reduce the Sanity cost - either the Psychiatrist (who restores 1 Sanity per turn) or the Professor (who reduces any one Sanity cost by 1 point).

The Professor's power effectively makes the 1-Sanity-cost spells into 0-Sanity-cost spells, so for him the spells are about as effective as mundane weapons. The only tradeoff is that he has to make a Lore check to successfully cast them (which is usually not terribly difficult as he can have a high Lore). Fewer things have Magical Immunity or Resistance than Physical, so it all evens out for him.

For other characters, even the Magician (!), the Sanity cost of casting spells is simply too high to make it worthwhile. Bearing in mind that most Monsters will have a Horror check at the start of combat too.

[ScS of the Fraternity]

I concur with Alhoon, the weapons were the absolute tops.

I only playeed Arkham a few times with my brothers, and each time we scored a win - never encountering the terrible Elder Gawd, of course. Its been a while, but i'm fairly certain that we had the rules correct. The key was to focus entirely on sealing the gates with clues. We practically never went to the store or the shops, and at almost every opportunity we traded in the dead monsters for blessings.
We had to use strategy with the monsters, though. By not trading in a monster, you could keep that one species of monster from being chosen out of the monster bag.

[HuManBing]

Yes, closing then sealing the gates is by far the fastest way to win the game (six sealed gates will do the trick).

It's possible, but difficult, to win by closed gates only. The parameters of this require that you close every last gate on the board, and that the number of gate tokens equals the number of players. Because a gate tries to appear each turn, the only way you can prevent gates from repeatedly popping up is by sealing them. Thus, this is only possible if you have less than six players (because you may as well seal them with clues anyway).

Shotguns are pretty nice. Their combat bonus is not very high for firearms (require two hands, only gives +4), but they allow every single combat die you roll to count as double successes if you roll a natural 6.

Blessings are also almost indispensable - later games we heavily prioritized those.

[alhoon]

Later additions to the game have the gate burst cards, that break through sealed gates.

[HuManBing]

A correction: the Professor's power actually does not reduce the Sanity cost of spells at all.

So this means the only person with any mitigating factors to casting spells is the Psychologist... and she can recover 1 Sanity per turn at upkeep.

[alhoon]

Psychologist could help people use their spells too.

[HuManBing]

Yes. In fact, the more I see of the Psychologist, the more I think she's a standalone badass.

You can get the researcher and the detective together for a good team (detective gets multiple dice for Clue tokens; researcher allows rerolls of all non-successful dice). You can also get the photographer and the novelist together for a similar team.

But on her own, the Psychologist is a powerful character. If you load her up with combat bonuses, it doesn't matter if she takes a few Sanity hits in Horror checks. She'll flatten the enemy and then heal up quickly.

[alhoon]

Well, let's not pretend it's always that bad to lose all your sanity. If you have a couple of crap things here and there, it's a good way to teleport to the Asylum.

[HuManBing]

The heaviest price of losing Sanity, in my experience, is you lose half your Clue tokens. This is brutal, because without Clue tokens you're going to find it really hard to beat the game (they're one of the few ways you can seal Gates rather than merely close them).

Losing items, spells, and retainers is only a minor penalty, in my experience.

[alhoon]

Except if you play with 2 characters and the Elder one is managable.

Then you gather guns, take a blessing and maw down the Elder one with your attacks. As far as it's not immune to physical attacks or the dread "Attack 1 place a curse. A curse char attacked again is devoured" with just 2 S needed for each doom token you can easily get 5-6 Successes/ roll and kill him fast. Usually the Elder one needs 2+ landed hits to kill a player so you have 3-4 rounds to kill him. Totally managable for many Elder ones.
It's about which strategy you choose. If the Elder one is a pus you better use your clue tokens fighting him or getting blessed instead of closing gates.

Note When I play the game alone once a while, if I use 1 investigator, even the 15 doom tokens Elder ones that kill with 2 hits can be beaten. Usually by the 3rd round of combat my combat monster character has dealt enough damage to kill the Elder one.

[HuManBing]

That's interesting. I had never seriously considered a strategy where I face the Ancient One in combat, because I'd assumed it would be doomed to failure. But I might give it a try after loading up my investigators.

[alhoon]

Depends.
6 investigators and it's impossible (except for the weakest EO). The Elder one attacks ALL investigators at the same time, so your guys drop before his health. At first, you deal some damage with your 6 guys, but then someone fails the "Easy" rolls and you're 5. Then one more and you're 4. Then 2 more and you're 2. Then he wipes you out. Also 6 plays means at least 3 won't be properly equipped to pull their weight.

6 investigators on the other hand, would have time to deal with monsters so they could keep gates closed so that their "clue guys" could seal 6. 2 investigators would have trouble keeping 8 gates from opening.

[HuManBing]

Recently we took a group of three investigators to fight Yig.

It was a series of accidental boons. First, we ended up with at least +5 combat bonus each from weaponry. I had a +7 from wielding two pistols. Secondly, a Mythos card of a late turn gave us all Luck checks to get blessed, and we all three got blessings despite having no more than two dice to roll for the luck checks. Third, we were forced to kill a Cultist when it moved onto one of our squares, thus inadvertently giving us control over when Yig appeared.

For the fight, we lost our blessings early on, but it was okay. We maximized speed and fight, and each turn we did on average 3-4 successes per attack, and we were able to defeat Yig on the third turn. I think only one of us failed a speed check at all.

[alhoon]

After the 3rd turn people (blessed or no) would start dropping. You either mostly kill the EO by 3rd turn so you can finish him up by 4th turn and mop up (if you're lucky) at 5th turn. or you've lost.

[HuManBing]

Nope. 3rd turn with Yig means you're making a speed check at -1. If you fail, you lose 1 Stamina and 1 Sanity.

Realistically speaking, 3rd turn would be the first that people start failing the check... which still only means they're losing one point of each. Assuming they didn't enter the battle in the extremity of desperation and unpreparedness, you'd probably be looking at 5th round before investigators started risking actual death (for people with really low top Speed and either Stamina or Sanity 3).

We beat him down in the third turn but we could each have gone for at least three more even if we failed all our Speed checks.