# arkham horror strategies?



## fireinthedust (Sep 15, 2009)

so I've tried ARkham Horror, and loved it.  However, not only was our group entirely Newb, but we only played until the whole group arrived for D&D: one full turn.


I want to know how to win at this game, any strategies people have discovered.  ...please?   

1)  who are the best characters to play?  
2)  Is there an optimal group cast?
3)  any schemes for victory recommended?


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## Wycen (Sep 16, 2009)

I've only played it 3 times in the past 2 or 3 years, so I don't really have a good idea on how to win, but to prolong the game I suggest not moving to dangerous areas, which might mean staying put and doing nothing for a long time.  

And forgetting the rules, like the number of monsters that appear, is another good way to prolong the game.

I might also suggest choosing your doom, (like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man) and simply choosing one of the easier BBEG's to kill.  Then again, I'm not sure of which definition of easier you should use.


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## Victim (Sep 16, 2009)

It's usually better to seal gates, especially in the most frequent locations, than to simply close them.  There are two real exceptions: 1: you're close to losing on open gates, and 2: the investigators are going to win soon, and you want to increase your own score to become 1st Citizen.  

The newspaper is your friend.  In the base game, there's only 1 bad encounter there.  Chilling out there can be a good source of additional money and clues.

Consolidate your clue tokens so you can seal more gates - 1 person with 5 is a lot more useful than characters with 2 and 3.

Trade items.  Rich and lucky characters should buy things and give extra weapons or spells to other characters.  Ideally, every character should have a decent weapon (or a pair of poor weapons) for self defense, and one guy should be a more focused monster slayer.

Mandy is a like a cheat code.


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## fireinthedust (Sep 16, 2009)

Should I focus on killing monsters or can I skip them and get to the gates?

    I think the archaeologist is a good monster slayer, ditto the gangster; but their low sanity scores mean I come really close to dying every time I run into a critter.  

I worry that spending a turn getting supplies feels like a wasted turn waiting to fight (which likely means I should be the monster slayer).

How do we trade items?   Do we have to meet up in the same spot?


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## MerricB (Sep 16, 2009)

The basic rules are:

Seal gates. Collect 5 clues as quickly as you can (more would be advisable so you survive the encounters), then move to one of the four "common" gate locations and seal it: Independence Square, Woods, Unvisited Isle, Witch House.

Pay attention to how you fight the Old One in the end just in case you can't seal gates in time. If he's resistant to magic, go to the General Store before it closes and buy every weapon you can. If he's resistant to physical, get magic weapons from the Old Curiosity Shop. 

Keep down the monsters wandering about if you can.

Get blessed when the final battle draws near.

Cheers!


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## fireinthedust (Sep 17, 2009)

What if we go through the gate to the Abyss?  Are we supposed to do that, to close a gate?  Oh yeah, I think we need an Elder Sign, or something.   ...i could be in big trouble.


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## MerricB (Sep 17, 2009)

fireinthedust said:


> What if we go through the gate to the Abyss?  Are we supposed to do that, to close a gate?  Oh yeah, I think we need an Elder Sign, or something.   ...i could be in big trouble.




You *have* to go through gates to seal them. Although you can seal them with an Elder Sign, getting one of those is very hard (and random). Most gates will be sealed with clues.

If you move onto an open gate, you'll be drawn through into the Outer World. For the next two turns, you'll have to Outer Worlds encounters, then return through the gate (place an explored marker under your character) and then you can make Fight or Lore checks to close it. If you close it and have 5 clues, you can seal it by discarding the clues. 

Sealing gates is essential for winning the game - it means that you get times where no gate opens and no monster burst occurs. If you seal the top 4 gates (mentioned above), you've basically shut down 60% of the Mythos deck. 

Cheers!


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## fireinthedust (Sep 18, 2009)

should I go through gates without clues?   I didn't have any (well, one), I just killed the monsters and jumped through.  ...with one Sanity left.  While typing this, it reads like a massive mistake (or at least a waste of time).


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## MerricB (Sep 18, 2009)

fireinthedust said:


> should I go through gates without clues?   I didn't have any (well, one), I just killed the monsters and jumped through.  ...with one Sanity left.  While typing this, it reads like a massive mistake (or at least a waste of time).




LOL.

"Just closing gates" can work, but you've got to do it on the right gates. The Science Lab gate, in particular is a real pain if it's taken up by a gate (since it is one of the main sources of clue tokens), and it rarely gets a gate on it. Getting rid of gates like that - the one on the Historical Society is another good one to just close - are good and you don't "waste" clues sealing a gate that doesn't give benefits.

Just closing a gate on the Woods, Independence Square, Unvisited Isle or Witch House is a mistake: another gate will open there very soon (increasing the Doom track), and Doom increasing is a much bigger threat normally than a monster surge.

The other "uncommon" gates... normally, close them only if you have to (if the game is going to end due to too many open gates). Otherwise, seal the major four gates first, then close/seal the uncommon gates.

Cheers!


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## John Crichton (Sep 21, 2009)

If you are just playing with the base game (no expansions) your best bet is to simply get familiar with the rules before thinking about serious strategy.  The real beauty of the game is that it can be played many different ways and you can still be successful and have fun.  Another huge bonus is that you can play it solo.  Just play with 2-3 investigators yourself a few times and that will help you get comfy with the rules, timing and such.  It will also give you a chance to try out all the characters to learn their strengths and weaknesses and see different types of weapons, skills, spells and other items.

As for basic play the whole point of the game is to close/seal gates.  That's the only way to win unless you want to just try and gear up to fight the Old One which I think get pretty boring fast but it's still one of the 3 win conditions.

As for characters in the base game the best two are easily Kate and Mandy.  Just have Kate make sure she is at an unstable location every turn so that she effectively turns into a gate/monster blocker.  Mandy is obviously powerful because of her "super re-roll" that lets you keep successes and re-roll all failures for any character once per turn.

She isn't in the base game but there is a violinist character in one of the expansions who has weak stats.  However she gains a clue token every time a gate opens plus all the investigators can use her clue tokens making the team able to seal gates almost every time they close one.  Out of about a dozen games with her on the team I've only lost one and it was still close.  She is about as close to an auto-win as one can get with AH when used properly.

You also may want to check out boardgamegeek.com.  They have strategies there as well as some helpful downloads that clear up many of the more confusing rules.


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## fireinthedust (Sep 22, 2009)

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).


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## John Crichton (Sep 22, 2009)

fireinthedust said:


> 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.



fireinthedust said:


> 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.
> ...



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.



fireinthedust said:


> 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.


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## fireinthedust (Sep 22, 2009)

John Crichton said:


> 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.


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## Victim (Sep 22, 2009)

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.


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## John Crichton (Sep 22, 2009)

Victim said:


> 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.


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## Victim (Sep 22, 2009)

John Crichton said:


> 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.


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## John Crichton (Sep 23, 2009)

Victim said:


> 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.



Victim 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.



Victim said:


> 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.


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## Blackbrrd (Oct 15, 2009)

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.


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## John Crichton (Oct 16, 2009)

Blackbrrd said:


> 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.



Blackbrrd said:


> She can actually nearly gear herself doing gate jumps.



Huh?


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## Blackbrrd (Oct 18, 2009)

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.


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## John Crichton (Oct 19, 2009)

Blackbrrd said:


> 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.



Ah, gear *up*.  



Blackbrrd said:


> 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.



That's too many 'ifs' to be a solid strategy for my tastes.


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## Blackbrrd (Oct 22, 2009)

John Crichton said:


> That's too many 'ifs' to be a solid strategy for my tastes.



I only meant Gloria G. needs any one of them, not all of them. In other words, she might very well start with the item/spell she needs.


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## John Crichton (Oct 22, 2009)

Blackbrrd said:


> I only meant Gloria G. needs any one of them, not all of them. In other words, she might very well start with the item/spell she needs.



I got what you meant.  

I just wanted to point out that she's basically one of those characters who is very dependant on multiple factors to be effective, even if that specialty can be very powerful and helpful.  There are many characters that I'd prefer to play over her.

Have you played with any of the expansions yet or just the core set?


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## Blackbrrd (Oct 23, 2009)

John Crichton said:


> I got what you meant.
> 
> I just wanted to point out that she's basically one of those characters who is very dependant on multiple factors to be effective, even if that specialty can be very powerful and helpful.  There are many characters that I'd prefer to play over her.
> 
> Have you played with any of the expansions yet or just the core set?




I have tried three different expansions. I enjoyed "Black goat of the woods" the most.


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## John Crichton (Oct 25, 2009)

Blackbrrd said:


> I have tried three different expansions. I enjoyed "Black goat of the woods" the most.



How about the big box expansions?


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## Merlin the Tuna (Jan 10, 2010)

fireinthedust said:


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



I just jumped on the Arkham bandwagon last week and have been through two mostly-games so far -- both times we had to call on account of length, but it's been a good experience.

In Michael's (the gangster's) defense, since he starts with a tommy gun, you can park his slider on 3 Fight/4 Will and do pretty well for yourself, especially if you manage to snag a good skill/ally card or two.  And again admitting my inexperience, but he seems like absolutely the best monster killer to have on hand when Ithaqua is the Ancient One, since he can end turns in the streets (ie where the monsters are) without automatically taking stamina damage.


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## John Crichton (Jan 14, 2010)

Merlin the Tuna said:


> I just jumped on the Arkham bandwagon last week and have been through two mostly-games so far -- both times we had to call on account of length, but it's been a good experience.
> 
> In Michael's (the gangster's) defense, since he starts with a tommy gun, you can park his slider on 3 Fight/4 Will and do pretty well for yourself, especially if you manage to snag a good skill/ally card or two.  And again admitting my inexperience, but he seems like absolutely the best monster killer to have on hand when Ithaqua is the Ancient One, since he can end turns in the streets (ie where the monsters are) without automatically taking stamina damage.



He's certainly a damn good monster killer.  There are a few characters in expansions that are really good as well but Michael is just as good due to the reasons you already stated (Tommy Gun, tough guy, etc.).


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## TroyXavier (Feb 12, 2010)

Michael can be really handy for sure.   The fact he can soak stamina damage made him really useful for the winter elder one especially when we drew the card that caused the 5 monsters to appear.   He could just stand out there and blast them away.

Has anyone made a list of who's best?  I know a few are blahh and I've seen the few that are really good.  Was just wondering if there is a tier list.


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## Jhaelen (Feb 15, 2010)

TroyXavier said:


> Has anyone made a list of who's best?  I know a few are blahh and I've seen the few that are really good.  Was just wondering if there is a tier list.



Well, there's been several attempts to create such a list over at the FFG boards.

It may also be interesting to have a look at the latest (January 2010) results from the Arkham Statistics pages.
On the 'Investigators' page you'll find a listing of the 'Most Effective' investigators.


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## Saeviomagy (Feb 16, 2010)

dang: wish I'd known about the stats page before. We've had a few kills against some of those "hardest to fight" old ones.


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## DavidVS (Aug 27, 2011)

fireinthedust said:


> 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.




He is correct.  See the official FAQ PDF file.


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