So, part three of this review...
So, how to win against a old one in Arkham Horror?
Well there are a couple of ways
First - Seal 6 Gates - This is most "easy" way; but with the expansion Lurker in the Threshold it is a bit more difficult due to the bursts of gates
Second - Banish the Ancient One - Or as to say, you fight the old one after he has awaken and defeat him. This is hard as steel....
Third - Close the Gates - This one means that you've closed or seal every gate on the board and the number of gate throphies are equal or greater than the number of the investigators. This is not an easy condition because if you do not seal them another gate can open on the same spot. So...
Fourth - For the greater good (unique item of the Dunwich expansion) - In this task you must go to the Abyss (2nd Area); Yuggoth (2nd Area); The Dreamlands (2nd Area) and R'lyeh (2nd Area) and sacrifice in each one 4 clue tokens. If you achieve this task you are devoured but all investigators win the game (including you) - I watch some excel with games played by people (boardgamegeek) and in 13416 games submitted this happend 10 times so as you can see it is not that easy or possible.
Now about losing conditions?
Final combat - This is the more common one... You fight the ancient one and die... We shall talk about this a bit more about combat the ancient one..
King in Yellow Act III - When you play with the expansion cards from King in Yellow you can die if you have drawn the third Act. There is no battle nothing. You die!
Shudde M'ell - When you battle this ancient one (dunwich horror) he as a power that says that everytime a monster surge occurs you draw a rubble token and it's put on that location closing it for the duration of the game. When you drawn 7 rubble (everyone of them) you lose.
Joining the Winning Team - Well this is one of the most interesting ways to win(lose) the game...
So, this is a mission where you must go to St Mary Hospital; Arkham Asylum; South Church and Lost in time and Space and sacrifice 1 ally in each location... If you do that you win the game and everybody else loses. Suffice to say in the 13416 games played only 11 bastards done it.
Every one of them is different and that's the reason I really enjoy the game. Btw, as a curiosity the most played is Nyarlathotep, Azathoth and Yog-Sothoth. The least played is Daoloth (I think it was a free card) and from the 24 old ones is Rhan-Tegoth and Atlach-Nacha and Cthugha.
The Hardest one and Easiest one...
I never played against them all but from the same site look at this...
This graphic is to percentage of lost games against a particular ancient one
...
So lets start of how to defeat an old one.. This particular old one has 13 on the doom track so for each investigator you have to have one success. So if you are playing with four investgators you have to deal 13*4 .... so as you can see it's not good... But let imagine we have to fight him.
So, how to win against a old one in Arkham Horror?
Well there are a couple of ways
First - Seal 6 Gates - This is most "easy" way; but with the expansion Lurker in the Threshold it is a bit more difficult due to the bursts of gates
Second - Banish the Ancient One - Or as to say, you fight the old one after he has awaken and defeat him. This is hard as steel....
Third - Close the Gates - This one means that you've closed or seal every gate on the board and the number of gate throphies are equal or greater than the number of the investigators. This is not an easy condition because if you do not seal them another gate can open on the same spot. So...
Fourth - For the greater good (unique item of the Dunwich expansion) - In this task you must go to the Abyss (2nd Area); Yuggoth (2nd Area); The Dreamlands (2nd Area) and R'lyeh (2nd Area) and sacrifice in each one 4 clue tokens. If you achieve this task you are devoured but all investigators win the game (including you) - I watch some excel with games played by people (boardgamegeek) and in 13416 games submitted this happend 10 times so as you can see it is not that easy or possible.
Now about losing conditions?
Final combat - This is the more common one... You fight the ancient one and die... We shall talk about this a bit more about combat the ancient one..
King in Yellow Act III - When you play with the expansion cards from King in Yellow you can die if you have drawn the third Act. There is no battle nothing. You die!
Shudde M'ell - When you battle this ancient one (dunwich horror) he as a power that says that everytime a monster surge occurs you draw a rubble token and it's put on that location closing it for the duration of the game. When you drawn 7 rubble (everyone of them) you lose.
Joining the Winning Team - Well this is one of the most interesting ways to win(lose) the game...
So, this is a mission where you must go to St Mary Hospital; Arkham Asylum; South Church and Lost in time and Space and sacrifice 1 ally in each location... If you do that you win the game and everybody else loses. Suffice to say in the 13416 games played only 11 bastards done it.
Every one of them is different and that's the reason I really enjoy the game. Btw, as a curiosity the most played is Nyarlathotep, Azathoth and Yog-Sothoth. The least played is Daoloth (I think it was a free card) and from the 24 old ones is Rhan-Tegoth and Atlach-Nacha and Cthugha.
The Hardest one and Easiest one...
I never played against them all but from the same site look at this...
This graphic is to percentage of lost games against a particular ancient one
| Atlach-Nacha | 49% |
| Zhar | 49% |
| Rhan-Tegoth | 47% |
| Cthulhu (Arkham Nights) | 42% |
| Abhoth | 41% |
| Yibb-Tstll | 41% |
| Chaugnar Faugn | 41% |
| Quachil Uttaus | 40% |
| Tsathoggua | 40% |
| Yog-Sothoth | 40% |
| Shub-Niggurath | 29% |
| Azathoth | 28% |
| Hastur | 27% |
| Yig | 24% |
| Nyarlathotep | 21% |
| Ithaqua | 19% |
This graphic is to percentage of lost games when fighting an old one...
| Ancient One | Lose |
| Azathoth | 100% |
| Tsathoggua | 98% |
| Quachil Uttaus | 96% |
| Cthugha | 94% |
| Chaugnar Faugn | 91% |
| Zhar | 91% |
| Hastur (Arkham Nights) | 89% |
| Yog-Sothoth | 89% |
| Cthulhu | 86% |
| Ghatanothoa | 86% |
| Yibb-Tstll | 82% |
| Eihort | 82% |
| Nyogtha | 78% |
| Y'Golonac | 77% |
| Atlach-Nacha | 77% |
| Daoloth | 76% |
| Rhan-Tegoth | 72% |
| Shub-Niggurath | 68% |
| Abhoth | 67% |
| Bokrug | 62% |
| Glaaki | 60% |
| Shudde M'ell | 59% |
| Yig (Arkham Nights) | 58% |
| Hastur | 46% |
| Nyarlathotep | 42% |
| Ithaqua | 38% |
| Yig | 37% |
Well, Azathoth is impossible to win if you fight him (basicaly there is no fight you lose). And as you can see fighting an old one is not easy. Half of them have a percentage of over 80%. Tsathoggua is 98%... DAMN... So what's so hard about him you ask? Well...
So lets start of how to defeat an old one.. This particular old one has 13 on the doom track so for each investigator you have to have one success. So if you are playing with four investgators you have to deal 13*4 .... so as you can see it's not good... But let imagine we have to fight him.
First of all we lose all clues - so no rerolls. OK that's not hard. Then I attack and deals some wounds... Then he attacks.. and how does he attack?
I have to discard 2 monster trophies and 1 gate trophy! Each one!!
So, in normal games of cooperation one investigator is good to close gates and others are good to buy and help others, some are good at killing monsters
and so on. And the gates and monster trophies are very useful to gain allies, becoming bless, clues and so on.
and so on. And the gates and monster trophies are very useful to gain allies, becoming bless, clues and so on.
 |
| Thank you for existing in your life! Praise Cthulhu! |
So as you can see - to fight this beast we have to change the gameplay. Well first we try to seal the gates but sometimes you know, you have the feeling that you are not going to do it, so you change your tactic and start amassing weapons, spells and clues to battle the ancient one. With this one you don't do that but you focus on killing monsters and closing gates.
Lets talk about two other ancient ones... Ithaqua (one of the "easiest" ones with 37% losing probability) and Cthulhu with 86%
Cthulhu - In this case as you atta ck you must lower the maximum sanity or stamina by one. After he attacks 1 doom token is placed in back. So, basicaly you battling with 4 investigators. Total you did 7 damage. You remove one doom token and the other one is one success away to being remove. After he attacks he receives his doom token so this turn was useless to the investagors. Ah, about sanity and stamina loss. Each investigator starts with some stamina (per exemple 3) and sanity (per example 7) so each investigator is losing one this per turn... This is not that hard but combining with his regenaration is pretty hard. Ah don't forget that your investigator starts the game with less 1 stamina and 1 sanity so, that example should be 2 stamina and 6 sanity. It's hard, believe me. Now about Ithaqua, one of the easiest ones..
So this guy steals your items in the beginning of the battle. Imagine you have two weapons, you have to roll a die for each one so if you are unlucky you may lose everything.. But how does it attack. Each investigator must pass a fight (+1) check or lose two stamina. Each turn this decrease one. So, second turn it's a fight check (0) then fight check (-1). So imagine you have a fight check of 4 and that weapon you had was stolen... First turn you attack with 2 dice 4+1-3. The second turn you attack with one die and then you are taking damage until you lose. If you didn't lost that might weapon you may begin with 7 attacks, then 6 and so on... But this guy has a life of 11. So unless you have something you are going to lose the game. And this guy is the easiest eheh
Now what about Eldritch Horror
Well, as you know I only have the main game and with four investigators they made them pretty the same. As I said - you only have two winning conditions. Either solve all three mysteries before the doom track gets to zero or after the old one awakes defeat him and I don't think it's that hard to solve the mysteries. In all my games only Shub-Niggurath have awaken (and I lost). And one of the things they should fix in the expansions (don't know if they did); each old one has only four mysteries and eight encounter cards unique to each one. This made me a little upset because after playing against them all I knew 3/4 of the cards. So after playing two games I will know every card which is kind of stupid. BUT I must say that each mystery is the same. collect some clue tokens and put it on the card (the way to adquire the clues is the only thing that changes).
So guess which one I prefer?
Well I don't know how to answer that. For once I like that I have 24 ancient ones and each one has a battle and conditions that differ from other. Against X ancient one I must do Y but against W that won't work. And that's nice. In eldrich those clues and mystery cards unique to those ancient ones are a sure delight that give me more thematic feel but after playing two games against an old one it's been spoiled...
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