Zach, Dane, and I played another game of Arkham Horror yesterday afternoon. The Ancient One drawn was Shub-Niggurath. We've never faced her before. Yow! Tough one, and we lost.
We added in the King in Yellow expansion this time as well, using the Permanent Production and Herald options. This was a first for us (it was an early Christmas gift from Zach), and it went... not well. Not that it made the game less fun - far from it! I appreciated the extra encounter cards and the new items and spells and such. It does increase the difficulty level a bit, though. One reason we lost was the Herald and those darned Yellow Signs tokens! These are used whenever the Terror Track increases, and you have two options: advance the Doom Track or accept a Blight, which is sort of like a universal, permanent, negative Ally. We only had the Terror Track creep up on us twice - we are pretty good at keeping monster numbers down - but the advancing Doom track and the Blight we drew might have done us in.
It started off so well. We each sealed a gate in the same turn! Only three left, we thought... Ashcan Pete (me) managed to get a second gate closed, finally, for a total of four. And then, just as I was ready to pop back into Arkham from the Great Hall of Celeano with five Clues, disaster struck: a Blight. And this particular Blight meant that it would take six Clues to seal the gate. SO much for that brilliant plan.
At that point, we only had two spaces left on the Doom Track. Shub Niggurath awoke. We fought, but... without appropriate equipment or bonuses, defeating Shub-Niggurath was just not possible. We were all devoured, the Ancient One rampaged across Arkham, and it was a Bad Day for Massachusetts.
Next time we are adding in the Innsmouth expansion. That was my gift to Zach. Great minds think alike, I guess. It looks diabolically difficult as well. Those Ancient Ones need to stay sleeping!
