Innsmouth Horror

Thanks for the write-up! Now, like Uba, just waiting for Tales of the Arabian Nights to come out so my Innsmouth will ship...

Shellhead wrote:

5. The Tide is Rising: the Deep Ones Rising track is great. It's easy to work with compared to those fiddly Kingsport rift tokens. It's very similar to the Dunwich Horror track, only twice as long but more likely to go off, but the players can work against it. Every time a gate is thwarted from appearing (usually because of an Elder Sign token at that location due to a successful seal), you add a token to the Deep Ones Rising track. And every time a monster jumps into a vortex space in Innsmouth (identical in nature to the vortex spaces in Dunwich), you add a token to that Deep Ones Rising track. If it fills up with all six tokens, go to Final Battle with the Ancient One.

To clear out that Deep Ones Rising track before it fills up, you can discard clue tokens in Innsmouth locations during the upkeep phase, placing those clue tokens on the Federal Raid track. When all six spaces on the Federal Raid track fill up, you remove all those clue tokens and also remove all tokens on the Deep Ones Rising track, to indicate that the Feds just raided Innsmouth. The tricky part is that you can only discard up to two tokens to fill the two Fed Raid spaces that match the color of that Innsmouth neighborhood that you are. To fill up all six spaces, two clue tokens will need to be discarded in each of three neighborhoods in Innsmouth.

Shellhead, I'm curious to know the chances of the Deep Ones Rising track actually filling up. Is it a serious threat that you're constantly worried about and fighting to stop? Or is it a "lesser" threat, like the Dunwich Horror awakening and rifts?

I'm itching for this to come out so we can see some concrete opinions of how good it is. I want an AH expansion - only one for now - and I'm undecided between this and Dunwich. But I wish they'd hurry up and get it on the market because I want to get back to playing AH, and the base game is staring to loose its shine!

MattDP wrote:

I'm itching for this to come out so we can see some concrete opinions of how good it is. I want an AH expansion - only one for now - and I'm undecided between this and Dunwich. But I wish they'd hurry up and get it on the market because I want to get back to playing AH, and the base game is staring to loose its shine!

Matt I maybe talking out of my ass, but reading what shellhead wrote, if you want to take AH to another challenging level you cannot go wrong with Dunwich. The gate busting events and "the Horror" are well worth it.

I'm gonna wait a bit and try Innsmouth myself before I totally pass judgement, but I know I was not a huge fan of Kingsport.

MattDP wrote:

I'm itching for this to come out so we can see some concrete opinions of how good it is. I want an AH expansion - only one for now - and I'm undecided between this and Dunwich. But I wish they'd hurry up and get it on the market because I want to get back to playing AH, and the base game is staring to loose its shine!

Innsmouth is good, but Dunwich is better. By the time Dunwich came out, Arkham Horror was almost a solved game for our regular group. Seal six gates to win. Arkham + Dunwich will always be a challenge for us. Judging by the two games we played on Sunday with Thaadd's set, Arkham + Innsmouth is not as challenging as Arkham + Dunwich.

Partizan wrote:

Shellhead, I'm curious to know the chances of the Deep Ones Rising track actually filling up. Is it a serious threat that you're constantly worried about and fighting to stop? Or is it a "lesser" threat, like the Dunwich Horror awakening and rifts?

There are six spaces on the Deep Ones Rising track, compared to just three spaces on the Dunwich Horror track. But the only way that the Dunwich Horror track could increase was when a monster jumped into a vortex space in Dunwich. Innsmouth has the same potential, but two of the three vortex spaces are immediately adjacent to unstable locations where gates can open up. Both of those unstable locations are more difficult to access, costing $1 to get to Innsmouth plus $2 to take out a boat, so those gates are harder to close, giving monsters from those gates a better chance of jumping into a vortex before investigators can stop them.

Also, the Deep One Rising track increases by one each time a gate tries to open but is blocked by a seal. So if your group has managed to seal a few gates, the Deep One Rising track is more likely to see movement, which can cause an otherwise winning game to stall out as investigators are drawn to Innsmouth to place clue tokens to bring down a federal raid.

The Dunwich Horror is bad of course, but his actual impact is intermittent, occasionally adding one to the Doom Track. Rifts are a little worse, because an active rift can occasionally increase the Doom Track and also pumps out more monsters, and eventually there can be three Rifts in action. The Deep Ones Rising track is worse, because it leads directly to final battle with the Ancient One.

In summary, I would say that the Deep Ones Rising track is somewhat more threatening than either the Dunwich Horror or Rifts. It's usually a manageable threat, but drains away clue tokens in the effort. Oh, and of course trips to Innsmouth become more scary after martial law happens at mid-game.

Dr_Mabuse wrote:

I'm gonna wait a bit and try Innsmouth myself before I totally pass judgement, but I know I was not a huge fan of Kingsport.

I'm willing to bet that almost everybody will like Innsmouth more than Kingsport. I'm still glad that I bought Kingsport, for the Epic Battle cards, the new investigators and the new GOO. But my table doesn't quite fit all the boards now, so the Kingsport board will probably get less play now.

Judging by the two games we played on Sunday with Thaadd's set, Arkham + Innsmouth is not as challenging as Arkham + Dunwich.

We mostly play 2 players with one character each and found Dunwich a bit too difficult so I'm actually glad this one is not that hard... Next time we play we will probably start drawing mythos cards once every two turns again (we stopped this with the base game and substituted it with "other world encounters take 1 turn instead of two"). Our last few games all have ended in disaster...

We haven't tried Kingsport yet, but I fear playing with both Dunwich and Kingsport with just 2 characters will be too much...

maka wrote:

Judging by the two games we played on Sunday with Thaadd's set, Arkham + Innsmouth is not as challenging as Arkham + Dunwich.

We mostly play 2 players with one character each and found Dunwich a bit too difficult so I'm actually glad this one is not that hard... Next time we play we will probably start drawing mythos cards once every two turns again (we stopped this with the base game and substituted it with "other world encounters take 1 turn instead of two"). Our last few games all have ended in disaster...

We haven't tried Kingsport yet, but I fear playing with both Dunwich and Kingsport with just 2 characters will be too much...

I sometimes play two-player Arkham Horror with a friend, and we always play with two characters each. With four characters, you can potentially handle multiple expansions. Also, there is a rule that adjusts the difficulty for number of board expansions. If you play with more than one board expansion, you reduce the number of players for purposes of all calculations except for the toughness of the GOO in final battle. For example, if you are playing Arkham + Dunwich + Innsmouth with four players, your monster limit is 6 ((4 players - 1)+3), and your outskirts capacity is 5 (11 - monster limit).

I see... I really like playing with one character, and to me having to control multiple characters kills the immersion a bit... Still, we thought about playing an extra character that we would both control together... I may try this approach soon...

I wish that Arkham Horror scaled down to 1 or 2 investigators well, because just playing one character each does make for a more immersive experience. But it honestly feels like Arkham Horror is too hard for just one or two characters. Too much to do, and not enough movement or actions to get it all done in time.