How is it difficult? Is it possible to win the game without extreme luck?
Thanks

L.

The game is balanced so that the fewer investigators you play, the easier is the final combat, and the more difficult to achieve are the victories by sealing / closing gates. You have to consider your strategy according to this, but still, if you play for now only with the core set, it's something you can try. If you were able to manage three investigators, that would certainly be better

Leper,

      Julia's comment is at the center of the great debate on this game regarding its scaleability:  if you have fewer Investigators, it's nearly impossible to have a sealing/closing victory, so gear up for Final Battle.  With 7 or 8 Investigators, you have enough manpower to cover the territory required for the sealing victory, which is great since a Final Battle will prove disastrous.  I have played nearly all of my 100+ games solo and with four Investigators. 

     I can tell you based on both the numbers on the stats sheet and comments here in the forum, Julia is a highly competent and "take-no-prisoner" player, with an impressive win-ratio.  If you have a strategic question, she's the one you want to call…the "Queen of Arkham!"

     Enjoy the game and by all means, don't fixate on winning…as I've said time and time again, "AH is about the journey, not the destination"

Cheers, Joe

The Professor said:

Don't worry, Julia will start being butchered on a regular basis very soon (at the moment, I'm playing a 24-game series with Groth and all the AOs, Miskatonic Mythos in ::laughter:: man, it's a pain)

Anyway, Leper, if you need to talk about strategy, me, the Professor, and many others here in this forum will help you for sure!

Julia,

      I don't know, my friend… ` 'brutal'   'butchered' ` you have quite the way with words…please don't scare off the young ones. Hahahaha! : )

Cheers, Joe

The Professor said:

::rofling::

The Professor said:

There's nothing like a little round of friendly mutilation. ;-]

I've only recently got this game.

I've played it about 8 or 9 times now on a 2 player with my Bro…. we've won once.

Came INCREDIBLY CLOSE once (needed 2 successes on 3 dice on the final Ancient one hit point)… we failed that.

And have gotten a severe beating on all other occasions.

But we've had an absolute blast each time regardless.

There's some weird scientology stuff goes on with this game.

for instance; The terror level rose and we discarded an ally - the next location encounter their name was mentioned on the card. "That's spooky" we thought.

The next time the terror level raised - discarded another ally - the very next location encounter, yup - they were mentioned.

I notice that coincidences like this seem to happen all the time in AH…. it's awesome, makes for some great narratives.

It's like the Terry Pratchett rule of "Million to one chances crop up 9 times out of 10" :D

Glad you're having such a great time playing Arkham :-)

Yeah, indeed, the board is alive. Or, at least, it seems so ::laughter::

If you're having troubles in winning the game with two investigators, have you considered raising the number to four? You and your brother can control 2 investigators each. In this way it should be a little easier scoring victories, and you should have some more chances to plan a good strategy :-)

Thanks for all the answers!
Yesterday we won for the first time, four of us against Cthulhu! (win by seals)
About seven hours… I didn't think it could last so long.
I have some other questions I'll ask in another thread (or here, maybe changing the name if I can).

Leper

Well done Leper! Congrats for the victory :-) And don't worry, the more you play, the more the time needed to win the game will drop. Usually, a game lasts 1.30 - 2 hours (something more in case of very tense games, but certainly you won't hit the "7 hours" that often)

Julia said:

I hope so!

I'm going to run a 2-player teaching game soon, and I'm leaning toward using only 2 investigators, just to cut down on the sheer volume of little cards to keep track of. I don't really want to go into final battle mechanics, and in any event want to preserve some fear of the ancient ones.  Do you think two investigators would have a decent chance to win against Azathoth? Does it matter if they're pre-selected to both be good gate divers?

OrionAnderson said:

Yeah, sounds good to me. Maybe preselect Joe and Mandy, so that you're allowed some free re-roll and clues spent on adding dice are worth more. Top-notch would be you and your friend playing a total of three characters, so that you have some more variance