Arkham Horror Help

[Maerok]

I made a post a while back about AH being too easy for my group. This has continued to be the case (mostly via sealing the gates; never fought an Ancient One yet), even when adding the Dunwich Horror add-on. A few of us are certain that we are doing something wrong.

Last night, we had a game against Glaaki with five people. Characters were:
The Journalist (Me; closed one gate and did a lot of running around to see what I could find for encounters; became Deputy during the lull at the endgame)
The Magician (New Guy; generally got screwed over by monster surges)
The Redeemed Cultist (Semi-New Guy; camped at Inner Sanctum for a while but got a lot of clue tokens from different things)
Ashcan Pete (Closed a lot of gates)
The Soldier (Also closed a lot of gates; Does delayed apply to Lost in Time and Space?)

We also had the rumor that adds to the terror track on a die roll of 1 or 2 at the mythos phase. The terror track got up to six or so, but we managed to keep the Servants off the board most of the time. Another thing to note is that we ended up with three Elder Signs, though only one got used. I was also adding two monsters per open gate, as the DH booklet says to.

The game was going well (the doom track was creeping up) to about 8 or so. Then we started sealing gates and the doom track bottomed out to 1 because we had several gate bursts that were sealed again. We did get plenty of monster surges, however, because it seemed like whatever didn't bounce off a sealed gate landed on an open one.

What I'm wondering is if the doom track is supposed to go up only when a new gate is opened. I proposed that we add a doom token every time a monster surge happens as well. What seems to be happening is that the number of open and sealed gates reaches an equilibrium that ultimately shuts down the chances of adding new open gates (and advancing the doom track) by the mid-game. Once we had reduced the doom track from 8 to 1, it sat like that for a long time. There were like three gate bursts.

And the Dunwich Horror track got up to 2 (I was rooting for it the whole time because he hasn't shown up yet).

The Outskirts filled up several times due to monster surges (Shudde M'ell would have been interesting; him and Glaaki are favorites of mine). We also got two Colors Out of Space and a Cthonian.

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I got Black Goat coming via Borders, but it's backordered so I've been waiting for like 4 weeks now.

[Krytha]

I got Black Goat coming via Borders, but it's backordered so I've been waiting for like 4 weeks now.

I dunno, it's been a while since we've played AH together, but sometimes we trounce the Old Ones and sometimes we get eaten. We tend to play with 8 players though, so I dunno if that's a factor.

[Fuzzy_Juan]

Well, 3-5 players is the ideal, less than 3 and you don't have enough to seal gates fast enough, and more than 5 will result in stupid amounts of monsters and too much competition for tokens, though it does make things interesting, and a ancient one fight stupid hard.

Seems liek you are doing things right, do you advance the doom track for every time the outskirts fills?

We also noticed the gate problem, eventually it does in fact seem that if you just seal gates instead of closing them then you will eventually screw yourself, however, if you always seal gates, then your game becomes REALLY easy.

I will say that events can and will advance the doom track FAST if you draw them. we had 2 events back to back that spiked the doom track and wound up with a doom of 6 or so by the 3rd turn...=( then came the huge monster surge, and we were too weak to beat back the hordes...needless to say, we lost that game.

[Maerok]

Seems liek you are doing things right, do you advance the doom track for every time the outskirts fills?

It says to increase the terror track.

[Ianuagonde]

I consider monster surges bad enough as they are. More monsters means an advancing terror track (because of the outskirts overflowing), and that is nasty. The shops and allies I can live with, but once it reaches 10, you add a doom token and remove the monster limit. And it can reach 10 pretty fast if the wrong mythos cards come along.

In the games where this happened to me, it was game over pretty soon.

[Maerok]

But the right combination hasn't come up yet, within several games.

[mrbox]

When you say that the doom track bottomed out at one, are you removing a doom token from the doom track each time you seal a gate? If you so, this is your problem. You are only supposed to remove a doom token from the doom track if you use an elder sign.

[Maerok]

Oh...

>.>
...

<.<
...

Facepalmdeskfloor.

That... would probably explain it.