Donal O Suilleabhain
Australia
Bellingen
NSW
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I had a chance to get through 8 games of AH with the KiY expansion and wanted to write down my thoughts on the various aspects of the expansion. All games had 4 investigators so each investigator got 2 outings and each AO got 1. All games were played using the Touring Performance set up.
Common Items – These seem to concentrate mainly on generate clues which is good as it can be difficult to pick them up later on in the normal game. However, apart from Athame, there is a real lack of weapons here. This leaves you relying on Unique Items to get your investigators tooled up.
Unique Items – These are great, very varied and original and it seems like a lot of thought went into developing these. Gladius is an excellent weapon and I really liked the Cryptozoology item. There are no elder signs however ruling out the easiest way to seal gates.
Spells – I found these to be very weak. I had no use whatever for the Magical Effects and they are generally weaker than those found in the base game. Here is however one exception……and what an exception. I found Arcane Insight to be absolutely essential to beating this expansion……impossible without it?
Gate Cards – Same/same but good. They freshen things up a bit.
Location Cards – Same/same as above.
Mythos Cards – These are very good with The Next Act Begins being a constant threat and pushing up the Doom Track quickly (with the 2 Double Doom Token cards there is an approximately 30% chance of having to stick 2 tokens on the track every Mythos Phase). There are also no chances of gates appearing at the 4 quieter locations which makes things just a little bit easier.
Herald & Blight Cards – I haven’t really made my mind up about these yet. With the threat from the Mythos Cards I found putting the yellow sign tokens on the DT not to be an option so I was always drawing the Blight Cards. I thought these were generally good as you could never be sure whether or not they would have a significant effect on the game, except for Doyle Jeffries who’s riots were a real pain all the time.
Summary – I found this expansion really speeds the game up. There was no time for anything other than getting Arcane Insight, engineering the future and going for a Gate Closure victory. This made everything a bit hectic. No time for shopping around for weapons and tooling up, no time for collecting clues to seal gates, forget allies or the Deputy Cards. In some ways I found it a bit one dimensional and repetitive, completely dominated by the one spell.
From my perspective the expansion certainly changed the way I approach the game but I would like to try it using the Permanent Style as it would mean having access to the original decks, so more Common Item weapons, Elder Signs and less pressure from the Next Act Cards, however Arcane Insight would be more difficult to get and the Blight Cards would have more time to influence the game.
I know this expansion is very much the favourite small box expansion for most people on this site and while I enjoyed it I still have my reservations. I think Permanent Style will change my perspective (and maybe 8 investigators) but until then it gets a 6 from me.
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Could you explain what is so powerful about "Arcane insight"? I don't see why reordering the top 3 cards would make such a difference except potentially delaying one mythos card for 2 turns.
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EinGlasWurstWasser wrote: Could you explain what is so powerful about "Arcane insight"? I don't see why reordering the top 3 cards would make such a difference except potentially delaying one mythos card for 2 turns.
And then you cast it again the next turn, and push it back even further.
And again, and again...
You may need a tome or two to get past the -4 casting modifier reliably, and you need to sit at the asylum to avoid it draining your sanity, but it can be exploited quite well.
It comes down to whether you can rearrange gate openings for your closing victory before three nasty things rise into the top 3.
If you have Kate Winthrop, then knowing where the next three gates will appear is ridiculously powerful, too.
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Donal O Suilleabhain
Australia
Bellingen
NSW
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You can arrange for Monster surges rather than new gates opening. Makes a gate closure victory so much easier. I found it the key to winning the game. Not really sure how you could win without it, especially playing the touring variety (not counting final battle as a win).
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