Arkham Horror and it's expantions

[TransconaSlim]

Howdy folks!

I just got the board game Arkham Horror, I bet other folks have played it.  I've only played it once so far, but we all had allot of fun. 

One thing I was wondering if people could help with:  the rules are kind of vague on spawning monsters.  Does this happen every Mathos phases?   We kind of assumed it only happened when the mythos card said "a monster appears!"  so when we played there was very few monsters on the board (which I guess is a good thing considering it was our first time playing). 

any help is greatly appreciated

[smarttman]

Every time a new gate opens on the board, it also spawns a monster. Every time a gate opens where a gate is ALREADY open, you get a monster surge, which I believe spawns either as many monsters as there are open gates or players, whichever is greater. For example, if you were playing in a group of 5, and you had 3 gates open, and you already had a gate in the Graveyard or whatever. If you drew a mythos card that indicated you open a gate at the graveyard, you would instead draw 5 monsters from the cup and place them as evenly as possible between the open gates. You also need to take into account how many monsters can be in Arkham at one time, and move any "overflow" monsters into the outskirts.

[TransconaSlim]

Every time a new gate opens on the board, it also spawns a monster. Every time a gate opens where a gate is ALREADY open, you get a monster surge, which I believe spawns either as many monsters as there are open gates or players, whichever is greater. For example, if you were playing in a group of 5, and you had 3 gates open, and you already had a gate in the Graveyard or whatever. If you drew a mythos card that indicated you open a gate at the graveyard, you would instead draw 5 monsters from the cup and place them as evenly as possible between the open gates. You also need to take into account how many monsters can be in Arkham at one time, and move any "overflow" monsters into the outskirts.

Thanks so much! 

I was kinda slow waiting for "a monster appears" on mythos cards.  In the end we had only two lonely monsters hanging out on the board. 

[Inner Prop]

Spawning monsters sounds like a talk that your parents should have had with you when you were younger.

I'm thinking about getting this game and I would probably have to play it solitare.  Does anyone know any groups that may play it remotely, or have advice about this game?

[Chris Hutson]

I just played that and heard of it for the first time last night with some people my wife works with.
It's pretty complicated but I think the next time will be fun now that I kind of know what's going on.
Fortunately, there was a guy there who knew how to play, and another guy who caught on really quick.
The rest of us spent most of the time asking a lot of questions, like:
"wait, how many dice?"
"why did that happen?"
"where does that number come from?"
"did we forget to add another thing to the whatever?"
"when do I fight that monster?"
"am I dead now?"
"can you run that by me again?"
It was fun anyhow, next time will be funner.