"The Terrible Experiment" Mythos Card - How to deal with it?

Question

Yesterday my game was progressing quite smoothly until we got "The Terrible Experiment" Mythos card.

http://www.arkhamhorrorwiki.com/The_Terrible_Experiment

We were playing with two investigators and immediately tried to go to the Miskatonic University and try to fight the monsters off but some were just too powerful to deal with.

One of the investigators ended up in the hospital and after a while we realized it might have just been better to let the monsters pile up on the card and to have the terror level raised to 10 and all those monsters on the board instead of trying to fight them off.

What are some strategies to deal with this card?

Answer 1

The first time we encountered this rumor, we used Flute of the Elder Gods on it. On reread, I suspect we were cheating but if you don't agree then that might be a strategy...which could be generalized as try and buy stuff to help (you do have a couple turns to prepare right after the rumor appears).

Note, the rumor also says "one or more monsters". In subsequent runs I've definitely cherry picked the easy ones and let it build up again. This is somewhat luck based and won't help you if they're all harder than you can defeat. Similar to the above comments and other answer, if you have no-one who can fight at all, it is probably better to push on, so is dependant on the variables of the game (which make the game replay value skyrocket IMO=)).

I guess along with the above strategy if you have a bunch of easy monsters as trophies might be worth spending them to get them back in the pool.

It may also be noteworthy to newer players that the positioning of this rumor is between Hospital and Asylum so if you have a lot of money isn't a terrible position to recharge in between fights (well one stat anyway). This is dependant upon how clean your streets are/your sneak, another variable :D

Really this answer and likely any answer could be applied to fighting in general. The rumor just adds a terrible downside if you fail.

Answer 2

There are a lot of variables you need to consider before fighting any monster.

1. Number of players vs Number of Monsters
2. Number of items player(s) have collected to help them in the fight
3. How tough are/is the monster(s) being fought? Stats are public knowledge.
4. Does the player characters have any stats or character traits that help them better fight or longer sustain the monster?
5. How far in the game is this?
6. How close are you to losing?
7. What is the worst that can happen if we do not fight the monster(s)?

Maybe this is the end card for your game. Neither option is good. These Arkham/Eldritch games can/are difficult games. It can be brutal. Maybe your team has gotten lucky though. Found good items or started with characters that are good fighting monsters. Maybe it's an easy card to just push through and be done with.

In the end, with all things in the current game considered, it comes down to:
"Do we as a team think it's better to fight or is it more efficient to push to the win?"

Answer 3

It says you may fight one or more monsters on the card from Miskatonic U, so you don't need to clear it immediately, you can just keep it in check with one player defeating monsters while the other one builds themselves up and finds items with the goal of beating the stronger ones. This will make the overall game harder since it effectively removes one of the players, but this is already going to be a very hard game with only two players.