Sign of the Dice: A Deep Dive on Elder Sign, Part III

The last three expansions, where story really took the reins alongside mechanism.

Most games based on Lovecraft's work are rooted in story. I mean, sure, the majority of games have some kind of theme outside of deliberate abstracts, but most Lovecraft/Cthulhu games are as much about telling a story as they are about gameplay. That, of course, has resulted in a lot of really bad games using that public domain theme, but Elder Sign is not one of those tourists. Despite the game being heavily influenced by its dice-rolling mechanisms, there's a lot of story attached to Adventure cards, Great Old Ones, and the Investigators trying to stop the latter from conquering/ruling/eating our reality. But the base game and the first three expansions were kind of restrained when it comes to the amount of story they were telling. With both the base and Unseen Forces being limited to The Miskatonic Museum and Gates of Arkham only expanding that to the everpresent Arkham, MA, you could make the argument that the approach was still pretty bog-standard in terms of what people tend to think about Lovecraft-style stories ("Cthulhu! But with dice!") Now, there's no problem with that for people that enjoy it (and I'm one of them, a lot of the time.) One of FFG's most popular games of all time (and space) was Arkham Horror, 2nd Edition which never left the cozy confines of New England (Arkham, Innsmouth, Dunwich, Kingsport...) but if you actually read Lovecraft's stories, a lot of them take place all over the globe and not just in those weird little towns. I mean, Call of Cthulhu roams from New England to New Orleans to the South Pacific. At the Mountains of Madness takes place almost wholly in Antarctica. And, of course, many of HPL's cohort and later successors in the group of horror writers that perpetuated his legacy also moved far afield when telling their tales of the cosmic and horrific. So, when I got into Elder Sign, I was pleased to see that three of the expansions had done the same and moved out of Arkham to various other climes in order to show that the weird things really can crop up anywhere. I wondered later whether FFG had decided to forego another edition of Arkham Horror for a few years while they produced Eldritch Horror which does, indeed, take place around the world...

Part of those excursions in Elder Sign are the inclusion of new rulesets that confine the story to the setting. In other words, in the same way that you can't play the base game cards mixed with the Gates cards, all of the Omens cards are restricted to their particular storylines. In having a brief discussion about expansions on r/boardgames, where a poster suggested that expansions are usually split into More Stuff and New Stuff, I asserted that in my experience most are usually a combination of the two. Same thing here, in that each of the Omens expansions has More Stuff (GOOs, Investigators, Items, Spells, etc.) but also has New Stuff, in that you only use the Omens of Ice Adventure cards and Storm rules with Omens of Ice, for example. That means that each play is going to be a somewhat different experience in the same way that playing Runebound: Frozen Wastes was different from both the base game and Runebound: Sands of Al-Kalim, despite all of them still being Runebound. (Again, this is Fantasy Flight.) 

Omens of Ice

Despite the aforementioned bottom of the world for At the Mountains of Madness (Giant albino penguins!), Omens of Ice takes place in Alaska which has brief mentions in a few stories (like alongside the Uighur people in Abraham Merritt's Dwellers in the Mirage) but is not a frequent setting for Lovecraftian fiction. But two of the GOOs included with the expansion are Ithaqua, rooted in North America since its introduction to the mythos by August Derleth and Rhan-Tegoth, introduced by none other than HPL and Hazel Heald in their story The Horror in the Museum(!) and based in Alaska. So maybe designer Samuel Bailey and the FFG development crew knew what they were doing. The third opponent, Rlim Shaikorth, is a little more removed, created by Clark Ashton Smith in his story, The Coming of the White Worm and which is debated by Lovecraft scholars as to whether it actually counts as a GOO. Whatevs. As noted before, all of the Omens expansions use the system introduced by Gates of Arkham, which produces new Adventure cards face down with an indicator color (green, yellow, red) on their backs to give some clue as to their difficulty for players but also to maintain the mystery of the challenge. And in Ice, the home base is the Expedition Camp, which replaces Streets of Arkham, but leaves open a few more options in terms of turning in trophies (you can once again do a limited amount of shopping.) But in this version of the game, there are two more tracks for the players to monitor: the Supplies track and the Storm track.

The Storm track is another clock, on top of the one constantly striking midnight. The more time you take to get through the adventure as a whole, the more difficult it will become. At the bottom of the "track card", each day will show you how many storms you're to place on Adventure cards. When you travel to those adventures, you have to resolve all the storm tokens currently on them. A few of them are blank and do nothing, but most of the rest do the expected, costing you Supplies, Stamina, Sanity, Items, or even Allies. A few cause a monster to appear, from the relatively mundane Wolf Packs and Grizzlies to the more exotic Gnoph-Keh and Culstists of Ithaqua. The worst, of course, adds a Doom token to the track (but there's only one of those.) And, as you can see, if you're playing on Winter mode, if you get to Day 8, you just lose. The penalties for failed Adventures are also pretty heavily weighted toward both losing Supplies and advancing the clock (Storms.) Supplies are the other part of the "track card" as, aside from storms, many Adventure cards will cost you Supplies, as well. As noted above, if you run out of supplies, you start losing Stamina. On many of the entry effects to Adventure cards, you can also spend Supplies to gain other bonuses like Clue tokens, so they're more than just another way to start losing the game. The Mythos deck is similar to that of the base game or Gates in that it swings back and forth between losing Supplies/Sanity/Stamina to gaining them at some cost to losing an Elder Sign and locking a die for the night. But the Omens trio also introduced two-phase stories.

When you begin your game, you use the Stage I deck and have the Arrival adventure face up. It's a pretty easy pair of tasks: 2 + 2 Investigation followed by 3 Investigation. But whenever it's still in play at Midnight, it advances the clock again, so Storms will build up quickly. Once you solve it, Into the Wild comes into play, which is more difficult (3 tasks of 1 Lore, 3 Investigation, and 1 Peril) and also causes a monster to appear at Midnight as long as it's still active. But if you solve it, you have to move to Stage II. Now Stage I is all green and yellow Adventures and the rewards provide a lot of gear and Supplies, as well as Healing (regain 1 Stamina) and Respite (regain 1 Sanity.). Stage II is all yellow and red and this is where the bulk of your Elder Signs will come from, as well as stopping the clock from moving. It also has two special Adevnture cards in Treacherous Ascent and then Heart of Darkness. Thankfully, the latter moves the Storm track back to day 1 when it's completed, but it's no joke to do so (two tasks of 1 Investigation and 3 Terror/Lore and then 1 Investigation and 3 Terror/Peril.) Also there just aren't that many Gate symbols in Ice to introduce Other Worlds, so the most frequent way to get Elder Signs is to get them from Stage II Adventures, which can be quite difficult. Also also, the GOOs are a step up, since all of them add Storm markers on their Doom tracks and their abilities range from Rhan-Tegoth costing someone a Stamina every time they win an Elder Sign (and he has a really short Doom track (8; considered "average" difficulty)) to Rlim-Shaikorth adding 3 Storm markers at midnight (hard difficulty) to Ithaqua adding a Storm to each Adventure that lacks one at the start of each Investigator's turn (they can sacrifice a clue/item/spell/ally to prevent this; considered Insane difficulty.) We've won this one once, against Rlim and it was close.

Omens of the Deep

Now we move to the South Pacific, famous as the locale of the most heralded story of Lovecraft's, The Call of Cthulhu. Omens of the Deep uses all of the main mechanisms of Ice (face down, color coded Adventures in two stages), but in contrast to Ice, Deep focuses a bit more on the home base, which in this story is a ship named The Ultima Thule. Like the Expedition Camp, The Ultima Thule allows for a bit more flexibility in terms of turning in trophies, including being able to advance the Dark Waters track. Said track is the home of the Omen token and, if said token retreats all the way to the left, a Deep One Legion is summoned to an Adventure card. The focus of the Deep expansion is to prevent, as you might expect, an invasion by the Deep One Legion. If there are ever 4 or more Deep One Legion monsters on the board, the home base becomes the Wreckage of The Ultima Thule and it reverts to being much more like Streets of Arkham in terms of usability. The opening special Adventure in this case is known as Calling and, at midnight, the Omen token retreats one space. Getting through that (two tasks: 1 Terror and then 2 Investigation and 1 Lore), you move to Echoes of the Dream, where each Investigator loses 1 Sanity at midnight. Solving that (2 tasks: 1 Terror/Peril, 1 Terror/Lore, lose 1 Sanity, then 1 Investigation, 2 investigation, 1 Peril) gains you two pieces of the Broken Amulet of R'lyeh, which is your second broad goal, in that there are three pieces of the amulet: 1 green, 1 yellow, 1 red. If you complete the Dark Waters card (advancing the Omen token all the way to the right), you flip the card and for every piece of the amulet you don't have, that color die is locked for the rest of the game.

When that card is flipped, you also move to Stage II, which opens with R'lyeh Risen, which adds a Doom token to the track at midnight (so, y'know, don't keep this one running) and has 2 tasks (2 x Terror/Peril, then 5 Investigation and 1 Lore) and is followed by The Sleeper Wakes, which also has two tasks (3 Investigation, 1 Lore, 1 Terror, then 3 Investigation, 1 Peril, 1 Terror) and rewards you with no less than 4(!) Elder Signs. This progression is significantly easier than Ice, despite occasional Adventures like Run!: 0 trophies, locked yellow and red dice, 3 tasks in order: Lore/Peril, Terror/Lore, Terror/Peril and a midnight effect of adding a Doom token. And that's a yellow Adventure. Oh, and when you defeat Deep One Legion monsters, you have to pay a cost, which is usually a requirement to discard something (Items, trophies, etc.) If you don't pay that cost, they just reappear on another Adventure. In contrast to the (ahem) rolling snowball of Ice, the Deep is more like a slow grinding descent. Like drowning, one supposes.The GOOs are a little lesser overall compared to Ice, as well. Hydra (average) makes you discard the trophy you just won unless you pay 1 Sanity or 1 Stamina, Dagon (hard) collects the Deep One Legions to his card which only affect his power if he awakens (?), and a new version of Cthulhu (The Stars Are Right) makes one Investigator lose some combination of 2 Sanity/Stamina every time the clock strikes midnight and a Deep One Legion appears every time an Other World card comes into play. We've beaten both Hydra and Dagon fairly smoothly, but we got cocky and our one encounter with Cthulhu ended up with a green and the red die locked and we got hammered.

Omens of the Pharaoh

In contrast to Ice, there are a ton of HPL stories set in Egypt, both contemporary for those times and ancient, including one (Under the Pyramids) that was a collaboration with Harry Houdini. Many of them center around Nyarlathotep, one of whose more famous forms is the Dark Pharaoh and Omens of the Pharaoh follows right in line with that trend. Pharaoh also adds a bit more complexity than either of the other two Omens which starts, quite literally, up front as the "entrance" card is two-sided, representing both Cairo and Dashur and able to be switched between the two of them, not by a game condition like Deep, but if an Investigator is willing to advance the clock. Each side offers different "shopping" options but with the Dashur side giving access to a more limited menu while also opening up the possibility to acquire one of the powerful new items known as Relics. However, each side of the entrance card also affects which Adventure deck you draw from: Stage I for Cairo and Stage II for Dashur, which gives the players more control over the level of challenge they want at any given time without having to follow a specific path. But the Investigators also gain access to the Expedition sheet, the tokens for which are gained from solving Pharaoh Adventures, as well as some Mythos cards. When the tokens are in place, either constant effects are in play or the tokens are discarded to trigger one-time effects, ranging from gaining Sanity or Stamina at midnight to ignoring die locks or cancelling the GOOs attack. The reverse side of the Expedition card also allows Relics to be used in other games of Elder Sign, outside the Pharaoh realm.

And the reason you'd like to do that is because Relics always allow you to refresh at least one die of a particular color, even if that die has already been discarded in the course of trying to solve an Adventure, making them among the best items in the game. The traveling show of Relics also hearkens back to a similar arrangement in Arkham Horror, of course. The best way to acquire those Relics is through The Dark Pharaoh special Adventures, which guarantee one of them upon success. Those Adventure cards most commonly appear when a Doom token is placed on the track of one of the three GOOs included with the set. And even though Outer Worlds are still an option here, you'll likely find more than enough Elder Signs in the Hidden Chamber Adventures mixed into the Act II cards, since each of them awards 3 Elder Signs per. Of course, you have to solve a task before you even enter the Hidden Chambers, so the climb is steeper. Since this is Nyarlathotep-focused, not only does Pharaoh add several more Mask monsters, but you include all of those from other sets, such that it's likely you'll face nothing but those as you move along. Among them are such famous servants as the Dark Demon, the Dweller in Darkness (alliteration, FTW!), and the Black Wind. Likewise, the aforementioned Ancient Ones are all aspects of Nyarlathotep, with the Haunter of the Dark adding a Doom token at midnight unless someone discards a Relic, as well as denying any monster trophies but Mask monster trophies. Meamwhile, Nephren-Ka, the Dark Pharaoh himself, makes everyone lose 1 Sanity and 1 Stamina each time they move to a special Adventure, where Clues and Spells can't be used and where a Doom token is added each time someone fails. Finally, a new aspect of Nyarlathotep is the "insane" difficulty opponent, since he requires all monsters to be Masks and adds a Doom token at midnight for each one currently in play.

So, that's Elder Sign. With all of those expansions on hand, there's any number of ways to play, either sticking to theme with one of the Omens, taking it a little easier with Unseen Forces, or slugging it out in the streets of Arkham with Gates. This was a really worthwhile pickup for me and I'm glad to have finally latched on to it, even so many years after it ceased publication. It should keep me in Lovecraftian adventures for a long time.