Arkham Horror: The Card Game

Finished the Gathering. I got 9 xp with the bonus 2. It does not feel like enough

Decks did ok. Minh got the dream diary done and got some clues.

Dexter had the most meh game of the three.

Winni went nuts. I had quite the opening hand with 2x opportunist and a cig case. I preceded to draw a whole whole lot of cards.

I held onto some xp and payed one to go Curse of the Rougarou. So nothing too crazy upgrade wise.

Sharpshooter and 2x Daredevil 2 for winni

Haste and tarot card for dexter and Rita.

Diary and a grisly totem for Minh.

Not sure how fast I’ll get games in right now.

So some thoughts as I take a little more time to post.

Winni this time just feels better than the last time I played her. I am for sure a more experienced player and I would like to think a better one at this point.

This is after one game but wow was she humming. The amazing opening hand helped but I think you just have to go full pedal to the metal with her. I was much more restrained last time. Part of that for sure was the treachery card that does 10 damage when you run out of deck. But I think it’s also comfort with the game.

She just went off. And with a minimal rig too. I had lock picks and I never played them. Same with pickpocketing. I also just chucked daredevil from my overfilled hand but that’s a thing of the past now that I upgraded them. In the end I finished with Loni Richter out and a Mauser along with the cig case. I had a leather coat but that was lost to a treachery test I ranked to get rid of my sig treachery.

I for sure had the highest comfort level with this deck. It’s also my first repeat investigator. I would likely be as comfortable with any of the others if I played them again. It’s a real strait forward deck. You just have to be bold with it.

I plan to go full killer with it. Gonna get the 2 hand machine gun that comes with Winni. I’ll have light healing for both health and sanity and just hope to toss cards at treachery. Maybe just tank will checks sometimes. Cost of doing business.

Have you guys played with her at all yet?
Be curious to her your thoughts.

I ran Wini and Mateo through Forgotten Age together. They weren’t the best decks, leaning a little too hard into stacking Custom Ammunition on the .45 Thompson and Sharpshooter on Wini. Turns out a combo built on three mid tier cards is pretty fragile and inconsistent.

It was a lot of fun though. Wini is great as long as everything is going well, but an autofail at the wrong time or a nasty willpower treachery can kneecap her. Mateo helps with both. At the same time, he takes awhile to get running, and Wini can do things well immediately, like in your game. If you’re running Wini heavy on skills, I think Daredevil(2) was a great choice because it triggers her innate on its own. Copycat is good for the same reason, if your other decks have enough good skills.

Yeah. I expect daredevil to do work. I grabbed one sharpshooter. I expect it to do work. But I also expect to be ok without it. I am gonna grab Momentum. Not sure if I want to grab relic hunter or upgrade cig case first. Both have huge upside, I expect to only be able to buy one for a bit. Mauser will be fine for a bit.

Minh of course has skill cards and synergies with them a lot. I expect Winni to be able to get back on her feet fast off a bad pull from the bag. Dexter has none. The deck is interesting but not sure it’s complicated way of doing things is better.

My boss damage will likely come from Dexter.

Got my first ever side scenario done. I found this to be really refreshing. The scenario was fun. The random clue pop was great. I think the thing I enjoyed most was the total lack of core tracery sets. Even if some cards did the same stuff. New art / name was just pleasant.

Things almost went ugly for me. I had a baller start on Winni again only to get two really bad pulls that stalled some momentum. Also took some early damage. I’ll miss lockpicks when I totally cut them from this deck as it adds a little umph to clue checks and I may reconsider going the 2h gun route with her as Dex pulled Monsterous Transformation. Which makes him a lot better at what he was trying to do. So being more flex here may be the right course. A pair of Mousers or Derringers would not be bad upgrades instead. Bough relic hunter and momentum. Not amazing leaps but solid progression. I expect to whip through her deck at a blistering pace now.

Minh had a great game just working away. Upgraded scavenging and added a pair of sharp vision. I think now I save up for the busted ass Necronomicon and watch fun stuff happen.

Magic has started to happen here. Added Charisma as he has Leo DeLuca and Lita that really want to be in play. Now with Monstrous Transformation I need to think about more draw excel. Maybe backpack upgraded. He has the biggest deck and most moving parts. I spent the whole game with Leo out and most of it with haste as well. It’s pretty wild.

Going to solve a murder next. I am super excited for this scenario. I Have heard good things.

The murder has been solved. I made a guess and it worked out well. Super fun scenario. In hindsight I left some xp to on the table, which is frustrating as I made 2 on the game after paying for the next side scenario. Heading to the new one. Time for war of the outer gods.

Pretty standard game for everyone except Dexter. I went full beast mode at the end. Played in an upgraded Colt Vest Pocket played out with Monsterous transformation and showmanship with hast for a 4th shot. Felt good. Not sure this deck works without the Book sig cards for dexter.

Finally got to sit down and play War of the Outer Gods. Super cool scenario. I had quite the blast playing it.

You cover a lot of area in this one. I had some awesome Nimble plays that moved me from one end to the other. The other card that really shined was good old Leo Deluca. I should not be surprised on this one as he is super strong but he allowed for a turn consisting of engage and attack and engage and attack twice in the game. These were big plays for me. Eventually Dexter got haste out to really hit stride and make Leo shine with some six action turns.

Minh even got some kills with occult Lexington. She also hit someone with a book.

Think I am going to take a bit of a hiatus as I got Tainted Grail. Sounds like a friend of mine is buying in so I will like Gabe some games in my near future that are not me playing 2 or 3 hand solo. So that’s an exciting development.

Well, I got sucked back in for 2 more scenarios. I have a buddy buying in and with that it mind I decided to end the world tour early to keep a few standalone scenarios blind. So I did the last two Night Masks and The Devouring. As you can imagine my world traveling investigators made pretty fast work of it.

Here are my thoughts on my investigators post campaign.

Dexter: this deck did a lot of neat things. Leo Deluca and haste are pretty bonkers. These are not some unique combo locked down to Dexter, but what he does bring is Showmanship. The +2 for a whole round off a fast play install made for some huge plays. Switchblade and colt vest pocket were stars here. Monstrous Transformation just made this super nuts for him. I took a lot of Story cards into this deck so it was pretty bloated by the end. Running the errata for scroll of secrets helped this a good bit. Not sure this was better than a spell build. But it was for sure fun.

Minh was a real pleasure. This deck had a few moving parts and was a little hampered by cash flow. I only got it totally operating at max speed once, but to be honest it did more than enough at non bonkers to be a pleasure to play. The gimmick here is replacing hand slot items that have used their secrets up and replacing it with the other from the trash to them cycle to the original again. The three cards used for this were Necronomicon and Scroll of Secrets. The Necronomicon replaced occult lexicon. With Dream Diary In the other hand and plenty of card draw she screamed through throwing cards everywhere. She even killed some stuff a few times. Most satisfying moment for her was smacking a cultist between the eyes with a book!

Now for Winnie, what a blast. I don’t know that there is another character that gets smashed in the face worse by the auto fail. It happened quite a few times to me. Commit 2 opportunist and one other card or so if not more just feels bad. Lucky for her she had teammates that had card draw to help her get back on her feet. With 2 lucky cigarette cases in play she draws cards like a fiend. She is just a blast to play.

I really should be taking a break for a bit now.

Well, that was brutal. Rita just scraped into the finale of Circle Undone and came nowhere close to winning. Out of eight scenarios, she got the a good result in just one, got pretty great results in another two but only after I gave her an extra turn after finally drawing the card I needed, had to resign in three before getting smacked around even worse and straight lost another two.

Not that my deck was the best. I actually liked the bones of my original deck a lot and would run it back but definitely with a new upgrade path. I built into a permanent that made the exile cards cheaper. It was not worth it. The exiles I bought were fine, but I didn’t draw and play them often enough to get my experience back. Really need two or three more solid, cheap exiles to reach a critical mass for the archetype.

It’s a rough campaign, especially solo. A few scenarios are built on some really swingy luck. The Return box should be announced soon, and I think this campaign is ripe for a revisit to smooth out some of these rough edges, make it feel a little more fair.

I finally wrapped up my second run through of the Circle Undone. My thoughts on prior scenarios more or less stand; however, I was less frustrated as I was much better prepared this time.

In the Clutches of Chaos turned out to be a lot of fun but Before the Black Throne was absolutely fantastic in terms of theme and design.

In related news, I ended up upgrading from cardboard boxes to a custom storage solution and I couldn't be happier. The dividers are beautiful and make assembling a deck really easy and the box itself has space for all of the campaigns which haven't released a return to box yet as well as room for the standalone scenarios.

Image attachment not quite working but here's a picture of the box with my cards sorted in it: imgur.com/a/qx8eVxS

I could see this being a game where storage would be a huge utility upgrade and not just an expensive aesthetic upgrade.

100%. A good storage solution makes these games more likely to be played and reduces the friction required to assemble and disassemble decks.

I don’t have an amazing solution. But it works for me.

I keep player cards in a white cardboard storage box separated by faction and neutral. I keep investigators and their dog cards in a clear sleeve. One per group.

As for the encounter side of things that’s done 2 ways. For the ones that have Return to boxes they go there. All the stand alone are in Zealot. The rest are still in there plastic box’s in a different cardboard box. It works well enough.

For deck building I pull the deck and cards I think I may want for upgrades for the campaign.

Works well enough for 5 bucks. And the return too boxes.

Can't stop running the jank. Decided I was going to make the Springfield M1903 and Telescopic Sight work. Springfield has the honor of being one of the first cards to be buffed by the taboo list via a decrease in xp cost and still not be worth it. For a midrange weapon, its numbers and damage are okay, maybe even good, but it has the rather crippling deficiency of not being allowed to target enemies engaged with you. The Telescopic Sight allows you
to turn any two-handed weapon into a sniper rifle and attack enemies at connected locations but has way too many limitations.

Running on the theory that enough bad to mediocre cards can make a terrible card playable, I immediately dedicated half of Leo Anderson's deckbuild to running away from enemies or pawning them off on his teammate and actually creating targets for the Springfield. I paired him with a good-stuff Finn Edwards to actually win the scenarios and sent them off on the Waking World half of Dream Eaters.

I'm happy to report that the Springfield actually did work. I drew the Telescopic Sight every scenario after I spent the xp, but it was always too expensive to play in the moment and just committed it for icons. Half my plan worked. Whoo. I crushed the first three scenarios, my best runs ever in them. Had a chance to win if all my tokens pulls went right in the last round, but they did not. The spiders ate me, and the dreaming and waking collided into one another. Sorry. My bad.

Best part of the campaign? The deck name "The Assassination of Atlach-Nacha by the Coward Leo Anderson" even if it ended up being a gross overstatement.

Ha. That’s some great jank. Watching someone try the same sorta combo with sister Mary. For added fun the Winchester is in play there too.

Just saw the posting for Return to Circle. Looks pretty exciting.

I’m messing around with a Preston deck. Think I am gonna lean hard into Dark Horse with Mariners Compass and Fire Ax and then allies. Delilah and Leo and the Lola. With some fail tech. It could be fun or terrible. Excited to try it.