Arkham Horror: The Card Game

So. Started a Night of the Zealot with my buddy. He is playing Dexter and I am playing Broke ass Preston.

We started a little slow. Also had a poorly timed Doom play on turn 1. Then we kicked it into high gear. We drew a ton of monsters in our first few turns. Fire ax is legit. I never got Dark Horse into play but I still did real work. Trial by fire closed out the ghoul priest. I also got some work out of Mariners compass. I raked in 5 xp. Not enough to get into the expensive allies I want in Lola and Delilah, so instead I bought two cornered and a sharp vision. Seems like they should do some work.

My buddies Dexter build is much different than the build I was just running. Has some things in common. He did the lions share of the clue gathering. Also chipped in in the fights. Was a good pair. Both require some setup.

Not sure if I refine the Preston deck and give it another try after night of the zealot or not. I’ll have to think on it.

Finished number 2 in night of the zealot. It’s still a pretty great time. Both of us had pretty great games doing both clues and monster control. We hit some stumbles and a lot of cultists.

I find myself a little flummoxed in my upgrade path. Cornered did work for sure. If it were more than 3 games I would try charisma with Delilah and Lola. But I just can’t fit them in here. So I went with Leo a copy of haste just because and a skeleton key. The deck is super solid. It kills with fire ax and finds stuff with compass and intel report. It’s just not very exciting to play. I would be cool trying big money instead if I try Preston again.

Dexter is landing big spells and making big fast asset plays. No bad luck with doom on assets this game. So that was a positive.

Well. “We” finished night of the zealot. Preston did not make it. He died to a brutal set of treachery cards. Dexter was however able to save the town.

Dark horse Preston did work. But it’s a little boring. I’ll have to revisit big money Preston soon.

We will be starting Dunwitch soon. I am gonna play Rex I think. Some sort of seeker anyway.

In very exciting news my busy and I were able to order Phantom of truth off of assmodee’s website.

We also started Dunwitch. First scenario was school. It went well. So now we will see how the seedy underbelly of Arkham treats us.

So far my aggressive kinda kill things Rex has killed no things. But I am working on it! Need more than the three xp we earned. I forgot how stingy this campaign is. At least early on.

Played scenario two. We hit every enemy in the deck. Some twice. In an epic screwup we advanced at a poor time and the club owner got ate before we could do anything.

Hopefully no long term harm done. Got my first acidic ichor. This should help kill things that we seem to be encountering a lot.

Both our decks seem to be working well. This next scenario should be fun.

@sornars--I just picked up DUNWICH HORROR and RETURN TO DUNWICH for AH LCG. My FLGS had a restock on that, and I was wondering if there are any must-haves for that game. I also have been frustrated by the difficulty of AH LCG, it's really hard for me, so maybe I am not getting something. Any sets give assets that can help me out?

Moving my response from the Marvel Champions thread (and DMs) to here.

Our very own giantbrain put together these amazing beginner guides on getting started with Arkham in general and deck building in particular:
giantbrain.co.uk/2019/02/19/arkham-horro...me-the-story-so-far/
giantbrain.co.uk/2020/04/22/arkham-horro...lding-for-beginners/

These are so much more thorough than I could ever be so read through both posts for some really solid advice. A single core doesn't provide much deck building opportunity but with a Core + Dunwich you should be able to make some good decks. I know it's a bit late for this advice but I'd recommend avoiding the Return To sets until you've gotten everything else.

The Night of the Zealot campaign gives an amazing overview of what Arkham Horror LCG can do but is also a pretty terrible campaign. I doubt most players have beaten the third scenario via killing the big bad; however the pre-con decks should give you enough to make it through so buying more things shouldn't be necessary. In particular, the recommended starting pair of Roland and Wendy are very good and remain strong investigators as the card pool has grown. If you're really keen to buy something, the Investigator Starter decks are decently well made and should also serve you well through this campaign. e.g. Nathanial Cho could help you if monsters are your problem.

If you're playing on true solo (only one character) then you're already playing on hard mode - expect the game to be swingy and in my opinion, un-fun. My recommendation is to play two-handed for a better experience. Secondly, if you're playing on Standard then don't be too proud to switch the chaos bag to Easy. Heck, if you're really having a bad time then feel free to add a few extra tokens to sweeten the pot (or remove the auto fail if it makes you mad). On Standard, I don't really expect to pass a test unless I can take it with +2 over its difficulty so if failing tests is your problem then try and hit that target. If you really want more information than use an app like Arkham Cards ( Android , iOS ) to calculate your actual probabilities of success for any test.

The other thing to keep in mind is that failure is baked into the narrative so embrace the failures if you can. Losing all the time can definitely be un-fun but some of the best moments in the game come from when a character gets some trauma in a scenario but the narrative keeps on going. There is a lot of branching so you'll end up playing them multiple times. Your second run through will often have you optimising your decks around the known threats.

Beyond that, I'm not sure if I've got any more advice to offer. I'm not the best deckbuilder in the world so I often browse arkhamdb.com to find inspiration when building a deck for a new character. Feel free to let us know what sort of problems you're having in particular and we can see how we can help.

That's all great advice, and I appreciate it. Even the understanding that you should be {+2}on a pull before you should start thinking it'll work is a good rule of thumb that I have been learning the hard (unfun) way. I have all those rules baked into my AH 2e play, but I had no leg to stand on in the LCG without just getting biffed out the door. I don't mind missing, but I don't like missing every time.

I do play two-handed, every ARKHAM game works better that way, and I was on Standard, so I'll take that to Easy. And the big draw for the the RETURN was the deck box, honestly. I won't be doing any content in there for some time, but I do want that box to keep all my gear in.

One great feature of ArkhamDB is the ability to filter decklists by packs. Most of the stuff you’ll see on the front page will need the latest releases, but you can use that filter so your results only include the cards you actually have. You’ll see your results really improve with a solid deck because what you can make from a single core is pretty shaky.

I’ll second the investigator decks as the next thing to buy. They will give you the most bang for your buck even if they are a little tricky to track down. Not only do they have a ton of new cards that can only be found in them but they also fine you more of some of the core set cards that you really want more of and save you from getting a second core set. You may find you want one anyway. But it can help.

I have not played Jackie or The seeker yet but the other three are super fun investigators.

My buddy and I got two games in the other night. We completely trucked the train ride to Dunwitch and we’re feeling pretty good about ourselves. We started looking into the next scenario and got wrecked. It was one of those games where it all just goes wrong. We finished in the end, barely. I think I was at one health and Zoe was not much better. I drew Rex’s curse 5 times. Which was sorta helpful as I would have died if I had decked. The encounter deck discarded my strange flux to counter Beyond the veil. As well as most of my combat tech. It was just an ugly scenario. Tons of fun. I’m curious to see how the next one goes.

I set up some decks from ArkhamDB and had Ashcan Pete and Jenny Barnes set out in the default Scenario. On easy mode too, but that probably overshoots the need a little. We only had a couple TOTAL whiffs, so for the most part we moved the story along, and did a solid job managing baddies and gathering clues. It’s a great game, I just had some activation energy issues to get over the hump to get into it. Pete finished at 1 health and took some mental trauma for the balance of the campaign, but Jenny came out fine and is a killing machine.

I realized that I’d purchased Dunwich Legacy some months ago, I guess? Only after opening the cards and realizing I had dupes though, haha. I’ll bring it back to the FLGS and have them give it to whoever buys that other core set. I assume the folks in this thread are set on that front.

Printing and delivery problems with the current Innsmouth cycle mean I still haven't played the fifth story in the campaign, so I've been dipping into some fan creations lately. There is some really good stuff out there.

I cannot pay The Symphony of Erich Zann any greater compliment than to say that it feels like an official design. Solid inspiration is aiding a new batch of musicians who have been captured by Zann's music, and very well designed encounter cards that interact well and have synergy with the mini-bosses. The art is even well sourced with lurid colors and heavy brush strokes that give that feeling that things aren't quite right. My only complaint is that there can be a few too many ongoing effects on the board that make it too easy to miss one or two, but that happens even in the official releases. Really, if you feel a little ennui toward playing Carcosa or Dunwich again, this is easily worth the time in printing and cutting.

Against the Wendigo is pretty great, too. It's built around seeking students who went missing during a past expedition into Canada, but feels like a collection of mini-scenarios that really works for a standalone.
Unfortunately, it's held back a bit by a weaker encounter set. More than a few of them did absolutely nothing to me and had me wondering if I wasn't playing them wrong.

Both of these, and a fair deal more, can be found at Arkham Central .

Finally got the Investigator packs in, so decided I'm going to throw caution to the wind and do a blind run on Easy of Dream-Eaters with Harvey and Jackie entering the Dream and Wini and Stella taking care of bidness here in the "real" world.

Did the 1B scenario first, it was terrific. Kept it in check for the most part, advancing to Act 2 with a quickness (we never even went into the Records Room). Nice dramatic moment at the end with Stella .

Knee-jerk thoughts: both decks are a ton of fun to pilot, and super versatile. Neither Rain nor Snow is a beast of a card, getting 3 of them almost feels like cheating. Anything You Can Do, Better and Sneak By are tremendous.

It’s kind of funny to think of running Stella on Easy since it makes triggering her innate and associated fail tech that much harder. Should definitely ramp Wini up, though.

I really enjoy both of them as both their archetypes have been around since core and finally find their peak expression here, but I do feel Stella is bit overtuned. She has the highest combined health and sanity pool, an innate that’s rarely useless with strong class synergy, and an elder sign ability that does something, but those Neither Rain Nor Snow signatures really push her over the edge. The text basically says you can ignore a lot of treachery cards, and the three wild icons help you pass tests when you actually want to do that, AND they can be recurred with Resourceful and True Survivor. It’s not as bad as feeling like you’re cheating when you play Luke or Mandy, but I kind of wish she only had one or if they had just one wild icon.

Hope you enjoy Dream Eaters. I think it just edges Forgotten Age as my favorite campaign.

Thanks for the info on the fan made scenarios. I have a few that I want to print and cut. I have been too lazy to do so.

As stated, Dream Eaters is a ton of fun. You should have a good time with it.

Has there ever been any talk of FFG bundling up an older cycle and selling a campaign in one box?

It'd be super convenient to be able to pick up a full cycle in one go rather than having to hunt down individual packs and be at the mercy of the reprinting schedule.