Arkham Horror: The Card Game

My spouse and I are actually just at the same place... we're finally getting around to finishing the third of the intro scenarios. I have the Dunwich cycle sitting around so hopefully we'll get into that.

The distribution situation on these packs for individual cycles is sort of mind numbing. You can put together a full cycle of at least 2-3 of these but you have to go to different stores, etc.

Yeah, the only reason I bought it was because it had the full cycle which means that I don't have to muck about looking for individual packs if we like it and it'll hold it's value for resale if it turns out we don't.

I like the new format for the cycles, it makes a lot more sense to get everything for the campaign in one box.

Deckbuilding in Arkham is great because you build your deck around your character, providing them with tools to solve problems or a subset of problems but the set of problems that need to be addressed are relatively consistent across campaigns/scenarios so even a blind play through can result in success if you have reasonable coverage across the decks you're running in the campaign. That coupled with the fact that failure of a scenario still allows you to progress the campaign means that you don't need to build your decks around the campaign that you're playing.

Edit: A reread made that sound like word salad. To be slightly more explicit, in a campaign you'll need:
1) a way to get clues
2) a way to deal with enemies
3) a way to deal with surprises from the encounter deck (some of which are enemies)

Not every deck needs to do all three well but across decks you'll need a plan for how to deal with all three even if that plan is "I'll leave that to someone else". Some cards explicitly enable "I'll leave that to someone else" as a deck archetype.

Played scenario 3 from the base game. Had a somewhat good time. It's hard because we play it once, put it away for 6 months, and then play it again and don't know the rules well enough to pull of good tricks. But that's an "us" thing.

We're moving on to Dunwich next and my spouse has asked we play this a bunch in short succession, so we'll be doing that. Going to play on easy mode, I must say changing the skill check tokens is a *very* elegant solution to difficulty scaling.

I asked my spouse if there was anything we could do to make her enjoy the game more (she seems to quite like it) and besides playing more than once quickly she said "I want to play as Mandy Thompson" so... looks like miniature market has the dream eaters though no one else does. Is that campaign any good? Should I just get the base box? If it's good I'll just grab the whole thing.

I must say that besides the way the purchase model works, which makes tons of sense for a first release but not after that, this game is so smartly constructed to give you lots of options and fun but not overwhelm like a MTG or something. Sornars comments above about deck building being very approachable *specifically* because of the way they've made the game really hit home when I was looking through it this time.

All of the campaigns are good, even the ones I was whinging about further up thread have grown on me. I’ve just started The Dream Eaters and like it so far! The nice thing about it for someone who plays casually is that you have a choice of doing two shorter campaigns or the full length campaign with all of the scenarios interwoven.

Cool, I pulled the trigger, Mandy and that whole campaign is on the way. Even if we peter out I'm sort of warming to the system enough to play it myself and deck build.

Though I kind of despise playing anything two handed. I don't know why it's a barrier but two full real hands feels much harder to manage than, like, running a three player Oath game.

Heh, YMMV but I don’t find two hands to be bad at all. I think it’s easier than playing solo. That’s where the real constraints of deck building strike. Dream Eaters is great. They all are. I would hold off adding more if you can. Sounds like there may be an announcer in the near future about a repackaging of the old content. Take that with a grain of salt but it was kinda hinted at by MJ during a podcast interview.

Knocked out Carcosa 3 today. It went super well. Yorick was up and killing full speed at the end of turn 1. I chipped in a little here and there. This enabled us to cruise to an easy win. I did not have a stellar game clue gathering as I did not find Rite ofSeeking till the end, I had to grind with Sixth Sense. This may come back to haunt us. But so far we have been good. It may just be that clues were gathered more slowly when Carcosa was released.

Bless continues to be great. In a bit of an odd one we only drew one bless token from the bag and I sent it back in with the Sacred Covenant. Not to say that bless was not key. Yorick destroyed with Favor of the sun getting it into play three times.

I added my second copy of Nepthys as my sole upgrade sorta. I have 2 cap to upgrade spells. I think I have used it for the second to last time. Have the first of my two wards upgraded. I think two trauma for 8xp may be a little dodgy but it’s mostly been ok. It’s not been an issue in two of our three games. My next upgrade will be Enchant weapon. This should make Yorick just bonkers.

All this being said Yorick with the survivor covenant and two favor of the sun may just be one of the most busted things I have seen to date. I know segment of onyx can be busted pretty bad. But this has to be up there. It may be exacerbated by being teamed with Mary and Yorick not needing to load the bag with bless. It’s pretty amazing to watch in action.

Gary,

If you can find them without too much expense / trouble the investigator starters are the best addition you can make to your collection.

Ok, definitely. I'll do those next. I got this one specifically because my wife has a very particular attachment to a particular investigator.

I totally get that.

I did not prior to diving headlong into the lcg, have a direct attachment to anyone. I have Arkham horror 2nd and some of the expansions and Arkham 3rd. That’s no longer the case.

I know Arkham Horror 3rd edition is not as good as second but I will be picking up the new expansion because Winnie is in it. It’s funny how these things get you.

If your wife’s attachment to Mandy comes from Arkham the Second, her LCG incarnation is a strict upgrade. They kind of reused her character art from the board game but totally repainted it so that you’re not looking down her blouse and so she has a real face instead of that triangle.

And she’s really strong. She inspired most of the Seeker taboos in the latest FAQ.

Enjoy.

I think it's fair to say this I'd our most successful try at this game. My wife started picking new cards with her two experience and was like "OHHHHHH, I could have started with any of those 0 dot ones? I get it."

We had a lot more fun with easy level.

A decent house rule that makes the game better, especially if you are running pregen decks is allowing yourselves to swap level 0 cards until the start of the third scenario. Normally that would cost one xp a card. It lets you tweet a little.

This is doubly true as new players and running pregens. Those can leave a little to be desired.

That's what we're doing, so great minds think alike. She swapped in two 0 cards in addition to adding two 1 level cards.

A reason I wish I had two core sets is for two 45 automatics and two entomology professor cards...

Looks like the entymology professor gets nerfed in the faq, makes sense, he's still very good for the 4 (iirc) cost.

Played again today, mission two of Dunwich. I'm warming up the game, there's still something a little bit off-putting about trying to figure out what the game wants you to do in each stage of a scenario. It speaks a very particular language to understand what the flow of the next step is and I'm only starting to get it. Otherwise a lot of act/agenda progressions require a little bit of confused parsing which disrupts play.