Arkham Horror: The Card Game

Gary Sax wrote: Sornars and I had a fitting end to carcosa on easy, with us being shut up in a mental asylum forever. It was one of those games where I felt we had the game locked and were progressing with excellent speed... and then it just went completely sideways on the escape. We probably should have stuck together... dunno. Losing my gate box early was a real blow.

I think sornars thought I was going to blow my top with the non-standard game over, but it really just is the sense of helplessness caused by the bad decks that was driving me crazy in this game. I kind of thought the game over was hilarious. My Luke deck wasn't like amazing but it does have tools to handle most situations, you just might not have them handy.

If you're referring to the scenario I think you're referring to, it's not game over. You just have to make new investigators. Keep going!!! (in fact, in general, unless it says "you lose the campaign", you make new investigators and continue, but that scenario especially is the first time I'd encountered it and the subsequent scenarios have lots of text for folks in your position)

Unfortunately we both died and did encounter “investigators lose the campaign”. In my first run through only one person got out which let me carry on with a replacement investigator. The second half isn’t so bad with 0xp deck but it was so shocking to think that my poor play could have consequences.

Kmann wrote: The only reason to pass on a complete cycle is if you believe it'll be released in the new format and are happy to wait for however long it takes for FFG to release it onto the market.

If not, I'd grab it while the grabbin's good.

You two are vindicated, here is one of the packs two days after I ordered them all after hemming and hawing all day:

www.miniaturemarket.com/ffgahc35.html

This Dream Eaters scenario just dragged. Cool one, but fuck man this game does not want to push past two hours solo.

Boy that fail/skill card Stella deck gets ground up if you hit a restriction playing events and skill adds!!! It all almost ended there.

It even ended really tense on a final pull but I was just exhausted by then.

I’ve found the extra long scenarios are only really annoying the first play. Then I know whether I have enough time before I need to go to bed. But I’m also lucky enough to have a room and table to lock up, if I really can’t finish it that night.

I just cracked and sorted innsmouth. There's some stuff without any knowledge of the scenarios I really like about it.

First, I think a big advantage of the 8 scenario format re: player cards is when they introduce a conceit (bless/curse) they have a big enough card corpus to elaborate on it. Maybe not perfectly, but I'm guessing you could make a solid bless/curse with the whole cycles worth of cards. It would be hard to create a truly orphaned mechanic with this format even though we're unlikely to see many bless curse cards going forward.

I also really think going all in on a mechanic is the right way to go this far in. There isn't much basic utility in here, it really is the bless curse set. That'd be a problem three cycles earlier but at this stage it is the right thing to do imo. That said, it does make me quibble a little with the get whatever set looks best for you as a first cycle which I have hypocritically given. I do think an earlier set with more utility card ratio is a slightly better choice first cycle.

Finally, mystic cards can be the most boring cards because sometimes it feels like 3/4 of the corpus of cards is just making it so you can fight or investigate with will in different ways or in this case using the new mechanic.

Anyway, I'm real hyped to try it after my dream eaters campaign. I think if I go bless curse I'll be downloading decks, I'm not sure I have the skill to balance it properly.

I am officially all out of storage and circle is coming in next week. I'm a crazy card person now.

www.bcwsupplies.com/card-game-box-black-white

I was using the ugly cardboard BCW boxes before upgrading to a custom storage box but the link above does 80% of my current solution at about half the cost. It looks like a reasonable tradeoff between cost, utility and aesthetics. I use the Return to boxes to store the scenario and encounter cards and a big box like that for player cards. I build decks on Arkham Cards/arkhamdb so sort by faction/card type/release order to make deck assembly easier.

I also appreciate when the designers go all in on a mechanic. You'll find TCU was pretty half hearted on its approach to Tarot cards. I haven't looked at the Return to box for TCU specifically but that's generally the next opportunity for a cycle specific mechanic to be revisited beyond the odd card in future cycles.

I still need to finish the finale for Innsmouth, but right now I think the best part of the campaign is the player cards. They went all in on the bless/curse mechanic because of the physical limitations of printing tokens and created a cohesive, interesting batch of player cards. Not only did they create whole new archetypes but also they made some good stuff that can fit anywhere. I think Mystics are the big winners because they can lean in any direction depending on their respective card pools, but everyone got something.

I’m not sure whether I’d encourage it as a first campaign buy. I still think core and starter investigators are a solid base for attempting any campaign, but the bless/curse cards tend to encourage all or nothing. Depending on one’s enjoyment of deck building, it could feel limiting or refreshing.

Gary Sax wrote: Finally, mystic cards can be the most boring cards because sometimes it feels like 3/4 of the corpus of cards is just making it so you can fight or investigate with will in different ways or in this case using the new mechanic.

Before Innsmouth, I’d tend to agree. Part of the problem is the Mystic investigators. Their numbers all encourage just stacking Will bonuses. They don’t have a Carolyn or Joe Diamond or Sefina that really makes you look at their cardpool differently from the others. Luke and Parallel Agnes encourage events a little more, but everyone else is still happy to take their preferred suite of Shrivelling/Rite/Mists. Most Mystic decks probably started with the same 20 or so cards and filled it out according to their pool and needs of the campaign. It was not terribly exciting.

But post Innsmouth? It’s so open. You can build Jim on the back of Curse of Aeons. Mateo can go bless and Isis to trigger his innate all the time. There is some fun stuff to explore in Mystic now.

sornars wrote: I also appreciate when the designers go all in on a mechanic. You'll find TCU was pretty half hearted on its approach to Tarot cards. I haven't looked at the Return to box for TCU specifically but that's generally the next opportunity for a cycle specific mechanic to be revisited beyond the odd card in future cycles.

Return to Circle Undone is the first Return box to create wholly new cards just so tarot becomes a real theme. You can definitely build a “tarot deck” now.

I wasn’t that bothered by the lack of support in the initial release, personally. It was a theme in the story, and they wanted to bring that into the investigator space, too. That was all.

I think the problem was one of expectations. If you’re going to create a whole new slot, people are going to expect more than seven associated player cards and one weakness.

DarthJoJo wrote:

Gary Sax wrote: Finally, mystic cards can be the most boring cards because sometimes it feels like 3/4 of the corpus of cards is just making it so you can fight or investigate with will in different ways or in this case using the new mechanic.

Before Innsmouth, I’d tend to agree. Part of the problem is the Mystic investigators. Their numbers all encourage just stacking Will bonuses. They don’t have a Carolyn or Joe Diamond or Sefina that really makes you look at their cardpool differently from the others. Luke and Parallel Agnes encourage events a little more, but everyone else is still happy to take their preferred suite of Shrivelling/Rite/Mists. Most Mystic decks probably started with the same 20 or so cards and filled it out according to their pool and needs of the campaign. It was not terribly exciting.

All of my mystic decks end up looking so samey and I’d never really given much thought as to why. MJ recently talked about how she and the design team try to introduce new investigators in a blog post here: www.bewaretheblackcat.com/post/behind-th...nvestigators-part-ii

Given her five criteria, it’s interesting to see how mystics frequently violate points 2 and 3:
- An investigator should fill a space other investigators don't.
- An investigator's ability should "inform" their deckbuilding.

The MK1 grenades are in (with the rest of Circle Undone). Time to GET IN for this fourth waking scenario! I'm pumped.

Just finished the last scenario, took the thing down with time to spare. Great scenario! Good example of a flavorful final boss battle that doesn't leave clue people totally stranded. Loved this four scenario campaign. If it wasn't for that long dreamland hike I'd say it's near perfect for what I'm looking for.

Base Stella deck is over the top good and fun to run. I would give it to any beginner and tell them to have fun and take chances.

It's totally unreliable but in this campaign Wish Eater was insanely good... just eating spider souls left and right, easy to activate, and its activate power is *so* good. Dual heal and cancel a nasty token is incredible, especially attached to a fighter pulling tons of fight tokens.

I think both of the Dream Eaters finales are really strong in that they broke from the trend of every other campaign where you cross into another universe and everything is weird and falling apart. Both feel much more concrete and have solid, original takes on the boss battle. The only knock on them is that both can swing really hard or easy on random draws.

I haven’t run the Wish Eater yet, but I really want to slot it into a full-on battle mage Akachi who charges it up faster. Anyone who can pair the Eldritch Sophist with it can do some crazy stuff, too.

DarthJoJo wrote: I think both of the Dream Eaters finales are really strong in that they broke from the trend of every other campaign where you cross into another universe and everything is weird and falling apart. Both feel much more concrete and have solid, original takes on the boss battle. The only knock on them is that both can swing really hard or easy on random draws.

I haven’t run the Wish Eater yet, but I really want to slot it into a full-on battle mage Akachi who charges it up faster. Anyone who can pair the Eldritch Sophist with it can do some crazy stuff, too.

That encapsulates it perfectly, it was a brawl but they thought about how to make a brawl interesting, not how to dress it up.

Honestly, wish eater works in any scenario with swarm for any muscular guardian. It works elsewhere too but it's much iffier because you might not get it early enough and you might not fight enough 2 health normal annoyances to really flip it.