Arkham Horror: The Card Game

Yeah, research assistants, library docents, arcane initiates, newspapermen, etc all have an alarmingly high death rate.

There have been a few cards lately like parallel Roland and Miskatonic Archaeology Funding that actually encourage keeping your allies alive which I appreciate. Seems much more heroic.

Gary Sax wrote: A thing I've been thinking about is how "natural" tests can just stop hybrid investigators, especially mystics, to a complete standstill. If you're "faking" your way using spells through fight tests, evades, or investigates you're just going to run into some shit that stymies you.

I don’t know if they’re becoming more common, but those sorts of critical, natural tests have really pushed me toward two-handed play lately. Skill-heavy investigators like Minh and Silas can probably get by, if I plan ahead for them, but the pool who don’t just get hosed is kind of small.

Completely agree, if you have multiple investigators with diverse specialized skills you can generally clear any persistent problems in their threat area.

The memory of Carolyn just having two "can't get in the boat" cards sitting in front of her for 3/4 of the game because neither her nor Agnes could pass a dex or fight 3 most of the game is going to haunt me for a while. It does speak to needing unexpected courage and the like around and not just wasting it on normal passable checks.

Innsmouth is such a mixed bag, I'm just about to the final missions. I think, overall, it's really great and quite a varied design. I just think the keys bit is kind of a bust and the tokens lean a little too difficult, and this is on easy.

I saw someone on reddit say that the design team is trying to make agility more important and I have really felt that here.

I'm realizing it would make close to no difference in innsmouth if I was playing standard instead of easy, since you pretty much have to be at +3 or +4 at all times anyway since you have at least 5 and often 7 tokens in the mix that trigger -3 (usually plus other badness) on easy.

Don't forget to look good, is all I'll say to you and Al.

I finished innsmouth last night, a win of a sort surprisingly.The final scenario didn't do a ton for me but it wasn't bad, I think they overdid it a touch creating branching content for a win state/consistent victory contingency that very few people are going to meet. Looking back, there were a bunch of wildly creative scenario designs so I think overall the campaign was a success, though I would definitely place it below the Dream Eaters half I did. Easy recommendation, though not as a first product for several reasons.

Jim is a very solid pick for Carcosa. I think it’s still the only campaign to start with three skull tokens, and his trumpet can do a lot of work in such a horror-heavy campaign.

I am running my Tommy/Luke decks in a rerun of Dunwich on easy, I did the casino mission. These decks still have some problems (as some of you pointed out in the discord, I did adjust a bit ha), but it is very hard to underestimate how much easier Dunwich is than Innsmouth. Even just token distribution is a gigantic difference. We got into a little jam at the end by drawing the 1vp enemy from the spheres set while Tommy was just about out of ammo, but most of the damage I took was mostly me just hurrying along to get out. If I had taken another turn I wouldn't have gotten to 4 damage on Luke. Finished with 3 doom to spare, and that was with a lot of inefficient actions taking resources.

The Clover Club stands out still today for its ability to set a mood and scene with a minimum of rules overhead. Giving the mob aloof, trying to duck the boss’ attention, watching the hordes of enforcers grow has a real energy to it. I still don’t know why the monsters break in, but whatever.

Rita Young is pretty limited in a lot of ways, especially because the "trick" keyword is not on some crucial cards you'd think would be tricks. But god damn, sornars and I played the Paris and Paris catacombs scenarios of Carcosa and she is just an absolute monster in those scenarios once she has her shoes.

Apparently Asmodee is raising prices to cover increased costs in October so the MSRP of Mythos Packs are set to go up by $2 then. It might be worth picking up any cycles that are in stock in the old format now if you intend to pick them up at all.

More broadly, I know we frequently talk about how greedy Asmodee is but this move seems pretty reasonable given the current situation.

My buddy and I got in Threads of Fate. After our struggles prior this was a good one for us. His deck took a little longer to get rolling but he was humming by the end. As for me I hit some peek survivor BS. Used Duke to investigate from one space away thereby skipping the extra action cost due to an encounter card, failed the test, landed 2 clues with Look what I found into Live and Learn to pas the test after all. Real satisfying play, when it just works.

Made a few tweaks after the second scenario, deck was not quite doing what i wanted. I removed the Fail tech aside from Look what I Found.
While Take Heart and Drawing Thin are amazing cards they were not pulling weight for me in this deck. Really kinda unexpected. The addition of Winging it really helped. With the 7xp earned I got the second Sharp Vision and a pair of True Survivor. I'll look to lean into Innate skills a little more, but I have quite a few good ones and True Survivor is a Spirit card so I can dig for it with Boxing Gloves. Its alittle silly but I am having fun with the deck. Its turned a little more Silas rather than Stella.

sornars wrote: Apparently Asmodee is raising prices to cover increased costs in October so the MSRP of Mythos Packs are set to go up by $2 then. It might be worth picking up any cycles that are in stock in the old format now if you intend to pick them up at all.

More broadly, I know we frequently talk about how greedy Asmodee is but this move seems pretty reasonable given the current situation.

You are an extremely bad person to my pocketbook to bring this up. I'll probably crumble later this month on Forgotten Age since it is now barely just all available if you do multiple site orders. That said it's too bad but seems reasonable to me given the clusterfuck in transport and Chinese manufacturing.

On the fail forward thing Bernie, it's interesting, my initial take was it is a devastatingly powerful thing as a whole strategy, having seen it when I played Stella. But I've come to realize that it's a hard thing to really lean into hard without being, well, Stella, or someone who can manipulate token draw. At least in Innsmouth and to a lesser extent in Dream Eaters failing has really bad ancillary effects that generally aren't erased by most of the "when you fail" survivor cards that you let you try again or succeed, or take resources, or whatever. So I do think it has more limited utility than it first appears because failing can be extremely punishing even if it facilitates you succeeding afterward or nets you some benefit.

That said, I find look what I found and old keyring to be the most realistic way to help out on clues for survivors as you mentioned.