Arkham Horror: The Card Game

I reracked the game with the spouse once we are not intensely stresssed out all the time. She requested Jenny Barnes. This time I read the descriptions of starter deck strategy from that FFG doc to her so she could decide, I'm really glad FFG included those.

www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2019/12/2/barkham-horror/

If y'all remember the Barkham Horror April fool's day thing from a while back, apparently I wasn't the only one whose first thought was "Wait, actually make that though!" It's going to be a real stand alone scenario. I am deeply pleased by this silly thing, and look forward to playing it. It looks incredible . I very much look forward to mashing dog related cards into my regular Arkham decks too.

The best part? Duke is his own investigator who has a Friendly Human ally and can presumably take the Stray Cat and Miss Doyle allies.

This is the best thing FFG has done in quite a while and I don't mean that in a backhanded way at all. Truly awesome.

I think it being set in a universe they have a considerable amount more creative control over than other iterations (Marvel) is helpful.

Gary Sax wrote: I think it being set in a universe they have a considerable amount more creative control over than other iterations (Marvel) is helpful.

No doubt, but I can’t see them ever doing something like this with L5R.

Amazon currently has the base game for $23 so I picked it up without knowing much about it, other that a lot of people seem to like it. I like the campaign aspect. Anyway, I have a question: The King in Yellow is my favorite stuff in the mythos, and I will definitely pick up the Path to Carcosa. Is it advisable to do the Dunwich Legacy stuff before Carcosa?

It’s probably okay. The difficulty isn’t too much of a jump, the investigators are pretty straightforward and the scenarios aren’t bonkers convoluted. The campaigns are all meant to be their own starting point, but Forgotten Age and Circle Undone definitely seem better suited to experienced players.

I don't mind doing Dunwich first, I was just curious.

Upon second look, I totally misread your question. Yeah, Dunwich first is no problem at all. I particularly like that all the new investigators work pretty well in a limited card pool.

If it's similar the question I had, Digustipater, it really is totally your call---each cycle is a complete game reset, new characters, etc so it doesn't matter what order you buy them/do them. I'd just go with whichever most interests you. Dunwich seems to be the most common to recommend because the scenarios aren't too complicated and the cards with it are pretty general and useful for your character deckbuilding (what Darthjojo is talking about).

As everyone else has said you really can pick up stuff in any order you want. In my beginner's guide I recommend starting with the most recent cycle if you want to take part in the current conversations going on in the community. If you don't care about that then go for whatever you want. I would say that Carcosa is a fair leap in terms of the complexity of scenarios and how the designers are willing to mess with you. Dunwich is a gentler introduction to that kind of thing, Carcosa is probably the best of the game so far though I really enjoyed Circle Undone as well.

If you are going into Carcosa it is worth noting there is an errata for scenario 3, Echoes of the Pat that you should read up on.

Finished a three-player campaign of The Forgotten Age last night. After a five-minute argument between Jenny Barnes and "Diamond" Joe whether we should side with Yig and the snakes or humanity, we lost on doom one location away from powering up the Relic of Ages and mending the tear in time. Honestly, it was a much better finish than I expected when we came into the scenario with thirteen total trauma. I was pretty well ready to bin the whole campaign after Boundary Beyond ended before Padma even showed up and my Norman was shot three times when Joe and Jenny missed the snake on top of me.

Some notes on play:
-Pnakotic Manuscripts is totally worth it at five resources and five experience, even without Daisy getting the bonus action. Well Maintained Pnakotic Manuscripts are hilarious and even more useful.
-I don't get Norman. I was experimenting with the seal cards and powering Protective Incantation with Dr. Milan, but it always felt disjointed. I rarely used his innate outside of the final scenario when everything just clicked.
-I can never give Jenny to one of my fellow players again. His whole strategy was getting max bullets on the .45 Thompson with multiple Contraband and still not using it more than its original clip allowed.

My wife and I finished our Return to Carcosa campaign last night. We had been doing pretty well. There were a few tight finishes, but we were still winning scenarios. Then Dim Carcosa happened. We were only six damage away from finishing Hastur on Conviction before he personally saw to the demise of Jim and Joe, but it wasn't that close. There was some bad luck in drawing way too many enemies (four were left on the board after my wife emptied two separate guns, and I never played any weapons), and we went through every additional location but one looking to damage Hastur. First time we've ever blown a campaign since our woefully misbegotten run of the core Night of the Zealot campaign with Skids and Daisy.

Notes on the campaign:
-The designer took a light touch in refining and revising what is probably the community's consensus favorite campaign. A few rules to cover up exploits that most players didn't realize were there, and a few new scenario cards that did a great job of making the entire thing more threatening. Probably a less necessary expansion than the Return to Dunwich, but a great job, nonetheless.
-After accounting for the new weaknesses, my wife and I both ended the campaign on 16 experience. I know Carcosa and Dunwich were stingy with their reward, but good grief. I've earned more experience than that after three scenarios of Forgotten Age.
-My Jim deck used a lot of the new mystic cards that reward you for drawing the skull and other face tokens, but I never fully committed to it, so it never felt like it really came together.

If you want to do some chaos bag manipulation I really recommend Father Mateo with some bag diving nonsense like Recall the Future, Olive McBride, Ritual Candles etc. Lots of fun, if brain burning.