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Arkham Horror (3rd edition): Under Dark Waves Coming Soon

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Arkham Horror (3rd edition): Under Dark Waves

Game Information

Players
1 - 6
MSRP $
54.95
Release Date
September 18, 2020
There Will Be Games

We shall swim out to that brooding reef in the sea and dive down through black abysses to Cyclopean and many-columned Y’ha-nthlei, and in that lair of the Deep Ones we shall dwell amidst wonder and glory for ever.  –H.P. Lovecraft, The Shadow over Innsmouth

Cold salt waves beat on the New England coast and thick fog rolls in off the bay, obscuring the small fishing hamlets that nestle in the darkness. Dark things creep along the shoreline, strange lights glide deep beneath the surface of the Atlantic, and the pallid villagers go missing with disturbing regularity.

Under Dark Waves is a new large box expansion for Arkham Horror (3rd Edition), taking your investigations beyond the town of Arkham to the other ill-fated towns of Massachusetts. Two new double-sided tiles bring Kingsport and Innsmouth to vibrant life, while eight more investigators arrive to join your party, ranging from a drifter like "Ashcan" Pete to a letter carrier such as Stella Clark. These investigators will have their work cut out for them with four entirely new scenarios pitting them against the horrors that lurk beneath the ocean waves. With over 150 encounter and event cards, alongside new assets, monsters, conditions, and the terror mechanic, Under Dark Waves boasts a vast undersea treasure trove, pulling you into some of the Cthulhu Mythos's most compelling tales.


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jason10mm's Avatar
jason10mm replied the topic: #313511 26 Aug 2020 16:03
Good grief, I missed Arkham Horror THIRD EDITION????
Shellhead's Avatar
Shellhead replied the topic: #313512 26 Aug 2020 16:10
I'm the resident Arkham Horror 2nd edition fanboy, and still can't even part with my 1st edition. But I haven't even tried 3rd yet. 2nd with all the expansions is the extravagant sandbox that I always wanted.
Gary Sax's Avatar
Gary Sax replied the topic: #313515 26 Aug 2020 16:29
If I could try third edition without buying it, I would. It sounds like it's more meta-story driven which is certainly a different but logical change in approach to the series---Eldritch pushed in this more authored direction but didn't get all the way there. I would say that Arkham Horror 2nd is more vignette or micro-story driven in terms of its narrative.
Cambyses's Avatar
Cambyses replied the topic: #313518 26 Aug 2020 17:00
Not to be too curmudgeonly, but I have so many fond memories of staying up til 3 in the morning playing 2nd edition with college friends that I don't think I would ever part with my copy, and I don't even care to see whether the new one is any good at all. I'm happy playing 2nd edition a few times a year forever.
ubarose's Avatar
ubarose replied the topic: #313519 26 Aug 2020 17:05

jason10mm wrote: Good grief, I missed Arkham Horror THIRD EDITION????


You didn't miss anything. It's not very good.
DarthJoJo's Avatar
DarthJoJo replied the topic: #313526 26 Aug 2020 19:35
Keeping in mind these thoughts are based on a single play over a year ago, I’d call it an admirable failure. It felt like they were trying to corral the sprawl and sandbox of the second edition through a tighter narrative and with a dusting of Pandemic in the need to keep corruption or whatever under control at different locations. That was fine, good even. I just didn’t find my actions as a player terribly interesting.

The narrative system could be a great addition to some solid dungeon crawl mechanics, but I guess Fantasy Flight thought it was more important to revive Elder Sign first. Not that I mind fancy Yahtzee, but an X-Men skin on Descent 4.0 with Arkham 3.0’s narrative mechanics? Super iterative? Yes, but a lot more exciting.
Disgustipater's Avatar
Disgustipater replied the topic: #313528 26 Aug 2020 20:59

Gary Sax wrote: If I could try third edition without buying it, I would.


Like say...a TTS module?

I downloaded it a while ago but never got around to trying it.
ubarose's Avatar
ubarose replied the topic: #313567 27 Aug 2020 13:38

DarthJoJo wrote: I’d call it an admirable failure.


That's the perfect description.
fightcitymayor's Avatar
fightcitymayor replied the topic: #313569 27 Aug 2020 13:58
I still remember reading the interview with Nikki Valens (AH 3E designer) after she announced she was leaving FFG and indicated prior to coming on-board she wasn't really in tune with hobby gaming & didn't even like Arkham Horror.

Until very recently, you worked at Fantasy Flight. How did you get your start there? How was your experience working for such a well known company in the industry?

There's not much to the story of me getting hired. I saw the opening and applied. They must have liked the work I'd done on RPGs up to that point and liked me in my interview and then I was there making Eldritch a few weeks later. I didn't know a ton about the hobby games industry before starting at FFG. The only FFG game I had played at that point was Arkham Horror (which I really didn't like).

Josh Look's Avatar
Josh Look replied the topic: #313600 28 Aug 2020 22:45
I'm actually coming around on it. It's got some weird pacing issues, but I dunno, there's something about it that I'm really warming up to. Maybe it's that I don't have to connect the unrelated dots to form some kind of cohesive narrative in order to make myself feel better about playing a truly garbage design? Perhaps. I do know that it's shame it has to share it's name with Arkham Horror, because it isn't that and I'm mostly for what it is. Eldritch is still on top for me, but given how little I want in on an FFG LCG money pit these days, AH3 does just fine for me
ubarose's Avatar
ubarose replied the topic: #313626 31 Aug 2020 11:01
I could be that the pacing is the primary issue. That is something that is scenario specific and may be "fixed" in the expansions. But I'm not going to risk throwing good money after bad. What I like about 3rd edition is the same thing I like about the LCG, and the LCG does that thing better.

Maybe in the long run the LCG might end up costing more, but with the 3rd edition expansions running $50 each, and the slow pace at which we going through the LCG, it will probably be a wash for us.
Josh Look's Avatar
Josh Look replied the topic: #313649 31 Aug 2020 19:12
The game needs one more consistently present thing to do. Resolving Doom and collecting clues (which isn't really a thing to do because it happens outside of the 2 actions you have each round) is not enough. EH and AH2 had a crap ton of monsters wandering the board, which when you think about is perhaps the least Lovecraft thing going on in the game, but it kept things interesting. I'm not asking for oodles of monsters though, I find their smaller numbers refreshing, but it's missing that one more thing. It's so close to being the game I want and that makes it all the more frustrating.
ubarose's Avatar
ubarose replied the topic: #313663 01 Sep 2020 10:29
I've only played 3 times, and it was a while ago, so I can't speak as specifically as I would like to. However, the impression that it left was that it quickly became very wack-a-mole and Pandemic-like. As a result it suffered from the same issue that I have with Pandemic. Players got locked into "roles," and players got stuck doing the same thing over and over again every turn - monster fighter, doom remover, clue getter. The story my have progressed, but what you did on your turn didn't change. Plus, the fiddliness of it rivaled Arkham Horror 2nd edition.

The neat story progression mechanic didn't quite mesh up with the rather abstract, mechanical wack-a-mole puzzle. It made me feel like I could be playing the LCG, which does the former better, or Ghost Stories, which does the later better. Or just go play Eldritch if I wanted a straight up adventure game with less overhead.