Arkham Horror

[Maryring]

Arkham Horror is one of my favourite board games. I like to play it, make cards for it, and especially love it when the game manages to pull me into an epic, terrifying struggle of regular people facing horrors above and beyond what anyone could expect of them (and then the game jars me out of that sensation with a bottle of ink, but what can you do). However, I have a rather... small problem with the game.

I don't have many others who enjoy playing the game or discussing the game.

So, I thought to myself, the best course of action is to try to find everyone else out there on the internet who likes this game as much as I do. I'm sure they must exist.

And if that means I'm talking to you, what do you enjoy about the game? Who do you enjoy playing as? Have you made any fun content for the game that you like to use yourself?

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

I was introduced to the game at a GitP meetup, actually, ended up buying it. I love it, my girlfriend hates it because it's long and intricate and rules-heavy, but my other roommate likes it so I can still play it sometimes! Never thought of doing homebrew content though...

[Eldan]

It's nice and all, but I don't think I'd buy it. I played it a few times at a friend's place and we had the feeling it got a bit samey after a while. We played with expansions and all, sure, and there's tons of cards we've never seen, but there's just this stage where you go "Clue, clue, clue, equipment, fight monster, repeat, god defeated", when you've played it too often.

[Tvtyrant]

It is fine, but I prefer Mansions of Madness. My group owns both, and Arkham Horror tends to stay in the box.

[Fri]

If you like arkham horror, you'd like eldritch horror. Its basically an improved, more streamlined, better designed, more varied arkham horror set as globetrotting adventure instead of set in a city, by the same company. If say you like to play arkham and haven't bought it but would like to buy it, you might want to check it.

[Chen]

I feel the game needs expansions otherwise the strategy of just farming for elder signs is too strong.

Also the difficulty balancing seems off. Trying to play 2 players is very hard but playing 4 is generally quite easy. One of the home brewed ways of making the 2 player one more feasible (without controlling an extra char) was something along the lines of having the mythos phase only happen every second round. Best way is to do it randomly rather than a predictable way (which means the dice can still screw you).

[danzibr]

I freakin' love Arkham Horror. My favorite board game ever.

I also love Mansions of Madness, but I like that Arkham Horror is strictly cooperative.

For me... I have like 3 big expansions and a few little ones. I recall there being some really broken combo with investigators. My family houseruled it to where you can go to the shop and buy from particular expansions. Like, "Show me your Dunwich goods" or whatever.

My wife always played as Jenny Barnes. I like the melee characters. There was a farmer dude I liked. The gangster is cool.

[thorgrim29]

Probably my favorite boardgame, I like playing as the old professor. Magic is fun.

[Eldan]

After a while, we came up with the house rule of drawing random characters without looking. Made the game a bit more interesting. And then roleplaying them out, of course.

[Maryring]

I've never heard of Eldritch Horror, nor have I played Mansion of Madness, but I'll keep an eye out for them both.

For homebrew content I use this. http://cgjennings.ca/eons/

It's a program that lets me create and print AH content with ease. Like turning me and my friends into investigators on the board, though my favourite creation is the Primal Flame. An ancient one who summons supermobs with every monster surge, and has a Prisoner's Dilemma as one of her plots.

I'll agree that the game could do with some expansions to make things interesting. Especially the one that adds injuries and madnesses. Dunwich Horror if I recall correctly. Injuries and madnesses seem to be one of the better additions to the game. I also like the Lurker at the Threshold and Goat of the Woods expansions for the cult deck and the pacts. I love the "power at a price" prospect.

For my favourite characters to play as...
Carolyn Fern: Healing sanity makes her a boss when it comes to reading books and casting spells. And I love to read books and cast spells.
Gloria Goldberg: Outer realms can be really painful, so she sometimes feels like a requirement to survive, for example R'lyeh.
Kate Winthrop: Her ability to ignore several of the really bad effects of unstable locations makes her a lot of fun to play with.

As for hourse rules, I tend to use the following house rules:
When making a purchase, increase selection of items to choose from by 1 for every 10 extra item cards in that particular deck. (This is mostly to make it easier for characters who don't start with weapons to at least find one through purchase. Otherwise they tend to be pretty useless.)
When choosing characters, draw 1-3 (depending on how many extra investigators we're using) and pick one of these. (Forces you to try out characters you may not play much, but doesn't leave you stuck playing characters you hate unless you have a lot of hated characters and really poor luck)
Allies require only 5 toughness / 1 gate to acquire. (Otherwise the game tends to be over before anyone has a chance to get an ally)
When trading trophies, you can trade as many trophies as you like at once. (Because rounds are precious and you want to feel good about your successes).
The game starts with a home-location encounter phase, rather than the Mythos phase. (I find it helps create a sense of unease before things turn bad)
Joining the Winning Team does not exist. (That card is bad and you feel bad for acquiring it)

And finally, roleplay is, while not mandatory, something that is heartily encouraged once you know the rules of the game, because it's what makes the game what it is.

Arkham Horror is no fun if a round follows a story that goes

"Sister Mary encounters the Ghoul. She fails the horror check, but that's cool. She still has 1 sanity left. With her fight and shotgun that gives 7 dice on the roll. I got three successes. I win and claim it as a trophy."

What makes Arkham Horror fun is when the same scene is

"In the darkness, Mary notices a man hunched over on the ground. She instinctively calls out to him. An action she immediately regrets as the man turns towards her. Feral eyes glare at her, and in his hands. Oh god. A half-eaten human arm. Mary tries to scream, but her voice shrivels up in her throat. She desperately lifts her shotgun and aims it at the creature in a futile attempt to frighten it away. With a snarl it lurches towards her, only for a loud boom to echo through the night. The creature lies dead before her, killed by her own hands."

[danzibr]

[snip]
You sound like you'd be fun to play with.

It's also fun to load yourself to the teeth and throw yourself against, well, improbable odds. Totally in the ganster's personality.

That broken combo I was talking about earlier is the one chick that seals gates with ease, and the other chick that shares clue tokens (I think they're both chicks, and I think that's what they do). We stopped using that because it made the game too easy.

[Maryring]

Thank you. :smallredface:

And yeah, Patrice the clue-sharing chick is plain broken. She gets so many clues. Starts with 3, gets at least another 15 as the doomtrack advances, and gets another 5 from completing her personal story. I don't play her, but when I do, I figure that she should only be able to either directly swap clue tokens with someone if they're in the same space as her, or be unable to use her clue-tokens for sealing gates.

I've never actually played the gangster, but maybe I should. Especially if I can have him acquire the mental fortitude skill. Horror checks be hard.

[thorgrim29]

I should get a couple of expansions, the last few games were starting to feel a bit old hat. Dunwich Horror seems to be the big one, but there are a ton of them, which are especially recommended?

[Fri]

I should get a couple of expansions, the last few games were starting to feel a bit old hat. Dunwich Horror seems to be the big one, but there are a ton of them, which are especially recommended?

IIRC arkham horror expansions are quite expensive right? On par with a smaller core boardgame? If your purpose is trying to have variety, why don't just try eldritch horror instead? The core gameplay is similar.

Dunno how expensive it is though, in comparison of an arkham horror expansion.

Also, I had a crazy idea of Horror inception back then.

Play Eldritch Horror, then when you arrive in Arkham play Arkham horror, then when you arrive in a museum play Elder Sign.

Might take a whole week to finish the game :smalltongue:

[Eldan]

The expansions are quite nice, though. They come with new boards, stacks of new cards and new mechanics. When we usually play it, we tend to have three cities set out.

[danzibr]

The expansions are quite nice, though. They come with new boards, stacks of new cards and new mechanics. When we usually play it, we tend to have three cities set out.
And, most importantly, new investigators ;)

One thing I did find... often you're not rewarded for checking out the other maps. It's been a while since I played though. Like, they're kind of a hassle to get to and... there's not much to do.

[Maryring]

Yeah... the new outer world locations on the new boards are nice. But the actual board locations generally aren't all that interesting. And while new Investigators are nice, you can always make your own... well you can make your own anything, but what you should look for in expansions is new mechanics.

That's why I would suggest Dunwich Horror (Injuries and Madness), The Lurker at the Threshold (pacts and relationships) Black Goat of the Woods (Cult cards and Corruption) and the Curse of the Dark Pharao Revised (exhibit items). Pretty much in that order as well.

[Name_Here]

Man I love Arkham Horror. Have Eldritch but haven't ever been able to play a full game of it.

My friends and I got to a point where I don't think we could lost a game if we tried. we just would destroy even a game where the cards didn't go our way.

Course the horrible downside to that was that when I tried to get other friends to play I was kind of the bossy know it all.

[shadow_archmagi]

I feel like the game has too many random elements for me to really feel like I'm *playing.*

"Okay, so how do I know what stats I should pick?"
"Well, different cards make you roll different stats."
"Do I know which cards are coming?"
"Not really."
"Okay, well, how do I pick a location?"
"Different locations have different decks, and you know roughly the probability of getting each different type of reward. Like this area often grants items. Do you like magic items?"
"What do magic items do?"
"I mean here's a lot of them and they all do different things and you usually don't get to pick."
"So I'll just pick stats that might be useful and then hope that a card makes me roll them and then hope that I succeed and then hope that my success gives me something I want?"
"Yeah you've got it now"

[Derthric]

I love this game. It's what got me hooked on cooperative board games in general.

It's also the source of one of my favorite gaming memories. During Hurricane Sandy, which wasn't that harsh to Rhode Island thankfully, we lost power relatively early in the night. My brother and I decided to just play some games by candles and other lights we could find. He saw the copy of the game and wondered aloud about it and I took the chance to see if he wanted to do something other than monopoly for the 1000th time. He did and we convinced my father to join. So we sat well into the night as a hurricane swooped around us playing Arkham Horror using mirrors and candles for light. Most excellent.

[Fri]

You're lucky you didn't burn half the cards and a quarter of the house.

[danzibr]

I love this game. It's what got me hooked on cooperative board games in general.

It's also the source of one of my favorite gaming memories. During Hurricane Sandy, which wasn't that harsh to Rhode Island thankfully, we lost power relatively early in the night. My brother and I decided to just play some games by candles and other lights we could find. He saw the copy of the game and wondered aloud about it and I took the chance to see if he wanted to do something other than monopoly for the 1000th time. He did and we convinced my father to join. So we sat well into the night as a hurricane swooped around us playing Arkham Horror using mirrors and candles for light. Most excellent.

You're lucky you didn't burn half the cards and a quarter of the house.
Sounds like it was worth it.

[JellyPooga]

I liked Arkham Horror for a long time; it's a long game, made longer by the set-up time, which made it a "once in a while" sort of game, but I enjoyed it for all that. After playing it a few times, it became a bit formulaic (as most co-op games do), but it was still fun to dig out some of the "more difficult" characters or attempt winning using different or sub-optimal tactics. The expansions didn't really add anything worthwhile for me; they didn't change the game at all, just added more of the same stuff. Having said that, the expansions added a little variety, giving me a few more play-throughs before it started growing stale again.

With Eldritch Horror on the scene, though, I doubt I'll ever play Arkham again. EH is Arkham+; it takes everything that is good about Arkham and throws away all the trash, streamlining the bits that were superfluous and expounding on the story elements and theme. It's the same game, essentially, but much much better, both from a gameplay and a roleplay point of view.

For instance; just the scale of Eldritch, alone, makes the theme make more sense. In Arkham, you might have two Gugs, a Warlock and a Shoggoth running around the streets of this one city, whilst a Fire Vampire and a Mi-Go are flitting around the skies and a horde of Zombies and Cultists lurk in the Outskirts. From a strictly fluff point of view, why have the citizens of this place not fled screaming for their lives? Heck, the Bank's still open, shops are doing business as usual...even the diner is still open and serving coffee to the locals. Why aren't the police doing anything? Or the Army been called in? We're talking about a lot of seriously weird stuff just mooching around this one city with no-one batting an eyelid except for these half-dozen "investigators" who can't avoid a monster without fighting it or hiding from it.

Take those 6+ monsters as scatter them across the globe, however and it makes a bit more sense that it's really only the people who are going looking for them or are poking around the places they're lurking, that are finding them. Has the game changed? Not really, but the theme is stronger because it makes more sense.

[The Hellbug]

Agreed, I love Arkham, but the flavor of Eldritch Horror is much stronger, though I think one of the biggest improvements is that the encounters that give you clue tokens are attached to each great ancient one. So if you're playing against Yig, for instance, instead of randomly fighting zombies for clues (or whatever) your clue encounters involve various run-ins with his cult of serpent-people.