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Review of Arkham Horror 2nd edition
Overview
The stars are aligning, and in the unfortunate town of Arkham an ancient entity
beyond human imagining threatens to destroy the world as we know it. A small
handful or intellectuals, criminals, and misfits must risk their lives and
sanity to stop this unfathomable threat.



Arkham Horror, a remake of the 1987 game of the same name, is a cooperative
board game for 1-8 players. Players explore Arkham, keeping an array of threats
at bay while trying to find the clues and equipment they need to prevent the
attacking Great Old One from passing through into our world- or, failing that,
to defeat the Great Old One in a desperate, epic final battle.

Components
With a few exceptions such as the dice and player stands, the components in
Arkham Horror are almost entirely cardboard, and will be familiar to anyone who
has seen Fantasy Flight Games’ Doom. Almost all of the art is recognizable from
FFG’s Call of Cthulhu collectable card game. The game board is large, folding
out in six panels each only slightly smaller than the box the game ships in.
Between the board, the nine location decks, five equipment decks, player sheets,
Great Old One sheets, and a wide array of tokens, the game takes a lot of space
to play in.

The majority of the counters, including the player tokens, are in good, thick,
textured cardboard. It is sturdy and attractive, and the only complaint in this
regard is that it is extremely difficult to put the characters into their stands
without tearing them up. I ended up using a butter knife to pry the stands open
wide enough to insert the characters.

The character sheets and Great Old One sheets, made of thinner, slightly glossy
cardboard, are large well laid out. The cards themselves are extremely small.
Normally this would be a complaint, but it saves spaced in a very
space-intensive game and the majority of the cards are simple enough that they
won’t need frequent referencing. The various encounter cards are larger,
probably because each card includes text for three or four separate encounters.

Overall, the components of the game are excellent if extremely numerous.

Gameplay
Intellectuals, Misfits, and Criminals
In Arkham Horror, each player takes on the role of one of sixteen different
investigators. Each investigator has is rated in six different skills, “focus”,
sanity, and health, as well as starting with different possessions and a unique
special ability.

The skills and focus work in a somewhat unusual game mechanic: each skill is
paired with a second, oppositional skill. The higher one skill is, the lower the
opposing skill is. Every turn, players may re-arrange their skill selections by
a number of points equal to their focus rating. This allows players to retool
their characters for different tasks according to the current state of the game,
although some characters may be predisposed towards one skill or another by
virtue of higher numbers in that ability.

As an example, Harvey Walters, a professor, is rated from 0-3 in speed, 5-2 in
sneak, and has a focus of 2. At the start of a turn, he is at speed 1/sneak 4.
If he wanted to move 3 spaces he could adjust his speed to 3, in turn lowering
his sneak rating to 2. In doing this, however, he has used both points of his
focus and cannot adjust any of his other skills on this turn.

Investigation, Exploration, and Combat
Over the course of the game players will explore Arkham and other dimensions,
having random location-specific encounters. To add some decision-making to the
game, each location tends to provide specific sorts of rewards such as money,
health, or magical items. These items are marked on the map, allowing players to
plan in advance where they wish to go to obtain these items without
foreknowledge of the game.

Most of the encounters and conflicts in the game are resolved through a dice
pool mechanic. A number of die are rolled equal to the relevant skill, modified
by the difficulty of the encounter and any relevant equipment. Generally a 5 or
6 is a success, although cards such as Blessings (4, 5, 6), Curses (only 6), and
Shotguns (6 counts as 2 successes) can change this. The modifiers and number of
successes vary from challenge to challenge; a challenge of -1 (2), for example,
would require the character to roll the relevant skill with one fewer dice, and
need two successes to pass.

Another interesting component of the game is clue tokens. Clue tokens appear on
the board from time to time or are rewarded by encounters. A clue token may be
spent to buy additional dice rolls on any encounter. However, clue tokens also
are used to seal gates- the player’s primary path to victory. This provide a
tough decision- spend clue tokens for immediate rewards, or try to horde them
for the ultimate victory.

In the course of exploration, players may also encounter monsters which are
either spawned from dimensional gates to randomly wander the board or attack as
the result of encounters. When facing a monster, players may choose to fight or
flee. Successfully fighting a monster rewards the player with a “monster trophy”
that can be traded for equipment and bonuses and also serves to keep the monster
population down, in turn keeping the terror track down. Fleeing the monster may
prove a better choice if the encountering character is poorly equipped to fight.
Fighting a monster also ends the character’s movement, so flight may be a better
choice if the character is needed elsewhere. A player losing conflicts with
monsters will usually lose sanity and stamina, eventually going insane or
falling unconscious. Either state is generally only temporary, teleporting the
player to the asylum or hospital, respectively, but also exacts a cost on that
player’s current possessions and clues. Players unlucky enough to go insane or
fall unconscious in another dimension will suffer the additional inconvenience
of a one turn delay “Lost in Space and Time”.

What Lurks Beyond
Opposing the players is one of the eight great old ones: Cthulhu, Yig, Azathoth,
Ithaqua, Shub-Niggurath, Yog-Soggoth, Hastur, and Nyarlathotep. Each GOO has
different stats and abilities that modify the monsters and game environment,
providing a somewhat different challenge each game. The influence of these
beings also manifests through event cards, which are played each turn after the
players have moved.

Event card cards produce a myriad of negative effects and the occasional helpful
one. They also open gates to other dimensions in Arkham and spawn monsters. The
gates provide an immediate threat: if too many gates open simultaneously, the
Great Old One immediately breaks through and attacks. The opening of a gate also
moves a counter down the doom track. If the doom track fills, the GOO similarly
immediately attacks.

The monsters provide an additional threat. Besides being a hindrance to
investigators in Arkham, if the monster population grows too large the terror
track increases. The terror track is a thematic mechanic to represent the
closing down of Arkham as bizarre and horrific events drive the populace away.
As the terror track fills, potential allies are discarded from the deck and
stores close. When the terror track fills to the maximum level the doom track
increments by one, bringing the final battle one step closer. In addition,
although the number of monsters in play is normally capped relative to the
number of players in the game when the terror track is complete this cap is
removed, opening the way for an apocalyptic swarm of unfathomable horrors.

The final major threat to the players is rumors. Although rarely game-ending,
rumors sit in play and grow in strength over time. If left unchecked, rumors
ultimately have a devastating effect on the game such as undoing all progress
towards sealing gates shut. Stopping rumors requires a considerable commitment
of resource from the players that often increases the longer the rumor is left
unchecked. When stopped, the rumors pay off a moderate reward to all players in
the game.

Opposing Oblivion
The primary path to victory against the attacking Great Old One is by closing
and sealing the dimensional gates. Players may step through the gates, exploring
the dimensions on the other side. After spending some time in exploration, the
player may then close or seal the gate.

Closing a gate is a relatively simple matter of a skill check. Once closed, the
gate is removed from the board, lowering the current count of open gates. In
addition, monsters from that gate’s dimension are destroyed in the process and
the player receives a gate trophy that may be exchanged elsewhere for useful
cards or clue tokens. However, a gate closed may open later on. Closing gates,
especially the most active (likely to open) gates is often a risky decision
since the doom track increase when the gate opens again may well the immediate
payoff of closing the gate.

Sealing a gate provides all of the benefits of closing a gate but also prevents
gates from opening at that location in the future. Furthermore, if the players
can seal six gates they have stopped the attack on Arkham and win the game.
Sealing a gate is performed like closing a gate, but also requires a significant
expenditure of clue tokens or an Elder Sign, a magical item.

Should the players fail in their efforts and the Great Old One breaks through,
they may participate in a final, epic battle against invader. The battle itself,
although tough, isn’t especially dramatic as it generally resolves to a
repetitious grind of dice rolling until either the players or the GOO drops.
However, if there are multiple players there may be tough decisions as the
players decide how to divide their resources to give the group the best chance
of winning.

Play testing and Conclusions
When pitching this game to other players, some of the more casual gamers were
scared off by the sheer number of rules and tokens involved in the game. In
play, however, the game is quite manageable- especially if one player knows the
rules very well for reference and handles the Mythos phase. Two or three games
should be enough for an average group of players to get a working understanding.

Beyond intimidation factor, there are also a few complaints to be levied at the
rules. There are tons of small rules and caveats that you are likely to miss
unless you re-read the manual a couple of times after playing. The game plays
well even in the face of missing these rules, though, so it’s not a huge down
side. For example, at first my group didn’t notice that closing gates destroyed
all monsters with a matching symbol and thought that using elder signs required
a closing check. This made the game a tad harder, but without interfering with
the core gameplay. Additionally, sometimes the manual requires a bit too much
flipping between sections and the rules for the final confrontation if the GOO
attacks are extremely ambiguous.

After the initial hump of getting people to play the game, getting repeat
players proved no problem. Even the casual gamers in my group could be talked
into playing again. In one occasion, I even managed to get them to play three
games in the same day- no small feat for a game with a playing time of several
hours. The strongest negative reaction was actually from a more hardcore game
player, who thought the game would be too easy after a few games.

Experience has suggested that he may have been right- while among my largely
casual gaming group the losses exceeded the wins, most of those losses were
accrued early on and many of the early losses seem like we would have won if
we’d known more.

Knowing what everything does and how important it is a great boon. The most
useful knowledge is the frequency of gates opening where; once this was learned,
things became notably easier. Furthermore, as with many co-operative games it’s
fairly easy to learn a “winning strategy”, even in the face of randomized
elements. Keeping it vague to avoid spoiling it for other players, ultimately a
strategy of running between two nearby board locations to harvest Elder Signs
proved pretty devastating in play. The good news in this regard is that we’ve
had good luck in increasing the difficulty with house rules. I consider the ease
with which the game can be tweaked a testament to the solid game design of
Arkham Horror.

Overall, Arkham Horror is easy to recommend as a enjoyable co-operative game.
The strongest criticism I could level from my play experiences is that after
being played repeatedly, it has become somewhat boring. Since I have played 10
games for 30+ hours of enjoyment for the $40 I paid for the game, this is faint
criticism indeed. If you like the Cthulhu mythos or co-operative board games,
pick this one up.

Product Summary
Name: Arkham Horror 2nd edition
Publisher: Fantasy Flight Games
Author: Richard Launius, Kevin Wilson
Category: Board/Tactical Game

Cost: $49.95
Year: 2005

ISBN: 1-58994-210-8

Horror


View [ Printable Review ]
Review Summary
Playtest Review
September 28, 2005




by: Dale Moyer



Style: 4 (Classy & Well Done)
Substance: 4 (Meaty)

The stars are aligning, and in the unfortunate town of Arkham an ancient entity
beyond human imagining threatens to destroy the world as we know it. A small
handful or intellectuals, criminals, and misfits must risk their lives and
sanity to stop this unfathomable threat.



Dale Moyer has written 1 reviews, with average style of 4.00 and average
substance of 4.00

This review has been read 19194 times.

MORE REVIEWS (2)
4/06: by Shannon Appelcline (5/5)
8/05: by Tom Vasel (5/4)

In 2 reviews, average style rating is 5.00 and average substance rating is 4.50.

Recent Forum Posts

CommentatorDateMessage Kesh2005-09-29I have to say, this game rocks. It was
incredibly fun each time I played it, and ... RPGnet Reviews2005-09-28 Dale
Moyer's Summary: The stars are aligning, and in the unfortunate town of ... Dan
Davenport2005-09-28Great job, delor! This is an excellent, comprehensive review.
Having played the ...

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