[Board Game] Arkham Horror

[HuManBing]

Just got this board game, complete with fearsome reputation for complexity and length.

Still, it's a great game. My friends and I hashed our way through it one afternoon and evening. Plenty of great ideas here and good flavor text too.

Game mechanics are based on rolling d6, with 5 or 6 being successes. Almost all checks are done with Xd6, and the value of X is modified up or down by your skill and the enemy's skill. Most items, spells, and other boosts affect the value of X, although a very small number of cards affect the dice roll itself (a curse means you ONLY succeed on a natural 6, a blessing means you succeed on a 4-6).

Players have to keep track of two types of vitality: Sanity and Stamina. Every hostile encounter requires a Horror Check to start with, which costs Sanity if failed. Every hostile encounter can also do standard Stamina damage. A player at zero Sanity loses most items and ends up in the asylum, slowly healing up. A player at zero Stamina is dead.

Board movement is mostly on a city map of Arkham, with 1920s locales. Each location allows an encounter, and the flavor text for these make for excellent inspiration for Ravenloft games. Monsters appear in the locations, and every turn they also spawn Gates. The gates spawn more monsters, and PCs try to seal the gates as soon as they can.

Gates: each gate will draw in the PC to an Outworld, which is only described as an abstract concept (so the game doesn't even attempt to present a "map of R'lyeh", for example). PCs spend a certain amount of time in the Outworld, with at least two encounters, then if they survive, they return to the Arkham side of the gate. They can then try to seal the gate, which requires a skill check against Lore.

Skill checks: each player has different preset skills, and each turn you can make minor changes to the levels of your various skills. These are always paired in antithetical couples - so as you increase your Speed, you decrease your Stealth, for example. Careful management of your skills is essential.

Magic: spells are acquired like any other possession, but before they can be used, they must be activated, which requires a successful Lore check. Most spells also drain Sanity.

Play progresses against a countdown. When it hits max, a big bad Ancient One comes and a big fight occurs, which the PCs will generally lose. If you can seal enough things before that, you prevent it from showing up.

Very complicated, and well worth having somebody who's played it before at your first try. But rewarding and beautifully written.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

And again, I find myself wondering why so many people with whom I share common interests, and whose opinions I respect, love this game and I hate it.

Here's my post on BGG about it:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/646 ... -i-missing

I still haven't brought myself to play it again. It sits on my "for trade" shelf for now.

[alhoon]

I love that game and I don't find it too complex. If anything, I just find it kinda easy. If you get a tommygun or shotgun, only 4Health beasties are a problem.

I understand why some people find it boring though, as you can end up waiting for 2 rounds = 15 mins doing nothing but waiting for your char to return from being lost in time and space.

Still, it's one of the most atmospheric board games I've ever played and trust me... it works very well with WoD!

Gonzoron: Yes, you missed a few things. For instance,
- doom tokens are adden whenever a gate opens, not when a gate opens on another gate. When this happens you get a monster surge. If 6 gates are open at the same time (for 4 players) the evil one wakes up with full doom track. If you had 9 gates open... then you should have been fighting Cthulu about 1 hour earlier.
-With 3 players, you propably did a couple of things wrong, because it's almost impossible to play for 3 hours without Cthulu waking up.
- To seal a gate you need either an elder sign or 5 clue tokens. Else you just close the gate and the doomtrack doesn't go down. That's why the guy with 5+clue tokens should be the one dealing with gates.
- I think you can trade clue tokens. At least we play it this way. BTW, I don't like the clue-trading but since it's in the rules we play it that way. IMO clues shouldn't be traded.
- I also think you move to where the monster is, beat the monster and then you enter the gate. If a Shoggoth is on the gate, good luck passing by.
- Terror track rises usually with certain events and very rarely with monsters in the outskirts as you have noticed. Truth be told only in a single game it became a problem. And I think it was an Elder evil's power or something, not sure.
- Lost in space and time = lose a turn and you can't close the gate since you return to Arkham without exploring the gate.
- If you lose your health or sanity... you lose half your things. It sucks. I tend to gather a couple of junk things just in case this happens to me.

About being repetive: It has so many possibilities in each place to happen that I can't see how it's repetive. Unless you camp on a place for half the game, I don't think you will hit the same Arkham encounter again. Not to mention that with the number of events from the cards that affect the game substancially everytime is different.

Truth be told, I sometimes play the game alone in my house. That's how much I like it. It's as entertaining as playing a computer game.

Speaking of playing it alone... do you have "Vassal" Gonzoron? May I tempt you in playing with me over the internet?

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

it works very well with WoD!

WoD? as in World of Darkness? What do you mean? Did you use it as part of a WoD campaign somehow?

Gonzoron: Yes, you missed a few things. For instance,
- doom tokens are adden whenever a gate opens, not when a gate opens on another gate.

Yeah, see my later post in that thread. We actually had that right, I just typed it wrong.

If you had 9 gates open... then you should have been fighting Cthulu about 1 hour earlier.

We never had all 9 open at the same time. I meant 9 gates opened total during the game. We closed and/or sealed them fast enough that there were never 6 open at once.

-With 3 players, you propably did a couple of things wrong, because it's almost impossible to play for 3 hours without Cthulu waking up.

Possible, but other than one minor issue (going to the Other World without fighting the monster first), I don't think so.

- To seal a gate you need either an elder sign or 5 clue tokens. Else you just close the gate and the doomtrack doesn't go down. That's why the guy with 5+clue tokens should be the one dealing with gates.

Yes, we had that right. We sealed most of the 6 gates via clue tokens. I think maybe 1 with an elder sign.

- I think you can trade clue tokens. At least we play it this way. BTW, I don't like the clue-trading but since it's in the rules we play it that way. IMO clues shouldn't be traded.

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_c ... ternat.pdf
"TRADING EQUIPMENT
An investigator in the same street area, Other World
area, or location as another investigator may trade
money, Common Items, Unique Items, and Spells. This
may be done before, during, or after movement, but not
during combat."

Clues are not in that list of things that can be traded, so I'm pretty sure they can't be. (Which doesn't make much sense. If I find a clue, it's glued to me?)

- I also think you move to where the monster is, beat the monster and then you enter the gate. If a Shoggoth is on the gate, good luck passing by.

Yeah, this is the one rule we got wrong for sure. My bad, but I can't see how it would change the game from "hate it" to "love it" or even "like it".

- Lost in space and time = lose a turn and you can't close the gate since you return to Arkham without exploring the gate.

. Meh... still pretty pedestrian outcome for something that sounds so dire.

- If you lose your health or sanity... you lose half your things. It sucks. I tend to gather a couple of junk things just in case this happens to me.

yup, we knew that one.

About being repetive: It has so many possibilities in each place to happen that I can't see how it's repetive. Unless you camp on a place for half the game, I don't think you will hit the same Arkham encounter again.

The decks were so small, and some of the locations so obviously better than others that we looped through more than once and got the same event. Even if it wasn't the exact same event, aside from flavor text, many of the events were so similar, they felt the same.

Speaking of playing it alone... do you have "Vassal" Gonzoron? May I tempt you in playing with me over the internet?

I do have Vassal (I use it mostly for Navia Dratp), but honestly, I think I'm going to give this game only one more try, and when I do, I'd prefer it to be in person and with a larger group, for maximum chance of me liking it. Much as I'd love to play with you, I don't think Vassal's going to deliver on the atmosphere that's the major selling point of the game.



Again... HuManBing likes it. alhoon likes it. By all appearances, that means I should like it. But I don't. I don't know why, but it's just not for me.

[alhoon]

I didn't like the Star Hellas of Greece a few years ago. Tzoulia Alexandratou, Google her. There's not a man I know that doesn't consider her at least very beautiful. Yes, the game doesn't to be for you. It's not a disease, you just don't like the game.

What I wonder is how playing it with 3 people that know the rules more or less makes the game take 4 hours. However, if you play it with 3 newbies then yes it will take 3-4 hours. To be sincere though, if you find it boring the first two times, how do you expect to suddenly love it the third time?

I would like to ask... how you managed to gather 6x5 =30 clue tokens in the time it takes for 9 gates to open? Were you that lucky?

About your concerns: It's the fluff that counts for me, so yes many of the elements are the same in a way, but they feel different. A monster appearing in the unmanable has for me a different feeling than a monster appearing in the woods.
About the clue tokens, it's things you found out and you know. IMO, they can't be traded. I mean, you spend a couple of days in a dusty part of the university library reading, you help one of the professors in a mad experiment afterwards. The whole experience shakes you enough to threaten your sanity as you learn things not meant to know. Armed with forbidden knowledge you move out... and a couple of days later you meet another investigator in the woods while searching for more clues on how to deal with the situation. You may give her that sword or money... but how can you possibly impart within a few hours what you read, in the words used in half mad crawlings and what you witnessed in the experiment?

WoD: Yes, I used it more or less as the base of a WoD campaign. I even used some of the locales. The PCs (mages I think at the time, not sure) were travelling to various places to investigate magical happenings in the area under their protection. They were finding clues that they had to deal with a very powerful, very evil thing in the Shadow that was stirring in its sleep. They went after the Cult of the Thing that served it (cultists) and other things that wanted to wake it up. They were gathering fragments of knowledge here and there and finally they moved through a verge (See gate) explored it, find some final clues and armed with them closed the verge for good. Later they did the same in another hole in reality, foiling the plot alltogether.
The campaign was such a success that I've been making the town of Arkham 1931 as a setting for some time.

[HuManBing]

For what it's worth, I'm not entirely sold on the game either. I love the subject matter and I love the color text on the cards. The general game dice mechanics I'm okay with. Time will tell if I like the game's various offshoot rules (e.g. Terror Track, Doom Count, etc).

Gonzoron, I can definitely see why the game might not be a given person's cup of tea. It has a central game progress count (the Doom Count) which must be addressed, and without which the game is almost unwinnable. The game also has a load of other detailed mechanics going on that are at best a footnote to this central goal, and at worst an outright distraction from it. I've played another Fantasy Flight Games board game, Twilight Imperium, and I found this to be very much the case there - the victory conditions were this weird, off-stage, largely-invisible counter, and most of my initial instincts were to focus on the much more interesting maps and combats and tech and stuff. It's easy to get wrapped up in the tangential cards and sub-plots, while the main goal of the game passes you by unawares.

And given that these games tend to take upwards of three or four hours to fully play through, if you look up from the side quests only to realize your main quest is now unwinnable, that's a non-trivial amount of time you've invested.

I have a lower opinion about Twilight Imperium - it's a game that is too "busy" and "finicky" with all the cool little sidequests you can do, but they contribute far too little to the main goal of the game. I played that board game two or three times and each time I felt like the most interesting dimensions of the game contributed nothing to my final score, which was abysmal.

Also, both games use large numbers of randomized cards, most which NEVER get seen during the course of any given runthrough. So you have a massive reliance on the luck of the draw for your progress. I'm not sure about Arkham (I only played it once) but my few times through TI have shown that it's possible to get a starting hand so crappy that even near-perfect play won't make the blindest bit of difference.

Either way, the game has promise for me and I'll definitely be playing it through a few more times. I especially like its cooperative nature - once you remove the competitive aspect of player vs. player, it becomes a much more pleasant game (and one where having a more experienced player participating is a bonus, not a drawback). Also, the flavor text and the encounters are an added fillip for me, because I can mine them for ideas in my RPGs.

[steveflam]

I won't go into details like you fellas. However I have played it three times so far. I loved it every time! Next time will be with an expansion. My wife hates it so we play when she is unavailable to

[alhoon]

I also play AH with DH expansion when possible and in Vassal I also use another expansion. I may buy the other AH expansions when I can afford them.

TI is ... good but certainly not as good AH. And it takes upwards to 4h. We managed to finish a game of TI once.
PS. The Imperial card is weird, that's for sure. The expansion of TI changes it to make the game managable and to better tie the victory with player's goals.

[steveflam]

I find that winning AH is kind of like winning Shadows Over Camelot[right name?].... not easy.

[alhoon]

It has a lot to do with luck actually.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

I didn't like the Star Hellas of Greece a few years ago. Tzoulia Alexandratou, Google her

If AH is as beautiful as that woman, there's only one explanation: you and I are both insane.

What I wonder is how playing it with 3 people that know the rules more or less makes the game take 4 hours. However, if you play it with 3 newbies then yes it will take 3-4 hours.

I had read the rules, but the other two were in fact newbies to AH. Though, the 3 of us have played so many games, we tend to pick up rules quickly.

To be sincere though, if you find it boring the first two times, how do you expect to suddenly love it the third time?

Stranger things have happened. I finally liked Starfarers of Catan on my 3rd try. Until then, I thought it just a gimmicky version of Settlers. But I forced myself to try again, and it "clicked." Now I like it better than Settlers.

I would like to ask... how you managed to gather 6x5 =30 clue tokens in the time it takes for 9 gates to open? Were you that lucky?

Couldn't tell you. It was sufficiently long ago that the details are foggy. I think it was 25 clues and an elder sign, but I could be mistaken. Again, it's possible we got something wrong, but I don't think so.

About the clue tokens, it's things you found out and you know. ... but how can you possibly impart within a few hours what you read, in the words used in half mad crawlings and what you witnessed in the experiment?

I guess if you dress it up like that, it makes sense, but I generally would think of clues more like: a scrap of an old journal, a torn shred of a mystery fabric, an abnormally large tooth, the deed to a house in a cultist's name, footprints leading from X to Y. Stuff that could be passed off or shared easily.

I find that winning AH is kind of like winning Shadows Over Camelot[right name?].... not easy.

Keep playing Shadows over Camelot, it will get easy eventually. Most co-op games do, once you get the hang of them. Some games manage to keep them challenging by scalable difficulty, and some by extreme randomness so that it can be easy or difficult depending on the luck of the day.

[alhoon]

I tend to agree about winning AH. Once you get the hang out of it, it becomes quite easy.

About clue tokens: Some of them are a piece of old journal yes, but a piece of old journal alone isn't (IMO) enough to count as a "clue" token, but you have to do some research or experiment about it. After all, usually you have to spend most of a round in a location to get it.
To be sincere, many of my friends agreed with you though, saying more or less "sometimes it just is just a weird footprint" or "we can assume that in the time we spent together one investigator told the other all about that journal page".
However if it was just about teaching the other what you found out about that torn page or showing him a copy of the footprint you found... clue tokens should be duplicated. I.e. you give the other guy a copy of the footprint... you don't lose the info.
Again, I think the clue token is also about the experience and the hunting and the growing understanding of the threat and the SN rather than sharing sketches of weird monsters and writtings.

PS. I suspect you don't want to play with me because you're alive. That discrimination against undead should be criminalized. Vitism is an anachronism, equal rights for all, breathing or not!

[HuManBing]

PS. I suspect you don't want to play with me because you're alive. That discrimination against undead should be criminalized. Vitism is an anachronism, equal rights for all, breathing or not!

I agree. I don't trust those weird biophiles one inch!

[HuManBing]

I played another round of this game a few days back. This time we actually managed to win the game.

The rule book is badly written in several ways. It appears to be written somewhat in the order in which they designed the game's rules, rather than the order in which players would want to look them up. The index is not particularly thorough either. Certain very basic issues, such as "How do you succeed on a dice roll?" are buried in paragraphs of texts in random places. Other entire game mechanics are intricate (such as the Terror Track) but the specific events that trigger them are not made clear.

Anyhow, we started discovering a few neat elements with the game.

• Azathoth is a good archenemy if you're trying to learn the game. His background power is pretty minor and easy-to-remember (all Maniacs have a slight combat bonus), and the Doom Track is very long.
• The fastest way to win the game is to seal six gates. This victory condition likewise is not really emphasized in the text, and we completely missed reading it on the first game a month ago.
• The researcher's power (re-roll all failure dice in any one skill check, once per turn) is really nice when coupled with the Detective's power (all Clue tokens give two extra dice to roll, instead of one extra die). Sadly, this tends to burn through your Clue tokens, which you need to seal the gates!
• If you kill enough enemies, you can go to the Church to get Blessed. This is really quite important.
• Early in the game, the streets are relatively safe and the locations are comparatively dangerous. Later in the game, the opposite is generally true.
• Monsters with a high Toughness value are generally more of a threat than monsters with a high Combat value. Monsters with a high Horror check penalty are arguably even worse than either.
• Spend money early in the game to get important goodies early on, so you'll better survive combats later.
• Ideally, raise your skill enough so that you're ultimately rolling triple the number of dice as the difficulty. (Merely double if you're blessed.)

[alhoon]

Find/buy/steal shotgun or a couple of revolvers for a +6 to combat rolls for most monsters and you're more than OK. Ideally, change one of the weapons for a +3 magical item to also take care of physical resistant monsters and the game is a breeze.
Chars that start with tommygun, much money or shotgun trump spellcasters whoever cool you think you may be.