arkhamresident

I’ll admit I’ve spent way too much money on Magic over the years. I started playing in high school and it was a torrid love affair that ended when I wound up broke. I picked it up again in my early twenties and again spent more money than I should have for about a year until I grew tired of it again. Then AGAIN in my late twenties but that tryst only last six months or so.

The game itself is actually quite good. If there’s actually anyone reading this that doesn’t know what this game is about I’ll give a small synopsis. You make a deck consisting of spell cards and lands in order to whomp the holy **** out of anyone you play against. Lands give mana which is used to cast spells to summon monsters, gain artifacts, fireball the pants off of some poor schmo or do nasty things to your opponents directly. Each player has 20 life and if you end up with zero or can’t draw any cards you lose.

I like the premise and I like playing but the obvious cash grab this thing has turned into over the years has made me loathe Magic and CCGs in general. Rampant rules lawyering has also made me shy away from Magic since so much of what is legal is in some official FAQ online and if you don’t keep up with the ins and outs of the official rulings you can get screwed HARD.

The cards are good quality, the art is generally good and the game is fun but I’ll not indulge in this ever again since I now have a kid to feed and a mortgage to pay. If you’re single, have money to burn, like strategic rules lawyering CCGs and don’t mind buying a new core set EVERY FREAKIN’ YEAR then this game can be, great fun. Otherwise stick to something that won’t force you to live on the streets after retirement.

I’ve been playing Uno since I can remember. It’s easy to learn so that makes it good to play with kids and games can go quickly on occasion. I remember having so much fun playing this when I was little but since I’ve been playing it with the family lately I’ve come to the conclusion that I absolutely hate this game.

The premise is easy enough; match like numbers or like colors and use special cards on other players all in an attempt to use all your cards before everyone else. The problem comes in with the randomness of card draws coupled with how plentiful forced draws from other players are there’s not much in the way of a winning strategy. It just devolves into a game of screw the other players more than they screw you and hope no one remembers to call you out if you forget to yell “UNO!” when you have one card left.

I guess I’ve become jaded after years of RPGs and more complex card games but this is not a game I choose to play but one I play to make other people happy.

The town of Dunwich is a testament to inbreeding and decay. The Whateley family’s delving into the Mythos has created one of the most powerful creatures to threaten our intrepid investigators. The Dunwich Horror adds many new Ancient One and investigator cards along with a new board containing nine locations and the Dunwich Horror and Injury and Madness mechanics.

Dunwich brings more of everything. More Ancient Ones, more monsters, more investigators, more spells, more common items etc. The locations on the board are varied and pretty interesting but overall more dangerous than Arkham’s areas while more encounters for the base board breathe new life into areas you’re already familiar with. The items and spells have some very nice surprises and the Ancient Ones cards have some really nasty ones too.

The new mechanics that are introduced are the Dunwich Horror itself, the Injury and Madness cards and Condition cards. On the Dunwich board are Vortices and when monsters move into one of them the terror level is increased and a Dunwich Horror token is placed on the Dunwich Horror track. Once three tokens are on the track the Dunwich Horror appears at Sentinel Hill and while unmoving it can add Doom tokens to the Doom Track during the Mythos Phase. The Injury and Madness cards are given as an alternative to losing half of your items and clues when reduced to zero sanity or stamina. When taken the cards refill your stamina or sanity to max but may reduce skills, carry capacity or make your investigator unable to spend multiple clue tokens in certain situations among other things and gaining a duplicate card results in the investigator being devoured. Condition cards are beneficial and affect all investigators but each can only be gotten through a specific encounter card in a specific location.

The four AOs that come with Dunwich are more challenging than those that come with the base game. Tsathoggua removes the location abilities from all locations other than the three stores, the hospital and the asylum, Shudde M’ell threatens Arkham with earthquakes that completely destroy locations and make the already dangerous Cthonians even more of a threat, Glaaki brings his undead servants with him and as they come into play each investigator must discard items, clues etc. and Abhoth and his children can speed up the rate at which the Terror and Doom track fill.

Eight more Investigators bring more variety to character selection. Careers ranging from handy man to psychic are included with more interesting abilities like being able to win a combat check against any undead creature by spending a clue token or removing one Doom token from the track once per game.

I can’t express how much I like the Dunwich Horror expansion. It brings so much more to the base game. Don’t get it if you think Arkham Horror is too hard already as the ramp up in difficulty is significant. The only complaints I have are the Dunwich Horror rarely comes into play and gates don’t open in Dunwich frequently enough. Despite those two minor quibbles I think this expansion is a very good buy and it has brought more challenge and much more fun to our Arkham Horror games

The Lurker at the Threshold has come to Arkham to pave the way into our world for the Ancient Ones! Gates to Other Worlds are now more dangerous with penalties for failing to close or seal them and with the addition of moving gates not even the streets are safe. The Lurker Herald brings Dark Pacts to the game whereby investigators can trade sanity or stamina for Power tokens to aid them in their quest but the more indebted to the Lurker you are the less likely you are to survive.

While Lurker comes with new types of all the cards from the base set the best part of this expansion is the new gates. Instead of all gates only going to one Other World there are now split gates which lead to two but have a more difficult modifier for your close/seal rolls. Also introduced are penalties for failing your rolls to close which can cause you to lose stamina, sanity or even make a monster appear. Gates can now move like monsters and a couple add doom tokens or devour investigators making gate openings much more tense.

The Relationship cards in Lurker are a nice addition giving an investigator a bonus shared by themselves and the investigator next to them. While most are pretty good there are a few which are hardly used and one that is almost useless.

The new Investigator cards are light on items but there are a lot of new spells. Most spells differ from the majority of spells in Arkham Horror as they promote cooperation by giving benefits to other investigators even if they’re far away on a distant planet.

The Lurker Herald makes closing gates more difficult but it’s Dark Pacts actually make the game a bit easier. Since Power tokens are easy to acquire and can be spent in place of clues players can load up on Power and seal gates without the need for spending time gathering clues. The Reckoning cards, which are drawn when a gate opens, have some nasty effects which target investigators with Dark Pacts and/or Power but are relatively weak in comparison to the boon Power tokens are.

The new Mythos cards don’t add too much difficulty although they bring more gates bursts and double gate openings. The Location cards and Other World cards add more variety but aren’t very thematically tied to the expansion’s premise.

Overall the Lurker at the Threshold is a good expansion but it doesn’t ramp up the difficulty nearly as much as others do. The new gates and relationships make it a worthwhile purchase alone but the Herald sees very little use in our games as they’re so open to abuse they can make the games much, MUCH easier.

While Arkham Horror has a big rulebook and tons of fiddly rules once you play a few times it becomes quite a fun game. The sheer amount of cards and tokens that come with the base set make set-up a bit daunting until you’ve gotten used but all the components are very well done.

Arkham Horror is a co-op game but players don’t interact much but all work towards the same goal of stopping the Ancient One from awakening and conquering/destroying/enslaving/eating the world. Strategy does play a very large part of succeeding and the players do need to coordinate actions or the game will be over fairly quickly.

It’s big, it has a daunting rulebook, lot’s of fiddly bits and sometimes ambiguous rules but it’s great fun and can be a very tense nail-biting experience. If you like Lovecraft or Ameritrash games this is definitely a game to look into.