Elder Sign

… the great old ones will return. And that’s exactly where you as a player enter the stage. You are one of the people that investigate the strange events happening in the Miskatonic University Museum. It is your responsibility to stop the monsters and solve the many mysteries that surround this place.
Elder Sign is kind of a smaller and easier version of Arkham Horror. Appropriately enough it does not cover the whole city of Arkham but rather takes place in a museum there.

Components:

The game comes with a lot of different sized cards, a cardboard clock, a bunch of beautiful customized dice and a lot of tokens. The whole content is of very good quality as everything from Fantasy Flight Games. The Artwork is great and supports the flair of the story.

Gameplay:

Unlike Arkham Horror this game does not have a game board. Here you just put down six cards from the deck of adventure cards. These cards represent the different locations in the museum with tasks on it. Each turn you can move to one of the rooms with your character and try to solve these tasks. If you can fulfill them you get a reward (for example: weapons or if you have luck even an Elder Sign). If you fail you have to suffer the penalty effect (most times lose health or sanity). And the end of every players turn the clock has to be advanced 3 hours forward. If it strikes midnight the current player has to draw a mythos card which has an instant effect and an ongoing effect on it.
The investigators have to solve room for room to find better weapons and hopefully enough elder signs to stop the ancient one to appear. If they don’t stop him before he awakens they have to fight the ancient one in battle. But most times this doesn’t end well for our heroes.

Learning Elder Sign is not that hard compared to Arkham Horror but a little harder than the average casual game I guess. The game is partially luck driven concerning the continual dice rolling. But as you can decide which tasks you go for and which weapons, spells and abilities you use the game has enough tactics involved to let you change the games outcome due to your own decisions.

Replay Value:

By the use of 16 different investigators, 8 different ancient ones, 48 different adventure cards (locations) and a whole bunch of weapons, spells and allies there is nearly no chance that you ever have the same game again.

Pros:

– beautiful components (including customized dice)
– design really brings the Lovecraft Flair across
– good balance of luck and tactics
– you can play it solo

Cons:

– spells and weapons could be more creative (not only extra dice on them)
– with that much tokens and cards I would like the box to be better designed to sort and hold all of them

Last Words:

For Lovecraft Fans this game should be a definitive buy (as Arkham Horror is too). It’s quite easy to learn and provides a well themed adventure. If you are just searching for good games to play solo (as I was when I got this game) I can also recommend it. The only ones I would advice not to buy it are gamers who don’t like dice games or games with to much luck involved. I would set the luck/tactics rate somewhere at 50/50.

Best wishes,
Blaine101

“Hmm…I’m not feeling very confident about this..better throw in some dynamite”

Elder Sign (ES) is a horror themed game and is becoming one of my favorite games to play. It’s easy to learn and cooperative, this means that if you are looking for a game to “lure” some people into the board-gaming world, this is probably a good choice. The goal of the game is to solve the mysteries before time runs out and one of the Elder Creatures appear. If such an Elder appear, it’s not lost yet, you have a chance to fight it…but I really suggest to just unravel those mysteries fast 😉

Overall, I believe that the designers did a very good job.
There are many different characters (in this game called “investigators”) each having their own unique ability. There is a magician, a psychologist, a salesman, a doctor and many more.
You can increase the fun of this game by role playing a bit if your into that.

In this game, you don’t have a game-board but over-sized cards, which represents the different rooms of the museum. Because there are plenty of rooms, the replay factor of this game is medium to high. Except for the normal rooms, there are “Other World” cards. When you complete an investigation successfully, it might open a gateway too these Other Worlds.
It’s a fun extra they included in this game.

ES is a dice rolling game so I would suggest to increase your positive karma as much as humanly possible , because it really *peeps* if you keep on failing investigations. You will feel down and useless.. this is probably one of the downsides of the game. Even if you win, you can feel bad because you didn’t do much to help achieving the victory.
On the other side, if you are having luck, you will feel amazing because YOU carried that game and thanks to you, your fellow investigators won too. (even if you know you just were lucky, you can’t avoid feeling this way)

Now, even though this game is mostly luck based, you can change the outcome of an investigation by using items (ex. ->Dynamite<-, Guns, etc), allies, personal abilities or even mighty spells. The downside of the items is that there aren't many different effects. Most of them just adds an extra die and that's it. It would be better with a larger variety of effects.

I've already played it a couple of times and it feels like it's impossible to lose. Some of my "Fellow Investigators" weren't really thinking a lot and were making tons of mistakes and we won by far.. so maybe this game is a little to easy.

Conclusion: If you like playing coöp games and you don’t hate the horror theme, it won’t be a bad buy…it even will be a good buy! The game is beautifully designed and well made. It doesn’t take long to set up and it takes 1-2h to play. Have fun!

If you want to see some game-play: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jh4nSpV2n4k

Introduction

I’ve had my eye on this game for some time now, and was recently able to pick it up with some birthday money. I’m not really into Lovecraftian horror, but the idea of rolling dice to resolve cards got me interested. Right, it doesn’t take much beyond dice to get me interested in a game.

You’re an investigator, and the object of the game is to find enough Elder Signs to seal off a monster (called the Ancient One) to prevent its awakening and entrance into, and subsequent destruction of, the world. You’ll do this by – eh hem – rolling dice. If sealing an Ancient One away with Elder Signs is not exciting enough, or perhaps seems like a cop-out, you may also have the opportunity to get into the ring after an Ancient One’s grand entrance, in which case, you’ll wonder why you didn’t take a lighter case.

Components

Of course Fantasy Flight has lifted the bar high for great-quality components. Since the game involves a lot of dice-rolling, this area of the components is very nice. Rounded corners , deep etchings, and just a solid, polished feel make them a pleasure to roll. This area in particular makes a big difference for overall gameplay.
The high quality of art on the various types of cards is also what you’d expected from F/F.

Gameflow

You can either randomly or specifically choose the character you want to play. Each character card has their own weakness and strengths, along with special abilities. Characters come with a max level of “Sanity” and “Stamina”, which if depleted to zero, causes the character to be “devoured”. The player whose character is devoured can pick a new character; however, all equipment is lost. The center of the game revolves around rolling dice to match their faces to “tasks” on one of the six Adventure cards in play, which are meant to represent locations/events inside the museum at Miskatonic University, a well-known locale in the world of Lovecraft. There’s a lot of variety to the different Adventure cards (48 in all). “Resolving” a card by matching the tasks yields all kinds of items/benefits (including Elder Signs) that can help you win the game. Also, the cards you do resolve become “trophies” which can be traded in for resources at the permanent “Entrance” location (10 trophies yield an Elder Sign, by the way). The passing of time, which yields good and bad events, is represented by a nifty clock that progresses 3 hours at the end of each player’s turn. Mythos cards are turned over when the clock strikes midnight that render “immediate” and “lingering” effects. Usually the immediate effects are bad, and the lingering effects (lasting a whole day) are a mixed bag. Oh, and everyone keeps their eye on the Doom Tracker, which if filled up, signals the failure of the investigators to seal away the Ancient One, thereby ushering in its awful entrance into our world…then it’s show time!

Fun Factor

Umm, yeah, this game is fun – make no mistake. However, the game is fun more for the mechanics than for a strong theme connected to them. I can play this with my 7 year old son (I don’t let him read the flavor text) and he doesn’t get creeped out and have nightmares, for example. Besides the general mechanics often not making sense with what you’re supposed to be doing in the game world, part of the weakness of the disconnected theme can be attributed to the lack of a board. You’re going to a lot of locations, but they’re represented by only a little art and flavor text on the upper part of the adventure cards, and those cards occupy/replace the same 6 spaces in front of you throughout the game. I really don’t pay attention anymore to where I am in the museum…who cares? This really doesn’t bother me, as I didn’t buy the game to have a Lovecraftian experience, and am even a little relieved for how weak the theme comes through (my son can play!) as I normally don’t want to spend an evening playing a gloomily –themed game.
The thing that surprised me is that even though you’re rolling dice like crazy, which suggests a high degree of randomness, decisions do feel relatively important. Assessing what you might be able to accomplish with a given set of Adventure cards, given your resources (stamina/sanity and items) presents interesting decisions. Don’t get me wrong, you ARE going by your gut in many cases (what have I been rolling recently?), but there are tactics to use that will certainly increase your chances of beating the game.

What can I say, it kind of captures the excitement of gambling. Taking a risk by going for that difficult Adventure card, and somehow pulling off a great final die-roll that wins it just feels great!

And the filling up of the doom track (revealing the Ancient One) definitely conveys that final stage/big boss feel. It’s like a cool little mini game tagged onto the main one. Really, if the game just ended after the doom track was filled, it would still be a cool.

Positives

With a few minor exceptions, the rules are easy to pickup

Gorgeous components/game art

Nifty mechanics lead to varied tactics for completing tasks

Lots of variety in the adventure and character cards

It isn’t creepy (theme not strongly tied to gameplay)

Negatives

For all its great artwork, the theme doesn’t come through very strong, which can also be a plus (see above)

Too many essentially duplicate item cards (just different art)

When writing a short review of this game it’s almost impossible not to mention Arkham Horror. I think Elder Sign is a concentration of Arkham Horror, Fantasy Flight has taken the most important aspects of what makes that game unique and created a shorter, lighter and more accessible game.
Elder Sign contains the same great theme that is found in Arkham Horror, luck and randomness plays a big part too and a big bad monster is lurking in the darkness waiting to devour the players and maybe the whole universe.
So does Elder Sign replace Arkham Horror? I would say no to that question. I think Elder Sign is a good complement and can be a nice way to introduce new players to the Arkham universe. Even though the rules and mechanics differ between the two games you still get the same feeling and the objectives are almost identical, the way to get there differ somewhat.
As you can see in this short text, the game is very often compared to Arkham Horror, too much so I think. I’ve made the same mistake, mostly because I played Arkham Horror first. Elder Sign stands on it’s own and is a great game with or without bothering about Arkham Horror.

Others have written great reviews that includes the game mechanics so I won’t repeat that but summarize my feelings about the game.

Pros:
* Quite easy to learn
* Thrilling
* Great value for the money
* Great theme
* The number of players are very flexible

Cons:
* Cooperation between players could be more pervasive
* The manual is a bit ambiguous (first edition)
* The card items could be more varied, not just a ticket for red or yellow dice
* The element of randomness might be an issue for some players

Elder Sign gets two thumbs up from me. Don’t forget to check out the Android and iOS versions, they’re great too.

In this co-op game 1-8 players take on roles of investigators exploring an old museum filled with ancient artifacts to ward off the awakening of a terrible Elder Evil being.

The main game mechanic is rolling custom dice with the purpose of obtaining a series of specific combinations. Different in-game abilities allow you to modify rolls, save rolls for later, add dice and avoid obstacles. Each failure drains characters’ resources and time works against them as well – if they are not able to seal away the evil entity a final battle will ensue where players’ chances are slim at best.

The theme and the art are fantastic and immersive. The mechanic is good at supporting the theme – on one hand the die rolling makes it seem too luck-based, yet – all of your successes seem improbable and exciting when they do occur. (as mortals’ efforts against dark extraplanar deities should feel in my opinion).

The difficulty can vary quite a bit with some games resulting in cakewalks and others where you get demolished. Could be a little tougher for my liking as it’s the challenge that makes co-ops interesting.

The game claims to accommodate 1-8 players but I find anything over 4 to result in down time that leads to disengagement. Works great solo though. With 1-4 players the game is usually done within an hour – the pace is quite brisk. It’s quite approachable and can be taught easily.

The dice mechanic can be very appealing to some but offputting to others. Depending on players’ comfort level with this mechanic and affinity for games with rich character (and darker adult themes) – this game is either excellent or adequate.

I personally enjoy it immensely and would suggest it. Don’t forget to read out the flavour text!

Elder Sign is the newest in the Call of Cthulhu Mythos series of games (Arkham Horror, Mansions of Madness), and while it keeps some of the same ideas and goals as the other two, it dumps the heavy, time-intensive style for something that is entirely simple and fun: dice rolling.

Like Arkham Horror, your team is attempting to keep one of the Elder Gods from waking up by finding enough Elder Signs to keep them out of the world. You do this by investigating locations, which also gives you perks like finding Common and Unique Items, Spells, or Allies. In fact, if you’ve played Arkham Horror, these cards will feel perfectly familiar to you. It is the goal of your team to use abilities to their fullest potential and to help each other to beat these locations.

The mechanic at your disposal is a pool of dice. In order to beat a location, you must roll a certain number of specific faces of the dice. For instance, each dice has a single black skull on it. Some locations may require two black skulls to complete, along with a terror, a scroll and three clues. If you can roll all of these, you investigate successfully and take the rewards. If you fail, all of the dice are removed and given to the next player, who must then start fresh. Items allow you to access extra dice with slightly different faces.

Once you’ve played a single turn, you are suddenly a master of the game. Elder Sign is easily accessible because the mechanic is so simple. I felt bad for people demoing this game, because it was just so easy for people to pick up. New players can easily start making strategic decisions as early as their second turn.

And yet, to say this game is just a mashup of Zombie Dice and Arkham Horror is unfair. While this game is simple (and seemingly easy to win!) it does require some strategy. There is some dice manipulation involved, and certain characters can make your chances much more successful. It is often more helpful to gain items and allies than to just try for an Elder Sign every turn.

I would say that this is an excellent game for new and old players, but I wouldn’t recommend playing it three times a row in one night. I would also recommend this to the player who dreams of Arkham Horror, but can’t get friends to commit… Let this be your gateway!

The focus of so many exotic curios and occult artefacts at the museum is the cause of a new threat to Arkham. They weaken the barriers to the beyond, letting Gates open and monsters in, and laying a path for an Ancient One to make its way to Earth and lay waste to mankind. Only a number of dedicated investigators have the knowledge and will, and perhaps the allies and the tools, if not necessarily the time, to locate a sufficient number of Elder Signs that will seal the portals and prevent the arrival of the Ancient One. This is the set up for Elder Sign, the latest board game from the designers of Arkham Horror that uses the same art work and trade dress as seen in both Arkham Horror and the recently released Mansions of Madness.

Fantasy Flight Game’s third board game of facing Lovecraftian horror, Elder Sign is, like Arkham Horror, a co-operative game designed to be played by between one and eight players, with a playing time of between one and two hours. The co-operative element means that the opponents faced by players are not each other, but by the game itself and its mechanics. It also means that there is a time component to Elder Sign, not only in terms of a time limit before the Ancient One arrives, but also in terms of events (of a random nature) that occur regularly throughout the game’s play. In order to counter the effects of these events, and eventually, the arrival of the Ancient One, the Investigators will explore the Museum and have Adventures within its confines, the aim being to marshal the resources necessary to save the world.

Elder Sign is comprised of several sets of large and small cards, various tokens and counters, a card clock, and a set of customised dice. The large cards are divided between decks of Investigators, Adventures, and Ancient Ones, whilst the small cards are divided between decks of Common and Unique items, Spells, and Allies – all beneficial to the Investigators, whilst Mythos cards describe the events and effects that occur every time that the clock strikes Midnight and linger until the clock strikes Midnight again.

There are sixteen individual Investigators to choose from. Each one gives an Investigator his maximum Sanity and Stamina, his Starting Items, and a special ability. For example, Dexter Drake is a magician who whenever he gains a Spell card during play, he always gains an extra one, whilst Gloria Goldberg is an author whose Psychic Sensitivity grants her extra dice to roll when visiting Other World Adventure Cards.

During a game, the Investigators will face one of eight Ancient Ones. They include Azathoth, Cthulhu, Hastur, Ithaqua, Nyarlathotep, Shub-Niggurath, Yig, and Yog-Sothoth. Each one gives the number of Elder Signs needed to prevent it from being awoken, which occurs when the Doom Track on the card is filled; a special ability that applies throughout a game; a means of Attack once it is awoken; and a Combat Task that must be completed by the Investigators to weaken and eventually banish it from the Earth. So for example, for Cthulhu, the Special Ability is “Dreams of Madness,” which reduces every Investigator’s maximum Sanity and Stamina by one. Thirteen Elder Signs are needed to banish this Ancient One, but it only needs eleven tokens for the Doom Track to be filled and Cthulhu to be woken up. When Cthulhu does Attack, it reduces each Investigator’s Sanity or Stamina by one and adds another token to his Doom Track. The latter is a problem because in order to defeat an awoken Ancient One, the Investigators have to remove all of the tokens from the Doom Track. To remove a Token, an Investigator has to roll the given Combat Task.

Each Adventure Card has a title, a Trophy value, some flavour text, a set of Tasks that need to be completed if an Investigator is to succeed at the Adventure itself, and a set of Penalties for if an Investigator fails to complete the Adventure and a set of Rewards if he does. Some Adventure Cards also have a Terror effect that occurs if an Investigator does not complete a Task on each roll and some stipulate that their Tasks have to be done in order rather than the order of a player’s choosing. Most of the Adventure Cards take place in the Museum such as “Remains of the High Priest” and “The Gift Shop,” but others take place off world, like “The Dreamlands” and “The City of the Great Race.” In general, the Rewards and Penalties for the Other World Adventure cards are greater and they are also harder to complete.

Penalties on an Adventure Card can deduct Sanity and Stamina from an Investigator, cause a Monster to appear, advance the Clock, or add another Doom Token to the Doom Track on the Ancient One Card. Rewards can grant Items, Spells, and Allies as well as Elder Signs and Clue Tokens. They can also open Gates to Other World Adventure Cards. Not all of the Rewards are good – sometimes they are mix of the good and the bad.

The small cards represent Common and Unique items, Spells, and Allies as well as Mythos effects. They add extra dice to a Task attempt or alter dice rolls; enable an Investigator to restore Sanity or Stamina; or in the case of some Spells, let an Investigator store dice results between attempts at a Task. Allies grant another special ability, such as Richard Upton Pickman’s being able to change results on the dice in a certain fashion. Each Mythos card has two effects. The first occurs as soon as it is drawn, whilst the second lasts until the next Mythos card is drawn. For example, immediate effect of “The Stars Align…” is to add a Doom token to the Doom Track, whilst the lingering effect, “…Before Reason Fails,” lets the Tasks on Adventure Cards be done in any order, even if they stipulate that they must be done in order.

The game includes Sanity, Stamina, Investigator, Clue (these allow re-rolls of the dice), Elder Sign and Doom Tokens. There are also Monster Markers, little card strips that when summoned can replace Tasks on an Adventure Card to make them more difficult to complete. Each Monster Marker has a piece of flavour text on the reverse and a Trophy value.

The final components are the card Clock, used to measure the passing of time and determine when new Mythos cards are drawn; the Museum Entrance card; and the dice. The Museum Entrance card represents somewhere where an Investigator can go to “Receive First Aid,” “Search the Lost & Found,” or “Buy A Souvenir.” This usually requires an Investigator to expend Trophy points won by completing Adventure Cards or defeating Monsters, or to expend various tokens or items.

The dice are the heart of the game, rolled by an Investigator to try and match the symbols listed for each Task on the Adventure cards. They come in three colours. The six green dice are the most common and all of them are usually rolled when a Task is attempted. The yellow dice gives better results than a green die whilst the red dice gives better results than the yellow die. It usually takes the expenditure of a Common Item card to add the Yellow die to a player’s roll and the expenditure of a Unique Item card to add the red die. There is only the one yellow and one red die in the game.

Game set up is quick and simple. Each player selects an Investigator and receives its starting items. An Ancient One is chosen and placed on the table where everyone can see it along with the Clock – which is set at midnight, the Museum Entrance card, and six Adventure Cards. The first Mythos card is drawn and takes effect.

On his a turn, a player sends his Investigator to the chosen Adventure Card. He takes up the green dice and the yellow or red die if he decides to use an Item or has a Special Ability. The Tasks are arranged on each Adventure Card in lines and with each roll of the dice, a player must match the symbols on a single line with those on the dice. He can only attempt to match the symbols on one line at a time and if he does, he places those dice on the symbols on the card. He can then go on to roll for the Tasks on the other lines. If he fails to roll the right symbols for a line, he can continue rolling, but must discard a die each time he fails to match the symbols. On some Adventure Cards, there is a Terror effect for failing to match any symbols and rolling a Terror on the dice. If the player completes all of the Tasks, he receives all of the rewards at the bottom of the Adventure Card. He also receives the Adventure Card to keep as a Trophy which can be spent at the Museum Entrance for various effects. If he does not complete any of them, he suffers the penalties also given at the bottom of the Adventure Card.

Alternatively, a player could have sent his Investigator to the Museum Entrance. As soon as a player’s turn is over the Clock is advanced one quarter of the way round its face. When the Clock reaches Midnight a new Mythos Card is drawn and its effects applied. Since the two effects on the Mythos Cards vary greatly, often the players will find themselves hoping for one with less dangerous effects. So drawing one every fourth turn is another way in which Elder Sign can turn up the tension.

Our sample Adventure Card is “Lights Out.” Harvey Walters’ player decides that the reward of an Elder Sign is worth going for. The individual Tasks on each line are not difficult in themselves, but the Arrow symbol beside them means that they have to be done in order. Harvey has at his disposal one Unique Item – a copy of “Cultes des Ghoules” that lets him add the red die to a Task attempt, and one Spell card, the spell “Flesh Ward,” which lets him store a die roll between attempts. Harvey decides that he will use both, meaning that he rolls both the green and the red dice.

On the first roll, Harvey gets the results of 1 Clue, 2 Clue, Scroll, Scroll, Skull, and Tentacle on the green dice. On the red die, he gets the Wild Card symbol, which can be used to match any other symbol. The 1 Clue and 2 Clue symbols are enough to complete the Task on the first line and places those dice on the Adventure Card. He takes the red die and stores it on the Spell Card. This leaves him with just four green dice to roll.

On the second roll, Harvey needs two Skulls, but is unlucky and gets neither. He is forced to discard one of the green dice leaving him with three to roll. He gets 1 Clue, 3 Clue, and a Skull. He needs another Skull, so uses the Wild Card symbol on the red die that he stored earlier to match the symbols needed to complete the Task. This leaves him with just two dice and needing two Scrolls to complete the third Task and the whole Adventure Card. He rolls a Scroll and a Tentacle. Ordinarily this would not be enough, but Harvey’s Special Ability allows him to change a single Tentacle result on the dice to a Scroll, and as soon as he does he has completed all of the Tasks and the Adventure Card.

As a reward, he gains an Elder Sign and a Spell Card plus the Adventure Card to spend as a Trophy. A new Adventure Card is then added. If he failed, he would have lost two Stamina and added another Token to the Doom Track on the Ancient One’s card.

When the Doom Track is fully filled on the Ancient One’s card, it awakes and comes to Earth. At that point every Investigator has to face it, battling to remove the Doom Tokens from the Track. This uses the same dice mechanics as for the Tasks on the Adventure Cards.

Should either the Sanity or Stamina of an Investigator be reduced to zero, he deemed to have been devoured! His player must start afresh with a new Investigator, including new Starting Items. He loses those previously held by the now devoured Investigator. If an Investigator is devoured by the awakened Ancient One, no new Investigator can join the fight against him.

Winning a game of Elder Sign is not easy, but it is made all the harder when certain Adventure and Mythos Cards and Monsters appear that have the Locked Die icon on them. These temporarily remove a die that matches the colour on the icon from the game, thus reducing the number of dice each player has to roll on his turn until the Adventure Card or the Monster that has confiscated the die has been dealt with, or the effects of the Mythos Card have been replaced with a new one when the Clock strikes Midnight. Fortunately, in addition to using Investigator Special Abilities and the various Spell and Item Cards to give themselves an advantage, players can do things. First, Clue Tokens allow players to re-roll dice. Second, they can Focus a die – saving a die result for a subsequent Task, but at the cost of discarding another die, or Assist another player on the same Adventure Card – giving them a die result that they can use on their turn in attempting the Tasks on that Adventure Card. The downside to this is that it reduces the number of dice every player has to roll until the Assisted player’s turn.

Physically, Elder Sign is up to Fantasy Flight Games’ usual standards. Everything is of a high quality as you would expect, and the illustrations, all of which will be familiar to players of Arkham Horror and Mansions of Madness, are excellent. The rulebook is perhaps a little succinct at twelve pages, with some more examples of play being needed to better get the play of the game across. If there is an issue with the components, it is that some of the components are just a little too small for easy handling and thus some of the artwork’s effectiveness is lost.

Elder Sign is described as a co-operative dice game, but whilst the dice rolling lies at the heart of mechanics and game resolution, the game is really a “co-operative dice and decision” game. The players have to decide where their Investigators have to go and which Adventure Cards they should attempt to resolve, this decision usually being influenced by the number of Elder Signs available as Rewards on the current Adventure Cards or the Adventure Cards or Monsters with the locked dice on them. Of course, sometimes a player will attempt to resolve an Adventure Card for the Item and Spell Cards that it would reward him. They also need to decide how to apply their dice rolls, and in all of this, a player is free to solicit advice from the other players. This then, is the game’s “co-operative” element.

In comparison with Fantasy Flight Games’ other titles of Lovecraftian investigative horror, Elder Sign is simpler, more direct, and quicker to play. It is less location focused than either Arkham Horror or Mansions of Madness, so it has less of a narrative structure to it, but because a player is rolling the dice multiple times during his turn, it actually feels like you are doing more than in either of those games, especially in Mansions of Madness where a player’s actions feel severely limited.

The combined effect of the reduced narrative structure in comparison to Fantasy Flight Games’ other Lovecraftian board games and the focus on the dice rolling to resolve the Adventure Cards is to make Elder Sign feel mechanical in play. It is possible that much of the game’s flavour and colour could fade into the background if the players do focus too much on the dice and the mechanics. That said, this is not necessarily an issue for the more casual player.

With eight Ancient Ones to face and forty-eight Adventure and eight Other World Adventure Cards, and sixteen Investigators to play, the core set for Elder Sign offers plenty of replay value. Plus, the format is ripe for expansion. The actual downtime between turns is not necessarily high, but of course with more players there is a slightly longer wait. When it is a player’s turn, the rolling of the dice to resolve the Tasks of an Adventure Card can be quite tense, which just adds to the atmosphere and feel of the game seen in the art.

Above all, Elder Sign captures much of the tension and atmosphere of fighting desperately against the Mythos. That it does so in such a self-contained and time constrained manner is a sign of a good design, at the heart of which is the clever, tension inducing dice rolling. Not too complex for the casual player, but still evocative for the Lovecraft devotee.

As I enter my third year of modern board gaming, I find there are an ever expanding number of titles I want to play. I keep adding games to my wish lists, and new ones appear. It’s nearly impossible to purchase, learn and play, and store every game that interests me. The more I discover about my gaming preferences, the more I yearn to try additional titles. My gaming circle seems to gravitate toward cooperative games, so I am especially inclined to try any coop that plays well with small groups and in under an hour. Elder Sign (2011) is hardly a new release, but it is new to me.

I have read many reviews of Elder Sign, and most are favorable. The recurrent knock on Elder Sign is that it is a luck filled, dice chunking affair that is too easy to win. After more than a dozen plays, I have found that the odds of winning are quite favorable. This is particularly true with certain investigators. And that is an issue with many cooperative games, as some “roles” seem to have distinct advantages. Most games designers address this issue by directing players to randomly choose their roles at the beginning of the game. Random distribution works, if enforced, but how many players adhere to this approach? Once I familiarize myself with a game, I find that I pick one or two roles and use them every time I play.

So how does the game look and feel? The many components look great. The artwork on the sturdy cards is gorgeous, and the small bits and markers are printed in vibrant colors. Especially neat is a large clock face, which serves as a timer players advance three hours at the end of each turn. The only components that seem lacking are the player tokens themselves. They are roughly two centimeter, flat squares that are hard to distinguish from one another. I would have preferred colored pawns that matched colors on the player investigator cards, but that’s a minor quibble. The custom dice are solid feeling and clearly etched in easy to read contrasting colors.

Gameplay is fairly straightforward in Elder Sign. One to six players choose an area of the museum (represented by six face-up “Adventure Cards”) to explore, and then they must complete tasks printed on the cards. The tasks are rows of symbols that correspond to those on the player dice. Players roll the dice and try and collect a die for each of the symbols in the task. When the desired roll is not achieved, the player must discard one die and try again to roll the desired task symbols. If a player exhausts his supply of dice and or cannot complete the tasks, he fails the adventure. Failed adventures penalize a player by causing him to lose health and sanity. If a player’s health or sanity reaches zero, his character is devoured. Additionally, failed adventures may result in the appearance of monsters and doom tokens. Completed adventures give players rewards including spells and weapons to help them tackle tough adventures and trophies to be exchanged for health and sanity restoration or for Elder Sign tokens. Some adventures also reward players with Elder Signs.

Players must collect a specified number of Elder Sign tokens before the doom track is filled, or the Ancient One awakens. The game includes eight Ancient Ones of varying strength and difficulty, and each has its own mode of attacking players should it awaken. So far, I have only awakened the Ancient One once, and I lost the game badly. Watching the doom track fill with tokens adds a real sense of tension and impending doom. Also included in gameplay are Mythos cards. They appear at the beginning of the game and each time midnight comes. Mythos cards usually cause some negative event like having a monster appear or adding a token to the doom track. They bolster the eerie, supernatural theme of wandering after hours in spooky Arkham Museum.

Elder Sign is a good, but not great cooperative game. The horror theme is easy to embrace, and rules are straightforward. Most of the game’s components are very good. And, given the number and quality of the cards, bits, and pieces, the game is a great value. I suspect there are ways to make the game more difficult without altering play. The simplest idea might to begin the game with two to four tokens on the doom track, or lock one of the dice for a portion of the game. Then the Ancient Ones would rise to create real challenges for players.

This game fits it’s theme perfectly. Play it at least with some role playing element to really make the most of that. Disclosure: I’ve never read Lovecraft.

You are an investigator working through the night whilst the museum is closed trying to stop the awakening of an Ancient One by earning Elder Signs. To earn the Elder Signs (and clues or items which are needed to help you do so) you have to enter rooms of the museum. All of the rooms are beautifully drawn in terrifying artwork and have some backstop as to what’s in the room.

A little bit about the investigators briefly. They are all horror classics like the curious photographer, the eager student, or the mentally tough nun. Some have more stamina, some have more sanity (lose all of either and they die) and all of them have cool special powers. You can change the difficulty or theme of the game by either drawing these randomly or assigning players different characters.

Every time your investigator enters a room (and they must do so each turn) they have to make a dice roll (normally a series of dice rolls) to beat the room. Succeed and they get the benefits of the room – albeit it some rooms have mixed effects and aren’t all good. Fail however and bad stuff happens, like losing stamina or sanity or, worse, bringing the Ancient One closer to return. There are actually a significant number of different things that can happen and lots of potential modifiers to dice rolls so I was lucky to have a friend introduce this to me who already knew how to play – otherwise you would need to spend some time reading the rules.

The basic premise sounds pretty straightforward though,so where does the tension come from? Well the bad stuff that can happen is really bad. To complete rooms you are risking death. Yes it’s coop but you don’t want to die at the hands of the horror! And the difficulty ramps up brilliantly throughout the game, with monsters arriving in rooms and players naturally working through the easier rooms leaving harder options to cracking.

It’s the theme which makes this game great so come prepared to get in character, bring your best film noir narrator voice and go enter that museum!

I was hesitant at first to add Elder Sign to my Mythos game collection. I’m a huge fan of Lovecraft and the Mythos, but dice games have never really been my thing. That being said, I’m glad I made an exception in this case. Elder Sign is a lot of fun, and makes a great addition to the Arkham Horror Line from Fantasy Flight Games.

The game has a lot of common elements to Arkham Horror, including artwork – the investigators face a series of adventures in the Museum in Arkham seeking to prevent the Ancient One from awakening by sealing off the way using a series of Elder Signs. The game is quite rich in story and atmosphere, both good points for someone like me when evaluating a game. It doesn’t have as much to it as Arkham Horror (especially if you are used to playing AH with its large array of expansions), but Elder Sign is every bit as fun while being a lot faster to set up and play. Unlike the board games in the Horror line, Elder Sign also requires significantly less space to play.

All in all, for fans of the Arkham Horror game line or Mythos games in general, Elder Sign gives you a rich, fast, fun game that will leave you coming back for more. There’s already one expansion, Unseen Forces, which adds some very cool elements to the game, including a new set of cards of the Museum Entrance, blessings and curses.