Arkham Horror - Tips & Strategies

Despite numberous warnings on this site, I insisted on learning how to play Arkham Horror myself (it was really that or nothing – I don’t know anybody who plays the game). Learning yourself is an absolutely brutal process. I easily invested 50 hours in my first 5 games and finished none of them. The first 20 hours of “play” were with rulebook firmly entrenched in hand for constant citing. If you have ANY alternative, I suggesting learning from a current player of the game. If you decide to brave the journey alone like I did, here are a few modifications I implemented around hour 30 that really assisted my efforts and kept me from washing my hands of the game completely:

– Add one die to all skill checks. Purists are going to hate this, but it’s the best way to remove the excessive punishment the game doles out without hindering the great variability the game provides. Some monsters are still impossible to beat; others, like witches and early-game maniacs, are easy to begin with so it doesn’t affect them any. Even using this I find the odds of winning are worse than even… it just saves you from continuously losing half of your equipment or sitting on an explored gate for 3 turns trying to close it.

– Buy plastic stands for the gates and monsters. After about 1 hour of playing the board is a big blurry mess to me. I can’t quickly identify monsters or gates, as they start meshing with the board itself. If you screw up a few gate surges and realize that you were short by a handful monsters, the temptation is too great to say “well, this game is invalid anyway” and pack it up. Having the gates and monsters stand out really helps.

– Only one of each monster on the board at a time. This prevents having four gates permanently blocked by nearly impossible to beat stationary monsters. If you draw a monster that is already on the board, simply return it to the bag and draw again. With a wide variety of monsters on the board, there will always be a few you can kill and a few you must avoid.

– When you cash in monster tokens put them aside (do not return them to the bag). This should help the game scale in difficulty – the monsters you are able to beat early in the game should be the easier monsters, so keeping them out of the bag increases the likelihood that harder-to-beat monsters come out later in the game. This makes thematic sense to me, and I’m really not certain why Arkham Horror and Elder Sign instruct you to return them to the bag.

– If you can swing it, get the monster miniatures from Fantasy Flight. This game feels like it should be a miniatures game to me anyway. The drawback is that this is expensive… If you purchase the 29 (I believe) monsters from the base game individually the cost is $170 – an awful lot to invest in a game if you’re not sure about it, but better than buying FFG’s four “sets” of monsters, which runs about $400 for all four (necessary to complete the base game’s monsters). I took the chance and it really helped me. The game feels more immersive now. I never worry about monsters “blending in” with the board and getting forgotten. And it helps enforce the “one of each monster” rule I proposed above since you would have only one of each figure. Note that I purchased both designs of the cultist and allow two cultists on the board at the same time since there are more of them in the bag than other monsters.

I’m glad I’ve stuck it out with this game, as I’m starting to really enjoy it. The only one of these rules I’ve fazed out as I’ve gained experience is the extra die rule… all of the others add to my experience, and I’m likely to continue playing with them. But I absolutely had to get creative with the rules while trying to learn the game or I would have given it up long ago. I hope some of these suggestions can help anybody else trying to self-teach. The journey is worth it, as long as you don’t go insane along the way.

There are plenty of fan based character sets out there on BGG and what not – from Barney Fife to a Scrooby Gang with a little Buffy and Ghostbusters thrown in the mix. They are mostly for funsies, but there aren’t many moments for laughs when playing a game that can smack you about the face with a wet tentacle in less time then it takes to set up.

I do like the Penny Arcade Trio on the Fantasy Flight Support Page

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_minisite_sec.asp?eidm=6&esem=4

They may not come out to play much – but they live in the box. They are actually nicely balanced and there’s just something about Team Precipice that screams Eldritchy and Arkham.

Maybe it’s just that I’m one of five people who danced on the Rain Slick Precipice back in the day and enjoyed myself.

Arkham Horror is a game about uncertainty, insanity and impending doom; embracing this (through a few mild gameplay changes) can really enhance the experience. Here are a few things my friends and I do:

1. Play our characters: Even though we’ve played the game any number of times, we still read our characters’ bios before each game, to remind everybody who it is they’re playing with. We encourage each other to embellish upon our characters, especially regarding how they react to their fortunes in the game.
My first game was all the more memorable, because Sister Mary ended up being a “battle nun,” with a cross and a .45 Automatic, limping by the end from the wounds of successive monster encounters and driven nearly insane as she cleared the streets for my fellow investigators. Now that we have Dunwich, We almost relish getting injury or madness cards for the added color to our characters.

2. Don’t just read the cards, play out the scene: We never give information about the potential rewards or consequences of a choice as another player lays out the scenario. Keeping with the spirit of the game, an investigator wouldn’t really be privy to this information; it adds tension to the decisions the players make and drama to the game.

3. Pass around reading responsibility: Each person’s encounter is read by the person to their left, giving each player a chance to ham it up and embellish scenarios as they see fit (sometimes playing off the character traits/history of the character caught in this encounter).
The person whose turn it is gets to read the mythos phase. The competition to read gets really heated in our games, which makes it easy to keep track of who starts each round as each person is possessive of their right to read their mythos card.

(Looking through the tips, I see there have been a number of like-minded individuals, so while some of this may be redundant, I hope I’m adding a little something in the way we try to embrace the spirit of the game.)

When FFG switched from the soft plastic “clip” style bases to the hard “toothy” bases that rip up tokens, I hunted down more of the soft plastic bases. As part of this, I found that the bases come in 10 different colors, not included the translucent white of the original game.

Tip 1) Use colored bases for your investigators. Most people are more comfortable using their favorite color and with so many components in this game, it is much easier to focus on a blue base, for example, than a specific character. This is particularly useful for large groups that may be crowded and unable to see what is on the far end of the board.

Tip 2) Use the translucent bases for monsters. This helps make their presence more visible, especially on crowded boards. Going a step further, you can also count out the number of bases you need based on players (so a maximum of 11 bases). Set these next to the monster cup and when you run out, you will know that you have reached your monster limit. It is one way to help reduce the administrative tasks in the game.

One source that I have found is in the United Kingdom but sometimes has a US presence. These are 17 mm x 19 mm rectangular card stands: Plastics for Games Ltd.

While skills and allies can make a tremendous difference to an investigator, buying them at the Administration or Ma’s is generally not worth the time and cost unless things are really quiet. Being out of the action for one turn can be devastating especially near the end of the game.

Many people see Phase 1 as just a quick upkeep phase: adjust your sliders, rest your items, get to Movement as quickly as possible.

Phase 1 should be the longest phase for your group. This is the phase where everyone needs to interact and plan out as much of the turn as possible. Realize who will be first player and how that impacts timing during movement and gate closings. Verify who will be clearing monsters out of the street for others to travel unimpeded. Note which investigators need to trade items or money and see if they can cross paths this turn. Make sure you aren’t all going for the same set of clues or into the same gate. Realize the game state and if you are getting close to losing.

Phase 1 is the most important phase to keep the game interactive and on task. Spending more time here will keep the downtime to a minimum later as people who don’t plan, realize things don’t work out and need to “do over” for the turn.

What do you do turn 1? Unless you have a lot of money and no weapons, I’d say the first couple turns should always be spent hording clue tokens. Grab them before gates make them disappear.

However, keep in mind that in order to seal a gate, a single player needs to have 5+ tokens, so don’t spread the clue tokens out too evenly. Let some players gather them up. The faster you can seal gates, the better.

The shotgun is one of the best normal items in the game. The shotgun may not have as many bonus dice as other weapons, but the special skill it grants totally makes up for it. When wielding as a weapon, all sixes count as double successes. In Arkham Horror, most monsters don’t have more than three stamina points, and most are around the 1 or 2 stamina range. But if you have to face off against the Ancient One, you’re going to want a shotgun if it’s not immune to normal weapons.

Since you can trade weapons freely in the final battle amongst players, giving the shotgun to the character with the highest fight attribute is one of the best things you can do. However, giving the shotgun to a character who has the Bravery skill is even better; if they don’t roll well once, they can exhaust it to roll once more.

In short, if you get the shotgun, never give it up to an event that makes you lose items. Not unless you know that it will do you no good during the finale.

When you’re playing with The Innsmouth Board a primary error of some players is to forget the fearsome city of Innsmouth unless you have a monster portal or somewhere inside her.

But inevitably in the game some players busy eliminate monsters in Arkham or close portals forget that each team is Prevented from the gate opening , such as by an elder sign token or an investigator ability , add one uprising token to the Deep Ones Rising track.

Usually when players remember it is already in force Martial Law Innsmouth.

One strategy to be adopted in the first innings of the game is to send 1 or 2 players ( usually a character can start with 1-2 clue tokens ) and the town of Innsmouth go to the Esoteric Order of Dagon and Marsh Refinery, (both sites have have 1 token each clue as initial setup of the game ) and there spend 2 Clue tokens to place on Them spaces on the Feds Raid Innsmouth track , purposely leaving the green area Innsmouth without advancing the Feds Raid Innsmouth track.

After this, I suggest to close the portals of the game, kill monsters, etc. When the Deep Ones Rising track is a worrying level send preferably a character with a good level of Sneak a Innsmouth, spending 2 Clue tokens in the green area and resetting the Deep Ones Rising track.

The obvious choice is the character with the best chance to close the gate should be the one to get the most clue tokens. Remember, gates can be closed/sealed with either a Lore or a Fight check.

Have your Fight heroes focus on preparing to kill monsters, while your most magical/scientific heroes gather the clues to seal gates. This will help prevent you from getting overrun by either gates or monsters.