Arkham Horror - Tips & Strategies

Great tool to minimize card shuffling and set up. It will automatically pick Location and Other World cards and is selectable by expansion. Maps and investigator info is also available. Dice rolling too if you want it (though I prefer rollin’ the bones myself).

It’s pricey to buy all the expansions — heck, but if you’re addicted to AH, what else is money for?

If your investigator goes insane instead of losing half of your items lose half of you skills and spells instead. This better represents the psychological trauma of insanity. You still lose half of your clue tokens in addition to the skill/spell loss.

We allow sharing clues when in the same area- helps with increasing the chance to seal more gates (after all wouldn’t you pass on any useful info to someone who is trying to help save your town in real life)?

Due to the length of the game setup, I like to have the game ready to go people my gaming group arrives. The can definitely reduce some time in an already length, but awesome, game

For larger games or groups of newer players, it might work well to have a player (preferably an experienced player) act as a game master of sorts. They’d draw and read all of the Mythos cards, move monsters, keep track of the Ancient One’s sheet, and so on. This will let the rest of the players focus on their investigators and their strategies.

While this house rule won’t work for everyone, it could work to ease certain players into the game gradually.

When the fate of the world hangs in the balance, you and your team need to be working toward the same goal. You need to decide at the beginning of the game if you are going to win by sealing or fighting the Great Ancient. You will have a greater chance of success if you are specializing in sealing gates or obtaining equipment rather than switching strategies midway through the game.

Strange Eons:
http://cgjennings.ca/eons/index.html
…is a great site for making your own customized Investigators, GOOs, Monster, Items, etc. It’s fantastic. Our group has investigators that represent each of us. It’s good fun!

When I play this, usually someone volunteers to go sit on the Unique Item store and try to get at least one Elder sign. Since there’s usually one character who isn’t good for fighting monsters, this can be a good way to keep everyone involved.

Always watch for someone randomly going into three buildings that are significantly far apart. He/she may make excuses for it like “oh, let me go here. I know you need me to kill creatures and I’m pretty full on health and sanity, but I know there’s a card in here that will help us.” Don’t believe him/her! Their brain has already been eaten by the Ancient Ones. It is no longer your friend! While you can’t actively kill the person, let the creatures roam in their path, blacklist them from trades. Do it. Your friendship will heal. But the sorrow of betrayal will never. …Or don’t, and laugh with your friend as he plays his devilish game and no one listens to you – Oh the beautiful irony!

This has never happened to me. Never.

One thing that always bugs me about this game is that the ONLY two ways to seal a gate are through coughing up clues or by using an Elder Sign spell. If one of my characters gets pulled through a gate during the Encounter Phase and she is not equipped to handle, the best she can hope to do is close it upon her return. Sealing is out of the question. If she leaves the area to collect enough clue tokens or an Elder Sign card, she has to return to and travel back through the gate. That is utter crud, IMO. I haven’t tried this yet but I’m feeling pretty confident it will work – Let your character who has passed through a gate return to it any time to close and seal it. It’s not like the character doesn’t know where the gate IS, for crying out loud! There are already so many cards stacked against you in this game that SOMETIMES you have to implement a house rule and level the playing field. You paid for it; tweak the rules to make it enjoyable.