Arkham Horror Lookback Review

I played Arkham Horror a lot back when I only wrote about games I owned…

So time to write about it now!

The year is 1926, and it is the height of the Roaring Twenties. Flappers dance till dawn in smoke-filled speakeasies drinking alcohol supplied by rum runners and the mob. It’s a celebration to end all celebrations in the aftermath of the war to end all wars.

Yet a dark shadow grows in the city of Arkham. Alien entities known as Ancient Ones lurk in the emptiness beyond space and time, writhing at the gates between worlds. These gates have begun to open and must be closed before the Ancient Ones make our world their ruined domination.

Only a handful of investigators stand against the Arkham Horror. Will they Prevail?

Arkham Horror Game Play

This is a fairly large game with a lot of stuff going on so this is just a rough overview of the important parts…

The main setup bits are that there is a huge board of Arkham and each player has a character with a special ability and different levels of health and sanity. These characters also have certain fixed and random starting items that match their profession.

There is also an Ancient One card sat off to one side, this is the big bad you’re going to fight.

So let’s go through things that happen in this game in the rough order they happen without going into too much detail or we’ll be here all day.

Firstly, the main system is based on successes on dice. You roll a number of D6’s for the stat you are skill checking against. Successes are a 5 or 6 but you can be blessed during the game to make this a 4, 5 or 6 or cursed making it only 6s.

Movement Phase

Characters can move point to point around the map of Arkham. Monsters must be fought or evaded when leaving a space with one or ending movement on one.

Encountering Monsters (Evading & Combat)

To evade, you need a single success from a number of dice equal to your sneak value minus the monsters awareness. If that fails or you just fancy it, you fight the Monster.

First, you need to pass a horror check to see if you lose sanity, then go to combat. Here you check your fight value minus the monsters combat rating and you need successes equal to their toughness. You can use weapon and spell cards to up your combat rating to increase your chances.

Arkham Encounters Phase

If you’re in the space with a gate you go through it, or if you’ve been through it you can seal it with 5 clues. Otherwise, you resolve the special ability of the space you’re on or draw an encounter card for that location.

Places like the store let you spend money to gain items etc The hospital can recover health and the asylum recovers sanity. They’re all pretty thematic.

Encounter cards range from the mundane to the outright weird!

If a player is already in a gate they have an Other World encounter. These are also VERY weird as you’re in the other world obviously and it’s usually just a case of trying to survive until you get out the other end!

Mythos Phase

This starts with flipping a mythos card which will tell you what to do. You advance the Doom track, spawning a new gate and monsters. If the new gate would spawn on an existing gate you have a monster surge, spawning more monsters.

If the number of monsters on the board exceeds a certain level they are placed in the outskirts instead. Then if the number of monsters in the outskirts gets to a certain level the terror track is increased.

Monsters also move depending on their type. Some move a standard 1 or 2 spaces in a certain direction while others move directly to Investigators.

Death, Devoured, Arrested & More

Death: It’s called death but you’re not really dead. You go insane if you have 0 sanity or unconscious with 0 stamina. You lose half your items and wake up in the asylum or hospital respectively.

Devoured: If you’re unfortunate enough to be reduced to both 0 sanity and 0 stamina at the same time, you discard all of your cards.

Arrested: Go to Jail. Lose half of your money and lose a turn.

Lost in Time and Space: Miss a turn and reappear on any location. You can be LiTaS if you’re devoured in the other world or randomly during an encounter among other ways.

Ancient One

The ancient one will awaken when the doom track is full of there are too many gates open. Any Investigators LiTaS are devoured

Players must now get a total number of successes equal to the number of players multiplied by the number of doom tokens on Ancient One. After each player attacks, the Ancient One attacks all players.

Terror Track

This increases when the outskirts are over its monster limit and via encounters among other things.

As it increases, various locations are closed on the board and investigators inside are kicked out onto the streets.

Winning the Game

You can win by closing all the gates on the board, if there are 6 or more elder sign tokens on board (From closing gates) or if the Ancient One wakes up and is defeated.

Players score points for a “real” winner but if you stop the world ending you’re all winners in my eyes.

Theme

Cthulhu and all that. I’ve never really been into it but I like the constant fear of EVERY monster. I like the impending doom of the Ancient One and the creepiness of the encounters and the people you meet.

Setup

I mean… It’s sprawling with things everywhere so it takes a while. I was definitely lucky to play this with a group that knew what was what and where everything needed to be to fit onto the table we used.

Not a game I would set up and play solo!

Components & Artwork

The components are OK for a 16-year-old game, Fantasy Flight never really got any better in that time, did they? I like the standees and counters over minis and though I didn’t buy this game myself I can only imagine what it would have cost.

Ease of Teaching & Accessibility

A standard sentence from me here: It’s an open information co-op so help the noobs and get on with it.

The base game is accessible, just need to calm down on the expansions if someone is going to be overwhelmed.

Arkham Horror Summary

This is a Pandemic style game tartted up really well. You’re fighting fires around the board trying to keep the number of open gates and living monsters down to a minimum.

You also need to do a little shopping and heal when you can. Also, the streets are deadly so movement is a massive issue, you can’t stay out long.

I love the tension, no game has made me feel like this since where the epic battle is constantly on a knife-edge.

It’s successor Eldritch Horror is a better board game, but this is a better event. I wouldn’t play it much now even if I had the opportunity, I would opt for a shorter game like Marvel United.

But Arkham Horror is the game that really got me into the hobby and I’ll never forget those experiences.

Jesta ThaRogue