Arkham Horror: The Card Game First Impressions

Arkham Horror: The Card Game puts the Cthulhu Mythos in card form.

But it could still drive you insane.

Something evil stirs in Arkham, and only you can stop it. Blurring the traditional lines between role-playing and card game experiences, Arkham Horror: The Card Game is a Living Card Game of Lovecraftian mystery, monsters, and madness!

Arkham Horror: The Card Game Game Play

So as with a lot of LCGs, there is A LOT to cover so here I’m just covering the VERY top level to give a taste of what the game is about.

Keep in mind the game is scenario-driven so setup involves a lot of stacking certain cards in piles, also players get a character with different abilities and starting equipment. The locations for the scenario are set up on the table to show the layout of various rooms etc. A small character card is placed next to the location each character is currently in.

You’re playing through the scenario encountering different things as you go and a turn is played over a few phases.

Mythos Phase

A round starts with the baddies taking a turn in the Mythos Phase. Doom tokens are added to an Agenda card and if there are a certain number of tokens on it the Agenda advances as does the story for this scenario.

Each player draws an Investigator card which is either an enemy which then engages the player that drew it or a Treachery card the player resolves and discards. As you can imagine a Treachery card is not necessarily better than being engaged by a Monster.

Player Turns

Players will move around the location looking for clues, fighting monsters and basically trying to complete the scenario.

On a Player Turn, they take up to 3 actions.

Make an intellect test against the Shroud value (Basically the number you test against) of the location the player is at and if successful they get a Clue token. Clue tokens can be spent to advance the current act of the scenario by spending the amount needed as a group.

Move to a connecting location. allows players to explore the different cards on the table.

Pay the resource cost for a card in hand and put it into play. Events are resolved and discarded but things like weapons and spells stay in play.

To fight an enemy, make a combat test against that enemy’s fight value. If successful, deal 1 damage by default but weapons, spells etc may increase the damage. A funny thing is if you attack an enemy engaged with another player and miss, they take 1 damage instead!

If you’re not looking to fight, you can make an agility test against that enemy’s evade value to exhaust the enemy and disengage from it.

Skill Tests

When taking a skill test, players can add cards from hand with the correct symbol to the test. Other players at the same location can play one card each to help out.

Players then reveal a Chaos token from the bag and apply the effect. These will affect the result in positive or mostly negative ways. As long as the total you have exceeds the target you’re ok… mostly.

Game End

Complete the scenario! It’s that simple

Theme

It’s a Fantasy Flight Arkham Game and they all have the same look and feel. If you’ve liked them before you’ll like this. I like the creepiness and the constant threat.

Setup

As mentioned before, the scenario setup is piles of cards so they are placed out and some in a specific order in a particular place on the table. The player deck can be custom-built but there are default ones available if that’s not your thing.

Components & Artwork

Standard FFG again. I never like the quality of the cards but these seem better. Maybe because it’s in the card game series rather than a board game.

The art is the same as always. It’s not my style but it’s been around so long it’s just the “Arkham Look” for me now.

Ease of Teaching

Co-op games are always easier to teach. There are hidden cards in hand but you can easily teach them one at a time.

Arkham Horror: The Card Game Summary

There are a few LCGs from FFG and I’ve enjoyed the ones I’ve played. My favourite purely for the theme is Marvel Champions. That, and it has the “discard cards in hand to pay for cards in hand” mechanism that I really enjoy.

But it isn’t as scenario-driven as Arkham Horror. There are scenario-based expansion packs for MC that has a story unfolding over several games but not like AH.

Arkham Horror has experience points players can use to grow in between games and a long story with plenty of expansions. To be honest, I don’t know anything about the game outside of my experience of it here.

So I’ll leave it there. These games are all good fun albeit expensive if you want to keep up. You just need to pick one with the theme you like and go with it.

Jesta ThaRogue