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  • Arkham Horror The Card Game: the greatest deck construction introduction of all time… if you can get there.

Arkham Horror The Card Game: the greatest deck construction introduction of all time… if you can get there.

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GS Updated July 28, 2021
 
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Arkham Horror Card Game: the greatest deck construction introduction of all time…  if you can get there.

Game Information

Players
1 - 4
There Will Be Games

Arkham Horror The Card Game by Fantasy Flight Games is the best deck construction/deck building game I have played; no small feat because I find most of the biggest card games in the genre to be completely impenetrable and intimidating. It is also probably the most difficult game to get into that I have, nevertheless, grown to like, presenting a wholly deceptive façade as a light “experience” adventure game when it is actually an exceptionally hardcore product. Arkham Horror CG a bit like a jewel locked behind multiple layers of elaborate security: security guards, electronic locks, heat sensors, the whole bit. If you can get through the tall walls standing in your way, it has an enormous amount to offer. But getting there is not easy and is, in practice, also staggeringly expensive.

By way of setup, Arkham Horror CG is more of a game engine than a set game. Each scenario asks you to manipulate the basic engine in different ways, but boils down to characters traveling between locations, taking skill checks, fighting, and gathering clues. You handle these challenges using the combination of an investigator of your choice paired with a (usually) thirty card deck composed of the assets, tricks, and skills your investigator will bring to the table. Scenarios are ordered in campaigns, and as campaigns go on you will be adding new cards from whatever sideboard of cards you happen to have.

The Wall

Before I get to the aspects Arkham Horror CG excels at, let me talk about the barriers to enjoyment it presents, because from my perspective they are varied and pretty brutal. The game expects you learn a game on the fly, losing feels like shit, the beginner product line is terrible, enjoyment requires huge buy-in, and prospective players should engage community tools to get the most out of the game. All of these criticisms come together into one baseline fact: it is extremely unfun to lose in Arkham Horror CG with a badly tuned deck, especially on first play of a scenario. Everything else flows from this.

On a purely mechanical level, I found Arkham Horror CG intimidating to play initially because of its structure. Scenarios are all different, and their rules are presented to you across a variety of different kinds of components that describe interlocking mechanisms---act, agenda, encounter, monster, and other special cards all come together to form a lattice that operates the mechanical gimmick of that scenario. But because of this, it is very hard to get a holistic picture of what is actually going to happen and how to execute those instructions on the fly while you play without breaking the rules (or the pace) horribly. My thesis about this game is that it can be a game about learning how to play a game, which can make it choppy and bewildering on first play. This makes Arkham Horror CG intimidating except for very experienced gamers.

Confronting a Big Bad

In play, Arkham Horror CG is a game of ruthless action efficiency. The sort of action efficiency one usually associates with a Knizia or a Pax series entry. Players need to handle the encounter card “bad” they receive every turn---could be an enemy to fight, something restricting your play options, a damaging skill test, or something worse---and also make progress against whatever the scenario goal is, all in the span of three actions. In practice, most of the opposition thrown at you serves to drown your action efficiency. Enemies tie you up in engagements, preventing you from making progress against the goal until they’re dealt with. Clue retrieval is an action sink. Scenario boss enemies often have many turns worth of health, to be confronted while challenges keep piling up from encounter cards. Most importantly, if you are behind the action curve in Arkham Horror CG, even at its easiest setting, losing feels like having all of your options stolen from you and being slowly strangled while you fall farther and farther behind. In my view, this makes it a terrible adventure game. I am told people enjoy no-spoiler first plays of scenarios. I cannot imagine how or why, as coming to grips with challenges you cannot prepare for does not create exciting, dynamic, adventure gambits but rather stifling losses that could not be prepared for. Against the grain, I enjoy Arkham Horror almost exclusively on a mechanical level and consider it a strategy game first and foremost with little appreciation for its narrative or adventure qualities.

Dovetailing with losing sucking is that the core set of Arkham Horror CG is bad. Getting to a fun product requires immense investment. I quarrel much less with the thin scenario offerings in the core (just three) than the investigator deck possibilities. The player decks provided are poor, unfocused, and they do not feel very empowering to play. So not only will beginner skill be low, beginners are also equipped with poor investigators without the player card sideboard to handle challenges. And to repeat, losing with bad decks with few options in Arkham Horror CG feels like shit.

So how much more Arkham Horror CG do you need? Well, there is the horrifying rub. I would estimate that I only started having fun with the game when I had bought a full campaign cycle and the five investigator starter packs on top of a core. That put me in for… approximately two hundred dollars. There’s no way to sugar coat this: creating good player decks and therefore finally having fun with Arkham Horror requires a shitload of cards and a boatload of money.

To add insult to injury, understanding how to make decks that unlock the fun in the game is helped by engagement with the (quite lovely) online community. The Arkham Horror CG community has the amazing resource of www.arkhamdb.com, where decks can be seamlessly created, shared and inexperienced players can get insight into what good decks look like. The Arkham Cards phone and tablet app is, similarly, a jewel of an app which lets you manage decks, plugs into arkhamdb, and leads you through campaigns and records information while playing.

Beyond the Wall

So say we, despite the odds, have a huge set of cards and another campaign. We are looking in our app, perhaps at someone else’s highly liked deck, and we are reading their comments for beginners on their philosophy. Why would anyone go to this trouble? What’s there?

In short, Arkham Horror CG is a tightly designed, incredibly accessible introduction to and elaboration on deck construction and deck building. First and foremost, it is a cooperative card game which completely changes the context of constructing decks for play, reducing the stakes immensely. Your constructed deck is going up against a built scenario, with a surprisingly elegant difficulty system. This immediately nulls all of the fraught, competitive, race-to-the-best-online-deck aspect of deck construction games. Players can build their decks for campaigns and try creative things without dipping them into the crucible of typical deck or army building munchkin behavior. Even the community of Arkham CG is helped by this setup, being quite positive with no real caginess about sharing successful builds since they will not be deployed against others.

ahc60 cardfan

I hear you saying, though, that other CGs have been cooperative before. Lord of the Rings LCG, for example, or even its lovechild Marvel Champions. What advantage does this particular game have? To me, Arkham Horror CG’s biggest advantage (beyond a system that does not pivot strictly on ally mooks) is how the upgrade system combines with the complexity of the levers its cards can pull. The upgrade system, in and of itself, gently introduces players into deck construction. Upgrades feel great and, critically, there are not any purely wrong answers. A level 4 card is going to be better than a level 0 one, and you have a small discrete number of XP to play with after every scenario. I found that being gently introduced to deck construction via the upgrade system completely unlocked the joy of tuning and making investigators. Sornars on our forums pointed out to me that Arkham Horror CG's decks have a strong parallel to an incredibly crunchy tabletop RPG character creation and upgrade system; I would say that is exactly the appeal of the dizzying deck construction options now available. I started working with the upgrade system from prebuilt decks, and via what I learned there, branched out to tinker with the initial decks and deck concepts, something I have never felt comfortable doing before in any big card game.

The investigators themselves further support experimentation. Investigators are almost universally well designed. They feel like they are partially intended to, mechanically, introduce players into the myriad of successful strategy directions the huge corpus of cards can support. The investigators are a chance for FFG designers to provide a great roadmap of possibilities for a beginner that otherwise might not be obvious, while simultaneously creating exciting new opportunities for experienced players to use older weak or forgotten cards.

I think it is fair to say that everything else about the mechanics of Arkham Horror CG leans into the core strength: it makes deck building fast, easy, and fun. It does a great job of shortening the length between a deck idea, constructing that deck, and testing that deck idea in a scenario. Critically, decks are quite small by CCG/LCG standards, generally thirty cards, can have two copies of a card, and each character only has access to very limited card suits. Putting together an experimental deck is, therefore, straightforward and can feasibly revolve around the interplay of a simple and limited set of cards. Playing into the playful, iterative experience, individual scenarios of Arkham Horror CG are very difficult but also much shorter than a game of Arkham Horror or Eldritch Horror, realistically wrapping up in under an hour once set up. The decision-making comes so fast, and your actions are so limited and important, that there is very little faffing about before it becomes perfectly clear if you’ll be able to execute your ideas.

For me, the pleasure of playing Arkham Horror CG is in playing a challenging, taut cooperative strategy game in the shadow of wildly engaging deck construction. I cannot say that I expected the experience to be quite so unforgiving and euro-like mechanically, given what on its face looks like a pulpy game of taking risks and shooting monsters. In practice, Arkham Horror is all about playing efficiently and taking as few risks as possible, and I cannot even wrap my mind around the idea that people can successfully complete scenarios and campaigns on hard or higher difficulty. Yet despite all these positives, it is absolutely wild that this game has been successful as it has. It is still hard to ignore just how unfun the play of having a bad deck is or how much real money you will spend to get into the fun part. Nevertheless, I am grateful to have gotten stuck into Arkham Horror CG after several tries and a long time on my shelf, because it has unlocked a genre of game that I have never had any luck with.


Editor reviews

1 reviews

Rating 
 
4.0
Steve M. "Gary Sax" (He/Him)
Community Manager

Steve is an academic in Arizona and Texas that spends his off-time playing board games and hiking. He cut his teeth on wargames and ameritrash before later also developing an odd love of worker placement and heavier economic games. You can also find him on instagram at steve_boardgamesfeed.

Articles by Steve

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charlest's Avatar
charlest replied the topic: #324931 26 Jul 2021 10:31
Good stuff, Steve.

While I've played the game several times (a friend's copy), we keep talking about committing to a campaign and it's yet to happen. I need to get over the hump.
sornars's Avatar
sornars replied the topic: #324934 26 Jul 2021 12:09
A good review although your non-standard acronym of Arkham Horror CG weirded me out every time I saw it :P.

To your point on how it got to be this successful: I think this (and all LCGs) seem much more impenetrable as time goes on but if you got in close to the ground floor, picking up a core set is enough to show you the possibilities even if the prebuilt decks suck and the deckbuilding options are limited. As time went on a single deluxe box would add so many options to your card pool and then the steady drip feed of mythos packs would let you build up and learn the card pool gradually. It also helped that cycles are mechanically themed so by buying things in sequence you'd dive deep into suggested archetypes. It's only now with so many cycles completed that jumping in looks so daunting.

It may be worth mentioning FFG has since recognised how terrible their core sets are for beginners and the revised core should really address a significant complaint in your review. I wonder how your experience would've been different if you had been able to start with the new core from the get go.
Gary Sax's Avatar
Gary Sax replied the topic: #324938 26 Jul 2021 14:17
Thanks charlest, means a lot to hear that from you. Based on what I know about it, I think your group is one of the few I know of I would recommend the game to. Your group seems like a pretty persistent group of capital G gamers.

I think we disagree on the core, sornars. I think the core is bad enough feeling that I would just never have played again if I only had the base investigators and lists as an option. It's why I had the core for like a year or two and played it once and thought about selling it multiple times. It's only because I'm an insane person and I had such positive feedback from people I trust like you that I dug in deeper instead.

I do think the coming new bigger core set is a good point and important context. It won't dispel all the problems I outline with a bad first impression but if they tuned and updated the base investigator lists with it in mind, ideally to add much needed 2nd copies of stuff that should now be available in the core, I think it will help to at least make the base investigators make better first games. You won't feel as powerless and your losses wouldn't feel like there was nothing you could do unless your deck was better.
Jackwraith's Avatar
Jackwraith replied the topic: #324944 26 Jul 2021 17:16
Cool stuff. Can guarantee you that I will never get into it, despite my love for the AH CCG/LCG (previous edition), because of many of the things you cite here: Virtual demand to spend X 100s of dollars to get to a game that's fun; cooperative play; deep involvement with community (i.e. lifestyle game, like Magic or GW.) Can't do it anymore. Interesting to read about how it works and how it works for you all the same.
Gary Sax's Avatar
Gary Sax replied the topic: #324948 26 Jul 2021 22:11
The cooperative part is what makes it accessible to me. For me, the rest of what you note is all correct and a good reason to hold back. But the community is really surprisingly good and not a turn off. They like to share ideas using arkhamdb posts so you don't need to get crazy with it.
Ah_Pook's Avatar
Ah_Pook replied the topic: #324960 27 Jul 2021 11:23
I think the biggest success of Marvel Champions is that the base box is actually a fun and fairly replayable game that you could conceivably buy and stop with. AHLCG base box had enough there that you could maybe squint and see a real cool game down the road after you spend a couple hundred more dollars, which is a step up from the X-Wing core set I guess but it's still not great.
Cranberries's Avatar
Cranberries replied the topic: #325071 30 Jul 2021 19:17
So after reading this review I sold my copy, a copy of Tikal and also Theseus: the Dark Mancala, and used the money to buy an air fryer at Costco. Unlike Arkham, the air fryer does not require any expansions or additional players, and I will use it almost daily. We should probably always ask, "Is this game better than a $50 air fryer?"



My wife pointed out that I'm running a complex money laundering scheme. Buy a handful of board games cheap from the family general fund, as opposed to my "fun money." Tikal cost $12. I sold Arkham for $20. It was a gift. I don't think I paid much for Theseus. So my argument that "I paid for this air fryer by selling board games so it cost us nothing!" is kind of hollow. However, we had roasted vegetables, asparagus with butter and lemon juice, and crispy chicken sausage last night while we watching the Olympics.

It took me far too long to figure out that "Gary Sax" games, because his writing is so compelling, always sound amazing, but are not always Cranberries games. The idea that the game is essentially a game about how to play a game that essentially costs $200 to play properly sealed the deal. Now I'm saving up for Sleeping Gods, based on Dan Thurot's review.
Gary Sax's Avatar
Gary Sax replied the topic: #325072 30 Jul 2021 19:20
I think that is the right call.

I have also played this game about 15 times over the last week and a half so...
Jexik's Avatar
Jexik replied the topic: #325079 31 Jul 2021 19:07
This is the second time now that everyone is saying to Steve: “Great review. Not buying it!”
Gary Sax's Avatar
Gary Sax replied the topic: #325080 31 Jul 2021 19:33
I figure it means I did a good job in actually portraying it.

Played again this afternoon. ;)
Gary Sax's Avatar
Gary Sax replied the topic: #326855 29 Sep 2021 23:37
Cole Wehrle referenced this review in the monthly Leder stream and I swooned. He attributed it to Charle Theel but that's another compliment tbh.
thegiantbrain's Avatar
thegiantbrain replied the topic: #326869 30 Sep 2021 10:25
Lovely work.

I do think the new core set is a real missed opportunity. I would have loved to have seen a new mini campaign alongside a rejigged set of cards that would ease you into the game better. It's good that it gives a full playset and the new way of releasing the campaigns will help with accessibility. The new core set just feels really lazy.
Gary Sax's Avatar
Gary Sax replied the topic: #326877 30 Sep 2021 11:31
I guess I don't think the base campaign is that bad, but it certainly doesn't give you a full arkham experience or anything like that.

I still think, even with the big improvement of the expanded player card corpus they're putting in the new box, it's still not enough to get into the really engaging deckbuilding that keeps me with this game. I don't know if one product can realistically do it, even if this is admittedly better.
DarthJoJo's Avatar
DarthJoJo replied the topic: #326879 30 Sep 2021 13:17

thegiantbrain wrote: Lovely work.

I do think the new core set is a real missed opportunity. I would have loved to have seen a new mini campaign alongside a rejigged set of cards that would ease you into the game better. It's good that it gives a full playset and the new way of releasing the campaigns will help with accessibility. The new core set just feels really lazy.

What would you do different for the campaign? The first two scenarios, at least, are pretty great for newbies. Gathering drips in new elements to not overwhelm you with options at the jump, and Midnight Masks is wide open that won’t punish you too hard for not playing optimally. Devourer, unfortunately, isn’t terribly interesting outside of seeing how earlier actions can impact you.
DarthJoJo's Avatar
DarthJoJo replied the topic: #326880 30 Sep 2021 13:33
m.imgur.com/a/6d8UPCQ

So they did decide to sprinkle in some more new art on player cards in the revised core set. You can see and compare them at the above link.

I’m glad to see more investigators clearly featured on card art as it makes the universe feel more unified, but a lot of these feel like lateral moves to me. The new art isn’t bad but neither was the original.

New investigator art feels like a real downgrade. Really? You’re going to improve on Magali Villeneuve, one of Magic’s premier artists? Not a huge fan of the 3/4 body shots over the close ups, either.

Have to try and squeeze a few boxes out of the established players, I guess.
Gary Sax's Avatar
Gary Sax replied the topic: #326884 30 Sep 2021 14:36
I don't like the new investigator art, happy with the current stuff as you said. The Wendy stuff is extra creepy to me. Only one that stuck out to me as a big improvement was the unexpected courage one which is fun.
Dr. Mabuse's Avatar
Dr. Mabuse replied the topic: #326885 30 Sep 2021 14:38
Looks like they wanted to tone down the blood and in the case of Hard Knocks alcohol consumption.
Gary Sax's Avatar
Gary Sax replied the topic: #326886 30 Sep 2021 14:43
Yeah, the "emergency aid" change which is, admittedly, kind of a gross card... I didn't think of the alchohol thing, you're right. That is pretty cheesy tbh.
DarthJoJo's Avatar
DarthJoJo replied the topic: #326889 30 Sep 2021 15:34

Dr. Mabuse wrote: Looks like they wanted to tone down the blood and in the case of Hard Knocks alcohol consumption.

That occurred to me, regarding alcohol, but there are literal cards for Liquid Courage and Tennessee Sour Mash, and there is a rum running investigator. Is the line actually drinking it?
Gary Sax's Avatar
Gary Sax replied the topic: #326894 30 Sep 2021 16:55
Probably!
Kmann's Avatar
Kmann replied the topic: #326926 01 Oct 2021 15:04
I'm generally pretty disappointed with the new art. Many cards have a thematic disconnect - Hard Knocks being a prime example but also Will to Survive is up there.

There's others I don't like, and some of the new investigator cards don't wow me, but it's not all bad; the new Deduction is great, I like the new Wendy's Amulet and, as mentioned, Unexpected Courage.

Art aside I'm more disappointed by the removal of the blood, gore and the adult nature of the art like - shock horror - someone swigging some booze and how the characters in the new art tend to look more empowered than horrified.

I'm hoping this is just for the core box and isn't a sign of the game toning things down and going more PG. That's never worked out well when movie franchises have tried it.
thegiantbrain's Avatar
thegiantbrain replied the topic: #326935 02 Oct 2021 03:44
Well as you say here the third part of that set of scenarios is notoriously not very good. I do think the first two are fine. They could have taken this opportunity to tidy it up, change the last scenario, streamline things. The main issue with the new core is that it really could have done with a long hard look at the cards in there, swapping out some of the ones seen as duds for more interesting choices and generally building a much more interesting card pool to build from.

I generally applaud them going in this direction release wise, but it just feels a little lazy. Shall we actually produce a new starter set that is dynamic and interesting? Nah, let's just double the player cards in there and call the job done.
DarthJoJo's Avatar
DarthJoJo replied the topic: #326936 02 Oct 2021 08:35
www.reddit.com/r/arkhamhorrorlcg/comment...e_15_xp_cards_newly/

It looks like they added in some more xp and level 0 options outside the original box to expand deck building and upgrade paths, too.

I don’t know. I see what you’re saying, but this is the same core box that has made this game as popular as it is, just better. This box and a few starter decks is a pretty complete experience without going hard on campaigns.
charlest's Avatar
charlest replied the topic: #326937 02 Oct 2021 09:54

Gary Sax wrote: Cole Wehrle referenced this review in the monthly Leder stream and I swooned. He attributed it to Charle Theel but that's another compliment tbh.


Ugh, sorry that happened. Although, I wouldn't mind being given credit for this review. It's a great piece. I was happy to see it do so well at BGG.
ubarose's Avatar
ubarose replied the topic: #327185 14 Oct 2021 13:57
I've been meaning to comment on this for a while. I have to agree 100% that purchasing the 5 investigator decks really cracked this game open and made so much more fun. Like probably 300% more fun. The investigator cards added with each cycle keeps the deck building and "character development" interesting.

When we hit the 3rd cycle, with all the cards from the investigator packs, plus all the cards from the core and 3 cycles, is when I hit the WOW! point. Now I really want to go back and replay the earlier campaigns with different investigators.

If you are doing the math, it took $300+ for this game to really shine. It was a worthwhile investment for me, because I spent the money over a 3-4 year period, $15 at a time, so it was almost painless. But more importantly, I have a built in partner to play with, and we go through periods when we will play multiple times a week. So it is probably my most frequently played game.

Another thing to note, is that organizing all these cards also requires an investment of time and/or money. You are likely to end up purchasing the "Return To" sets, or some other card box storage solution + dividers. I just recently spent an entire rainy day printing and laminating dividers, and organizing cards in order to get our enormous collection under control, and streamline set up/clean up and deck building. And we only own 3 of the cycles.