Arkham Horror: The Card Game

As I narrated above, I went back around to Dunwich still on easy with Tommy and Luke after the toughness of dream eaters and innsmouth... we had a couple close calls but mainly smooth. We got to the train mission and had a single early close call due to randomness but absolutely trashed the scenario after that. Felt fucking good.

To no one’s surprise, Fantasy Flight officially announced that previous campaigns, starting with Dunwich, are getting repackaged in the new format. Only surprise for me is that they’re not rereleasing the investigators with new art like they are doing with the revised core.

I posted this elsewhere but I want to post it here for any peanut gallery members. I cannot emphasize enough how well the combination of a huge sideboard, card combination gameplay, and the ratcheting power of adding XP cards to your deck works when you nail a combo of 2+ cards that work together naturally. Not only are you using a stronger card, which automatically feels good, but if it combos with another XP card or just a lvl 0 card it is just like gamer candy for me. Something about my gamer psychographic, it is one of the better feelings in games. I pulled off an enchant weapon+shotgun+extra ammo combo in my last game, all are XP upgrade cards, and it just blew open how powerful each of those things are individually. Feels so good.

Attended Fantasy Flight’s Pop-Up Gen Con for a play of the new epic multiplayer scenario Machinations Through Time. The last two Gen Con specials have leaned toward scenarios where everyone is knocking health off the same boss and sharing some resources but otherwise minimal interaction. Machinations instead heralded back to and refined the very first epic multiplayer scenario of Labyrinths of Lunacy.

Three tables, working in parallel in 1890, 1930 and 1950, had to repair the timeline by encouraging the relationship, education and career of two young students whom a spurned collaborator was seeking revenge upon. It was a good time. We had to run to our fellow tables to see what events they needed us to trigger, and once we were on firm footing, we pulled the scientist back in time and distracted him while the present got their work done. It was a fun scenario that was at its peak in a convention environment.

I ran a seal Norman that took the worst tokens out of the bag, one teammate put four or so upgrades on his rifle and the other ran Luke doing Luke things.

DarthJoJo wrote: To no one’s surprise, Fantasy Flight officially announced that previous campaigns, starting with Dunwich, are getting repackaged in the new format.

Did they say if these include the 'Return to' content?

I watched this unboxing of the new Investigator box on the Arkham Chronicle YouTube channel and was a little disappointed at its flimsiness. The box not the video. The video is good.



The pre-release pictures had me thinking it'd be the same as the Marvel Champions campaign boxes and could be utilised for storage. Ah well. It's still such a massive win environmentally over six individual plastic blister packs that it's hard to get that worked up over it.

Maybe the campaign boxes will have some form of storage built in? In any case, I read a second hand accounting which stated that the lead designer had stated that they intended to keep the Return to boxes as a separate SKU and nothing would be changing on that front.

There was some talk going around the campaign box might be Marvelish and more durable? Maybe MJ said it during a podcast? Did that get scuppered?

Finished my Return to Circle Undone campaign with Mateo and Wini last night. They dominated it as hard as any team I’ve seen in a while. They won every scenario without too much stress (the only major caveat being I made a game breaking rules error in Wages of Sin and minor caveats later in misreading the rules to give myself too many experience in a later scenario and misreading an encounter card to my benefit later). Even Union and Disillusion which I haven’t even come close to beating in three or four attempts wasn’t that big of a deal.

Wini went hard on skills and enemy management with some curse while Mateo went good stuff mystic with a clue focus and bless support. I was initially planning on leaning a lot harder on the bless build, but I realized the priest just couldn’t reliably generate enough to make it worth it. Thus it became a smaller aspect of the build to counter Wini’s curses and maybe help her with the occasional will test or to keep her successes high. It was nice to see the small bless and small curse decks work. I had thought for a while that they needed to be the entire focus of the deck to make them worth it, but a handful of related cards worked just fine.

As a product, the Return box is mixed. It easily has the best batch of new player cards and the replacement encounter sets are really good. As a second pass on the campaign? It feels like missed opportunities. There’s a new narrative path which, though I didn’t take it, is appreciated, but there are several infamous scenarios that could have been improved a lot in the Return. Unfortunately, it feels like only one received the attention it needed by way of a new story asset. The others remain punishing grinders whose doom clocks feel a touch short. They’re still better than they were, but I feel like more could have been done. MJ has preferred a scalpel in revising Return scenarios, adding variety in locations, maybe a new enemy and perhaps a patch on a broken mechanic. Maybe these ones required a cleaver.

Think I’ll go back to Innsmouth next with Wendy and a killer, probably Tony or Roland.

My vow not to buy another cycle until the next paycheck is almost here, will be hoovering up forgotten age and return to in one go.

Sornars has warned me that there is unpreparable arbitrary shit in it abound so consider my loins girded.

Silas is such a fun investigator! What a blast to play and not sweat assets too much while upgrading. I'm sure there is some broken shit with him but he feels really well designed.

I like Silas a lot. He’s a pretty solid pick for true solo, and I like the speed of skill play. It gets broken in combination with Drawing Thin, but Silas can definitely cheese with Signum Crucis. It triggers after committing, so you can get all the benefit immediately and return it to hand without caring about the result. Defiance and Unrelenting work similarly by creating a lasting effect that doesn’t require them to stay in play through resolution.

I've been using defiance lvl 2 which works very well.

Going back into Dream Eaters for the two team version. I'm pretty pumped because the waking scenarios may be my favorite material arkham lcg so far.

I am most of the way through the first dream eaters scenario, I had no idea how deceptively good Ursula was, at least two handed. There are so many locations in a lot of these scenarios that are one per investigator clue locations so sneaking an investigate in on first arrival is incredible paired with a clue tempo increase like deduction.

Nathaniel is also just dumb fun, I love that there's absolutely no bullshit or games about his ass kicking. 5 fight, gloves, maybe an ally and he can just rain damage down without charges or anything.