Let us journey back to the summer of 2011. My family is on vacation in Ocean City, Maryland in a condo a block from the beach. Those who know me well are aware I have 2 arch nemeses, one of which is the sun (a story for another time) and the other.. well we will discuss that later. I thus avoided the beach more often than not and withdrew to the comfort of the air conditioned condo to enjoy a book or game. My brother and my dad often joined me in this seclusion and we quickly turned to games to fill our time and it was thus that my brother introduced us to Arkham Horror.

The vitals
Released 2005 (remake of a game from 1987)
Designer: Richard Launius & Kevin Wilson
Plays: 1-8 (I’d recommend 4-5 and avoid 8)
EPT: 240 minutes (90-120 if all players are well experienced)

Arkham was a game I had wanted to play since I first learned about the game early on in the life of its 2005 reprint. I was aware of the Lovecraft world, as I had read a few of his short stories and loved the idea of a board game facing off against an ancient one such as Cthulu.

In Arkham Horror players are investigators working their ways around the city of Arkham, Massachusetts collecting clues, picking up weapons, spells, and artifacts so as to be equipped when they come up against the ancient one and its minions. This game is thus fully cooperative (unless investigators choose to take on individual missions) and has had a plethora of expansions released that add to the game; perhaps someday I will look into the expansions in more detail but for today let us focus on just the base game.

Each investigator has varied strengths and weaknesses which can be altered as the player needs during their upkeep. This is done in the form of a trade off; you can increase your investigator’s speed at the expense of their sneak or vice versa. The same goes for fight//will and lore//luck. Players can move up to their speed ending their turn on set locations or on the street between locations. After the action phase players draw encounters based on the color of the neighborhood they are in or if they traveled through a gate to another world they get an otherworldly encounter. As play progresses new gates appear in Arkham spawning more monsters and increasing danger.

As Investigators travel Arkham they can attempt to kill the monsters and close the gates before the ancient one awakens. If too many gates or monsters spawn unanswered, however, or if the ancient one’s doom track advances too far the great entity awakes and they players must test their skill against the creature!

There is much much more to this game but as it is nearing its 10 year anniversary I feel it should not be difficult to find it covered in great depth elsewhere; and if not mayhaps I will have to make a video entry explaining it in more detail if so desired… and I desire it… so it will happen.. sometime… someday… maybe…

When I first learned of the game there was a strong desire to play it; after a while one of my cousins had picked it up and we quickly took out the pieces; punched out the chits, and skimmed the rules. We then put everything back in the box, completely overwhelmed and played a different game. This story is a common one; Arkham is not a game that you buy and teach yourself and play all in one afternoon; not easily at least. When my brother took out Arkham on that warm summer day, I was as excited as a small child on Christmas morning.

The rules are not as complex as they seem; easy enough to learn while playing the game given someone at the table already knows how it plays. By the third turn or so most common events of note have occurred and new players can take full control of their turns without need of great assistants. Arkham is the first game I played in which I had a notable physical response to the in game thrill. There are plenty of competitive games in which I would get an emotional response; such as Axis and Allies when you are repeatedly air raided and start each round with no money, but it is a competitive game players are making the best choice they should I can’t blame them. In Arkham, however, it is the game itself being a jerk; my heart beat escalated, my palms got sweaty, I got nervous, excited, scared, and everything else imaginable.

There are occasional downsides in the game beyond the initial piece overload upon the first open but most are player related and easily manageable. The game runs the risk of analysis paralysis as well as alpha player domination. The former my playgroup has overcome simply through experience; we know what we need and where best we could get it while the second we overcame with a simple house rule we took into other games, “you can offer advice to the other players if prompted but never can you just tell them what they should do.”

Some have argued that this game has been ‘jones ruled’ with Fantasy Flights new game in the Lovecraft world, Eldritch Horror, but that is a tale for another day. Personally I find space on my shelf and in my heart for both games. Admittedly the more I played Arkham the more I loved it until eventually it peaked and declined; I feel it has now reached it’s score at which it will remain at for some time unless Fantasy Flight decides to add another new expansion someday which is quite unlikely.

The game is gorgeous and the bits are fairly self explanatory and the quality is equally outstanding. There can be difficulty in storing all the pieces, but I overcame this by building a custom box I am quite proud of (I will attach pictures for bragging purposes below). The balance between skill and luck plays marvelously and while some people complain about rolling to see if you can roll for sake of learning how many dice you get to roll… they just don’t get how awesome that mechanic is (note this is only even an issue if you are playing lore based spell caster… which I usually am).

I could write about this game for many more pages; but I will spare you the time and jump to the rubric.

Between the game’s amazing use of theme, art, and mechanics I give Arkham Horror 8 out of 10! There is very little I would change to this game; aside from custom investigators and cards (yes I made a Harry Potter based expansion “Hogwarts: a Horror” in which I created 12 investigators, a new spell deck, a muggle artifact deck, monsters, and an ancient one (volde… he who must not be named – maybe I will post that sometime for your enjoyment.)

Visuals – 2 // 2
Skill/Luck – .5 // 1
Pacing – 1.25 // 2
Theme/Immersion – 1.75 // 2
Mechanics – .75 // 1
Fun Factor 1.75 // 2

Come back Monday when we return to the world of mechanics and jump into Action Point Allowance! Until then you can find us on social media!
Twitter @Gam3rsR3mors3
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Bragging photos – My Arkham Horror box I made over the winter break of 2012