therese blog

So, I thought I would do an unboxing photo dump. But, I got to excited and just opened the game, the wrappings, sleeved the cards and punched out the tokens before I remembered I was supposed to take photos.

But I have a few photos of my first playthrough, or actually my second. I had read the rules and watched a video before I got the game so after the sleeving and punching, I started playing. I’m a bit late to the scene with this game, now on its third revised core game.

Arkham Horror living card game is a deck building game where you embark on scenarios that make up a campaign. The scenarios have an act and an agenda as well as encounters. There are locations where you are able to make progress and search for clues.

The agenda and act decks are where the story happens, the act agenda “collects” doom tokens and will progress towards a bad end. The act deck “collects” clues and progresses towards the better end. If you don’t all die or get eliminated on the way.

Your own deck is filled with events, assets and allies. And there is a (sometimes) reasonable cap on how many of these cards you can have in your play area, for instance you can only have ONE ally. And this seem to work because allies often give you something once, and then they’re just fodder for damage/horror.

Then you through the phases, performing actions, resolving enemy actions, upkeep and mythos phase. There is a resolution to each scenario and you gain experience, traumas and resolve with a few decisions that I’m guessing is going to bite you in the backside before the end. With experience you can buy cards to enhance your deck.

I started with investigators Roland the fed och Wendy the urchin. And after a short while I had conquered the ghoul priest and “won” the scenario. Even though, Arkham feels like a game you never truly win, because of its grim nature. Having played LOTR LCG before I was surprised that I made it through alive and read through the reference guide. I had missed a few minor rules but all in all I think I just really got lucky with the chaos tokens. Too bad that was just a test run and not my “real” campaign.

The next day I set out with the same investigators, thinking I’d do short work of the whole thing. But no, both investigators got eliminated and I didn’t take the “no resolution”-path. I will start again and try the scenario with different investigators to learn about the mechanics of the game more before starting the campaign. It will hollow out the first scenario and make it a bit boring, I know, but it will be better for the campaign.

There were more differences between this and LOTR LCG than I thought it would be. There are elements I really like about Arkham, like the experience and buying of cards to “level” up.

There are still some questions I have about some mechanics and with LOTR it’s been like a new question every time I’ve played, sometimes making it cumbersome to play because I’m reading/watching videos more than I’m actually playing. I have a hard time not knowing how the rule really works and playing by the grim rule to get momentum. But that’s more of a me-problem 🙂

I’ve not rated the game yet because I want to get through a campaign first – I’ll let you know how it goes. And if anyone have a few tips for a newbie Arkham player, feel free to comment!