An Analysis of Arkham Horror

Me and my group have been playing the board game Arkham Horror this week, and this is my analysis of the game.

Arkham Horror is a co-op ameritrash board game for 1-8 players based on the Cthulhu mythos. Each player plays an investigator and will be walking around Arkham and other worlds searching for clues. The objective of the game is to defeat the Ancient One, or Great Old One, and this can be done in mainly three ways: 'killing' it in combat, sealing gates or closing all open gates.

It's not supposed to be easy though as the Ancient One will fight back. Each Ancient One have their own unique passive and worshippers that makes the game harder for the investigators. Not only that, every turn a gates to other world opens throughout Arkham releasing monsters the investigators have to fight in order to walk arounf the streets. If the Ancient One awakens and the investigators are all devoured, they have lost the game.

Investigators

Each player will be playing one investigator and if that investigator is devoured before the Ancient One has awakened, you may choose a new investigator to play as. Each investigator have a pool of Sanity and Stamina, if his sanity is reduced to 0 he is driven insane and is taken to the Arkham Asylum where he can regain his sanity. It's the same thing with Stamina, he gets knocked unconscious and is taken to St. Mary's Hospital where he can regain stamina.

Each investigator also have attributes: speed, sneak, fight, will, lore and luck. These are very important to keep track of and are essential for the planning part of the game. Each investigator have a max and min in each stat and you can adjust them each turn depending on what he is going to do, but you need to think carefully for increasing one skill will decrease another. They come in pair, skills: speed and sneak, fight and will, lore and luck. If you increase his speed you also decrease his sneak and so on.

Investigators also have their own uniqe abilities that make them feel even more different from all the other investigators.

And lastly all investigators start with some of these things: money, clues, common items, unique items, spells, skills, allies and a few other things.

Ancient Ones

All Ancient Ones have a doom track with room for 10-14 doom tokens, depending on the Ancient One, and it is basically the timer of the game. The doom track starts empty and each time a gate opens in Arkham, a doom token is added to the doom track. Once the track is filled, the Ancient One awakens and the investigators must immediatly fight it.

The Ancient One also have worshippers, making some monsters stronger or adding stronger monsters to the game.

It also has a power that makes it harder for the investigators to win the game.

And lastly, if it awakens, it has a combat rating and an attack.

Game board

The game board mainly represent Arkham with all it's important locations and streets. On the side of the board are the other worlds.

Monsters

Each time a new gate opens, or a monster surge occurs, monsters are drawn from the cup and placed in Arkham where the investigators then have to defeat them. If there are more monsters in Arkham than a certain number, depending on how many players there are, the terror level increases. If the terror level hits 10 there is no longer a monster limit in Arkham and the board can be overrun and the Ancient One awakens.

Gates

When a gate opens it's placed on a specified location in Arkham, if an investigator enters that location he is sucked into the gate and places his marker in the specified other world on the side of the board. He then spends two, can me more or less depending on what happens, turns in there before he returns to Arkham through the gate he entered. When he has returned he may close the gate, if he succeeds he may spend 5 clue tokens to seal it as well. The good thing with seals is that gates cannot open on them.

And finally the core mechanic of the game is; Mythos Cards

These are the game playing against the players. The start of every turn begin with the Mythos phase. A mythos card is drawn and a gate opens at the specified location and a monster is placed on the gate. If there already is a gate on the specified location, then it's a monster surge instead and a monster is placed on each open gate.

Then it's the monster movement. Each monster have a symbol and if that symbol is shown on the mythos card the monster moves.

After that, the event of the card is read out loud. These events can be both harmful or helpfum (more often harmful) and they can also stay in play for several turn.

Mythos cards are the core mechanic since they are the one that opens the gates, hence adding doom tokens to the doom track hence making the time tick forcing the players to act fast. They also make sure that the monsters do just stand there but move around in a unforeseeable pattern making it harder to plan for the future.

Here's the most interesting system; The phases of the game.

Upkeep phase

At the start of each turn is the Mythos phase and the players can't do much if anything at all in that phase. After that is the Upkeep phase, what I call the planning phase. Here the players may adjust the skill sliders, untap exhausted items and use upkeep or any phase actions. Untapping exhausted items and using upkeep actions is trivial, but the real interesting part is the adjustment of the skill sliders.

Every turn is new and there is something different in Arkham, more often than not you'll have to adjust the skills in order to have a successful turn. You'll have to disscuss with your team mates what you want to do, what they want to do, what needs to be done, which monsters needs to be killed, which gate needs to be closed and so on. When you all have a plan you need to see which skills are needed for the action you are going to take later, you cannot change the skill sliders after the upkeep phase.

Movement phase

This is pretty simple, the players move. If they encounter a monster they have to fight it.

Encounter phase

Depending on where the player stands, different things happen.

Generally nothing happens on streets.

If the player is standing on a location he may then either draw a location card or use the locations special encounter (if the location doesn't have a special encounter the player must draw a location card). On the location card several thing can happen: gates can open, monsters can attack the investigator, the investigator can gain or lose items, money, sanity, stamina and other stuff.

If the player is standing in another world he has an encounter there drawing a card from the other world deck. These can be both harmful and helpful, but like always they are more often harmful.

After the encounter phase is over a new turn begin with the Mythos phase.

Enough with explaining the game, now;

The positives

One of the great thing about Arkham Horror is that it's a team based game where everyone work for the same main goal, which allows for a lot of communication and team strategy. At the start of the game each player gets a few random items, and even if you are unlucky and do not get what you want you can always exchange items with your friends.

Another great thing is there is little down time. Everyone are often active all the time and thanks to the flavor on all the cards players feel engaged from beginning to end.

The way the game fight the players is also great. It constantly pops up more stuff to take care of and if the players doesn't handle it in time it can get out of control telling the player: "You need to deal with this". It is also semi random, there are locations that gates open more often in and when you have played a while you know of these locations without counting the cards. Also the monsters move from time to time which makes it hard to plan to far ahead because you do not know where the monsters will be.

The negatives

Arkham Horror, with out any expansions and following the rules, is way too easy. It's more like Arkham Faceroll which is not as cool of a name and it is very sad to be honest. You can make it harder for yourself, choosing harder Ancient Ones and investigators, but it's still easy with 4 or more players.

There are a few not so bad things, like; it takes a long time to set up and play, and it take huge amount of space of the table. But who cares?

Target Audience

First of all; anyone who knows of Cthulhu mythos. There is so much flavor in Arkham Horror and so many references to the mythos so anyone who have read the works of H.P Lovecraft will instantly feel at home.

Secondly poeple who likes big and complicated board games so they can learn everything there is to know and build and test different strategies.

Lastly those who want to have game evenings with a few friends and just have a good time playing together.

Conclusion

Arkham Horror is an awesome game and just gets so much better with expansions. It is fun to play alone and even more fun with others and there's enough depth to delve into for countless hours.

That was Arkham Horror, thanks for reading and stay awesome!

An Analysis of Citadels

Two weeks ago we received an assignment to play and analyze a board game as a group, and our group chose to play Citadels with it's expansion The Dark City. Citadels is a bluffing card game where the players compete to try to build the greatest city, they do so by building districts in their city. In the end each player get points for how expensive their city is and can get additional points if they have met a few goals with building their districts. The player with the highest score win the game.

The game is played in rounds; each round all players, starting with the player who have the crown token, secretly selects a character to play as. Then, the characters are called out one by one and if a player have the character that is called, he takes his turn. When all characters have been called and each player have had their turn, the character cards are all shuffled back into the character deck and a new round starts. When a player plays his eight district card the game ends after that round.

There are four components in the game: character cards, district cards, gold tokens and the crown token.

District cards:
There are five different types of district cards: noble, trade, religious, military and special. Each building cost a certain amount of gold the player must pay during his turn to build it. The special buildings have unique special effects that mostly have something to do about gold, district cards or score, the other districts have no special effects but can be used by different characters to gain additional gold.

Gold tokens:
Gold is the main resource in the game and is gained in a few different ways. It's mostly used to build districts but can also be used to destroy them.

Crown token:
The oldest player start with the crown token, later during the game this will be passed on each time a player chooses to play with character number 4. The player with the crown token always choose which character to play with first, there are no other perks.

Character cards:

The important thing about Citadels is knowing what the different characters does, otherwise it is not neither a strategy nor a bluffing game. So the 8 normal cards are:

1. Assassin: Names a character, that character may not take his turn this round.
2. Thief: Names a character (not number 1). When the named character is called the thief takes all that players gold.
3. Magician: May exchange his district cards (with another player or the district deck).
4. King: Gains extra gold from noble buildings and gain the crown token.
5. Bishop: Gains extra gold from religious buildings and gain protection from number 8.
6. Merchant: Gains 1 extra gold and gains extra gold from trading buildings.
7. Architect: Takes additional district cards and may build up to 3 district cards that turn (otherwise limited to one per turn).
8. Warlord: Gains extra gold from military buildings and can pay to destroy other players districts.

The absolute most interesting system in Citadels is the character deck and how the players choose their character. At the beginning of each round all the characters are shuffled into the character deck, then one of them is discarded at random and placed face down so that no one can see which character it is. Then, depending on how many players there are in the game, a number of randomly selected characters are discarded and placed face up on the table for everyone to see (number 4 cannot be discarded this way). Now the player with the crown token get the character deck and selects one character he will play with this round, then passes the rest of the characters on to the next person who does the same. The last person will have two characters he can chose from, he takes one and place the other face down on the table.

When all the players have their character the player with the crown token call each character, starting from number one. When a player have the character that is called, he takes his turn. This is very important, it's not the player with the crown who takes his turn first, it's the player who chose the Assassin character.

Example 1
Here is an example where I have the crown and it's the first round of the game. The Bishop has been secretly discarded (I know this since I can see the other seven cards) and the Warlord and the Thief have both been discarded faced up for every one to see. First I take a look at my 4 district cards and see if I have something I can gain extra gold from and that I can afford to build. I see a trade building that cost 5 gold, so if I pick the merchant and take gold as my action I have enough to build it and gain 1 extra gold from the bank. This is a great first round. However, that mean the Assassin is open for the others and when the second pick see that the Bishop and the Merchant are gone it's pretty easy to know which card I took and then assassinate me causing me to lose my entire turn.

So I think differently, maybe I should take the Assassin and be safe from attacks. The Merchant is a strong card and someone will surely pick it, it's a safe card to assassinate. But I do not gain bonuses from that, sure I cannot be assassinated but I gain two less gold and can't build as good of a building as I could have as the Merchant.

In the end I pick the King since I already have the crown and do not want anyone else to have it. It's also a lower possibility of getting assassinated as it's not an obvious choice over the Bishop, and lastly I have a noble building costing 3 gold which mean I gain 1 additional gold that turn.

The second player then get the rest of the deck and see that the King and Bishop are gone. He decides to take the Assassin because he doesn't want to get assassinated and even though he has a 50% chance of assassinating me, he chooses to target the Merchant since it's a much stronger card.

Example 2
Another example where I'm the player next to the player with the crown. It's in the later stages of the game and I have no district cards in my hand but an awful lot of gold. When I get the character deck from the first player I see that the Assassin and the Warlord are both gone. The Thief is discarded faced up so I do not need to worry about him.

Since I have no district cards, there are two great characters for me, the Magician and the Architect. With the Magician I can take another players district cards and with all my gold I can play one of them. The problem is I am two districts away from having 8 districts in my city. With the Architect I can draw 3 district cards from the deck and build all three of them if I can afford it.

So the obvious choice is the Architect, but the Assassin is gone and I do not believe the first player would pick the Warlord and leave the Architect to me so I consider. He have four district cards in his hand so he might assassinate the Magician in fear of losing his cards, but is that a risk I'm willing to take?

In the end I chose the King since I know I wont get assassinated as him, I also want to be the player with the crown next turn so that I can take the Assassin and be out of harms way. Also I have 2 noble buildings which allows me to build what ever district card I take this and the next turn.

The positives

I've already talked in detail about the depth of choosing a character, and that is the best part of the game, but not the only good thing. The characters and their relation to the buildings is very well balanced in my opinion as there are way more trade districts than other districts making the Merchant gain more gold than the other characters even thou it doesn't say it on the card. There are equally many religious and military districts and only a few, and expansive, noble districts. The fact that there are few noble districts is good since the King is already powerful with him taking the crown token, if he gained as much gold as the others that would have ruined the balance in the game.

The special buildings are also balanced in that they do not yield gold like the other buildings do, but their special ability makes them a bit stronger. There aren't as many special districts as there are normal ones, and they aren't so strong that you automatically win if you only draw special district cards. They are just as strong as they need to be for a player to feel good when he draws one.

Another great thing is the expansion that adds 10 characters to the game. This adds two characters with the number 9 and eight characters with numbers from 1 to 8. These bonus characters can be exchanged for the normal characters with the same number at the start of the game. This adds even more depth generally since each game can be different depending on which character you exchange. There are strategies that certain characters counter and when they are exchanged suddenly you are free to execute them without fear.

The negatives

There are a few minor bad things about the game, the first is the down time. In character selection you wait for the other players to take their characters and you have little to nothing to do in game in the mean time. Then when it's each players turn you do want to pay attention, but you can't effect what is happening until it is your turn. This is the games biggest flaw according to me.

Another thing is the characters numbered 1, the Assassin and the Witch. The Assassin is a risk free choice and the player that is assassinated gets huge down time. The Witch however is a risk picking since you lose your building phase, the reward is greater if you successfully bewitch someone and they do not lose as much as they would have if you'd assassinate them. They get to take their action but you get to use their special ability and build. I believe this adds more to the game and I almost always play with the Witch instead of the Assassin.

There is a rule I do not like; "Before the game begins, players may agree to remove one or two of the original eight character cards and replace them with the bonus characters of the same rank numbers.". The fact that I almost always exchange the Assassin for the Witch mean I can only add one other bonus character, and I have had great games with 5 to 6 bonus characters. I've never intentionally followed this rule, and I probably never will.

Another rule, this one is just annoying; "Before the game begins, players may agree to add 2-3 additional purple district cards to the District Deck (...)", (purple is the special district). This merely annoys me since it means you have to go through the whole district deck every time you want to play, remove the bonus district cards and then add the new bonus district cards. If you add all the bonus district cards the chance to get special districts is too high, but this is usually what I do anyway since I can't be bothered to go through the whole deck before each game.

The last big-minor bad thing about this game is the fact that you believe you know what the characters does by reading on their cards, but in fact you have to read about them in the rule book since there are a few unexplained things there.

That's all for me, thanks for reading and stay awesome!