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!