What a year for Lovecraft stuff. First Mythos Tales, now Arkham Horror: The Card Game. I’m going to have to stop saying that the Mythos doesn’t do anything for me because all of a sudden it does. I get now why Great Cthulhu holds a place in so many people’s hearts. I get why I should fear The Yellow Sign or signs of the Black Goat Cult. I get it because the AH:LCG is the best card game I’ve played since Netrunner.

Arkham Horror is a story game at its heart. As you play you’ll advance through Acts (good things) and Agendas (bad things). These are portrayed literally as a book and are full of the rich flavor text you’d expect from an FFG title. They both set the scene and tell you what to do to move forward. The intro scenario begins simply: you’re in your home office when suddenly you realize the door is gone. The Act tells you what you need to do to move to the next chapter while the Agendas serve both as a descriptor of all the Spooky Bad Stuff TM that is going and as a timer. Round after round – and sometime mid round – you’ll stack Doom tokens on an agenda until it fills up and moves to the next.

Arkham Set up on a Guild Ball mat. Just go with it.

These mechanics drive a strong feeling of escalation. The story advances when you find the door and move to the next Act but it also advances when the Agenda fills up with Doom and now bad things get worse. The beauty of these cards is that they can be used in different ways. In the first Scenario, the Acts are tied to physical locations. When you finish Act 1 you remove the location cards from the board and lay out new ones; you’re in a different place. Meanwhile the Agenda cards don’t really represent where you are, they talk about what kinds of dark nonsense are happening there. In later scenarios when it doesn’t make sense from a story perspective for the Acts to drive the location, this flips. Agenda cards may bring new locations into play as time passes or the bad guys do things while the Act cards provide more options now that you’ve learned things.

The framework to the Arkham Horror Card Game is strong yet flexible. It’s a skeleton on which the designers can build sets and story pieces but there is room for you to influence your own story and for them to flip the structure and keep you own your toes. I have to be careful about spoilers because I don’t want to ruin anything, but rest assured the designers are already pushing and moving the mechanics to keep things from getting stale. Initially it feels like the core is very simple: investigate a bunch until you trigger the new act and move. And that does happen quite a bit. It doesn’t take long though for them to mix things up. The virtue of a card game with so much instruction written on cards is that they can modify a lot in service of the story.

Agnes, my favorite investigator, with some of her cards.

And what a story. Your characters feel alive and the game manages to pull some emotions out of you as you play. The investigators in this game are all flawed people. These aren’t heroes here to save the day. They’re doing what they have to do to survive while struggling with their own demos. Roland is a flawed cop with a cover up to deal with. Agnes is having horrific flashbacks that assault her psyche. Again represented by cards these are actually placed into your deck to start the game. It’s a card game so drawing is important, but knowing you have a couple weakness in your deck stresses you out. The longer the game goes the more you – and your character – begin to feel the pressure of their demons lurking in the background. Drawing becomes stressful and seeing your Medical Debts come due right as you’re approaching the climax of the story is devastating. See, this is a campaign game. If you can’t resolve your issues during Scenario 1 then there will be consequences that echo forward into future games.

To drop a minor spoiler, there are some NPCs in the 2nd scenario that you have to deal with. They’re template as monsters which means you can just kill them if you want. However, they also have alternate methods to deal with them. One of them will talk if you can sneak her out of the hospital which is an evade test. Another will talk if you sit with them for a while, which lets you deal with it easily in exchange for passing your turn. That Doom is going to advance though so you better weigh how much time you have.

It’s just an all-around awesome experience. Deck building is fun and compelling with each investigator having their own unique way to construct the deck. Playing through that deck is a big part of the story you tell, which changes with every game. Maybe this game Wendy tears through monsters with a Baseball Bat and a Knife but the next game she’s forced to get creative, throwing chickens to distract monsters and leaning on her allies to do the combat.

Arkham Horror has me coming back again and again, even to play the same scenarios. I can’t wait for the expansions; I’m planning to spend a lot of time in Arkham.

Pair with anything from Miskatonic Brewing for a spooky good time.

Raf Reviews - Arkham Horror: The Card Game

Rafael Cordero

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