A note about spoilers: this review may contain light mechanical spoilers critical to my evaluation of the game. I also will freely discuss anything that you could pick up by reading the rules or the scenario set-up instructions. I promise that there will be no story spoilers for the Dunwich Legacy.

To say that I was excited for the Dunwich Legacy would the understatement of the year. I could not get enough of The Arkham Horror LCG core set and really wanted to see where it would go. I was also a little nervous. I’m always wary of campaign games becoming samey, and part of my excitement was a hope that they’d find ways to push the system and make the expansion feel like new gameplay and not just a new story.

Nailed it.

If you’re reading this I’m going to assume that you’ve played the core set. If you haven’t, skip the rest of this paragraph - there be spoilers. One of my favorite moments of playing the core set was realizing that every cultist in scenario 2 had an alternate way to deal with them. You could chat them up for a few hours (burn actions), evade them, etc. It was a simple thing but I appreciated them quickly messing with the base resolution method. Sure you could fight them the old fashioned way, but you could also employ other methods (thematically appropriate!) to make the story yours. This continues in a very strong way in the Dunwich Legacy.

Dunwich comes with two scenarios to kick off this campaign and they both change the basic mechanics around investigating and advancing the Acts. In one, clues are spent as currency to dig through the enemy encounter deck in search of a VIP. Burying him in there is a clever way to represent that you don’t know exactly where he is and to have clues represent searching specific buildings for him. In the other, clues aren’t even obtained by the normal investigation method. You’re in a casino and you gain clues through small games of chance that mimic casino games.

I love it.

Not just because it’s fun - it is - but because of what it means for the system. Buying into an LCG means buying into a promise that the game is going to continue to be awesome. The Core Set lays a foundation that must be built on. In a campaign LCG like Arkham, these Deluxe Expansions both expand and lay their own foundation for the campaign to come. We already know that there will be at least 8 scenarios in the Dunwich Campaign and I think it’s awesome that the foundation is already changing some of the basic assumptions and mechanics.

This is carried over into the resolutions. No spoilers, but the resolutions in these two scenarios are both less “Good, Better, Best, OH GOD IT’S AWFUL” and more “Well, we got the McGuffin but that bus full of kids got sucked into a hell portal”. On top of that, you’re given the agency to make that choice directly a couple of times. To do this at the start of a campaign is great. Characters will join your party, cards get added to your deck, and things get written down in your campaign log that won’t matter at all for the scenarios in this expansion. There are even encounter sets you won’t be told to use.

It’s both infuriating and tantalizing. “Why am I writing this down!?” and “What will this mean?!” are things I thought multiple times across my multiple playthroughs. In fact, my one gripe about this expansion is how open ended it is. Maybe it’s because I’ve grown accustomed to binge watching TV shows but I’m finding it difficult to wait for more expansions. Especially since I want to keep playing but now I have informed knowledge about how the scenarios work. I’ve settled for noting what happened on my first playthrough and making that the official log. Ashcan Pete will have to live with the consequences of my uninformed actions.

Oh, right. Ashcan Pete. He’s one of the 5 new investigators that the expansion brings us. They, along with a pile of new character cards, make up the other half of this expansion. For the most part, it’s pretty good. There are new Level 0 cards for every character class and a few new upgrades as well. The new Investigators all fit right in with their class as well while playing very differently. Our new Mystic takes on more of a support/healer role than Agnes, and needs to be built around accordingly. Again...their abilities tie in beautifully with their fiction.

Jim, the Mystic, comes with a trumpet. His jazz stylings can be used to heal the team so long as he forgoes the bonuses he’s getting from the chaos bag and opens himself up to the penalties associated with the Skull tokens. His personal weakness may be my favorite card in the new set...he plays his Final Rhapsody as the fates come back to wreak havoc on him. Ashcan, my favorite new Investigator, can discard cards to ready Duke, his loyal dog. Ashcan is a drifter and thus has no attachment to things; it’s him and his dog against the world so what good is it keeping a Flashlight around anyway.

While the new cards are great, I do wish there were a few more of them. The new investigators all have stringent restrictions on their decks that means using almost all of your class cards without regard for their synergy with your specific ability. I expect we’ll be seeing many more with the upcoming expansions but I almost wish there was one fewer class. It’s a minor gripe however, and I do enjoy replaying scenarios with new investigators.

All in all, Dunwich is a fantastic follow up to one of 2016’s best games. It both builds on the promises of the core while serving as a foundation for its own new story. While two scenarios may feel light, they can be played in either order opening up the replay factor a little. It also means we’ll all have very different stories to tell at the end of this campaign.

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Rafael Cordero

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