Arkham Horror: Difference between revisions
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{{Game Infobox | |||
|name = Arkham Horror | |||
|picture = [[Image:arkhamhorror.jpg|200px]] | |||
|type = Co-operative [[boardgame]] | |||
|playno = 1 to 6 | |||
|time = 2 to 4 hours aprox | |||
|publisher = Fantasy Flight Games | |||
|authors = Richard Lanius and Kevin Wilson | |||
|year = 2005 | |||
|books = N/A | |||
}} | |||
Arkham Horror is a co-operative board game based around the [[Yog-Sothothery|Cthulhu mythos]] created by [[H.P. Lovecraft]]. The game itself is made by [[Fantasy Flight Games]]. | |||
The | |||
The whole point of the game is to explore the various areas of the fictional city of Arkham and acquire enough resources to close gateways to other worlds to prevent monsters from spawning and (preferably) prevent the arrival of one of the greater entities, or (more likely) fight the entity and defeat it or (most likely) die a horrible screaming death. | |||
The | |||
Being an FFG game it comes with SHITTONS of tokens and cards and the board is huge. Seriously, this game needs several square feet of table space to set up. It does look good though and the game has a particularly strong theme of struggling against unknowable horrors. A savvy or experienced group of players will not have as much fun as new group learning the game the first time round though. | |||
There are a number of expansions which add more uncertainty and increase the difficulty but again with experienced players this just draws out an already very long game. There are in fact so many expansions, there's also an EXPANSION FOR EXPANSIONS. | |||
A third edition exists now. It tries to dampen the complexity by a long shot, and it succeeds (tiles are hex-based, streets are simplified, rounds flow much faster, etc.) However, the game now takes its own turn not via a complex Mythos card as in 2e but instead a bag with a bunch of tokens from which each player draws at the end of a round. The problem is that the tokens don’t get replaced until they’re all depleted, which means the absolute worst thing that could happen is guaranteed to happen on a regular basis, and the bad tokens (a majority) generally require more than one turn from a player to deal with. This means the game breaks the action economy from the word go unless the players have great rolls and loses a lot of the suspense that made its predecessor so fun. Yeah, Arkham Horror is supposed to be hard, but the new one takes away a lot of the agency and strategy of the old one. Finally, instead of just a Great Old One with a couple of twists on its sheet, you play through a scenario similar to a Haunt from [[Betrayal at House on the Hill]]. That works great in Betrayal and pretty poorly here. | |||
Tl;dr stick to 2e. It’s a lot longer and more complicated but also way more fun. | |||
== Eldritch Horror == | |||
Some blessed person in FFG's otherwordly cult decided that the city of Arkham wasn't enough for their Lovecraftian adventure games, and as a result, they released Eldritch Horror in 2017. Instead of surveying the dank streets of Arkham, Eldritch Horror takes you to the entire world in an Indiana Jones-esque quest to stop those pesky unknowable entities from beyond space and time from using your reality as a fleshlight.Eldritch Horror uses a lot of the same mechanics of Arkham Horror, only the scope is much, much larger. Gates encompass entire cities, a productive turn of moving around can take you from Cape Town to Mexico City and, as always, the game will heap atrocious amounts of hate on you. | |||
It's not quite as difficult as Arkham Horror but it is in many ways better than its cousin game - It plays faster, is less fiddly and has even more flavor than Arkham Horror. The mileage-may-vary issue is that the game is ''fucking stupid'', like a Lovecraft-inspired B-film. Your characters may kill mobs of Zombies, two Deep Ones and a Baykhee with a single stick of Dynamite, the encounters are entirely random and makes it sound like the evil cults are on literally every street corner, and best of all, you characters gets so fucking mangled, indebted, tortured and generally ruined that losing them feels like a mercy. On the other hand, some lucky card draws can make the game much easier and make you feel like Sly Marbo outfitted with the Necronomicon, a .44 Winchester, several packages of Whiskey and a raging hard-on for the destruction of the abominations beyond space and time. | |||
The | |||
{{ | {{Board Games}} | ||
[[Category:Board Games]] | |||
Revision as of 17:28, 14 August 2020
| Arkham Horror | ||
|---|---|---|
 |
||
| Co-operative boardgame published by Fantasy Flight Games |
||
| No. of Players | 1 to 6 | |
| Session Time | 2 to 4 hours aprox | |
| Authors | Richard Lanius and Kevin Wilson | |
| First Publication | 2005 | |
| Essential Books | N/A | |
Arkham Horror is a co-operative board game based around the Cthulhu mythos created by H.P. Lovecraft. The game itself is made by Fantasy Flight Games.
The whole point of the game is to explore the various areas of the fictional city of Arkham and acquire enough resources to close gateways to other worlds to prevent monsters from spawning and (preferably) prevent the arrival of one of the greater entities, or (more likely) fight the entity and defeat it or (most likely) die a horrible screaming death.
Being an FFG game it comes with SHITTONS of tokens and cards and the board is huge. Seriously, this game needs several square feet of table space to set up. It does look good though and the game has a particularly strong theme of struggling against unknowable horrors. A savvy or experienced group of players will not have as much fun as new group learning the game the first time round though.
There are a number of expansions which add more uncertainty and increase the difficulty but again with experienced players this just draws out an already very long game. There are in fact so many expansions, there's also an EXPANSION FOR EXPANSIONS.
A third edition exists now. It tries to dampen the complexity by a long shot, and it succeeds (tiles are hex-based, streets are simplified, rounds flow much faster, etc.) However, the game now takes its own turn not via a complex Mythos card as in 2e but instead a bag with a bunch of tokens from which each player draws at the end of a round. The problem is that the tokens don’t get replaced until they’re all depleted, which means the absolute worst thing that could happen is guaranteed to happen on a regular basis, and the bad tokens (a majority) generally require more than one turn from a player to deal with. This means the game breaks the action economy from the word go unless the players have great rolls and loses a lot of the suspense that made its predecessor so fun. Yeah, Arkham Horror is supposed to be hard, but the new one takes away a lot of the agency and strategy of the old one. Finally, instead of just a Great Old One with a couple of twists on its sheet, you play through a scenario similar to a Haunt from Betrayal at House on the Hill. That works great in Betrayal and pretty poorly here.
Tl;dr stick to 2e. It’s a lot longer and more complicated but also way more fun.
Eldritch Horror
Some blessed person in FFG's otherwordly cult decided that the city of Arkham wasn't enough for their Lovecraftian adventure games, and as a result, they released Eldritch Horror in 2017. Instead of surveying the dank streets of Arkham, Eldritch Horror takes you to the entire world in an Indiana Jones-esque quest to stop those pesky unknowable entities from beyond space and time from using your reality as a fleshlight.Eldritch Horror uses a lot of the same mechanics of Arkham Horror, only the scope is much, much larger. Gates encompass entire cities, a productive turn of moving around can take you from Cape Town to Mexico City and, as always, the game will heap atrocious amounts of hate on you.
It's not quite as difficult as Arkham Horror but it is in many ways better than its cousin game - It plays faster, is less fiddly and has even more flavor than Arkham Horror. The mileage-may-vary issue is that the game is fucking stupid, like a Lovecraft-inspired B-film. Your characters may kill mobs of Zombies, two Deep Ones and a Baykhee with a single stick of Dynamite, the encounters are entirely random and makes it sound like the evil cults are on literally every street corner, and best of all, you characters gets so fucking mangled, indebted, tortured and generally ruined that losing them feels like a mercy. On the other hand, some lucky card draws can make the game much easier and make you feel like Sly Marbo outfitted with the Necronomicon, a .44 Winchester, several packages of Whiskey and a raging hard-on for the destruction of the abominations beyond space and time.
| Board Games | |
|---|---|
| Classics: | Backgammon - Chess - Go - Tafl - Tic-Tac-Toe |
| Ameritrash: | Arkham Horror - Axis & Allies - Battleship - Betrayal at House on the Hill - Car Wars Clue/Cluedo - Cosmic Encounter - Descent: Journeys in the Dark - Dungeon! Firefly: The Game - HeroQuest - Monopoly - Mousetrap - Snakes and Ladders - Risk Talisman - Trivial Pursuit |
| Eurogames: | Agricola - Carcassonne - The Duke - Settlers of Catan - Small World - Stratego - Ticket to Ride |
| Pure Evil: | Diplomacy - Dune (aka Rex: Final Days of an Empire) - Monopoly - The Duke |
| Others: | Icehouse - Shadow Hunters - Twilight Imperium - Wingspan |