Arkham Horror: The Card Game

(upbeat music) - Welcome to replayable, where we go into depth on our favorite tabletop games that keep us coming back again and again. I'm the start player, Todd. And today I'm joined by David and Paul for our 28th episode. We'll be trying to hold on to our sanity while investigating Arkham Horror, The Card Game. It was designed by Nate French and MJ Newman and originally released by Fantasy Flight Games in 2016. Are you two ready to peer into the slavering infinite?

- I'm podcasting in from the land of Carcosa right now, so I'm coming across the dimensions from Etherplane's. - Nice. I'm sure this episode's gonna be like a smooth relay. (laughing) - I'm gonna use that just in regular slang. - How was that movie? It was a smooth relay. - Arkham Horror, The Card Game is a cooperative experience where players step into the eerie world of HP Lovecraft.

Each player takes on the role of an investigator facing supernatural horrors and unraveling mysteries in the haunted town of Arkham. It includes customizable decks and branching narratives and players must work together to survive encounters, collect clues, and ultimately thwart the ancient evils lurking in the shadows. Let's see, who gets to start? (clicking) (laughing) The sound of Arkham Horror. If you get to go first, this game sets out to punish you. What's your most painful memory of it?

- Well, every game I ever played, I think. I mean, that's, (laughing) I think that's part of the mentality you have to get into when you're gonna play this game. There's no good luck, there's only bad luck. And it's just how bad is that luck gonna be? So, people get in this mindset on winning and losing games, but there's no winning or losing Arkham Horror. There's just how bad does it get as you go along? So, accept that punishment and you'll have a better time.

(laughing) - Agreed, Paul, how about you? - I recall a scenario I played with Dave in the Dunwich cycle that was a train. - Right? - And it went so badly that we didn't even finish it. We're just like, "Okay, let's try this again next week. " (laughing) - Right? (laughing) - And I don't remember exactly what it was, but I think a big part of it was the fact that the map was just a straight line. And the movement restrictions just allowed us to just box ourselves into an impossible conundrum.

And that's when we scooped. (laughing) - Yeah, in that scenario, you're right. It's you start in the caboose of the train, you're working your way forward. And as the game goes on, the latter cars in the train are pulled off into another dimension. And for every passenger that's on those, you take horror because these people you didn't save as you watched them be torn us under. And so, we were at the point where the cars were just being ripped off the train so quickly.

And we were either gonna go insane or get pulled off into us under ourselves. So, that almost sounds like the game that just finished its Kickstarter campaign. - Well, yeah, so it horror on the Orient Express. So, that's a famous storyline in Call of Cthulhu. And I think this, and I forget what this one's called "Is it the Miskatonic Express? " or "Something Express" in that Dunwich cycle. And it's yeah, it's kind of wicking back at that. - Part of it is that it's an early scenario.

And if you're playing the cycles as intended, then you're adding better and better cards to your deck 'cause you go along. - And so, the early scenarios, you just get walked all over. (laughing) - Well, and as can happen in this game though, it depends on how the cards come out. I've also played the scenario and it was a cake walk up to the engine to stop the train. And everything was easy as pie.

So, when you get the monsters coming out at the right time, when you're not ready for 'em and you're not getting your equipment in place, and we'll go into how all that fits together. But it's, I don't know if I'd call it a sandbox game, but it's pretty wide open as to where what direction this game's gonna go. - Right. My most painful memory would be the most recent one. So, we played the standalone scenario, the machinations of time, right? And early on, I get an asset card in there.

Okay, it's gonna be lock picks. And it has a certain cost to it. And so, I go all in. I'm gonna get my lock picks out there early. They allow me to add, as a rogue, to add my fleet score to skill checks. And then, my event card says, get rid of an equipped asset or get rid of three cards out of your hand. So, I discard to just almost no cards left in my hand, because I'm all in, right? I'm gonna get those cards back, but I've got lock picks in play.

And the very first time I use 'em, I tend to fell and they break. And they're just gone. And now, now my entire early engine is just absolutely stalled. And I never really caught back up, which was just insane, and just goes to show how this game has multiple ways of being evil and destroying you. - Exactly. So, with that said, is this the apex form of Cthulhu mythos, like in game form? What do you think? - You know, maybe the Call of Cthulhu RPG might top it.

It's been a while since I've played. I've had it, I've kinda read through it, just, and there's some solo adventures that I've been through. They're very close. 'Cause the Call of Cthulhu doesn't have the mechanisms, you know, the math, not that the math is heavy, but it doesn't have that getting in the way it's a strict RPG. - Right, which allows it a lot more freedom and latitude. - Yes, that's right. It's close. Yeah, they both can exist on the same block.

- Yeah, as far as structured gameplay goes, where you're kind of bound to these scenarios and results, I absolutely adore Archimhor of the card game. - Right, yeah, if you're talking apex, I mean, what else are we talking about, Archimhor of the board game? You know, Cthulhu and the Lovecraft, you know, mythos went into public domain a few years ago, so there's a million Cthulhu games. Yeah, this certainly beats the other front runners.

- You know, some of these might come up later, but there have been, even from Fantasy Flight Games, right? They've been punching out different variations on this theme for years. - Yeah, another Cthulhu card game. I said the Cthulhu card game by Fantasy Flight as well. - Right, then there's been Archimhor that's had several revisions, there's Elder Sign, there's Manchin's of Madness, there's a bunch of them, right?

- Yes. - They keep coming out with again and again, but in my mind, I feel like Archimhor of the card game is the Apex evolution of it. Like, it does the most narrative integration with the mechanics and does it in an elegant format without a huge amount of extra fiddly bits. Lots of fiddly rules, but not a lot of fiddly bits. - Yeah, I think that's true in part just because of chronology, like all the games you mentioned came before this one. - Okay, yeah.

Though Archimhor of Third Edition has came after this, - Correct. - And it's borrowing some mechanisms from this, but I play this a lot more than I play Archimhor of Third Edition, a lot more. We're unfathomable. - I still want to play more than that. - That is bad. - Yeah. (laughing) I know you're Battlestar Galactica, you know, to the soul, but I want to play more uncomfortable. - You know, it's funny because Prime Video, I think, just got a, at least the first season of it on there.

And, you know, they're saying, "Hey, you might be interested in this. " I'm like, "Oh, you know me so well. " (laughing) - You're talking about Battlestar Galactica. - Yeah, yeah, but, you know, I'm Battlestar Galactica, because that's in our library. You know, for folks that don't have access to that game, it's been out of print in that format for a long time. Unfathomable does a fine job of streamlining that experience and bringing it forward.

- And for people who dislike sci-fi, it's a much better theme. - Right, that's true too. - Well, Cthulhu is an interesting theme. Like, I know, you know, some people just don't care for it. I absolutely love it, 'cause it goes back to my early days of gaming, but I know, like Greg in our group, he's not in love with the theme of Cthulhu. He almost plays these games in spite of the theme, right? They can be off-putting. - Absolutely.

- Well, yeah, and how much do you like getting punished in your game? I mean, if this is a, in some cases, an escapist hobby, right? I've got lots of real-world hardships to deal with, and I game because it's fun and relaxing, and then I've got a game that just wants to beat me up all the time. - Just like Lovecraft did. - Yeah, well, we're at the point when we turn over a bad card, we just laugh on how, like, how bad could this get, like, we're almost hoping to see how bad it gets.

- Yes, this is true, 'cause if we're not laughing, we're crying. So beyond the evolution of games that got us to this point, since it was released in 2016, it's also seen at least one major revision. I mean, there is a revised edition, but also in how it gets distributed. Do we want to spend any time talking about what used to be the distribution mechanism versus what it is now, or just state what it is now and move on? - I mean, absolutely.

I guess I'm going to talk about it later, but-- - Let's do it. Yeah, okay, I know where you're going with this. - I would frequently get confused as to, what cycle does this mythos pack go to? And I just, I hated the way that they sold the mythos packs are used to, I should say, but I'm so happy they don't do that anymore, right?

- Well, we don't often get to say this, but thank God for the pandemic, 'cause I think that was really what helped push it along, because Arkham Horror was rising in popularity because we're, you know, it's a great game to be stuck at home with, right? Solo or with a partner? - 100%. - A lot to explore. And at that time, you could get maybe all but one of the Path to Carcosa cycle.

So it was really difficult, 'cause you gotta buy seven components to build a cycle, the core box and six mythos packs. And they just weren't in stock, supply issues were a problem. It was a nightmare to try to build a cycle if you were trying to catch up. - Because some were in stock and some were not. - Right, exactly. So you might have three of the Carcosa packs and then you've got two forgotten age. Now, Dream Eaters is coming out and it's just, it was just so difficult to keep up with.

- Yeah, I mean, I was one of those people. Arkham Horror of the Card Game was my most played game in 2021. - Wow. - Yeah, yeah. And how often do we see such a like customer friendly change? And not that they were intending to be so customer friendly, but obviously this is easier for fantasy flight games. They have fewer. - I would hope so. So many less SKUs, right? - Right, exactly. You know, for one cycle, instead of having seven SKUs, you've got two.

But now, instead of paying, what was it, 15 to 20 bucks for each of those six components, plus the 25, 30 bucks for the core, well, now you can just buy the whole thing for a hundred bucks or less at a discount site. So it's saving the consumer money. It's much, much easier. So it's been great. - It's just the Netflix versus Disney conundrum where would you rather get everything at once or be forced to wait a few weeks in between?

- Yeah, and I don't know how many people were actually playing the scenarios as they came out. I certainly wasn't. I was back filling them and it takes me so long to get through a campaign. You know, I was two campaigns behind. - Right. - Well, what about the old style of, you got one to two player support with one core set, but you could play up to four if you bought two core sets. They also have changed that, right? - Did they? - They did. - Yeah. - So what does the new box say on it?

- It's one to four. So it is the equivalent of two of the old core sets. - I feel like the original core box said one to two players because that's what the game is designed for. (laughing) - Yeah. - And as designers, they're probably like, hey, if you want to play with more than two, you can, but that's on you. (laughing) - Right. Yeah, it's like when Subway was shocked that we were actually eating both halves of the footlong sandwich. (laughing) It's supposed to be for two people only.

Well, so you do run into some problems even in two players. So some of your investigators will use cards from another class. So maybe you're running, I forget what it is in the core set. Maybe the seeker can use cards from the survivor class. I think it is. Well, if you're also running a survivor, they're definitely gonna be using those two lucky cards, which is probably the best survivor card. That's definitely in their decks.

So now the seeker who can borrow a few cards from the survivor cards cannot use those lucky cards unless you had two cores at the time. So it allows you to use some of those good cards in both of your investigator decks. - Do you know if they also double the number of counters and other components in the new box? - I actually, I don't know. I never thought about that. - Okay. - I'm not sure because you do need a few more counters when you're going to three and four players.

We found out the other night. We were really run and low. Somebody was saving up. You had a card, Paul, that went to, you needed 12 resources. There was ways to discount it. We didn't even have 12 resources on the table because we were all on our pocket. So yeah, time to break out the iron clays. And on the difference of the old style and the new style, I think I was in the minority in the online community for it. I preferred that old style.

And it took me a while to get my head around it because when Android Netrunner first came out, remember that was the same way. You could buy a core set, but if you really want to do well, you have to buy a second core set. And I was naive at the time. I'm like, this is BS. I don't don't make me buy another core set. Just give you the whole game. I got cycles to buy. I got other things to buy. Don't make me buy two core sets.

But in this case, that old model that FFG used to do, I look at it as, do you want to try this game? Well, here's an entry level, just something to try for 30 bucks, 25 bucks, whatever you get it for. And then if you like it, you can buy the rest of the core set, just buy a second set. - Right. - Well, everybody complained about this. Do I have to have two core sets like fine? Just pay 60 bucks up front, you know?

There's no more get in at half price, you know, and see if you want to continue with it. - I guess I'm split because for Android Netrunner, I totally agree, just pay the 60 bucks up front. But for Arkham Horror of the card game, I like that they split it in two boxes. I think it makes sense. - That's what I'm saying. And like Legend of the Five Rings was on that same thing. I bought one core set, I played it, I enjoyed it, and I realized this isn't a game.

I'm going to get to the table a lot, so I'm going to stop here. It just gives you a chance to dip your toe in. There's a lot of content in that half a box. And if you think of it as half a core set, you're going to be fine. But if you think of it as making me buy two core sets, well, then you're just going to be bitter. So they solved it by just charging 60 bucks for the core set and shut up about it. - Right, now you can only jump in the whole hug. - Yes, all right.

I want to go back and you mentioned the seeker class and how it could borrow cards from the survivor class or vice versa, and then maybe they both worked that way. Is there a balance to the classes? When we were playing the other night, we didn't have a guardian. And it turned out there were so many fights, and they were all really challenging for us because we had no guardian. So is there an ideal composition? Is there one that you should always at least include?

What are your thoughts on the various classes? And there are five, right? There are guardians, seekers, mystics, rogues, and survivors. Is there a hierarchy here? Go ahead, Paul. - I really don't think so, but there are bad combinations. The seekers and rogues are generally poor fighters. And so if you want to do fighting, having a pair that's a seeker and a rogue is going to make this scenario extremely hard. But then again, there's no crystal ball, right?

Once you've played the scenario, then you can realize, oh, these are all the perfect character combinations for this scenario. But before the fact, there's no way to know. - Yeah, I totally agree with that. Now, in general, it depends on if you're playing first a true solo with one investigator, or if you're playing a team, then you can kind of balance out. If you're playing true solo, you have to be pretty good at everything.

And that's not just the class, but that's also just how you build your deck. You can make a clue absorbing survivor or something like that. But I think in general for the, to prepare for a scenario you don't know, you must have somebody that can fight and you must have somebody that can gather clues. - Agreed. - They might throw other things at you, but those are key.

So at its core, if you don't know what you're up against, a guardian and a seeker, that's usually almost the like, the tonic ideal of you going in. - My personal preference is a survivor and a seeker, but it's the same idea. - A fighter and they call them clovers. Like a hoover, somebody they can hoover clues. - Sink a fighter and a clover.

- Yeah, but then you, you know, they, of course the designers know this and then they throw in a scenario where you really have to do well and will to get through this scenario. So if you don't have a mystic, you could have some trouble. So right, you know, it's a form that they set up and then start bending as you go. - So I want to hear your confessions here. How often do you allow yourself to replay a scenario?

Like if you fail, do you just move forward or do you allow yourself to go back without restarting the entire cycle, campaign, whatever you want to call it? - For me, it depends how close we were. If it's an epic fail, then I am so unsatisfied that I have to replay it. But if it's like, oh, we were so close, we failed at the very final inch. Then I'm like, okay, let's see what the designers intend for us to do and what's going to happen going forward.

- You know, there's actually a good vibe in the online community about this is that most people will admit they flood things here and there. And even the hardcore players are like, the point of the game is to have fun. And we know it's a punishing game. And if you're in the third scenario and you're taking like four trauma, you're just not going to have fun for the next four scenarios to get out of this campaign, replay it, flood it, have fun. It's your game and your experience.

So accept punishment, but at the same time, don't make it miserable. - Yeah, I completely agree with that. But it did feel a little, I'm not dirty, but you know, it felt a little wrong saying, oh, I've got to go back and replay this because we got it handed to us in this last scenario. And can't you have investigators die? - Yeah. - And then you can, then you have to pick another class that wasn't in there before and bring them in. And now they don't have this, huh? - That's a drag.

- Yeah, yeah, that's all a drag. The other part that still stands out is like you only have that first time through experience once. The genuine, I'm going to be surprised and have to figure out the puzzles. You only get that experience once. And so that's the flip side of, do I allow myself to replay anything? Because now I have advanced knowledge and it's like, oh, well, I'm going to send my secret down to the basement because there is going to be clues down there.

I'm going to send my guardian up to the attic because I know there's a fight up there. You know, that sort of thing. - Yeah. There are a few scenarios that really open up on a second play. I've done it with, they have a few times where we replayed a scenario. It was like, we don't remember this at all last time. - Where do you ask them from? So there are several scenarios that have that discovery more than once.

- Well, because they branch, you know, some scenarios you can get to the end by finding the science to do something. I'm thinking of specifically the Miskatonic University one. It's like, you can go to the lab and get the potion and that'll get you through. Or you can just go to the dorms to protect the students and just put up a stand and fight. So there's the story branches. And so every time you play it, you might get a different experience. - Right.

- And sometimes, you know, I've just rifled through a scenario where I got lucky, I got all my clues and I'm over in 20 minutes. Like I don't feel like I really got into the depths of that scenario. So next time through, it's a whole new experience 'cause I hadn't seen most of it. - That makes sense. And I agree with the branching. Have you ever intentionally taken a branch that you know you didn't take previously? - Oh yeah, for sure.

- Can I like flipping back to the Choose Your Own Adventure book to the previous decision and then picking the other one? - Yeah. - It's playing solo, just like I read those books solo. (laughing) - Yeah. - All right, so this game has been out. It was originally released in 2016 and there has been just a massive volumes of content that have been released for it in different cards.

And these TCGs or you know, LCGs, as far as you can get every card that's out there, it can be daunting to get started and understand how do I do the deck building and how do I keep track of all this? The deck building, the meta aspect of the game is almost as much time, if not more, than actually playing the scenarios. What do you guys use to make that easier? - I am a big fan of the website ArkhamDB.

com and that is a site where people will build decks and it has all the cards listed so you can go look at the cards. If there's comments on the cards, people say I like comboing this with that or here's what's good about the card and gives you ways to think of what a card might do that you maybe hadn't thought of. But then you can go on there and build a deck, save the deck and then put it out there for other people to look at to comment on the deck. And it's just such a great resource.

You know, deck building can be daunting. You know, I've done a lot of it, I'm okay at it, but at the same time, sometimes I just want to play and like, give me a good deck. So I'll go on there, I'll look for a popular deck, I'll read the write up on it and say, yeah, I'll give it a go. I'm gonna try their little scheme with this deck and they even will have an upgrade path or something like that. So it can take the deck building out of the game and just give you a chance to go in and enjoy it.

So it's a fantastic resource. And most of the card games like this have a, you know, Marvel DB or Lord of the Rings, the card game DB. So most of them have this deck building website that fans have made. - Okay, that's cool. - Yeah, I myself have spent very little time building decks. I just crib them from that website. (laughing) - There's an app that I have loaded. I think it connects to it and that's Arkham cards. Yes. - Oh yeah, that's a good app.

- Arkham DB, I mean Arkham cards doesn't really do any deck building for you, but just that it syncs with that. So you can find them on Arkham DB. But Arkham cards is a campaign tracker. And I don't even get the little booklets out anymore. I track my entire campaign log, read the verbiage campaign set up. That's all in that app. - Save so much time. - Yeah, it's so great. It even has a chaos bag, which will get into that. You were jingling your chaos bag earlier. (laughing) - It was this sound.

- Right, well, and you've got the, we'll say essential coin capsules on there. I mean, if you're going to stay with your original components, these cardboard chips will work out really quickly if you just put those in a bag, which you have to also provide your own bag, right? - Yeah, that is my biggest gripe with the game. (laughing) Why do you include something to draw these chips out of? Come on.

- Well, that goes to the, I guess Arkham Horror of the board game was like that too, 'cause I remember a friend of mine and I used to play and we would put all the chaos tokens into a gravy boat, which we call the gravy boat of doom, and that's where you would reach in to find out your fate. - Yeah, I would use red cups when I was in college.

- Yeah. (laughing) I either through my own acquisition or through friends, had a supply of Crown Royal bags, and so I would always just grab one of those off the shelf and throw it into a box. (laughing) - The Crown Royal of doom. - Yes, Knivesky and gaming hand in hand since the '70s. (laughing) - I mean, since prohibition, right? - Yeah, I guess so. Wow, which is an appropriate timeframe for this game? - But yeah, so you're right.

The coin capsules, or you can buy acrylic components, a la quacks of Kedlenburg or something like that, but just the base cardboard tokens thrown into a bag or a cup, not satisfying. Just they're gonna wear out for sure. You need a solution rather than what comes in the box. - Right, there is a rule in the Arkham Horror games, and I believe it carried over into this one too, right?

The Grim Rule, which basically says, if ever you get into a situation where you think the outcome is unclear, you pick the option that is the worst for the players. Just how evil is that rule? - No, it's a kindness. 'Cause look, what it's doing is keeping the game moving. It's like, don't get caught up digging through your rulebook, looking for a solution. Just pick whatever's worse and move on. - Yeah, I only recall using it once when I was playing with Dave.

- Yeah, the rules are surprisingly clear. The verbiage is very specific on the cards, and as everything comes out, there are sometimes in any game like this where you have massively growing content, that there are gonna be some confusions with timing and things like that. And rather than get bogged down in it, just choose the timing that works a little bit against you and just move on and keep playing and having fun with the game. - Interesting.

Okay, you know, when you say the rules are surprisingly clear, I mean, they're setting up the framework for the game, and I would agree that that is clear and they describe how the icons are going to interact. But my experience with actually playing the game is it can be super fiddly, and that's because each of the scenarios is implementing its own little twist on things. And suddenly it's like, oh wait, did I forget that?

We've got this other thing in play that came off of the encounter deck or something like that. Like there are all these little things that crop up or when we were playing machinations, it was like, oh, we're supposed to start up by putting a horror on these cards, but we didn't understand why, and then another term came up, and we didn't understand yet why that term was being used.

And there's a lot of that, especially on your first time through a scenario where there's just unfamiliarity and you're not going to get clarification from the rules, from the framework, because the rules you're concerned about have not been introduced to you yet. - I definitely agree that it is confusing and overwhelming, but I also agree with Dave in that it's clear if you know where to look. (laughing) The writers, the rules writers did an excellent job with this game.

- Absolutely, when they introduce a new word in a cycle like peril, and now forever we can use this word peril. And once you understand what those mean, and you've got the book where you can look through, or I'm constantly just, you know, arc and horror peril on my phone while we're playing, and the rule will come up for me.

So there are a lot of those details, like what is a persistent yet, or I forget what the cards are that stay in front of you all the time, like charisma or something like that. So yeah, there are enough things like that to where it can start to feel overwhelming, and even at this late in the game, I'm still constantly Googling like, wait, what does this mean again? - That's the dynamic I'm really referring to, is like, this is a game where research is a component of it.

And unfortunately, it's not research in the investigator sense. It is literally researching, what is this gonna mean here? It's like, you need a compendium to have all this information in one place, which if you are playing off of just the physical components alone, it's not there, right? The rule books I have from 2016 don't have terms that were introduced later. - That's right. And there's also taboos. - Oh, right. So some cards you have from 2016 might not be, but again, it's your game.

When Paul and I were playing, we were aware of the taboo list, but we would just play the cards as written. - Right, because I think, I mean, at least for me, let's talk about the taboo list. For me, the taboo list applies when I am combining cards from different cycles. - Right, yeah. - When Dave and I played, we decided to play as if it was the period of time when those cycles were released.

And so we just played with the cards as they were, and we didn't grab into the future to pull cards and make our investigators more powerful. - And that's why we ignored the taboo list. - Got it. And then I ignore the taboo list just because I'm not that robust in my understanding of the game's limitations. I play the game that I have, and the game that I have includes cards that are old and have since been retired, but that's okay.

- Yeah, I think the taboo list only really applies for conventions. - Right, right. If you're playing in some sort of organized setting, or I don't know if there are competitive options, but something like that, you have to have a, you know, 'cause of power creep and all these, you know, there is nothing competitive about this game. (laughing) - That's what I think. That's why I was doing there isn't, right? - You got beat up less badly than the other people, well done. - What about the balance?

Do you wanna talk about balance? - Sure. - What do you mean by balance, Paul? - So we mentioned it a little bit before, but every turn each investigator is gonna draw a mythos card, and then they're gonna get three actions to deal with it and progress towards the goals of that scenario. If you have to spend all three of your actions dealing with the mythos card, you're not progressing at all. And if you can ignore the mythos card or deal with it easily, then you're advancing quite quickly.

So I feel like this game is at its best when you're only advancing just enough. If it's too difficult or too easy, then you end up not having much fun. - Yes. - And I think that's the crux of the design of this game. - Mm, which is amazing when it works. - Yes. - But you're right, you get three actions per turn. And so if you draw a mythos card, will this happen to us when we play the other night? We drew a monster that had a health of seven. - I was gonna bring that up.

- Yeah. - That is even though I had a spell in play that I could do two damage. I used all of my actions and got it down to one hit point. Did nothing to advance the story. Didn't move my location. I accomplished nothing except for hurting this creature. And it really hurt the tempo. And I think Meghan came over and finished it off or she did whatever it was. Yeah, so we had to work together on that. But yeah, Paul's right, when you draw a mythos card, then sometimes you do get lucky.

You draw a mythos card and like, hey, this is meaningless to me or it's a will check. And my will is, you know, through the roof. So it's easy and it's out of the game. But then sometimes you draw that card that just, you know, is a kick in the pants. - So then is the right approach to determine which mythos cards you can either ignore or absorb their damage. Otherwise you're fleeing from them and you're trying to get out of the scenario and you just leave them unresolved.

- As a player, that is the strategic goal. Yes, it's about action efficiency. But as a designer, looking at this game's mechanics and design, I think the ideal experience is when you have just a little bit of play to advance the story. - Yeah, no, the best games were you fought hard and you barely made it because you hadn't just enough. - Exactly. I mean, it shouldn't be easy to defeat an interdimensional, galactic, evil, world-eating entity, right? - Right. But sometimes it is.

(both laughing) - All right, well, then let's move on to the prompts. Wait in complexity on board game geeks scale of one to five. How would you rate the weight of Arkham Horror, the card game? Paul, you can lead us off. - I rate it a four. This game is very hard to learn, especially if you haven't played anything similar. I tried to teach my wife and she just flipped the table, basically. (both laughing) - Dave, it's definitely a five for me is that there is a lot of rules overhead.

Like I said, we're still this late in the game. Looking up, what does this particular keyword mean or something like that? And if you don't have somebody who knows the game well, who can run the bureaucracy, you can really get bogged down on, the steps are clear as you go through the mythos phase, the investigator phase, the enemy phase, all that. All that is really well done in the rule book and on the cards themselves.

But it can just, the bureaucracy and everything can really start to feel overwhelming. And then beyond that, like we said, with the punishing scenarios, well, you also have to know how to play your deck. You have to understand that, okay, I've got a deck that makes me, you know, the grave digger shovels so I could, grave digger so I can pull things out of my discard pile and what's the magic in this deck that I can make it do what I need to do?

And that's a whole other level and there's 30, I don't know, 40 different characters, maybe 50 investigators you can choose from and near infinite numbers of decks you can build and being able to make those decks sing, you know, to, you know, run through a campaign. It just takes a lot of overhead. - Absolutely. I had this down as a for as well. So we all rated it high in terms of weight and complexity.

And my focus was on the complexity of the game and that it's easy to overlook something in a scenario as we've already discussed. And at least with my owning the original core sets, the rule books are not set up for easy fact finding. So I'm always having to rely on other outside resources to answer questions. And if you have to do that in a game, automatically the complexity is getting ratcheted up. But then you have all of those gameplay decisions that you brought up Dave.

So yeah, I think you can actually defend a five very well also. - Yeah, I subscribe to the page on Board Game Geek and I get notifications literally every day on somebody asking a rules question. Somebody who's new to the game or has been playing for a while like, what do I do in this situation?

And there's a group of saints out there, just heroes of the game who it's the same, you know, 10 guys who show up or, you know, guys and girls who show up and answer the questions, even though it's been asked 40 times already. But here's where it is in the rule book. Here's what you do in that situation. And it's, you know, very helpful community. But the fact that literally daily people are asking rules questions, that's another level of complexity.

- Right. And what's the turnaround time on that, right? If you assume that there's a game that is unpause, waiting for our response, that's ours. - Yeah. - Well, that's when you use the grim rule. - That's when you use the grim rule. - Exactly. - That's right. That's why it's there. - Yeah. - Maybe it is a kindness. So strategy on the same scale, one to five. How much strategy do you think there is in this game? - For me, it's a three. - One mistake can basically kill your character.

(laughing) Deck building, super important. But winning comes down to how you react to the luck of the cards, which is not strategic. So to me, strategy comes to play in recognizing which tests are must win and all the other ones that you can just take a chance on. - All right. Yeah, I agree with that. I would say a three. There's some basic tenets of strategy. You know, get your assets into play. Your items, your allies that you want to do that in the beginning of the game.

So you're geared up and ready to go. And then it's tactically choosing your path as you go. So and understand the makeup of the chaos bag. To know that you draw into that chaos bag on a skill check and it's going to give you a modifier to help, you know, plus or minus as to whether you might achieve this skill. Knowing that if I'm at plus two, then I have a 60% chance of succeeding.

Or do I need to go to plus three and just understanding the makeup of the bag, very simple kind of strategic stuff. So strategy is light, but that doesn't mean it's easy. - Right. I also had it as a three. I think the strategy came into the deck building portion of the game and understanding what it is you're trying to accomplish. And you were setting out a long range goal with that composition, but then you're letting it run and you're hoping for the best and often getting the worst.

And so it's not completely strategy at that point. There is a fair amount of chaos that's being introduced, which means luck on the scale of one to five. And you've got to deal with this sound, right? And are you going to draw that one coin that's got the tentacles on it that tells you, yeah, you automatically lose regardless of how much advantage you thought you brought into it.

In my brain, this game, you can try to do a lot to mitigate luck, but it can never be completely mitigated and that bag of doom, lux of four. And it's a glorious part of the game for me. I'm not saying it's a bad thing. What do you guys think? - Well, I'll go and say, I'm thinking luck is a three. I mean, really your question I think should be not how much luck plays a factor, but how much does bad luck play a factor?

Because that's the only luck that you're recognizing in the game because of the nature in the game. - Sure. - You know, you rarely are you putting yourself into a position where like, oh, look, I drew a plus two. Like I got lucky and got the right thing. More often, you're just trying to mitigate that bad luck that could happen to you.

And really drawing into that bag I mean, if you're just willy-nilly, going after your skill checks and drawing into the bag, it feels lucky, but really you can calculate, I've got a 75% chance that 75% of those tokens mean I pass. And that's very calculable because you should know what's in the bag and you know you're coming in at plus three or plus one or whatever it is.

So it feels lucky because those bad luck times when you draw that tend to fail, that's the one thing you're gonna remember from that game. So the thing is is the luck is not constant, but when it hits, you feel it and you remember it forever. So there's definitely a selection bias. Yes, that's what it is. - So I thought about this question a lot and it really comes down to how you define winning. If you define winning as getting the best outcome, then the luck is high.

However, that's not what this game is about. And so I rate luck as a two. - Okay. - A game allows you to carry on even if you fall unconscious or go crazy and that mitigates the luck to something minor, in my opinion. - Yeah, I like that a lot. That's a great point. It's when you get out of the mindset of winning and losing, which we talked about in the beginning a little bit, when you get into the mindset of just, this is what happens in the story. - Yeah, you're a character in a story.

- Yes, then there is no luck. There's just what is. This is what happens. This is how the story goes. - Did you survive your loner scene? (both laughing) - Nope, not a main character. (both laughing) All right, then theme. How much do we think the theme has been integrated into this game? - I mean, never was there a game more themy. It's a five.

I mean, not only does the theme integrate so well, I mean, when the designers are doing things like, a perfect example is the aloof keyword, is that there's a scenario where you're in a casino, the pit bosses are enemies that kind of roam the casino and they're aloof, meaning they're not gonna attack you, you're not attacking them, they're not hurting you, they're just kind of walking around.

But when they're in your vicinity, there's certain things you can't do because they're looking over your shoulder. And just this idea of an aloof enemy roaming the thing, it works out thematically so perfectly by just having that keyword. And there's countless of these ideas that they put into the games and how this affects the way the game plays. It's through the roof, right? - Yeah, I think it stands on the shoulders of the games that came before it.

And like we talked about before, it's the pinnacle. So I rated a five and it's the primary reason I play this game. - Well, on that Paul, so I was just, I'm always behind in my podcast. So I was just recently listening to your guys's obsession podcast, which I'm really loving. I'm not done with it yet. And I love Paul's comment is that, you know, when going to five, he says he'd rated a bunch of other games at theme five and obsession has more theme than even those. So it must go to six.

So. (laughing) I mean, if those games are only five and this is more themy, where do you go from there? So obsession compared to Arkham Horror, what do you think theme wise? - For me, obsession just connects with me better. That's why I said that. But yeah, Arkham Horror is super polished, well integrated theme. - So I remember on one of the earlier podcasts, I mentioned that there was the 18-17 rule when it comes to complexity. (laughing) It was the rule.

I know the reference, but with the rule. - Just the fact that there's a game out there called 18-17, it is a five and therefore, in comparison, everything else must be less. (laughing) Yeah. And I think in that one, Paul was like, oh, that one's a six or an 11, something like that. (laughing) And I would say that Arkham Horror, the card game is the 18-17 of theme, right? I would say it's even better than obsession, but it's a close race. - Or terrifying of ours?

- I don't think terrifying Mars has as much theme and it's everywhere and yet this is more. The way that the act deck and the agenda deck are creating this narrative experience that's interactive and you are revealing it as you go and it's masterful. This is the reference Cthulhu experience. This is theme on steroids, it's fantastic. - It can be, it usually is, but sometimes it's not.

- Okay. - If you draw the cards in the wrong order or the bag hates you, it can just feel like an exercise in self-torture. - A utility, yeah, a utility, yeah. - Well, and then the narrative that's created, the fact that we still talk about story lines from when we played before, whenever we played the Excelsior Hotel and when it Greg just went up to a hotel room and just started shot gunning the guests, like he became the bad guy. (laughing)

I don't even remember the details, but just a... - Let's remember that event. - That's even happening. - Yeah, or it's not from the card game, but from Arkham Horror of the Board Game, I remember it, which, you know, thematically fits very close to this, obviously. I remember a time when we were just getting beaten, I think Megan and I were getting beaten up by monsters.

Todd jumps into a car that he finds across town, comes flying across town, runs over the monsters, steps out like the Terminator with the Chicago typewriter and just mows 'em down. I just, I'll never forget those moments that these stories that these games create, they're just, they're so fantastic. - I agree. So then what's your favorite player count for this game? It plays one to four. I think this is gonna be an interesting discussion.

What do you find to be the best player account for Arkham Horror of the Card Game? Is it gonna be interesting? (laughing) - For me, the best player count is one. - Oh, maybe it will be interesting. - I thought one of you was gonna do it, that's why. - This is my favorite solo non-video game. And yeah, like we talked about, it reminds me of the old "Choose Your Own Adventure" novels or role-playing video games. - Okay, so Dave, what did you have? - Well, I agree with that.

This is my favorite solo gaming experience. In fact, before this game, I would not have considered myself a solo gamer. I would rather go play a video game or read a book than sit down and even my good solo games, I would never play them solo. This is the first time where I love to play it solo and I do all the time. But to me, my favorite player count by a mile is two player. Having that joint experience with a friend and laughing and crying together as we go through the game.

Because when I play solo, I don't play true solo, which is one investigator. I don't enjoy that. I don't like the balance deck you have to build. I will only play two-handed solo, so two investigators. So the game rolls out the same as two player. I'm just, I'm doing it by myself, I'm doing all the bureaucracy. So for me, that's the only way I wanna play the game. But having another person do it with you is just, it's by a mile for me. - Right.

And you got the same answer I did for those same reasons. I love playing it with a second person. And the other side of it is, I know that everything scales, right? So a lot of times you're gonna have get so many clues per investigator. And so as you add more investigators, it gets harder. You have to acquire more clues and it scales out. Yeah, you have more actions, but you're also drawing another mythos card. And so that's, you know, the encounter decks getting more overwhelming.

Two feels like the perfect balance between all of those things. So if I was playing solo with two investigators or better yet, playing a two player game, which is my favorite, then the balance between difficulty and experience and time is spot on. - Agree. - So then what's your least favorite player count? And I think we're probably gonna be unanimous on this, but maybe not. - Nine? (laughing) - Oh my gosh. - I picked multiple players. - Yeah, that goes to 12.

- Okay. - But yeah, I feel like the game was originally packaged and designed for one or two players. And so taking it to three or four just adds way too much downtime and chaos. - Right. Yeah, I agree with that. Again, four by a mile. - Yeah. - It's so long. It's, you know, you gotta come up with 16 clue tokens to get past this pointer. It's long and arduous and just lots of downtime. It really drags and really makes a great game boring. - Agreed. By the way, I also had it at four.

So totally agree four is too many. Five is right out. (laughing) - So actual playing time, the original box said 60 to 120 minutes. And that actually got revised with the revised edition. So what are your thoughts on playing time? - It's really scenario-dependent. So I can paint with a broad brush and say it's about 45 minutes per player, but some scenarios are half that time and some are double. - Right. Maybe 45 minutes per investigator.

So when I play solo, I almost perfectly come in at 90 minutes every time. Now, of course, there are some times where I just, you get destroyed and by turn three, those are much shorter games, you know, took you longer to set it up and tear it down than to play. But for the most part, a standard scenario, I'm you generally coming in at 90 minutes. Whether I'm playing, you know, two player or by myself with two investigators, it comes in at 90 minutes.

Three to four player for some reason is five hours. I don't know what it just adding that extra player, it goes forever. - Right. I would agree with 45 minutes per investigator, which gives you a range of 90 to 180, right? If you're assuming that you're not playing true solo with one investigator. So the original box was 50% underrepresented in its playing time, which is exactly what they posted on the revised edition. So the revised edition says 90 to 180. And I think that's actually spot on.

So which edition of the game is the best? So we really only have two to choose between here. We have the original or we have the revised. Two core sets, one big box, but different changes that have been incorporated into the revised edition. Do you have an impression here? - I mean, we already talked about it. I hated the old mythos packs. So now that I could buy the game without figuring out which mythos pack goes to which cycle, I'm much happier. - Right.

Yeah, for sure, the new distribution style. But as far as the core sets, I mean, I guess we could revise the old saying it's two half dozens in one or 12 in the other. I guess we could put it that way that, the revised core really is, I think there was some changes to some of the artwork, but basically it's exactly two of the old core sets. So it really isn't different. If you have two old core sets, don't waste your money and go buy a revised core. It's the same thing.

So revised core is what's available. Go ahead and get it, even though I preferred the old style. If you could get your hands on one for 25 bucks, try that way to get in. - Right, yeah, I agree. I would say that there are some organizational changes which are nice. So there's definitely no need to go out of your way to find the old version is what I'm saying. Is that the current available revised edition is great. Go with that. So expansions.

Now on the game page on board game geek, including all of the promo cards. So this number is gonna be artificially inflated. There are 108 expansions to this game. We're not gonna cover them all. What I'd like to know is what was your favorite cycle? Dave? - My favorite is probably the path to Carcosa. And I just have a lot of familiarity with it. I played it so many times. And it's just, it's solid through and through pretty much every scenario.

I'm getting a little tired of the story 'cause I've played it so many times. But when you're looking at the cycles and actually I forgot to count, what do we have to eight cycles, nine cycles or something like that? There really isn't a stinker in the bunch. I think the dream eaters is probably the least favorited, but people still love it. And then path to Carcosa and the forgotten age are always the most favorited. And I would probably agree with that.

I'm happy with everyone that I've played so far. It's just, there's not a bad choice. Except for the stand-alones. Now we could talk about that here. - Sure. - We have not been having any luck with the stand-alones 'cause we try to play them at three and four player and they just eat up so much time. And maybe we're not giving them a fair shake. We need to set aside like all day Saturday to try to play it. We're trying to squeeze it in on a Monday night before 10 o'clock.

But I'm not enjoying the vast scope of the stand-alones where it's gonna be two, three, four hours. It's, I don't know if that's my shortcoming or if it's just, it's not what I'm looking for in the game. - I would say it's not what I'm looking for in the game. I don't sit down and intend to play one of the cycles front to back in one sitting. What's kind of great about him is it's broken up into scenario. So I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna work on the next one and I can take that at my own pace.

Whereas the stand-alone, you're expecting to sit down and well, it may not be the entire cycle, which used to be eight scenarios. And if you're playing those in an hour and a half, that's 12 hours of play. So even if they gave you half the content as what's in a cycle, that's still sitting down for six hours. - Yeah. - That's a lot of time to dedicate to that style of game, especially six hours of punishment. So Paul, what was your favorite cycle in the expansions?

- Well, my favorite play was murder at the Excelsior Hotel that Dave mentioned. And that's primarily because one of our players went full role-playing and he started using the police badge card that he played as a prop to deliver lines like, "I am the law and stop the police. " (laughing) - Way to go, Frank. - It was amazing, yeah. But I think my favorite cycle has been the first one done with Legacy and that's because the story's solid.

I really enjoy the characters and the cards that they released with it as well. - Right. - And it's not too much extra rules overhead. - Right, that's true too. So Pat the Carcoso was the next cycle after the done with Legacy. And I don't know if that was just, when I was playing this game consistently, where I was in my understanding of the game, I was like hitting everything in stride. It felt like the developers hit their stride. I had the best experience with that particular cycle.

And every since I've gone back and played a couple more, there has been some element of, "Oh, I've got to re-familiarize myself with it. " 'Cause I didn't stay current or fresh on the game. So I have the fondest memories of Pat the Carcoso. But I wasn't surprised Dave Uni said that it and Forgotten Age are the two most favoriteed of the batch. - They're also great. - So most recognizable comparison, what's the highest ranking game that reminds you the most of this one?

Dave, I'll give you the courtesy of First Choice here. - I was gonna say, I'll go last. So I picked three just so I'm covered if you guys get my answers. - I've got two, so I'll let Paul go first. - Yeah, I couldn't decide between Arkham Horror and Android Netrunner actually. And I guess I'll talk about Android Netrunner. Android Netrunner took an old game and re-themed it to the Fantasy Flight Android universe.

But they changed the game to give every player a starting card that defined who their character or corporation was, and then add in some unique powers and abilities that they could do. And also on the backside of that card, tell them how they can build their deck in a special way. And Arkham Horror the card game did the same exact thing. And I think that is one of the main things that elevates it above all the card games that came before it.

It really puts you into a frame of mind that I am this character and I love that about it. - Nice, such a good game. We're gonna have to do an episode on that one at some point. - For sure. - But I feel like there's a lot more preparation I'm gonna have to do for that. Okay, so Dave, I'll go second. And I was conflicted on which way to go for this one. Do I go with the Cthulhu theme or do I go with the deck construction for storytelling purposes?

I'll go with Cthulhu and then we'll see what you have for your choice. So for me, that would be Mansions of Madness and specifically the Second Edition, which was an improvement over the first. The first was good. The second is great because it added an app that took care of a lot of the bookkeeping and bureaucracy. And it just got you down to dealing with the story and the tasks and solving the puzzles to get through that experience.

So Mansions of Madness, Second Edition is my pick here for most recognizable. - I'll be honest, I constantly confuse Elder Sign and Mansions of Madness. One of them to me felt like pandemic, but Cthulhu Mythos. Is that right? - Well, no, pandemic and Cthulhu Mythos is Arkham Horror Third Edition. - Well, sort of, no, but there was one very much so 'cause you have outbreaks. - But one of them has a world map. It's been so long. That was back in Bloomington when we were playing.

- That is neither Elder Sign or Mansions of Madness that would be Eldritch Horror. - Yes, Eldritch Horror, that's pandemic, but Cthulhu. - Right. - Yes, those all run together for me. I don't have a ton of experience with them. Well, since you're taking those, then you guys didn't even touch into my three choices. I could have used them all, but I'm gonna go with Marvel Champions, which I think is an obvious comp. - Right. - It is, you know, a lot of similar mechanisms.

It is not, the overhead is not as intensive. The deck building is a little bit easier, although there's still Marvel Champions, DB or whatever it is. There is a website where you can find decks to use. They've started incorporating some campaign style boxes, but they're not as fluid or cohesive as the Arkham Horror ones, but there is some carryover from one scenario to the neck, some decisions you make early do carry with you.

So it incorporates that a little bit, but obviously the superhero theme versus Arkham Horror theme, but under the hood, they're very, very similar. - Right. Yeah, I considered that one. - Yeah. Well, Marvel Champions is a lot more pick up and play. We could just pick up and play a game right now. The thing with Arkham Horror is if we play right now, we also have to schedule seven more times in the future that we're going to get together and play. And that's a little difficult. - Agreed.

All right. So what's your less recognizable comparison? So Dave, you can go for us this time. - Well, I already told you guys in chat before, I'm going to go with Earthborne Rangers, which is up and coming. It's only a matter of time before it hits the top 750. So if we recorded this a year from now, we might have to be one of the more recognizable comparisons. But, you know, the Earthborne Rangers is from some of the original designers of Arkham Horror.

And there are definite similarities in how it comes together and how it plays out. But it is a new, fantastic way to do this sort of storytelling. And it's not so conflict heavy. It's, you know, very quest driven, is that instead of like fighting these beasties, maybe we need to go fishing, 'cause we need to get some food for the village. Or maybe, you know, there's some elk in the countryside.

And we need to move these elk, or we need to make friends with them because they're afraid of something. And it's just, they're getting so creative on the types of stories that can be told. And it's such more of a lived-in experience and we're not where you've got ghouls creeping over your shoulder at every turn. I'm pretty new to the game, but as I play it, it's giving me a lot of the Arkham Horror experience. Maybe without the anxiety of it.

But I mean, in a good way, anxiety, but it's fantastic. Paul, how about you? What did you have for your less recognizable comparison? I mean, I could just double down and say system gateway, but I am gonna pick unlock, which is kind of a fudge because there are unlocks that are more recognizable and unlocks that are less recognizable. But unlock, with an exclamation mark, is a kind of escape room game based on a deck of cards.

So it's a cooperative game and you start often with just a single card in front of you. And then you have to find clues on that card that allow you to turn over new cards. And the new cards build a map much in the way that you do in Arkham Horror. Okay. And you cooperate with other players to be observant and use outside the box thinking to continuously find clues. And then it requires an app to play.

And so it will tell you how to proceed and some of the gateways that you have to pass require codes that you have to type in. And those codes can be solved just from the pictures and clues that you're turning over and all these cards that create this map in front of you. Sometimes of a room, sometimes of a town, sometimes of a whole island. Okay, I have not played that one. Yeah, and usually plays in about an hour. So it's a really good game. I enjoyed a lot. I would like to try that.

Another couple of options here, I'll go with what for me was an obvious comp and that was Star Wars the card game. It was another fantasy flight LCG format and it had the same distribution paradigm, right? They were sending out six packs plus a deluxe for each of their cycles. That was more of a duel though that was happening. And so the packs and upgrades were adding flavor, different cards you could assemble. So now we're going to duel on the Hoth, right?

And so I got all of the packs and I can apply my things are now on Endor. But it was still a battle between the rebellion and the Empire. It wasn't a cohesive storyline the same way. And now it's a dead game. So sorry to prop up a dead game, but it definitely had the same feeling as Arkham Ohora the card game at the time. So house rules, how would you improve the game? So let's talk about, you know, are there essential upgrades that this would be the time? I had a couple of actual house rules.

Now, one, use a bag, right? Well, yeah, what were a cup? Well, this is where I have to confess that I often use the app, Arkham bag, when I'm playing by myself, where I just touch the screen and it gives me one, you know, gives me my next chaos token. But when playing with others, then we usually use the bag. But a house rule that a lot of people use, I don't use it, I don't like it as much.

I really haven't tried it, but the idea of it, I'm not sure, is that in your opening hand, you always start with your signature card because each investigator has their signature card, whether it's Jenny's guns or something like that. You always start with that, but then you don't get to Mulligan. So that way your character has all of its thematic components right from the start, except for the weakness that you might draw later.

I don't use that as much, but a lot of people do and they really like it, though I do like to house rule when you're drawing weaknesses for your deck, draw two and pick one, rather than just draw and you get what you get. Some of those can be pretty devastating and they're gonna come up almost every game. Yeah, I've always done that. I thought it was part of the rules. I didn't realize it was a house rule. Yeah, as far as I know, you're supposed to just draw one and you get what you get.

Oh, wow, okay, interesting. So we talked about coin capsules. We talked about the bag and how you use Arkham cards and you actually use it to replace the bag. No, Cthulhu's listening and so it's picking the token it wants to give you when you go the app route. So you can stay silent in control of your fate if you're using the bag, I'm just gonna say, right? It's also great for taking notes though, the app. It is. And for double checking all of the checklists that you have to complete.

Yeah, the Arkham cards app, which that does have a bag in it, but I use a separate app for the Arkham bag. Okay. Because that one is just the bag. You put in what tokens are gonna be in there and that's the one we use the other night and you just touch it. I'm sure the one in Arkham cards is good up for some reason, I just, I never used that one. But the campaign tracker Arkham cards, to me, it's essential.

It's just so easy and you can put your game down for a month or two and pick it up and it tells you right where you were, tracks your decks. It's just fantastic. Awesome. Other house rules? Well, I also have acrylic clue tokens and doom tokens. And I mean, you can, you can spend a lot of money at see, you know, I've got those player boards that you were using the other night. Yeah, those are crazy.

I really like those and they've got little special slots where your sanity points go and your health points go and a place to keep your tokens. And yeah, I went a little bit crazy. Oh, and sleeves, I think are a necessity, especially for the standard set, because you're constantly seeing a lot of those encounter cards over and over in everyone. So I feel like you have to have them sleeved and then you have to make that decision. Do I sleeve my entire collection?

No. Which I don't do because I have so many cards. I will sleeve a player deck at the beginning of the cycle and when the cycle is over, I'll un-sleeve it and that's my next player deck. Yeah, welcome to the world of Dominion. Do you sleeve every card? No. Yeah. Well, in this case, I mean, you could be spending as much or more money on sleeves than you are on the actual game, especially I like the dragon sleeves with the mat back. I don't like to mess with sticky sleeves and things like that.

I just, I want it to be perfect. All right. So if this game is being played at game night, what do you wanna play afterwards? What's the best double feature game that goes along with it? Ball? For me, it's usually more like a more of the card game. Let's play the next scenario, right? That's not the case for me. I'm usually pretty spent at the end of a scenario. Like, it feels pretty daunting to kind of set up and start fresh again.

But being in that deck building mode, I like the other night, we went right into Dune Imperium uprising and I like keeping in a deck building mode. So I'm gonna say playing one of these new deck building work replacement games that we've been enjoying. And look, having a night of Arnik and Arkham, even like fanatically kind of lines up. So, wow. Okay. I originally had, I'm gonna pull a poll on this one and say play the second time.

But since we let Paul go first, my other option was there was a Cthulhu reskin of the Game Star Realms. That was perhaps unimaginatively called Cthulhu Realms by Tasty Minstrel Games. And I played the heck out of that on my iPad and I've got a copy and that would be a great, almost tongue-in-cheap cartoonish follow up and get a little more competitive, obviously, since it's not a cooperative game to be dropping the king and yellow on, you know, your opponent is always a lot of fun.

So I would also play Cthulhu Realms. - You know, I'll throw in 'cause I think it might be a good fit just thematically where you are. How about a game of Mysterium when we're all done? - Oh, yeah. - Kind of lights kind of fun. It's in kind of, you know, old creepy mode. - I like it. I like that a lot. So what feature of the game still stands out to you? What's aged the best? - The writing and the story crafting. You know, that's the reason I pull it out and that's the reason I buy more. - Right?

Good point. - Yeah, with each new cycle or new scenario, the ingenuity of ways that they're using the cards, where especially the first time you play, and, you know, if you haven't gone through and looked at any spoilers on the cards, when all of a sudden you turn this ally over and they've become this hellhound or something, where on the other side of a card is an enemy version of that character, or this location comes out of nowhere, put it into play, and just those sort of surprises,

that they're getting so just creative with how they've set the framework and then how they implement it with all the new cycles. It's just been so fantastic to see what they're gonna do next. - I agree. I also like that you've got the right soundtrack for the game with all of the interdimensional screeching. - Good luck with the edit, Todd. (laughing) - I didn't even notice. Sorry about that. I should have muted and waited. - Oh, no, no, no. You're, that's fine. I'll mute for now.

- It does sound fitting. - It did. I mean, it was eerie screeching. It was good stuff. - I agree. I'm in love with the act and agenda decks as plot advancing devices. That concept was so good and implemented so well that they basically lifted it from the card game, modified it, and re-implemented it in Arkham Horror 3rd Edition as the codex. And I think that's what makes this game truly unique and superior. What feature of the game now disappoints? - For me, it's the variance.

The fact that you can play the same scenario of the same characters, and one time it's easy, and the next time it's impossible. - Okay, Dave, were there any items that didn't age well for you? Sometimes, you know, I have these nights where I'm like, I'm gonna play Arkham Horror tonight, and then I think about it, and I think, and it is so daunting to get it out, set everything up, and it's where am I in this campaign at this point, and it can feel a little overwhelming sometimes.

But just that, once I get it out, I'm having a blast, but there are times where I just end up not playing because I'm a little overwhelmed by putting it all together, and, you know, now I gotta build a deck before I can even start, where am I? I don't know, maybe that's a feature, not a bug. (laughs) - Fantasy Flight has republished certain elements of this game several times, right? They streamlined this, they've given you a little extra of that, now they have a new version of it.

I think the Dunwich legacy has been reprinted three times, 'cause you had the original cycle, then you got the return to the Dunwich legacy that came in the bigger box, and it had a couple extra cards in it, and then they came out with the revised edition, and the new format, so if you've been buying it as you go along, then that's a problem. But, you know, the good news is, if you're new to the game now, you get the best version on first buy, so this could just be me having sour grapes.

- Well, I wanna hear from Dave, do you have any gripes about the return to boxes? - Basically, I paid $25 for a storage box with a return to, because they're a great store, they store an entire cycle for their small on the shelf, but I don't play the return to scenarios.

You know, they give you a couple of cards, and it makes sense, you know, I've played Dunwich legacy so many times, next time I play, I probably will play Return to Dunwich legacy, so it gives you a twist, because you're constantly revisiting these scenarios, but it does have a, it's there for the completest sort of feel, and I do like the storage box, but it's kind of an expensive storage box, the way that works, right?

- Yeah, I'm not a huge fan of them, but I own all of them, I think there's five of them. - All right, I haven't paid for any, so I wanted to hear from you, thank you. - All right, so do this game replace a previous one? - Yes, it replaced Arkham Horror second edition, and perhaps third edition. - You are reading my page right now, I had the same thing.

It definitely replaced the 2005, you know, informally second edition of Arkham Horror, and it preemptively, as it would turn out, replaced the third edition that wouldn't come out for another couple of years. - It replaced the game that hadn't come out yet. - Which is appropriate, for an interventional stuff, right? - That could have been through time. (laughing) - What did you have, Dave?

- My answer's the same, I mean, I have all of Arkham Horror, the board game second edition, it has not hit the table since before 2016. - Right. - So has this game since been replaced, and if so, by what? - Well, no, but also earth-worn rangers. (laughing) - I thought you were gonna say yes, but yeah, for me it's just a flat no. - Yeah. - For me, it was Marvel champions. Although, now that I feel like I've reached superhero saturation, - Yeah.

- Coming back to Arkham Horror, the card game was actually a welcome event, and it got me re-energized to play this game more. Soundtrack, what would you wanna listen to while playing this game? - Yeah, that's a really tough question, because my experience has been that most of my time playing this game, things are semi-normal. (laughing) So, the soundtrack I want for those times of playing the game are like 1920s swing music-style soundtrack.

But then, you get the final scenarios of the cycle, which are just completely out there. Swing music doesn't work at all. (laughing) - Right, great. Yeah, Dave, as much as I wanna say some good old fashioned goth music, like Dead Can Dance or Bauhaus's Bella Legosi's Dead, I don't think those would actually work well-playing. - You could not listen to that song on repeat, I'll tell you what. Once is enough for a couple of weeks- - It's such a long song, though.

You don't need to repeat it that many times for your hour and hour. (laughing) That's true. - But Spotify is full of good dark academia, playlists, dark ambient, where it's then kind of thematic sort of background. There's actually an artist called Knox Arcana, which shows up on a lot of those, which Spotify describes as neoclassical dark ambient, which I think fits perfectly. And it is, it's just great background vibes for their perfectly. - Yeah, it's a dark ambient or drone.

- Yeah, yeah. - It's the key words for that kind of music. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Okay, I mean, I might wanna have that on just during the day. I'm gonna have to go check that out. So that was Knox Arcana, Knox Arcana. There's even an album called The Necronomicon. - Okay, awesome. There was an HBO series that came out called Lovecraft Country that took on a version of this.

And if you go to the instrumental portions of the soundtrack, there are some great options in there, but they are so situational, right? Kind of to Paul's point is like, I don't necessarily want the loud clanging, bombastic stuff when things are normal. - Exactly. - So what I decided to go with was the Diablo 4 soundtrack. (all laughing) - Because that does have a lot of good, calm background stuff, like Firebreak Manor, perfect.

And then you can segue over to stuff like a Shava for whatever the last fight in the scenario is. So rating on Board Game Geek scale of one to 10 now, how would you rate Arkham Horror the card game? - It's a 10 for me, you know? In fact, when people ask me, you know, especially people who don't play many games, 'cause when you introduce yourself as somebody who plays games, they always ask, well, what's your favorite game? And this is often my answer. I mean, the truth is I'm a grownup.

I usually don't have favorites. Like, I don't understand being a grownup and having a favorite color, it's just colors. (all laughing) But anyways, if you are gonna have favorites, but I mean, but people want an answer when they ask that question and it is certainly in the conversation for one of my favorite games of all time. So it's become my stock answer. - Nice. Paul, what did you have it down as? - On the whole, I rate Arkham Horror a nine, different expansions I rate differently.

It's on the whole end of the nine. - Yeah, I also had it down as a nine and it's still the best Cthulhu experience that's available. Is it replayable and how soon would you want to revisit the game? So I could say solo, I could play this game every week, couple of times a week. Group wise, I don't think I'd wanna dedicate the time to solely focus on this game and give up the other games that we're playing. So I could play it once a month, maybe as a group, probably even less than that.

But I think as a solo game, it's highly replayable. - Yeah, I'm right there with you. I could play it anytime solo, but multiplayer, no, thank you. (laughing) - Well, by its very nature, it's replayable. I mean, it's not just variable setup and these things that we have in games that make them unique experiences. This one, literally, it is a completely different experience because of the scenario that you're playing.

Even when you're replaying a-- - I was gonna say as long as you're paying for it. (laughing) - That's right, wow. Yeah, it's pay to play, that's for sure. But it's also one where, I mean, I think there's a ton of content in the revised box. I think you could just buy that with the five investigators and the three scenarios that work together as a campaign and get six months to a year of consistent play before even branching out because there's so much in there.

But for the most part, you gotta keep paying to keep playing. So either play it a lot or don't bother. - Right, agreed. And with that, we have finally shut the dimensional portal that was spilling horrors into our world. - Whew, for our next episode, we'll try to take over the world through more traditional means. And by that I mean capitalism. (laughing) So thanks guys, I really appreciate you being available today. This was a lot of fun.

- Yes. - We're in 90 minutes, so you got a lot of editing to do here. (laughing) Thank you for listening to "Replayable. " Support for our podcast comes from listeners like you. You can find us online at replayable. fm, on Twitter as "Replayable FM" and on Instagram as "Replayable FM. " You can also join our team at patreon.com/replayable. Thank you for your support. We welcome your feedback, which is the only way that we are going to get better.

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