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Monday 6 February 2017

Arkham Horror: The Card Game: 1 Player Review – The House Always Wins


So having really enjoyed the Extra Curricular Activities scenario of the Dunwich Legacy, I decided to not wait for my cohorts before trying the second scenario from the deluxe expansion and gave this a quick go. I again took the reins of “Ashcan” Pete to play this scenario, as before simply because the deck has more flexibility than my Zoey build which is almost solely focused on combat.


Act 1 – Beginners Luck

The Clover Club is the venue for this scenario, throwing a curveball straight into the mix is the enemy the game has starting in the Lounge, who has Hunter, so will follow the investigators around. The Aloof keyword starts on all villains at this point, so he wouldn’t automatically engage me, so hoping I played it correctly, I simply ignored him and explored the area obtaining clues away from him so he didn’t attack me. I utilised the locations abilities to get enough clues to proceed in the act and as a side note I “Cheated” here to get the Elder Symbol from the chaos bag, don’t worry though, I remembered this for later.


Act 2 – Skin Game

Ok now I had to deal with another bad guy the encounter deck threw at me and some new hidden locations. The Agenda act advanced by this point also meaning the bad guys would now automatically engage me and attack. I wasn’t too worried about this yet as I was a couple of turns away from the bad guys getting me. I built up on those turns and waited so I could take down the Pit Boss away from the other bad guy who had spawned out. I took a fair few hits to the face here but I managed to sacrifice my Leather Coat to take the blunt of the damage. After finishing the Pit Boss with the help of my trusty companion Duke, I moved to advance the Act deck once more.


Act 3 – All In

Professor Rice was found, the VIP Room of the Clover Club was obviously the place to be, however at the same time a new uber bad guy had materialised in the club to hunt us down. Again, luckily I was a few turns away and I had no intention of tackling the enemy all by myself. I instead opted to gather up the entranced professor, sneak out the back door, carrying cab fare and leaving a fake phone number in my wake to complete the scenario with all my faculties intact.


Again this was a real quick play through, and no doubt at some point I made a mistake during my game. One thing I did notice about this scenario was that I finished it with 4 experience points, where my play though of the Extra Curricular Activities scenario left me with 1 experience point, although I could have gotten 2 had I been smarter.  I feel like this is the scenario to work on, so you come out of it with a good number of experience moving forward in the campaign.


Based on my games I would be moving forward in the campaign with 5 experience points, which certainly would give me some options moving forward regarding upgrading my deck. I am hoping that the 4 man game will reap some extra points, as the team can make sure we hit those targets to obtain those extra points I missed during my solo play through. One thing the game required me to note was that I had “Cheated” during Act 1, this would have resulted in a new token being thrown into the Chaos Bag for the remainder of the campaign had I been continuing.


A fun game and surprisingly nothing like the core campaign; enjoyed the fact there was a big bad guy present from the start and that dodging him for the first few turns was critical. I really enjoyed that the game added locations to the board as the act progressed; it gave the feeling of secrets being uncovered and definitely gave the feeling of an evolving storyline. This scenario has really set the tone for the Dunwich Legacy campaign and I am very excited to start the campaign properly with the rest of the team.


As usual thanks for reading, I would again highly recommend getting yourself down to Watchtower Games in Crewe or Even GTG Guys That Game in Hanley and get yourself a copy of the core set and give this game a try. You won’t regret it.


You can follow me on Twitter @bigboss010 and on Instagram @bigbosstp010. You can also follow my Tag Team partners at SOS on Twitter @SiteOfShite.


I’m Big Boss..... I’m Out..... Peace.










Saturday 4 February 2017

Arkham Horror: The Card Game – 1 Player Review – Extracurricular Activity


So I have had the latest Dunwich Legacy for little over a week now and I really wanted to give it a go, so while I had some time today, I opted to take the expansion for a spin. I built an “Ashcan” Pete deck to tackle this scenario, sadly the deck was built to be used in a team and not on solo operations, however the end result was fairly positive.
                                

This game also sees my first custom deck build too, I was tempted to use Zoey originally, however I felt that Pete would bring a level of flexibility to the game where Zoey would just bring attack ability.


Act 1a - After Hours

This act felt very much like an expanded version of the 1st act in The Gathering, the objective was simply to get three clues in order to advance the act. The additional locations to discover mixed things up and also the 3 shroud on the two locations I did investigate certainly increased the difficulty. I managed to get the 3 clues after being bogged down for a few turns by enemies and moved forward in the act.


Act 2a – Rice’s Whereabouts

This was an interesting act, the objective was to take control of “Jazz” Mulligan, an asset who was shuffled into the encounter deck. For the cost of 1 clue, I could discard the top 10 cards of the encounter deck and luckily for me “Jazz” was in the first lot of ten discarded. I managed to parley him into joining my little team and advanced the act once more. This was a fairly speedy act to get through and without giving away too much about the contents of the encounter deck, I sure was grateful.




Act 3a – Campus Safety

This act was pretty cool as it provided multiple ways to advance. The game threw a monster called “The Experiment” towards me and with the “Beast Unleashed” agenda in play; the creature was advancing towards me. However I opted to not try to tackle the large bag guy moving towards me and I continued my search for the missing professor to obtain resolution number two.




I quite enjoyed this play through with “Ashcan” Pete; I wasn’t so sure I would enjoy playing as him when I first built the deck. My variation of the deck has a lot of drawing power to capitalise on Pete’s ability to ready an asset and this was really pivotal in completing this scenario without going mad. I am thinking about moving away from the Backstab card though as I thought his evasion was 4 basic and sadly it is 3 basic, although I am playing cards to increase his base evasion value, I never got much use out of Backstab when I drew it.


The main reason I built the deck was for my friend to use when we restart the campaign and I am really excited to see how the game plays out once we all jump in on the latest expansion. So far we have Zoey and Pete in the Team, we still haven’t confirmed the final two characters yet and im looking forward to seeing what mix of characters we can come up with.


I will be posting more detailed review once we have organised a time to sit and play. Sadly its a case of getting the time where my partners and I are all free to delve into the mythos. I will most likely give The House Always Wins scenario a go too prior to going in with a full team. I would highly recommend this game to anyone with an interest in the HP Lovecraft books or wants to delve into the living card game format. If you are in the Crewe area I would recommend dropping by Watchtower Games on Nantwich Road to pick up a copy of the core set.


As always thank you for reading, you can follow me on twitter @bigboss010 and Instagram @bigbosstp010.



I’m Big Boss.... I’m Out.... Peace.