Arkham Horror: The Card Game – 4 Player Review- The Devourer Below

So we finally got a time when we could all sit down to play the third and final chapter of the Night of the Zealot campaign contained within the Arkham Horror: The Card Game core set. I had been a bit naughty and caught a glimpse of the scenario on YouTube prior to us playing, but did not manage to get a proper look at the horrors to come.

To set the scene I took the role of Skids ‘O’ Toole, Josh took the role of Roland Banks, Shaun played as Wendy Adams and Stuart reprised his role as Daisy Walker. The game was considered to be “Past the Midnight Hour” so we all had to discard two random cards from our hands which crippled our chances of mass killing a load of bad guys later on in the game and in the previous scenario we allowed 5 of the 6 cultists to escape, which resulted in the agenda card starting with 3 doom tokens.

Act 1a – Investigating the Trail

This act took so much longer than it should have, we all moved into our hidden Arkham Woods locations only to find we had ventured into a location where out skills were wasted and this slowed our clue gathering down to a snail’s pace which resulted in the Agenda deck advancing to the next step. Eventually we managed to get the 12 clues required to advance the act deck and we crawled into the next part of the story.

Act 2a – Into the Darkness

Things went from bad to worse here when our awful showing in the Midnight Masks scenario came to back to haunt us. Our path was blocked by 5 cultists and a random monster which was lurking at the location. Sadly due to having to randomly discard two of my cards I lost my Dynamite Blast which would have made the world of difference here, leaving us with two bad guys to fight so we could get to the ritual site. Sadly though the doom counters were stacking quicker than we could get our acts together and we failed to stop the agenda from advancing yet again.

Agenda / Act – The Devourer Below

In the words of Michael Caine “I’ve got a great idea”, I drew Lita Chantler and had the brainwave of sacrificing her to the Umôrdhoth so we could survive the scenario. Like most plans, this did not go well and in fact it all came together like the start of an episode of Casualty.  Sadly Shaun moved into the middle area to try and clear some of the cultists out, he managed two but sadly once Umôrdhoth moved into the location, the team up was too much, with Shaun being the first eliminated. Next if fell over to Stuart who failed a check thrown at him by the encounter deck, resulting in him taking too many damage tokens, removing him from the game. I felt that all was not lost as Josh and I were still in the game, with Lita Chantler in tow, she would soon be thrown to the wolves so we could live. The start of the turn arrived and my encounter card forced me to take 3 horror, when sadly I only had 1 horror left. Our only shot of surviving was gone and Josh did not have the health remaining to best Umôrdhoth, who quickly defeated him.

Well as per the resolution we unlocked, with our defeat the summoned Umôrdhoth would be left to stalk the city of Arkham uncontested for now and all of our investigators were killed. Absolutely gutted about this result since we had been building this up, but it was a really fun experience and it was a run through using the basic decks from the Learn to Play guide, will build my own decks moving forward. Now that the Dunwich Legacy has been released, I am hoping to build a couple of tougher decks to play through the scenarios again and expand into the Dunwich Legacy campaign after that. I think the four of us are happy to play through it again and to try the Dunwich Legacy campaign also.

I have really enjoyed playing this game and I cannot wait to get my hands on the new packs when they are released. I have also pre-ordered the stand alone scenarios and I am quite interested to see what they will bring to the game when moving through the main scenarios. If you have any interest in this game you can check out the forums on CardGameDB.com or have a wander into Watchtower Games in Crewe to pick up your copy of the games core set or deluxe box.

Fingers crossed I will be able to write a report about the Dunwich Legacy campaign as I play through it and thank you for reading my report of the Night of the Zealot campaign. Check our adventures out on Twitter @bigboss010, Instagram @bigbosstp010 and my pals at SOS on Twitter @siteofshite.

I’m Big Boss.... I’m out.... Peace.